Shakeel Jafri is a versatile personality. This is not an exaggeration or conventional praise, but a fact. He is simultaneously a distinguished poet, journalist, expert in hotel management, and a driving force behind cultural activities. However, my point of interest is the aspect of his poetry that has initiated a trend of resistance poetry on social issues in Urdu – that many other prominent poets have since followed.
My acquaintance with Shakeel Jafri dates back to the 1980s, when a literary organisation named "Bazm-e-Ilm-o-Danish" was highly active in the suburbs of Malir. The organisation regularly held literary sessions every month. Renowned writers, poets, and intellectuals of the city frequently visited, including Syed Sibte Hassan, Professor Karrar Hussain, Ismail Yusuf, Abbas Mehkarri, Zaib Azkaar Hussain, Asrar Shaki, Raouf Nizamani, Aslam Azhar, Fehmida Riaz, Ishrat Afreen, Khalid Moin, Khalid Alig, Fatima Hassan, Tauqeer Chughtai, Najmi Baba, Hasan Abidi, Rahat Saeed, Malik Akbar, Ghulam Muhammad Wamiq, and many other notable personalities. Shakeel Jafri and his brother Nadeem Jafri also often attended the literary sessions of the Bazm.
In those days, Shakeel Jafri's poetic talents were blossoming, and he was beautifully weaving various themes into his poetry. However, the ethnic riots that erupted in the 1990s not only caused numerous human tragedies but also disturbed the city's literary activities. Fear and terror forced people to relocate, and the intellectual activities of Bazm (the literary organisation) began to suffer. Adding to the misfortune was the sudden death of Munsif Raza, who was a driving force behind Bazm. All Bazm's events were held at his home, and he organised these gatherings with great dedication and enthusiasm. After his passing, maintaining the continuity of Bazm became a question mark. The Bazm disbanded, and friends parted ways.
For a long time, I lost contact with Shakeel Jafri. I heard that he was working with the former Mayor of Karachi, Faheem Zaman. There were hardly any meetings until the end of the 20th century.
True to the adage "As long as friends are alive, companionship endures," I reestablished contact with him at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. By then, he had become the editor of an English newspaper, The Financial Daily, and I had also become involved in taking interest in literary activities after retiring from my job. He invited me to write for his newspaper, which I accepted, and I continued to contribute as long as he was associated with it. Later, he left the newspaper and joined a renowned hotel, but we stayed in touch. From time to time, he would share his poems with me on WhatsApp, and I began to notice the emerging new trends in his style. The universal appeal of his thoughts convinced me that he had now groomed to join the ranks of the country's top-tier poets. This was indeed a very promising development.
Shakil Jafri pioneered this movement of speaking out against religious obscurantism, and other poets have since admirably followed suit
One day, he sent me a poem that vividly depicted the violence carried out in the name of religious fanaticism in the country. Since I myself conduct research on terrorism and killings carried out under the guise of blasphemy, which seemingly has no connection to literature, my statistics usually do not interest or draw attention from the literary community. However, I was not only surprised but also extremely pleased to see that Shakeel had chosen to write on a topic that most people avoided discussing.
It was clear that, as a poet, he couldn’t turn a blind eye to the miseries caused by the blatant misuse of blasphemy laws in the country. Poets are integral to every society and, above all, they are inherently sensitive individuals. This sensitivity prevents them from remaining silent in the face of cruelty and brutality. Despite the highly sensitive nature of the topic, Shakeel Jafri chose to make it the subject of his poetry. Reading his work, I was convinced that our poets are not entirely silent or indifferent to the growing lawlessness in the name of religion in our country. Even if their numbers are few, they do exist. Readers might have read this poem before, but I am including it here to illustrate my perspective on his poetry and its expanding impact.
ہمارا جبر یہ ہنس کر نہیں سہتا، یہ کافر ہے
یہ انساں کو مذاہب سے پرکھنے کا مخالف ہے
یہ نفرت کے قبیلوں میں نہیں رہتا، یہ کافرہے
جڑا ہے ارتقاء قدرت اور انساں کی مثلث سے
ہمارے دائرے میں یہ نہیں رہتا یہ کافر ہے
اسے سنگسار کردو جذبہء ایماں نہیں اس میں
یہ کافر کو کبھی کافر نہیں کہتا یہ کافر ہے
ہےبہت بے شرم ہے یہ ماں مزدوری کو نکلی
یہ بچہ بھوک اک دن کی نہیں سہتا، یہ کافر ہے
یہ بادل ایک رستے پر نہیں چلتے یہ باغی ہیں
یہ دریا اس طرف کو کیوں نہیں بہتا، یہ کافر ہے
ہیں مشرک یہ ہوائیں روز یہ قبلہ بدلتی ہیں
گھنا جنگل انہیں کچھ بھی نہیں کہتا، یہ کافر ہے
یہ تتلی فاحشہ ہے پھول کے بستر پہ سوتی ہے
یہ جگنو شب کے پردے میں نہیں رہتا، یہ کافرہے
شریعتاً تو کسی کا گنگنانا بھی نہیں جائز
یہ بھنورا کیوں بھلا پھر چپ نہیں رہتا یہ کافر ہے
(شکیل جعفری)
(Why doesn't he say what we say? He's an infidel.
He doesn't endure our oppression with a smile, he's an infidel.
He opposes judging humans by religions,
He doesn't live among the tribes of hatred, he's an infidel.
He believes in evolution, nature, and humanity,
He doesn't stay within our circles, he's an infidel.
Stone him, for he lacks the spirit of faith,
He never calls an infidel an infidel, he's an infidel.
How shamelessly this mother goes out to work,
This child can’t endure a single day’s hunger, he's an infidel.
These clouds don’t follow a single path, they are rebels,
Why doesn’t this river flow in this direction? It's an infidel.
These winds are polytheists, they change their direction daily,
The dense forest doesn’t mind it either, it's an infidel.
This butterfly has no morality, it sleeps on the flower’s bed,
This firefly doesn’t cover itself within the night’s veil, it's an infidel.
Even humming is not permissible in Sharia,
Yet, this bee doesn’t stay silent, it's an infidel.)
Shakeel sent me this poem in 2010. By then, an estimated 46 people had been extra-judicially killed on charges of blasphemy in Pakistan, including 18 Muslims, 21 Christians, 6 Ahmadis, and one Hindu youth. Hundreds more had been arrested and imprisoned, waiting for years to learn the final verdict of their trials. This poem vividly depicts the social oppression that compelled Shakeel Jafri to write about a subject that has relentlessly pushed society into the dark abyss of ruthless inhumanity since the establishment of Pakistan. While the importance of religious sanctity cannot be denied, it is crucial to ensure that lawlessness is not committed in the name of religion. This is a complex and difficult issue, and few dare to address it. Should anyone be declared an infidel and killed on a whim, without a thorough investigation? Should people live in constant fear that they might be declared an infidel and killed at any moment? Shakeel Jafri's powerful depiction of this lawlessness inspired many other poets to raise their voices against oppression and brutality, making this poem a guiding light for them.
A few years after this poem came to light, Professor Salman Haider's long poem "Main Bhi Kafir Tu Bhi Kafir" (I'm a non-believer, and so are you) was published in an online magazine. Later, Muhammad Bilal Ghori included it in his article in the 14 May 2015 issue of the Jang newspaper. This poem is available on various websites, but its access is not easy. In this poem, Salman Haider expressed his thoughts on many aspects of extremism carried out in the name of religion. By that time, 73 people had lost their lives to extrajudicial killings on blasphemy charges. The largest number of victims belonged to the same religion in whose name they were killed. Among them were 29 Muslims, 24 Christians, 9 Ahmadis, one Hindu, one Ismaili, and one Buddhist. Among the Muslim victims were three individuals who were highly religious. In 1994, Dr Sajjad Farooq, a member of Jamaat-e-Islami and a Hafiz-e-Quran, was brutally beaten and burned to death by hundreds of people in Gujranwala after being dragged out of jail on charges of desecrating the Holy Quran. In 2002, Maulvi Sanaullah was killed in Kasur city while out on bail. Additionally, another religious scholar, Muhammad Yousuf, was murdered in Lahore Jail on 11 June 2012.
The story doesn't end here. Not only were Muslim religious scholars victims of this brutality, but three innocent girls also suffered this injustice, despite having committed no act of blasphemy. Their only fault was that they belonged to the Ahmadi sect. This tragic incident occurred on 28 July 2014, when a Muslim youth named Ijaz, along with the local Pesh Imam's son Zakariya, accused an 18-year-old Ahmadi youth, Aqib Saleem, of posting blasphemous content on Facebook in an area of Gujranwala. Within no time, a crowd of over a thousand people gathered and started attacking and setting fire to the homes of Ahmadis in the area. As a result, a grandmother, Bushra Bibi, and her two granddaughters, Hira (7 years old) and Kainat (6 months old), suffocated to death. Additionally, the children's aunt, Mubashra Bibi, who was pregnant at the time, lost her unborn baby.
Perhaps the unborn child found the scene so distressing that it preferred to return to its Creator rather than enter this world. The unborn child might have even questioned God: if my mother was an infidel, my grandmother was an infidel, and my little cousins were infidels, why was I sent to be part of this infidelity? The aspect of acceptance and resignation that Salman Haider presented in his poem is vividly reflected in this incident.
Salman Haider's poem articulates the severity of these situations so profoundly that no words can fully capture its impact. What is particularly noteworthy is the declarative nature of the poem, strikingly similar to Shakil Jafri's work. The key difference lies in their approaches: Shakil Jafri's poetry conveys societal coercion with the authority of a decree, while Salman Haider's work sarcastically acknowledges this coercion, highlighting the escalating series of events related to religious illegality.
Shakil's poetry captures the oppressive nature of a trend that identifies and condemns infidels, relentlessly issuing decrees and marking individuals for extrajudicial execution. In contrast, Salman Haider's poem voices the anguish of the victims, who, unable to fight against this injustice, resign themselves to being branded as infidels.
I'm not sure how popular Salman Haider's poem became, but he had to face allegations of blasphemy as a consequence of expressing his thoughts. Besides being a poet, Salman Haider was also a blogger and used to express his opinions fearlessly on an online magazine. On February 1, 2017, he, along with three of his blogger colleagues, was arrested under various blasphemy charges (Sections 295, 295-A, B, C, 298, 298-A, and B). These charges were pressed by Hafiz Ehtisham Ahmed, associated with the Lal Masjid's Shuhada Foundation.
The case continued for almost a year, and on 23 December 2017, due to lack of evidence, the court acquitted Salman Haider and the other bloggers. After this incident, all these individuals relocated from the country, while incidents of blasphemy continued unabated in the country. Even today, the series of allegations, as described by Shakil Jafri in his poem, " Why doesn't he say what we say? He's an infidel," continues. Victims are being coerced into admitting their disbelief, and the situation persists where thousands of people, accused of blasphemy, reassure each other in the jail cells, saying, "I'm a non-believer, and so are you."
Shakil Jafri's poem, which raised the first voice against this tyranny, continued to resonate even after that incident. Recently, a journalist and poet from Azad Kashmir, Ahmed Farhad, became widely popular across the country when he wrote a poem about the ongoing series of disappearances of individuals, with the lines, یہ اپنی مرضی سے سوچتا ہے، اسے اٹھالو"" (He thinks what he wants, just pick him up). This poem, like Shakil Jafri's poem, bears the influence of a manifesto, and its verses are strikingly similar to those of Shakil Jafri's poem. Strikingly, the two poems are interchangeable without losing their fundamental messages. Replacing "Pick him up" with "He's an infidel," or vice versa, does not alter the essence of their content or message.
This comparative analysis is not intended to elevate Shakil Jafri above other poets, but rather to highlight the emergence of a new perspective in resistance poetry within the country. Shakil Jafri pioneered this movement, and other poets have since admirably followed suit, expressing their thoughts on the same issues. All these poets deserve commendation for raising their voices against societal injustices, facing numerous challenges, and steadfastly standing by their convictions.