Reading time : 8 minutes
No matter how sick at heart we might occasionally get, no matter how depressed – we see it as our self-appointed task to keep on recording, to keep on chronicling all the madness of our times
Dr Rakhshanda Jalil is a multi-award-winning translator, writer, and literary historian, based in Delhi. She has published close to 50 books and has written over 50 academic papers and essays. Some of her books include: Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers Movement in Urdu (OUP, 2014); a biography of Urdu feminist writer Dr Rashid Jahan: A Rebel and her Cause (Women Unlimited, 2014); a translation of The Sea Lies Ahead, Intizar Husain’s seminal novel on Karachi (Harper Collins, 2015), and Krishan Chandar’s Partition novel, Ghaddaar (Westland, 2017), and recently two collections of essays entitled But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim (Harper Collins, 2019) and Love in the Time of Hate: In the Mirror of Urdu (Simon & Schuster, 2024), among others. She runs an organization called Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture. In conversation with Amit Sengupta, Editor, timesheadline.in
Your latest book, Love in the time of Hate, is undoubtedly a bestseller, despite being so bulky in content. Especially so, when it is a painstaking literary documentation, translation and interpretation of poetry, shairi, literary genres in Urdu, a language born in our homeland, a beautiful and brilliant language which has been so compulsively ignored by most academic and political establishments in recent times. In contemporary times, when reading books seems to have been outdated by low-attention span and mediocre digital/television media across India, and the world, how do you understand the book’s stupendous success?
I think several things go into making a book successful: there is, of course, the subject that must necessarily be of interest to readers. But there are other things too, such as, the title, the quality of production, the cover. Everything adds ups.
In the case of Love in the Time of Hate, I think the title is attention-grabbing. Also, it is a collection of 80 essays; each essay is about 3-4 pages long. Despite its serious, even occasionally grim content, the length of each essay is such that it doesn’t overwhelm the reader. A book such as this is not required to be read from cover to cover. It doesn’t exhaust a reader. You can pick it up, read a couple of essays at a time, put it down and come back to it.
I would like to believe the essay format has helped make the book more reader-friendly. The 80 individual pieces are on vastly different subjects; there is a smorgasbord of ideas and topics. I think the variety could possibly also be a reason for its popularity.
What motivated you to work on this particular theme, indeed, a not-so popular theme in terms of commonplace popularity, and, seemingly, more restricted to refined sensibilities. I mean, and I might be wrong, there are not too many who seem to rejoice, cherish and preserve the great inheritance of Ghalib, Mir Taqi Mir, Sahir, Kaifi Azmi and Faiz, among other greats.
The more I read of Urdu poetry, the more I want to share my joy. I do believe what Mirza Ghalib had once said for the spoken word, can well be said for Urdu poetry:
Dekhna taqreer ki lazzat ki jo uss ne kaha
Main ne ye jaana ki goya yeh bhi mere dil mein hai
(Such is the deliciousness of speech in what he says
That I understood everything to be what is in my heart)
For, indeed, the Urdu poet has written something for every occasion, every sentiment, every impulse that flickers through the human heart. There may be plenty one might disagree with, but there is always something to be found on nearly every subject in the vast bulk of Urdu poetry — not just the names you mentioned above. Nothing is beyond the pale, nothing is sacrosanct or unquestionable.
I wanted to share the catholicity of its concerns, given the fidelity with which it has been reflecting the good, bad, ugly, indifferent face of society, given its dogged refusal to be tied down to a caste or community or State.
Not only among the famous practitioners of Urdu in our subcontinent, the language was integral to our everyday existence in post-Independence India. Since my childhood in a small town in western UP, I have grown up with Akbaaron ki raein, Tapsara and fabulous music programmes of old songs on All India Radio Urdu Service. Even Ameen Sayani, legendary broadcaster, used Urdu and Hindustani in his narrations, including in the famous Wednesday night blockbuster on Radio Ceylon — Binaca Geet Mala. Film scripts, dialogue, songs, radio dramas, were loaded with Urdu words. Films in the backdrop of this language were super hits — Mughal-e-Azam, Pakeezah, for instance. The great IPTA cultural high, when their lyrics and songs in Urdu/Hindustani would resonate in humble courtyards in humble homes! And, also, in the equally great tradition of the Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA) with Munshi Premchand as the first chairman. Your comments.
Yes, there was a time from the early-1940s when PWA, IPTA and (in many ways) the Bombay film industry were like three inter-linked circles with often overlapping membership; together, they shaped popular consciousness in very many ways. Remember that the Bombay of the 1940s and 50s was brimful with new ideas, a hub of the country’s best minds, a melting pot of young people from different, far-flung regions, all busy pouring new wine in new bottles.
By the time the Second World War ended, some of the most dynamic writers of the age had flocked to Bombay from different parts of undivided India: among the Urdu writers there was Rajinder Singh Bedi, Hameed Akhtar, Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Rifat Sarosh, Niyaz Haider, Hajra Masrur, Khadija Mastoor, Saadat Hasan Manto, Miraji, Vishwamitra Adil, Ismat Chughtai and her husband Shahid Latif, to name a few; Hindi writers included Upendranath Askh, Nemichandra Jain, Amritlal Nagar, Prem Dhawan; Marathi writers Mama Warerkar and Anna Bhau Sathe; and Gujarati writers Bakulesh Swapnath and Bhogilal Gandhi. They were all members of the Bombay branch of the PWA which was then the most active in the country.
While the initial impulse behind the formation of IPTA was the man-made Bengal Famine, and the Urdu poem by Wamiq Jaunpuri, ‘Bhooka Hai Bangaal’ (Bengal is hungry) became its rallying cry, soon almost all the big ‘isms’ of the time became grist to its mill: anti-colonialism, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, feminism, land reforms, rights of industrial workers, peasants and landless labour, not to mention national unity, communal harmony, secularism, pluralism, multi-culturalism.
Together, the members of three inter-linked literary and cultural groupings influenced the debates on imperialism and decolonization in the years leading up to independence, and in the years immediately thereafter, they were at the centre of the discourses on the nature of the newly-independent, post-colonised State and society.
Drawing inspiration from the strong Chinese Peoples’ Theatre Movement and especially the innovative Living Newspaper format (where topical events or news was told in a dramatic form), IPTA sought to combine indigenous or folk elements in dance, drama and song from influences as diverse as Urdu poetry and Russian ballet. Groups of IPTA performers, initially called ‘squads’ (Bengal Squad, Punjab Squad, Central Squad, etc.) later called ‘troupes’, toured the length and breadth of the country, hiring several bogeys of a train, performing in small villages and hamlets before the humblest of audiences (such as women beedi workers or manual scavengers), sleeping in the train and moving on to the next venue.
What is it that makes a language flourish, or fade away? For instance, Latin and Sanskrit have more or less disappeared from the horizon.
In a word: adaptability. Languages die when they are no longer in sync with the times. Urdu has shown great adaptability over the centuries. It has never been static; it has been evolving, changing, keeping itself abreast with changing tastes.
What, according to you, is the future of Urdu in India as an everyday language, or part of our aesthetic/literary tradition?
I am not a ‘doomsdayer’. I believe, despite the formidable odds stacked against it, Urdu has not merely survived but flourished. Yes, fewer people read it in its own script. Yes, its propagation is not tied to employment generation. Yes, the government has paid mere lip service to safeguarding its interests. Yes, many of those who nod their heads in appreciation when they hear Urdu poetry being read or recited possibly do so because it sounds pretty rather than because they fully understand the real meaning of those mellifluous words. But that is not to say that Urdu is dead, or dying. Despite the odds, Urdu has not merely survived but remained relevant. It is still the language of the heart and soul of India.
Your book, But You Don’t Look Like a Muslim, is important in current times. The title itself is so telling! I did a face-to-face with you, I remember, among a learned gathering in Delhi when it was launched. Looking like a Muslim, or, not looking like a Muslim — what does it mean really? Can one similarly ask: But you don’t look like a Hindu, or, a Bengali, or, whatever…
But you do hear people say ridiculous things like: ‘You are so fair; you don’t look like a South Indian!’ We are a country that seems to judge a person by their looks. Though how one is supposed to look like one’s religion I can not say. Save for outward tokens such as a turban or a topi, a beard or a burqa, how can one give instant proof of one’s religious beliefs?
Yet, growing up in Delhi, all through one’s school, college and university days, while negotiating an assortment of jobs and offices, not to say myriad social occasions, I have heard this comment delivered in tones ranging from surprise to approval. With time I have understood that the speaker is trying to give me a back-handed compliment. Since I don’t look like a Muslim, I am ‘okay’, I am not quite one of ‘them’ − the bomb-throwing, beef-smuggling, jihad-spouting Muslim of popular imagination. By extension, I might even − at a stretch − be considered one of ‘us’.
You showcase food, mostly cooked by you, on social media. It looks delicious, almost always. Food as a social and cultural metaphor. A deep emotion, inherited from the oral traditions of our grandmothers, aunts and mothers. A loved, fulfilling, shared reality. Laborious, painstaking, demanding special skills and attention by the hardworking women of our households, and, perhaps, therapeutic too. Also, a signifier of those who have it and those who are denied. Please tell us about your fascination with multiple, original, indigenous cuisines, and what it means to you, in ‘the times of online food’ in urban areas.
TS Eliot famously wrote in his poem, ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’: ‘I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled…’ Well, as I grow old, I find food is inextricably intertwined with memory. I like to cook – not just to break the interminable tedium of everyday life – but also because food, like memory, is a magic carpet that transports me back to my past, to a happy childhood. Increasingly, I like to recreate foods that were cooked in my home by my parents (yes, we had a very gender-just household and my father was a great cook!). I like to share the bittersweet joy this simple act of cooking by posting pictures on Facebook. I like to look out for seasonal foods, of cooking from scratch, using healthy alternatives, sourcing indigenous varieties of fruits and vegetables.
I remember once I posted something –in the midst of the Delhi riots – and you, Amit, quite correctly reminded me of how crassly insensitive that was. So, yes, cooking and eating is a luxury that is unequally available to us — and we must be mindful of the privileges we have.
How do you look at the future of India? Especially, do you think the new generation of the young, who do not seem to carry any sectarian baggage, who cherish their open-ended dreams and aspirations — will they make the world a better place?
While indeed the young carry no sectarian baggage, it is their very ‘lightness of being’ that worries me. They are blasé and blithe to the extent of being heedless, self-absorbed. I am especially concerned about those young people who come from homes where no books are ever bought, where no part of a monthly budget is allocated to the buying of books, where possibly even newspapers are never bought, where the internet is possibly the only source of their (dubious) knowledge. It is these products of the ‘Whatsapp University’ who cause me the biggest disquiet and who make me wonder occasionally at the futility of all that people like you and I are doing.
After the Genocide in Gaza, which is like history repeating itself yet again, as we remember another anniversary of Auschwitz — will the world become a better place? Ever? Can poetry, literature, music, arts, culture and cinema, knowledge systems, indeed, make it worth living?
Yes, that is a question that worries me immensely; in fact, niggles away in my brain like a worm. Will the blind see? And will the deaf hear? Especially those who are willfully blind and deaf?
Sometimes, I think maybe they won’t. After all, history, has time and again held out lessons, lessons that we ought to have learnt from for the greater good of humanity — but we didn’t; in fact, willfully chose not to. You mentioned Auschwitz. Remember the message that came out from those wretched concentration camps: Never Again.
But, did the world learn? Did people stop heaping unimaginable atrocities upon each other in the name of religion or race or colour or ethnicity? No.
Having said that, some of us – no matter how sick at heart we might occasionally get, no matter how depressed – we see it as our self-appointed task to keep on recording, to keep on chronicling all the madness of our times. I am reminded of Ghalib who said:
Likhte rajhe junoon ki hikayaat-e- khoon-chakaan
Harchand isme haath hamaare qalam huwe
(We kept writing those blood-drenched narratives of madness
Even though our hands were lopped off in the process…)