Opinion Who is afraid of Faiz Ahmad Faiz?

Millions of Modi’s apologists of course will argue that the PM is not personally responsible for every ill-deed and cannot be expected to comment on everything, including the barbaric instigations spewed forth almost every day by Hindutva clerics. That open calls for a genocide of Muslims elicited no response (forget condemnation) at all is proof, if proof were needed, that the rot begins at the top. The constant invocation of Aurangzeb and Mahmud Ghaznavi has only one goal — to exacerbate imaginary wounds among the right-wing Hindu populace in our country. Even Tipu Sultan who resisted the British with all his might is not safe from vilification. And of course the Taj Mahal and Qutb Minar were “Hindu temples” converted into Muslim memorials.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s nazm “Hum dekhenge…” was written during the rule of Zia-ul Haq; he penned “Aaj bazaar mein…” during his imprisonment by the Ayub Khan government — neither despot bothering with even putting up a pretence of democracy. The removal of his verses from school textbooks indicates the chilling fact that protest of any kind is no longer permissible. Is someone afraid that these poems will resonate with the imprisoned intellectuals, activists and teachers in our country? Or is it just that Faiz is Pakistani? The removal of “Hum ke thehre ajnabi…” is baffling as it was written to heal, not rub salt in, wounds when Faiz visited the newly created Bangladesh. I really wonder if the worthies on the education board who forbade these poems have actually even read or understood them.

The ball of course was set rolling (with not a little instigation, one assumes) by a faculty member of IIT Kanpur who was offended by the line “Sab taj uchhale jaayenge, sab buth ukhaade jayenge”, as tending to glorify Ghaznavi! Does someone with such tunnel vision and limited understanding of imagery deserve to be teaching at an IIT or anywhere at all? The supreme irony is that “Hum dekhenge…” was considered anti-Muslim by right-wingers in Pakistan at that time!

With an unspeakable sense of trepidation one awaits the day when Faiz’s, or any Urdu, poetry and literature will be banned in totality in our country, considering the anxiety in some quarters to declare Urdu a foreign, or Muslim, language and the speed with which attempts to erase all traces of India’s Muslim past are under way, while our Pradhan Sevak addresses the nation from ramparts of Red Fort, which of course was built by “Hindu kings” and for which the marauding Mughals “falsely” claim credit!

At the same time the Prime Minister of a country that actually looted us is warmly received and hugged and is Modi’s “khaas dost”, just as Donald Trump was at one time, not to mention Nawaz Sharif.

As it is, Boris Johnson is hanging on to the PM-ship of his country with a single strand of his disheveled hair, and Trump is edging closer to incarceration. One is excusably concerned about the future of the next world leader whom Modi will walk around hand-in-hand with. Could it be Vladimir Putin?

With not one contestant on a quiz show sometime ago being able to name the writer of “Saare jahan se achcha Hindustan hamara” (Rabindranath Tagore? Munshi Premchand?) or who coined the slogan “Inquilab zindabad”; with the Hindification of Persian city names; the dissemination of literature like “Vedic scientists of ancient India”; the claim that we had flying machines centuries before the Wright brothers; that it was IVF that resulted in the birth of a hundred Kauravas; that the God Ganesha’s elephant head was placed on him by plastic surgery, it does seem inevitable that future history books will be indistinguishable from mythology and render us the laughing stock of the world.

There will presumably be 600 years in our country’s history which just didn’t happen or in which untold miseries were heaped upon the Hindu populace of India by Muslim invaders whose only preoccupation it seems was to convert temples into mosques.

Truly “Khoon ke dhabbe dhulenge kitni barsaatonke baad?”.

The writer is an actor, director and ‘occasional writer’