THANKS to 9/11 we now have a new English translation of Maulana Hali’s Musaddas. Of course we had already two English translations of this epoch-making long poem. But they were done when the towers in the Trade Centre were still standing high. It was in the aftermath of 9/11 that the great granddaughter of Hali Syeda Saiyidain Hameed was awakened to the need of a new translation of the poem as, according to her, “following the event(s) September 11, 2001, Islam and the role of Muslims has come into sharp focus of the entire world.”
Elaborating her point, she says: “I feel that today the world needs the Musaddas because the real spirit of Islam has been lost in the myth, mystification and miasma of half-truths and blatant lies, such as the theory of clash of civilizations. Nothing will be resolved in this scenario of harsh polarization, unless the spirit of Islam enters the hard mindset of its adherents and non-adherents. Musaddas has the quality to do just that.”
Is it really so? Does the poem still retain the quality Syeda Saiyidain is talking about? I feel tempted to read it anew. Syeda Saiyidain has cared to provide the Urdu text along with her translation, which has been published by Harper-Collins, India. The nicely produced volume carries with it a brief foreword by Qurratulain Hyder and a detailed introduction by the translator.
The introduction carries with it Hali’s life story. More vividly depicted are his last days when he returned to Panipat, and lived with his family. “Downstairs lived his wife, granddaughter and great grandchildren. His living quarters were upstairs where he sat on a takht and worked on his writing all day. Sometimes he would look out on the children playing in the courtyard. The little boy and girl busy in their games were children of my grandmother, Mushtaq Fatima. Khwaja Ghulamus-Saiyadain in his biography recalls how he and his elder sister used to occasionally call out ‘Baba’ and the man who was then in his mid-seventies came down the stairs each time, much to the thrill of his two great grandchildren.”
Coming back to the poem, which has now been translated anew by the competent great granddaughter of the poet who is expected to have a better understanding of the poem. That should have been enough reason for my re-reading the poem along with its translated version. What added to my temptation to read it once again is the assertion of the translator that the poem of her great grandfather will, in the present circumstances, be instrumental in the resurrection of the true image of Islam, which has been tarnished for reasons known to us all.
I feel I can still admire the poem for its poetic worth. It is poetry written in a purely unpoetic diction. No poetic embellishments, no purple patches, and even no adjectives. After all, Hali in the company of Azad had staged a revolt against the age-old poetic dictions current in Urdu, which, according to him, had grown obsolete. He carved a new anti-taghazzul diction for his poems, which he called natural poetry. Most readers of those days formed this expression prosaic and insipid. But Hali stuck to it. This diction finds its culmination in Mussadas. Hali called it Ubli Khichry, an insipid dish and said, “the people of refined taste in our country will not like this simple, lacklustre and dull poem.” But Hali was wrong. The poem took the whole Muslim community of India by storm. There were scenes of emotional outbursts in meetings where it was recited. Sayeda Saiyidain has quoted Sir Syed narrating an event in Amritsar. It was a stage show. The curtain opened to reveal a ship with a sleeping crew caught in a storm and sinking. A man sang the stanzas. The atmosphere grew poignant to the extent that people burst into tears.
Maulvi Abdulhaq gives an eyewitness account of a gathering in a village near Ferozepur. A female singer appeared on the stage and started singing. Until she finished her song, there was pin drop silence. Some people were swaying in rapture; some others had tears in their eyes.
Indeed, it is a moving story of how a single poem went deep into the hearts of the Muslims prompting them to self-examination. But with due respect to the great granddaughter of the poet, those times were very different from ours. The poem was published in 1879. The traumatic experience of 1857 was still alive in the hearts of the Indian Muslims. They were acutely conscious of their fall. They were in a mood to listen and to know what had gone wrong with them. Sir Syed’s reformist movement had rejected the jehadi line proposed by the Ulema. The salvation of Indian Muslims, according to Sir Syed, lay in their struggle to go in for new learning. And this is what Musaddas seems to say. No allusions to the conquerors and their conquests. Instead, Hali appears to be reminding the Muslims of that golden past when Islam acted as a civilizing force and the Muslims rivalled the old Greeks in their quest for knowledge:
In seeking knowledge, they did not have peers.
But now the Muslims, especially in Pakistan, are in a different mood. Their sense of self-righteousness will not allow them to revert to self-examination. They perhaps will like more to listen to firebrand militants than to a poet talking in a low tone and interpreting Islam as a cultural phenomenon.
THANKS to 9/11 we now have a new English translation of Maulana Hali’s Musaddas. Of course we had already two English translations of this epoch-making long poem. But they were done when the towers in the Trade Centre were still standing high. It was in the aftermath of 9/11 that the great granddaughter of Hali Syeda Saiyidain Hameed was awakened to the need of a new translation of the poem as, according to her, “following the event(s) September 11, 2001, Islam and the role of Muslims has come into sharp focus of the entire world.”
