The journey to Kasur in central Punjab reveals the shrine of Bulleh Shah (d. 1757) mid-renovation, caught in upheaval. Though the work is ongoing, the new architectural vision — a relentless remodelling — feels strangely restrictive.

The burial site is being encased within a massive, rectangular iron platform, a towering skeletal frame that currently encases the grave. What was once a simple structure is being replaced by something strangely overpowering.

Punjabi scholar Iqbal Qaiser describes this newness as the “shackling” of Bulleh Shah. His words carry the memory of the older structure: its two circular arches and a longer, corridor-like passage that mirrored the shape of a charkha [spinning wheel].

The arches symbolised reciprocity and balance; their curves embodied a grace that has now been stripped away. That characteristic silhouette once provided an entryway to the poet’s pastoral world.

The ongoing ‘renovation’ of the shrine in Kasur of Sufi poet Bulleh Shah is mired in a shocking lack of vision — choosing pomp and grandeur for a man of the masses, enforcing gender restrictions for a poet who often wrote in the feminine voice and forcing his grave to share space with a man history remembers very differently from him…

The ongoing ‘renovation’ of the shrine in Kasur of Sufi poet Bulleh Shah is mired in a shocking lack of vision — choosing pomp and grandeur for a man of the masses, enforcing gender restrictions for a poet who often wrote in the feminine voice and forcing his grave to share space with a man history remembers very differently from him…

Those who have heard Bulleh Shah understand how the poet and the charkha are inextricably intertwined; his many poems in the kafi form repeat the rhythmic hum of the spindle, channelling the voice of a woman at the wheel in a tradition that stretches back to 16th century Sufi poet Shah Hussain.

This is the burial place where, in 1758, the mullahs refused the poet his right to a communal graveyard. As a saint-singer whose lyrics delivered scathing truths, Bulleh Shah was the enfant terrible of his time. Occupying a........

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