To Waris Shah

Name: Alisa Rahman

Class: B.A.(Hons.) English
Semester: V
Subject: Literatures of India Assignment 1
Submitted to : Prof. Ivy Imogene

Question 2: Comment on Amrita Pritam’s poem as

an elegy expressing anguish over the partition of
India.

Amrita Pritam, the poetry diva of Lahore who had charmed and
mesmerised the literary milieu with her words in Punjabi, was a prolific writer
who has credited to herself twenty eight novels, eighteen volumes of poetry,
five collections of short stories and sixteen collections of miscellaneous prose
besides her autobiography, Rasidi Tickat. Her works emanate a wide
menagerie of social and personal issues: be it as a staunch stance for women’s
rights, or unhappy marriages, or the redemptive power of love, or needless to
say, the vivid portrayal of vilification of humanity during the Partition of India.
‘To Waris Shah’, which is translated from its Punjabi version ‘Ajj Akhan
Waris Shah Nun’, is an elegy which falls under the category of Partition
Literature. This literary specimen is a hauntingly beautiful poem addressed to
the creator of the immortal epic of love, Heer Ranjha. It is a plea from the
poetess to regress to the days of love and brotherhood among the people of
Punjab. Heer Ranjha is a love story and an allegory of the living culture of
eighteenth century Punjab, which the poet recalls with nostalgia and longing.
The Partition of India in 1947 had a great impact on Indian literature,
especially written in Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi. The transfer of populations and
the carnage of the communal riots challenged the writers of the time to take up
their pens and stem the tide of hatred and bloodshed by advocating humanity,
peace, and brotherhood. ‘To Waris Shah’ ensues the poet’s anguish, horror
and the sense of shame and indignity at the brutal ways of men. In this poem,
she expresses her agony at the condition of the bleeding and the ravaged land.
The historical analogue that is invoked from the outset, adds to the poignancy
and pain. Amrita Pritam’s appeal is to both poetry and history and she
summons to her aid the greatest medieval love poet of Punjab.

She resorts to the poet of love and compassion, imploring him to wake up from
his grave and witness the bloodbath she is onlooking. At this critical moment
when the land is sweeped by ruthless communal riots and belligerent human
war, when “corpses are strewn on the pastures” turning the Chenab crimson red,
she wants to impregnate in the minds of the masses the compassionate doctrine
of Heer and Ranjha’s love. The venomous act of partition and the poison of
‘Divide and Rule’ are irrigating the soil of her beloved motherland which once
owned a plethora of richness and which has now been mortified to
contamination.

The intriguingly bewitching usage of metaphors and imageries drives us to a

trance of enchantment, approving Pritam’s erudite literary skills. At the same
time, one will shudder at the graphic and lucid picture of the heart-wrenching
landscape of Punjab the poetess has portrayed. The metaphorical ‘snake’,
which Pritam in all probability, refers to the political leaders who were
swinging their legs, sipping their cup of leisure, while the abhorrence they have
induced in the hearts of people, has made them come at loggerheads.

People have stopped singing and the ‘hum of the spinning wheels’ has fallen
quite. Pritam metaphorically picturised the plight of people, shunned from all
happiness and pleasure. They are ostracized from every gaiety, lost in the vast
unceasing ocean of tragedy, helplessness and vulnerability: “The boats lost their
moorings, And float rudderless on the stream.”

The people of Punjab have discarded the flutes and have taken up swords,
killing their brothers out of a burning zeal of revenge and contempt. Even the
lifeless, in their tombs, would wail if they had witnessed the bloodbath. A
villainous disease has infected the people and has turned them into “thieves of
beauty and love”. The poetess desperately beseeched Waris Shah to wake up
from his grave, author a new book of love and become the saviour of
humanity.

Revitalizing the memory of Waris Shah, this heart-rending elegy made Faiz
Ahmed Faiz break into tears. Herself a victim of a communal riot during
partition, Amrita, in her autobiography ‘The Revenue Stamp’, recollects :
“Everything had been torn apart. The words of Waris Shah about
how the dead and parted would meet, echoed in my mind. And my
poet took shape.”