C.M. Naim on Gopi Chand Narang

There was a time when people wrote a literary piece and then ascribed it to someone whom they held in high esteem out of love, admiration, reverence or some other strong sentiment. Jalaluddin Rumi wrote a magnificent volume of ghazals but did not put his name to it. It has always been known as Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (The Diwan of Shams of Tabriz). An unknown poet wrote another, smaller diwan of ghazals and ascribed it to Khwaja Mu’inuddin Chishti of Ajmer. Later some other people concocted ‘table-talks’ of some of the Chishti Sufis and circulated them as genuine collections. In Urdu literary history, two examples of something similar immediately come to mind. When Muhammad Husain Azad desired to publish a definitive edition of the ghazals of Shaikh Ibrahim ‘Zauq,’—the first poet laureate of Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’—he felt no qualms in composing new ghazals and verses to fill in the gaps he felt his beloved master would have filled in himself. Then there is the fascinating case of one of the foremost modern poets in Urdu: when Sana’allah Dar took on the name “Miraji” after a woman named Mira whom he obsessively loved, he might have had in mind the exemplary bond between Rumi and Shams.

Urdu literary culture, however, has known many more cases where someone took the work of another person and claimed it as his own. Particularly among the poets. The practice of ustadi/shagirdi in Urdu poetry encouraged it. Many an ustad or master poet earned his meagre living by giving away his verses to his pupils or shagird, who in turn provided for his needs. Some ustad openly sold verses to anyone who came with money the night of a musha’ira (a gathering of poets). A nawab or king would appoint some good poet as his ustad and then quite as a norm expect him to put together a volume of ghazals in his name.

It also happened in prose. Imam Bakhsh ‘Sahba’i’, a contemporary of Ghalib and teacher at the famous Delhi College, reportedly wrote for a Mughal prince a tazkira or account of the poets of his time. The book, Gulistan-i-Sukhan, carries the name of Qadir Bakhsh ‘Sabir’ as its author, but Ghalib always referred to it as “Sahba’i’s tazkira.” Much later, when the Anjuman-i-Taraqqi-i-Urdu (“Association for the Development of Urdu”) published The Standard English-Urdu Dictionary in 1937, the organization’s Secretary, Maulvi Abdul Haq (a.k.a “Father of Urdu”), put his own name on the cover as its editor, instead of the Anjuman’s. But at least he was honest enough to clearly acknowledge in the Introduction that the work had mainly been done by Dr. Abid Husain of Jami’a Millia. Since then, however, things have been going downhill in Urdu, particularly in its academia. The late Azhar Ali Farooqui of Allahabad earned his living by writing Ph.D. dissertations for others, with the full knowledge of the university’s professors. I personally witnessed how he worked.

In the old literary culture plagiarism of the ordinary kind was also common and not made much of. The stakes were not high then. But now the stakes are quite high in the academic world. Ambitious university teachers no longer can make do by merely taking care of their patron’s grocery shopping and milk cows—I witnessed both at Aligarh. Now they must publish “research” in order to get coveted promotions and titles. Sadly, quite a few take to plagiarism as the shortest route. I became involved in the case of one such ambitious academic at Aligarh back in the early 1980s.

The Department of Urdu, Aligarh Muslim University, had obtained some money from the government for a professorship in Aesthetics, and advertised the job. One of the candidates was a Reader in the department, who was far better known for his fiction than research—he wrote at least one superb novella that will always be admired. In no time that gentleman managed to publish a volume on Urdu Aesthetics. I was most surprised when I came across the book in our library at the University of Chicago. Having known the person since our shared college days, I couldn’t imagine him as the author of the book. A couple of hours of digging around in the library solved the mystery. The talented academic had taken a well-known book on Aesthetics in English by a Bengali scholar and diligently translated most of it into Urdu. Dutifully I prepared a short article, presenting page-and-line references to the original. It was published in Urdu, and received plenty of notice. But nothing actually happened. The gentleman didn’t get the job—no one did, as I remember—but he went on to become a full professor, and soon chaired the department for a while. Needless to say he received—justly, I must add—a ‘Padma Shri’ as a fiction-writer.

Presently the Urdu literary/academic world has been violently shaken by what must be termed “the mother of all plagiarisms”. Instead of the out of fashion field of Aesthetics, it is the currently much more fashionable field of Literary Theory that is at issue, and the person at the ‘heart of darkness’ is no less than Dr. Gopi Chand Narang, Professor Emeritus, Delhi University, who from 2003 to 2007 presided over the Sahitya Akademi and has received two “Padma” awards from the Indian state—the latest being “Padma Bhushan” in 2004. (A full list of his honours and publications may be seen at his website.

At the centre of the scandal is the book Sakhtiyat, Pas-i-Sakhtiyat Aur Mashriqi Shi’riyat (“Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Eastern Poetics”), for which Dr Narang received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1995. Though the title suggests that it might be a comparative study, bringing out the commonalities and oppositions between two contemporary Western literary/linguistic theories and their counterparts in Sanskrit and Urdu—a rather curious undertaking—but in reality it only describes and explains the three topics in the book’s title, and the major thinkers who contributed to them.

As far back as 1997, an Indian Urdu critic named Fuzail Ja’fari had explained in some detail how Dr Narang’s book shied away from original thinking and analysis, limiting itself simply to what X wrote and Y said in Western languages (Zahn-i-Jadid, Delhi, #22-3). In fact, he described the book as a “compilation” (talif), adding that it was not an original piece of writing (tasnif). Now a young scholar Imran Shahid Bhinder, a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Birmingham, U.K., has made a much more serious charge. Bhinder published in 2006 in the annual issue of Nairang-i-Khayal, a Pakistani journal, an essay entitled “Gopi Chand Narang is a Translator, not an Author.”

A year later, a revised and expanded version of the essay appeared in the journal Jadeed Adab (July–December, 2007), which at the time was printed at New Delhi—now allegedly stopped under pressure from certain people—and published from Germany. (It is also available on the web). In 2008 Bhinder published two more articles in Jadeed Adab, the first in its January–June issue, entitled “Plagiarism in Urdu Literature – How Long will it be Defended?” and the second in the July–December issue, entitled “Gopi Chand Narang’s ‘Truth’ and ‘Context’ [as] Thievery.” Both articles found plenty of circulation in both India and Pakistan, and excerpts were reproduced in a couple of Indian journals. Now a Pakistani journal, ‘Akkas, published from Islamabad, has brought out a special issue devoted to Dr Narang’s oeuvre and career, including a more detailed analysis by Bhinder.

In summary, Bhinder has most convincingly established that Dr Narang’s achievement in that award-winning book is not that of an author but only of a translator, and that too of a reprehensible kind. According to Bhinder, Dr Narang did not read the original authors—Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude LeviStrauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and others. He read only their well-known interpreters, and then transferred the latter’s analyses and interpretations into Urdu, doing so verbatim and without giving the reader any indication of what he was doing. In his third article mentioned above, Bhinder has given extraordinary details of the Dr Narang’s “authorial” enterprise. He has quoted excerpts from the Urdu book and then placed them next to their unacknowledged English original. Further, he has listed with precision the countless pages in Dr Narang’s book that correspond almost word-for-word with the English pages of American and British scholars. For example, pages 79–106, 234–240, 243–267, and 288–329 of Dr Narang’s book, according to Bhinder, are exact translations of pages 27–42, 149–158, 86–103, and 49–70, of Raman Selden’s book, A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory (1985). The other exploited scholars that Bhinder similarly identifies are Terence Hawke, Catherine Belsey, John Sturrock, Jonathan Culler, Christopher Norris, and Robert Scholes. (I must add that Bhinder’s critique has some other dimensions too that are important and relevant for all academics in a general manner.

The evidence Bhinder presents is quite irrefutable. When, for example, I checked the pages he points out in Selden’s book, they indeed turned out to be the unacknowledged source of Dr Narang’s remarks. I also stumbled upon something equally interesting. Dr Narang has a note on Michel Foucault (pp. 193–8) in the second chapter in his “Book Two,” i.e. the second section of his book. The text on pages 194–6, as pointed out by Bhinder, is merely a translation of pages 158–9 in Selden’s book.

I checked the “sources” that Dr Narang’s has helpfully listed for each chapter, and found that he does list Raman’s book as a source for that particular chapter. And gives exact page numbers too: 79–84 and 98–102. The first reference, however, turned out to be where Selden discusses Bertolt Brecht, Theodor Adorno, and Walter Benjamin The second was equally curious: in Selden’s book, page 98 deals with Frederic Jameson, but pages 99–102 contain only a bibliography. Again, the opening paragraph of Dr Narang’s note on Jonathan Culler (pp. 318–9) is, as per Bhinder, entirely Selden’s (p. 62). But in the sources, Selden’s name is listed with page numbers 106–27! In other words, while Dr Narang twice went to the trouble of indicating precise—though unrelated—pages in Selden’s book, he somehow failed to include the pages he had actually abused.

Bhinder’s charges are extremely serious. They are also thoroughly documented. First made three years ago, his accusation has remained unchallenged—unlike in the past when the slightest criticism of Dr Narang promptly produced a spate of articles in his defence and diatribes against the critic. This time he and his admirers are remarkably silent. And for good reason. They understand that any attempt would only bring more notoriety. Sadly, they also know that the academic circles in India in general, and the university departments of Urdu in particular, take no notice of inconvenient details. With them it is always “business as usual.”

After all, soon after Bhinder’s original article came out in 2006, Dr Narang received the degree of ‘D.Litt. Honoris Causa‘ from the Central University at Hyderabad. Then after two more articles, two similar honorary degrees were conferred on him in the past six months, by the Maulana Azad National Urdu University and the Aligarh Muslim University.

Sahitya Akademi has an excellent policy of making its award-winning books available in other major languages of India, including English. Dr Narang’s book received the award some fourteen years ago, but, to my knowledge, it has so far been translated only into Hindi (2000). May I ask the Akademi to do a major favour to Urdu letters? Marathi and Bengali scholars, in my experience, are usually far more knowledgeable about modern and pre-modern literary theories than an average Urdu academic. (I very much include myself among the latter.) The Akademi should have Dr Narang’s award-winning book translated into both Bengali and Marathi so that it can properly be judged by his peers in India. Given the international protocols on copyright, however, an English translation might not be advisable at this time.

C.M. Naim is Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago

Text provided by Ijaz Syed

Poet Zahid Laeeq

Zahid Laeeq, an Urdu poet and the Chief Editor/Publisher of Canada based monthly magazine Shahpara, died in Islamabad on 31 October 2008 due to a heart attack.

He was 56 years old, and lived in Port Coquitlam with his family.

Shahpara was Laeeq’s passion that had begun within a year of his arrival in Canada in 2000. He published this magazine in Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi and English for the last eight years where no such literary-cultural magazine existed in BC Lower Mainland.

Surjeet Kalsey, a Punjabi Poet, fiction writer and dramatist who was working with Zahid on Sahapara, says: ‘Zahid Laeeq was basically a fine and sensitive mystic poet of Urdu and won hearts of his audiences by singing in his golden voice. His poetry, mostly gazals, sound romantic but they are dedicated to a higher spirit. He himself was a carefree, kind and mystic ‘darwesh’ who touched the hearts of many wherever he went and wherever he read his poetry. On his untimely demise, most people who are familiar with his poetry and his mysticism are shedding tears over this sudden separation.’

Zahid Laeeq’s Urdu poetry is published in three books – ‘Ziaey Hira’ and ‘Akas-e-Barmala’ in Shahmukhi, and ‘Aaks-e-Barmala’ in Gurmukhi.

The transliteration from Shahmukhi to Gurmukhi is done by Surjeet Kalsey and Daljeet Kalyanpuri. The book in Gurmukhi was published in Pakistan, and was released last year in Surrey in ‘Jashney Zahid’ where MLA Dave Hayer presented Zahid Laeeq, Surjeet Kalsey and Daljeet Kalyanpuri certificates of congratulation on behalf of the Provincial Government for their contributions to Urdu and Punjabi literature in Canada.

Representatives of International Multilingual Shahpara Publications, Kendri Punjabi Lekhak Sabha (North America), Indo-Canadian Seniors Centre Society, and Canadian Punjabi Cultural Association BC gathered together in Surrey to pay homage to Zahid Laeeq, and decided to dedicate to him the following:
A Special Issue on Zahid Laeeq
Shahpara International Magazine will publish the next issue (Nov-Dec 2008) as Special Zahid Laeeq issue. Zahid’s friends, readers and associate are invited to provide materials, photos and memories for it by November 15th.
Kendri Punjabi Lekhak Sabha (North America) Meeting
The Kendri writers meeting on 8 November 2008 will be dedicated to the memory of Zahid Laeeq.
Indo-Canadian Seniors Centre Society (Surrey) Mushaira
The monthly ‘Mushaira’ Poetry Fest on 30 November 2008, will be dedicated to the memory of Zahid Laeeq.

For more information and for contributing to these events please contact:
Surjeet Kalsey
Editor Multilingual Shahpara International
604-526-2342.
Mohan Gill
Vice-President Kendri Punjabi Lekhak Sabha (North America)
778-908-0914
Nirmal Singh Nannar
General Secretary
Indo-Canadian Seniors Society Surrey
6045903863
Daljeet Kalyanpuri
President Canadian Punjabi Cultural Association, BC
604-583-4658

Pakistani Canadian Poet/Publisher Zahid Laeeq Moves on

Zahid Laeeq, a Surrey poet and publisher has passed on while visiting Pakistan.

Zahid was the publisher and the chief editor of multilingual monthly ‘Shahpara’, a publication that he initiated in 2003.

On the Passing of Ahmed Faraz by Moazzam Sheikh

1 October 2008

It would be accurate to say that Faraz was the most famous and beloved twentieth-century Urdu poet from the subcontinent, after Iqbal (1877-1938) and Faiz (1911-1984). He may even be the most sung or popular among his contemporaries in any South Asian language. This is no small feat, since many of Faraz’s contemporaries have penned verse that is considered equally serious and innovative.

Destiny often plays a role for he who meets fame in his lifetime, or whose genius is unearthed after he has become dust and earth. Let me elaborate: It is difficult to understand the world of Urdu poetry from outside. Urdu poetry, especially in the ghazal format, cannot be separated from its counterpoint: the musical tradition of singing ghazals. In India and Pakistan, there is a breed of singers who primarily sing ghazals. The best of them are referred to as ghazal maestros. These singers work diligently to perfect their craft and dedicate it to ghazal singing, resisting the temptation to become film playback singers or pure classical singers of raags. Great singers treat evocative and subtle ghazals avec grand soin. Conversely, some ghazals have achieved iconic status, and, singers feel honored to have sung a ghazal by Ghalib or Mir and are judged against the major singers who have performed the ghazals before them.

Poets can be deeply indebted to a singer for a particular tune. Often a famous ghazal is sung by many singers and of course many times by the same singer, each time with a different embellishment, a new aspect in a line, a word, or a note. Ahmed Faraz was, perhaps, luckiest in this respect. The great Indian playback singer, Lata Mangeshkar, the nightingale of South Asia, once praised the Pakistani ghazal maestro Mehdi Hasan for his voice, saying Lord Rama’s chariot had passed through his throat. It should be noted that the ghazal Lata alluded to, Mehdi Hasan’s most famous, both in India and Pakistan and beyond, sung in the semi-classical mode, “Ranjish hi sahi dil hi dukhane ke liye aa” (If you’re still angry, then, come even if it is to hurt my heart) was penned by none other than Ahmed Faraz.

But many years before the ghazal in Mehdi Hasan’s voice took India by storm, it had already been a mega hit as a film song in a Pakistani film, Mohabbat, sung by Hasan. Hasan provided the singing voice to Mohammad Ali, the movie’s star. The fact that a ghazal could be taken by a film music director and put into the service of a commercial enterprise speaks volume about the kind of fame, respect and love Ahmed Faraz had come to enjoy.

Faraz is predominantly a poet of ghazals, although he wrote poems as well, many of which became very popular both in India and Pakistan as well as wherever people can speak or understand Urdu or Hindi. As a Pakistani, I grew up hearing his name all around me. Music directors picked his ghazals for their movies, in which he lent his voice to my favorite actors, like Nadeem and Mohammad Ali. Pakistan Television often invited singers, both male and female, to record their renditions of Ahmed Faraz’s famous ghazals. Those recordings were then beamed all over the country. Often the movie and the non-movie versions competed against each other. One of Faraz’s best-loved ghazals “Yeh alam shauq ka dekha na jaaye” (Intolerable is this state of desiring) is one such gem. It has been sung for the screen by Naheed Akhtar, a great playback singer of her time, ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali, and Tahira Syed, who performed it for Pakistan Television. The last of these is the most haunting, in my humble view.

No South Asian writer’s work can be fully appreciated without the lens of colonialism and post-colonialism. With the interference and meddling of the British (acting under the influence of a Victorian and post-Renaissance mentality), into India’s indigenous literatures, the prime mode of expression of Urdu poetry, the ghazal, came under tremendous pressure, as it came to be seen as backward and degenerate. The ghazal was seen as artificial, pretentious, soaked in the vapors of alcohol. Men who wrote and recited ghazals, and the culture that promoted them were deemed incapable of rational, scientific thinking, and any serious, concrete thought. MacCauley’s poisonous words about Indian literature in his infamous minutes (1835) were having a disastrous effect on the perception of the ghazal. It is due to the genius of the Urdu language and her poets and the resilience of her native idiom that the ghazal fought back colonial prejudice and reclaimed its rightful position.

It wasn’t an easy journey.

Faraz became a sensation with the publication of his first collection of ghazals and poems. Each new collection added to his fame and stature as a major poet. Most critics agree that his verse—at least the earlier half—is light and romantic, but still touched a certain nerve. It spoke to an important part of the human heart. I believe there were several reasons for audiences’ positive response. Most other major poets steered the Urdu ghazal in the direction of social consciousness, issues of isolation, man’s confrontation with the material world, dictatorship and the tyranny of modern times. What Faraz offered in contrast was the ghazal’s essence: love, ache, longing, beauty, separation, union, life, death. But with a fresh and highly creative vocabulary!

Unlike two other great male contemporaries of his, Nasir Kazmi and Munir Niazi, Faraz didn’t suffer the scars or trauma of partition directly, and that’s why his early verse is not mainly concerned with those issues. Although his verse is light, it retains a highly skillful control of Urdu diction and meter. It is often read against that of the other three towering poets of his time, Munir, Nasir, and Kishwar Naheed’s highly feminist poetry.

Although Faraz never lost his original charm in verse, a new poet was beginning to emerge from inside him as social conditions and the political realities of Pakistan, and most of the world, began to change in the 60s. The student movement, labor agitation, the formation of the Pakistan People’s Party, the first free elections of 1970 and the political opposition to American-backed military dictatorships, all had a profound influence on his consciousness. Despite this crucial transformation, Faraz remained a poet of love and the heart. He was not a political poet in the sense of Hikmat, Faiz or Neruda. Nor was he a philosophical poet in the tradition of Tagore. What earned Faraz political respect was his resilience against state oppression. If he felt like saying something, he said it. If that went against the status quo, so be it.

As has been quoted in several homages and obituary write-ups, his first confrontation with tyranny came from the democratically elected leader, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. In a public soiree, Faraz recited a poem, not a ghazal, passing a guilty verdict on the Pakistani Army for their crime in killing their own in the then East Pakistan. He called the soldiers “professional killers.” He was arrested and put in jail without a warrant or trial. Other intellectuals, such as Kishwar Naheed and the cream of society, like the melody queen of South Asia, the singer Noor Jehan had to pull all the strings available to them to get him out. A lesser poet would have learned his lesson, his spirits broken, but Faraz proved he was stronger than his enemies. He chose to walk in the footsteps of the sufi poets of the Punjab, and modern rebel poets such as Jalib and Faiz. You could jail him, exile him, throw him out of his job, but you couldn’t bend or silence his verse. When he wanted to say something direct, no fear or metaphor could hide it. His second showdown was with the intellectually zero dictator Zia-ul-Haq. Again Faraz did not bow down. This time, he chose exile in the tradition of Darwish of Palestine and Faiz, who went to Beirut, and Fahmida Riaz of Pakistan who went to India.

It is testament to his greatness that when his poetry changed and absorbed social and political contours, he followed its call, even at the risk of his life. Other articles have pointed out that he was fired from his honorary position and his belongings thrown out, solely due to his critique of the American-backed General Musharaf. It is remarkable that in this day and age, any civilized country’s leadership can stoop so low as to treat one of its most respected poets this way. At least that should have earned Pakistan a gold at the Olympics, in the poet-thrashing category.

You can take a poet out of a language, but you cannot take language out of the poet. I’d argue that Faraz’s greatness lies in the era he wrote in, not because he broke any major ground, or for any experimentation he did with form and registers of language. Unlike Faiz or Firaq who are pre-partition poets, Faraz belongs to the post-partition era. For his poetry to reach all corners of India at a time when it’s eradication was part of state policy hints at the subtle but tremendous appeal of his verse to singers, the young and the uninitiated.

Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over twenty years, I had countless opportunities to see Faraz read. Of those opportunities, I missed all but one. Before I went I was ambivalent about the seriousness of the crowd. But I was glad I went. I also went because a California-based singer was supposed to sing ghazals in the second half of the program. The LA-based Moni Deepa Sharma, of Bengali origin, had fallen in love with Urdu and had gone to Aligarh University to study the language, so she could sing Urdu poetry one day. She has become California’s premier ghazal singer. It was a sight to watch a Bengali being connected to a Pathan’s ghazals through a bridge written in Urdu. There cannot be a greater homage to a language, and admirers of Urdu are indebted to people like Faraz who inspire non-Urdu speakers to fall under its spell.

Information provided by Ijaz Syed

Straying with Ahmad Farāz by Amarjit Chandan

I did this interview in Punjabi with the Urdu poet Ahmad Farāz for my book Humsukhan – conversations with fellow writers which never saw the light of the day. Farāz used to be in London in transit to western Europe and North America where so many Pakistani political exiles had sought asylum and were leading reasonably easy life. Those were the optimistic days.

a

18 October 1985. When I meet Ahmad Farāz in a pub in Piccadilly London, we both talk of the news just in of hanging of a South African poet Benjamin Moloisi at the age of 30.

Switching on the tape recorder I ask Farāz: From where shall we start? He starts with a quote from his poem: Qalam surkhroo hai/ ki jo mai ne likha/ vohi aaj main hooN/ vohi aaj tu hai…My pen is placated/ I am what I have written/ I am still the same/ and you too haven’t changed.

Does that mean a poet is answerable to himself primarily; society and ideology come later. Farāz has also written: Merey qalam ka safar raigaaN na jayeyga…The journey of my pen shall not go in vain. He goes on in chaste Punjabi: ‘The journey which involves commitment and some noble cause is not in vain. You can’t get the reward in your life time. In South Africa Benjamin has been hanged to death. They can’t stop people’s unrest with such atrocities. People’s journey never goes in vain. Tears shed in blood or in ink are never lost for nothing.’

But the commitment with what? With the political movement or with the Party or with the ideology? Farāz being close to the PPP has to say: No man is isolated and no individual is important. His only strength lies in his thinking, which takes concrete shape in the form of the movement. You are in it in the front line or in the back seat. You get the feel of a vast multitude. Otherwise no individual is great for me, how great he may be. A poet is not confined to his own experiences; he recreates others’ experiences as well.

But no politician is honest; they keep on changing their colours. They have to. That’s the name of the game. To this Farāz replies: In spite of his simplicity and sincerity a poet knows where political leaders deviate.

Is it a necessity or sheer opportunism? ‘In fact a poet is always the leader. He is with the vanguard leadership and with the rank and file as well. He plays dual role at the same time. When there is something wrong, he’s followed by his inner voice. So there is no need to feel disheartened. One can be silent to observe, to recoup. But personally I have no guts to lead the movement.’

I did not know that Farāz did not write in his mother tongue Pashto. I don’t want to put him on the spot and instead ask him indirectly: whose language is Urdu in Pakistan? He does not like my ‘strange’ question but goes on: ‘Urhdu’ (he pronounces Urdu as Urhdu and the word likhari –writer– as Likharhi which sounds to me as Khilarhi – player) doesn’t belong to any specific region of Pakistan; it’s the language of some inhabitants of Karachi. What follows is what I really want to know: ‘My father Agha Barq was a Farsi poet. His friends who visited our house wrote in Urhdu and the girl I first met knew some romantic Urhdu couplets. I started writing couplets in Urhdu for her. I had to work in Karachi Radio where all the staff was from Lucknow and Delhi. I didn’t speak Urhdu well enough, but my written Urhdu wasn’t bad though. It can’t work in Pashto. Now it is quite hard to go back.’

Farāz defends the feudal poetic form ghazal thus: It is naïve to think in terms of nazm or ghazal. The bread is bread whether it is triangular or round-shaped. All the progressives have written ghazal. What’s the point being against the form? The fault doesn’t lie with the form but with the poet. Then why Josh Malihabadi didn’t write ghazal? Farāz answers: He was against it from a literary viewpoint. The ghazal is self-contradictory – the clichés are inherent in it e.g. sāqi, qafas, bulbul. That way it is just a formula. Bad poetry is written both in the nazm and ghazal forms. Josh and Noon Meem Rāshid were weak ghazalgos. The progressives gave a new life to ghazal. It had become stale. A genre loses its vitality, if it doesn’t get new blood. In ghazal you have to say all in just two lines. It didn’t suit Josh. He keeps on filling words in his nazms without any imagination. The poem doesn’t rise vertically. Faiz and Rāshid brought great themes in ghazal. It is not limited in itself, the poet makes it so. A good ghazalgo writes good nazms. No epic poem surpass this couplet by Ghalib: kahāN tammanna ka doosra qadam… It was Ghalib who wrote: Safeena chāheeye iss bahr-e-bekrāN ke liyey/ Beqadrey zaraf nahiN hai ye tungnāyey ghazal… [A vessel is needed in this endless ocean// the unbounded ocean cannot be contained within the narrow bounds of the ghazal. Interesting that bahr is used for both ocean and metre] and Punjabi is not that developed yet to reject any poetic form. You write in all the forms. One day a Mir will appear in Punjabi. (Majid Sadiqi’s Punjabi translation of Farāz is titled PartāN – Layers).

The people’s poet comes up with a sexist example: ‘Ride the ghazal like you ride a woman. Take up the reins in your hands. As the Prophet said: Your wives are a tilth (for you to cultivate). Go to your tilth as yee will.’

Then we travel a long way to Southall in west London where he is staying with his brother. The house is deserted though whiskey and later food appears mysteriously.

Now Farāz is a bit high and stands up abruptly to bring a framed colour picture showing him shaking hand with Faiz and a femme fatale is standing by Farāz. The picture makes me sad. I have never seen Faiz so old as he appears in the photo. Farāz says that it is the last photo taken of Faiz. Then he goes into its minute details. He is eager to talk about the woman. To change the subject I ask him whether he has written any sensual poetry. He recites his couplet: vo ik rāt guzar bhee chuki magar abb takk/visāl-e-yār kee lazzat se toot-ta hai badan…That night passed long time back/But my body still aches with the relish of my lover…and declares that he believes in the intensity of life. ‘Poetry is like manhood. Never separate the ethics of poetry from the beauty of life.’ Then he picks up the collected poems of Faiz and reads his Punjabi poem aloud: ajj rāt ikk rāt dee rāt jee ke/ asāN jug hazārāN jee kia e/ajj rāt amrit de jām vāNgu/ inhāN hoThāN ne yār nu pea liaa e. Living to the full just one night/I have lived a thousand years/I sipped the body of my lover with my lips/as if it was the goblet of nectar. He adds: you can’t find such sensuality in the whole of Urdu poetry. Faiz becomes his own māshook lover in his poetry: Subah hoyee to voh pehlu se uThā ākhir-e-shub/ vo jo ik umar se āyā nā gayā ākhir-e-shub. The dawn approached and the one who woke up lying next to me// Had not arrived/nor left me for ages.

I see some sense of estrangement and frustration in visāl –meeting with the lover– in Faiz’s poetry. Farāz doesn’t want to listen to me and starts talking again about that woman in the picture. Now he tells me that she is a Sikh and is an air hostess. I interrupt: Faiz or Farāz? He tells me: I won’t talk about my self. Then Faiz or Jalib?

‘Yes, on the one hand you talk to the people face to face. That way Dāman and Jalib are very close. On the other hand is Faiz – subtle, soft with new Farsi-tinged imagery. He is poets’ poet.’

Most of Urdu progressive poetry seems to be written by the same poet. It’s full of clichéd imagery – zulm, jaddojahad, dār-o-rasan, shaheed, khoon and zakham. Farāz himself is heavily influenced by Faiz and Sahir. Without dropping names I raise the question of evolving new imagery and style. He likes the idea and fully agrees with it. But, he says, ‘there is one problem – we can’t frog-jump. We like to continue the tradition because our readership is still uneducated.’ Is it?

About the sound of language, he says: ‘Urhdu’s beauty lies in its plasticity inherited from Farsi and softness of Hindi. No word is soft or crude. It all depends on its usage. A poet has got very few words in his stock. I was in prison for a while. After the release, I had search for words while talking to others. If you don’t converse, words tend to leave you. Words are birds, who don’t like to perch on dry trees.’ He confides: you can’t write every day. You feel drained after writing a poem. Faiz used to translate Iqbal during his dry periods to ‘keep his weapons in shape’. A ghazal can be written while sitting in a moving tonga, but a poem needs much more meditation!

Farāz has also written nātiā qalām. ‘If Faiz could write on a man like Suhravardy, why can’t I write on the Prophet?’

Then why was the Rasul against the poets? The poet gives comes up with this face saver: Because he said: it is those poets straying in evil, who follow them; sees thou not that they wander distracted in every valley? And that they say what they practise not?

Our conversation comes to an abrupt end which had started with the notion of poet’s commitment. We both are drunk. I switch off the recorder.

¡

[Translated from the original in Punjabi by the author. September 2008. The recording can be availed in the Sound Archive British Library]

Bhagat Singh’s Statue by Fahmida Riaz

There is news from Delhi
alas! Alas!!
What a mess they have made
Of Bhagat Singh
In the Parliament Square!

For sixty years they petitioned
The British rejected him
But YOU! Our own government.
Erect his statue
in the Parliament Square.
At last the government beat its breast
and said why not!
and erected the statue in the parliament square.
But when the veil was lifted
You discover it is not Bhagat Singh
That 24 year old beautiful lad
Nor his young limbs that they could not properly burn
On the fateful night when they hanged him.

It is some 60 years old guy
Flabby and tired looking
With upturned mustaches
Ah what the hell is this.
This is not our Bhagat Singh
In the Parliament Square
Who the hell is he?

Ha ha ha! Dear friends
Wipe your tears look closely
At all the other statues
Is it the same Jawahar Lal as he was? Is it the same Gandhi?
The same Abulkalam Azad?

The in-coming and out-going respected parliamentarians
Have made an omlette of thier reality
And gobbled them up long long ago.
In this grand square
Only scissored and edited versions
Can find a lasting place.

Bhagat Singh was the child of his time
And times have changed. He loved Urdu poetry and Ghalib
And Ghalib, getting rid of his robe
Is Galib now, winking and singing some trashy “gajal”
Ishwarya Rai is dancing on it
So kind of her.

And in his city Lahore
Bhagat Singh is a Sikh
Who perhaps left for India in ‘47
Such names make people nervous
Is the god-damn man coming back?
to claim his property??
We shall never let that happen
After all we left fields and barns
shops and houses
in Ludhiana.

Bhagat Singh was a pure Indian
His times are swept away with the wind
He was a purely Indian heart-flame
Light in the water
rustling in the wind
He was a purely Indian passion of his time
And times have changed.

Let his statue remain where it has been for 60 years
Accross both sides of the border
In a heart or two.
There every morning
Longings as innocent and ignorant as little children
Cover his young body with fresh garlands of marigold
Bathe his limbs with tears of love and adoration
He belongs there
He is happy there.

Translated by the author from the original in Hindustani

Original Urdu Version

On Bhagat Singh Statue Controversy

Background Information

Bhagat Singh Ki Moorat by Fahmida Riaz

On Bhagat Singh Statue Controversy

Background Information
Urdu Poem
Bhagat Singh Ki Moorat
Fahmida Riaz

Bhagat Singh Ki Moort
Dilli sey khabar aai hai
Duhai hai Duhai hai.
Parliament Complex main
Sheed Bhagat Singh ki
Sarkari shilpkar ney
Yeh kaisi chabbi bani hai!
Are hai hai hai!!!
Yeh tau Bhgat Singh naheen
Voh kaisri ghabroo humara
Jis ki deh ko jala na paey they theek sey.
Saatth painsatth varsh ka
Mota Phappas sa
Moti munchon wala
Yeh to koi aur hai!
Saatth varsh sey koshish kar rahey they
Dhar petition par petition
Angrezun ney thukraya
Tum to mat thukrao
Bhagat Singh shaheed ki
Murat yahan lagao.
Aakhir satth varsh baad Sarkar ney
Chati par haath mara aur kaha
“Han! Kiun naheen!”
Aur laga di mooat, Parliament Comlex main.
Hain! Yeh kia?
Yeh to Bhagat Singh Naheen!

Hahaha! Piarey mitro
Rona band karo
Zara is parliament main doosri mooraton ko bhi ghor sey dekho
Kia yeh wo hi Jwahar Lal hai, jo who tha? Wohi Gandhi hai?
Wo hi Abulkalam Azaad?
In ki asal soorat aur atma
Tau is Parliament main aney janey waley
Kab ki omlette bana kar kha pee chukey.
Is chogherey main kaiwal
Badli hui muratain hi lag sakti hain
Kuja Bhagat Singh!
Who Ab baqi naheen raha.
Us ka zamana beet gaya.
Who jo Ghalib ka aashiq tha
Sher o shairi ka rassia.
Ab Ghalib bhi Galib hain
Aur ankh mar mar kar, gajal ga raha hai
Ishwarya rai jis par naach rahi hain
Unki mehrbani
Aur uskey shehar Lahore main
Bhagat Singh aik Sikh hai, zyadatar logon key liey.
Jo shayed san sentalees main
Wahan sey chala gaya.
Aisey naam sun kar loog ghabra jatey hain
Kambakhat kaheen wapis tau naheen aa raha
Apni property claim karney!!!
Naheen, naheen, humm aisa naheen honey den gey
Aakhir humm bhi tau chor kar aey hain
Khet khalyan, dukaneyn makaan
Ludhyaney main.
Kiun tum ney chaha us ki murat lagana
Parliament Complex main? Bhagat Singh sarkar ka hero naheen ban sakta
Kisi bhi sarkar ka naheen.
Who Khalis Hindustani tha
Uska samey beet gaya
Who khalis Hindustan ki mitti ka geet tha
Paani ki chamak
Hawa ki sarsarahat
Khalis Hindustani josh aur jazba apney waqt ka.
Hawa us waqt ko ura ley gayi
Uski murat waheen lagi rehney do
Jehan who saatth baras sey lagi hai.
Sarhad key iss paar aur uss par
Ikka dukka dil main.
Har subha bacchon jaisi masoom kaamnaen
Us key korey pindey ko gaindey key phoolon sey dhanp deti hain
Aur us ko nehlati hain
Pyar aur samman bharey aansuon key namkeen paani sey.
Yeh hai uska asal asthan
Bhagat Singh yahan khush hai.

English Translation by Fahmida Riaz

Courtesy: Chaman Lal. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi: prof.chaman@gmail.com

Ahmad Faraz Crosses Over!

Ahmad Faraz, London 1985
Photo by Amarjit Chandan

One of the most ‘loved’ and ’sung’ Urdu poets of his time, Ahmad Faraz, crosses over at 77.
www.bbc.co.uk/hindi

View Kishwar Naheed to Ahmad Faraz
More:
thepathans.blogspot.com

Kishwar Naheed to Ahmad Faraz

An OPEN LETTER From Kishwar Naheed Looking back on a more than four-decade-old friendship with Ahmed Faraz, one of the best-known Urdu poets of Pakistan and of the sub-continent, now battling for his life in an American hospital.

KISHWAR NAHEED
24 Aug 08

Dear Faraz,
We met back in 1964, in the Peshawar office of Yousuf Lodhi (the great political cartoonist who died a few years ago). That night we talked about politics, literature and made small jokes about contemporary writers. That was the start of our friendship. You and my husband Yousuf Kamran grew closer. You were both too glamorous. I know the way girls used to write letters to the two of you. The phone was not common then. Yousuf was presenting PTV’s popular programmes such as “Sukhanwar” and “Dastan Go”. You were being introduced on TV as the Hero Poet. When a famous singer sang your ghazal “Yeh Alam Shouq Ka Dekha na Jai’, viewers still remember you looking like a shy adolescent, the singer with her ring-studded fingers, looking proud of her achievement. Yes, it was a small spark, which was quickly put to ashes by her mother.

Faraz, You were my colleague at the National Centre (a State-run cultural centre, now defunct). I was posted at Lahore and you at Peshawar. You opted for a transfer to Islamabad in 1974. Again, some love spark very intense, very absorbing. But despite being a majnoon, you were conscious that a writer has to be a person with status.

On one side, your popularity was speeding up after Dard Ashob, your second collection of poetry. On the other, you decided to build your own house. You were fortunate that poetry made you rich. As you often claimed, no other poet had been as lucky. You received the highest royalty ever paid to a poet for over 30 years. Your poems were bestsellers. You have roamed the world reciting your poetry, letting people from the crowd repeat lines. An old man enjoys your poetry in the same way as a teenaged girl or boy.

Sense of humour
Once, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, you and I were chief guests. After me, when you started reciting your poetry, the fiery Tahira Abdullah objected. We want poetry on women, she said. Abruptly, Faraz, you said “all my poetry is about women”. Your sense of humour is so remarkable that even eminent humorist Mushtaq Yousafi was impressed by your repartee and wit.

I can never forget 1977 for two reasons. One is the time you recited “Peshaawar Qatilo” (Professional Killers) at a function at Islamabad. Around 2.00 a.m., men in white clothes [I don't know why they always come in white clothes] entered the house and threw you into an army jeep and drove off. After a few days we consulted with Abid Hasan Minto, the lawyer, and filed an appeal in the Lahore High Court, that for the last 15 days Faraz is missing.

Justice Zullah was in the chair; he ordered the army to produce Faraz in two days and asked me and Saif sahib to bring all the writers we could collect on that particular day. Nobody will believe, Faraz. Right from Qasmi Sahib, every writer of name was in the High Court that day. When I saw you, I screamed; so thin had you gone, so spoiled your complexion. You were brought in escorted by the army. The judge, judges could then still speak like that, asked you “why were you locked up, did you see some warrant?” When you said no, the judge, in a very angry voice, announced that Faraz may be freed immediately. The decision was presented before Gen. Ziaul Haq, who was army chief of Pakistan. It was June 27, 1977.

The General’s words
You remember, Faraz? The General spoke to you to convince you about how important it was to support Bhutto sahib. Less than two weeks later, the same General placed Pakistan under martial law on July 5, 1977. That is, of course, the other reason why 1977 is unforgettable.

Faraz, you told us that during your stay in Attock Fort, you were kept in a dark and dingy basement, where food was given to you in a thali, by a hand whose face you could not see.

During that crisis I talked to Begum Bhutto, as we came to know that your arrest had the approval of Bhutto sahib. She promised to talk to him. Next day when I again rang her, she too was angry; she said Bhutto sahib had said all of us were his supporters. So why had Faraz placed him in such a situation? All of us were perplexed, how to make Bhutto sahib agree to release you? With Masood Ashaar, I went to see Madame Noor Jehan, as she was your admirer. Also we knew that she was a close friend of the “Black Queen” (whose closeness to Bhutto sahib was known to every one). After a lot of discussion, Madame went to Karachi and persuaded Black Queen to request Bhutto sahib to order your release.

Faraz, In 1978, you were reciting your famous poem Muhasra at Karachi. Right there, in the middle of the night, you were made to get up and leave as you had been “exiled” from Karachi and Sindh with immediate effect. You were so dejected that you exiled yourself from the country, stayed with your brother for six years in London. When you returned from England and Fehmida Riaz came back from India, we celebrated with a function at Lahore. Again we were together, but the distribution of government jobs created a new horizon of relationships. You were appointed Chairman Academy of Letters, and Fehmida was made MD, National Book Foundation.

Remember you were earlier made Chairman of the same academy by its founder, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto? The urge for a job in the government remained in you until Pervez Musharraf got angry because you spoke against the Army and you and your luggage from the residence were thrown out like that of any low man. Despite protests by the press and writers, nothing happened.

Remember when we went together in the processions for restoration of judges 2007-08. Many junior but non-committed writers, following your instructions, joined the processions.

Faraz, You have had a tendency to create controversies about either yourself or about different issues. Remember you spoke against marriage and said this is also a sort of prostitution through a contract on paper. How many newspapers and fundamentalists spoke against you? Another controversy you started was about the Urdu language. You said Urdu is a dying language. The entire Muttahida Qaumi Movement (a party that represents Urdu speakers in Pakistan) and many writers got angry with you. You also spoke against the army but then changed your words saying “I am against the ruling junta, not against a sipahi”.

Internationally popular
You have been very popular internationally. You have hardly ever refused an invitation for a mushaira from anywhere in the world, but accept only on your own terms. You made writers conscious of getting royalty from the publishers; you made police crack down on illegal publishers. You made writers realize their self-respect. No one can accuse you of being a munafiq, a hypocrite. You have never been ashamed of your romances, never presented any excuse of your evening drink sessions.

Faraz, You have been the darling of singers, so much so that ghazals by others with the same name as you got popular. In all colleges, the girls who had never read poetry recited your couplets. Each one of them, even in Hijab, wanted your autographs. You, so conscious of your age, have never liked yourself to be called “Uncle”, especially by any women. You are Faraz Sahib for every one. But you did not object when my sons called you that. I, in turn, have been a darling aunty to your three sons and I have not seen any son so much fond of the father as your sons have been. But who is not fond of you and who will not remember you every evening with a glass in hand? Cheers my friend, your innings has never been without grace and glamour, and you are still our darling.

Love you,

From: www.hindu.com

Life and Work of Great Poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz celebrated in California

Faiz Ahmad Faiz at the School of Oriental and African Studies
London 1983. Photo by Amarjit Chandan.

A literary evening celebrating the life and work of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the great poet from South Asia, was held in the elegant Banquet Hall of newly constructed India Community Center at Milpitas in California, a city between San Jose and San Francisco.

Hamida Chopra read an informative paper on life and poetry of Faiz Sahib. Faiz was born in 1911 in Sialkot Punjab and after the partition decided to live in Pakistan. He married a British woman Alys in 1930s; Faiz also worked in the British Army and was promoted to Lt. Colonel; was imprisoned in Pakistani Jails; and, was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.

Several participants including Dr. Anil Chopra, Dr. Jyoti Dhamdhere, Dr. Khalida, Tashi Zaheer, Hiten Verma, Anupama Dalal, Arvind Kansal and Anshuman Chandra paid tribute to Faiz and spoke about the new dimensions he gave to the Urdu poetry.

The guest of honor Dr.Liu Schuxiong, Chairman Department Of Urdu at the University of Beijing, addressed the gathering in his beautiful Urdu in an eloquent manner. His speech was well received by the audience.

After the proceedings every one was invited for ‘High Tea’ in the Banquet Hall.

The event was organized by Hamida Bano Chopra, who was a teacher at the department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Berkeley. Now, Mrs. Chopra offers regular classes in Urdu.

Mirza Ahmed Baig
Fremont, CA.

More on Faiz Ahmad Faiz