PESHAWAR: While painting a mural of Allama Iqbal, the national poet in perpetuity, in Peshawar, painter Siyar Khan unknowingly added his name to the list of people to whom another poet Syed Sadiq Hussain Kazmi dedicated his book Barg-i-Sabz.
Kazmi says: Tundie baad-i-mukhalif se na gabra ay uqaab/Ye to chalti hai tuje ooncha urahane ke liye (Don’t get daunted by the fury of opposing winds, oh eagle! These blow only to make you soar higher into the skies).
Every child, who has ever pored over a ponderous Pakistan Studies book, knows the couplet by heart, thinking it is penned down by Allama Iqbal.
In the dedication to his poetry book, Kazmi writes: “To all those gentleman, who attributed my couplet to Hakeemul Ummat Allama Mohammad Iqbal, making me reevaluate the merit of my poetry.”
Like many before him — and perhaps even after him — Siyar Khan only reproduced what most of us have long believed to have belonged to the national poet when he scrawled the couplet next to his portrait of Iqbal.
He was commissioned by one of the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) contractors to draw several murals across the city as part of a beautification campaign.
The mural drawing campaign was undertaken under the corporate social responsibility wherein the artist was tasked to draw murals of national symbols across the provincial capital.
Siyar Khan drew up a mural of Allama at the BRT flyover near Bagh-i-Naran in Hayatabad area of the city. However, the mural he ended up drawing was quite large, surrounded by blank space. He added the couplet in question to balance the mural, thinking it appropriate because he was given to believe it belonged to the national poet.
He insists it does. “I can furnish evidence from internet that it is Allama’s verse,” he said when told about the couplet’s mistaken identity.
He is not to blame. The inspirational imagery — the unflinching eagle flying in the face of strong headwinds because, after all, it is meant to make it soar higher -- seems like something straight out of Bang-i-Dara. It is easy to take the couplet as Iqbal’s, complete with his characteristic Shaheen (eagle) no matter what the odds — as generations of Pakistanis have mistakenly done for close to seven decades now.
In the introduction to Kazmi’s poetry collection Barg-i-Sabz, Mufti Kifayat Hussain Naqvi notes that the influence of Allama Iqbal, Maulana Altaf Hussain Hali and Maualna Zafar Ali Khan is clearly evident in his poetry. One of the reasons for this similarity of ideas, Naqvi writes, was that they were not only Kazmi’s contemporaries but he was also influenced by their ideas.
“He penned a large number of poems about national, religious and ethical topics between 1920 and 1947 that appeared in prominent periodicals of the time including Zamindar, Aftab, Ehsan, Humayun and Makhzan. Besides, he has also written many poems for children, unfortunately, most of them are lost,” he writes.
It is ironical that the only couplet that could have earned him a place in the pantheon of Urdu poetry ended up being attributed to a poet, who already occupied a lofty station in there.
Barg-i-Sabz, a slim volume of over 100 pages, was published in 1977 after publishers scoured some of Kazmi’s poems from periodical and newspapers of that period. It is currently out of print. The poem that contains the couplet was first published in daily Aftab Lahore in 1918.
Kazmi was born in Kashmir and his family migrated to Sialkot in early years of 20th century. He initially worked as a teacher and later studied law to become a lawyer in late 1920s.
In 1930, he relocated to Shakargarh and founded the local chapter of Muslim League there. He was made its president in 1936.
After the creation of Pakistan, he soon became disillusioned with politics and stopped his political activities. He later died in 1989.
Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2023