I went to Lahore for studies, three years after Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s demise in 1983. The first book I bought was Faiz’s, “Nuskha-e-Hae-e-Wafa”. My mother used to pay me Rupee 1200 as a monthly stipend—good old days. Faiz's book cost Rupees 280 in those days. But I purchased it through Reader’s Book Club—a subsidiary of the National Book Foundation, which used to facilitate students buying expensive books with a 50 percent discount. So, the book cost me Rupees 140, which still was a major chunk of my monthly stipend. Holding the book with a black cover and Faiz’s poetry printed on fine paper was a feeling of ecstasy. Starting from 1986 till the late 1990s I didn’t go to sleep without reading “Nuskha-e-Hae-e-Wafa” on any night in my life. If I say that Faiz’s poetry made me into what I am right now at the emotional level, it would not be an exaggeration. However, I am still confused whether it would be correct to claim that Faiz narrates my story—or the story of my generation—in his poetry and whether I have tailored or made up my story in the light of the lessons I learned from Faiz’s poetry.
I think it is difficult to say with definite clarity which would be the correct statement. But I can say with certainty that I have internalized Faiz’s poetry. I fell in love as a young man, I still flirt with the idea of radical political change in Pakistani society, I started treating my opponents or rivals (I would not use the word enemy here) as someone very close to my heart, I still strongly believe in social and economic egalitarianism as a political ideal, I think that my young age love (ashiq) for a particular person has softened my feeling toward downtrodden and I feel a very painful guilt if my instincts force me to look down upon a hapless poor person.
I think no sensitive person, after reading Faiz’s poetry, can continue to look down upon the downtrodden in his social dealings. Faiz just romanticised the poor—not in the sense that it is something good, after all, he was a Marxist—but in the sense of the revolutionary potential of the poor segments of society. Allures of poverty in Faiz’s poetry are so strong that I started developing a personality that could easily be described as an inverted snob. Faiz was well versed in classical languages and classical Islamic sciences as well as Islamic history and culture. In my opinion, this has strongly impacted his poetry. The words in which he describes poor and poverty are a reflection of the higher status the downtrodden enjoy in Islamic societies over the centuries.
The reflection of poverty in Faiz’s poetry is a synthesis of this Islamic attitude toward poverty and the Marxist approach of treating the poor and downtrodden as a class with revolutionary potential.
The Saints and Waliullahs (friends of God) have led a non-affluent life in Muslim societies. The prophet (PBUH) himself never retained anything for his consumption and always distributed everything that came his way among the poor. In this way, poor and poverty was never a phenomenon that was looked down upon in Muslim societies over the centuries. The reflection of poverty in Faiz’s poetry is a synthesis of this Islamic attitude toward poverty and the Marxist approach of treating the poor and downtrodden as a class with revolutionary potential. But Faiz in his poetry is closer to Islamic cultural values than Marxist axioms—for instance, Marx treats the poor, especially those poor who are completely propertyless and without any earning or source of income as a class that is more likely to side with the bourgeoisie in revolutionary situations. Faiz’s poetry in contrast makes you fall in love with the downtrodden.
Somewhere in his non-poetic writings, Faiz is full of praises for Communist Manifesto—a book that revolutionised communist politics in 19th-century European society and which was later smuggled into British India for young intellectuals like Faiz to read and come under its influence. Faiz was a typical Marxist, and he believed that Stalin’s Soviet Russia was a perfect example of the classless society that Marx and Engel had predicted in their Magnum opus. This often perplexes me and my thoughts about Faiz. I truly believe that Faiz was a truthful and honest man—no person with a propensity for lying could create poetry of this standard and quality. Faiz was Bhutto’s cultural advisor, and he wanted to resign from Bhutto’s cabinet when PPP government forces resorted to straight firing upon the National Awami Party’s protest rally at Liaquat Bagh, killing around 40 political workers. His left-oriented friends prevented him from doing so. But as truthful as he was, he wrote the famous verse, “My self keeps on question me and this sword keeps on sheathing in my blood”(translation my own), to describe his feelings about not being able to resign from the cabinet after witnessing the bloodshed in Rawalpindi. Just imagine how much we lack and how much our society has deteriorated in moral and ethical behavior—we see bloodshed before our eyes and we don’t speak up.
Faiz was among those truthful brains of that era who were truly inspired by the social, economic, and political engineering experiments that the communists were undertaking in Russian society in those days
Why didn’t Faiz speak up about oppression in Soviet Russia in Stalin’s era? I think Faiz was among those truthful brains of that era who were truly inspired by the social, economic, and political engineering experiments that the communists were undertaking in Russian society in those days. Bertrand Russell went to Russia and came back impressed by the enormity of exercise in social and economic equality. H.G. Wells was no less inspired after his visit. Other Western intellectuals were inspired by the Soviet experiment. The stories about the Soviet’s oppressive tactics were not received as gospel truth in those days as they are now in the face of an avalanche of literature by Western authors and media. Soviet propaganda was massive about a successful project of introducing social and economic equality in soviet society. It was new, it was modern, and it was innovative. In Soviet Russia, Faiz saw the implementation of the ideology that inspired him at a young age. There is not an iota of any trace of Faiz supporting any kind of political oppression in society.
Faiz’s poetry captures the whole cultural world and the political and social values of the era in which he lived. My career as a political reporter took me into a world of ruthless power politics, where moral values and ethical behavior always take a back seat. Although I was only reporting about this world, but its values crept into my social attitudes, feelings, and behavior. I only rarely open Faiz’s, “Nuskha-e-Hae-e-Wafa”, though when I feel sadness creeping deep into my heart, I always recite Faiz’s poetry in a trance of ecstasy, especially “Ab tum He kahoo kia karna ha” (you tell us what we should do now?”—a poem which Faiz wrote in his last days. Faiz in this poem recounts how in his early age was full of ideas and solutions to the problems of society and now he was asking what he should do when that strength left him. But Faiz has left a deep ethical imprint on my worldview and the way I see the political world. No political idea or ideology for me is complete without some semblance of social and economic equality injected into it. I want to revive my nighttime reading of Faiz. But I am surrounded by a ruthless, cutthroat world of competition and rivalry, where you cannot tell who your friend is and who your foe is. I hope I find time to immerse myself in Faiz's poetry before I bid farewell to this world.