A Thousand Yearnings

by Ralph Russell

  Azad thought to himself,‘I shan’t do such a stupid thing again. It’s up to me whether I eat in a restaurant or not, but I don’t have to advertise the fact. From now on I’ll be more discreet.’

  ‘Well’, said Khoji, ‘now what about it? You thought you could make a fool of me; but now the Maulvi Sahib has told you off. I bet you won’t go again in a hurry!’

  ~

  The Impact of Hali’s Musaddas

  A great role in winning acceptance for Sir Sayyid’s ideas was played by a long poem of general referred to as Hali’s Musaddas, because it is in the musaddas form, that is, in stanzas of six lines. First published in 1879, its actual title is The Flow and Ebb of the Tide of Islam (Madd o Jazr i Islam). The first stanzas were quoted earlier; after that Hali goes on to contrast the present benighted state of the Muslims with the past glorious achievements of Islam, recounting the social and religious revolution that the coming of Muhammad brought to Arabia and the cultural achievements in subsequent centuries which put the Muslim world far in advance of contemporary Europe. Then he returns to themes of the present decline,and urges his contemporaries to take inspiration from their glorious past and again make their mark in the world.

  The poem quickly won widespread popularity. It owed much of its success to two things. First, just because it was a poem, and while the new prose was still trying to establish itself, poetry had an immediate appeal as the medium of serious literature. Secondly, it celebrated the past glories of Islam. This would strike a chord in the hearts of the conservatives and would predispose them to listen, however reluctantly, when he went on to draw the contrast between past glory and present decline and to prescribe the cure.

  A movement which set out to re-examine everything in the Muslim heritage could hardly ignore poetry, and both Nazir Ahmad and Hali turned their attention to it. Their assessment of it is startling. Nazir Ahmad writes:

  What is there in our poetry except indecency and playing at love?

  Hali is even more vitriolic. Here is the relevant section of the musaddas (given here in a prose translation):

  That foul collection of verses and odes, which stinks worse than a cesspool, which has an impact in the world no less than an earthquake, and which makes the angels in heaven feel shame at it, has been the ruin of learning and religion. Such is the role among our arts and sciences of the art of literature. If there is any punishment for the composing of depraved verse, if the telling of vain lies is impermissible, then that court in which God is judge, and in which retribution of good and bad deeds is decreed, will release all other sinners and fill hell with our poets.

  There is a certain unconscious irony in these passages. The theme of Nazir Ahmad’s article on God’s vicegerency echoes one of the major themes of Urdu poetry. As for Hali, he was himself a ghazal poet, and a good one. Among Hali’s later works is Poetry and Poetics (Muqaddama i Sher o Shairi), published in 1893, in which he undertook a critical assessment of the whole body of Urdu poetry, with proposals for reform in the light of the demands of the new age which had now dawned. In it his tone was much more restrained than it had been in his musaddas; and it is significant too that, although he wrote Poetry and Poetics as an (inordinately long) preface to a collection of his verse, that verse still includes much that does not conform to his prescriptions. It is not surprising that these strictures on poetry were generally ignored. Classical poetry continued to make a universal appeal—as it still does.

  But in other respects, the impact of the musaddas was unquestioned. Sir Sayyid himself rated its value to the New Light extremely highly, so much so that he wrote to Hali:

  Yes, it was I who urged you to write it, and I rate this so high among my stock of good deeds that when (on Judgement Day) God will ask me, ‘What have you brought here?’ I will say, ‘I have brought the musaddas which I got Hali to write: nothing more.’

  * For the full story, with much colourful detail, see p.124.

  * A Persian verse. He means,‘Just see how completely conditions have changed.’

  * The second part of an Urdu proverb,‘It is no good repenting now that the sparrows have gleaned the field’—i.e. it’s no use crying over spilt milk.

  †Traditions: see note p. 85.

  * Ekka: see note p. 87.

  * Azad means free, but its senses range from liberty to license to ‘freethinking’.

  Satire in a Changing Society

  AKBAR ILAHABADI

  The Aligarh movement did not win all its battles. The passionate hopes that Sir Sayyid expressed in his letters from London were to a great extent unrealized. He himself virtually abandoned his aim of spreading modern knowledge through the medium of Urdu, and the language of instruction in the Aligarh College, except in the traditional ‘Oriental’ subjects, was English (and still is in the Aligarh Muslim University). His ideal student who ‘wants to acquire knowledge because he values it’ was a rarity, and for the most part the student who came to Aligarh continued the tradition that he had deplored, and was still one who did not feel ‘any other motive for study but the desire for government service’. By the time the first generations of students had passed through the Aligarh College, reflection on their experience had produced a reaction against the wholesale acceptance of Sir Sayyid’s views.

  This found its most effective expression in the satirical verse of Akbar Ilahabadi, a poet who looks at the conflict between the New Light and the Old but refuses to give indiscriminate support to either. For Sir Sayyid’s efforts to improve the lot of the Muslims and to make them see the advantages of learning from the British, he has a genuine respect. But he does not think Sir Sayyid’s efforts are in any way adequate to produce the results he wants. He is opposed to the extremism that maintains the old just because it is old or embraces the new just because it is new. But in the conditions of his time, he understandably concentrates his fire on the excesses of the New Light.

  ~

  Akbar shares with both the Old Light and the New a sense of traumatic change:

  The minstrel and the music—both have changed

  Our sleep has changed, the tale we told has changed

  The nightingale now sings a different song*

  The colour in the cheeks of spring has changed

  Another kind of rain falls from the sky

  The grain that grows upon our land has changed

  A revolution has brought this about

  In all the realm of nature all has changed.

  He also shares with the New Light the conviction that changed times demand changes in outlook; but at the same time Muslims must be loyal to all that is best in the legacy of the past and must make their own active contribution to the process of change:

  Akbar does not deny the need for moving with the times

  But understand that loyalty has its importance too.

  Why feel so proud because the times have changed you?

  True men are those whose efforts change the times.

  He portrays himself humorously as caught in the crossfire between the two:

  I wear a loincloth—and am looked at with suspicion and contempt.

  I put on trousers—and arouse men’s anger and hostility.

  Perhaps I’d better drop them both and go around with nothing on—

  Then maybe men will feel my charm and I shall feel their sympathy.

  He disapproves of Sir Sayyid’s complete identification with British aims, for he is alarmed at the prospect of the evils which this identification is likely to produce:

  Sir Sayyid sought—no doubt of it—well-being for us Muslims.

  But lectures and subscriptions? How can these set us on course?

  Mere nails and tacks will not avail to mend the throne of honour;

  Do not expect great horsemanship from him who shoes the horse.

  Sir Sayyid had an intellect that radiated learning

  And strength enough to vanquish any foe you care to mention

  And I for one would readily have counted
him a prophet

  But that there never was a prophet yet who drew a pension.*

  The British, says Akbar, did not (as Sir Sayyid liked to argue) come to India as the Muslims’ friends. They hold all the power, and they use it in their own interests:

  The Englishman can slander whom he will

  And fill your head with anything he pleases.

  He wields sharp weapons,Akbar. Best stand clear!

  He cuts up God himself into three pieces.â€

  The British have the impudence to accuse the Muslims of having spread Islam by the sword. Akbar retorts:

  You never ceased proclaiming that Islam spread by the sword:

  You have not deigned to tell us what it is the gun has spread.

  If they promote those Indians who support them, this does not alter the overall picture, no matter how much their supporters praise the New Light:

  The light that only lights the path to plunder

  I will not call ‘refinement’s radiance’.

  You ruin thousands to promote a hundred:

  I’ll not call that ‘humanity’s advance’.

  and

  If fifty to a hundred of them get good posts, what of it?

  No nation yet was ever based on fifty to a hundred.

  For the old Muslim elite, he wryly says, British rule has brought only deprivation:

  You have no gold: how can you live in style?

  You have no mistress: how can you have fun?

  And if you want to end it all—all right—

  But then how can you when you have no gun?

  He comments on the founding of the Mohamedan Anglo-Oriental College with a somewhat sardonic humour and a warning against neglecting the importance of spiritual values:

  God confer on Aligarh a cure for every malady

  And on its students, scions of the gentry and nobility

  Refined, and elegant, and smart, and clean, and neat, and radiant,

  Hearts full of good intentions, minds blessed with originality,

  They ride the highways of the East, and plod along the western ways,

  Each one of them, without a doubt, everything you would have him be.

  No Indian fair, no English miss, diverts them from their chosen path;

  Their hearts are innocent and pure; their books absorb their energy.

  All of them dwell in College, still without experience of life;

  They do not know what lies ahead, nor what should be their destiny.

  The flame of faith burns in their hearts, but those who guard it are not firm

  And logic’s winds may blow it out, or youthful immaturity,

  Ensnaring them, and teaching them to hold religion in contempt

  And, seeking fame, to bring to nought the ways of their community.

  I pray then: May the boons of knowledge and of understanding be

  Bestowed on them by their professors and their God—respectively.

  With the passing of time he felt that events were proving that his fears had been warranted:

  What our respected Sayyid says is good.

  Akbar agrees that it is sound and fair.

  But most of those who head this modern school

  Neither believe in God, nor yet in prayer

  They say they do, but it is plain to see

  What they believe in is the powers that be.

  And indeed faith in the rightness of all things British did indeed become, for many, their strongest article of faith. For others, their traditional faith was overlaid by Western values:

  His rosary is sandalwood. Alas!

  Its fragrance is imprisoned in French polish.

  For Akbar, it is obvious that science cannot explain everything, because as he puts it, God is beyond the range of telescopes. He simply cannot understand why people should want to question this:

  Why all this concentration on the problem?

  You ask what God is? God is God. What else?

  He mocks the modern student whose knowledge is preserved not in his head, but in his notebooks, and imagines his embarrassment after death when according to Muslim belief two angels visit the grave to interrogate him:

  When the angels both appeared inside the grave to question me

  I myself intended to explain things comprehensively.

  Delving in my pocket for my notebook, I was shocked to find

  I had lost it on the way there—or, perhaps, left it behind.

  Much confused I said,‘I really must apologize to you,

  I have left my notebook in the world—there’s nothing I can do.’

  Such students think that their modern syllabus encompasses all knowledge and that the application of this knowledge is sufficient to solve all difficulties:

  Poor fellows, how can they believe that there’s a throne of God?

  It wasn’t on the maps they studied in geography.

  No more they fear the day of retribution;

  They concentrate on doing what they like.

  What if the bridge to Paradise is narrow?

  They say they’ll ride across it on a bike.

  On occasion he sarcastically enlists their most profoundly held beliefs of the British and their admirers to support his conclusion:

  Today when my petition was rejected

  I asked the Sahib, feeling much dejected,

  ‘Where shall I go to now, Sir? Kindly tell.’

  He growled at me and answered,‘Go to Hell!’

  I left him, and my heart was really sinking;

  But soon I started feeling better, thinking,

  ‘A European said so! In that case

  At any rate there must be such a place!’

  Or he plays with concepts familiar to them in order to score off them. Thus, he represents an Indian as telling his British superior,

  Fate favoured you, kind sir: you grew from monkeyhood to manhood.

  See our ill-luck: once men, we grow more monkey-like each day.

  You say ‘There’s nothing after death’? What nonsense!

  Just look at us. We’re dead, and we’re still here.

  Sometimes his mockery is extremely bitter. He sees a generation of men arising whose whole aim is to forget all that their forefathers valued and to learn only what they need to learn to get a post, however menial, in the British administration:

  We do not learn the things we ought to learn—

  And lose what was already in our keeping;

  Bereft of knowledge, plunged in heedlessness,

  Alas! We are not only blind but sleeping.

  He jeers at them:

  Give up your literature, say I; forget your history

  Break all your ties with shaikh* and mosque—it could not matter less.

  Go off to school. Life’s short. Best not to worry overmuch.

  Eat English bread, and push your pen, and swell with happiness.

  He sums up their great achievements:

  What words of mine can tell the deeds of men like these, our nation’s pride?

  They got their B.A., took employment, drew their pensions and then died.

  So great is their refinement now, they’ve bid their parents’ home goodbye.

  They spend their lives in hotel rooms and go to hospital to die.

  What do they want with parents, or with maulvis, or with God?

  They owe their birth to doctors and their schooling to the state.

  He believes that modern education undermines morality:

  Praise be! Both wife and husband are refined.

  She feels no shame: he feels no indignation.

  More humorously, he depicts a male graduate addressing a female one:

  Both you and I have passed our graduation—

  Lie down, let’s have a learned conversation.

  By the time Akbar had got into his stride, self-important Indians who held minor posts in the service of the British Raj were fairly numerous. He ridicules their pretensions, their motives, and their methods of gaining
advancement:

  Look at the owl! What airs and graces! What a way to talk!

  Because the British told him he’s an honorary hawk!

  (The owl, in Urdu idiom,is a symbol of foolishness, not of wisdom.)

  Perched in their park the crow makes loyal speeches

  One day they’ll make him honorary nightingale.

  I’m actually a nightingale, but since I want to eat

  I pretend to be a parrot and accept a council seat.

  He is disgusted with what such people will do for the sake of a little cheap fame:

  They changed their fashions, left their homes, and got into the papers.

  But after all it doesn’t last. Death ended all their capers.

  When at a somewhat later stage political leaders emerged who expressed respectful criticism of British policies, he felt just as great a contempt for them and for their pathetic belief in the power of the press against so formidable an adversary. Their policy, he says, is,

  Faced with a gun, bring out a newspaper.

  The country swarms with editors and leaders

  Who can’t find any other games to play.

  They used to say the pickpocket is brother to thief

  They tell us now the editor is brother to the leader.

  Such leaders make great play with their deep sympathies for their suffering people. Akbar is not impressed:

  He made his speech with copious tears—and that is known as ‘policy’

  I thought he was my well-wisher—and that is called ‘stupidity’.

  In mourning for their nation’s plight they dine with the authorities.

  Our leaders suffer deeply for us, but they suffer at their ease.

  I must not be ungrateful: see the trouble that he takes—

  After each meal he eats he sends a photo of the cakes.

  Akbar sees this lack of genuine feeling for the poor as a characteristic of the well-to-do in general—as indeed it was. Sir Sayyid’s movement, for example, was concerned almost exclusively with the old Muslim elite. Their religion ought to impel them to do better: