Khushhal Khan Khattak’s relevance to Karachi

Khushhal Khan’s 400th birthday anniversary in Karachi was a welcome event. The Academy of Letters has realized that it should endeavour more and more to hold seminars on all the important poets of Pakistan, and that Karachi has a Pakhtoon population which makes it an important city for the promotion of Pakhtoon culture.

Khushhal Khan was born in 1613 at Serai Akhora — now known as Akora Khattak — into the family of Shahbaz Khan, a chieftain in the service of Mughal Emperor Jehangir. He belonged to a distinguished family of Sardars whose loyalty towards the Mughals was undisputed. It was due to some misgivings that Aurangzeb removed Khushhal him from his hereditary position, and then ensued a feud which saw the Mughals and Pakhtoons locked in bloody battles.

Khushhal Khan Khattak thought that he was the hero of Ajmer (Rajisthan) and it was he who had presented it to Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan on a gold plate. And the irony of history is that he was imprisoned in the fort of Ranthambore, not very far from Ajmer. Khushhal Khan’s nationalism served him well. He had fought against the Yusafzais.

But when the Mughals raided Bunair in his youthful days, he fought on the side of the Yusafzais of Swat Valley and thus the northern and the southern Pakhtoons were united in a bond of fraternity which had not been in evidence before.

Khushhal has a greater claim to our admiration as a poet and man of letters. Pashto poetry has an older tradition than any other poetic tradition of the northern Subcontinent. The Punjab’s Nath poets, who were composing love songs in the 10th and the 11th centuries of the Georgian Calendar, might have a comparable tradition.

Haji Karor is supposed to be the first Pashto poet in 168 Hijri. But there are not many poems to his credit extant today. From 168 A.H. to 1,000 A.H. there is a long list of Pashto poets preceding Khushhal Khan Khattak. What makes Khushhal Khan Khattak unique is the fact he broke a tradition of Pashto poetry by making a female his sweetheart.

Khushhal Khan Khattak was a truly learned man, having scores of books or manuscripts to his credit. There was hardly any discipline that he did not delved into. Religion, philosophy, mysticism, lexicography, medicine, hunting and falconry, war and aesthetics- all came under his scrutiny.

Allama Iqbal wrote an article on Khushhal’s poetry in the “Islamic Culture”, Hyderabad, in October 1928, under the title of “Khushhal Khan, the Afghan Warrior Poet”. Earlier, the great orientalist Raverty had written an introduction to Khushhal Khan’s poetry alongwith translations which simply immortalized Khushhal.

Abdul Ghani Khan also wrote an important monograph on Khushhal. Mir Abdul Samad Khan’s work and Farigh Bokhari and Raza Hamdani’s Sarhad Number shed light on the fact that Khushhal had also tried to compose some couplets which could be called an admixture of Urdu and Pashto.

Rahman Baba’s Urdu-Pashto couplets were also published in the Sang-i-Meel Number which was the first serious attempt by the two progressive stalwarts to bring Pashto and Urdu together. Subsequently Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi’s book on Pashto-Urdu relationship became a landmark.

The Academy of Letters’s function was held in collaboration with the Arts Council of Pakistan, Jaras-i-Pashto and the Rafiq Khawar Academy -a newly formed body to serve the cause of literature. Rafiq Khawar was a prolific Urdu writer who translated many a regional poet of Pakistan including Khushhal Khan, while serving the Monthly Mah-i-Nau.

Anjuman Taraqqui-i-Urdu also brought out a book of translations of a selection of Pashto poets and Jamiluddin Aali did well to introduce this work of the Anjuman to prove the point that the Urdu readers had been fed on all the great names of all languages.

Urdu has been enriching itself through this enterprising activity and now there is hardly any major poet of any language of Pakistan whose work has not been rendered in Urdu. These translations now run through the veins of Urdu poetry.

Among the speakers of the evening were Aali, Mohib Wazir, Tahir Afridi, Ms Parwin Malal (an Afghan scholar from Qandahar), Ghulam Nabi Agro, Hanif Khalil. What a tribute it was to the grand old man of Pashto poetry.

Khushhal Khan Khattak’s poetry was eulogized by all and it was easily forgotten that he was not only a poet par excellence but also a scholar of high calibre. His poetic diction retains all its characteristic charm even in translations and what strikes us most is that he speaks for the entire mankind. He exhorts the virtues of chivalry and courage asserting that only after the attainment of these virtues it can be said that only the courageous and the brave deserve the embodiments of Beauty.

Khushhal Khan believed himself to be the best poet that the Pashto language had produced. He died in 1689 and up till now no other Khushhal Khan has been able to come around. Ajmal Khattak, a well known Pashto poet, is his descendant, but he doesn’t rise as tall as his ancestor.

Cancellation of tour by Australia could have been foretold

THE cancellation of Australia’s tour of Pakistan could have been foretold, much before the terrorists struck in Murree and Taxila. Once the principle of neutral venues had been accepted, the tour was off. After all, it was the Australians who had refused to play in Sri Lanka in the 1996 World Cup and they had taken the West Indies along with them.

In many respects, the Australians are like the Americans, they feel safe among their own. I cannot, in all conscience, say that their concerns for their players were unfounded.

Of course, the terrorists can strike and, on the face of it, Pakistan seems to have become a high-risk country and that’s the view that one would get from the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad.

But from the measures that the United States is adopting in the name of Homeland Security, the United States too would be a high-risk country. But international sports events are not being cancelled and the US Open tennis tournament is due to get underway in New York in a few days time. New York is the city where the World Trade Centre was located and which is now called Ground-Zero. But everyone is entitled to his own perception of danger.

When I went to Nairobi, some 20 years ago, the hotel manager advised me not to go walking about at any time of day or night for fear that I might get mugged. I don’t know what it is like these days but when I went to South Africa many years later, I stayed in my hotel in the evenings and even so the Pakistan team’s physio was mugged on the grounds of the hotel which was in a posh suburb. Danger lurks in many forms but you can’t opt out of life because danger exists.

Some of the Australian players have been vocal about not touring Pakistan. One of them has been Mark Waugh. He has good reasons to give Pakistan a miss, provided he would have been selected. It was in Pakistan that he claimed that Salim Malik had offered him (and Shane Warne) a huge sum of money to “tank” the Karachi Test match.

At that time, he did not disclose his relationship with a bookie who was then simply called John but who turned out to be a major player in gambling on cricket matches.

Mark Waugh and Warne’s association with Mr John had not been one-off and he regularly received ‘pocket money’ from John for providing him with ‘innocent’ information!

Twin-brother Steve has blown hot and cold about Australia’s tour, as if, getting signals or reading the mind of the Australian Cricket Board.

Pakistan must now decide on a neutral venue. Last week, I had recommended that this option be shut out as I had wanted Pakistan to call the tour off. Now the Australians have beaten us to the punch. It re-arranges the scenery on the stage. If the Test matches are to be played at a neutral venue, so be it.

The victory has already been handed to the terrorists and Australian troops who are in Afghanistan, as a part of a coalition military force, would have every right to wonder what they are doing there, putting their lives on the line. Pakistan is a victim of terrorist attacks because it too is a part of that coalition. Perhaps, the Australian High Commission in Islamabad is not aware of this.

India has blooded a new wicket-keeper, Parthiv Patel, who is 17 years and some months old. The excitement shown at picking such a young player is such that one gets the impression that the Indian tour selection committee has invented sliced bread.

Patel looks even younger than his age, as did Sachin Tendulkar when he toured Pakistan in 1989. But to us in Pakistan, catching them young is routine. Hanif Mohammad was 17 years and 300 days old when he was picked for Pakistan in 1952. Some of us forget that he was not only a batsman but first-choice wicket keeper.

We now remember Hanif as one of the great batsman of his time. But his brother Mushtaq was even younger when he first played for Pakistan against the West Indies and Wes Hall in Lahore.

There has been Khalid Hasan who played for Pakistan in England in 1954, Hasib Ahsan and Nasimul Ghani who were probably school boys when taken on Pakistan’s tour of the West Indies.

Zaheer Abbas too looked terribly young when I first cast eyes on him and he went on to make a thundering double century on Pakistan’s tour of England in 1971.

But the crown rests on the head of Hasan Raza who was 13 years and some months when he wore the Pakistan cap, prompting a lyrical editorial in The Times of London.

The Indian school-boy Patel, looks a fine prospect and may turn out to be another Wasim Bari. Bari too was very young when he toured England in 1967 but one look at him and one knew that he would go on to be one of the best the cricket world would see.

But Patel must not be spoilt because he hasn’t even started to shave. Test cricket is serious business and no quarter is given. But once selected, he should be persevered with, something we did not do with Hasan Raza.