Faiz and Minto
By Lisette Poole
CA
The
year was 1949. A young student leader in Pakistan
was asked to drive an underground intellectual to
an unpublicized meeting with individuals whose identity
he did not know. Two years later both were arrested.
The underground intellectual was none other than
South Asia’s poet laureate, Faiz Ahmed Faiz,
and the youth was Abid Hassan Minto, a rising star
in the progressive movement.
The two, along with a number of other progressive
intellectuals, writers and thinkers, and 13 military
officers, including Major General Akbar Khan and
his activist wife Naseem Akbar, were arrested in
March 1951 on charges of conspiring to overthrow
the government and bring about a socialist revolution.
The government was unable to prove these charges
in the court of law. All accused were set free after
a few years in prison. The case is popularly known
as the Rawalpindi conspiracy case and Faiz was among
the last to be released in September 1955.
While they were all still in prison, Faiz’s
new book of poems entitled Dust-e-Saba was published.
Commenting on the book, Syed Sajjad Zaheer, a leading
Marxist intellectual of South Asia, perceptively
predicted that “in the fullness of time, when
people will forget about the Rawalpindi conspiracy
case, the historian will evaluate the important
events of 1952 and most likely this short book of
poems will be judged as the most important historical
event of the year.”
That this came to pass is self-evident.
Faiz and Minto remained life-long colleagues working
together to uplift the masses and resist the marshal
law, feudalism and imperialism in the whole region.
Despite his incarceration Faiz had become the most
revered poet of his time. His poem, Sub’hai
Azadi (“Elusive Dawn”) became the unofficial
anthem of Pakistan for those who were unwilling
to settle for a corrupt society. He wrote:
This trembling light, this night-bitten dawn,
This is not the dawn, we have waited for so long
This is not the dawn whose birth was sired
By so many live, so much blood
Generations ago, we
started our confident march
Our hopes were young, our goals within reach
After all, there must be some limit
To the confusing constellation of stars
In a vast forest of the sy
Even the lazy languid waves
Must reach at last their appointed shore
And so we wistfully
prayed
For a consummate end to our painful search
Many a temptation crossed our forbidden path
Many inviting bodies, many longing arms
Many seductive pleasures beckoned on our way
But we stayed faithful
to our distant dream
We kept marching to a different drum
We kept searching for our lost freedom
We kept looking for our elusive dawn
We are told: our new
Dawn is already here;
Your tired feet need journey no more
Our rulers whisper seductively
Why this constant struggle? Why, this perpetual
search
Come, join us, enjoy this new-found wealth
Built by the toil of our “liberated”
poor
And yet, even today
Our hearts are aflame
Our desires unquenched
Our goals unmet
Was there a streak
of light?
Where did it go?
The wayside lamp just blinked unawares
This is yet no relief
in the darkness of the night
No liberation yet of our souls and minds
So let us keep marching, my tiring friends
We have yet to find our elusive dawn (Translation
by Mahbul Haq)
Faiz understood the inherent flaws of the newly
decolonized countries of the Third World. Noted
political scientist Dr. Eqbal Ahmed astutely observed
that Faiz was the first intellectual in the Third
World to capture the incipient “mood of disillusionment”
with the post-colonial states and their incipient
elites. Faiz’s poems, published exactly a
decade and a half before Frantz Fanon’s Wretched
of the Earth, highlighted the frustrating incompletion
of the newly- won freedoms—thus the metaphor
‘Elusive Dawn.’
This July 2005, roughly 54 years since Faiz and
Minto walked together down the difficult path, the
Pakistan American Democratic Forum (PADF) conferred
its prestigious Faiz Ahmed Faiz award on Minto,
now 74, to honor him for his life-long work on behalf
of human rights, equality and social justice in
Pakistan. It read:
“Presented to Mr. Abid Hassan Minto in recognition
of his lifelong struggle against militarism, feudalism,
neocolonialism and imperialism.
“Cognizant of
the fact that you have spent fifty years, half a
century, leading nationwide movements for poverty
alleviation, rule of law, due process and equal
justice in Pakistan, we salute you for your continued
struggle for human rights, women’s rights,
minority rights and rights of the working classes.”
San Francisco, California
July 12, 2005
Ostensibly, PADF named
the award for Faiz because he has come to symbolize
the quest for freedom and equality, fraternity with
the Third World, opposition to oppression and a
thirst for peace. Moreover, Faiz is seen as the
poet who felt that the pursuit of freedom was incomplete
despite the end of British rule. It was he who wrote
“Cha’lai cha’lo keh voh munzil
aabhi nahin ay’ ee (“keep going, the
destiny is still far away”).
In his essay “Faiz: A Poet of Mansur and Qais”,
Dr. Agha Saeed writes:
Faiz thinks through the mind of a revolutionary,
feels with the heart of a lover, speaks the language
of a poet and is in constant consultation with a
Sufi’s conscience…. The uncharted journeys
of struggle, which came after he had been harassed,
maligned and imprisoned, took him to foreign lands
and newer destinies. His concerns became global
and his passion universal. A world map emerged in
his poetry. He looked at Africa and called out:
Come, Africa! Come, I have heard the ecstasy of
your drum Come, the beating of my blood has become
mad
Come, Africa! Come, I have lifted my forehead from
the dust Come, I have scrapped from my eyes the
skin of grief
Come, I have released my arm from pain
Come, I have clawed through the snare of helplessness
Come Africa. (Translation by Victor Kiernan)
Faiz dedicated one of his last books Me’rai
Dil, Me’rai Musafir to the late Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat, whom he considered one of
the major freedom fighters of the 20th century.
The poems are replete with his unbounded love for
the Palestinian:
Your enemies have destroyed one Palestine
My wounds have blossomed into many Palestines.
Palestine blossomed in Faiz’s imagination
during the last years of his life, and brought a
new, somewhat sadder, shade to his poetry. Between
Palestine and Pakistan the poetic journey was concluded.
In the concluding years of his life, Faiz had gained
such a universal recognition that at that stage,
as Ahmed Faraz puts it, “Neither his friends
could add to his stature nor his detractors could
lessen it.”
Too humble and shy to tell the audience about his
personal friendship with Faiz, Minto thanked the
group saying “It is a great honor to receive
this award. Faiz was a great poet and I am gratified.”
Yet, those who know Minto well could see how deeply
he was moved largely because of his profound understanding
and appreciation for Faiz’s prodigious intellectual
contributions that have sustained generations in
hopeful pursuit of the “Real Dawn”—Sub-e-Sadiq.
Minto, soft spoken, yet firm in his convictions,
remains active in the political life of Pakistan
since late 1940s when he, Faiz and a core of committed
progressives and nationalists sought independence
from British colonial rule. He is one of the most
articulate voices of his generation to champion
the rights of the underprivileged demanding higher
wages for the working class, land reform and benefits
for the farmers and an end to the feudalism and
comprador capitalism which concentrates wealth in
the hands of a few.
On a professional level he is a constitutional expert,
law professor, author, literary critic, public intellectual,
political leader, and the current President of the
National Workers’ Party of Pakistan—a
grassroots organization, similar to the Green Party
in the US.
In 1974, Minto boldly stood down the growing dictatorship
of Zulfikar Ali Bhuto when he represented Khan Abdul
Wali Khan, leader of the combined opposition in
the national parliament, during the infamous Hyderabad
conspiracy case. In addition to Khan Abdul Wali
Khan, the case also implicated two governors, two
chief ministers, scores of national and provincial
parliamentarians, revolutionary poet Habib Jalib
and even some of Bhutto’s former colleagues,
many of whom were later re-elected and became federal
or provincial ministers. Most of the accused were
leaders of minority provinces.
At stake were constitutional rights, rule of law,
provincial autonomy, institution building, the democratic
right to dissent, and the freedom of speech and
association. It was a decisive moment in the history
of the country as Bhutto, who having presided over
the adoption of a consensus constitution had suspended
it within 48 hours and ruled the country under emergency
laws for the duration of his tenure till his overthrow
by Zia ul-Haq in July 1977.
During the presidency of Zia ul-Haq, Minto was elected
to chair the All-Pakistan Lawyers’ Association
against Martial Law to lead the national struggle
against yet another dictatorship. Of course he had
to pay a heavy price for his courage of conviction.
Imprisoned by Gen. Zia, he was adopted as a prisoner
of conscience by the Amnesty International. In 1990,
when Mr. Nelson Mandela was elected President International
Lawyers’ Association, Mr. Abid Minto was elected
as Vice President of the same organization. They
worked as a team from 1990 to 1995.
Shortly after, in 1997, he was elected President
of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association. As
documented in the press, “declining many offers
of judgeship in the higher courts and ministries
in various governments, he has spent fifty years,
half a century, leading nationwide movements for
poverty alleviation, rule of law, due process and
equal justice in Pakistan. His principled stand
and struggle against militarism, feudalism, nepotism
and malfeasance has been internationally applauded.
He has spent his life struggling for human rights,
women’s rights, minority rights and rights
of the working classes in Pakistan.”
Minto and Faiz continued to work together in one
forum or the other till Faiz’s death in 1984.
Minto was twice blessed by his close friendship
with Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib, the two most
gifted and conscientious poets of Pakistan. Often
confused with the legendary fiction writer Sadat
Hassan Manto, his uncle, Abid Hassan Minto along
with C. R. Aslam and others, gave the best years
of his life to build foundations on the ground to
sustain the visions of his poet friends. This praxis
– translating ideas into material reality
– is his contribution.
The revolutionary poet Habib Jalib called C. R.
Aslam and Abid Minto ‘the two most civil and
dignified people’ in Pakistani politics.
“It is wonderful that a handful of people
like Minto – the cream of intelligentsia –
can continue the struggle for human rights in Pakistan.
I think the struggle must continue. We must change
the existing mindset,” veteran community leader
Dr. Shabbir Safdar said. “You cannot have
human rights for yourself if you do not honor the
same for other people.”
(Lisette B. Poole, a freelance writer in the San
Francisco Bay area, also lectures at CSUEB, Hayward
)
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