“I write to preserve memories that are under threat of erasure.”- Mahmoud Darwish
(Mahmoud Darwish)
A careful reading of some post partition Urdu poems of well-known Pakistani poets -Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Muneer Niazi, Parveen Shakir, and Nasir Shehzad - raises some interesting questions: How did the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 affect the experience of a shared culture and civilisation? Amidst the trauma of displacement and loss, what happened to the memories of this experience? To paraphrase Langston Hughes, did these memories stink like rotten meat, or did they fester like a sore only to surface in the language of poetry? Is this why some of these prominent Pakistani poets used Indian, specifically Hindu cultural symbols and references in their Urdu poetry? I am not referring here to the occasional use of a few Hindi words or Hindavi language. Many Pakistani poets like Ibne Insha or Jameeluddin Aali – well known for his ‘doha’ poetry – have done that. I am instead referring to the use of symbols and language deeply rooted in the cultural, civilisational and religious traditions of India. Incidentally, this kind of language and symbolism was quite common in the pre-partition era, eg Mohammed Iqbal’s famous poem in praise of Lord Ram, and Nazeer Akbarabadi’s numerous poems celebrating Hindu festivals and religious figures.
I argue here that these Pakistani poets exemplify ways in which they have dealt with these memories and complex emotions in their Urdu poetry. I also believe that some of these syncretic poems go much beyond an evocation of the mixed ‘Ganga-Jamuni' culture that flourished in North India. In their language, imagery and symbols, these poems celebrate aspects and memories of a civilisational experience that may no longer exist. At least, it is not part of the immediate everyday cultural life for most Urdu-speaking Pakistanis, specially the new, post 1965 generation. Interestingly, since a small population of Hindus still live in Pakistan, this kind of poetry perhaps also serves as a gentle reminder that a minority culture still exists, just beyond the pale of an actively celebrated, dominant majoritarian culture. All these poets have had their own associations or memories with the Indian civilisation and culture. Faiz, Muneer Niazi, Nasir Shehzad were all born in Punjab before partition and lived in Lahore and Amritsar. Parveen Shakir was born in Karachi, but her parents had migrated from Bihar.
In Pakistani stories and novels, this kind of ‘cultural mourning’ and nostalgia has been well documented by scholars. It has also featured in a few public discussions
RC Ainsley has proposed a psychological state of ‘cultural mourning’. It refers to the collective process of grieving that occurs within a society when it experiences significant cultural loss or change. It also explores how individuals and groups, particularly those facing cultural displacement and trauma, cope with the loss of their cultural identity, traditions, and way of life. In response to ‘cultural mourning’, we often engage in creative processes that seek to either restore or reimagine our cultural identity. This can include the preservation of language, traditions, and rituals, or the creation of new hybrid forms of cultural expression. According to Denis Walder:
“It is important to think about memory as something shared: shared memories may involve remembrances, legacies, traditions, heritage, histories, and monuments – and nostalgia, which is commonly taken to mean a distorted memory of the past that is morally questionable. But nostalgia can also involve feelings of sympathetic reflection – towards others or ourselves, feelings that we may want to value positively...The phenomenon of nostalgia goes back a long way – at least to Homer’s Odyssey, as well as ancient Chinese texts.”
Literature in general, and poetry in particular, becomes a very powerful mode for this kind of mourning. John Berger in The Hour of Poetry observed that “Poetry can repair no loss, but it defies the space which separates. And it does this by its continual labour of reassembling what has been scattered.” According to the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, after a loss, a “second life, promised to you by language, continues.” He should know; as a Palestinian, he experienced most intimately and painfully, the loss of a home, a shared culture and a community. ‘Cultural mourning’ therefore becomes another form of the longing and loss which forms the heart of all great poetry.
In Pakistani stories and novels, this kind of ‘cultural mourning’ and nostalgia has been well documented by scholars. It has also featured in a few public discussions. Intizar Hussain’s novels and short stories are the most obvious examples. Hussain grew up in Dibai, a small town in Bulandshahr district of UP, India. Growing up, his household witnessed Hindu cultural and religious life very intimately. He frequently and fondly recalled the memory of these cultural expressions in his fiction, attributing it to what he called ‘Nostalgia’ in several interviews. His craft has been studied and analysed by several scholars, such as Jasbir Jain, Haris Qadeer, Nasir Abbas Nayyar and MU Memon. Why is there no similar analysis of this expression and practice in the case of Urdu poetry- both in public discussions and scholarly articles?
To my knowledge, the poets themselves have also not articulated their feelings in public. Rather, true to their vocation, they have quietly and gently used their art form to express these sentiments. A rare exception to this silence has been the scholarly work of Aamir Mufti (Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture). Aamir’s sweep is vast, and his theme much broader, but it contains an incisive analysis of trends in Urdu writing in the aftermath of partition.
In the chapter on Faiz, Aamir Mufti looked at some of Faiz’ poems and argued as follows: Faiz’s poems, in their most essential form, reflect the meaning and legacy of Partition; images of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Hindu’ sacred origins are mixed as a symbolic defiance of Partition; very often, the pangs of memories (ya’d), pain of separation and exile (fira’q & hijr) are also a yearning for unity of self and society, and the broader idea of ‘Partition’; that fira’q is also about the rupture of a shared cultural space, community, and imagination; the beloved often stands for the pre-Partition undivided self. One of the poems that best exemplifies these sentiments is “Blackout.” On Rekhta’s web pages on Faiz, this amazing poem is described, rather simplistically, as an ‘Anti-War’ poem that Faiz wrote soon after the 1965 war between India and Pakistan. In this poem, Faiz mixes the Quranic imagery of Moses bringing the light with the Hindu ritual of purification through cremation and submersion in a river as possible redemption. We can therefore put this poem of Faiz in the broad category of ‘cultural mourning’, a yearning for unity that is lost and almost impossible to regain.
In light of the framework of language, culture, and poetry outlined above, let us look at the poets in our list and some of their poems. Nasir Shehzad (1937-2007) deserves special mention. Firstly, he is the least known and popular among the famous- Faiz, Muneer Niazi, Nasir Kazmi, Parveen Shakir and Ahmed Faraz etc. However, unlike them, he is most explicit on the subject of language and culture. He felt the need for poetry to embrace elements from the culture from which it emerges, which in India/Pakistan region has strong elements of a shared heritage. The title of his second collection of poems Banbas - referring to the exile of Lord Ram - captures this sentiment, as well as his own experience of displacement and exiles., In the introduction, Majeed Amjad provides a rationale for a fundamental shift in Urdu poetry and imagery that Nasir Shehzad brought about. In his own preface, Shehzad explains how the experience of Hindu culture and civilisation, with its songs, festivals, phrases, words and music, ought to be an essential element in the evolution of Urdu poetry and Ghazal.
“Hafiz- o Mir se nisbat bhi baja lekin ab
Paanch dariya-on ke is des ka hone de mujhe”
(It is fine to be connected to Hafiz and Mir; However, let me now belong to this land of five rivers)
Interestingly, in the 2004 edition of Banbas, this second line, which is part of a ghazal, has been altered, and published as
'hāfiz'-o-'mīr' se nisbat bhī bajā lekin... ab
ḳhitta-e-pāk kī is ḳhaak kā hone de mujhe
(It is fine to be connected to Hafiz and Mir; However, let me now belong to the land of the pure, ie Pakistan)
I am not sure who made this change, but it does indicate a preference for a more politically correct version. Nasir Shehzad has numerous poems in this collection where his imagery and symbols reflect his ideas: eg "nai-nikor nirali par," and "Jai Jai Sur Sangeet" (p-343)
“Gori tere saath hai mujh ko janam janam se pyaar
Tu Gokul ki Madhuvanti hai, mai.n Mathura ka Shyam”
Muneer Niazi wrote several ‘geets’ and poems using Hindu religious ethos and terms . The most interesting one is titled “Mai.n shaant ho kar teri prem katha likhu.n ga”, in his collection Ek dua jo mai bhool gaya tha, 1989, p-49-50. The poem is in the voice of Lord Siva addressing Parvati, wondering how he could assuage his anger and write a poem of love dedicated to her. Other poems which use Hindu symbols extensively are in the collection Tez hawa aur tanha phool (1994). For example: “Man moorakh", p-23-24; ‘Prem Kahaani, p-31-32’, ‘Atma ka rog’, p-38, ‘Abhiman’, p-65 and ‘Dur ke nagar’, p-59’. Symbols from Hindi language and Hindu culture, and a pervasive sense of longing, loss remembrance and love reverberate through these poems.
Several of Parveen Shakir’s poems use Hindi/Hindu symbols and tropes such as Shyam, Radha, Manohar, Ganga, Aatma, etc. The following poems are particularly interesting (references are from her collected works of poetry, Maah-e Tamaam, 2008):
-Gori karat singhar ; (Khushbu, p-337); Ganga Se (Sad Barg, p-156-57) Salma Krishan, (Sad Barg, p-165) ; Shyam mein tori gayya.n churaaon’ (Sad Barg, p-231-233); and Manohar kya varoo.n tujh par (kaf-e Aina, p-105)
The poem "Salma Krishan" by Parveen seems to be in praise of Salma Siddiqui, the Indian-Urdu writer, who was married to the writer Krishan Chander. It employs interesting language and symbols related to the Hindu deity Lord Krishna, and Radha. Here is how it opens:
Tu hai Radha apne Krishan ki
Tera koyi bhi hota naam
Murli tere bhitar baaj.Ti
Kisi ban karti bisraam
(You are the Radha of your Krishan, whatever name you may have had; The flute would have played in your soul, and you would have found peace and solace in a forest)
To come back to the questions raised in the beginning: whatever their merit in terms of poetics, why are such poems not well known and discussed in Pakistan? When Nasir Shehzad’s work first appeared, it was much appreciated in India by writers and poets such as Ali Sardar Jafri and Shamsur Rehman Farooqui. Can we read these poems in the same way as the fiction of Intezar Hussain and Manto, from the perspective of nostalgia? Is this a case of a ‘mourning’ of a culture that is ‘present in its absence’, to use a phrase from Mahmoud Darwish? Have these poems been ignored as part of a denial inherent in the ‘partition’ of culture and language that accompanied the geographical split? Aamir Mufti in his above cited book has provided some details of a debate on the ‘culture’ of the newly Islamic state of Pakistan. The debates centred around the content and source of the newly established country. Was it to be the same syncretic culture of its neighbour and erstwhile home, India? Will geography or history establish its parameters?
The era of General Zia provided an answer, for a while at least, as to what will be permitted and promoted, and what was proscribed. Poetry and music saw some of the implications of this ‘Islamisation’ of culture. Perhaps these poets expected this state of affairs. That they tried at all, quietly, gently and subliminally, is a testament to the power of poetry, the persistence of memory and their courage of convictions.
Is it time these poems were read and discussed more widely for their poetic, cultural, and historical significance?