The world in a few couplets

Faraz had a receptive audience and he kept them enthralled with an excellent selection of free-verse and ghazals.

Has there been a deliberate de-Persianisation of Urdu, as Faraz alleged at the end of his recitation? One can understand that Faraz is sensitive on this issue because he is from the Pushtu speaking part of Pakistan, always close to Darri or Farsi. In fact his father wrote poetry in Farsi. But in my view the issue he raises is not terribly relevant.

From Amir Khusro to modern times Urdu did pick up words from Farsi, Turki, Brajbhasha, Avadhi 8212; dialects wherever it was written. Insha Ullah Khan Insha chronologically between Mir and Ghalib wrote Rani Ketki Ki Kahani without using a single word of Farsi or Turki. In the early 20th century, Arzoo Lucknavi made exactly the same claim for his collection of ghazals, Surili Bansuri. In fact Ghalib appears to be among a small set of elitists consistently comfortable with Persianised diction.

Any deliberate de-Persianisation in India as a consequence of Partition may be a wrong way to look at Urdu8217;s deliberate reach for popularity through the medium of cinema. No modern Urdu poet ever felt embarrassed admitting that Urdu and Hindustani or simple Hindi often overlapped in style and expression. And this is the language which gave Bollywood its boost.

There is little doubt that Ahmad Faraz is the most popular poet of his generation. But it would be gross exaggeration to place him in the same league as, say, Faiz Ahmad Faiz in calibre. Critics like the late Ali Sardar Jafri and, more recently, Shamim Hanafi would not give the pride of place to either Faiz or Faraz as the greatest poets of their respective generations. Jafri was emphatic that N.M. Rashid and Meeraji were much better poets, opening new vistas in free verse. They did not have the 8220;infrastructure8221; of support Faiz had. For example, there was the extensive Government College, Lahore, network, spilling into the ICS steel frame which determined the tempo of life on both sides of the border. Even otherwise there was the vast, influential Punjab elite patronising him on both sides.

Indeed, Josh Malihabadi, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Yagana Changezi also had no support on this scale once the feudal order had breathed its last. They were creatures of an age when feudalism was dying and their steady gaze was on the dawn of independence. The subsequent generation, of which Faiz was the most prominent, rode a wave of international leftism, national liberation movements. Plus he had his own personal support structure mentioned above.

Faraz has travelled in an ideological vacuum, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His battle has been against military dictatorships. The other reality of the day is the undiluted market economy. The poet may be intellectually squeamish about commercialisation but the fact is that Faraz has benefited from the market. He is the only poet who has made considerable sums of money from his books. Commercial success means popularity. This, in turn, places the poet on the wrong side of established critics who discuss their own chosen poets in literary magazines. Their favourite contemporary poets are Ahmad Mushtaq currently in the US, Zafar Iqbal, Irfan Siddiqui died recently, Mohammad Alwi and Shehryar.

The question, of course, is: why are these poets, on the critics8217; list of favourites, not popular? Or is this system of patronage a device for critics to keep themselves in play? Where in this framework would you place Gulzar and Javed Akhtar? Gulzar is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award. In the opinion of critics, this does not enhance the value of the award.

Javed8217;s remarkable popularity is a function of marketing. He comes from a distinguished lineage: Majaz his maternal uncle, Jan Nisar Akhtar his father, Kaifi Azmi his father-in-law. But Javed is also from the very heart of Bollywood. From all these elements he has picked up the skill of the one-man-show. Some may consider Javed the lesser poet but it will be difficult for Faraz to measure up to Javed8217;s stirring presentation derived from the art of 8220;Tehet8221; which he has picked by association with Ali Sardar Jafri and Azmi, who, in their turn, sat at the feet of Josh Malihabadi.