Through Jafri’s eyes

An apt tribute to Jafri, the symbol of our cultural renaissance, would be not to strangulate the language that he wrote in

We the dwellers in the ruins of love
Sowed the trees of our dreams in the sand of yesterday;
There being no shade, we sleep under the desire for shade. (N.M. Rashid: 1912-1976)

His attire may not have changed for decades, as he flitted in and out of Mumbai to enrich India’s cultural life. Maybe, he wore in the mid-thirties, the same loose-fitted Lakhnavi pyjama as a student at the M.A.O. College. Maybe, he always ran his hands through his hair as he spoke or recited his poems in mushairas. Certainly, his soft but firm voice had not changed over time. He spoke poignantly and elegantly on his favourite themes. His eloquence was legendary, reminding his admirers of the best traditions, now forgotten, of marsiya (elegy) recitation. His numerous books and essays portray vividly and with great artistic skill the social realities of living under colonial rule and post-colonial governments.

Outside the public spaces, he was a very vivacious and amusing talker with a strong sense of wit and humour that seems to come naturally to men of culture and refinement among the Urdu-speakers. During his lifetime, Ali Sardar Jafri had more than his share of detractors. His poetic sensibilities were called into question not by serious scholars but by anti-communist polemicists. ‘‘As soon as the poet in him hands over the pen to the propagandist,’’ wrote one of them, ‘‘the beauty somehow vanishes... He is angry, but there is no nobility in his anger.’’ He was chided for hobnobbing with and seeking favours from the ruling establishment from the days of Indira Gandhi. To some critics, Bertrand Russell’s description of Bernard Shaw — as an iconoclast he was admirable, but as an icon rather less — applies to Jafri.

My reasons for writing this column on Jafri may not make sense in this day and age. The word ‘composite culture’, the cornerstone of his philosophy, will sound hollow to those who have driven the Kashmiri Pandits out of their homes or the militants who have killed innocent pilgrims on their spiritual journey to Amarnath. This is, surely, not the Islam that Sultan Zainul Abidin or the great Sufi saints of Kashmir professed and practiced. Give peace a chance, Jafri would have said, in the wounded Valley.

Jafri’s political credo rested on a strong commitment to rationalist thought; hence his fascination for Mir and Iqbal. Sadly, however, his rationalism would not appeal to the persons responsible for jettisoning the ‘Towards Freedom’ project of the Indian Council for Historical Research. As a champion of diversity, he would have said that if individuals are to retain that measure of initiative and flexibility which they ought to have, they must not be all forced into one rigid mould; or, to change the metaphor, all drilled into one army. In the words of Faiz, ‘‘Let colour fill the flowers, let the breeze of early spring blow.’’

Yet, let us not allow the voices of the Jafri’s and the Kaifi Azmi’s to be stifled by the weight of religious or political orthodoxies. Political parties will come and go, but India is too precious a civilisational entity to be used as a pawn on the chessboard of opportunist politics. I am not interested in exploring the ‘Idea of India’; my idea of India is anchored in the vast array of knowledge and wisdom derived from saints, sages, poets, writers and musicians, and my interest lies in my country’s survival as a civilisational entity. That is what the Progressive Writers’ Association, pioneered by men like Prem Chand, Sajjad Zaheer and Mulk Raj Anand, stood for. They embodied a vision that has not ceased to be relevant even after the collapse of socialism. An apt tribute to these men, some of whom made huge sacrifices for freedom, would be to preserve some of the values they represented.

An apt tribute to Jafri, the symbol of our cultural renaissance, would be not to strangulate the language that he wrote in. So often he would say that the unfair and harsh treatment meted out to Urdu, the language of Mir Taqi Mir, Ghalib, Iqbal and Raghupati Sahay ‘Firaq’, does damage to the secular foundations of our society. Perhaps, he was asking for the moon. In some ways, Jafri was a victim of the criminal neglect of our society; sadly, there wasn’t enough in the family kitty to pay for his medical expenses. His wife Sultana had to depend on the goodwill of loyal friends. But, in many other ways, her late husband was a lucky man. Unlike Ghalib, he received recognition during his lifetime: the prestigious Janpith award came in handy for the dwindling family fortunes.

All said and done, Jafri was fortunate enough to be a witness to, and an active participant in, some of the tumultuous events of this century. He observed and commented on the rise and fall of colonialism. He shared the agony and pain of living under the British and protested strongly, along with Faiz Ahmad Faiz and scores of other Hindi, Bengali and Urdu writers, against colonial rule. He shared the joy of freedom, but bemoaned the vivisection of India. He envisioned a socialist world but saw its painful demise in the land of Lenin and Stalin.

He spoke for the poor and the hungry and constructed pictures of a society that encouraged the young to envisage possibilities which otherwise they would not have thought of. He saw his country embroiled in wars with China and Pakistan but refused to acquiesce in the hypocritical high moral tone of the governments and their followers. Here, as Russell wrote of Joseph Conrad, his intense and passionate nobility shines in my memory like a star seen from the bottom of a well. I wish I could make this light shine for others as it shone for me. Allow me to conclude with the following lines:

Neither Chengiz lives any longer, nor Timur,/ What have survived are the people./ The youthful waves of the ocean of Time/Gush and flow from eternity to eternity./Ours is a story of the millennia;/For we are invincible, eternal./We are the designs and patterns of civilizations;/We are the aspirations of the hearts;/We have been over engaged in struggles;/We are the sharp swords of history.

This general optimism, although the state of the country makes it difficult to sustain, is much more likely to lead to good results than the somewhat lazy cynicism which is becoming all too common. This is not the moment, Sardar Jafri would have said in his inimitable style, to deride secularism and mock at multiculturalism.

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