Dubai: Renowned Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s works should be made compulsory for all Indian students, his biographer and grandson said in an exclusive interview with Gulf News.
Faiz’s iconic Urdu poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’ has become a rallying cry against India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, which has sparked nationwide protests.
Last week, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kanpur formed a panel to probe if the poem hurts Hindu sentiments after some students sang it on campus to express solidarity with their peers at Delhi’s Jamia Islamia University who were assaulted by police during a protest.
Faiz’s grandson Dr Ali Madeeh Hashmi said the family is amused by the controversy over the poem written four decades ago as a reassurance to those waiting for radical change.
“It seems that the professors at IIT Kanpur and many of India’s current so-called intellectuals have either never read poetry or are deliberately trying to curry favour with Mr. Modi and his band of communal hate-mongers,” Ali Madeeh said in an email from America.
Lost in translation?
Recently, an IIT faculty member had filed a complaint against the recitation of the poem alleging it was an attack on Hindu beliefs. The lines he found offensive are: jab arz-e-khuda ke ka’abe se sab but uthaaye jayenege... ... bas naam rahega allah ka...”
Loosely translated, the verse means:
“When from the abode of God (Kaaba) all idols will be removed
Then we the faithful, who were debarred from sacred places Will be placed on the royal seat.
The IIT complainant said: “In a country, where we have 80 per cent idolators, the removal of idols is an assault on my belief.”
Superficial understanding
Ali Madeeh said this was a superficial understanding of the composition. “Poems are laden with symbols and metaphors and to take a phrase such as ‘Butt uthwaaye jaayen ge’ and label the poem ‘anti-Hindu’ is laughable. Not to mention that Faiz is talking about the ‘Ka’aba’, not Babri Masjid! We don’t quite know what to make of it except that perhaps a module of Urdu poetry should be introduced in all Indian universities starting with IIT Kanpur. And Faiz should be made compulsory reading for all Indian students,” said Al Madeeh, the eldest grandchild of Faiz, a trustee of Faiz Foundation Trust, Pakistan and author of the poet’s authorised biography 'Love and Revolution'.
Widely regarded as the anthem of dissent and hope in Urdu and Hindi speaking countries, 'Hum Dekhenge' was penned by Faiz in 1979 to protest against general Zia Ul Haq’s military regime in Pakistan. However, it gained a cult-following as a song of resistance after a public rendition in Lahore by acclaimed ghazal singer Iqbal Bano in 1986, two years after Faiz’s death.
Al Madeeh remembers attending the famous concert at Al Hamra Arts Council in Lahore as a 17 year old.
Dubai connection
“I was there, along with all of my family. The date was February 13, 1986. The hall where she (Iqbal Bano) was to perform was already filled to the brim before she came on stage,” he recalled in an article published recently.
“She sang many Faiz poems but the loudest cheers were reserved for ‘Hum Dekhenge’. She finished the concert but the audience refused to let her leave and begged for an encore of ‘Hum Dekhenge’. A technician in Al Hamra surreptitiously recorded the encore and this is the recording that survives today. For those of us sitting in the hall, it was quite surreal. The clapping and cheers were so thunderous that it felt at times that the roof of Al Hamra hall would blow off,” said Al Madeeh.
But the story does not end there. According to Madeeh, the same night Pakistani authorities raided the homes of the organisers and many of the participants looking for any audio copies of the concert, especially ‘Hum Dekhenge’.
“Many copies were confiscated and destroyed but my uncle Shoaib Hashmi had managed to get a hold of one copy and, anticipating the crackdown, handed it over to some friends who promptly smuggled it out to Dubai where it was copied and widely distributed,” he said.
Audio cassettes were not that cheap, so it was always a special ‘gift’ said Al Madeeh adding that he still remembers Bollywood lyricist Javed Akhtar’s reaction when he gave him a copy of the recording in Mumbai.
“He was enthralled because you could hear the slogans in the background of the singing,” Al Madeeh told Gulf News on Sunday.
The recording is now available on YouTube. In 2018, Coke Studio released a music video starring eleven featured artists as they sang an abridged version of the poem.
Al Madeeh said an ethnic Kashmiri once asked him why protesters sing the poems of Faiz and chant his verses.
“I told him the story I have narrated as a reminder of the power of poetry and of the ideals of justice, brotherhood and equality. Faiz died in 1984 but, like his ideal, Ghalib, he lives on in the hearts of his admirers and so does his poetry, in the struggles of ordinary people all over the world.”
Who was Faiz Ahmad Faiz?
Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911-1984) was an influential left-wing intellectual, revolutionary poet, and one of the most famous poets of the Urdu language from Pakistan. Among other accolades, Faiz was nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature and won the Lenin Peace Prize. 1n 1951, he was arrested for allegedly being part of a conspiracy to overthrow the government. Faiz was released after four years in prison and went on to become a notable member of the Progressive Writers’ Movement. His literary work was posthumously publicly honoured when Pakistan conferred upon him the nation’s highest civil award, Nishan-e-Imtiaz, in 1990.
Did you know:
The poem known by its refrain 'Hum Dekhege' is originally titled Wa-yabqa-wajh-o-rabbik, a Quranic verse from Surah Rahman meaning, literally, ‘The face of your Lord. The poem was censored with one verse being permanently excised, even from Faiz’s complete works, Nuskha-e-Ha-e-Wafa.
