Nadeem Qasmi has come out with his own assessment of his distinguished contemporaries as he found them in his relations with them during his lifetime. These assessments may, in most cases, appear unkind to the fans and admirers of these writers. So the book, which has been published under the title Mairay Hamsafar has the potential of provoking a controversy. We have already seen that his account of Faiz, when published by a journal, triggered a heated controversy. The fans and admirers of Faiz found it hard to digest all that Qasmi had said about their favourite poet from his own experience of the man. That portrait of Faiz is now the part of this volume.
One can easily discern three categories of the contemporaries portrayed here. The first category is of seniors such as Maulana Abdul Majid Salik, Maulana Ghulam Rasool Mehr, Maulana Chiragh Hasan Hasrat, Syed Imtiaz Ali Taj. Qasmi Sahib is all praise for them. He talks about them with reverence. And yet he has been able to bring before us lively portraits of these seniors.
The other category is of juniors — Ibn-i-Insha, Khadija Mastoor and Mohammad Tufail come under this category. Here the most lively portrait is that of Ibn-i-Insha. As for Khadija Mastoor, he talks more about her writings than about her person. The article may be taken as a critical assessment of Khadija as a short story writer.
What is likely to make this volume controversial is the third category, which includes Faiz, Noon Meem Rashed and Manto, the three bigs of that shining literary age to which they, along with Qasmi, belonged.
Here I need not discuss Faiz as seen and portrayed by Qasmi Sahib. As stated above, the article — months before this volume came out — appeared in a journal, sending a wave of anger among the Faiz devotees. Much has already been said about Qasmi’s portrayal of Faiz.
The other major poet belonging to the same period is Noon Meem Rashed. He too, like Faiz has been subjected to scathing criticism for his personal behaviour. But I don’t think Qasmi Sahib will have to face the same kind of hostile reaction and anger as he had to face in Faiz’s case. The reason is not far to seek. Faiz’s was an amiable personality. It was not his poetry alone which had brought for him so much popularity. His amiable personality, too, had played a part in this respect. His fans were perhaps more under the spell of his charming personality than under the influence of his verse. Rashed’s was a different kind of personality. As portrayed by Qasimi, he carried with him a kind of bureaucratic air and often betrayed a lack of human feelings. Qasmi has estimated him as an arrogant man and has cited situations when he behaved with fellow-writers in a very officious way. So with all his achievements as a poet, he could not win the kind of admirers Faiz and Qasmi had.
Much resentment was shown on Qasmi’s portrayal of Faiz. Resentment will also be shown by some on his portrayal of Rashed. But Qasmi deserves credit on one count at least. He has had the courage to say in an unambiguous way what he feels about those of his contemporaries, who are held in high esteem in our literary world.
We in general try to be polite to the point of hypocrisy. Qasmi has chosen to be honest with himself and has candidly said things without caring that he will be accused of jealousy.
But his portrayal of Manto is somewhat intriguing. He takes pains to show us that he was intimately related to Manto as a friend and that Manto valued this friendship very much. But with Manto’s arrival in Lahore after partition this friendship suffered a setback. His ideological differences with the Progressive Writers Movement adversely affected his friendly relations with Qasmi. Meanwhile, a new relationship based on common thinking in relation to literature, had developed between Manto and Mohammad Hasan Askari. This led Qasmi to believe that Manto, essentially a progressive, had been misled by reactionary Askari. He wrote an open letter to Manto, which was originally published in a literary journal, Sang-i-Meel and has now been reproduced in this volume. Here Qasmi is seen advising Manto and seems to be saying: “ My dear friend, beware of Askari. He is a dangerous man trying to entangle you in the decadent ideas borrowed from Gide, Flaubest, etc.”
The whole controversy is now part of our literary history. Now while reading about it I felt that Qasmi’s situation is different from other progressive writers, who were very angry with Manto for making a literary alliance with Askari. With Qasmi it was more a psychological situation than an ideological one. Seen from his point of view, Askari appears playing the role of a raqeeb, a villain wooing his bosom friend. A lover in the Urdu ghazal is fated to face time and again a situation where the beloved is seen happy in the company of a raqeeb keeping the true lover at a distance. Even then he does not like to find fault with the beloved. The innocent soul, he thinks, has been beguiled by the raqeeb. He implores him to see into the guiles of the rogue. What else can he do?
Nadeem Qasmi has come out with his own assessment of his distinguished contemporaries as he found them in his relations with them during his lifetime. These assessments may, in most cases, appear unkind to the fans and admirers of these writers. So the book, which has been published under the title Mairay Hamsafar has the potential of provoking a controversy. We have already seen that his account of Faiz, when published by a journal, triggered a heated controversy. The fans and admirers of Faiz found it hard to digest all that Qasmi had said about their favourite poet from his own experience of the man. That portrait of Faiz is now the part of this volume.
