Lalon Fokir, also known as Lalon Shah (Bangla: লালন ফিকর) (1774–1890), was born in a village in the district of Kushtia, now in Bangladesh. Lalon was one of the greatest mystic-singers the Indian subcontinent has ever produced, and also a radical and secular voice in India during British colonial rule, which also witnessed increased miscommunication between Hindus and Muslims. He is often referred to as Baulsamrat (The emperor of the Bauls).

Lalon had no formal education and lived in extreme poverty. Tradition has it that the Hindu family he was born to abandoned him when he was suffering from smallpox. Shiraj Shai, a Baul of Muslim background saved him from death and took him under his wing.

Following the Baul tradition, Lalon started to write songs to communicate his ideas. Writing in nineteenth-century lyrical Bengali, Lalon composed numerous songs which still provide spiritual and political inspiration to the Bengali rural peasant, a class from which Lalon himself came. The religious message in his songs are often obscure; however, a basic humanist element can be seen underlying his work. Lalon's songs oppose religious intolerance, casteism, sectarianism, and colonialism.

Influence

Lalan Shah had a perceptible influence on the poet Rabindranath Tagore, who introduced the Baul tradition

In 1963, a mausoleum and a research centre were built at the site of his akhda. Thousands of Bauls come to the akhda twice a year, Dol-Purnima, in the month of Falgun (February to March) and in October, on the occasion of the anniversary of his death. During these three-day song melas, Bauls pay tributes to their spiritual leader.

Excerpt from Lalon Shah's songs

What caste is Lalon? everyone asks.

My eyes fail to see the ways of caste,

Lalon responds.

..

Circumcision marks a Muslim man,

But what for a woman?

The sacred thread is how one detects a brahmin,

But how to detect a Brahmani (a woman of brahmin birth)?

..

Look, how a strange bird flits in and out of the cage!

O brother, I wish I could bind it with my mindís fetters.

Have you seen a house of eight rooms with nine doors

Closed and open, with windows in between, mirrored?

O mind, you are a bird encaged! And of green sticks

Is your cage made, but it will be broken one day.

Lalon says: Open the cage, look how the bird wings away!