Faiz: His Relevance for the Third World People
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA

“If the world’s not set on fire, of what use is a verse?

Vain tears, that fill the eyes, and move not humanity.” - Faiz 1911-1984

The title itself is intriguing. The spatial division of the world into three - the First World, the Second World and the Third World - and thereby the division of humanity as such does not hold water now. I agree with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri when they say the three worlds are all scrambled up in such a way that we continually find the First World in the Third, the Third World in the First and the Second World almost existing nowhere.

Usually the Third World gets characterized by the presence of four features: one, the majority of people living there consist of the poor in absolute terms; second, its governments chronically remain unstable and prone to police repression and frequent military adventures; third, their economies remain heavily dependent on the former imperialistic powers from whom they had once liberated themselves, and lastly, the working class in these countries - their only hope, remains perennially in minority and ineffective.

Poverty, discrimination, humiliation of the working class people, loss of dignity and self-respect, and the loss of the basic freedoms are the problems that define the Third World countries. The question now is: Are these ugly realities not present in the First World countries?

Why had it been always so hard and risky to talk about these issues, especially in the countries where these problems exist in a rampant manner? Faiz committed this so-called sin, and became a living example of persecution, witch-hunting, imprisonment, seclusion, and denigration. Was there a charge that was not labeled against him? “A Surkha”, “an atheist”, “a Soviet Union agent”, “a traitor”, to count only a few.

“Darbaar-e-watan main ek din sub jaane wale jaaen ge

Kooch apni saza to ponchen ge, kooch apni jaza le jaaen ge”

If literature is to be meaningful, if it is to be the criticism and mirror of life, and as pointed out by T. S. Eliot in 1943, if poetry is to perform a social function, and expand the public’s awareness of non-literary issues, such as those in the social, political, economic, or religious arenas then it must perform a wholesome social function… civilizations. Nations may differ, but their poetic language has a universal purpose. If humanity is to move forward, not in pockets, but as a whole, then I must say Faiz is valid and Faiz is relevant because he did perform that function. Shri Krishan Kant called Faiz’s poetry for the new generation as “Surma for the eyes”. Faiz himself defined the purpose of literature just a few days before his death in November 1984.

“Karay na jag mai alao to sheir kis masaraf: karay na shehr mai jaal thal to chasham-e- nam kia hai”……

Earlier he had made it further clear. “The poet’s work is not perceptions and observations, but also to struggle and make efforts”  If the poet does not notice the care-worn and mud-soiled hands of the gardener, but spots only the multi-colored flowers, the sight of which reminds him of the rosy cheeks and ruby lips of his beloved, then for Faiz it is not enough.

If Faiz is in the air these days, it is understandable. So long as the purpose of art, culture and literature is to free humans from material and spiritual poverty, and is to fill their hearts with empathy, compassion, peace, and with a vision to learn to co-exist, to respect each other and to be magnanimous enough to discover goodness in others, irrespective of their color, language, ethnicity, religion and region, then Faiz is the poet to be read, and his poetry is the one that seeks to reach out and touch all such noble goals. Faiz accomplished all the above purposes without sounding didactic and moralistic.

As Faraq Gorakhapuri put it, “Faiz established a new school of poetry, the creative skill, affection, creative dexterity with which Faiz relates the event of love with other significant social concerns is something entirely new”.

Faiz’s poetry is a chronicle of our tormented issues, and a clarion call to the voiceless, to the workers, peasants, to the down-trodden and to the wretched of the earth to wake up and realize that they are not the dirt of the earth. They should realize that they have the potential to “make flowers blossom in the fire”, and they have the power to toss down crowns into the air and destroy throne utterly. Faiz’s biggest service to humanity is that in the wake of tyranny and oppression, he actively tried to sanctify the dignity of human labor. His is a louder cry than Mansoor’s, “I am Truth”, because it has the sharpness and shrill that will “rend the skies’, and will restore “sovereignty to the people”, and by this he meant, “You, I, and all of us”.

Sultan Majroohpuri, a rival of Faiz and a leading member of the PWA, bestowed the title of “The Meer Taqi Meer of the Progressives.” “Poetry became flesh in the person of Faiz,” wrote Khawaja Masood. Ecstasy and agony, romance and revolution ideally blended in him. In Faiz echoed Heinrich Heine’s words, “Poetry dearly as I have loved it, has always been a divine plaything. I have never attached any great value to poetical flame and I trouble myself very little whether people praise my verses or not. But lay on my coffin a sword, for I was a brave soldier in the war of liberation of mankind.”

Faiz, indeed, was a “Secular Saint” of our times. He fought better than many field marshals and generals in the battle of human liberation from the shackles of inequality, class division, social injustice and oppression. In this battle, he not only won, but also brought new glory to the gallows.

Faiz’s ideals were not new. In India people like Faraq, Mijaaz, Ali Sardar, Jazbi, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Kaifi Azami, and abroad, people like Edward Saeed, Noam Chomski, Nerudo, Langston Hughes and many more were actively engaged in the same mission.

Two qualities of his personal character are also equally noticeable. He was a titled man, but he was never arrogant. He was self-effacing, humble, and totally non-assuming to a fault. Humility, gentleness and kindness, the essential ingredients for those who espouse to follow lofty aims in life were amply present in him. Another most scintillating quality of his personality was his total belief in the ultimate victory of humanity over the dark and oppressive forces, no matter how strong. One of the major problems of the Third World countries has been their inability to speak out, and their passivity and docility in accepting sufferings as either a feat of fate, or a consequence of some defect in their own person. Faiz tired himself to awaken people to recognize that they mattered.

Faiz wrote his most forceful poem, “Bol”, way back in 1941, which in the words of his friend and interpreter in the USSR, Ludmilla Vassileya, is his poetical motto, and which basically is a call-to-arms for all writers and artists. The poem is a mirror of what Faiz was and what he stood for! The genesis of the poem is his own awakening to the fact that “it is pointless to think of oneself as being apart from the larger world around us”. This happened after he had attended the Progressive Writers Conference in 1936, presided over by the legendary Munshi Prem Chand, the man who had taken cudgels against the exploitative class of land-owners and money-lenders in India through his short stories, and who had espoused the cause of the poor, hard-working but meek and voiceless farmers.

“Bol, ke lab aazaad hai tere Bol zabaan ab tak teri hai. Bol ke sach zinda hai ab tak, Bol, jo kuch/kehna hai keh le…

(S peak, your lips are free, Speak; your tongue is your own still speak, Truth still lives, Speak, say what you must! Be it fascism, or censorship, the call is to reject it.)

Intellectual Eqbal Ahmed was right when he called Faiz as “the first intellectual in the Third World to capture the incipient “Mood of Disillusionment”. Faiz put a tongue in every link of the chain that would conscript human freedoms. He defended the most controversial short story writer in Pakistan, Saadat Hasan Minto, in the 50’s on the publication of “Thanda Ghost”. This was a period when religious persecution in Pakistan, like now, was rife. The irony was that even the champions of the freedom of speech, like Maulana Zafar Ali Khan of Zamindar, Shorish Kashmiri of Chattan and Hamid Nizaami of Nawa-i-Waqt and the entire government, were lined up to declare “Thanda Ghost’ as vulgar literature and its writer a perverted person. It needed a person with a lion’s heart to stand up and defend Manto.

Colonel Faiz and Dr Taseer did that. The charge was the same which was once leveled by Plato against poetry that poetry is the mother of all lies and that the poets are the biggest liars. Faiz defended the charge by saying, “The allegations leveled by the government were false because it - the story - was a piece of fiction, and not vulgarity”. Twenty-seven years after Faiz’s death in Pakistan, Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of his nephew, governor Salman Taseer, fondly gets addressed as “Ghazi Mumtaz Qadri”, and gets defended in the court by none other than the former Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court, Mr Sharif. The problem has not subsided. People of Pakistan need to read Faiz’s poem, “Bol”, somewhat more seriously. Celebrating his 100-year anniversary was not enough.

Faiz made exceedingly bold and forceful declarations through his poetry and prose of his allegiance to the ideas of social justice, and his opposition to exploitation and injustice.

On the fifth anniversary of Pakistan’s Independence in 1952 when he was in jail, as the government and jail officials busied themselves in decorating the buildings with lights and buntings, Faiz kept thinking of the poor people. He wrote to his wife, “While the government is busy in celebrating, the ordinary people of Pakistan have nothing to rejoice about”.

In 1958 when Ayub Khan took over the country and the people of Pakistan began learning how to live under fear, Faiz wrote his famous rebellious song: “Nisar mai teri ghaloo ke ai watan—ke jaahan chali hai rasam ke koi sar utha ke na chalay” Or…

“bay dam huay beemar, dawa koi nahi datay…Tum achay maseeha hoo, shafaa kayo nahi datay”….Mit jayi gee mukhlooq too insaaf karo gai. Munsaf ho too aab hashr utha kayo nahi datay.

In 1962 when Faiz was chosen for the Lenin Peace Prize, the government of Ayub Khan did everything to stop him from accepting it. But he accepted it with a purpose. In his famous speech he delivered on the occasion, he said, “The boundless treasures of Nature and productions are not the declared property of a greedy few, but are to be used for the benefit of all of humanity… the foundation of human society should not be based on greed, exploitation and ownership, but on justice, equality, freedom and the welfare everywhere… humanity has never been defeated by its enemies if the foundation of humankind will rest on the message of the great Persian poet, Hafiz Sherazi,

“Every foundation you see is faulty, except that of love, which is faultless’.

Faiz deliberately rode the oppose tide because that was the right one. In the 1965 war when the radio stations were abuzz with the patriotic songs of “Karnail ne… Jernail nee”, or “Mera Chail Chabila”, Faiz wrote an elegy, a lament for a Dead Soldier;

“Utho aab mithi say utho jaago—meri Laal, tumari zaij sajavan karan, dekhi ayai rain andharay” (Beauteous child, playing in the dust, it is time to come now. Come then, it is time to come home priceless jewel, Lost in the dust, it is time to come home now.”)

In 1971, much to the chagrin of the leftists and rightists, Faiz wrote on the debacle of East Pakistan: “Ham ke Thehri Ajnabi”

After the 1977 Zia ul Haque takeover, Faiz chose to go in exile which proved good for literature, just the way his going to jail had turned out to be a blessing. His most evocative verses were composed during those four years. Now he got a chance to travel widely and meet a vast circle of very important and famous friends. Middle East became the center of his attention. His poems like “Ishaq Apne Mujrimoh Ko Pabajaulaan Le Chala/Love leads its Prisoners Away in Chains” dedicated to Beirut itself; his Tarana for the Palestinian freedom fighters, ‘Ek Taraana Filastini Mujaahidon Ke Naam”, and a dirge or sad song for the Palestinian dead, “Falistini Shohada Jo Pardes Mein Kaam Aaye/Palestinian martyrs Who died Abroad”, and his very best and heart-wrenching lullaby to a Palestinian Orphan, “Mat Ro Bachche/Weep Not Child”, and finally the dedication of his collection, “Mere Dil, Mere Musaafir/My heart, My wanderer’ to Yasser Arafat, and many more were produced during this period.

We understand, dejection, poverty and injustice know no boundaries and have no religion. The languages of our prayers can be different, but the language of our sighs and tears everywhere is the same. Our friend, Dr Agha Saeed traced three distinct trends in Faiz: Faiz is Qais and Mansur in the same breath, meaning beauty and revolt artistically blend in him; he has a revolutionary mind, but has the heart of a lover; he articulates himself in poetic language but his natural inclination is in constant consultation with a Sufi’s conscience. Yes, Faiz was a Sufi at heart; but he was also proud to own: “It is long since Mansoor’s call has aged: I have brought glory to the gallows anew.” He was a rebel in his convictions. Dictators and kings always remained scared of the force of his ideas. He was essentially an internationalist, equipped with a global vision based on the working-class movements. Without mentioning it he understood better than most muftis and maulanas that monotheism is inherently linked with humanism as it leads to the oneness of humanity. In jail he planted flowers, and taught the Qur’an to fellow-prisoners who were pre-whispered before his arrival that they were to meet an “atheist”, a ‘communist, etc.

My friend, Dr Nazeer Ahmed even puts new meanings in Faiz’s famous opening lines of his poem, “Matai Looh –o- Qalam Chin Gai to kia Gham hai: Ke Khoon –i-dil mai daboo lee hai unglian mai nai” Dr Nazeer regards this loss of pen and ink as ‘inconsequential”, whereas in my humble understanding for Faiz this was the biggest loss that a human being capable of thinking and feeling could ever suffer. All his life he fought against those who attempted to deprive people of the freedom to express themselves, and the freedom to think. The path to win back these freedoms is often strewn with blood.

I will conclude by saying that the impending fear is that Faiz like Che Guevera or even like Iqbal may not begin living only in myths and images or for quotes in public address, staring out with a cigarette in mouth from coffee mugs, or appearing on posters, or being heard from people who would recite his poems in a melodious voice without ever bothering to know what he stood for, or who he actually was!

In the words of Tazeen Javed, “These born-again Faiz lovers are willing to sing his action-oriented verses, but are unwilling to march with the homeless, with the jobless, with the underdogs because they do not smell good. Real activism means de-classifying oneself and giving one’s guts and blood to the things one believes in”.

Faiz did that. It is easy to talk about Faiz, fashionably recite verses of Faiz, but it is very difficult to live Faiz.