A short biography of the mystic, philosopher and song writer Hason Raja.
Written by Mujibur Rahman
Chapter 1: The Zamindar’s Son
Dewan Hason Raja Chowdhury was born at the edge of a changing age in the British Raj. He arrived on 21 December 1854 into a world shaped by landed power, old customs and overlapping cultures. His first cries echoed through the opulent Raja Bari in Lakshmansree, now in Sunamganj District of Sylhet Division, Bangladesh.
He was born into a family that carried weight in every sense of the word. They were Sunni Muslim zamindars, part of the landowning elite who held economic and judicial power over large estates under the British permanent settlement laws. His father, Dewan Ali Raja, was a respected landlord with vast holdings. His mother, Hurmat Jahan Bibi, was Ali Raja’s second wife, and Hason was their only son. From the start he was the centre of their hopes and expectations.
Life at Raja Bari mixed comfort with responsibility. Servants, tenants and estate officials moved in and out of the large compound, running the agricultural operations and revenue collection that kept the family’s wealth flowing. The house itself promised ease and luxury, but it also carried an unspoken message for the sons of the family: one day all this would be theirs to manage, protect and expand.
For a while, Hason’s childhood followed the familiar path of a privileged zamindar’s son. He grew up surrounded by abundance, protected from hardship, with the world seeming to bend around the wishes of his household. But that safe world did not last.
First, his elder half-brother, Dewan Obaidur Raja, the main heir from his father’s first marriage, died. Not long after, his father, Dewan Ali Raja, also passed away. These losses came when Hason was only about fifteen. In a short span of time, the natural line of succession was broken and the foundations of his secure childhood were shaken.
Suddenly the boy who had lived in leisure found himself pushed forward as head of the family. Like many zamindar sons of his time, he did not have a long formal education in the modern sense, yet circumstances forced him to grow up quickly. He now had to oversee large properties, deal with tenants and make decisions about money and land.
This abrupt step from protected child to responsible landowner planted the first seeds of the inner journeys to come. He entered adulthood carrying heavy responsibilities, unaware that the life of comfort and power he was stepping into would one day feel unbearably empty and send him in search of something far deeper.
Chapter 2: A Life Of Luxury
Taking charge of the estate at fifteen, Hason Raja soon showed a natural talent for managing land and people. Under his leadership the zamindari did not crumble after the deaths in the family. Instead it stabilised and flourished. Wealth increased, influence spread and his name began to carry real weight in the Sylhet region.
With that success came a life of pleasure. In these years, he was the image of the worldly landlord. Tall, striking and well dressed, he moved with the ease of someone used to being obeyed. Stories from this period paint him as charming, confident and very aware of his own status. Later in life he would look back on these days in his own songs, sometimes with a trace of shame, sometimes with a kind of sorrowful smile.
Outside estate affairs, his passion was hunting. He kept elephants, fine horses and a collection of animals that signalled both wealth and power. Hunting trips into the jungles were grand affairs. They were about more than sport. They displayed his command over men, animals and the land itself.
He was also drawn to horse racing and would travel to Dhaka and Calcutta to watch or take part in races. There he mixed with influential figures from across British India, moving in the same social circles as officers, businessmen and other aristocrats.
Music and entertainment filled his nights. At Raja Bari he hosted regular jalsas, evenings of music and dance where musicians and performers entertained him and his guests. The air would have carried the sound of drums, strings and voices deep into the night. Feasting, laughter and gossip were part of the rhythm of his life.
In these years he lived like many men of his class: fine food, fine clothes, fine company. He enjoyed the privileges of being a successful young zamindar, surrounded by servants and tenants who followed his orders without question. The wider suffering of the world, the uncertainties of ordinary life, remained mostly at a distance.
From the outside it looked as if he had everything. Land, money, reputation, influence. But this abundance came with a hidden cost. It allowed him to believe, at least for a time, that the material world was solid and dependable. That illusion would not last forever.
Chapter 3: The Turning Point
For years, Hason Raja played his role with confidence. He expanded his holdings, enjoyed his pleasures and grew into a powerful local figure. Yet, over time, something in him began to shift. It did not happen overnight. It was more like a slow cracking of the surface, a growing sense that the life he had built was not as satisfying as it appeared.
The more he acquired, the more he realised that each new luxury soon became ordinary. The thrill of hunting, the excitement of races, the glow of admiration from others all faded quickly. Restlessness crept in. Questions he could not easily silence began to form in his mind.
Around him, the air itself carried ideas that spoke to this restlessness. Sufi mysticism, with its focus on love for the Divine, and Vaishnava devotional traditions, with their songs of longing for God, were part of the cultural fabric of Bengal. These teachings had always been there in the background. Now they began to press on his heart in a new way.
Then came a shock from outside his inner world: the Great Assam Earthquake of 12 June 1897. One violent, shuddering moment in the earth’s history tore apart homes and lives across the region, including Sylhet. Buildings fell. Fields cracked. People and animals died without warning.
For a man like Hason Raja, who had lived as if his world were secure and somewhat under his control, this was a fierce reminder of how fragile everything really was. The grand houses, the estates, the possessions he had collected over a lifetime could be reduced to rubble in minutes.
After the earthquake, the questions that had been quietly troubling him grew louder. What was the point of wealth that could disappear so easily? What did it mean to be a landlord if the land itself could split open? Where was true safety to be found?
As his inner search deepened, he began to see himself in a new light. In his early poems he started calling himself “Pagla Hason Raja” – Crazy Hason Raja. It was not the madness of confusion but the madness of a man who felt cut loose from ordinary ambitions and was now consumed by a hunger for truth.
This inner upheaval led to outer action. He began to distance himself from parts of his old life. One of his most important steps was to give away a large portion of his wealth. He donated about one third of his properties as waqf, a permanent charitable endowment meant to serve religious and social purposes, not just his own bloodline.
His clothing changed too. Rich silks and ornaments gradually gave way to simple white cotton, the dress of a man who no longer wanted to stand apart from the common people. Hunting, grand feasts and showy gatherings became less important. In their place came reflection, prayer, music and long, honest conversations with himself.
The zamindar who had once chased pleasure began to walk the path of a seeker.
Chapter 4: The Mystic Poet Emerges
By now the change in Hason Raja was clear to everyone who knew him. The landlord who once measured life in land, horses and elephants was turning inward. His search for meaning moved to the centre of his days.
He did not become a formal scholar or attach himself rigidly to any single religious order. Instead he drew from the currents already alive in Bengali culture. Sufi Islamic teachings and Vaishnava Bhakti ideas both shaped his thinking. He reached for a more personal relationship with the Divine, someone he often thought of as the inner Self, the Paramatma living inside every human being.
He embraced his own nickname, “Pagla Hason Raja”, as if saying, “Yes, I am crazy, but it is a madness for God.” He saw himself as a fakir, a wandering, empty-handed dervish in spirit, even if his past as a zamindar could never completely leave him.
Song became his main language. He began composing lines that poured straight out of his heart. These verses were set to familiar folk melodies, the kind that farmers and boatmen could hum without effort. He preferred the Sylheti dialect he had grown up with, rather than polished literary Bengali. That choice kept his words close to the people he most wanted to reach.
The gatherings at his home changed too. Where music had once been simply entertainment, it now became a vehicle for reflection. The jalsas continued, but their purpose was different. Listeners were invited not only to enjoy the tune but to think about the questions hidden inside the lyrics.
Again and again he returned to certain themes. He spoke about the shortness of human life, the way the body ages and weakens, the way beauty fades. He asked what point there was in decorating a body that was clearly passing away. He urged people to pay attention instead to the soul and its journey.
He also looked back at his own past with an unflinching eye. In some songs he criticised his former self, the young landlord lost in pleasure and pride. These lines were not written to impress scholars. They were confessions, almost prayers, addressed both to God and to anyone willing to listen.
One of his most famous songs asks in simple words: people keep asking where Hason Raja’s house is, but he himself does not know who he really is, even as life slips by. In that single image – the wealthy man who cannot answer the most basic question about his true self – his entire journey is contained.
Through such songs, the figure of Hason Raja shifted in the eyes of the public. He was no longer just a rich landlord who had become religious in his old age. He emerged as a folk philosopher, someone who translated his struggles into language that even the poorest villager could understand.
Chapter 5: The Thousand Songs
Once the door to song opened, it never really closed. Over time, Hason Raja is believed to have composed around a thousand songs. Even if not all of them survive today, the number itself hints at the depth and urgency of his inner life.
He kept his language grounded in the Sylheti tongue. The words feel close to the soil: rivers, boats, paddy fields, storms, villages. This earthy imagery allowed big spiritual ideas to land gently in everyday minds. A farmer listening to his songs might hear about the soul in terms of a boat on a river, or a crop that must be tended, or a home that will one day have to be left behind.
His way of composing was spontaneous. Many songs were born on the spot, shaped by the mood of an evening, a passing thought, or a sudden wave of feeling. He did not write to fill a book. He wrote because something inside him would not let him remain silent.
These compositions travelled from mouth to mouth long before they appeared on the page. Musicians memorised them. Bauls and other folk singers carried them across villages. A song sung in his courtyard in Sylhet might, within months, be heard in distant fields and on quiet river banks.
Still, he did not leave his work entirely to chance. In 1906 he published a collection called Hason Udash – Hason the Detached or Hason the Carefree. It contained 206 songs and gave readers outside his immediate circle a glimpse into his thinking. Later, larger collections such as Hason Raja Samagra attempted to gather as many of his known songs as possible.
Across these works certain concerns repeat themselves. He returns often to the frailty of the body and the illusion of physical strength. He sings of a beloved who is both near and far, the divine presence that hides behind ordinary appearances. He quietly criticises religious showmanship, reminding people that rituals mean little without honesty, kindness and sincere effort. He hints at the idea that the universe is reflected inside the human heart, that knowing oneself is a doorway to knowing the Creator.
What makes these songs powerful is not only what they say, but how they say it. They do not lecture. They sound like conversations, questions, cries, jokes and warnings all mixed together. At times he scolds himself by name. At other times he speaks as if he is just another flawed human being trying to find his way.
In this way, his music became a bridge. It joined the landlord and the labourer, the scholar and the illiterate, the rich and the poor, under the same simple tune.
Chapter 6: A Lasting Legacy
Dewan Hason Raja died on 6 December 1922, aged 68. In death, as in life, he chose simplicity. He was buried beside his mother in the family graveyard at Raja-Kunjo in Sylhet town. The man himself returned to the earth, but his songs refused to be buried.
For a while his fame remained mostly regional. Then, years after his passing, an unexpected voice carried his name to a larger world. Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize–winning poet and one of Bengal’s greatest thinkers, admired his work deeply. In 1930, during the Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, later published as The Religion of Man, Tagore mentioned Hason Raja as an example of a mystic poet whose simple, direct verses reached profound spiritual truths without the help of formal education or elite training.
That single acknowledgement placed the “crazy zamindar” of Sylhet on an international map of spiritual literature. It confirmed what ordinary people in Bengal had already felt in their bones: that there was something special, something timeless, in his songs.
In Bangladesh and West Bengal his presence is still felt, not just in books or academic discussions but in daily life. Songs like “Lokey bole” and “Gun Gai Re” are part of the living folk tradition. They are sung by Bauls, interpreted by modern bands, and taught in music schools. Lines from his work appear in conversations, often used as proverbs or wise sayings.
Efforts have also been made to preserve the physical traces of his life. In Sunamganj, near his ancestral lands, the Hassan Raja Museum displays his belongings, manuscripts and family items. At Raja-Kunjo in Sylhet city, the Museum of Rajas’ holds further objects and stories connected to him and to other notable figures of the region. These spaces act as quiet reminders that behind the legend there was once a flesh-and-blood man who struggled, failed, changed and searched.
Looking back, his life forms a clear arc. A child born into wealth becomes a powerful landlord, then slowly grows dissatisfied with everything that power can buy. An earthquake shakes not only the ground beneath his feet but the foundations of his beliefs. He gives away much of what he owns, strips his life down and turns to song as a way of talking to God and to himself.
His story is not just about a man who became pious after success. It is about the courage to admit that a life that looks full can feel empty, the willingness to question deeply, and the choice to share that inner struggle with others in a language they can understand.
In the end, the legacy of Hason Raja is not only in the museums that bear his name or in the praise of great men like Tagore. It lives wherever his songs are still sung – on crowded streets, in quiet courtyards, on river boats at dusk – reminding people that beneath the layers of wealth, loss, pride and regret, there is always the possibility of turning back toward the truth.
Disclaimer
This biography is an independent, unofficial account created for informational and educational purposes only. While care has been taken to be accurate, some details may be interpretive or incomplete and should not be treated as a definitive or authorised source. All rights to Hason Raja’s life and works remain with him and their respective rights holders.
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