Revisiting Amroha literary events
The elders of the community took great pains to ensure proper language on invitation cards, souvenirs and banners, as poetry and literature ran in their blood and even a careless typo could taint their meticulously built reputation. “We are the proud heirs of a heritage that strongly backs the community which owes it all to its forefather — Hazrat Hussain Sharfuddin Shah Wilayat, fondly known as Dadayji by the community — who was the proud recipient of the lineage of Imam Ali Naqi (AS),” he says.
The Indo-Pak Mushaira held here was a runaway success in Karachi as for the first time renowned poets like Mohsin Ehsan, Ahmad Faraz, Iftikhar Arif, Habib Jalib, Azad, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Kanwar Mohindar Singh Bedi, Wasim Barelvi, Ali Sardar Jafri and others recited their poetry and took the city by storm, leaving people yearning for more.
As subsequent mushairas were organised year after year by the Anjuman in honour of illustrious names such as Josh, Faiz, Mus-hafi, Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, Bahzad Lukhnawi and Jon Elia, becoming a much-talked-about annual event accommodating as large crowds as 12,000 to 15,000 people, it can be said with ease that the Anjuman has played a vital role in the cultural and literary scene of Karachi.
Be it a conference, seminar, literary sitting, adabi adalat, chaar baet, or an evening with poets and writers of repute, the Anjuman has been the breeding ground where discussions and debates enlightened even rigid minds.
“I have attended innumerable mushairas in India,” the famous Indian poet Kanwar Mohindar Singh Bedi once wrote, “but I have yet to see as well-organised a mushaira with such natural observance of its etiquettes as the mushairas held by the Anjuman-i-Saadat-i-Amroha.”
The community traces its strong penchant for aesthetic sense and literary background back to the small town of Amroha that prodcued many stalwarts from the community. “A small school called the Imam-ul-Madaris produced meritorious students like painter and poet Sadequain, scholar and poet Raees Amrohvi, philosopher Syed Mohammad Taqi, scholar and poet Jon Elia, architect Sibtain Sadiq, the much revered Urdu scholar and critic today, Dr Mohammad Ali Siddiqui, and the modern poet of marsia, Hilal Naqvi, who have received international acclaim in their respective fields,” says an elder who has seen the Anjuman through thick and thin.
Behind such successful mushairas have been the meagre donations made by the middle-class immigrant community that struggled not only to make both ends meet but also to keep the heritage of Amroha, as the community considers itself natural heirs of the classical era of Persian and Arabic traditions of yore and Urdu culture that was derived from it.
However, there has been a silent deviation from the norms with the passage of time with an abrupt intrusion of commercialism and medium of instruction. Such impressive and well-attended mushairas have now shrunk into small nashist with a smaller audience.
The reasons cited by the Anjuman are plenty. “We have to accept that there are no major mushaira poets that lure big crowds,” says Sajid Raza, the secretary of the Anjuman. “Another reason is that we are running a school on the premises where the mushairas were once held, which leaves us little space to organise such mushairas on a big scale.”
Though proceeds from the mushairas were largely spent on community welfare, the dying excitement of such literary events has now been replaced by a keen role played in education. The Shah Wilayat Public School, run by the Anjuman’s trust, with community resources and partial independent funding is a proud feather in the cap. “A total of Rs3 million is spent on scholarships and stipends for deserving students, by the Trust and the Anjuman separately,” says Sajid Raza.
“While widows and orphans are also paid monthly stipends from community pools, we feel that we are channelising ourselves into the field of education, which is close to our heritage and culture,” he says.
Despite the strong lineage, the religious cleavage was never considered an obstacle and inter-marriages took place in the secular town of Amroha. Muharram processions were revered at an equal pedestal as the annual Urs of ‘Dadayji’ — the qawali being the utmost feature of the event. Such a secular bent was also transported to the quiescent plains of Karachi after partition where drawing room parties or family get-togethers of a small group of the migrants of Amroha, led to cultural events on a mass level. Registered in 1950, the Anjuman has held regular annual elections for its president and cabinet to maintain a democratic framework of the organisation for community welfare and cultural activities.
Though today the Markaz-i-Anjuman-i-Saadat-i-Amroha is more known for its sprawling wedding halls, the dismally small number of literary gatherings held are enlivened by the few ‘respected elders’ who keep the torch burning and also endeavour to keep the distressed in the community under their wings. The present generation is aware of their classical heritage, but seems detached from the nuances of Urdu and so the lines between self-identity and the reality on ground also seem blurred today. What course of direction will the future generation take to either preserve or unravel its tradition is a question not only for the community but also for society.