With Jinnah back in the news of the subcontinent, and the issues of Partition of India being regurgitated, I thought this would be an appropriate reading and reflection.
The Faiz poem is translated by the late Agha Shahid Ali, the wonderful poet from Kashmir whom I had the pleasure of meeting a few times in the U.S.A.
--farida majid
61 years ago on this day Pakistan lost her creator and also lost her way.
I don't think it is possible to find a better obituary for Jinnah then this:
To God We Return
The Pakistan Times, Lahore
13 September 1948
The Qaid-i-Azam has passed away, after long years of toil and sacrifice and service in the cause of his people, his frail body has at last been gathered unto rest and his soul called back to the abode of eternal blessed. No name in the history of Indian Muslims has been loved and acclaimed as the name Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
No man in living memory evoked such unquestionable loyalty, such unqualified devotion, such unbounded faith, for the one-time oppressed, rejected and broken Muslim nation, Mohammad Ali Jinnah was much more then a political leader. He was the father and the brother, the friend and the counsellor, the guide and confidant, the comrade and leader all combined into one. Millions hopefully whispered his name in hours of anguish and blessed him in moments of joy. For the best portion of his life he carried on his shoulders the burden of all their cares, in his heart the ache of all their sorrows and in his bones the weariness of all their labours. And now he is gone. The nation has been deprived of his love and his wisdom that guided and sustained them, of his leadership that held them so closely together, of his incorruptible rectitude that set the standard for their moral and political conduct.
It is difficult in the shadow of this fateful hour to discourse dispassionately on what consequences his bitterly mourned death will engender for Pakistan and the rest of the sub-continent. The horizon has never been so dark and cloudy as it is today and the people of India and Pakistan have never faced more anxious days then the days we are now passing through. Not only has the social, cultural and economic renaissance that the dawn of freedom was expected to bring not yet materialised but new dangers to national freedom and national happiness have arisen that have to be fought and overcome.
A million homesteads are still drenched in tears for the loss, during the dark and bloody days of a year ago, of whatever was dear to them on this earth, and already the rumblings of fresh trials and new conflicts are audible from a distance. Short-sighted fanaticism and heartless greed are preparing to plunge both the dominions into another suicidal devil-dance and the voice of the common man is getting feebler through exhaustion. Both India and Pakistan need at this time all the wisdom and humanity they can muster to save themselves from the cataclysm that threatens, and it is a cruel irony of history that at precisely this time both countries have been deprived of the two most wisest and most humane men in the sub-continent. Ours is very much the greater and more grievous loss.
We can show no greater devotion to our beloved leader and give no greater proof of our loyalty to his memory then to base our conduct on the pattern that he has immortalized and to conduct ourselves in a manner that accords with his life-long preaching.
From the great grief that envelops the nation today, must emerge a new courage and a new determination to complete the task that the Quaid-i-Azam began, the task of building a free, progressive and secure Pakistan, to restore our people the dignity and happiness for which the Quaid-i-Azam strove, to equip them with all the virtues that the nobility of freedom demands and to rid them of fear, suffering and want that have dogged them their lives through the ages.
(Faiz Ahmed Faiz)
And what did we do?
Although Faiz wrote this poem after reading the letters of Rosenberg's in the 1950s for me it reads like a lament for the Pakistani nation/people who lost their way in the dark lanes of history.
I longed for your lips, dreamed of their roses:
I was hanged from the dry branch of the scaffold.
I wanted to touch your hands, their silver light:
I was murdered in the half-light of dim lanes.
And there where you were crucified,
so far away from my words,
you still were beautiful:
color kept clinging to your lips–
rapture was still vivid in your hair–
light remained silvering in your hands.
When the night of cruelty merged with the roads you had taken,
I came as far as my feet could bring me,
on my lips the phrase of a song,
my heart lit up only by sorrow.
This sorrow was my testimony to your beauty–
Look! I remained a witness till the end,
I who was killed in the darkest lanes.
It's true– that not to reach you was fate–
but who'll deny that to love you
was entirely in my hands?
So why complain if these matters of desire
brought me inevitably to the execution grounds?
Why complain? Holding up our sorrows as banners,
new lovers will emerge
from the lanes where we were killed
and embark, in caravans, on those highways of desire.
It's because of them that we shortened the distances of sorrow,
it's because of them that we went out to make the world our own,
we who were murdered in the darkest lanes.
(English Translation By Agha Shahid Ali)
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