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Mainstream, VOL L, No 8, February 11, 2012

Tribute: K.S. Duggal

Tuesday 14 February 2012

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A Many-Splendoured Creativity

by K.S. DUGGAL

That he was one of the most outstanding poets of our times has been discussed at various platforms by many not excluding the present writer and also recognised by the coveted Jnanpith Award and several other national and international honours. I propose in this short piece to give a glimpse of one of Ali Sardar Jafri’s less noticed, albeit highly significant, aspects of character which led to a kind of creativity that remains unequalled.

Sardar was a no-stranger when he came to be related—a relation fondly cherished. My wife Ayesha and the renowned Sultana Jafri, Sardar’s spouse, are sisters. Ayesha is the younger sister. Having decided to tie the wedlock when internecine communal carnage was at its peak in the Punjab immediately after Partition, Sardar was the first Muslim relative who visited us in our house at Jalandhar where I had been sent to set up a new Radio Station. His visit was like a whiff of fress air in the communally choked atmosphere obtaining in the Punjab those days with the influx of hordes of refugees and unending caravans of Muslim evacuees crissing over to Pakistan. I remember sitting on our veranda flushed with the bracing sunlight of the Punjab winter. The eminence of Sardar, the poet, was so pervasive that not for a moment did it occur to my refugee parents that their Muslim neighbours had only the other day hounded them out of their hearth and home and rendered them what they were. Sardar was the most welcome guest who stayed back for lunch and left late in the afternoon to participate in a mushaira in the town.

To my mind that was the most outstanding feature of Sardar’s character. He was so human, so all-embracing, so much away from any shade of narrow-mindedness that he made friends and admirers which at times became a whole-time job to cope with. Every time he stayed with us, our drawing room was exclusively left at his disposal for his visitors at all odd hours. And they were no ordinary people. It could be D.P. Dhar, Nikhil Chakravartty, Shankar Prasad or Shovana Narayan with their limousines parked outside our house.

Ali Sardar Jafri by any measure was the best specimen of a post-independence Indian Muslim. Independence did not come to him as a gift; he had to struggle hard for it, court arrests several times and undergo imprisonment. One of the stalwarts of the Progressive Writers’ Movement, he remained steadfast, truly wedded to secular India. Unlike Saadat Hasan Manto and the like not for a moment did he think of opting for Pakistan. On the other hand he was the most ardent advocate of Indo-Pak amity. He earnestly prayed:

I wish for the day when
Hatred is drained away with tears
I wish for the day when
The Border becomes the kiss of lips.
A poet who was adored as much in Pakistan as in his own country.

A many-splendoured creativity, one of Ali Sardar’s passions was communal harmony; Hindu-Muslim understanding was closest to his heart. A large-hearted Muslim who believed that the Hindu majority, too, has its rights as much as the Muslims and other minorities in India. All his life, it was his endeavour to being them closer.

As a litterateur one of his not much noticed, and yet most significant, contribution was a series of splenddid volumes projecting Ghalib and Meer to Hindi readers and Kabir and Mira to Urdu readers. Apart from providing painfully researched, extensive introductions to the poets, he ensured the original text printed on opposite pages facing each other in Devnagiri and Persian scripts. Tastefully produced on Royal size format the publications are a feast for the eyes.

And how it was brought about was again a gift of the charm of Sardar’s personality and eminence as a poet. Towards the second half of the fifties, Sardar had one of his ordent admirers in Lala Yodh Raj, a business magnate in Mumbai. Out of his admiration for Sardar’s poetry he decided to set up what was known as the Hindustani Book Trust with himself, V. Shankar, the renowned aide of Sardar Patel, Syed Shaha-buddin, Dasnavi, a noted Maharashtrian intellec-tual, as Trustees. It was decided to project the best Urdu and Persian poetry to Hindi readers with scholarly introductions and adequate glossaries. Dr Mulk Raj Anand and Ali Sardar Jafri were nominated as Editors of the Trust publications.

A beginning was made with Ghalib in 1958, then came Meer in 1960, followed by Kabir in 1965, and Mira in 1970. With the interest in sophisticated publishing of the type in our country what it is, the activities of the Hindustani Book Trust started dwindling after the passing away of Lala Yodh Raj; while no new publications were launched, the printed volumes went out of print. Then in the late nineties another admirer of Sardar took fancy to the project. It was none other then the charming Kamna Prasad, an entrepreneur from Patna settled in Delhi. She brought out a reprint of Ghalib in 1997 under the imprint of Jaya Prakashan. This was followed by Kabir in 1999. Meer was in the press when Sardar himself bade farewell.

The publications of Ghalib and Meer, Kabir and Mira, in the elaborate format in which they were brought out and the pains taken in their compilation, remain an eternal tribute to Ali Sardar Jafri’s commitment to Hindu-Muslim amity and Hindustani culture.

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