By Dr Muhammad Ali Siddiqui
I was born in Amroha, India, on March 7, 1938, in a family of religious background and got my early education at Imam-ul-Madaris High School.My father was a rebel whose love for painting and décor took him to Calcutta to work for the New Theatres, a well-known film company. Whenever he came to Amroha, he discussed with his friends his memories of eminent stage and film personalities like Agha Hashar Kashmir, Ashok Kumar, Nawab Kashmiri, Noorjehan and Shaukat Husain Rizvi. He was greatly fascinated by his visit to Tagore’s Shanti Niketan.
Eagerness of the speaker whets the appetite of the listener. He created a circle of friends like Rais Amrohi and S.M. Taqi, etc. He told me about Tagore’s Kabuliwala when I didn’t know whether Tagore was the writer or the Kabuliwala himself.
I used to long for summer for mangoes and for stories of the weird characters — in the cruel afternoons of May and June when children were not allowed to go outside to protect them from the heat of blistering dusty-winds.
I vividly remember that Deputy Nazir Ahmed and Sadiq Husain Sardhanvi’s novels and monthly Ismat were fervently read in my house. Daily Madina was the only paper in the mid 40s which was circulated in the entire Haveli. Islam and Islamic things were hot currency in the family.
I migrated to Pakistan in 1948 and was admitted in Class VIII in CMS High School. The school followed the syllabus of the Bombay Province having seven standards or eleven classes for passing matriculation. 1953, the year when I matriculated, was the last year of Bombay’s syllabus for Sindh schools.
The Karachi incident took place only six years after the trauma of partition and the riots that accompanied it. I remember the railway journey from Delhi to Monabao and walking on foot toward Khokrapar; from Khokrapar we then travelled to Karachi. I can’t describe the delight of being in Karachi. It was the city of lights, the capital of Pakistan. Pakistan was not just the promised land but a “heaven for my family”.
The year 1953 was the year of Karachi students’ struggle against high fees. January 1953 saw the culmination of a long drawn out struggle of Democratic Students’ Federation against the government. The main leaders of students’ agitation were Adeeb-ul-Hasan Rizvi (now famous urologist), Muhammad Sarwar (later Dr Muhammad Sarwar) and S.M. Kazim, etc. Apart from the dead and wounded students, the car of the Minister of Education (Fazlur Rehman) was also torched. It was Karachi’s first turbulence and a traumatic situation.
The last two years of the Pakistan Movement were memorable years. Watching Quaid-i-Azam’s procession in Delhi in 1946, I hadn’t imagined that I would be a Pakistani citizen in a few years needing a visa to visit my birth place. And then, soon after my arrival in Karachi, I had to be in a city going through the worst trauma of lathi-charge, tear-gas and firing by the police on young students of a free country demanding affordable fees and other legitimate facilities. It was a unique experience to be shut indoors during the January 1953 riots fearing that the police could arrest any student carrying a school or college bag on the pretext of taking part in the agitation.
While at college I began writing simultaneously in English and Urdu. The English articles I sent to the Daily Leader were mainly on youth activities. However, my first Urdu article “Hamara Qaumi Dimagh” (Our National Mind) published in monthly Jam-i-Nau, drew an unusual welcome. The article discussed why we Pakistanis don’t see the emergence of the National Mind in our literature. In Europe all countries depict their national minds.
Pakistan, to me, appeared to be a country without a national mind. I also joined Weekly Almas as a part-time editor in 1955 and it was quite an unusual experience for a teenager writing in English and Urdu as well as editing a socio-political weekly. Almas ceased its publication after the 1958 Martial Law. In 1962, the Education Commission introduced the three-year BA course resulting in students’ unrest, picketing and demonstrations. Some 12 student leaders, including Fatehyab Ali Khan, Husain Naqi, Jahan Husain, Ali Mukhtar Rizvi, Mairaj Muhammad Khan, were extorted from Karachi. Some of them hid in S.M. Taqi’s (Editor Daily Jang) house. It was the third wave of countrywide agitation in my life: Struggle for freedom in 1946-1947, student unrest of 1953 and the 1962-63 student unrest. Perhaps it fell to only young students to expose the incompetence of our leaders who failed to achieve national integration and thus arrested the growth of democratic culture in the country. The four Martial Law regimes of 1958, 1969, 1977 and 1999 have gobbled up almost 32 years of our country’s life.
After popular protests against FM Ayub Khan, Gen. Yahya Khan, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and Lawyer’s Movement against Gen. Pervez Musharraf, now I see people groaning under high inflation, unemployment, targeted and untargeted killings in almost all provinces and US Drone attacks.
After my articles on John Elia, Anjum Aazmi and Qamar Hashmi, etc. appeared in Indus Times, Morning News invited me to write on literary topics. Late Safdar Barlas had asked Prof. Syed Mumtaz Husain to write for Dawn. He declined and, instead, recommended my name. I started writing for Dawn in 1964 and continued writing till 2003 under the pen name of Ariel, a column which gave me so much fame that I, as an Urdu writer, went into oblivion. From 2003 to date, Ariel has been appearing in another Karachi daily and it is now 47 years old which is quite a record for a literary column to survive that long. While writing as Ariel, I have covered almost all literary movements: Islamic Art, Art for Art Sake, Progressive Movement, Modernism, Existentialism and now Post-Modernism.
My first book Tawazun (a collection of critical writings) in 1976 was awarded the Best Book Award by the Pakistan Writer’s Council; later the translation of Bendetto Croce, father of Italian democracy and great philosopher of Aesthetics, was also adjudged as the Best Book of the Year in its category in 1979. Some critics wondered what made me translate an important work of a philosopher who is reckoned as an adversary of Marx. I did so because an adversary of Marx has also a right to be read by the progressive Urdu readers. After all he was also a progressive if he was leading his country towards popular democracy.
Of all my work what I cherish the most is my sense of wonder over the resilience of Pakistani people to fight against dictatorships, proving thereby that Pakistani literature has faithfully recorded the portrayal of my people’s struggle for democratic dispensation thus disproving the contention of the “Act for Act Sake” pundits who keep on aspiring for all that western literary movements which work against foundationalism (in religion and sciences), realism, humanism and dialectic progress of human civilisation.
I have always lent my support to social and political movements which have stood for progress. Nowadays it is post-modernism and the progressives are up against it. Previously they were against the autonomists in Literature who preferred Mythos against Logos as Karen Armstrong has beautifully explained. I see that it boils down to the Battle of Ideas between progress and status quo. In other words, between obscurantism and enlightenment. There is no doubt that all those who are for progress and enlightenment will triumph.
Yet it needs sacrifices and a number of people will have to exert themselves to reach the desired goal of emancipation from unacceptable prejudices.
I have seen man’s ascent to the moon and man’s degradation and brutality towards fellow humans in 1947 in the subcontinent and the piles of human skulls in Bosnia in 1994-95. I have seen unnecessary wars in the name of enlightenment and democracy which had, in essence, nothing to do with those concepts.
I have seen the failure of the North-South dialogue and World Social Forums reiterating that it is all an euphemism for the sway of the philosophy of corporate imperialism as the title of Chomsky’s book Profit over People states.
In spite of all the reasons to be a pessimist, I would like to believe that the creation of another (and better) world is possible.
I was born in Amroha, India, on March 7, 1938, in a family of religious background and got my early education at Imam-ul-Madaris High School.My father was a rebel whose love for painting and décor took him to Calcutta to work for the New Theatres, a well-known film company. Whenever he came to Amroha, he discussed with his friends his memories of eminent stage and film personalities like Agha Hashar Kashmir, Ashok Kumar, Nawab Kashmiri, Noorjehan and Shaukat Husain Rizvi. He was greatly fascinated by his visit to Tagore’s Shanti Niketan.
Eagerness of the speaker whets the appetite of the listener. He created a circle of friends like Rais Amrohi and S.M. Taqi, etc. He told me about Tagore’s Kabuliwala when I didn’t know whether Tagore was the writer or the Kabuliwala himself.
I used to long for summer for mangoes and for stories of the weird characters — in the cruel afternoons of May and June when children were not allowed to go outside to protect them from the heat of blistering dusty-winds.
I vividly remember that Deputy Nazir Ahmed and Sadiq Husain Sardhanvi’s novels and monthly Ismat were fervently read in my house. Daily Madina was the only paper in the mid 40s which was circulated in the entire Haveli. Islam and Islamic things were hot currency in the family.
I migrated to Pakistan in 1948 and was admitted in Class VIII in CMS High School. The school followed the syllabus of the Bombay Province having seven standards or eleven classes for passing matriculation. 1953, the year when I matriculated, was the last year of Bombay’s syllabus for Sindh schools.
The Karachi incident took place only six years after the trauma of partition and the riots that accompanied it. I remember the railway journey from Delhi to Monabao and walking on foot toward Khokrapar; from Khokrapar we then travelled to Karachi. I can’t describe the delight of being in Karachi. It was the city of lights, the capital of Pakistan. Pakistan was not just the promised land but a “heaven for my family”.
The year 1953 was the year of Karachi students’ struggle against high fees. January 1953 saw the culmination of a long drawn out struggle of Democratic Students’ Federation against the government. The main leaders of students’ agitation were Adeeb-ul-Hasan Rizvi (now famous urologist), Muhammad Sarwar (later Dr Muhammad Sarwar) and S.M. Kazim, etc. Apart from the dead and wounded students, the car of the Minister of Education (Fazlur Rehman) was also torched. It was Karachi’s first turbulence and a traumatic situation.
The last two years of the Pakistan Movement were memorable years. Watching Quaid-i-Azam’s procession in Delhi in 1946, I hadn’t imagined that I would be a Pakistani citizen in a few years needing a visa to visit my birth place. And then, soon after my arrival in Karachi, I had to be in a city going through the worst trauma of lathi-charge, tear-gas and firing by the police on young students of a free country demanding affordable fees and other legitimate facilities. It was a unique experience to be shut indoors during the January 1953 riots fearing that the police could arrest any student carrying a school or college bag on the pretext of taking part in the agitation.
While at college I began writing simultaneously in English and Urdu. The English articles I sent to the Daily Leader were mainly on youth activities. However, my first Urdu article “Hamara Qaumi Dimagh” (Our National Mind) published in monthly Jam-i-Nau, drew an unusual welcome. The article discussed why we Pakistanis don’t see the emergence of the National Mind in our literature. In Europe all countries depict their national minds.
Pakistan, to me, appeared to be a country without a national mind. I also joined Weekly Almas as a part-time editor in 1955 and it was quite an unusual experience for a teenager writing in English and Urdu as well as editing a socio-political weekly. Almas ceased its publication after the 1958 Martial Law. In 1962, the Education Commission introduced the three-year BA course resulting in students’ unrest, picketing and demonstrations. Some 12 student leaders, including Fatehyab Ali Khan, Husain Naqi, Jahan Husain, Ali Mukhtar Rizvi, Mairaj Muhammad Khan, were extorted from Karachi. Some of them hid in S.M. Taqi’s (Editor Daily Jang) house. It was the third wave of countrywide agitation in my life: Struggle for freedom in 1946-1947, student unrest of 1953 and the 1962-63 student unrest. Perhaps it fell to only young students to expose the incompetence of our leaders who failed to achieve national integration and thus arrested the growth of democratic culture in the country. The four Martial Law regimes of 1958, 1969, 1977 and 1999 have gobbled up almost 32 years of our country’s life.
After popular protests against FM Ayub Khan, Gen. Yahya Khan, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and Lawyer’s Movement against Gen. Pervez Musharraf, now I see people groaning under high inflation, unemployment, targeted and untargeted killings in almost all provinces and US Drone attacks.
After my articles on John Elia, Anjum Aazmi and Qamar Hashmi, etc. appeared in Indus Times, Morning News invited me to write on literary topics. Late Safdar Barlas had asked Prof. Syed Mumtaz Husain to write for Dawn. He declined and, instead, recommended my name. I started writing for Dawn in 1964 and continued writing till 2003 under the pen name of Ariel, a column which gave me so much fame that I, as an Urdu writer, went into oblivion. From 2003 to date, Ariel has been appearing in another Karachi daily and it is now 47 years old which is quite a record for a literary column to survive that long. While writing as Ariel, I have covered almost all literary movements: Islamic Art, Art for Art Sake, Progressive Movement, Modernism, Existentialism and now Post-Modernism.
My first book Tawazun (a collection of critical writings) in 1976 was awarded the Best Book Award by the Pakistan Writer’s Council; later the translation of Bendetto Croce, father of Italian democracy and great philosopher of Aesthetics, was also adjudged as the Best Book of the Year in its category in 1979. Some critics wondered what made me translate an important work of a philosopher who is reckoned as an adversary of Marx. I did so because an adversary of Marx has also a right to be read by the progressive Urdu readers. After all he was also a progressive if he was leading his country towards popular democracy.
Of all my work what I cherish the most is my sense of wonder over the resilience of Pakistani people to fight against dictatorships, proving thereby that Pakistani literature has faithfully recorded the portrayal of my people’s struggle for democratic dispensation thus disproving the contention of the “Act for Act Sake” pundits who keep on aspiring for all that western literary movements which work against foundationalism (in religion and sciences), realism, humanism and dialectic progress of human civilisation.
I have always lent my support to social and political movements which have stood for progress. Nowadays it is post-modernism and the progressives are up against it. Previously they were against the autonomists in Literature who preferred Mythos against Logos as Karen Armstrong has beautifully explained. I see that it boils down to the Battle of Ideas between progress and status quo. In other words, between obscurantism and enlightenment. There is no doubt that all those who are for progress and enlightenment will triumph.
Yet it needs sacrifices and a number of people will have to exert themselves to reach the desired goal of emancipation from unacceptable prejudices.
I have seen man’s ascent to the moon and man’s degradation and brutality towards fellow humans in 1947 in the subcontinent and the piles of human skulls in Bosnia in 1994-95. I have seen unnecessary wars in the name of enlightenment and democracy which had, in essence, nothing to do with those concepts.
I have seen the failure of the North-South dialogue and World Social Forums reiterating that it is all an euphemism for the sway of the philosophy of corporate imperialism as the title of Chomsky’s book Profit over People states.
In spite of all the reasons to be a pessimist, I would like to believe that the creation of another (and better) world is possible.
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