Literary Notes: Akber’s letters to Iqbal published after a century
LETTER-WRITING is a dying art, goes the oft-repeated lament. Emails and other electronic methods are eating into traditional ways of communication and the conventional postal service is now scornfully dubbed ‘snail mail’. But the old-fashioned, handwritten letters have a charm of their own, especially if a letter is written by a writer or poet, it has much to offer.
Ghalib’s letters, for instance, not only offer samples of crisp and witty prose but they also reflect on the personal life of the great bard, not to mention the first-hand account of what was going on in post-1857 Delhi — to which Ghalib was an eyewitness.
Allama Iqbal and Akber Allahabadi, two of our towering literary personalities, were on good terms with each other. They had similar views and agreed on certain issues, especially Muslims’ role in politics in British India and their future. Iqbal went to Allahabad on three occasions to meet Akber. But Akber could not visit Lahore despite Iqbal’s earnest desire and invitation, though both kept on exchanging letters.
Akber, just like Iqbal, was a prolific letter writer and had penned several thousands of letters to his dear and near ones and Iqbal was, of course, one of them. But somehow Akber’s published letters addressed to Iqbal were not as many in numbers as one would have expected. Only six such letters could be discovered and published after Iqbal’s death in 1938. It was presumed that the missing letters must have been destroyed.
What supported this sorrowful thought was a statement by Javed Iqbal, Iqbal’s son, who wrote that Iqbal, just a few weeks before his death, had ordered Munshi Tahir to sort out a large number of documents stored in three or four tin boxes. Munshi Sahib put a large portion of those papers into a burning fireplace on Iqbal’s desire. Although many scholars kept on searching for the missing letters, it was all in vain. But Dr Zahid Muneer Aamir did not agree with the idea that Iqbal could have ordered Akber’s letters to be burnt as he valued Akber’s letters much and, according to Iqbal’s own words, he would read Akber’s letters over and over in solitude. Once Iqbal wrote to Akber, I see you as my “
murshid”.
So Dr Zahid Aamir had been trying to trace the missing letters and his quest finally paid off: he has come up with 133 unpublished letters that Akber had written to Iqbal between 1910 and 1921. These new-found letters have been published along with six previously discovered letters, a foreword, annotations and a detailed index. Titled
Akber Banaam Iqbal and subtitled
Aik Sadi Ke Ba’ad 133 Ghair Matboo’a Khutoot Ki Daryaaft (Akber to Iqbal: discovery of 133 unpublished letters after a century), the book has just been published by Punjab University’s Urdu Development and Translation Centre.
In his preface Zahid Muneer Aamir has named the collections of letters by Akber addressed to different personalities and published earlier. For instance, collections of Akber’s letters to Khwaja Hasan Nizami, Abdul Maajid Daryabadi, Mirza Sultan Ahmed, Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, Habib-ur-Rahman Khan Shervani, Kishan Prashaad Shaad, Shiekh Abdul Qadir and some others, were published. Mukhtaruddin Ahmed had been collecting Akber’s letters but could not get them published and finally Muhammad Rashid Shiekh edited and published them in 2021.
As put by Zahid Muneer in his foreword, Akber’s letters addressed to Iqbal were a treasured legacy that Saaqif Nafees had inherited. Nafees, grandson of Chaudhry Muhammad Husain (1894-1950), handed over these letters to Zahid Muneer Aamir and finally these letters were brought to light, after a century or so, in a befitting and scholarly manner. As we know, Chaudhry Muhammad Husain was very close to Iqbal and Iqbal had made him guardian of his children. After Iqbal’s death, Chaudhry Muhammad Husain devotedly managed all the matters related to Iqbal’s family, including children’s education and their wedding. In his foreword, Zahid Muneer Aamir has expressed his gratitude to Saaqif Nafees and has also dedicated the book to him. Zahid Amir’s foreword and annotations with a detailed index make the book a truly research-based scholarly work.
These letters, written between Jan 23, 1910 and Aug 15, 1921, shed new light on both the personalities and their thoughts. In these letters Akber emerges as a mentor to young Iqbal. Though at times Akber sounds pessimistic and depressed in these letters because of his own problems and a general gloom takes over him when he thinks of enslaved Muslims of India, but in Iqbal he sees a glimmer of hope and encourages him. Also, these letters offer some hitherto unpublished couplets by Akber.
Zahid Muneer Aamir is a well-known scholar and has penned over 50 books. He has been teaching at Punjab University’s Urdu department since long and now heads the university’s Urdu Development and Translation Centre.
Akber Allahabadi died on Sept 9, 1921.
These letters, published in a book by Dr Zahid Aamir, shed new light on both poets' personalities and their thoughts.
www.dawn.com
Akbar Allahabadi (1846-1921) was a splendid satirist. His poetry also says much about the times he lived in. I wrote a post on his poetry a few years ago and I ‘resurrect’ the post here.
For many Muslims, particularly in upper India, the colonial challenge raised profound questions. What did it now mean to be Muslim? The sense of the world having been turned upside down, that sense of cultural decline, comes through strongly in some of Allahabadi’s poems.
Wo mutrab aur wo saaz wo gaana badal gaya
neendain badal gain wo fasana badal gaya
rang-i-rukh-i-bahaar ki zeenat hui nai
gulshan me bulbulon ka tarana badal gaya
Fitrat ke har asar mein howa aik inqlaab
Pani falak pe khait mein daana badal gaya
(the minstrel, the music, the song, sleep itself, the tales, the colours of spring, the tune of the nightingales in the flower garden have all changed. Every aspect of nature turned upside down; rain from the sky and the seed in the field no longer what it once was.)
In another he says that should you pass by his ruined village, you will see a soldiers' barracks belonging to the British standing next to a broken mosque:
Jo guzro gay idhar se mera ujra gaon dekho gay
Shikasta aik masjid hai bagal mein Gora Barrak hai
Muslims, of course, responded differently to the colonial challenge. One response was that of the modernists - Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh movement - who attempted to adapt Islam to the needs of the modern world without surrendering its soul. But for many of its critics, including Allahabadi, they went too far. There was danger of reducing Islam to mere identity as he sarcastically noted:
Nai tahzib men diqqat ziyada to nahin hoti
Mazahib rahte hain qaaim faqat imaan jaata hai
(Not so troubling are these modern times / religions remain intact, only faith is lost)
In another poem he noted bitingly of the modernists has having given up on their culture:
Chhod literature ko apni history ko bhuul ja
shaikh-o-masjid se taalluq tark kar school ja
char-din ki zindagi hai koft se kya faeda
kha double roti clerki kar khushi se phuul ja
(Leave your literature, forget your history. Abandon the sheikh and the mosque, attend school. Life’s too short, so why vex yourself. Eat English bread, be a clerk, swell with happiness)
In his attempts to reconcile religion with reason, in his fervent belief in science, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, so his many of critics thought, forgot that faith and belief are transcendent. Heart not reason, believing without seeing, were the essence of faith. Or as Allahabadi put it, rather more succinctly, God was beyond the limits of the telescope:
Khuda bahir hai haden dorbeen se
He felt that in falling over themselves to fill their bellies and please their western masters, these modern Muslims had little sense of self-worth. Though actually a nightingale, they were prepared to become parrots of the British so that they could have a council seat:
Haqiqat mein main hon bulbul magar charay ki khawahish mein
Bana hon member konsil yahan mithu mian ho kar
Though the British have kept their faith, the modernists in their attempts to ape the west have lost theirs:
Dars tha yaksaan magar wo to masihi he rahe
Tujh pe mazhab ke evaz shetan ka qaabu ho gaya
Aik he bottle se pee hotel mein dono ne sharaab
Lutf mastee un ko aaya or tu ullu ho gaya
(Attending the same lesson, the Christian kept his faith / but Satan captured yours / from one bottle you both drank the same wine in the hotel / he became intoxicated, you became a fool)
Finally, we note that unsurprisingly, given his sentiments above, Allahabadi was far more anti-colonial than many of the modernists he critiqued.
Yehi farmaate rahe teg se phela Islam
Ye na irshaad howa toop se kya phela hai
(They keep saying that Islam was spread by the sword / They don’t utter what it is that the gun was supposed to spread)
In one couplet, he wrote there was not much difference between the colonial secret police and criminals:
Sheikh jee ke dono betay ba-hunar peda howay
Aik hain khufia police mein aik phansi pa gay
(Both sons of the Sheikh turned out rather skilled / one is in the secret police, the other sent to the gallows)
He warns Muslims to be wary of the British rulers. In a reference to the Christian belief in Trinity, he says,
Bachtay raho in ki teziyon se akbar
Tum kya ho khuda ke teen tukray kar den
(Protect yourself from [British] sharpness, Akbar / What are you, when they cut God into three pieces).
