COVER FEATURE

Listening to Faiz is a subversive act

Yes Even today ….?

By Gauhar Raza

Being unfamiliar with the name of Faiz Ahmad Faiz and what it signifies can make one
extremely unwelcome in the literary circles of North India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as
most of the countries that boast a sizeable Southasian diaspora. In Punjab province, despite a
positive dislike for Urdu among some sections, Faiz remains as popular as the Sufi saints,
Bullehshah or Baba Farid. Faiz was a trade unionist, a Marxist, and lived and died a communist,
yet even reactionaries hold the man in high esteem. In Pakistan, he was hounded by several
governments, and yet no fundamentalist group has ever passed a fatwa against Faiz. How did this
happen? How did this mild-mannered, soft-spoken Punjabi, who spoke Urdu in a heavy Punjabi
accent and was master of an awful reciting style, manage to surpass all the stalwarts, his seniors
and contemporaries, in popularity? Faiz is certainly the only poet after Ghalib to have been
translated into almost all languages of the Subcontinent and many further afield.

Of the galaxy of Southasian heroes, pre-or post-Partition, it is difficult to find individuals whose
greatness is acknowledged even by their enemies – perhaps Ashfaqullah, Ram Prasad Bismil and
Shaheed Bhagat Singh would so qualify. Even those who disagreed with their methods and
worked against their ideological positions saluted their commitment to the cause, and accepted
them as heroes of the freedom movement. While Faiz has been able to garner similar respect,
there is a marked difference with these other three. Ashfaqullah, Bismil and Bhagat Singh were
killed while fighting against the British. During this period, Faiz was writing poetry – albeit
revolutionary poetry.

Throughout, he remained a consistent votary against imperialism on almost all issues,

particularly during the extremely polarised days of the Cold War. Yet despite his publicly
declared partisanship, how is it that many of those located on the other side of the ideological
divide respected him? There seems to be only one answer: in his chosen field of poetry, Faiz
simply stood tall – technically and, perhaps more important, morally. He chose poetry as his
arena of revolutionary action, and he did this so well in the battle of ideas that he not only
transcended the hitherto prescribed limits of expression, but also redefined the vocabulary of that
expression. It was presumed that love poetry and revolutionary poetry are two different genre.
These have nothing common. Faiz blurred the boundary to the extent that you cannot
distinguish between the two. Where love poetry ends and where revolutionary poetry begins
cannot be marked. For example ‘huii hai hazrat-e-naseh se guftgoo jis shab, who shab zaroor
sare kooye yaar guzri hai (the night on which conversation has taken place with Mr sermoniser,
that night, for sure, has been spent in the alleyways of beloved).
With his felicity with languages and his brilliant academic record, Faiz could have had a bright
career in nearly any field; but he chose a life of commitment, at great personal risk – to his
freedom, citizenship and life – and at great cost to his family. Yet it was this steadfastness in his
ideals and the uncompromising manner in which he worked that compelled all those who chose
to stick to a safe path to bow their heads before him and acknowledge his leading role.

That brings us to the next question – what makes Faiz universally popular, even decades after his
death? Faiz was a committed dreamer, and he dreamt of a revolutionary movement that was
humanist, self-sacrificing and egalitarian, but also firm and uncompromising. He dreamt of a
future that many had dreamt of, but expressed his views in a convincing and polite language.
Indeed, this language did not alienate his ideological adversaries, but rather making them
uncomfortable – shaking the foundation of their side of the ideological fence, and therefore
leaving them dumbfounded.

Sublime revolution
My own love affair with Faiz’s poetry started when I was still in school. Love affairs of
adolescence are intense affairs, and yet only some last very long. Of course, in retrospect it
seems clear that I understood little of his poetry at that age. The true meaning of the poem ‘Mere
hamdam mere dost’ descended like revelation upon me only when I was in the final year of my
masters programme in Delhi, when I recited it to a friend. The poem in a very soft and beautiful
way says that revolution can be brought only by me, I am just a poet and can sing songs for you
(the working class) but cannot bring revolution. In other words though middle class has an
important role to play but it is proletariat who is the vanguard of any socialist revolution. I must
have recited this poem hundreds of times before then, but its import had somehow escaped me
totally.

Still, during my school days it must have been the power and beauty of Faiz’s language that
attracted me. I memorised almost every verse from the anthologies of his works available at the
time. Of course, much of this initial pull can be traced to my parents – my father a communist,
both freedom fighters. They never asked their children to recite ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’ or
‘Goosy, goosy gander’ before guests; instead, I was asked to recite the poetry of Mir, Ghalib,
Iqbal (not one of my favourites), Faiz and Sahir Ludhyanvi. During those years, ‘Siyasi leader ke
naam’, ‘Shishon ka masiha’ and the aforementioned ‘Mere hamdam mere dost’ were my
favourites. The first of these was easy to understand, but the latter two are not. The soft, beautiful
words might attract one to the beauty of poetry, but they depict extremely harsh realities of life.

Faiz realised quite early on that traditional Urdu poetry had immense potential to articulate
modern revolutionary ideas, and that this medium was yet to be fully explored. Of course, the
idioms, similes, metaphors and, above all, symbolism and structure of traditional Urdu poetry
were already highly developed. So, Faiz was able to pick up words and expressions that were
part of the traditional vocabulary of this form, and invest them either with new meanings or to
actively create nuances within their traditional import. Words such as raqeeb (adversary), laila,
majnoon, qafas (cage), saba (morning breeze), naaseh (sermoniser), munsif (judge), hawas (lust,
greed), muddaee (complainant), etc, were each invested with new meanings. For example in the
poem ‘Raqeeb se (To the Adversary)’, fellow traveller and revolutionary bosom friends are
addressed to as adversary-in-love, because they also held freedom and equality as their beloved
as opposed to traditional urdu poetry’s adversary-in-love who was responsible for all visitations,
pains and injustice perpetrated by the beloved. Calling a friend as adversary was a novel notion,
tradition turned on its head.

Such words had a long history of being used for love poetry, but Faiz was now appropriating
them for a whole new context. He also borrowed the structure of love poetry from Mir Taqi Mir,
the renowned poet of the early 19th century. Together, Faiz was able to use the traditional words
and structure to symbolise capitalism and state oppression as enemies of harmony – lovers, hope,
tranquillity and beauty symbolised revolutionaries and socialism for him.

Faiz’s felicity with multiple languages, including English, Persian, Arabic and Punjabi, coupled
with his understanding of their cultural and historical moorings, helped him to draw from diverse
traditions to construct new metaphors in Urdu. His palette was large and he never hesitated to use
words from other languages, which had the effect of increasing his intensity of expression. For
example, in his poem ‘Intisab’, he has used the word clerkon (clerks in English), railbaanon
(railway driver, English), katrion (dwellings, Punjabi) and wali-e-maasiwa fill arz dehqan ke
naam (dedicated to, the inheritor of destitution, god’s proxy on the earth, farmer, Arabic). Any
other word or phrase in the respective line could not have invoked the image or feeling that it
invokes. For example ‘babu’ or ‘daftari’ are two other words that are used for a clerk. Firstly,
plural of none of the two would have fitted in the meter and secondly, it would not these cannot
invoke image of a person out of whose life all the creativity and imagination has been drained
out and moroseness has been permanently instilled in his personality. And this is exactly what the
line demanded.

Whenever Faiz deviated from traditional language, literary critics would feel increasingly
uneasy, with many criticising him for not knowing proper Urdu. Once a famous Indian Urdu
critic said, ‘He does not know Urdu, and there are many linguistic mistakes in his poetry – after
all, he is a Punjabi.’ A journalist reported this to Faiz while he was on a visit to Delhi, and the
poet, characteristically polite, said only, ‘We will correct the mistakes.’ His answer disarmed not
only the reporter but also the critic, just as his poetry always has done with his opponents.

Ham Dekhenge
As a poet Faiz is traditional in almost every sense. His choice of words, imagery and poetic
structure are all traditional. What is not traditional was his content, and in this way he used
traditions specifically to subvert other traditions. This could be said about his entire corpus of
poetry, but two poems in particular stand out: ‘Dua’ and ‘Wa Ybaqa Wajhe Rubbika (Arbic: and
what will survive will be the God’s Face)’, popularly remembered as ‘Ham dekhenge’.

Traditionally in Urdu and Hindi poetry, a collection of poems or even a prose book is supposed
to start with a poem (or a chapter, in case of prose) in praise of god and other religious figures –
this is referred to as the ‘Dua’. Yet poets and writers associated with Progressive Writers
Association (PWA), most of them atheists, had given up this tradition – anti-god and -religion
sentiments had become so strong that all such practices had become unacceptable. Faiz was the
only one to realise that even this tradition could be used to subvert. The poem ‘Dua’ appears in
the middle of his collection, (Sar-e-Wadi-e-Sina page 55) so the placement itself is the beginning
of this subversion. Thereafter, the first couplet, hard-hitting as it is, sets the tone:
 Let us raise our hands in prayer, we who remember not the tradition of prayer,
We, who except the pain of love, remember not any idol, any god.

The poet does not ask anything for himself, as is the case with all traditional duas. He prays for
‘exchanging the toxic bitterness of the present with the sweetness of tomorrow’, ‘hope for the
hopeless’, ‘vision for the visionless’, ‘courage for the timid’, the ‘ability to investigate for those
who believe in lies and myths’. There are no harsh words, no ill feeling invoked; yet the content
of each couplet is revolutionary, sharp, clear and loud.

Title ‘Wa Ybaqa Wajhe Rubbika’ of the poem is taken from ‘surah e rahman in quran (chapter 55:
verse 26-27).‘Ham dekhenge’ draws its imagery from the description of qayamat, the Day of
Reckoning, as ‘revealed’ in the Quran (Surah: Ziljal and ), and transforms it into to ‘day of
revolution’. The description of what will happen on that day is taken almost verbatim from the
Quran, though with slight modifications. Instead of merely ‘mountains’, for instance, he writes
‘jab zulm-o-sitam ke kohe gran’,(mountains of tyranny and repression). Once again, Faiz is at his
best in subverting traditional imagery that had been used over and over again. In this case,
Islamic fundamentalism had been used by the authorities to reinforce religious ideas that General
Zia ul-Haq was trying to instil for the consolidation of political and economic power. General Zia
in a coupe imposed martial law in Pakistan (1977), and soon unleashed fascistic terror in the
name of Nizam-e-Mustafa (Islamic System). He constituted Sharia Benched announced
draconian Hodood Ordinance during his 11 year rule. How could Faiz keep quite, he wrote many
poems on prevailing political conditions including the master piece Ham dekhenge. It was
written in 1979. As Zia’s tyranny touched the zenith the poet in faiz also touched the zenith of
creativity Faiz subversively uses the lines ‘removal of idols from the Kaaba’ and the
‘reinstallation of outlaws’ to symbolise the removal of Gen Zia and his political movement, and
the restoration of democracy. Faiz made it amply clear that his reading of quran was quite
different from General Zia’s and the brand ‘Islam’ Zia was trying to sell was not acceptable to
him.

Iqbal Bano, the acclaimed ghazal singer, sang this poem in public during Zia’s rule. Faiz was in
jail and that night 50 thousand while listening to ‘Ham Dekhenge’ repeatedly chanted Inqalab
Zindabad (long live revolution). Shoaib Hashmi, Faiz’s son-in-law, once narrated before a
packed hall in Delhi how the recording was smuggled out, hurriedly edited with makeshift
editing facilities, and a few copies quickly handed out to avoid confiscation. With these few
audiocassettes further copies were made. The number swelled in geometric progression and soon
the copies crossed Pakistan borders. Within weeks the cassette was available with many
individuals in Delhi. These were ‘handmade’ copies. Peoples’ protest knows no bounds. It is
much later that copies of this cassette were made professionally and are available in various
formats.

Very often, I listen to a recording of this song at home and while travelling to my office.
Thunderous clapping and slogans of Inqalab Zindabad repeatedly interrupt the performance. A
Telugu scientist friend who usually travels with me to the office has either given up hope that I
will someday stop playing it – or has started enjoying ‘Hum dekhenge’. I very often forced this
song on him, told him stories about the context in which it was written and sung.
Recently a Pakistani friend, a scholar of the history of science told me that he had actually been
at the programme when Iqbal Bano sang. Thereafter, a friend of his who worked in the Pakistani
armed forces had rung him up late at night, warning him not to stay at home for the next two or
three days. He took precautions and stayed away from his house. In the coming days, many of
those present in the Lahore auditorium were hauled up and questioned, and some were detained.
His home was also visited in the middle of the night by the military police, to enquire after his
whereabouts.

One need not be surprised by this. Listening to Faiz’s poetry, even when sung by the most
celebrated musical diva of the country, was an inherent anti-imperialist, anti-dictatorship and
anti-fascist act. It was highly subversive. We may not realise it, but tyrants always recognise the
explosive potential of an apparently harmless piece of text. Perhaps it should be applied in
translation or without to the tyrants that remain with us all over Southasia.