Sahir
Ludhianvi: noir poet of
demystification
Raza Mir speaks
of why Sahir Ludhianvi's poetry defies all
traditional notion of Urdu writing, and still survives, angst and
political content intact
Sahir Ludhianvi was only 23 when, in 1943, he published his first book Talkhiyan, arguably the best-selling work of Urdu poetry after the Deewaan-e-Ghalib.
Most of us know of Sahir as a successful lyricist for the Bombay film industry. His songs could be dark and melancholy (Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai), or playful (Hum aap ki aankhon mein, iss dil ko basaa de to), or even full of charming buffoonery (Sar jo tera chakraaye, ya dil dooba jaaye, aaja pyare paas hamaare, kaahe ghabraae, kaahe ghabraae). It is Sahir, and others like him, who has kept Urdu alive in popular Indian culture through the medium of the film song.
But there is also another Sahir. One who has not circulated as widely among the masses. And this is tragic, because it is the ordinary people and their struggles that provided his poetry its breath of life.
In the years before 1947, Sahir lived in Lahore, editing a number of journals, including a fortnightly called Savera. In 1949, he was forced to flee. His critical articles had roused the ire of the Pakistani state, and an arrest warrant was issued in his name. Long before his hurried departure from the new nation, Sahir had asked: Chalo us kufr ke ghar se salaamat aa gaye lekin / Khuda ki mamlekat mein sokhta khaanon pe kya guzri (Thank God we arrived safe from the land of infidels; / But in God's own kingdom, what happened to the broken-hearted?).
In Bombay, the Sahir mystique was quick to take hold. His songs, lent voice by the best singers in the industry, would sail out from radio sets in shops and the open windows of homes in towns and cities all over the nation.
Little is known of Sahir's non-filmi work though. This was partly because Sahir rarely published his works. All of it, however, was powerful poetry. In 1956, for instance, Sahir wrote his long poem Parchaiyan (Silhouettes). A tribute to lost love, it was also a powerful antiwar manifesto. This mix of poetry and politics was Sahir's hallmark.
Sahir was a member of the Progressive Writers Association (PWA). But, we might ask, what did this mean in terms of his poetry.
The trend with poets had been to ascribe mystical origins to their work. For example, Ghalib had written: Aate hain ghaib se ye mazaameen khayaal mein / Ghalib, sareer e khaama, nawaa e sarosh hai (These ideas come to me from the void / Ghalib, the scratching of pen on paper is the flutter of angels' wings).
Sahir was not one for such airy metaphysics. His poetry, quite emphatically, had material roots. And so, on the frontispiece of his book "Talkhiyan" (Bitter Words), we read the following verse: Duniya ne tajrubaat o hawaadis ki shakl mein / Jo kuch mujhe diya hai, wo lauta rahaa hoon main (What the world, in the form of experiences and accidents / Bestowed upon me, I am returning).
Sahir's poetry was a departure from the classical traditional of Urdu poetry or the funoon-e-lateefa (the delicate arts). He wanted his poems to walk among the people, and that is why they seem to have the dust of the common roads on them.
Sahir was aware that such a radical departure invited dismissal from the pure aesthetes. This did not overly trouble him; he had only contempt for those who wanted anything different of his works. His aesthetic manifesto was delivered in these ringing words: Mujh ko is ka ranj nahin hai, log mujhe fankaar na manein / Fikr o sukhan ke taajir mere sheron ko ash-aar na manein (I do not regret that people do not consider me an artist / That the traders of thought and words do not consider my poems poetic).
To call a critic a crass trader is a time-honoured practice among Leftist poets. It continues to this day. Javed Akhtar, for instance, has unfurled his own banner in the following verse: Jaanta hoon main tum ko, zauq e shaairi bhi hai / Shaqsiyat sajaane mein, ek ye maahiri bhi hai / Phir bhi harf chunte ho, sirf lafz sunte ho / Un ke darmiyaan kya hai, tum na jaan paaoge (I know you appreciate poetry / After all, it is a personality-building skill / But you just pluck letters, hear words / What lies between them, you shopkeepers will never know).
But, there is a profound difference between a proclamation like Akhtar's, and the one by Sahir. And it lies in the fact that Sahir actually used his poetry to explain why he consciously repudiated the dominant forms of Urdu poetry - and his words carried a stinging awareness of why he himself would, in turn, be rejected by those who defended the status quo.
Sahir's triumph, of course, is that his finest poetry is as fine-grained as the ghazals of Ghalib and Meer, as lyrical as Faiz's nazms, and as inflected with philosophy as musadddas by Hali or Iqbal. Such poetry is a repudiation of all worn-out arguments against progressive, politically-inflected writing. However, despite the fact that Sahir's poems are hummed on the streets, his songs are keeping an idiom alive, and his non-film poetry is sold out, Sahir has received little critical attention, especially in commentaries written in English.
In his famous analysis of
Urdu literature, Mohammed Sadiq, after a chapter on Ghalib,
Iqbal, and even Akbar Ilahabadi, dismisses Sahir in one paragraph.
It is true that several Urdu journals have devoted special issues
to Sahir's work, and Urdu critics like Intizar Husain have lauded
him as a literary giant. Indeed, his songs continue to inspire
many Urdu writers. But, there is no critical appreciation of his
work in English. Barring a critical and empathic analysis by
Carlo Coppola, most of Sahir's critics in English dismiss him as
a pamphleteer or an ideologue. In the narrow world of Urdu
criticism in English, there appears to be an implicit agreement
that the works of PWA writers, while they may be lauded as
devices of public organising, are aesthetically inferior, and
even harmful to Urdu poetry's classical traditions.
Why have these progressives been given such short shrift?
I believe that their fate is not unique to Urdu writers. It is not unusual for the defenders of the canon in any field of literature to be wary of aesthetic experiments, and to regard the outcome of such experiments as aesthetic failure.
Thus, in the present literature on Urdu poetry, poets like Sahir Ludhianvi remain forgotten, very much like the workers who built the Taj Mahal, about whom he wrote with such indelible passion: Meri mehboob, unhe bhi to mohabbat hogi / Jin ki sannaa'i ne bakhshi hai ise shakl e jameel / Unke pyaaron ke maqaabir rahe be naam-o-numood / Aaj tak un pe jalaai na kisi ne qandeel (My love, they too must have loved / Whose craft has given the Taj its beautiful visage / Their loved ones lie in unmarked graves / Where no one even lights a candle).
At this point in history, though, Sahir's touching appeals against war are strongly brought to mind. In 1956, following the Suez Canal crisis, he wrote Parchaiyan, which focused on the domestic fallout of war.
Us shaam mujhe maaloom
hua, kheton ki tarah is duniya mein
Sahmi hui doshezaaon ki muskaan bhi bechi jaati hai
Us shaam mujhe maaloom hua, is kaargah e zardaari mein
Do bholi bhaali roohon ki pehchaan bhi bechi jaati hai
On that evening, I learned
that in this world, like fields
The smiles on the nervous faces of beauties are also traded
On that evening, I learned that in the marketplace of capital
The intimacy of two innocent souls is also traded.
… Guzishta jang mein
ghar hi jale, magar is baar
Ajab nahin, ke ye tanhaaiyaan bhi jal jaayen
Guzishta jang mein paikar jale, magar is baar
Ajab nahin, ke ye parchaiyan bhi jal jaayen
In the last war, homes were
burned, but this time
Even the loneliness may burn away
In the last war, only bodies burned, but this time
Even the silhouettes may burn away
I want to end, however, by presenting Sahir's lines not about war, but about the very language in which he wrote. Sahir wrote Jashn-e-Ghalib (Ghalib's Celebration) after the Indian government suddenly decided to mark the 100th anniversary of Ghalib's death in 1968. There could be no more scathing critique of the treatment meted out to Urdu by the bureaucratic policies in India:
Jin shehron mein goonji
thhi, Ghalib ki navaa barson
Un shehron mein aaj Urdu, benaam-o-nashaan thehri
Aazaadi-e-kaamil ka elaan huaa jis din,
Maatoob zabaan thehri, ghaddar zabaan thehri
Jis ahd-e-siyaasat ne ye
zinda zubaan kuchli
Us ahd-e-siyaasat ko marhoomon ka gham kyon hai
Ghalib jise kehte hain, Urdu hi ka shaayar thha
Urdu pe sitam dhha kar, Ghalib pe karam kyon hai
In those cities, where
Ghalib's voice echoed for years
In those very cities now, there is no trace of Urdu
The day we announced our independence
It became an oppressed language, a traitor language
The political will that
crushed this living tongue
Why does that very politic mourn Urdu's dead
The one who you call Ghalib, he was a poet of urdu
Why bury Urdu and then praise Ghalib?
(Raza Mir teaches at Monmouth University, New Jersey and helps edit the magazine SAMAR.)
June 25, 2002
