বাংলা 
English 
Lalon and the other Bauls condemned religious bigotry and exploitation in the name of religion. They sang against racism and religious distinction and made the building of a bridge between Hindu and Muslim their own object of worship. Few people have contributed so greatly to the pursuit of unity in Indian society as Lalon and the other Bauls. Below are some unforgettable verses of Lalon's songs:
Lalon says — in these eyes I have seen no shape or form of caste
Or,
Lalon says — I know not my own self, I seek it still
Or,
what a strange factory is this!
Along with being a sage and a true devotee, Lalon was a poet of the very first magnitude. No one but Rabindranath could utter such splendid praise of him:
In the simplicity of his language, the depth of his feeling and the ache of his melody, he has no equal; in him are mingled the theory of song, the making of poetry and the essence of devotion alike. Such an unmatched message of folk literature, he believed, would be found nowhere else.
Even without naming Lalon specifically, the Bauls appear in Rabindranath's many writings. Yet when quoting Baul songs, Rabindranath cited Lalon's songs again and again. In his Oxford lectures — later published as "The Religion of Man" — Rabindranath quoted Lalon's song 'The unknown bird within the cage'.
It was Rabindranath who first drew the attention of educated Bengalis to the literary value of Baul song. He also undertook an effort to collect Baul songs, and it was he who first edited and printed twenty of Lalon's songs in the Prabasi magazine.
Among the acknowledgments Rabindranath gave to Baul song, the greatest was his discovery in them of a reflection of the Upanishadic philosophy. In one place in "The Religion of Man" Rabindranath wrote:
Those Upanishadic rishis who said that in trying to grasp the unknown being our mind returns bewildered — the utterance of this village poet matches theirs clearly; yet without exhausting himself chasing his own infinite as the ancient rishi did, this poet makes it understood that the path of perceiving the infinite lies open.
In the introduction to the first volume of Muhammad Mansuruddin's 'Haramoni', Rabindranath wrote:
I remember, I was then young, when a Baul of the Shilaidaha region sang in Calcutta to the ektara:
the Man of my heart?
Having lost that Man, for him alone
I roam through land and foreign shores.
The words were utterly simple, but through the melody their meaning was lit by a matchless radiance. In those words one hears the very language of the Upanishads: "Know the Person within, else there is the pain of death." From the lips of the unlettered I heard that very saying; its sung melody said in simple language that he whom one must know above all men is the very one whose not-knowing brings the deepest pain — the tune of the crying of the child who cannot see its mother in the dark rang from his throat.
Annadashankar Ray reached the conclusion that although Rabindranath's poetry and Baul song share something of the same nature, it was Rabindranath's poetry that influenced the Bauls, and thereby Lalon's influence was limited. The Baul songs are by nature based on hidden meanings; their true import is not easily intelligible to ordinary people, and only those initiated into the Baul faith can grasp their sense. Rabindranath's poetry is exactly the opposite.
Like the Bauls, Rabindranath too believed that God dwells within man. In 'The Religion of Man' he spoke of the divinity of man and the humanity of God. In Gitanjali he said:
hoping for the formless gem.
Although mysticism remains a common element in Rabindranath's poetry and in Baul song, in this the Bauls did not influence Rabindranath. Rather, both gathered the mystic element of their poetry and songs from the common inheritance of Islam, the Hindu and the Buddhist faiths.
Not in his poetry but in his songs Rabindranath was deeply influenced by the Bauls. In the preface to Haramoni he wrote:
In many of my songs I have taken Baul melodies; and in many songs the Baul melody has mingled, knowingly or unknowingly, with other ragas and raginis. From this one may understand that at some time the Baul's melody and message merged simply within my mind.
Among the folk music of Bengal, the songs of Lalon are graceful. These songs are in truth soul-possessing; they carry their listeners toward the Supreme Lord. The songs are simple, plain, unadorned and risen from the soil. Because of their deep and rich philosophical content, many researchers, Annadashankar Ray among them, were unwilling to count them wholly as folk songs and placed them in the category of sadhana songs. Yet whatever the philosophy, it is beyond argument that these songs employ folk similes, words, scenes and style. Their folk source and their popularised nature are the very life of these songs, and for that reason Rabindranath called them folk songs. But classifying the songs at once as 'folk songs' and 'sadhana songs' involves no contradiction, for it is the folk simile that makes these songs a fitting vehicle of sadhana.
Unlike Rabindra Sangit or Nazrul Giti, Baul song has no pure, original form. The Bauls themselves were opposed to writing their songs down; of musical notation there is no question at all. The songs are sung after being heard, and they flow by mouth from Lalon's disciple to the next disciple. In this process many changes have already come upon the songs. Singers of later times have worked their own ornaments into them; to please the modern ear their melodies have been altered in various ways — indeed it is said that even in Lalon's lifetime his songs were sung to many different tunes: those who lived in the akhra sang them in one melody, and those who kept the ways of the world in another.
The Baul movement of Bengal was no isolated social or spiritual movement. It was part of similar movements that took place in several other places of India. The influence of Sufism and of the Vaishnav and Sahajiya doctrines on the Baul movement has already been mentioned. The Bauls were also close to the sage-poets of North India such as Kabir, Namdev and Dadu. In simile, style and underlying feeling, Baul song and the poetry of the sage-poets of North India share a great deal, though at the same time there are some amusing differences. In this line, Lalon and the poets may be set side by side.
The births and religions of both Lalon and Kabir are veiled in mystery. According to folk belief, both were born in Hindu families and brought up in Muslim ones. The poetry of both was an instrument for seeking the Supreme and for the reform of society. Both spoke strongly of the unity of mankind and of the inseparability of man and God. Quotations from several of Lalon's songs have been given above; now let there be an example from Kabir:
The dye that shows me I too am dyed in that red
(The beloved's essence — whenever I gaze at that radiance,
in beholding its glow I too have become radiant.)
