To make India a welfare state was the vision of Nehru, but his socialistic pattern of society did not fully evolve. Traces of the miserable plight of farmers and workers manifest in Urdu literature of the period, says MADAN lAll MANCHANDA
Some 100 years ago, Mahatma Gandhi had said that villages are the soul of India. He had started his first Satyagraha by visiting villages of Champaran, a district in Bihar, in April 1917. There, he listened to the complaints of farmers who had been forced by the British Government to grow indigo on their land; indigo was used to make dye. An ultimatum was given to Mahatma Gandhi to leave. His response was that he wouldn’t but was ready to bear the penalty for civil disobedience. As the resistance caused no violence, Gandhi was spared. However, the struggle against forced cultivation went on. The protests and hunger strikes ultimately ended with the abolition of forced cultivation of indigo.
According to noted historian Irfan Habib, this great struggle of the Indian peasantry for bread and land triggered a series of movements. It led to the Ahmedabad Mill Strike for economic justice in 1918. What followed was the Kheda Satyagraha of revenue enhancement in 1918, the All-India April Satyagraha against Rowlatt Acts in 1919, and finally the Non-Cooperation Movement, also known as the Khilafat Movement, which went on till 1922. Mahatma Gandhi, with his unique political philosophy, had shown a way from the darkness of slavery and exploitation into the light of liberation. He had created a revolutionary stir in all corners of the country, giving rise to a new spirit of patriotism and humanism.
It’s interesting to note that at that very same time, history was to witness the emergence of revolutionary ways of thinking even in other parts of the world. This was the time when thinkers like Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud challenged accepted ideas and left a set of new ideas for the generations to come. Karl Marx’ ideas had caused a stir in Russia and destabilised social stratification. Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, Henri Bergson’s Concept of Time, and Albert Einstein’s Theories on space and energy had given rise to small revolutions that were growing larger in the world.
As for India, Rabindranath Tagore, the first Nobel laureate of Asia, had championed the cause of a humanitarian approach towards the impoverished men and women in his country. He was shocked at the plight of women working in mud and knee-deep water in paddy fields. Through his legendary novels, poems and stories, he had awakened the conscience of other Indians and promoted universal brotherhood and humanism.
The influence of other fiction writers like Sarat Chandra is also manifest in Urdu literature. In Tarana-e-Hindi, Mohd Iqbal promoted communal harmony. In the following lines, he cries out in disgust against the system that was shockingly unfair to farmers. He wrote: “Jis khet se dehkan ko muyusar nahi rozi/Us khet ke har khosha-e-gandham ko jala do’. (If field harvest does not provide sustenance to a farmer/Then let each and every sheaf of wheat be burnt to ashes.)
Faced with a tough social situation after Independence, India struggled to build dams and work on irrigation projects to meet home demands. One-seventh of the world’s population lived in India! lauding the accomplishment of the country in such a scenario, H Appleby, an American expert concluded his historic report by saying: “Considering the magnitude of the gigantic work, in no other part of the world in recent times, so much was achieved in a relatively short time period.”
Therefore, to belittle the monumental achievement of self-sufficiency in the Nehruvian era is ridiculous. In the backdrop of the Bengal famine during British time, wheat was imported from Australia and food grain from the US. India has also had to seek aid under Pl-480. But eventually, the new nation adopted a different approach. A sense of the challenges facing the nation can be gathered from the fact that a major wheat-producing area of West Punjab had gone to Pakistan. To add to that, there was an influx of refugees in the country as a result the Partition — the biggest migration ever known in the history of mankind. But the nation was brave. “India is used to famine,” they said and got down to work. The resultIJ Not only were the home needs met and imports completely done away with, India was also able to export wheat and other food grains to other countries. All thanks to the Green Revolution.
Further, to improve the living conditions of the huge population, industrialisation was the need of the hour. Mahatma Gandhi was in favour of the promotion of cottage industries and was against reckless exploitation of natural resources as it could lead to environmental degradation. Ehsan Danish, another Urdu poet, echoes this vision of industrialisation to wipe out hunger and starvation in the following lines: “Hind ke iflas-e-nazeba pe dhawa bol do/Khol do har qadam pe karkhane khol do/Karkhane voh ke mun takta rahey jhuk kar falak/Dil hila de kohisaron ke machinon ki dhamak’
(Mount a powerful attack on woefully inept poverty of India/Set up workshops at each and every step/Such unmatched workshops that sky may look down at in wonder/And that the roaring thunder of the machines may shake mountains).
Thus, a great change was ushered in under the influence of contemporary knowledge. There was a strong wave of social reform intertwined with a sense of patriotism. Culturally, there was a healthy tradition founded by Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali and Mohd Iqbal. This was followed and advanced by the likes of Josh, Firaq, Majaz, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Akhtar ul Iman, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Ehsan Danish, and Ali Sardar Jafri. Direct as well as indirect links with Marxist socialism can be seen in the works of the progressive poets. For instance: “Rajkumari jhoola jhooley/ Daasi usey jhoolaye/log kehan phal karmon ka/Mein kahoon unhe ye/Daata mujh se na dekha jaye’
(The princess enjoys swinging in a hanging seat/The maid gives a push to the hanging seat to move it to and fro/People say it is the fruit of the one’s good deeds/But I say it is sheer injustice/My God I am ill at ease to see and bear it).
Further, literature in the form of novels, too, proved to be the vehicle of change. Munshi Premchand portrayed the misery of peasants in his short stories and novels. Infused with a strong sense of love for the nation and its people, his works portray the complexity underlying the ‘simple’ lifestyle of the common people.
Azam Ali, Abbas Hussaini, Sudarshan and Sultan Haider’s stories, too, speak volumes about the reality of those times. Angaray, the famous collection of short stories by Sajjad Zaheer, reflects the miserable conditions that the masses were living in. The second generation of Urdu short story writers painted a painful picture of the economic and social consequences of the nation’s past. Krishan Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Hayatullah Ansari, Upendranath Ashk, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Balwant Singh, and later Anwar Azim, Jeelani Bano, Hajra Masroor, Khadija Mastoor and Meem Meem Rajinder wrote about the oppressed.
Freudian influence can also be seen in the literature of this period. It’s evident in the works of Noon Meem Rashid, Meeraji, Qayyum Nazar, Salam Machli Shehri, Krishan Mohan, and Balraj Komal. There is an acute shortage of good dramas in Urdu literature. But in prose, some light inshias occupy a distinct position. Maulana Azad, Dr Zakir Husain, Khwaja Ghulam Saiyidain, and Mohammad Mujeeb contributed to this genre.
India is known as the world’s largest democracy. The poets who wrote about democracy were Kaifi Azmi, Ali Sardar Jafri, Naresh Kumar Shad, and Sahir ludhianvi. In particular, Kaifi Azmi, a great advocate of socialism, has been described as the red rose of Urdu poetry by Sajjad Zaheer. The fragrance of Kaifi’s creative thoughts still lingers on. The attack by China in 1962 came as a big jolt to the progressive movement in India. Kaifi expressed his resentment in Aawara Sajde, which won him the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award.
Sahir ludhianvi delivers a powerful blow to the social system that permits extremes of poverty and wealth, in these lines: “Faslenkat ke mehnat kash ghalle ke dher lagain ge/Jagiron ke malik aa kar sab poonji le jaenge/Bookhe dehqano ke ghar baniye ki kurki aae gee/Aur karze ke sood mein koi gori bechi jaegi’
(After sheering crop, the serfdom will pile up huge stacks of crop yield/The land owner will come to take away the entire produce/The famished farmers will get only money lender’s decree served on them/And for settlement of interest on the borrowed money, a fair damsel perforce would be sold).