My problem with biographies of poets is that they sometimes further the project they actually mean to debunk: Mystification of the subject. An autobiography of Faiz Ahmed Faiz is even more daunting given the huge following the poet has all over the world, especially in the Indian sub-continent. Too much has been written about Faiz after his death in 1984 and every major and minor detail of his life has been meticulously examined.
However, what sets the book love and Resolution: Faiz Ahmed Faiz from earlier biographies is first, that the writer is Ali Madeeh Hashmi, writer, chronicler and translator and also the grandson of the poet. As such, the book is filled with verifiable anecdotes from friends and family. Second, love and Resolution is meticulously researched, drawing from a lot of pre-existing books on Faiz. As a result, the book hangs in a fine balance between an ode to an extraordinary grandfather and an objective analysis of the life and times of a revolutionary artiste.
love and Revolution begins with the death of Faiz and then jumps back 70 years to celebrate the poet’s long, fruitful and glorious life. However, the second chapter is devoted to Faiz’s father, Sultan Muhammad Khan, a man almost as interesting as Faiz. He was a mir munshi to the emir of Afghanistan, a law student at Cambridge, traveler and adventurer. In a single chapter, Hashmi relates the astounding story of Sultan Muhammad Khan’s rise from a labourer at lahore to the Afghan emir’s English tutor and later an official at his court and his ambassador to England. Sultan Mohammad Khan was also the emir’s biographer. There is a very intriguing story hiding in this short chapter, which, sufficiently elaborated could have been a rather interesting book. Once in a while, Hashmi almost gives in to the temptation and the handful of paragraphs dealing with Sultan Khan is a delight.
The book traces Faiz’s life from his birth at Sialkot, follows his days as a student at the Scotch Mission School and Murray College, his stint as a lecturer at Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental, his first love, and his interactions with other poets and intellectuals, most importantly Allama Iqbal, the poet and intellectual and one of Faiz’s earliest mentors. We also learn about his short stint as a captain in the British Indian army (later promoted to major and then to lieutenant colonel), his horrified accounts of the Partition on which he wrote quite extensively, though the most well-remembered and oft quoted is the first couplet of his poem Subh-e-Azadi (Dawn of Independence): “This stained light, this night-bitten dawn; This is not that long-awaited day break.”
Faiz’s involvement with labour unions and his life among the working class is also discussed as is his arrest in 1951 under the notorious Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. Two beautiful chapters are dedicated to Faiz’s life in jail, the work he did behind bars and how the incarceration moulded his later works. More importantly, it spells out the allegations that were brought against him during his time in jail, ‘that he was a Russian agent, that his wife was a British spy, that he was an atheist etc’.
However, the book is not limited to an annalistic study of Faiz’s life and his various achievements. It also looks at the people who helped in making Faiz the revolutionary and poet, most importantly his comrade and wife, Alys. Faiz’s reticence is also mentioned quite often as is his aloofness, which, considering his deep association with the politics of pre-Independent India and later sovereign Pakistan seems quite an anomaly. All through, Hashmi keeps coming back to the role of art in changing society, sometimes from Faiz’s point of view and sometimes through his own personal musings. At one point he notes, ‘What is the role, if any, of art in bringing about social changeIJ Is the artist obliged to pitch his art to a certain level of simplicity or complexity to suit his intended audienceIJ What should such an art look likeIJ’
Many people who are now icons in different fields also make entries. We learn that Zohra Sehgal, the wonderful actress and danseuse was betrothed to Faiz’s friend ‘Sahibzada’ Mahmooduzzafar who was also his political mentor and of Rajni Patel, one of the pioneers of the All India Progressive Writers’ Forum who also happens to be the grandfather of Ameesha and Ashmit Patel. We also learn that Faiz and Alys’s marriage contract, modeled on the contract of Mohammad Taseer’s marriage to Christabel (Alys’s sister) was later incorporated into Pakistan’s Muslim Family laws Ordinance.
Faiz’s role in the birth and development of several literary organisations is also elaborated upon: For example, while in England, Faiz helped form the Indian Progressive Writers’ Association in 1935 and later the All India Progressive Writers’ Association in 1936, the first national conference of which was held in lucknow and presided over by Munshi Premchand. We also learn that Faiz, in his capacity as the secretary of the Punjab branch of the Association edited Adab-e-latif, a progressive journal which published some of the most revolutionary works of Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai and Mumtaz Mufti and was shut down after the infamous indecency trials of Manto and Chughtai.
All in all, love and Revolution: Faiz Ahmed Faiz is a very informative account of the life, writings and political activism of not just Faiz but of a whole host of writers and intellectuals of pre-Independence India.
The reviewer is a research scholar at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia