KARACHI: Scholars highlighted the salient features of Mir Anees’s poetry at an event held on Monday at the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi to commemorate the poet’s (1802-1874) 143rd death anniversary.

Poet Farasat Rizvi was the first speaker. He said Urdu literature has four greats — Mir, Ghalib, Iqbal and Anees — and no other could enter that select group. They changed our culture, values and literary traditions, and their influence would last for centuries.

Mr Rizvi said Anees’s poetry had also borne the brunt of severe criticism. The first one to object to his marsia nigari (an elegiac poem that commemorates Imam Husain and his companions’ martyrdom at Karbala) was M. Ahsan Farooqui who, in 1938, wrote six articles in the literary journal Nigar against him refuting a scholar Nawab Imdad Imam Asar’s statement that Anees was Urdu’s first ‘dramatic’ poet comparing him to Tulsidas, Homer, Dante and Shakespeare.

Farooqui rejected it saying Anees wasn’t such a great poet and was only a notable versifier; therefore he couldn’t be compared with Western greats. Farooqui called his versification ‘unnatural’, citing the reason that in a state of war, no one could speak in a contented tone — as Anees made the characters speak in his marsia. The second objection that Farooqui raised was that Anees turned Arab culture into the culture of Lucknow.

Mr Rizvi said in response to Farooqui’s thesis, Nawab Jaffer Ali Khan Asar Lucknawi penned six articles in the same journal. Dr Jamil Jalibi, in the last volume of his Tareekh-i-Urdu Adab, has summarised both scholars’ arguments, adding his own opinion on the subject, which is closer to Farooqui’s.

Giving his view on the subject, Mr Rizvi argued that not even Dante could create the kind of emotional landscape (jazbaat nigari) the way Anees did. In support of his argument he quoted a stanza from a marsia where Imam Husain, while fighting the war, still has love and affection for humanity. One of its couplets was:

Talwaar na maari jisey munh morte dekha
Aansu nikal aaey jisey dumm torte dekha

[He didn’t hurt anyone who turned away (from war)
He cried at the sight of a person dying]

Mr Rizvi concluded his speech by observing that as long as there were oppressed people in the world Anees’s poetry would not lose its significance.

Dr Javed Manzar said Anees was a remarkable ghazal writer as well, but his father urged him to write the marsia. He pointed out that unlike Dabeer’s poems, Anees’s writings catered to the masses. His marasi are an asset. Tabassum Zehra talked about the poet’s family lineage.

Hakeem Nasr Askari called Anees ‘Shah-i-Marsia’.

Dr Aalia Imam, in her distinct style, delivered a heartfelt talk. She said Mir Anees’s poetry was the other name of human purity and sparkling thoughts. She raised the point that why the poet made Karbala the subject of his poetry while he lived in Lucknow and reasoned herself that in 1857 the British Raj hanged anyone who dared to say ‘no’ to it. In such circumstances, the people were in need of a philosophy of life that could awaken the entire nation. The poet saw Karbala as the spirit to say no (inkaar ki manzil) to the oppressor.

Dr Imam said another aspect of his poems was the fact that Karbala did not believe in the concept of generation gap, because when every generation (old or young) believed in the same ideology, then all took part in it. She also touched upon the sanctity of human relationships in his poetry (rishton ka taqaddus) and quoted profusely from it, ending her address on the importance of ‘commitment’ to a cause.

Justice Salahuddin Mirza was the chief guest on the occasion. He drew the audience’s attention towards Anees’s ancestral abode.

Earlier, Hameeda Kashish gave a brief introduction of the poet to the audience (who hadn’t turned up in a big number). Suhail Ahmed conducted the programme which was organised by the Arts Council’s library committee and the Mir Anees and Bhitai Foundation. Provincial Culture Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah was supposed to preside over the event, but was stuck in the provincial assembly session.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2017