The subcontinent, both pre and post partition, has never been without the public’s political discontent as can be made evident by a look through its history of mutinies, martial law, and disobedience movements. Discontent, moreover, is a phenomena easily romanticized, especially with its enticing allure upon the subordinate as well as the adolescent segments of a society. Poetry, therefore, principally that which has political subtexts, has never found itself wanting of inspiration in this part of the world. The fame of poets including Nazeer Akbarabadi, Khwaja Mir Dard, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and of those more contemporary including Habib Jalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz is indicative of this perpetual inspiration.
Ben Learner, in his book, “The Hatred of Poetry”, portrays “contempt” as inseparable from the success of poetry. However, he does not attribute to poetry the potential to aggravate change. Similarly, many would argue that the form is merely a peripheral influencer of the consensus, an apolitical concept, and the importance given to it is reflective of both elitist sentiments and naïve intuition.
The writings of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, an Indo-Pakistani leftist poet however, stand for exactly what this critique of poetry denies. As an answer to Zia’s repressive usurpation of power, the poet created one of his most powerful works, ‘Hum Dekhain Gey”. With Faiz imprisoned, bootleg cassette tapes with recordings of a performance of this work by Iqbal Bano in her controversial black sari were smuggled throughout the country. A particular interpretation of his verses attributes to Zia, the great sin of associating himself with God, and hence his words aim to awake the consciences of the suppressed classes and do away with the prevalent mirage of amity.
It is a theory that the intimacy associated with a scrutinized reading of poetry is a materialization of the elitism it inherently emerges from. It suggests that as a poet must discover his audience, the reader must also identify a poet that he or she resonates with the most. To put it bluntly, poetry has its own niche, not suited to the masses, rather to a distinct type of individual who retrieves from the poetry a mutuality of ‘frequency’. As it happens, the distinct type referred to often alludes to the affluent.
Habib Jalib, however, another Indo-Pakistani poet, born in East Punjab, may indeed be, in the words of the aforementioned Faiz, “ the poet of the masses”. He wrote in a straightforward language, encompassing the plights of the working class. When Bhutto’s policies diverged from the essentially socialist manifesto of the PPP, Jalib took notice and spoke against the government in support of the Pakistanis who suffered at the hands of this divergence. He was jailed for what was not his first term in prison at the hands of a ruler uncompromising and unwilling to face opposition.
Passivity and apathy describe the level of animation of the Pakistani citizenry and are extremely uncharacteristic adjectives for Iqbal’s poetry, verses to which we owe the inspiration of the Pakistan Movement. If poetry is really food for the soul then it is poetry which must extend the promise of revolution to Pakistanis that must become hungry for their liberation. After 71 long years of coups, corruption charges, and media blackouts, poets such as Jalib and Faiz should be recognized for their tenacity and resolve when it came to sketching for the public, the moral destination that Pakistan has to progress to. They created visionary works accessible to more than just the crème de la crème of Pakistan, works unstained by naivety.
Come, gather your possessions,
O people with injured hearts.
Come, O Friends,
Let us go and get killed.