— Songs of Kabir, I.16 (tr. Rabindranath Tagore, 1915)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
संत की जाति पूछना व्यर्थ है; पंडित हो या योद्धा, व्यापारी हो या कोई और — छत्तीसों जातियाँ उसी एक ईश्वर को खोज रही हैं।
What it means
This is not a slogan about equality; it is an instruction about one particular question — the question put to a holy man first, before anything he has said has been heard. Kabir does not argue that the question is unjust. He argues that it carries no information: if every rank in the order is engaged in the same search, then knowing a man’s rank tells you nothing about the only matter you came to him for.
The catalogue repays reading as written — priest, warrior, tradesman, and then ‘all the thirty-six castes’, which works as the ordinary shorthand for the whole social order rather than as a count. Naming the ones at the top and then dissolving the list into everybody is the move the sentence makes. It is also harder than its usual anti-caste reading, because the reflex it interrupts belongs to the person asking, which on any given day is the reader.
What it teaches you
Notice the credential check you run before deciding whether something is true — surname, accent, college, sect, the neighbourhood someone lives in — and notice that you almost always run it before hearing the content rather than after. The concrete exercise is to catch yourself doing it once this week and ask what you would have concluded about the same sentence if you had not been able to place the person who said it.
अर्थ और सीख
कबीर यह नहीं कह रहे कि जाति पूछना अनुचित है — वे कह रहे हैं कि वह बेकार है: जब हर वर्ग एक ही खोज में लगा है, तो जाति जानकर उस बात का पता नहीं चलता जिसके लिए आप उसके पास गए थे। ‘छत्तीस जातियाँ’ कोई गिनती नहीं, पूरे समाज के लिए चला आ रहा मुहावरा है। सीख: सुनने से पहले जो पहचान-जाँच हम चुपचाप चला लेते हैं — सरनेम, बोली, इलाक़ा, पंथ — उसे पकड़िए, और पूछिए कि वही बात बिना पहचान जाने सुनी होती तो क्या सोचते।
Where it comes from
From song I.16 of the Songs of Kabir.
Kabir (15th century) was a weaver of Benares whose songs mock every search for God outside one’s own heart; Hindus and Muslims both claimed him, and he refused both. This rendering is from Songs of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore (1915); the song number is cited with this quote.
