The Mard-e-Momin as a form of national identity is overrated. So is the concept of the collective morality and the religious honor that gets everyone keyed up, ready to take up arms against an aggressor. The biggest aggressor, after all, remains poverty, bread within. Real tyranny is that which the state practices against its own citizenry, mostly by ignoring them.
Enough with the heroic machismo, I say. It hasn’t bought Pakistan any bread or butter, although it has surely strung us into becoming a state famous world over for its radicalism.
Zard Patto Ka Bann Jo Mera Dess Hai. Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984) brews in his poetry a gentle reminder of a wilting nation, he calls each of the forgotten, by their own name: the weary armed mother who can’t calm her crying child at night, the postmen, the clerk, the railway driver and the factory worker. These form the majority of our nation – they also form a group that we don’t like to talk about. Our ‘national poet’ Allama Mohammad Iqbal for instance has no mention of these no-name people. Neither does he mention shame, which is what a realistic self-introspection deserves. How can we talk of a national poetry without the people who form its working class?
Nisar teri gallion mey aye Watan, Key koi na saar utha key chaley. Faiz has asked for a soul check, a delving into what brings real honor to the country: protection of the rights of its citizens, a level playing field and recourse to justice. As a member of the International Labor Organization he was astute about the rights of the blue collar workers. His concept of patriotism wasn’t a jingoistic one. Evident in his piece mourning the death of the founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah, he said: “Short-sighted fanaticism and heartless greed are preparing to plunge both the dominions into another suicidal devil-dance and the voice of the common man is getting feebler through exhaustion.”
Faiz’s nationalism focused more on the cultural aspects of what it was to be Pakistani, the art, the music, the folk tradition. In his compartmentalized life, between his work as a writer and his jail sentences, he was also the head of the Ministry of Culture in Islamabad where he established the Lok Virsa museum, chronicling the unique regional art embedded in our nationalism.
Umeed-e-Seher ki baat sunoo. Far from being a pessimist, he believed in the message of hope. Listen, he said to the dawn of the new morn.
What is missing today, especially among our youth is a concept to anchor them in. A cultural identity of what it is to be a Pakistani. Childishly we believe that fighting the other fulfills our need to congregate around a cause. Pakistan is in the search of Bulleh Shah, the Khudi of Iqbal, the voice of Reshma, the Horse and Cattle show, the Polo matches, the fashion shows, the billboards and the TV Serials, no matter how variant the spectrum, each contributant to the creativity form a mosaic of multiculturalism forms a piece of the modern Pakistan we have today. Anyone with a green passport can claim it as their own.
In the same eulogy Faiz adds that Pakistanis should, “complete the task that the Quaid-i-Azam began, the task of building a free, progressive and secure Pakistan, to restore our people the dignity and happiness for which the Quaid-i-Azam strove, to equip them with all the virtues that the nobility of freedom demands and to rid them of fear, suffering and want that have dogged their lives through the ages.”
The Pakistani cultural identity is infused with religious sentiment. It is important to divorce those two concepts because we have not one but many religious avenues which describe what it is to be a Pakistani, and these avenues cannot be excluded, because Pakistan was not created out of an exclusionary identity. Pakistan was formed for a minority community, through a democratic and constitutional process; it must therefore amongst all its principles uphold the protection of the underdog as its highest moral principle.
Tum yey Kehtey ho vo Jang ho bhi chuki, Jiss mey rakha nahi hey kissi ney kadaam. Vehemently anti-war, Faiz cautioned against those wars that were fought on the behalf of an unseen force, and lost at the cost of many lives and much blood. His focus instead was on educating the youth. As principal of a local school, he introduced at first education for women, brought enrollment to an all time high and instituted excellence at this school. His versatility as a nation builder was evident in the devotion with which he completed each assigned task, no matter what the field.
Bahar Aaee. Above all else, Faiz brought alive that Pakistan which bloomed endlessly, even after loss.
Dear editors, I would strongly urge you to please remove the comments of both YLH and Watan Aziz. They are not only mean and abusive to each other but to both Iqbal and Jinnaj.
As a lifelong and committed fan of Iqbal’s poetry and someone who loves it dearly, I am absolutely ashamed and offended by the type of nonsense and hatred that is being spewed by Watan Aziz, supposedly in ‘defence’ of Iqbal. I am sure Iqbal would never stand for such hatred and vileness himself and it is shameful to see his name being invoked to justify such meanness and petiness.
I am sure that many fans of Faiz are equally offended by the same meanness and hatred expressed by YLH in the name of Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
What a vile representation both YLH and Watan Aziz are of the great men they seem to be defending. I guess now we know why we get the politicians we get, if these are the specimen to choose from!
“And when Pakistan was a first strike nation on the list of nuclear targets of USSR, Faiz was a paid servant of USSR. Another person will call him traitor. Another nation will describe it as coddling with the enemy.”
Another nation would call you McCarthy incarnate, another person would ask you have you no shame at long last?
“And he wanted to send Pakistani students to universities in USSR to be brainwashed by their propaganda and ideology. I know this first hand. ”
What was wrong for Pakistani students to study in USSR? Are you saying Pakistan should stop sending students abroad to the US, China, Great Britain etc?
“And when people in Pakistan will stop naming their sons as Iqbal, we will have a conversation as who the joker is.”
I have met more Pakistanis with the name Faiz than Iqbal.
@Aisha Sarwari
“Nisar teri gallion mey aye Watan, Key koi na saar utha key chaley”
Should it not be:
“Nisar teri galion pih aey watan kih jahaan
Chali he rasm ki koi nah sar utha ke chale”
Excuse me, did you deliberately change these lines from Faiz or it was just a faux pas?
This, ‘sar utha ke chalna’, is perhaps the crux of the problem today in view of the sword of Blasphemy hanging on the heads of all Pakies.
How prophetically Iqbal hat expressed this abuse of Islam by fake Islamists:
“”Kise khbar thi kih le kar charaagh-e-Mustafwi
Jahaan mein aag lagaati phire gi Bulehbi”
(Who new that taking in hand the lamp-light of the prophet his very arch enemies would set on torching the world over)
(The translation is mine which I wish to be improved).
Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz which are all intellectual assets of Muslim India, found expression in Jinnah’s political leadership. But alas what he had achieved has been hijacked by bulehbi.
Bombastic verbosity!
When Jinnah appointed Faiz, perhaps he was what he was; I will make a point to ask Jinnah when I will meet him.
But then Faiz changed.
And when Pakistan was a first strike nation on the list of nuclear targets of USSR, Faiz was a paid servant of USSR. Another person will call him traitor. Another nation will describe it as coddling with the enemy.
And he wanted to send Pakistani students to universities in USSR to be brainwashed by their propaganda and ideology. I know this first hand.
And when people in Pakistan will stop naming their sons as Iqbal, we will have a conversation as who the joker is.
…we all know middle of the road Pakistanis eat pork, drink whiskey, believe in equal rights for men and women of any religion caste or creed… and declare time and again that faith is the personal business of an individual. And because middle of the road Pakistanis are open minded enough to say that anyone who calls himself a Muslim is a Muslim.
Actually, this was true, is true and will remain true.
It is just because the middle of the Pakistan has been made a silent spectator of the garbage bounced around by fake liberals and religious nuts that it does not appear so.
But the reality is ***vast majority*** of the Pakistanis do not care who does what and when and where. The vast majority does not live in 3 cities. And few isolated incidents do not make a story.
BTW, it may be news to some, middle of the road Pakistanis do eat pork and drink whiskey.
Because some of them happen to have religion other than Islam; some with Islam. It is their choice. And I know those who want to, freely do so.
So now we unmask the fraud of the fake liberals!
They are the ones who actually do not count Pakistanis whose faith is other than Islam as Pakistanis. Ha!
Fake, fraud and phony self-proclaimed liberals and religious nuts joined at the hip!
Q.E.D.
Watan e Aziz…
“The obfuscation of any discussion about Jinnah is a direct result of confusion created by fusing ideas, timelines and happenings that did not happen in that order.”
Yes. This is precisely what Pakistan Studies wallahs have done to the great man… and people like you are the victims.
“He was neither a religious nut nor a secular freak. Both hated him. And both cannot capture him in a jar for display.”
If Faiz is your classic “secular freak”, then Jinnah approved his name to be the first editor of Pakistan Times. And the secular freak’s admiration for him is clear in what the secular freak wrote as his obituary.
“Jinnah was a middle of road Pakistani, like most of the Pakistanis truly are.”
Yes because we all know middle of the road Pakistanis eat pork, drink whiskey, believe in equal rights for men and women of any religion caste or creed… and declare time and again that faith is the personal business of an individual. And because middle of the road Pakistanis are open minded enough to say that anyone who calls himself a Muslim is a Muslim. If Jinnah was like most Pakistanis … then I am surprised that Pakistan has not turned out anything like Jinnah… organised, disciplined, progressive, honest, liberal.
As for Allama Iqbal… the guy was a joke. To mention him in the same line as the great Jinnah is an insult to Jinnah. The pro-military nuts like Watan-e-Aziz like Iqbal because Iqbal is the perfect antidote to Jinnah’s democratic liberalism.