Alas poor Josh, Urdu’s great son
An international Urdu Conference in Islamabad last week played Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.
This will be considered an exaggeration by those who approach Urdu from their respective regions. Urdu, a language created in the subcontinent, did pick up flavours from the Deccan, Punjab, Delhi, and so on. I may, therefore,be forgiven my own parochialism: my childhood was shaped in a zone of great cultural energy over the last 150 years, Awadh, with Lucknow as its capital.
From the turn of the 20th century, the poet who determined the cultural tempo of this region was Shabbir Hasan Khan Josh Malihabadi. A narrative of multiple ironies forms the backdrop to the fact that Josh’s name did not figure at the Islamabad conference in the list of numerous poets who adorned Urdu over the centuries. It is like omitting W.B. Yeats in a celebration of 20th century English poets.
Josh was born 20 miles from Lucknow in the qasbah of Malihabad, known for its mango groves. Lucknow became the cultural magnet attracting poets and writers from the districts and qasbahs. An extremely discerning Awadh audience kept Josh in ample competition with other great poets of the day — Yaas Yagana Changezi, Raghupati Sahai Firaq Gorakhpuri, Jigar Moradabadi. Critics are divided as to who was the finer ghazal writer — Firaq or Yagana. In this specific sphere, that of ghazal, only Josh’s unwavering partisans would crown him the numero uno. Jigar’s gentle lyricism, of course, cannot be compared with the 100-piece orchestra of diction, sound, colour and image with which Josh bursts upon the stage. No single poet, in any Indian language, more effectively lent his voice to the national movement, a fact which earned him the friendship of Jawaharlal Nehru and Maulana Azad.
Independence came with the pain of Partition. It was a traumatic time for all. It was also a time when strength of will, intellectual commitment, the ability to grasp historical currents, were all on test. The poet who spent a lifetime enriching Urdu, celebrating nature, demolishing religious bigotry, placing reason above faith, leading the procession of life’s grandeur, tavern to tavern, discourse to discourse, in a moment of weakness took a decision he rued all his remaining years. In 1954, Josh migrated to Pakistan. To many of his admirers, including Azad, this was an act of betrayal — a betrayal of everything Josh stood for. Just imagine! Majaz, Ali Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Niaz Haider, and a host of others, all sat at Josh’s feet. He was their guru. And this man abruptly packs up his bags and leaves for Pakistan!
Some reasons are given for Josh’s migration. An uneducated wife and children pressurised him for financial gain. The “financial gain” was identified as blandishments held out by senior Pakistani civil servants for property and the like. Added to this was Josh’s fear that Bharatendu Harishchand and Purushottam Das Tandon would oust Urdu from the pedestal promised it by Nehru and Azad. History will hold him guilty for not having stood his ground.
There could, however, be two views on the above sweeping statement. After all, Josh did leave India to settle in Pakistan. This fact alone should qualify him to find the pride of place at the Islamabad conference. This is where the saddest of all ironies plagues Josh. The poet who claimed, and rightly, that he was born “100 years before his time”, did not realise that he was carrying himself alone to Karachi, he was not carrying with him the environs of Malihabad and Lucknow without which he would wilt. The bulk of the poetry he wrote during his last 30 years in Karachi is a plaintive cry against irrational, religious orthodoxy, the absence of “Awadhi” delicacy, nostalgia for “home”, for the whistling purvaee, the breeze from the east, the sounds of birds on mango trees. Men of vision need no prophets, he wrote. For them the crack of dawn is sufficient clue to the ultimate truth!
He was no diplomat, and annoyed the entire religious and administrative establishment around Zia ul Haq. There was another challenge Josh had not visualised. He was critical of Allama Iqbal’s Islamic concerns. This attitude was anathema to Pakistanis. Josh’s essential support structure was the shattered feudal order of Awadh. He did not have the Government College Lahore elite, the ICS cadres from the Punjab, backing him as they backed one of their own, Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Josh had dominated the world of Urdu letters from Lucknow. In Pakistan, Lahore was the literary headquarters and Lahore had its own chosen son, Faiz.
Faiz, too, fought the Pakistani structure, but from within. He lived years in exile. He loved his evenings in New Delhi. But never abandoned his “home”. Josh did. And despite the wealth of spectacular, unparalleled, nazms, rubayat, marsias and ghazals he gifted to us, he finds himself, tragically, a bit like Manto’s Toba Tek Singh, neither in India nor in Pakistan. He deserves better because he ranks with the greatest.
This article was written by Saeed Naqvi on March 18, 2005.
Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/oldStory/66655/
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