A book launch ceremony held last week at the Alhamra Arts Council had something different to offer to Urdu poetry lovers. The book of poetry launched was a collection of dohas written by Dr Tahir Saeed Haroon and published by Sang-e-Meel under the title Kook. The book has been dedicated to the bird koel which, with its melodious voice, stands distinguished from the song of a bulbul.

The question that arises is whether the title of the book is an assertion by the poet that his poetry stands in contrast to the traditional Urdu poetry, stamped ‘gul-au-bulbul’. That he is not a gul-au-bulbul brand poet? That instead, he would like to be branded as a poet committed to Koelya, “whose first call or the first ‘kook’ acts as a harbinger of spring for the gardens”.

The form of poetic tradition known as doha is a purely local product with no link to the Persianised poetic tradition. This form found its best expression in the

dohas of Sant Kabir. Unfortunately, the early historians of Urdu language and literature, because of their deep-rooted cultural prejudices and Ajami sensibility, were hesitant to own Kabir as an Urdu poet in spite of his linguistic affinity to Urdu. Some critics and intellectuals of our times have censured them for this attitude. But the damage was done. Kabir and his distinct form of doha stand estranged from mainstream Urdu poetry.

If today this form of poetic expression has been able to find a place in our poetic tradition, the credit goes to Jamiluddin Aali. His first collection of poetry titled Ghazlain, Dohe, Geet came out in the 1950s with an introduction by Mohammad Hasan Askari. Askari Sahib paid compliments to Aali more for his dohas than his ghazals. He says: “Aali has revived the form of doha in quite a new way. Here we see lively emotions expressed freely more than what we had seen in his ghazals.”

This warm reception of doha at the hands of the leading critic of our times paved the way for its acceptance. A number of ambitious souls felt tempted to try their luck in this newly-discovered field of poetic expression. Dr Tahir Saeed Haroon has surpassed them all. He seems more sincere and more deeply committed to this genre than others.

Haroon has written extensively while exploring new possibilities of expression in this age-old genre. He already has seven collections to his credit. The present is the eighth one. The number of dohas he has written so far are now in thousands, which speaks of his prolificacy and his continual search for new themes relevant to our times so as to accommodate them in this form.

Often the difficulty with age-old poetic forms is that they appear to be repeating themes and thoughts employed by early masters. Haroon has followed these masters to a certain limit and has written about traditional themes associated with doha, but he refuses to limit himself to them. For him, doha keeps on expanding in its expressive capacity in accordance to the needs of our times. So these dohas discuss human problems.

Linguistic expressions too seem to be undergoing a process of change in accordance to the linguistic usage of our society. Now it is no more a purely Hindi expression. There is in it a happy mix of Persianised expression.

Coming back to the launch, Dr Saleem Akhtar, Ataul Haq Qasmi and Asghar Nadeem Syed spoke on the occasion. But Professor Khwaja Zakariya deserves special mention as he reminded us that prior to Jamiluddin Aali, Khawaja Dil Muhammad had written dohas and had done full justice to this form of expression. How unfortunate that his initiative in this respect went unnoticed. Or was it that in those days we ignored any such attempt which carried a stamp of Hindi?

Aali’s dohas entered the literary scene and enjoyed the moral support of the leading critics of the times. And now we feel that doha has come to stay in Urdu as well.