Written on 5:15 PM by CommuniKation

In Memoriam
Ali Sardar Jafri (
would be violative of the ideals and convictions of Ali Sardar Jafri (

Sardâr Ja˜far
) to write his obituary. In one of his more celebrated
na ms
,
âœ
M®râ Safar
,” he declared himself to be immortal, as he would eternally
live in the sweet song of birds and the musical smile of dry leaves. Even
after death, he felt he would remain alive so long as crops dance in the
fields. And much like
Ghâlib
, he too believed that one day all the golden
rivers and blue lakes in the sky would reverberate with the music of his
being.
Sardar was a rebel, freedom fighter, pacifist, radical activist, story-
writer, critic and documentary filmmaker at once. But, above all, he was a
poet endowed with exquisite imagination, one of the brightest stars on
the firmament of twentieth-century Urdu poetry. Like all great poets he
was a prophet engaged in unraveling the mysteries and ambiguity of
human drama. The principal theme of his poetry was compassion, love,
perseverance and sensitivity surviving amidst the callous inhumanity of
our times. In his unique style he depicted the exemplary survival of the
human spirit in the face of all-pervasive adversity and defeatism. In so
doing he not only carried forward the traditions of Urdu poetry but also
enriched its treasure with new symbols and powerful imagery. Indeed, his
poetry gradually evolved into a genre of its own kind whose influence is
difficult to ignore among the present generation of Urdu poets.
It is less known that Sardar began his career not as a poet but as a
story writer. His first collection of short stories, Manzil, irked the then
colonial regime. The result was his eight-month imprisonment in the
district jails of Lucknow and Banaras. Soon, however, he abandoned
prose and turned to poetry—the craft of which he later flowered into as
one of its finest masters. With the publication, in , of
Parv≥z,
his first
collection of
na ms
and ghazals, he established himself as a poet to reckon
with. Five years later
Na’µ Duniy≥ kå Sal≥m
, an unconventional, longish
Page 2
• T A U S
poem brimming with revolutionary optimism, took the Urdu world by
pleasant surprise. Sardar had by then become a familiar and revered name.
Among his other poetic works
Kh∑n kµ Lakµr
( ),
‡shiy≥ J≥g Uª^≥
( ),
Patt^ar kµ Dµv≥r
( ), Pairahan-e Sharar ( ),
Lah∑ Puk≥rt≥ Hai
( ) and
Navambar, M®r≥ Gahv≥ra
( ) are remarkable, both for their
theme and style. He also made four documentaries,
P^ir Bålå Ae Sant Kabµr
being the most outstanding one. Besides this, he produced a hugely
popular TV serial,
Kahkash≥
, based on the lives and works of seven
luminaries of Urdu poetry—
Æ’asrat
,
JÃ¥sh
,
Fir≥q
, Jigar,
Fai¤
,
Makhd∑m
and
Maj≥z
.
Sardar’s early works reflected a restless yearning for India’s independ-
ence from the colonial yoke. Equally intense was his yearning for the
freedom and dignity of the proletariat. This was because of the strong
impact of the Progressive Writers’ Movement inspired by Marxism and
the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in . As early as , he joined the
movement at its conference held in Calcutta and soon became one of its
leading advocates. The influence of Marxism on his poetry was thus pro-
found and everlasting.
As a result his early poems were heavily ideological-political and
hence somewhat propagandist in nature. Themes ruled over form, style
and aesthetics. As a committed Marxist, he viewed society in perennial
conflict: the conflict between exploiter and the exploited. Indeed these
poems sounded like a war cry against the capitalists and feudal lords. This
binary approach, so dominant in his poetry of the forties and fifties, left
little space for articulating other forms of conflict and complex nuances of
human life. Works such as
Kh∑n kµ Lakµr
,
‡shiy≥ J≥g Uª^≥
and
Patt^ar kµ
Dµv≥r
are examples of such poetry. However, it would be unfair to catego-
rize all of Sardar’s works, even of the early phase, as mere sloganeering.
Some of the poems really enthralled the hearts and minds of all and sun-
dry and transcended the dry logic of political economy.
This blood, the fragrance of lips;
this blood, the light of eyes;
this blood, the color of the cheek;
this loo, the peace of the heart;
sun of Mount Faran and Light of Sina and Tur;
flame of the word of truth, pain of a restless soul;
the light of the word of God, the expression of Light Divine;
This blood, my blood, thy blood, everybody’s blood.
(“
Ye Lah∑
”)
Page 3
I M •
With the publication of Pairahan-e Sharar in , one could see a
noticeable shift in Sardar’s poetry, both in terms of its grammar as well as
form. In its preface the diehard, uncompromising radical of
Patt^ar kµ
Dµv≥r
now declared that his poems were no longer “political documents.”
Rather they were a “cry of the heart and voice of the soul.” This shift
found its finest expression in his book on criticism,
Paighambar≥n-e Suk-
han
( ). This work of extraordinary significance makes a comparative
study of
Kabµr
,
Mµr
and
Gh≥lib
and underlines the richness and relevance
of Bhakti-Sufi traditions for the proletarian revolution. Given the disdain
of dogmatic Marxism to the culture and civilizational heritage of India,
this undeniably was a bold, even heretical, endeavor.
In his later works Sardar not only pursued this idea further but
turned it into a focal theme of his inquiry—in prose and verse alike. Con-
sider, for instance, his essay, “
Gh≥lib k≥ Somnat [?] Khay≥l
” ( ). It
underscored the purely Indian fragrance of
Gh≥lib
’s poetry and, by exten-
sion, of Urdu poetry at large. It is rarely known that for
Gh≥lib
neither
Shiraz nor Khansar were the source of poetic inspiration; it was instead
the sacred world of Somnath whose famous temple was destroyed by
Mahmud Ghazni in
CE
. Here mention ought to be made about his
poem,
Ajåd^y≥
, written with a heavy heart following the demolition of
Babri Masjid. He described December as a day of penance, when insult
was heaped on Ram, and Sita wept with blood in her eyes—a corrective
to those who rejoiced over the demolition in the name of Ram and Sita.
Ali Sardar Jafri’s firm faith in the efficacy and viability of tradition
and cultural resources to meet the vexing challenges of our times was
most eloquent in his cry for a war-free Subcontinent. Deeply anguished
by the Indo-Pak War of , he exhorted the ruling classes on both sides
of the border to sink their petty political interests and march hand-in-
hand towards a shared future, a future based on civilizational commonal-
ity and peaceful coexistence. In a moving poem, “Kaun Dushman Hai,”
composed in the wake of the war, he wrote:
Tum ≥’å gulshan-e L≥haur s® ±aman bar-dåsh
Ham ≥’® Ωub√-e Ban≥ras kµ raushnµ l®-kar
Him≥liy≥ kµ hav≥’å kµ t≥zgµ l®-kar
Aus us-k® ba‘d ye p∑±^® ke kaun dushman hai
Sardar’s sane voice, however, was drowned in the cacophony of jin-
goism. It took more than three decades before leaders on either side of the
border realized the necessity of initiating a genuine peace process. In ,
Page 4
• T A U S
when Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee made the historic peace trip to Paki-
stan, he presented Sarhad, the first-ever album of anti-war poems of
Jnanpith Award winner Sardar Jafri (sung by Seema Anil Sehgal) to his
Pakistani counterpart. This was indeed the greatest tribute to the poetic
vision of Sardar.
Where politics had failed, poetics triumphed.
“Poetry begins in delight,” opined Robert Frost, “and ends in wis-
dom.” This was certainly true in the case of Sardar; his poetry began in
radical delight and ended in civilizational wisdom.

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