Is it your portrait or is it a replica of kindness
Is it your portrait or is it an imprint of reality
Is it your portrait or is it an evidence of nobility
Is it your portrait or is it comfort for a troubled heart
Divine mercy streams down from your portrait, Guru Nanak
It isn’t just the poets of yore but contemporary poets too who invoke the name of Nanak in different ways. For instance, talking of Urdu or ‘zuban-i Hind’ Manzar Bhopali calls out to the centuries-old tradition of mingling of languages and cultures:
Yeh Nanak ki yeh Khusrau ki Daya Shankar ki boli hai
This is the language of Nanak and Khusrau and Daya Shankar
In ‘Hindola’ (Cradle), a long poem replete with images of a shared past, Firaq Gorakhpuri says:
Rahim Nanak o Chaitanya aur Chishti ne
Inhin fazaon mein bachpan ke din guzare thhe
Rahim, Nanak, Chaitanaya and Chishti
Spent their childhood in this very expanse
To conclude, here’s an exquisite little poem by Anand Narain Mulla on the five-hundredth birth anniversary of Guru Nanak:
Kasafat-e-zindagi ki zulmat mein sham-e-haq zau-fishan ho kaise
Jahan ki bujhti hui nigahon ko jagmagata hai baam-e-Nanak
Na paak koi na koi napak koi uncha na koi nicha
Guru ka yeh mai-kada hai is ja har ik ko milta hai jaam-e-Nanak
Yahan mitte aa ke tafraqe sab rahi na aloodgi koi bhi
Yeh harf-e-ulfat, ye taur-e-irfan, ye arsh-e-insaan, ye naam-e-Nanak
How must the lamp of truth shed its radiance in the tyranny of life’s grossness
The light snuffed from the world’s eyes is illuminated by the light of Nanak
Neither is anyone pure nor impure, nor is anyone high or low
It is the Guru’s tavern where everyone is served the wine of Nanak
All differences are removed here and no trace of impurity remains
This word of love, this state of knowledge, this throne of humanity, this name of Nanak
10
DIL KI KITAAB: THE GITA IN URDU
THERE HAS BEEN A TRADITION of translating the Bhagavad Gita in several Indian languages, including Persian which was the language of the Mughal courts. The poet-statesman-scholar Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khanan, aka Rahim Das or Rahiman, commissioned the translation of the Mahabharata in Persian in the wake of his mentor, Emperor Akbar’s initiative of having the major Hindu scriptures translated into Persian. Rahim’s own dohas contain references to incidents from the Mahabharata showing how these texts were in the public domain and very much a part of the medieval poet’s poetic vocabulary:
Jo purusharth te kahun sampati milat Rahim
Pet laagi Bairat ghar tapat rasoi Bheem
If power alone could bestow wealth, then who could accept fate
Did not the mighty Bheem work as a cook in Virat’s palace?
The Gita was translated into Persian by the poet Faizi as Ahang-e-Sarmadi and as the Razmnama (Book of War) with a preface by Abul Fazl. Prince Dara Shikoh (1615–59), son of Emperor Shah Jahan, translated the Bhagavad Gita into Persian with the help of Sanskrit-knowing pandits. There was also the Mir’at-ul-Haqa’iq (The Mirror of Realities), a Sufi’s interpretation of the Gita with comparative comments in Islamic terminology on its philosophic importance by Abdul Rahman Chishti in 1654. These Persian translations would, in later years, create a bridge between the Sanskrit originals and the later Urdu translations; and also a bridge across literary cultures and civilizations as well as across tradition and modernity, as Persian was then a modern, living, robust language with a vigorous poetic tradition.
Versions of the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita in Urdu - in both prose and poetry and as transliterations, transcreations and translations - have been appearing since Urdu gained popularity, and there are said to be over fifty such versions of the Gita in Urdu. The earliest Urdu translation of the Bhagavad Gita was done in Dakhni by the poet Syed Mubin sometime in the seventeenth century and is called Krishnagita Arjungita. Prose translations began to appear from the late nineteenth century, the earliest being Gyan Prakash, composed by Kanhaiyalal Alakh Vihari published from Gyani Press, Agra, in 1863; followed by the Bhagavad Gita translation by Munshi Shyam Sunderlal Banarsi and published from Newal Kishore Press, Lucknow, in 1884; then came Falsafa-e Uluhiyat by Pandit Janakinath Madan Dehalvi published from Ram Narayan Press, Mathura, in 1922. By the 1920s, these translations gathered momentum and we have many such translations from big and small presses in Agra, Mathura, Gorakhpur, Lucknow and so on.
The transliterations and commentaries of the standard 701 shlokas divided into eighteen chapters in the Bhagavad Gita do not hold much interest for me, though incidentally some bear evocative titles such as Naghma-e-Ilahi (The Song of God), Naghma-e-Touheed (The Song of Unitarianism), Rah-e-Maghfirat (The Road to Salvation); instead I want to talk about the translations in verse (manzum) of which fifteen have been listed in various bibliographies. I will look at the popular verse translations by Tamanna Lakhnavi called Bhagvat Gita Manzuma-e Tamanna: Gita Mahatam-o Krishn Dhyan Darpan (1913), and the more popular one by Khwaja Dil Muhammad called Dil Ki Gita (1944), and Anwar Jalalpuri’s Urdu Shairi Mein Gita: Naghma-e Ilm-o-Amal (2013). Using the classical Persian style of the masnavi, the Urdu poet has tried to tell the story of the human heart that transcends its time and circumstance, and address questions that have troubled mortals since time immemorial: Who is man? What is the spirit? What is life? What is death? Does God exist?
Khwaja Dil Muhammad’s Dil Ki Gita was first published in 1944 from Lahore and republished by the National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) in 2004. A bit of a maverick who wrote on mathematics and was Principal, Islamia College, and had also translated the Sikh holy text Japji Sahib into Urdu, he employed simple language shorn of literary excess and embellishment. His Dil Ki Gita proved to be so popular that its third edition came out a year later and its translator was given an award of one thousand rupees by the Punjab government; this new edition carried glowing tributes from his contemporaries such as Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, Dr Lakshman Swaroop, among others. In his preface, he explains how he took the help of two learned gentlemen, Swami Manishwar Anandji, who read every word he wrote and compared it against the original shlokas, and Dr Gauri Shankar, MA, PhD, Professor of Sanskrit, Government College in Lahore, who also compared Dil Muhammad’s version with the original. Where necessary, he has also given notes and explanations; so in a sense this is not only a fairly authentic but a modern, one can even say scientific translation, culled from the commentaries by Shankaracharya and Tilak. A note bearing the title ‘Paigham-e-Amal’ carries the forty-seventh shloka from the second adhyay and serves as a dedication:
Tujhe karm karna hai o marde kaar
Nahin iske phal par, tujhe ekhtiyar
Kiye ja amal aur na dhundh iska phal
Amal kar, amal kar, na ho be amal
The introduction in the text, which is divided into sections each explaining concepts such as parmatma, aatma, tanasukh, parkriti, nijaat ke teen raastey: (1) karam marg (raah-e-amal), nishkaam karm, yog, tap aur daan; (2) bhakti marg, (raah-e-ishq o muhabbat); (3) gyan marg (rah-e-irfan). The segment on Parmeshwar (Khuda) contains the nub of the debate: ‘Sabse pehla aur sabse aham sawal Khuda ki hasti ka hai. Kya Khuda hai? Gita jawab deti hai ‘Khuda hai balke Khuda hi hai.’ And this he takes as a testament of wahdat or unitarianism. Call it fitrat or nature, but whatever you see in the world around you is Khuda hi ka zahur (manifestation of God). Urging the students of truth (taliban-e-haq) to search for the answers to all the questions that have bedeviled man since time immemorial, he writes:
Azal se thii maujood hasti meri
Azal se thii maujood hasti teri
Yeh raaje bhi aur yeh khalqat tamam
Hamesha se hain aur rahenge madaam
Dil Muhammad also points out how the Gita offers perspectives that differ from the Islamic perspecti
ve:
Badlata hai insaan libaas-e-kuhn
Naya jaama karta hai phir zeb-e-tan
Issi tarah qaalib badalti hai rooh
Naye bhes mein phir nikalti hai rooh
The first adhyay has been translated by Dil Muhammad as follows:
Dhritrashta ne kaha:
Kurkshet ki dharam bhoomi pe jab
Mile pandavon se mere laal sab
To Sanjay bata unka sab haal chaal
Sanjay ne kaha:
Maharaj! aayi nazar jis gharhi
Saf aarah sipah Pandavon ki khadi
And Arjun’s bedili (listlessness) is described thus:
Jigar ki jigar se ladai hai aaj
Ke ladne ko bhai se bhai hai aaj
Huwa Arjun ke dil ko ranj o malal
Kaha is tarah hoke gham se nidhaal
Maharaj yeh kya hai darpesh aaj
Ke ladne ko hai khoye se khoya aaj
The oft-repeated shloka regarding amal and especially meaningful in the context of Arjun’s inaction:
sannyāsah karmayogaśra nihśreyasakarāvubhau
tayostu karmasannyāsāt karmayogo viśisyate
Has been translated as follows:
Kahi, sunke, bhagvaan ne phir ye baat
Hain tark aur amal donon raahe najaat
Fazeelat mein lekin hai badh kar amal
Ke tark amal se hai behtar amal
In the end, the Gita’s lesson is to prepare a ‘fauq-ul bashar insaan’ (superman), one affected by neither joy nor sorrow, fear nor anger:
Jo sukh se sukhi ho na dukh se dukhi
Na khauf usko aaye na ghussa kabhi
Coming to our third and most recent example, Anwar Jalalpuri’s Urdu Shairi Mein Gita, which was published in 2013 and released by Akhilesh Yadav and Murari Bapu, the poet has attempted to explain the meaning in simple language and thus expanded the 701 shlokas to 1761 couplets. Dedicated to the syncretic Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb of India, and to all the sharif people who wish for peace the world over, it has a foreword by the Hindi poet Gopaldas Neeraj and a preface by Uday Prakash Singh, so it covers a gamut of political shades and opinions. For all its political correctness, it is by far the most lyrical (despite its chhoti behar or short metre) possibly because its translator was himself a fine poet. Every adhyay begins with a saransh that contains a key to understanding each chapter, there is drama and urgency in the build-up to the point where Arjun’s dialogue with Shri Krishanji Maharaj begins:
Thhii tayyar Bhishm pitamah ki fauj
Garajdaar jaise samandar ki mauj
As Arjun sits dejected in his chariot, his bow and arrow slipping from his hand, Krishna says:
Ai Arjun! Hawaon ka rukh morh de
Yeh na-mardi aur buzdili chorh de…
Uthho jang ke waste uthh parho
Le haath mein asla uthh parho…
And then moving on through the mysteries of revelation...
Yeh ek gyan hai aur ek raaz bhi
Yeh mere batane ka andaz bhi
And in the end Arjun responds:
Ai Aaqa! Meri ab yeh ankhein khulin
Mujhe rehmatein barkatein ab miliin
Jo thhe mujh mein shak khatam sab ho gaye
Mere dil mein jalne lage ab diye
To conclude, mention must be made of two excellent verse translations of the Gita in Urdu published in Pakistan: the one by Abdul Azeez Khalid published from Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu, Karachi, and the other by Shanul Haq Haqqi published in India by the Anjuman-e-Taraqqi (Hind), contain immaculate translations from the Sanskrit original which maintain the same word lengths for each shloka as in the original. Sample the following:
tasmādasaktahḥ satatam kārya karma samācara
asakto hyācaran karmam paramāpnoti pūrusah
Vo hokar be niyaaz apne amal ke ijra se yaksar
Karega gar riyaazat to rahega afzal va bartar
And:
yadā yadā hi dharmasya glānirbhavati bhārata
abhyutthānamadharmasya tadātmānam srjāmyaham
paritrānāya sādhūnām vināśāya ca duskrtām
dharmasamsthāpanārthāya sambhavāmi yuge yuge
Jahaan mein dharm jab bigde, ast ka jab bhi ho ghalb
To aata hun main Arjun! Bol karne dharm ka baala
Chalaa aata hun main bhakton ko har yug aasra dene
Badhaane dharm ki shakti, shareeron ko sazaa dene
Footnote
8 ON RETURNING FROM DHAKA
* The visit to Dhaka, during 11–14 January 2010, was to participate in the ‘Leaders of Influence Programme’ run by the Asia Foundation and USAID.
AFTERWORD
THIS COLLECTION OF ESSAYS – of varying lengths, on vastly differing topics - is in the nature of a celebration. It’s akin to opening the doors of my house and saying: Come in, come and see who I am. Come and celebrate my festivals, relive my memories, travel with me, share my doubts and dilemmas. Yes, I am different, but then who isn’t in a country as plural, as multi-cultural, as multi-lingual and multi-ethnic as ours? Is an Asamiya-speaking, rice-eating, Mekhla-chador-wearing woman from the banks of the mighty Brahmaputra not different from a Punjabi-speaking, makki-ki-roti-and-sarson-ka-saag-eating, salwar-kameez-wearing woman from the ‘land of five rivers’? Are geographical, cultural, linguistic differences erased by the commonality of religion alone? Am I different from them simply because, in the mix of all other differences, you throw in the difference of religion? Does my being a Muslim make me different from others, to the extent of constituting a threat to the idea of being Indian? I sincerely hope not.
Despite what the proponents of majoritarianism might say, all Indians are not cut from the same cloth. We each have our differences: linguistic, culinary, cultural, ethnic and, indeed, religious. Shouldn’t these dissimilarities be a cause for rejoicing, I want to ask those who want to flatten out differences because they equate ‘difference’ with ‘deviation’? Must the ‘other’ be alien and, therefore, frightening?
In the very ordinariness of the events, people, places, occasions, sentiments brought to life through these short essays, possibly you will find an echo of your own lives. Possibly, there will be something here to make you pause and share my delight in my cultural legacy, or grieve with me when I see the richly-textured tapestry of my country being torn by divisive, communal forces. Possibly, then I will stop hearing the exclamation that has haunted me my entire adult life: ‘Oh, but you don’t look like a Muslim!’ Possibly then I will also free myself from the tag of ‘Indian Muslim/Muslim Indian’.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I AM GRATEFUL TO THE many people who commissioned some of these essays for publication in their newspapers and journals. These essays have since been tweaked, rewritten, expanded or updated in many ways. Nevertheless, I wish to acknowledge and thank those who thought of asking me to write on some of these topics for the Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, The Friday Times, Scroll, The Wire, The Hindu, etc. In particular, Renuka Narayanan, Devyani Onial, Raza Rumi, Arunava Sinha, Sidharth Bhatia. I am especially thankful to Arunava Sinha, fellow traveller and translator, who as Books Editor of Scroll has never turned down a piece that speaks of inclusion and syncretism and, in many instances, has been the first to seize an opportunity to commission something that is topical yet timeless. I am grateful to my editor Rahul Soni for his immaculate editing and imaginative restructuring of the contents.
I must acknowledge the use of the following: extracts from In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust taken from https://as.vanderbilt.edu/koepnick/AestheticNegativity_f06/materials/texts/proust_swanns%20way.htm; and Agha Shahid Ali’s translation of the Faiz ghazal in his The Rebel’s Silhouette: Selected Poems, University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.
About the Book
What does it mean to be Muslim in India?
What does it mean to look like one’s religion?
Does one’s faith determine how one is perceived?
Is there a secular ideal one is supposed to live up to?
> Can people of different faiths have a shared culture, a shared identity?
India has, since time immemorial, been a plural, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society, where various streams have fed into and strengthened each other, and where dissimilarities have always been a cause for rejoicing rather than strife. These writings, on being Muslim in India, by Rakhshanda Jalil – one of the country’s foremost literary historians and cultural commentators – excavate memories, interrogate dilemmas, and rediscover and celebrate a nation and its syncretic culture.
But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim is a book that every thinking Indian must read.
About the Author
RAKHSHANDA JALIL is a writer, critic and literary historian. She has published over twenty books and written over fifty academic papers and essays. Her book on the lesser-known monuments of Delhi, Invisible City, continues to be a bestseller. Her most recent works include: the translations The Sea Lies Ahead, Intizar Husain’s seminal novel on Karachi, and Traitor, Krishan Chander’s Partition novel; an edited volume of critical writings on Ismat Chughtai called An Uncivil Woman; a literary biography of the Urdu poet Shahryar; The Great War: Indian Writings on the First World War; Preeto and Other Stories: The Male Gaze in Urdu; and, most recently, Kaifiyat, a translation of Kaifi Azmi’s poems. She runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi–Urdu literature and culture. In 2016, she was awarded the Kaifi Azmi Award for her contribution to Urdu.
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But You Don't Look Like a Muslim Page 19