Edition 16: A tribute to Naseer Turabi

Pakistani poet Naseer Turabi passed away on January 10th this year. I hadn’t heard of him until I began working on my opening address for EDGE 2019.  The theme was Power of One and I used the Power of Voice to convey the firepower of words in various forms – written or oral or musically or visually rendered – in effecting change.  

I usually begin working on a speech or piece of writing about two months in advance. I find it magical that lines in books, poetry, music, reportage just find their way to me, and gradually a tapestry emerges. Just like that, the weave, the design, the colours begin to take shape and I am filled with joy. So it happened that year. It was complete serendipity that I chanced upon the poet of Woh Humsafar Tha when I was researching the 1971 war that led to the formation of Bangladesh – you will read about the story of how Woh Humsafar Tha came to be written on that fateful day in December when Dhaka fell, and Turabi wept, and the lines of the Ghazal made their way from his soul into our collective consciousness. Of course, the popularity of Pakistani TV series Humsafar that used Turabi’s ghazal as its title song rendered in the awesome voice of Quratulain Balouch that brought its poet into the limelight.

Turabi was born in 1945 in the Deccan state of Hyderabad in pre-partition India. His father Allama Rasheed Turabi, a renowned religious scholar moved the family to Karachi on Pakistan’s formation in 1947 when Naseer Turabi was two years of age. In addition to delivering innumerable religious lectures and speeches over the course of his life, Allama Rasheed Turabi was also a sought-after Urdu speaker of his time – a persuasive and brilliant orator. A scholar of Islamic learning, and Arabian and Persian literature, he became the Chief of the All India State Muslim League of the erstwhile state of Hyderabad upon the urging of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. After moving to Karachi, Allama Rasheed Turabi continued his public discourses as well as his broadcasts on Radio Pakistan and established his popularity among Shias and Sunnis alike.

Being the son of such an illustrious father was not easy for Turabi. He famously said that “a papaya tree does not take root under the shadow of a banyan tree” and sought to build his own identity through the study of Persian, and Urdu literature and poetry. He began writing poetry when he was only 17 – he was not prolific; he published only two compendiums – his first, Aks Fariyadi, published in 2000 has 55 ghazals, over 150 others being cut out as he was highly critical of his own work and believed in retaining only his weighty verses, and in helping the common man acquire a taste for high quality literature and poetry. Poetry for him was self-catharsis, a spiritual requirement! His second, Laraib, published in 2017 is a collection of devotional poetry. His ability to write in Persian strengthened his understanding of classical poetry. Yet he could blend tradition with modernity. Great artistes like Abida Parveen have composed and popularized his work.

He spent seven years between 2005 and 2012 researching and writing Sheiryaat (Poetics). He was inspired by Aristotle’s Poetica and wrote it as a scholarly piece of work that could be accessible at the same time. Sheriyaat explains basic definitions, forms, terminology, sounds, the lexicon and the errors involved in writing Urdu verse.  

Amid the COVID-induced lockdown, this verse of his went viral:

kuchh roz nasīr aao chalo ghar me? rahā jaa.e

logo? ko ye shikva hai ki ghar par nahī? miltā

Loosely translated as follows, this verse became categorized as “social distancing shayari”!

Let us stay at home for a few days, Naseer

People complain that they hardly find me there

As a tribute to him having both kindled my interest in and love of Urdu poetry, here is the speech I wrote for EDGE 2019.

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The Power of Voice

These are such interesting times that we live in! On the one hand, we are being assured that the human race has never had it better. There are fewer people in extreme poverty. More girls now finish primary school than ever before. People are living longer, healthier lives. On the other hand, we have also never seen so much publicly expressed anguish and angst by both the young and the old about the state of the world. We have 16-year old Greta Thunberg confront the most powerful people in the world about the lack of action on climate change. As someone born in the 60s, I have never felt like I am in the dock for not preserving and nurturing the planet for the coming generations. We also have the traditionally privileged classes in the West feeling threatened by immigrants. We have many scores of people being displaced and thrown out of their own homes on account of their “different-ness”. Finally, in a highly connected, social media – fuelled world, the young feel increasingly insecure and unhappy about their future prospects. How does one explain this state of affairs?

I read somewhere that this possibly has to do with the tremendous increase in the Us versus Them narratives. And these Us versus Them narratives are rooted in Identity. In psychology, Identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and/or expressions that make a person or group. A similarity in belief systems enables us to attach ourselves with a collective of individuals. Feminism is an identity. Being a marathoner is an identity. The label Hindu is an identity. In order for an identity to exist, its opposite must also exist. Ideally, one hopes for constructive resolution of Us versus Them battles through healthy debate and criticism. But when identity is involved at scale, the objective moves from what is right and just to whatever it takes to destroy the “opposite”, because the collective identity has assumed complete primacy. We need to look no further than Twitter or the current news cycle to see how unfruitful and dangerous these kinds of battles end up becoming.

Voice – A powerful tool

So, the fear today is that in this cacophony, we cannot hear the rational voices. Only the ones that are loud or relentless or sometimes absurd and radical are the ones that come through. To this end, I want to showcase some great poetry that used satire and humour to push through some profound truths. We only need to pay attention to hear them. I don’t mean to say that they kick-started movements or organisations in strong opposition to the regimes of the day. But their voice through their poetry provided for pause and introspection and in many cases hit an emotional core in many people. Indeed, there are many different forms of voice used over centuries to seed the idea of change, to launch movements of protest or to simply provoke thought and action.  

Why is the chaos growing?

if few sips (symbolizing alcohol) have been consumed?

I haven’t committed any robbery

nor have indulged in stealing.

The poet Akbar Allahabadi wrote this in the 1910s as a humorous rebuke to his detractors who accused him of being given alcohol by the Hindus. The Muslim League had begun to exert its independent approach to interacting with the British, against the wishes of the Congress. And Allahabadi who hoped for Hindu-Muslim unity intended this piece as a response to those insinuations!

Partition – WH Auden

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,

Having never set eyes on this land he was called to partition

Between two peoples fanatically at odds,

With their different diets and incompatible gods.

'Time,' they had briefed him in London, 'is short. It's too late

For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:

The only solution now lies in separation.

The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,

That the less you are seen in his company the better,

So we've arranged to provide you with other accommodation.

We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,

To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.'

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day

Patrolling the gardens to keep assassins away,

He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate

Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date

And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,

But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect

Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,

And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,

But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,

A continent for better or worse divided.

The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot

The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,

Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

This poem is about the Partition of India. British barrister Sir Cyril Radcliffe arrived in India for the first time on July 8, 1947. He had exactly five weeks to draw the borders between an independent India and the newly created Pakistan. He chaired two boundary commissions, one for Punjab and one for Bengal and the resulting boundary award was announced on August 17. Partition along the Radcliffe Line ended in violence that killed one million people and displaced 12 million. Radcliffe burnt his papers, refused his Rs. 40,000 fee and left once and for all. Was Radcliffe biased? Was he ill-informed? 

China and Arabia may be ours, and Hindustan too; 

Yet we have no home to go to; but all the world belongs to us.

Sahir Ludhianvi’s work continues to be relevant and enjoys great public interest even today. Part of the Progressive Movement, post-independence, he was anti-war, opposed the excesses of the colonial-capitalistic system, the exploitation of farmers and workers, and cared particularly about gender equality. His reverence for Pandit Nehru and his socialist vision for India did not prevent him from penning his angst in these beautiful poetic expressions. This was also, in a sense, a tongue-in-cheek response to Mohammad Iqbal’s famous 1904 Urdu poem and the Indian anthem of opposition to the British Raj - Saare Jahaan se Achcha Hindostan Hamara (Better than the entire world, is our Hindustan).

This world of palaces, thrones and crowns,

This world of societies that resent humanities,

This world of those hungry for (material) wealth

What is this world worth, even if I get it? 

Another piece of work by Sahir Ludhianvi was his famous lyrics used as a defining song in the 1957 award-winning Indian film Pyaasa (English: Thirsty, or more idiomatically, "Wistful"). The film has been rated as one of the 100 best films of all time by Time magazine. Set in Calcutta, West Bengal, the film tells the story of Vijay, a struggling poet trying to make his works known in post-independence India, and Gulabo, a prostitute with a heart of gold, who helps him in his pursuit. In this song, the protagonist questions the materialistic world and its lack of heart.

Someday, that morning will surely come

after all these dark ages,

when shadow of the night will pass,

when the clouds of sadness will melt,

when the ocean of happiness will flow,

when the sky will dance enthusiastically,

when the Earth will sing songs,

someday that morning will surely come.

The 60s were marked by the disappointment of the Indo-China war, followed by Jawaharlal Nehru’s (India’s first Prime Minister and leader of the Indian National Congress) death. Then, there were wounds of the Partition that had not yet healed. The future didn’t seem very bright. Sahir showed us the mirror but also gave the message of hope and optimism. His snug romanticism, coupled with the coming ‘dawn’ that would take care of all our ills, appealed to young people of that generation. His words have the potential to inspire the young generation of today as well, as seen in this piece.

Even though he was my companion, with him, we had no like-mindedness,

We existed like the sun and the shade; there was no separation.

These lines were written by Naseer Turabi, who was born in British India but migrated to Pakistan after Partition. However, there’s more to the lyrics that we heard and understood. He wrote this on 16th December 1971 on hearing about the Fall of Dhaka during the Bangladesh liberation war. This was a deeply emotional matter to the people of West Pakistan who had seen their ‘Hamsafar’ or East Pakistan as Bangladesh was originally named being separated from them, and their vision of a Pak Mulk being shattered.

Voice is an incredibly powerful tool in social change. Poets, authors, artistes, even stand-up comedians have used it as a powerful tool of protest against injustice. Shelley called poets “unacknowledged legislators of the world”. In today’s world of high inter-connectedness, we have performers of all kinds, not just poets who have used their talent to express their anger, anguish or pain. There is an unusual group of writers, the “Miya” poets of Assam. They are a loose collective of scholars, teachers and others whose poems challenge prejudice against Bengali-origin Muslim migrants in the state.  

When people around the world despair and cannot see light at the end of the tunnel, it is these people who help bring back hope and optimism. For surely with people as selfless and inspirational as these, we can’t but believe that being a small part of their journey will help build a better tomorrow! The future is always bright as long there are women and men of goodwill who aspire to create a better future. “Woh subah humin se aayegi!” (such morning can come only with through people like us).