August 15, 2004

Jamal Abro is among those rare authors who, by writing a single book, earn a high reputation envied by writers of dozens. Even if he had not later written his autobiography and articles on political, social and literary issues, his sole collection of short stories, Pashoo Pasha, would have been enough to give him a distinguished place in the annals of Sindhi literature. Written in the pioneering days of the Sindhi short story in the 1950s and the 60s, the stories and characters were inspired by real life situations and people and they motivated a whole generation of writers like Ali Baba to employ poignant realism to depict the social scene of Sindh.

Jamal Abro wrote the first story on karo-kari, “Seendh”, which portrays the plight of a teenage bride, who after being abused by her husband, falls in love with a young man from his paternal village. She asks for a divorce but for that her husband insists on the return of Rs2,000 he had paid her father for marrying her. The old man does not want to part with the money as a result she is denied a divorce. Finally she is hacked to death by her brother while she is going to see her beloved. After the brutal murder, her body is stripped to present the murder as a case of honour killing. While her body undergoes autopsy at a hospital, her father mourns that his daughter deserved Rs5,000, meaning if divorced she could have fetched the amount for him.

Jamal Abro also exposed the flesh trade carried out in the name of marriage in another masterpiece titled “Pirani”, in which a minor girl of the same name is sold out for Rs60 by her nomad family. These eye-opening stories were written in an era when there was no awareness about human rights. Jamal Abro’s other pieces also exposed social injustice prevailing in Sindh’s rural society. However, he did not confine himself to realism and also presented alternatives for realities on the ground.

Pashoo Pasha depicts a peasants’ revolt against the feudal system and “Man Mard” highlights the state of women by comparing it to the predicament of a man who has to face the wrath of women in an imaginary female-dominated community in Africa.

He wrote few stories after joining the judiciary. That was not because he was in service and couldn’t write. “I have lost contact with the common people and do not have the opportunity to directly observe their sufferings and aspirations,” he wrote to his contemporary and one of the greatest Sindhi poets of the 20th century, Shaikh Ayaz. Another reason was that due to a rare disease, he developed tremors in his hands and had difficulty in writing.

With the ailment taking its toll, his doctors told him not to write but he refused to obey them. He took up the translation of Maxim Gorky’s novel Mother and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer but could not complete them. However, he wrote his autobiography in five volumes which records the history of contemporary Sindh. Moreover, he also wrote articles on political, social and literary issues. He also penned a couple of articles for a popular newspaper but his printed pieces were not only poorly edited but also contained some parts which he had not written. This bitter experience discouraged him from writing for newspapers. He also wrote poetry but for unknown reason never got it published.

He was not an armchair intellectual and believed in activism. In his youth, he was a political activist and the Karachi Salar of the Khaksar Tehrik in pre-partition days. He had participated in bloody anti-colonial demonstrations in Karachi. When Bengal was hit by a famine in 1943, he went there to participate in relief activities. He led a students’ delegation which called on Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah after Independence to apprise him of the problems being faced by Sindh. During the anti-One Unit movement, he was a judge but he did not hesitate to provide legal relief to the movement’s leadership. He also took part in the activities of the peasants’ organization, Sindh Hari, and the literary association, Sindhi Adabi Sangat.

As a judge and civil servant, he remained a competent and honest official and not a single allegation of corruption was ever levelled against him. He believed in the dignity of labour and after his first heart episode, he started training his teenage son, Badar Abro, for practical life by giving him a brief stint as a rickshaw driver and bus conductor.

During the last 25 years of his life, he became a practising Sufi and a disciple of the Naqshbandi order. But as a true follower of tasawwuf, he kept his love for divinity a very private affair. Anyway, his spiritual development can be gauged from his indifference to worldly affairs during the last three or four years of his life. “During this period,” recalls Badar Abro, “Baba quit taking notice of things by refusing to become happy or angry over certain developments.”

Jamal Abro was a religious person from his youth but with a difference. He was a true son of Sufi Sindh. He was not intolerant even to atheists and his friends included proclaimed communists like Comrade Jamaluddin Bukhari and atheists like Shaikh Ayaz (who also turned to Sufism in his later age). When his son Badar Abro was arrested and tried with the Communist Party of Pakistan leaders, he did not get annoyed with him. He actually encouraged him by congratulating him. And he firmly believed that Islam gave more rights and liberties to women as compared to other faiths like Hinduism and Christianity. His article on the subject titled, “Aurat ji Islam mein azadi ayeen izzat”, is worth reading as it removes different misconceptions about the status of women under Islamic law.

Unlike most literary personalities, he was a very humble man. He shunned the limelight and never indulged in the race for the posts of heads of government-run literary organizations. As an author he remained away from controversies and found acceptance in different literary circles. But this also meant that he was not part of any lobby. This is why Hyderabad, the literary capital of Sindh, has not hosted a single gathering to mourn his death.

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