Modernity in Urdu Poetry

Dream And Nightmare
The second piece in our irregular series on progressive Urdu poets looks at Urdu poetry's flirtation with modernity, with examples from Sahir, Kaifi and Majaaz

MIR ALI RAZA

In 1958, when the Sputnik blasted into space, it received one of its most lyrical tributes from an unlikely source, Sahir Ludhianvi. In a poem titled Mere Ahd Ke Haseeno (Beauties Of My Generation), he presented the event as a success of humanity over yet another of nature’s barriers, the stars. Taking aim at those who saw their futures as astrally determined, Sahir saw in the Sputnik’s rise yet another sign that humanity had trumped nature:

Wo buland-baam taare, wo falak-maqaam taare
Jo nishaan de ke apna, rahe be-nishaaN hamesha
Wo haseeN, wo noor-zaade, wo qalaa ke shaahzaade
Jo hamaari qismaton par rahe hukmraanN hamesha

Mere ahd ke haseeno, wo nazar-nawaaz taare
Mera daur e ishq parwar tumhe nazr de rahaa hai
Wo junoon jo aab o aatish ko aseer kar chuka hai
Wo qalaa ki vus-aton se bhi qiraaj le rahaa hai

Mere paas rehne waalo, mere baad aane waalo
Mere daur ka ye tohfa, tumhe saazgaar aaye
Kabhi tum qala se guzro kisi seem-tan ke qatir
Kabhi tum ko dil mein rakh kar koi gul-o-zaar aaye.

Those exalted stars, those heaven dwellers
Who revealed themselves, but mocked our tantalised reach
Those ravishing children of light, those princes of space
Who established their vain kingdom over our fates.

Beauties of (the new) generation
Accept this loving gift of the very stars from mine
The passion that has already enslaved water and fire
Now commands obeisance from the depths of space.

You who live with me, and you who will follow me in time
May this gift from my generation bring you joy
May you fly in space looking for a silver-bodied beauty
And may someone of rosy cheeks come here looking for you.

There is a passionate optimism in Sahir’s poem, which works at several levels. First, it is imbued with internationalism, in the way in which it appropriates a foreign achievement with unselfconscious ease. There is a mocking disavowal of tradition, implying that those who irrationally believe in astrology and the eternal power of the stars are now to be pityingly invited into the scientific fold. But above all, the poem demonstrates an abiding faith in technology, a belief that nature will ultimately bow down toward the power of human endeavor.

Sahir’s poem is not an isolated instance of the celebration of modernity by the Urdu poets. Progressive poets developed the trope of modernity incessantly in their writings, as a marker of their era, and as a solution to the several problems that beset Indian society. This sense of modernity was to be marked by the triumph of reason, the creation of a "pure present" that would wipe away the horrors of the past, a teleological march towards social perfection, and the eventual elimination of all exploitation and inequalities.

In his famous poem Makaan (House) for instance, Kaifi Azmi wrote evocatively about construction workers and their role in the conquest of nature:

Haath dhalte gaye saanchoN mein to rukte kaise
Naqsh ke baad naye naqsh nikhaare hum ne
Ki ye deewaar buland, aur buland, aur buland
Baam o dar aur, zaraa aur sanwaare hum ne
AandhiyaaN tod liya karti thhi sham'oN ki laveN
Jad diye is liye bijli ke sitaare hum ne

Once our arms learned the craft however, how could they stop?
Design after design took shape through our work.
And then we built the walls higher and higher,
Lovingly decorated the ceilings and doors
Storms used to extinguish the flames of our lamps
So we brightened our skies with stars made of electricity.

Kaifi then goes on to lament how the actual creators of this wealth, the labourers themselves, were deprived of the fruits of their own creation.


Of course, this inequality was an artifact of the premodern past, and needed to be remedied by the conscious action of workers, through organised moblilisation. Kaifi poetically exhorts the construction workers to revolt, to create a revolution in which he, the poet will also participate:

Ban gaya qasr, to pehre pe koi baith gaya
So rahe qaak pe hum shorish e taameer liye
Apni nas nas mein liye mehnat e paiham ki thhakan
Band aankhon mein usi qasr ki tasveer liye
Din pighalta hai usi tarha saron par ab bhi
Raat aankhon mein khatakti hai siyah teer liye
Aaj ki raat bahut garm hawaa chalti hai
Aaj ki raat na footpath pe neend aayegi
Sab utho, main bhi uthoon, tum bhi utho, tum bhi utho
Koi khidki isi deewaar mein khul jaayegi

Once the palace was built, they hired a guard
And we slept in the dirt, with our screaming craft,
Our pulses pounding with exhaustion
Bearing the picture of that very palace in our tightly shut eyes.
The day still melts on our bodies like before
The night hits our eyes with black arrows,
A hot air blows tonight
It will be impossible to sleep on the pavement
Arise everyone! I will rise too. And you. And yourself too
That a window may open in these very walls.

The poem is remarkable because it not only represents the power of labour in achieving mastery over nature (through walls and stars of electricity), but also depicts the ultimate potential failure of modernity from the point of view of the socialist; that it does not automatically ensure a just and egalitarian society. Modernity sometimes fails the very subjects who were promised freedom from the feudal system they had laboured under in earlier eras. This brings us to an important issue, of how progressive Urdu poets dealt with the immediate failure of the modernist promise. How did they deal with the fact that the conquest of nature never really lived up to its potential, and sometimes even proved to be more venal and repressive than the traditions it displaced? After all, the independence of the country brought partition, the cobwebs of religiousity never could be swept away, and the post-independence era saw the increased marginalisation and devaluation of the progressive cause and the poets themselves.

For one, the poets sought refuge in a different form of modernist logic. For example, they blamed the failure of modernity's promise on the incompleteness of the modernist project, on its failure to vanquish some of the traditionalist demons that it was supposed to replace. In other words, the problem with modernity was seen as related to the fact that we did not have enough of it.

In his characteristically direct poem, Mera Maazi Mere Kaandhe Pe (My Past On My Shoulders), Kaifi wondered at the persistence of sectarian violence in the subcontinent, despite the tremendous progress that had been achieved in years past. He concluded:

Ab tamaddun ki ho ye jeet ke haar
Mera maazi hai abhi tak mere kaandhe pe sawaar
Mal liyaa maathe pe tehzeeb ka ghaala lekin
Barbariyat ka hai jo daagh, wo chhoota hi nahin
Gaaon aabaad kiye, shehr basaaye hum ne
Rishta jangal se jo apna thha, wo toota hi nahin

Be it the victory or the loss of culture
My past is still seated on my shoulders.
I have painted civility on my face
But it is still pockmarked by barbarity
I have populated villages, moved to cities
But never severed my relationship with the jungle.

As is clear from this poem, 'culture' (or the 'past') stands in as the culprit that prevents the liberation and evolution of the human being from the survival of bestial origins.

This is entirely consistent with the project of modernity to create a "pure present", that would wipe out whatever came earlier, so as to achieve a radically new departure. This is not to suggest that the progressives did not acknowledge that something was quite wrong with the object of modernity, especially in light of the horrors of urban violence that visited the subcontinent after independence. For instance, Kaifi begins a later poem Saanp (Snake) in defensive terms. He deploys the snake as a symbol of the fundamentalism that one had hoped technological progress had eliminated:

Ye saanp aaj jo phan uthaaye
Mere raaste mein khadaa hai
Padaa thha qadam chaand par mera jis din
Usi din use maar dala thha mai ne

This snake that blocks my way, poised to strike
I had killed it the day I set foot on the moon.

Modernity, Kaifi asserts, had initially vanquished the human tendency to engage in sectarian violence, which stood in his mind as the most egregious example of premodern barbarity. However, he describes how the wounded snake ran into a temple, a mosque and a church, where it was treated and made stronger by a variety of religious fundamentalists. So far, the poem appears quite conventional, blaming the failure of modernity on the survival of premodern atavisms. But by the end of the poem, Kaifi does a turnaround, and further theorizes the rise of fundamentalism in relatively unconventional terms:

Hui jab se science zar ki ghulam
Jo thha ilm ka aitbaar uth gaya
Aur is saanp ko zindagi mil gayi

Ever since science has become capitalism’s slave
Knowledge has been proven untrustworthy
And this snake has found life.

Despite its defensive tone, one can read in Kaifi’s poem a sense of disquiet that the elite can hold the liberatory powers of science slave. The relationship between this enslavement and the rise of sectarian violence is not explained, but the disquiet with modernity is quite apparent in the tentative tone of Kaifi’s assertions.

One of most cruel blows on the modernist and internationalist spirit of the progressives was dealt by the partition of the subcontinent, which had been expressed eloquently, if wistfully, by Faiz’s phrase ye daagh daagh ujaala (this ashen dawn). In a poem titled 26 January, Sahir acerbically lays out the failed promises of the nation-state, and of the whole promise of a liberated modernity that undergirded the socialist experience:

Aao ke aaj ghaur kareN is sawaal par
Dekhe thhe hum ne jo, woh haseeN khwaab kya hue?
Bekas barehnagi ko kafan tak nahiN naseeb
Wo waada-haa e atlas o kamkhwaab kya hue?
Jamhooriyat-nawaaz, bashar-dost, amn-khwaah
Khud ko jo khud diye thhe, wo alqaab kya hue?

Come, and let us ponder on the question
Those beautiful dreams we had dreamt, what came of them?
Helpless nakedness does not even merit a shroud
What happened to those promises of silk and satin?
Democrat, humanist, pacifist
What happened to all those self-conferred titles?

This despair mirrored the plight of communists all over Europe, who had hoped that the Bolshevik revolution would be contagious, but instead found themselves tethered to the cruel yoke of Fascism and Nazism. But in spite of these hiccups, the modernist dream appeared to acquire its own agency over time, becoming as important in its own right as the dream of an equal society. To that end, the PWA poets venerated artifacts of the industrial revolution: rockets, electricity, mills, and trains. Trains were especially popular, for their straight path, their piercing whistles, and their single minded teleological journeys. In his elegy to the train, Raat Aur Rel (The night and the train), Majaaz offers a veritable inventory of its desirable attributes:

Phir chali hai rel, istayshan se lehraati hui
Neem shab ki khamushi mein zer e lab gaati hui
Daaman e taariki e shab ki udaati dhajjiyaan
Qasr e zulmat par musalsal teer barsaati hui

Zad mein koi cheez aa jaaye to us ko pees kar
Irteqaa e zindagi ke raaz batlaati hui
Al-garaz, badhti chali jaati hai, be qauf o qatar
Shaayar e aatish-nafas ka qoon khaulaati hui

Once again, the train jauntily leaves the station
Breaking the silence of the night with its whispered song.
Tearing a hole through the black fabric of the night
Shooting constant arrows of sparks at the palace of darkness.

Crushing anything that comes in its way
Revealing the secrets of the evolution of life.
Ultimately it flies, fearlessly,
Roiling the blood of the fire-souled poet.

Ultimately then, in spite of the discouraging lessons of history, the progressives cheerfully and defiantly pushed the cause of modernity with such optimism, that when the backlashes emerged, they were left desperately holding on to their fragmented thoughts. Modernity cruelly announced its failure to the optimist progressives in several ways. The abject failure of the moment of freedom and decolonisation, the rampant and ugly sectarian conflict in urban South Asia, and above all, the failure to secure a decent and dignified life for the masses, weighed heavily on the progressive poets.

And when this failure sometimes looked deeply into their eyes, the PWA poets wrote their best poems, poems of anguish and rage. While they were unable to provide a viable internal critique of modernity, they produced several heartbreakers that may only be described as modernity’s laments, its dirges. Majaaz’s poem Aawara (Vagabond), while written in the earliest days of the movement, captures this sense of modernity’s ugly betrayal of the progressive cause. The poem was written to highlight the deep sense of alienation that the progressives felt with feudal Indian society, but can also be read as the ravaged cultural landscape that greeted them at the end of their seven-decade quest.

The poem is written from the point of view of an intensely alienated protagonist who walks the streets at night, and gives voice to his feelings of utter despair. This estrangement is derived from a sense of abject poverty that the protagonist experiences as he walks past the gay streets where the elite have constructed a landscape designed to pretend that all is well. It also comes from his knowledge that all this wealth and this gaiety could be his if he made a series of compromises. He is however held back by his ‘worthless’ commitments to honesty and fealty. His alienation takes several forms, sometimes of religious exploitation (a mullah’s turban), sometimes of penury (a money-lender’s ledger).

Older platitudes about the beauty of stars themselves become the cause of great anguish, which turns into a sense of rage at the end of the poem. However, in the new century, we can read it not as rage of the programmatic socialist seeking to channel this anger into revolution, but the inchoate, ineffable and the tragic rage of the human being who is caught in an Oedipal dilemma against a world that is neither comprehensible nor changeable. It is the rage of the utterly helpless, and mirrors the condition of the PWA poets waking up from their socialist-modernist dream.

Phir vo toota ek sitara, phir vo chhooti phuljhadi
Jaane kiski god mein aayi hai moti ki ladi
Hook si seene mein uthi, chot si dil par padi
Ai gham e dil kya karun, ai vahshat e dil, kya karun

Raaste mein ruk ke dam le loon meri aadat nahin
Laut kar vaapas chalaa jaoon, meri fitrat nahin
Aur koi ham-navaa mil jaaye ye qismat nahin
Ai gham e dil kya karun, ai vahshat e dil, kya karun

Ek mahal ki aad se niklaa vo peela maahtab
Jaise mulla kaa amaama, jaise baniye ki kitab
Jaise muflis ki javaani, jaise bevaa ka shabab
Ai gham e dil kya karun, ai vahshat e dil, kya karun

Jee mein aata hai, ye murda chand taare noch loon
Is kinaare noch loon, aur us kinaare noch loon
Ek do ki qadr kya, saare ke saare noch loon
Ai gham e dil kya karun, ai vahshat e dil, kya karun

There falls a shooting star, like a sparkler
A string of pearls fell in somebody’s hand, perhaps?
Desolation rises in my chest, like a blow
Anguished heart, desperate heart, what should I do?

To stop and rest on the way is not my habit
To admit defeat and return is not my nature
But to find a companion, alas, is not my fate
Anguished heart, desperate heart, what should I do?

From behind a palace, emerged the yellow moon
Like a mullah’s turban, like a money lender’s ledger
Like a poor man’s youth, a widow’s beauty
Anguished heart, desperate heart, what should I do?

I want to pluck this dead moon, these dead stars from the sky
Pluck them from this end of the horizon and from that corner
What is one or two, I want to pluck them all out
Anguished heart, desperate heart, what should I do?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mir Ali Raza helps edit Samar, the South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection.