Romancing Trotsky

Who could have thought an Urdu translation of Trotsky's autobiography could arouse such enthusiasm in the post-Zia Pakistan! At the TVO place where at its fortnightly discussions the Islamabad Cultural Forum considers a dozen chairs occupied as eminent success all seats in the hall were taken and the floor was full of eager young squatters, who wanted to know something about the enigmatic life of the maverick revolutionary, and confused old comrades who didn't know whether to discuss poet Javed Shaheen's excellent rendition or use the opportunity to inquire into what went wrong and how the unwashed of the world lost their robust empire.

There was Kishwar Naheed, godmother of the orphaned Left in the Islamic capital, Munno Bhai in his trim seventies who flew in from Lahore, ideologue Ashfaque Salim Mirza and the indefatigable octogenarian Prof Khwaja Masud, but the star of the evening it appeared was Tanweer Gondal, alias Lal Khan, the undaunted apparatchik who gave a moving account of the state of things as the Left saw that and how it was wrong to conclude that the progressive enterprise had closed shop.

There was a new awakening in the West itself that one saw in the huge protests against globalization, environmental pollution and imperialistic war mongering and forcible occupations of sovereign countries. Despite its costly and stupendous effort to sell its story line, corporate thuggery was daily facing a crisis of credibility.

He explained the differences that arose between Trotsky and Lenin that the latter regarded with respect but which the growing establishment around him felt threatened by.

Ashfaque Salim Mirza gave a more detailed account of Trotsky's role and the nature of his differences with Lenin and the deep rift that grew between him and Stalin for whom he had little regard.

Among Marxists there are two opinions about Trotsky. There are those who find fault with his refusal to submit to the official line of the Communist Party and those who respect him for his intellectual integrity and his contribution to Marxist literature and his role in the revolutionary struggle.

Lenin held him highly as the builder of the Red Army and criticized those who tried to exploit his differences with him. In fact in his later years Lenin wanted Stalin removed from his position as general secretary as he thought Stalin could not handle the immense power he had accumulated in this position.

What would have been the shape of things if as was generally hoped Trotsky had assumed charge after Lenin? Left visionaries would for long ponder this imponderable. A great romantic figure that twice escaped from Siberia was at last hunted down in Mexico by Stalin's men and slain brutally.

Che Guevara alone probably matches his revolutionary charisma, though not his intellectual calibre. That age is probably gone though one sees braver men and bolder women daily mock death in the streets of Palestine.

Nameless fighters these, if ten such souls America could produce their statues would dot memorial sites from Los Angeles to New York. Yet, as it is, one does not contemplate extinct manhood like Trotsky's rising again from the castrated crop of yuppies parading around as role models for our sterile world.

Praising Javed Hashmi's translation Mirza Sahib recalled the work done at Usmania University which included such complex texts as Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In Pakistan Ghulam Rasul Mehr translated Toynbee and Syed Zakir Ejaz rendered Fraser's Golden Bough into Urdu.

Will Durant's Story of Philosophy was translated by Syed Abid Ali Abid, Franz Fanon by Mohammad Pervez and Sajjad Baqir Rizvi. Sophie's World and War and Peace are among Shahid Hameed's achievements. Nowadays Yasser Jawad is in full steam.

One of the most beautiful of translations which is not so often mentioned is Mukhtar Siddiqui's Jeenay ki Ehmiyat from Lin Yu Tang's all time best seller, The Importance of Living. It is so good indeed you don't feel like reverting to the original.

The month of May that begins with workers rallying to renew their ritual resolve lends a reddish hue even to green Islamabad that with the promise of enlightenment spreading is kind of moderating its rigid stances.

For a change now the 'fellas' who came to 'cover' the Trotsky event left without getting any information about the whereabouts of this man whose name was so hard to pronounce. When they were told he died a long time ago and was a writer they lost their remaining zeal.

There is indeed a softening and this is good as there is much confusion also. The traditional Right is in a quandary finding itself pitted against its traditional sponsors. Its discomfort by the side of the progressive forces is soap opera stuff.

There is a huge increase in the body of writers lost on the middle path. Moderation takes its toll of clarity and tolerating hoodlums, hypocrites and dunderheads is for some the ultimate in charity.

Noted Urdu critic and writer Shamsur Rahman Faruqi was here on a visit from India. The Academy of Letters had an evening with him. It seems he didn't say many things that literary people here wanted to hear from him.

Agog initially Kishwar Naheed looked drained of enthusiasm and Rahat Saeed, the editor of progressive series Irtiqa, who later came from Karachi, also sounded noncommittal, in fact satiated and bored.

The function that Irtiqa Institute of Social Sciences held in Faruqui's honour at Karachi, did not go very well. Both the hosts and the guest had little approbation to share. And there was much amiss in Asif Farrukhi's speech, Rahat Saeed complained.

But his own visit to Islamabad as ministers returning from Jeddah usually conclude was a complete success. Kishwar Naheed, Ashfaq Salim Mirza, poet Farrukh Yar and other comrades arranged elaborate feasts in his honour.

Farrukh Yar's on the roof top was a breezy moonlit nocturne where sundry progressive themes were lightly touched upon. The mellow wind took away our words. The sky became overcast.

BNP's defeat in by-election sparks debate

The victory of the Bikalpa Dhara (alternative stream) candidate, Mahi B. Chowdhury, against a ruling party candidate in the parliamentary by-election to the Munshiganj-1 constituency, held on Sunday, has generated a heated debate across Bangladesh, especially in Dhaka.

Former president Badruddoza Chowdhury, also a former leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, won the constituency in Oct 2001 parliamentary elections. The seat fell vacant when he opted for the presidency in Nov 2001. In the by-election that followed, his son, Mahi B. Chowdhury, contested and won the seat for the BNP.

Bodruddoza Chowdhury stepped down from the presidency, after a dispute with the government of Khaleda Zia, in June 2002. His son, Mahi Chowdhury, eventually resigned from the parliament in March this year, along with another BNP lawmaker, to join a new political platform, "Bikalpa Dhara", floated by his father in April.

The seat fell vacant again. By-election was held on Sunday. Mahi Chowdhury contested the polls and retained his, this time for Bikalpa Dhara, by a big margin of 46,182 votes against the ruling BNP candidate.

Awami League, the main opposition party, boycotted the by- elections, earlier claiming that the governing BNP-led coalition would rig the polls, while there was "no point in participating in a farcical elections".

However, the win of an opposition candidate in a parliamentary by-election usually suggests that there was no significant government attempt to manipulate the polls, or to be more specific - the result of the polls.

But the defeat of a ruling party candidate in the by-polls, especially when a ruling party or coalition is halfway through its five-year tenure, is a pointer to the electorate's dissatisfaction over the performance of the government.

Both the points are being discussed in the political circles, while the ruling party leaders are stressing on the first proposition and their opposition counterparts putting accent on the second.

"The by-election result is a clear proof of people's anger against the BNP-Jamaat led four-party alliance government's misrule," said general secretary of the opposition Awami League on Monday. "They should, therefore, step down from power immediately."

The president of the left-leaning Workers Party, Rashed Khan Menon, told the press that the result of the by-election amounted to a clear 'no confidence' in the performance of the government of Khaleda Zia and demanded mid-term national polls. The leaders of other opposition parties and groups came up with similarstatements.

The government leaders, however, refuse to accept the argument that the electorate, by means of rejecting the ruling party candidate, actually expressed their dissatisfaction over the government's performances.

"No, there is no relation between the defeat of our candidate and the performance of our government," asserts Health Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, who is also an influential member of the BNP's highest policy-making body.

"Our candidate was neither a known political personality nor a popular figure in the constituency. Besides, he could not stand up to the personal appeal and family charisma of Mahi B. Chowdhury, who happens to be son of the former president, Badruddoza Chowdhury."

Hossain, perhaps, has a point. Badruddoza Chowdhury won the constituency in every election between 1979 and 2001, except for the 1986 elections that was boycotted by the BNP - a party that Badruddoza was the founding secretary-general of. Bodruddoza's father, Kafiluddin Chowdhury, won the seat in all elections from 1954 to 1973.

However, Law Minister Moudud Ahmed says that the "by- election result was a reflection of the people's desire, while the important point to note here is that the people's will got reflected in the polls because the government is capable of, and committed to, ensuring of a free and fair election".

There was, however, another dimension of the by-election results that became evident in the 'anonymous' quotes of the local-level BNP leaders printed in different Dhaka-based newspapers.

"The people of Munshiganj did not like the way Begum Zia removed Professor Badruddoza Chowdhury from presidency. It was absolutely humiliating for a man who was the founding secretary general of the BNP," a local leader of the ruling party reportedly observed.

"The people of the area have, therefore, taken a political avenge on Khaleda Zia's harsh action against Chowdhury," the BNP leader was quoted to have said. The observations, perhaps, call for consideration.

Chowdhury was not only removed from presidency in a humiliating manner, he was also mistreated, even manhandled, by the BNP men the day he floated his political platform, Bikalpa Dhara, in April. He was not even allowed to go to the venue he was scheduled to float the new political organization from.

What is, however, interesting to note in this regard is that while discussing Mahi B. Chowdhury's victory in the by-election, nobody is considering Chowdhury's Bikalpa Dhara as a political alternative to either the BNP or the Awami League, which the former president has promised the people.

After the election victory, Mahi B Chowdhury told a section of the press that some 40 BNP legislators have been maintaining clandestine relation with the Bikalpa Dhara, but nobody seems to have taken the statement seriously.

Urdu's deep roots in India

Vinoy Krishna Chaturvedi from Kashipur, Nainital, India, as a poet is known as Tufail Chaturvedi. He was in Karachi recently and in a couple of mushairas held in the city last week, the young man won much applause.

Chaturvedi does not seem to be a traditional mushaira poet. With his erudition and eloquence and sharp memory, he will confront one with many surprises. His up-to-date knowledge of Urdu literature, its major classics and of literature produced in other Indian languages - Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi and Gujarati - are noteworthy.

Trained in commerce, Chaturvedi brings out a literary magazine Lafz (the word) in Devnagri script with some of the contents in the original Hindi and some transcribed from Urdu. His passion is to introduce modern Urdu writings - mostly humour - and young Urdu poets to Hindi readers.

At a literary sitting jointly organized by the Fiction Group and the Pen for Peace, hosted by columnist/poet Saba Ikram, the visitor expressed his views on literary issues in plain words. He introduced to the audience scores of young ghazal writers and their ghazals, never heard at any forum here.

Chaturvedi finds absolutely no difference between Urdu and Hindi and believes that only the script divides the two languages. Urdu had deep roots in Indian soil and it would survive against all odds, he said. "The ghazal is such a popular poetic form that it is being written in Gujarati, Marhati, Punjabi and Bengali."

But for how long will Urdu survive without an economic base and meaningful economic activity attached to it? I asked. He said mushairas also comprised an economic activity as a source of living for many families. But that was not enough; in fact, Urdu had some basic drawbacks rooted in its past. Writers engaged with 'darbars' and the elite classes confined it to their use. They did not allow it to reach the common people.

Polishing and cleansing of the language was their favourite pastime, they used to weed out words that were coarse and indelicate to them and did not allow new words to enter into their so-called literary sphere.

Urdu, therefore, could not emerge as a common man's language. For example, Urdu's prose treasure after 200 years was a thin volume of Mirza Ruswa entitled Umrao Jan Ada.

Chaturvedi felt sorry for the critics who were dogmatic in their views and were indifferent to new writings and to the aspirations of young people. The critics admired Ghalib, who was a rebel in his time, but refused to acknowledge the 'rebels' of their own time.

Urdu should be brought out from its narrow habitat of poetry and it should be linked with the vast economic area of activities. Its sphere of appeal would thus expand, and its literature enrich, he remarked.

Thousands of Hindi language readers had read Aab-i-Gum by Mushtaq Ahmed Yusafi in the Devnagri script and only a few hundred might have read it in the Urdu script, he said. This was an obvious comment on Urdu's limited reach in India because of its script.

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Last week was shrouded in fear, gloom and uncertainty. Many literary and cultural events had to be cancelled. But life cannot stand still, and the people of Karachi rebounded on Saturday.

A book launch jointly held by the Academy Adbiat-i-Pakistan and Khawja Ghulam Fareed Sangat on Saturday was thus much welcomed, although it was attended by a small number of people. It was held at short notice at the office of the Academy and a proper announcement could not be made in the press.

The book introduced was 'Fizai Sarfrosh, researched and compiled by Rafiq Shahzad, a former engineer of the Pakistan Air Force. It carries the life stories of 40 PAF heroes who gave their lives for the victory and glory of the country in the wars of 1965 and 1971.

The book is a bulky volume of 800 pages in A4 size, a feat of perseverance carried out single-handedly by an author who did not want the names of the national heroes to be forgotten.

Air Vice-Marshal (retd) Akhtar Mahmood Bokhari was in the chair and Group Captain (retd) Syed Ehtesham A. Naqvi was the main speaker. Mrs D. Christy, a senior teacher at the PAF College, was also there. Her husband, Peter Christy, was awarded Sitara-i-Juraat.

Akhtar Bokhari opened a page that had a photo of the award- giving event with Bokhari himself decorating Christy after reading out the citation. It was an emotional moment. Ehtesham Naqvi spoke about the "PAF family", each person connected to it with love and devotion.

The book is a labour of love on the part of Rafiq Shahzad, who undertook its compilation following his retirement from the PAF after 18 years of service. He travelled to far off places and met every member of the family and recorded their stories. Later, he got the whole account printed, bearing the cost himself.

Ehtesham Naqvi recalled many of his former colleagues, including Rahman Kayani, Rasheed Qaisarani, both poets; and the writer and columnist Ashfaque Naqvi - "sahib-i-saif-o-qalam". Writer S.M. Moin Qureshi was also present on the occasion and thanked the guests on behalf of the host.