Following his stints as Director Urdu Markaz in London and Chairman National Language Authority, Iftikhar Arif is currently heading Pakistan Academy of Letters. He also has the distinction of being one of the youngest senior producers of PTV.
Iftikhar Arif was exposed to spiritual music at a very young age when he used to attend mehfil-i-samaah with his grandfather at Hazrat Shah Abdur Rehman and Qutb-i-Aalam Hazrat Shah Meena temples, which were close to his home in Lucknow. “I used to listen to live performances of united India’s most famous qawwals such as Murli Qawwal. The culture at these temples was secular and the qawwals used to render Persian and Avadhi poetry, and Amir Khusroo’s kalam. The impact of mehfils, majaalis, soz and manqabbat on my poetry is palpable,” notes Iftikhar Arif.
The poet is of the view that at early age, one gets influenced by people that are close to him. That is the reason why the singers he adores still, are those that he saw in his adolescence including Lucknow’s superstars such as, Begum Akhtar and Talat Mehmood. “We used to hum Asrar-ul-Haq Majaz’s immortal poem Aawara sung by Talat Mehmood.” At the same time Iftikhar Arif also likes Shakeel Badayuni and Sudarshan Fakir’s poems sung by Begum Akhtar.
Iftikhar Arif studied music in sixth grade, tutored by Siyaram Sharan Singh. During his PTV days, Iftikhar Arif got an opportunity to interact and work with leading singers and musicians of Pakistan. His inclination for qawwalis makes him a fan of Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, father of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Other singers he likes are Mehdi Hasan, Ustad Amanat Ali, Farida Khanam and Iqbal Bano. Iftikhar Arif is of the opinion that no ghazal singer from post-partition India excelled in the art of ghazal.
Commenting on the contemporary popular music scenario, Iftikhar Arif says that the melody is terribly missing from modern music. “One cannot excel in music without a strong base in classical music,” he maintains. “We must not forget that Western pop music is firmly attached to its classical roots. This is not the case with our pop music.” Among the new breed, Iftikhar Arif’s favourites are Adnan Sami Khan, Sajjad Ali and Shafqat Amanat.
Iftikhar Arif’s list of favourite instrumentalists is very long. It includes great masters of Indian classical music such as Ustad Natto Khan, Ustad Hamid Husain, Ustad Sharif Khan, Rafiq Ghaznavi, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Pandit Hari Parsad Chaurasia.
Iftikhar recalls going to the movies for 10 aana or 20 aana saying he prefers watching movies on social themes, especially on poverty issues. “We liked movies made by Balraj Sahani, Raj Kumar and Guru Dutt. We also liked movies with Sahir Ludhianvi’s poetry. We also liked movies starring Dilip Kumar and Meena Kumari.” One of his favourite Indian flicks is Mother India. Among Pakistani film actors, Iftikhar Arif is fond of Mohammad Ali, but has a distaste for ‘chocolate’ and effeminate heroes. A documentary series which Iftikhar Arif regards very highly is Masters of 20th Century Literature, produced by BBC.
Iftikhar Arif has a taste for parallel Indian cinema as well as English unconventional movies. Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari is his all-time favourite. He believes that Gujrati and Bengali theatre and cinema has a strong flavour of progressive writings. From parallel cinema Iftikhar Arif likes Shabana Azmi, Naseerussin Shah, Sameeta Patel and Lawrence Olivier.
As a person who knows many languages, and a student of various and diverse academic disciplines, Iftikhar Arif’s collection of books is marvellous. In his small but neatly decorated apartment in Islamabad, his sole companion are books. “I always read outside prescribed textbooks in my school days. I was a member of school’s bait-bazi team, so I memorized thousands of couplets,” says Iftikhar Arif. “My grandfather and hid friends would gather in our daalan and discuss literature and other arts. Sometimes they would ask me to recite from Tlism Hoshruba. It was a magic that captivated me throughout my childhood. To me the charm of Tlism was more real than the real world,” reminisces Iftikhar sahab.
As for books, he has extensively read works on before partition-Islamic Revivalism and Marxism. He had scanned Muslim historical books by Nasim Hijazi and Sharar Lachknavi, as well as communist literature by Marx and Engles. He, however, is an ardent fan of Gorki, Chekhov, Pushkin and Tolstoy. “It was not easy to find and purchase good books at that time. We used to get books on lease from libraries, such as Aik Aana Library in our muhalla. Ibne-e-Safi’s novels were so popular with the youth that the owner of Aik Aana Library would raise the price from Aik Aana to Chaar Aana.”
Iftikhar Arif is proud of literary milieu of pre-partition Lucknow and his association with progressive writers of that time such as Sajjad Zahir, Ehtisham Hussain, Josh Malihabadi, Asrar-ul-Haq Majaz, Sardar Jaffri, Dr Abdul Aleem, Razia Sajjad and Dr Rasheed Jehaan. Says Iftikhar sahab: “It was a time when revolutionaries ran high. We were like an enlarged family which not only included writers from our part of the world but also from other countries. Pablo Neruda was our man, as were Nazim Hikmat and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
“Progressive and socialist writings did not mean ‘anti-religious’ writings at that time. Great scholars and writers like Suleman Nadvi and Maulana Hasrat Mohani were progressives,” maintains Iftikhar Arif. Iftikhar Arif is all-praise for his teacher, noted scholar and critic, Professor Ehtisham Hussain. He laments that the fraternity among past writers is not visible in their succeeding generation. “The entire literary scene today has been blackened due to divisions and sub-divisions among poets and writers.”
Among classical poets, Iftikhar Arif’s favourites are Mir Anis and Daya Shankar Nasim. And among moderns he likes Majaz, Nasir Kazmi, Munir Niazi, Zafar Iqbal and Jaun Elia. He rates Parveen Shakir and Naseer Turrabi as poets of calibre among his contemporaries. Iftikhar sahab holds Jamal Ahsani and Sarwat Hussain in high esteem, and believes they could have progressed leaps and bounds had they lived longer. Commenting on present-day poetic scene, he maintains that Izhar-ul-Haq, Waheed Ahmed, Yasmeen Ahmed, Mansoora, Ishrat Afreen and Zeeshan Sahil are first-rate poets. He is of the opinion that female writers are ‘more politically and socially aware’ than their male counterparts.
FAVOURITE SINGER: Begum Akhtar
FAVOURITE ACTOR/FILM: Naseeruddin Shah/Shatranj Ke Khilari
Following his stints as Director Urdu Markaz in London and Chairman National Language Authority, Iftikhar Arif is currently heading Pakistan Academy of Letters. He also has the distinction of being one of the youngest senior producers of PTV.
