A personal quest to know more about Harbans Rai Bachchan results in the discovery of a legend

MANY years ago, when I first heard the name of Indian filmstar Amitabh Bachchan and learnt that he came from Allahabad, I surmised he ought be the son of Bachchanji. When I read about his (Bachchanji’s) death in the papers, I thought I should write a few lines in his memory as there were very few people in Pakistan who knew him. But frankly, there was very little that I could say about him, my knowledge of Hindi poetry, in general, and Bachchanji’s poetry being so poor and my acquaintance with him being of too short a duration. But M.A.H.’s glowing tribute earlier in Dawn Magazine has now induced me to add these few lines.

It was March or maybe April, 1940, when Harbans Rai was asked to take over our weekly tutorial, for eight or ten students, which was called a seminar for a month or so in the absence of the regular teacher who had gone on leave. He had joined the English Department only very recently and had just returned from Lahore after his marriage. Some days earlier, some other students and I, who used to gather at Firaq Sahib’s “salon”, saw two unfamiliar gentlemen come in, who were introduced by Firaq Sahib as Pandit Suditra Nandan Pant, an eminent Hindi poet, and Harbans Rai Bachchan. When three poets get together, it is only natural that verses and compliments are exchanged. I do not remember the poem which was recited by Bachchanji, but I do remember its striking title, Agnipat (The Path of Fire). Young people are always on fire. Neither he nor Pandit Suditra Nandan Pant recited with tarannum. Never having attended any Kavi Sammelan (Hindi mushaira), I cannot say whether it is customary to recite poetry in Hindi with tarannum. Soon, he became known as Bachchanji in the university and maybe outside as well. Poets get known very soon.

I attended his tutorial for two weeks or so but I have to say with deep regret I did not find him an inspiring teacher or one who could absorb the interest of his students and make them want him to teach them some more. So, after the initial couple of classes, I begged to be excused. I was joined by Ali Zamin Naqvi (later Lt-Gen Ali Zamin Naqvi, GOC Lahore Sector during the 1965 war). When both of us reached the exit door, Bachchanji observed to the rest of the class “both Muslims (there were only the two of us in the class) are leaving”, which can, in a way, be called a confirmation of the separate Muslim identity and thus a vindication of the Two-Nation Theory.

I stayed in the university till 1944, doing M.A. in 1942, followed by two years of “uncompleted” research on “mid-Victorian criticism”, but never met him again. After reading M.A.H.’s “in memoriam”, I wish I had. Perhaps I was too hasty and too young to judge him as a teacher. His poetry I could not judge anyway.

M.A.H. has also mentioned professor Amarnath Jha and very rightly so. He was the vice chancellor at that tide and he had appointed Bachchanji. Professor Amarnath was a multi-faceted personality, one of those who are all things to all men. He served as lecturer, reader and professor in the English Department before becoming Dean of the Faculty of Arts. I am not sure if there were any other or more scholars in the subcontinent who became fellows of the Royal Society of Literature. But he wrote only one book, Shakespearian Comedy, perhaps as a sequel or complement to professor A.C. Bradley’s classic, Shakespearian Tragedy, a favourite textbook of students for generations. Prof Jha had a very large library, but knew the location of each book and liberally allowed interested people to borrow any book they wanted, of course against a “receipt”, i.e. a chit on which the borrower wrote his name, the title of the book and the date before he could take the book out of the library.

Once, I was rather moved to find a copy of Prof Jha’s own book with the inscription ‘For Professor A.C. Bradley from an old admirer’ signed Amarnath Jha). I learnt that after his death, Prof Bradley’s heirs sold his library and it was in one of these second-hand bookstores that during one of his visits to London Prof Jha saw this copy and at once took hold of it. Prof Amarnath Jha also served as the librarian, registrar and editor of University Magazine, C.O. of the U.T.C. and remained Warden of Minor Hostel, the academically and some financially elitist students’ boarding house. Outside the university, he was the president of the All-India Hindi Sahitya Sammelan (the opposite number of the Anjuman-i-Tarraqi-i-Urdu). But he used to hold regular mushairay at his place and pay respects to Safi Lakhanvi, Saqib Lakhnavi and other poets when he visited Lucknow. Maulana Safi once wrote a poet in his praise, beginning:


Mere dost Pandit Amarnath
Jha
Raees-i-Adab Fazil-i-Namwar,
Zabandan-i-English ba
hadd-i-kamal,
Adeeb-i-Hunar parwar-o-zee
kunar...


Prof Jha must have contributed dozens of full-length articles on Urdu poets from Mir to his own contemporaries. Hasrat, Jigar, Fani, Yagana, Asghar and others, and also brought out a selection of Riaz Khairabadi for private circulation among friends. At the same time, he was also the president of the All-India Tennis Association. His father, Mahamahoupadya (the opposite number of Shamsul Ulama) Pandit Ganga Nath Jha, was the first “Indian” vice-chancellor of the University of Allahabad — it is said in opposition to the provincial governor’s (who was the chancellor) choice and served three permissible terms of nine years. Allahabad was the parent university and was the degree-conferring authority for all the five universities on the province.

After serving full three terms as vice-chancellor like his father, Prof Jha was appointed the chairman of the U.P. Public Service Commission, as well as chairman of the selection board set up to sift only a hundred or so candidates out of the thousands who applied for the I.C.S. examination. Gen Faizali Chishti told me he also appeared before this board.

I was told that Maulana Abul Kalam Azad wanted to appoint Prof Jha as secretary in his Department (as ministries were then called) of Education, but Prof Jha pointed out that under the rules, having served on a public service commission, he could not take any other job in government except as member of another public service commission. After completing his term in U.P., he was appointed as the chairman of the Bihar Public Service Commission (his family originally came from Bihar) and that is where he passed away.

Prof Jha was a dutiful son. In 1946, he was asked by the government about the conferment of a knighthood on him and he replied: “How can I accept it in the presence of my father who was the first vice-chancellor of the university after the passage of the Universities Act of 1921.” In 1947, the British packed up and departed and the knighthood eluded him.

Prof Amarnath Jha was a class-fellow and a close friend of my father right from his school days up to B.A., when their paths diverted. My father joined L.L.B. and Prof Jha, the provincial education service and M.A. in English. But wazaadari being a part of the culture of those days, they remained very good friends.