My fellow listeners! So this is what I have thought and understood on this matter. When I look back, I find the most eventful time for literature to be the historical creation of Pakistan, it was an important historical period for authentic literary creation. We hadn’t yet gathered ourselves together when a heated debate broke out in our literary world. To be honest, it was bound to happen. In the historical mayhem that resulted in the destruction of families, enforced migration, and violent bloodshed, no author could have fled the vertigo of emotions propelled by these scenes. I don’t have time to go into details. In short when I look back on those turbulent times it is fair to say that everyone was correct in his own way. Every author saw truth in the events that were passing in front of his eyes, and not only saw but also deeply felt it. There were multiple truths, and every artist found his truth to be the last word on the matter, which intensified the differences amongst them. Manto was adamant that in his stories he would represent the suffering of his time as concretely as Saadat Hassan Manto had seen, understood and felt it. His approach was criticized with a two-edged sword. One edge was Chaudary Mohammad Hussain, from the Press Board, and the second edge was The Progressive Movement. But Manto in his usual combative posture stood for himself and decided to fight against both of them.
There are many layers to this issue, but I shall leave them and turn my attention solely to literature for now. In the beginning of this period there were two literary creations, a poem and a story, that could be considered milestones of our literature. Until then stories, poems and ghazals were getting published and attracted a comfortably wide readership, but when Faiz published his poem “Yeh Daagh Daagh Ujala, Ye Shab Guzeeda Seher” (“This mottled light, this darkened morning”) was published it created a critical ripple in the literary readership:
Zahid tang nazar nay mujhay kaafir jaana
Aur kaafir yeh samajhta hai musalman hun.
(O friend! The unreflective sight judges me as a heretic,
And heretics call me a Muslim)
The supporters of Pakistan smelled something of a revolutionary in this. On the other hand Ali Sardar Jaffri thought that this poem lacked the poet’s revered revolutionary spirit and commitment to his art.
The second literary piece was Manto’s short story “Khol do”. It was not just widely criticized but landed him behind the bars. Especially the idealists found it indigestible. On the other hand, Askari Sahib derived principles of our authentic national literature from the points of criticism raised by these idealists. He justified his position by explaining that this story compels us to self-analysis, our national author is not someone who merely chants Long Live Pakistan! The mark of authentic literature is not to fuel stupid national fervor, but rather to reflect our national identity in a manner that impels us to question ourselves as nation.
Now let me discuss the third most important literary work of this period. Until then we were reading works by the famous writers who lived through the movements of the 30’s and 40’s in pre-partitioned India. They experienced the Partition as a historical continuity of the recent decades before it. Askari Sahib found a poet whose literary production began during the Partition, and he declared that if someone wants to read a completely new, experimental way of expression of the atrocities and enforced migration then one should read Nasir Kazmi’s ghazal.
Daitay hain suragh fasl-e-gul ka
Shaakhon pay jalay huay basairay
Jangal main hui hai sham hum ko
Basti say chalay thay munh andhairay.
(They give the news of upcoming season,
These burnt nests on burnt trees,
It’s evening now in the forest,
We left our homes with a dark future.)
These two verses were quoted in “Jhalkian” (“Fragments”), and since then they made the rounds in every major writers’ works. With this ghazal the criticism of the use of free verse in ghazal was silenced, in fact we realized that free verse was the true expression to embed in words the experiences we were going through. Poetical symposiums were also becoming more meaningful with this form of expression. Within a year or so another poet came on the literary scene, he was also wrote in this form as he also started writing during the Partition, but his writing style was diametrically opposed to Kazmi. This was Muneer Niazi.
Now let’s turn our attention to short stories and novels. Perhaps Realism had found its epigrammatic expression in Manto’s writings. Our fiction needed a novel style of expression. Towards the end of the ‘50s we could already discern some scraps of this new style, but before entering the ‘60s let me mention a novel first. It was “Aag Ka Darya” (“The River of Fire”). Allow me to say that this novel could neither be written before the Partition, nor in India after the Partition. Even though 1947 marks a schism in historical continuity of the Subcontinent, but all the rubble of this schism fell in Pakistan. In this part of the Subcontinent all those Indian Muslims who took pride in their heritage were discontented that their historical pride was razed to ground. And immediately another question followed it: What is our history now? The Muslims of united India who boasted of their cultural heritage found it unimaginable that the worst of it was given to them in their region. Both, their history and culture got the same result, broken and shattered. Then a group of people said that history is born out of land, if we begin our history from Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa then there is no discontinuity in it. Our national identity should be recognized with this historical tradition. Another set of people referred to the debates raised during the Pakistan Movement. Quaid-e-Azam mentioned in his speech that the ten crore Muslims in India have their own historical identity that begins with the moment they landed on the Indian soil for the first time. Pakistani national identity would be identified with this historical tradition. You can imagine from this how much of an issue our national identity became. Numerous speeches were given, various essays were drafted, and heated debates ensued. Many intellectuals, writers, artists, professors from Pakistan took part in this and gave their word on it. Faiz, Qarar, Doctor Ajmal and many other intellectuals took part in a series of debates that were regularly shown on the television, but the differences amongst them never dissolved. Everyone was concerned with these questions: What is our national cultural identity? What is our history? What is its origin? Even now these questions are unanswered. The same questions were also debated amongst politicians. Every province, every race, every language had its answers and its own justifications.
According to the Islamic tradition Muslims were already divided into seventy sects. Now again different questions arose regarding the Islamic tradition. Amongst these questions our culture was one of them. Which culture? The adopted Indian culture was non-Islamic. So many heretic rituals were embedded in this culture. Pakistani culture should be purely Islamic in nature. In opposition to this it was argued that our culture or heritage is not exclusive, just like any other. Social culture is by nature inclusive, it travels to different countries, it gets influenced by other traditions and in turn also influence them. But still the debates regarding pure and impure culture kept increasing; to the extent that the purity of religious events and seasonal ceremonies came under scrutiny. Basant was a seasonal ceremony for us. Our mullahs termed it as a Hindu heritage therefore it became unIslamic.
Every project planned for national development came to nothing because of the conflicts between the provinces. The prime example is the Kalabagh Dam project. This project came into being with so many promises, but in the end provincial conflicts put an end to it. All the benefits associated with this dam were highlighted along with its contribution to our national progress; all of it was ignored. Every province had its own complaints, its own doubts, its own voice. Because of these issues the project came to nothing, so much so that it could not resolve a single conflict.
Well! I wandered far off while talking about “Aag Ka Darya”. I was saying that this novel was written against the backdrop of these issues of our history and culture after Pakistan was created. The unique worth of this novel becomes more prominent against the backdrop of social controversies of those times. In the end this novel itself became a controversy just like Faiz’s poem became one. Even Qurat-ul-Ain Haider’s patriotism was dubbed peripheral and meaningless. Just a few days after these incidents I heard that Qurat-ul-Ain Haider had returned to India. Let me put it this way, because of the useless criticism of all the writers whose commitment to Pakistan was seen as dubious we lost a gem. Anyways the issue of our national identity remained unresolved. Neither our history became concrete nor our culture got its stable identity. In fact, every national issue in the end takes the color of the Kalabagh Dam project. The truth is that our national identity is the Kalabagh Dam, meaning that the absence of unified consensus constitutes our national identity.