An Interview with Rajiv Vijayakar: Good Lyrics is "Writing in a Simple Language and Keeping in Sync with the Times"

Rajiv Vijayakar has been an online and print film journalist for more than twenty-five years. He has also worked for television and FM. He was on the National Film Awards jury twice (58th National Film Awards in 2011 and 62nd National Film Awards in 2015). Mr Vijayakar is a consultant for Hindi Film Music at the Indian Music Experience Museum in Bengaluru. His paper, 'The Role of a Song in a Hindi Film', is part of the syllabus for South Asian Cinema Studies, University of Edinburgh. He has authored three books: The History of Indian Film Music (Times Group Books, 2010), Dharmendra- Not Just a He-Man (Rupa Publications, 2018) and Main Shayar Toh Nahin (Harper Collins India, 2019). He is currently working on a book on Hindi cinema's most versatile composers, Laxmikant-Pyarelal.

Main Shayar Toh Nahin is a well-researched, very informative and wonderfully written book.  Little is written about lyricists of Hindi Film songs and even less is known. Except for a very few top writers/poets, they remain the 'unsung' heroes of Bollywood music. This book fills this vacuum very well. The book is filled with interesting and inspiring anecdotes and, details and technicalities of songwriting. It also seeks to explore why words and melody have a fleeting presence. I had a conversation with Mr Vijayakar about his books and the role of lyrics in Hindi songs and films.

Aditya Singh: You are a film historian and a consultant at the Indian Music Experience Museum. How do you see the art of writing lyrics and what exactly is this Indian Music Experience Museum?

Rajiv Vijayakar: Writing good lyrics is all about first fitting the requirements of the story and script and matching a character’s intellectual, mental and emotional levels and then about showing off what you can do as a writer. It is about going with the director’s vision and that of the (film) writer(s) and within that doing something fresh if possible. It is also about writing in a simple language and keeping in sync with the times and not thrusting one’s own beliefs and experiences into the song. Also, doling out great philosophies whenever possible within the simplest words that are right for a situation (Gaadi bula rahi hai / Dost; Jab koi baat bigad jaaye/Jurm; Sajan re jhooth mat bolo / Teesri Kasam) is brilliant. 

For these reasons, I consider the following five names the greatest lyricists of all time: in alphabetical order Anand Bakshi, Indeevar, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Rajendra Krishan and Shailendra. For me, Shakeel and Sahir rank next along with others like Kaifi Azmi, Pradeep and more.

The Indian Music Experience (www.indianmusicexperience.org) is a one-of-its-kind largely digital music museum—a first for India. It encompasses every music ever heard in all of India up to Fusion and cannot be described orally, but it truly has to be experienced. A normal excursion through it will take a viewer not less than 3 hours to see it all decently, and you can spend many more hours there, depending upon your specific field of interest, like Hindi film music, Carnatic classical, theatre music etc. Exhibits apart, there are mostly things you can watch or experience through a touch-screen. It is located in Bangalore and I have been with them through the initial conception in 2011 to its inauguration in 2019. I am the only consultant for Hindi Film Music. It has been structurally designed by an American firm that has done several music museums around the world from the USA to Hong Kong, like the Grammy and Michael Jackson museums.

Aditya Singh: You mention in your book about meetings with numerous lyricists- from Majrooh Sultanpuri and Anand Bakshi of yesteryear to Amitabh Bhattacharya and Manoj Muntashir of my age. Which of these meetings do you cherish the most or any particular moment that you wish to share with our readers?

Rajiv Vijayakar: With some, I had multiple meetings and with others, just one or two. I cherish my multiple meetings with Bakshi and Majrooh the most, along with my two meetings with Indeevar, my meetings with the simple, no-nonsense Hasrat Jaipuri and the frank Yogesh. Javed Akhtar made good copy always and among the newcomers, it is Irshad Kamil, with whom I am more like a friend. 

Anand Bakshi’s comments on how a person who takes 20 minutes for a bath does not necessarily bathe better than someone who is out in 5 minutes, his decisive declaration to an upstart director that he never wrote a super-hit song in his life (“I write songs. Various factors make them a super-hit!”), Majrooh’s frank opinions about some newer lyricists (which will remain off the record!!), Javed Akhtar’s long statement used in the book about cultures and languages, Gulzar’s remarks on the three Khans and how only one of them is an artiste (Salman Khan) while the other two are hardcore businessmen and Neeraj’s comment that Bakshi was the man with the best grip on a film song situation are some of the highlights I recall.

Front Cover of the Book

 

Aditya Singh: It is generally said that the standard of lyrics has lowered significantly. The songs that are being produced lack in depth in comparison to the songs of the 1950s to 1970s. Do you feel the same? And if yes, who is to be blamed- the lyricist or the director-producer duo or the audience?

Rajiv Vijayakar: In a demand-and-supply situation, it is obviously the filmmakers, financiers and music labels that will always remain the prime culprits. Naushad had a clause that only the composer, lyricist and director would be there for music sitting; a smaller composer like Chitragupta never had the producer listening to a new song until it was recorded and he came in only to pay everyone; Laxmikant recalled how a sitting for a big film turned nightmarish when the director came with several team members and family and no tune would satisfy all. Finally, its big-name lyricist manipulated things so that a favourite smaller music director replaced them in the film!

The fact that so many re-created songs make waves with the youngsters shows that everyone identifies with good lyrics. Having said that, I firmly believe that today’s writers like Amitabh Bhattacharya, Irshad Kamil and Kumaar are significantly original and have the talent near to the greats (unlike the in-between 80s and 90s generations) but not the environment and the opportunities. Prasoon Joshi, Manoj Muntashir and Swanand Kirkire also can boast of this quality.

Rajiv Vijayakar

 

Aditya Singh:  You served as a jury member of the prestigious National Film Awards twice. What was the experience like? 

Rajiv Vijayakar: The experience was most congenial. Contrary to popular perception, there was total freedom and no pressures. They looked after us very well and we were put up in five-star hotels and were treated like luminaries. At work, we would see about 5-6 movies per day. We were also told to keep our positions as Jury Members a secret from all to prevent influences and from undue requests and pleas from industry members who might be known to us to “look after” their films.

Aditya Singh: Lastly, I want to ask you about Sahir Ludhianvi. There are two reasons: the first that he is my favourite and the second is that the year 2021 marks his hundredth birth anniversary. Can you share anything about Sahir, maybe as a tribute to him?  

Rajiv Vijayakar: I have mentioned everything about him in my book. I never met him since he passed away in 1980 long before I became a journalist. A lot of his work is truly awesome. ‘Tora man darpan kehlaaye’ (Kaajal), ‘Jab bhi jee chahe’ (‘Daag’), ‘Kya miliye aise logon se’ (Izzat), ‘Yeh parbaton ke daaere’ (Vaasna), ‘Sansar se bhaage phirte ho’ (Chitralekha), ‘Aage bhi jaane na tu’ (Waqt) and ‘Hum intezaar karenge’ (Bahu Begum) are probably my top-of-the-mind personal favourites among his songs.

Follow the interviewer on Twitter: @aditya_singh099

Delhi in 1857: Through the Eyes of Poets

There have been various attempts to study and understand the nature and extent of the uprising of 1857. It has been variously described as a 'mutiny',1 a 'revolt',2 a 'peasant revolt' 3and a 'war of independence'.4 However, more recent studies focus on regional variations and present a view that it was not one unified movement but many, with widely different causes, motives and natures. Such regional studies show how different were the situations in Muzaffarnagar and the Doab,5 Awadh,6 Bundelkhand 7and Delhi.8

Similarly, the uprising of 1857 had different meanings for each individual who were living in those times. Mutinous sepoys, kings and rulers, peasants, noblemen, merchants and traders, all of them had different expectations and socio-economic aspirations from those circumstances. Somewhere amidst this, poets were also trying to find their own meanings. Poetry, in particular, was an obsession in Delhi. The court of Bahadur Shah Zafar boasted of 'poetic luminaries like Mirza Ghalib, Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq and Momin Khan Momin in one gathering.' 9 Zafar was himself a talented poet and calligrapher.       

From Taimur to Zafar

Before three hundred mutinous sepoys and cavalrymen rode from Meerut on the morning of May 11, the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar was that of 'great brilliance', presiding over 'one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history.'10But Zafar was already deprived of any political power by the East India Company and he knew this very well. Zahir Dehelvi, who was a shagird (disciple) of Zauq in poetry and Darogha-e-Mahi Maratib (the in charge of the empire's fish emblem) at Zafar's court, talks about it in his eyewitness account of the rebellion, Taraz-e-Zahiri (became famous as Dastan-e-Ghadar):

He [Zafar] often heard expressing his views through his poetry and poetic utterances. One of his apt repeated phrase was:

Meri aulad na-haq aarzu sultanat ki rakhti hai

Yeh karkhana aage ko chalne wala nahin hai

Mujhi par khatma hai

Az Taimur taa Zafar

(My children have unjust dreams of kingship

This order can't stay for long

It will end with me 

From Taimur to Zafar)

 It happened exactly as he predicted.11

Photograph of the damaged St. James's Church in Delhi taken by Dr John Murray in 1858 after the Uprising of 1857
(Source: British Library)

The sepoys from the Meerut cantonment demanded the restoration of Zafar as the Emperor of Hindustan and proclaimed him as their leader. The reluctant Badashah eventually gave legitimacy to the rebels by lending his name to the cause. The stage for a prolonged conflict in Delhi was now set. In the following months, the city witnessed mass murders and looting.

An Ocean of Blood

A poet who was particularly excited by these turn of events was Muhammad Hussain 'Azad', twenty-seven-year-old son of Maulvi Muhammad Baqar, the editor of Dihli Urdu Akhbar. The second edition of the paper after the arrival of sepoys from Meerut, that of 24 May, contained Azad's poem entitled 'History of Instructive Reversals'. The ghazals saw these events as an end to the Christian empire in India:

O Azad, learn this lesson:

For all  their wisdom and vision,

The Christian rulers have been erased,

Without leaving a trace in this world.12
 

However, for Mirza Ghalib, the greatest Urdu poet, this was the time of subsequent destruction of the culture of Delhi. Ghalib called this time 'rustakhez-e-beja', or an unwarranted rebellion.13 He remained in Delhi throughout the uprising and recorded the events of this period, particularly a period of fifteen months (from 11 May 1857 to 31 July 1858),14 in his Persian diary, Dastanbuy (literally nosegay). But it seems that Ghalib wrote this diary in order to get amnesty from the British after the revolt. It is evident from a letter he wrote to Har Gopal Tafta who was supervising the publication of Dastanbuy:

When you see this manuscript you will understand...I shall present one copy to the Governor General of India and through him one copy to her Royal Highness the Queen of England. Now you can guess what the style of writing is going to be.15    

 

A portrait of Asadullah Khan Ghalib (dated 1856) from Bahadur Shah Zafar's collection (now in the Red Fort Museum)

Therefore, his epistolary correspondence is a more relevant source as it is written with comparatively greater freedom and boldness. In a letter to Abdul Ghafur Surur, he scribbled about the bloodbath in the city:

Here in this city with my wife and sons, I am swimming in an ocean of blood.¹⁶ 

In fact, Ghalib's mentally-ill brother, Mirza Yusuf had run out of his house and was shot dead by the blood-thirsty British soldiers and his house looted.17

Worst was the slaughter of innocent people in Kucha Chelan when British and their allies entered the city in September 1857. Among the dead were Miyan Amir Panja-kash, a great calligrapher and Maulvi Imam Bakhsh Sahbai, one of the most celebrated Urdu poet. Zahir Dehelvi wrote:

I have heard that 1400 men from this mohalla were arrested and taken to the river from the Rajghat Darwaza. There, they were slaughtered by guns and the corpses were thrown in the river.

The women ran out of their houses with their children and jumped into wells. The wells of Kucha Chelan were full of dead bodies.18

How Can Dilli Live

On September 20, the British captured the Red Fort. Bahadur Shah Zafar had already escaped to Humayun's Tomb on 17 September. Zafar probably wrote these verses then or sometime after that:

Ai vaaye inquilaab zamaane ke jaur se

Dilli  Zafar ke haath se pal mein nikal gayi 

(Alas! What a revolution, due to the cruelty of age

Dilli slipped out of Zafar's hands in a moment)19

Stereoscopic photograph of the Kashmir Gate at Delhi (battered by shots and shell), with carriages and pedestrians on the roadway, taken by James Ricalton in c. 1903

There were excessive looting and massacre in the streets of Delhi by individual soldiers and officers after the fall. Later on, the formal looting was started by the British 'Prize Agents'. Zahir Dehelvi mourned the situation:

Har ek shahr ka peer wa jawaan qatl huwa

Har ek qabeela wa har khaandaan qatl huwa

Har ek ahl-e-zabaan khush-bayaan qatl huwa

Garz khulasa yeh hai ke ek jahaan qatl huwa

(All the young and old of the city were martyred

Every tribe, every family was martyred 

Every eloquent, sweet-tongued was martyred

In short, an entire world war martyred)20

These circumstances forced poets like Dagh Dehelvi, Mohammad Hussain 'Azad' and Zahir Dehelvi to flee from the city leaving their house and belongings. But Ghalib remained in Delhi. Saddened, he wrote to Majruh:

The life of Dilli depended upon the Fort, the Chandani Chawk, the daily gatherings at Jami Masjid, the weekly walks to the Jamana Bridge and annual Phoolwalon ki Sair. When all these five things are not there, how can Dilli live? Yes, there was once a city by this name in the dominions of India.21

And in a later letter, he comments:

Dilli is not a city now, it is a camp, it is a cantonment. No fort, no city, no bazar, no canals.²² 

In the same letter, he also laments for the fate of female members of the royal house:

The male descendants of the deposed king - such as survived the sword - draw all allowances of five rupees a month. The female descendants, if old, are bawds; if young, are prostitutes.23

The damaged building of Delhi Bank (Part of a portfolio of photographs taken in 1858 by Major Robert Tytler and his wife, Harriet)

With the loss of the Mughal court went much of the city's reputation as a centre of culture and learning. Its libraries had been looted, its precious manuscripts were lost. It seems like it was Zafar who was binding it all together. He was now kept in a dark dingy cell in Red Fort where he lived all his life. He had nothing at his disposal, not even a pen or paper. Yet, he was doing there something that he loved all his life, composing poetry. As Times correspondent W.H. Russell described:

His eyes had the dull, filmy look of very old age...which seems as if it were to guide us to the great darkness...Some heard him quoting verses of his own composition, writing poetry on a wall with a burned stick.24

Zafar finally breathed his last on 7 November 1862 in Rangoon where he was exiled. He was buried secretly and no one knew the exact spot of his grave until 1991. On 16 February 1991, workmen digging a drain stumbled upon a brick-lined grave of the Last Mughal Emperor. It looks like one more of his prediction was right. As one of his verses goes:

Kitna hai badnaseeb Zafar dafn ke liye

Do gaz zameen bhi na mili ku-e-yaar mein

(How unfortunate is Zafar, that even for his burial

He couldn't get two yards of land in the beloved's lane)²⁵ 

Follow the author on Twitter: @aditya_singh099

Notes

1. J.W. Kaye, History of the Sepoy War in India, 3 vols. (London 1867).

2. S.N.Sen, Eighteen Fifty-Seven (New Delhi 1957); R.C.Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857 (Calcutta 1957); S.B.Chaudhuri, Civil Rebellion in the Indian Mutinies (Calcutta 1957).

3. Eric Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj, Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India (Cambridge 1978); Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi 1983); Eric Stokes, Peasants Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857, ed. C.A.Bayly (Oxford 1986).

4. V.D.Savarkar, The Indian War of Independence of 1857 (London 1909).

5. Eric Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj (Cambridge 1978).

6. Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Awadh in Revolt 1857-1858, A Study in Popular Resistance (Delhi 1984).

7. Tapti Roy, The Politics of a Popular Uprising, Bundelkhand in 1857 (Delhi 1994). 

8. William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal (Penguin India 2006).

9. Rana Safvi, Shahjahanabad, Shahr Ashob Poetry and the Revolt of 1857 (Sahapedia, 2018).

10. William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal (Penguin India 2006) pp. 2-3.

11. Zahir Dehelvi, Dastan-e-Ghadar, trans. Rana Safvi (Penguin India 2017) pp. 25.

12. William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal (Penguin India 2006) pp. 161-162.

13. Mirza Ghalib, Dastanbuy, trans. Khwaja Ahmad Faruqi (Asia Publishing House 1970) pp. 34.

14. Gopi Chand Narang, Ghalib and the Rebellion of 1857.    

15. Mirza Ghalib, Urdu-i-Mu'alla (1869) pp. 41.

16. Ibid., pp. 104.

17. V.N. Datta, Ghalib's Delhi.

18. Zahir Dehelvi, Dastan-e-Ghadar, trans. Rana Safvi (Penguin India 2017) pp. 142-143.

19. Rana Safvi, Shahjahanabad, Shahr Ashob Poetry and the Revolt of 1857 (Sahapedia, 2018).

20. Zahir Dehelvi, Dastan-e-Ghadar, trans. Rana Safvi (Penguin India 2017) pp. 301.

21. Mirza Ghalib, Khutut-e-Ghalib pp. 285.

22. Ibid., pp. 293.

23. Ibid., pp. 293-294.

24. Quoted in William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal (Penguin India 2006) pp. 434.

25. Rana Safvi, Shahjahanabad, Shahr Ashob Poetry and the Revolt of 1857 (Sahapedia, 2018).

A Pandemic and a Literary Account

Just like today, the world was gripped by a deadly pandemic at least a century earlier. The 1918 influenza pandemic spread all across the globe leaving no major inhabited place untouched. Quaranties proved useless almost everywhere. According to various estimates, 20 to 50 million people died all across the world. The pandemic, caused by the virus of H1N1 family, spread in three distinct waves which prolonged to more than a year. The first "spring" wave began in March 1918 and diffused to Europe, Africa, India, China and Australia in April and July. The second and the most deadly known as the "fall" wave began in late August and fanned out quickly from France. Many places experienced a third, but "less well-defined wave" in the winter of 1918 and spring of 1919. The disease seriously jeopardised the social and demographic pattern of the world.

Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala' was a great Hindi poet, essayist, novelist and pioneer of Chhayawad poetry. He is remembered for his great experiments with different genres and themes. Nirala provided a vivid account of this deadly pandemic in the Indian countryside. But more on that later.

The Global Spread of the Virus 

According to Patterson and Pyle, the earliest case of the virus was reported from an army recruitment camp for World War I in Kansas, USA where the epidemic began on March 5. The flu diffused to war-torn Europe as the American troopships reached France by early April. They point out that since Spain did not censor news and epidemic was widely publicized there, it led to the coinage of the misleading term Spanish Flu. Influenza engulfed the whole of Europe by June-end. 

Tram conductor in Seattle not allowing passengers aboard without a mask, during the Influenza  Flu Pandemic in 1918

Africa was infected in May. Troops returning to Indian subcontinent carried the virus the docks of Bombay in May. Australia, New Zealand and South-East Asia were infected by June. The spring wave waned in July and August. But, on the other hand, a new and more deadly second wave began in western France in Early August. The majority of deaths were of young adults.

The Pandemic and India

India was the focal point of this Influenza spread and loss of life. The estimates of the data regarding the mortality rates in India are wide-ranging. It differs from 6 million to 30 million. The official records of the British Indian government suggest a total toll of 6 million, which is definitely an undercount. Davis calculated the death toll to be 17.21 million. 

Spanish flu weekly trends in 3 Indian regions in 1918. 

(Source: Siddharth Chandra and Eva Kassens-Noor/BMC Infectious Diseases, 2014)

In the 19th century, the influenza pandemic broke out in the years 1803, 1833, 1837, 1840 and 1890. Colonel Norman White, Sanitary Commissioner to the Government of India diagnosed influenza as similar to that of 1890. But the 1918 influenza epidemic was more lethal in terms of mortality. According to a report by the Sanitary Commissioner of Punjab, the symptoms of the disease were: fever, slow pulse rate, ache in ache body, physical and mental depression and respiratory distress and inflammation in the air passage. The people exposed to the disease were normally dead in three days.

The diffusion of the disease was mainly aided by the enhanced pace and volume of the human movement. The soldiers returning to their villages from the military campaigns, the trade and commerce through ships and inland movement through railroad and postal services helped the virus to fan out in the entire Indian subcontinent. However, in most places, the first case was recorded after the movement of soldiers. 

(Courtesy: R. Bala)

In India, the largest number of deaths was reported in the United Provinces, which also had the largest population in British ruled India. According to an official estimate, more than one million people died in this province only. K. Davis, however, has shown that this data is full of discrepancies. The province experienced a death rate of 89.07 deaths per thousand population. Central Provinces and Berar lost 5.6 per cent of the population due to influenza deaths. Delhi was right behind where the 5.5 per cent population was wiped out. Bombay, Punjab and North-West Frontier Province also experienced high mortality rates. The majority of the people who died were in the prime of their life. 

A Literary Account of the Pandemic

A Life Misspent provides an account of Suryakant Tripathi Nirala's life. It also happens to provide an account of his friendship with Kulli Bhaat. It also provides a moving account of the influenza pandemic of 1918-19. Nirala was married to Manohara Devi from a small town named Dalmau in Rae Bareli district of United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). She was the one who motivated him to learn and write in Khari Boli. It was in Dalmau where he met an ordinary man but a great soul Kulli Bhaat. It was also here where he was exposed to the biggest jolt of his life.

A rare image of  Suryakant Tripahi 'Nirala'

The account from Sutti Khanna's translation goes like this: "There was a violent outbreak of influenza about this time...I received a telegram: 'Your wife is gravely ill. Come immediately.' I was twenty-two...The newspapers had informed us about the ravages of the epidemic. I travelled to the riverbank in Dalmau and waited. The Ganga was swollen with dead bodies. At my in-laws' house, I learned that my wife had passed away. My cousin had come over my ancestral village to help with wife's illness, but he had taken ill himself and returned home. I left for our ancestral village the very next day. As I was walking towards my house, I saw my cousin's corpse being carried to the cremation site."

The influenza infection did not spare his family yet. He further wrote: "My uncle was the head of the family. He, too, contracted influenza...Words cannot describe how pitiful the scene was, how helpless, how tender...Sister-in-law passed away on the third day of my cousin's death. The nursing child was also sick. I slept that night holding her. She, too, passed away in the morning. I buried her in the riverbank. Then Uncle died. One more corpse to cart to the Ganga. Sister-in-law's three sons contracted fever. Somehow, I was able to nurse them back to health. My family disappeared in the blink of an eye. All our sharecroppers and labourers died, the four who worked for my cousin and the two who worked for me."               

This excerpt brings up the horrifying situation that gripped United Provinces and the whole of India at that time in the absence of the basic health care facilities and the presence of an unsympathetic and exploitative colonial regime. "I would go sit on a mound by the Ganga and watch and watch the file of corpses brought to the river", Nirala further added. 

To conclude, the world had never seen such a cataclysmic disease before. First, no other disease in the past had spread with such rapidness in the entire world. Second, no other disease had spread to such geographical expanse with hardly any pocket of the world left untouched. And lastly, influenza affected far more number of people than any other disease.

(Excerpts from Suryakant Tripathi Nirala's A Life Misspent translated by Sutti Khanna)

Follow the author on Twitter: @aditya_singh099

Representation of the Peasants and Dalits in the Literature of Premchand

Munshi Premchand (Dhanpat Rai) is arguably the greatest and finest writer in the Hindi and Urdu literature. His realistic and non-romantic portrayal of the characters and narrative makes him different from his contemporaries and even the post-independence writers. His corpus still remains effective because his characters are simple, with simple desires, values and morals. The narrative is also simple and straight-forward. Krishna Datt Paliwal rightly points out that Premchand still remains relevant because he draws most of his characters from the rural-agrarian background. "He did not create, but presented his characters."

Premchand's corpus is vast, with 302 short stories, 15 novels, 3 plays, 86 journalistic essays, around 700 editorial comments, around 150 book reviews and some translation works. In his works, he brought into fold the many forms of manipulation and exploitation, be it gender, class, caste or religion. His literature is robust because of, as Gulzar said, "Utopian Idealism of Premchand". In one of his speeches at Madras in 1934, he had said, "Without idealism, what is the use of literature? Without idealism, it is only to entertain and satisfy the lust for amazing."

Approaching the Question of Caste Subjugation

It is beyond any argument that Premchand was the first person in the pre-independence phase to write about the marginalisation, subjugation and exploitation of the Dalit community. Kamal Kishore Goenka identifies Premchand's 40 short stories depicting Dalit life and thought. This, he argues, is certainly not a dominant trend but represents a separate stream of writer's humanity and sensitivity.

It is interesting to note that Premchand's first story with the plot relating to the upliftment of the Dalit community, 'Dono Taraf Se', was published in Urdu in March 1911. It was a time frame when neither Gandhi nor Ambedkar had entered the scene of movement for Dalit upliftment. Gandhi came back from South Africa in 1915. The sanyasi's speech in 'Sirf Ek Awaaz' (published in 1913) reflects what the author thought. Similarly, stories like 'Sadgati' (1930), 'Rashtra ka Sevak' (1930), 'Mandir' (1927) etc. reflects the politics revolving around the concepts of purity and untouchability through the Dalit body.

   

However, in the later years, Gandhi's impression can clearly be seen in his thought process. In 'Hans', he wrote: "We accept that we have done injustice to the Shudras. We exploited, dominated and crushed them. This injustice has pained Gandhiji the most, a saint who worked for their betterment for the whole of his life."  He dreamt of a caste-less society in future independent India. In a critical essay titled 'Kya Hum Vaastav me Rashtravadi Hain' (Are We Truly Nationalist) published in Jagran on January 8, 1934, he wrote; "The nationality for which we are dreaming, won't have any caste bound by birth, it will be an empire of our workers and peasants, where no one would be a Brahmin, a Harijan, a Kayastha or a Kshatriya. Where everyone would be an Indian, either each person would be a Brahmin or everyone would be a Harijan."  

Kamla Kishore Goenka has made an interesting observation that Premchand's Dalit literature is a literature of empathy, which carries the same pain as sympathy. In 'Thakur ka Kuan' (1932), Premchand depicts how people from lower castes were even denied access to essential objects such as water. He was certainly influenced by Gandhian call for Dalit entry into the temples when he wrote 'Mandir'.

Peasant Consciousness and Struggle

Premchand thought that he owed his 'rural brethren' that they should feature in his literature. His protagonists mainly came from an agrarian background crushed under the class hegemony of the landlords and their agents, the colonial state and their officials, the moneylenders and priests. Though sometimes the protagonists perish due to the exploitation, there also exists some kind of poetic justice. In fact, nationalism and peasantry were the central themes in his writings. 

In the initial phase (1903-18), the issue of peasants does not find a frequent mention. Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay thinks that it is because, in this phase, Premchand wrote mainly in Urdu, which catered to elite urban culture. Besides, the rise of Gandhi, his peasant movements in Champaran and Kheda and the Russian Revolution in 1917 drastically changed his literary paradigm in his second phase of writing. In Rangabhoomi's protagonist (published 1925), we see a clear impress of Gandhi. Many scholars believe Surdas symbolises Gandhi and the idea of a struggle between good and evil with mass support.

Peasantry occupies a central role in his novels such as Premashram, Rangabhoomi, Karmabhoomi and Godaan. In Gaban (published 1930), though indirectly, he stressed the superiority of rural culture over the city life. 'Sava Ser Genhu' (1924) is an excellent portrayal of a peasant by a moneylender. In the same story, he also portrays the problem of the bonded labour which continues from one generation to the other. The author leaves a note in the end: "Please don't consider it as a figment of the imagination. It is a true story."

Criticism: Revolutionary or Not?

Dalit and Marxist writers have criticized Premchand for not professing a revolutionary solution to the problems of Dalits, peasants and workers. Such critics believe that a revolutionary solution to such problems feels more practical than Gandhian or Tolstoyan solution. He seeks to pin hope on certain changes of the heart rather than a steadfast revolution by the Dalits or peasants.

   

But, at a deeper level in Premchand's works, there is a presence of a spirit of resistance which can be located in the most neglected and marginalised groups such as Dalits and women. Manohar in Premashram, Surdas in Rangabhoomi, Chaudhari in Karmabhoomi, and Hori and Dhania in Godaan are all revolutionaries in their own capacity. Surdas in Rangabhoomi fights a prolonged battle against the factory and its supporters who want to take away his land. In Karmabhoomi, the situation becomes so desperate that peasants have to rebel.  

There is a certain revolution in 'Mandir' where a mother who was considered untouchable revolts against the hegemony of upper castes on temple entry. In Godaan, Harkhu Chaudhary, a Chamar, even goes to the extent of putting a bone in Brahmin Matadin's mouth when she harasses a Dalit girl. This act was aimed at making Matadin a Chamar. According to Virendra Yadav, the Dalit discourse of Godaan is the symbol of the internal fragmentation of the Hindu society which forces Matadin to throw away his sacred thread.  

It would not be incorrect to say that Hindi and Urdu literature has not seen any other writer like Premchand. As Gulzar puts it: while his contemporaries were busy writing either the escapist romantic fiction or the slogan-ridden stories, he found his protagonists in Chamars, kisans, and the corrupt Brahmins.

Follow the author on Twitter: @aditya_singh099

A Forgotten Hero: Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi

Two days after the execution of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev, on March 25, 1931, a slender and lean man set out of his house to succour the communal tensions in Kanpur. His wife tried to argue with him- "Where do you think you are going in this fierce riot?" He responded- "You are panicking in vain. Who will harm me when I have not hurt anybody? God is with me." Witnesses reported that he left bare-headed and bare-footed.

Unfortunately, his dead body was found in a pile with others after two days in a hospital. This man was no other than Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi. He was a journalist, editor, activist, freedom fighter and a prominent Congress leader. He himself wrote- ''A man is alive as long as there is a lofty ideal before his eyes, for which he can give his life.'' That's exactly what he did.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi

An Upfront Journalist

He started his career from a literary magazine, Saraswati where he worked in close association with Acharya Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi and developed high literary talents. He later came in contact with Pandit Sunderlal (who was a revolutionary Ghadarite) and his weekly Kamrajogi (in Hindi) and Swarajya (Urdu). For a short span of time, he also worked in Abhyudaaya, edited by Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya.

In 1913, Vidyarthi along with Shivnarain Mishra started his own weekly, Pratap. Later it was converted into a daily newspaper. In the first edition, they set out the policy and objective of the newspaper-

"....सांप्रदायिक और व्यक्तिगत झगड़ों से 'प्रताप' सदा अलग रहने की कोशिश करेगा।....उसका मत स्वातंत्र्य-विचार और उसका धर्म सत्य होगा।"
("....'Pratap' will always try to stay away from communal and personal disputes...Its opinion will be Independent thought and truth its religion.")

It further stated-

"....लेकिन जिस दिन हमारी आत्मा इतनी निर्बल हो जाए कि अपने प्यारे आदर्श से डिग जाएँ, जान-बूझ कर असत्य के पक्ष-पाती बनने की बेशर्मी करें,...वह दिन हमारे जीवन का सबसे अभागा दिन होगा और हम चाहते हैं कि हमारी उस नैतिक-मृत्यु के साथ-ही-साथ हमारे जीवन का भी अंत हो जाए।"
("....The day our souls become so weak that they fall short of their beloved ideals or the day we deliberately become the disgraceful partisans of untruth,...that day will be the most unfortunate day of our lives and as with our moral death, we want it to be the last day of our lives.")

Vidyarthi as an accused in Fatehpur
Sedition Case (1923)

In the Foreword of Pandit Vishnudatta Shukla's book 'Patrakar-Kala', Vidyarthi mentions the responsibilities of a journalist-

"...पत्रकार की अपने समाज के प्रति बड़ी ज़िम्मेदारी है; वह अपने विवेक के अनुसार अपने पाठकों को ठीक मार्ग पर ले जाता है;...पैसा कमाना उसका ध्येय नहीं है, लोक-सेवा उसका ध्येय है; और अपने काम से जो पैसा वह कमाता है, वह ध्येय तक पहुंचाने के लिए साधन मात्र है।"
("...A journalist has a huge responsibility towards his society; he guides his readers on the right path according to his conscience;...Making money is not his goal, it is public service; the money he earns is just a means to this end.")

Vidyarthi went to jail on five occasions, out of which three times due to objectionable pieces published in the Pratap (according to the colonial government) and twice for his anti-British speeches. A British bureaucrat of United Provinces wrote in his report, "The publice life in U.P. can not be safe unless the 'Pratap' is crushed." after he published an investigative report on Rae Bareli Kisaan Massacre of 1921. He was slapped with a fine of Rs. 10,000 and a defamation case.

A Friend to Revolutionaries

Vidyarthi was a perfect blend of revolutionary and Gandhian ideals. When most of the Congress leadership was unsympathetic towards the revolutionaries involved in the Kakori case, he published numerous articles glorifying the act and provided material support to Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan and Roshan Singh.

Bismil's autobiography was published by Pratap. Through his efforts, Vidyarthi constructed a mazar over Ashfaqullah Khan's burial in Shahjahanabad, Uttar Pradesh. He performed the ritual of a father at Roshan Singh's daughter. Not only that, but he also sheltered Bhagat Singh who worked in Pratap as an Assistant Editor under the pen name of Balwant Singh Sandhu. He even facilitated a meeting between young Jawaharlal Nehru and Chandra Shekhar Azad.

For Kisaan and Mazdoor

At a village named Narbal, several miles away from Kanpur city, Vidyarthi established a Sevagram Aashram in 1929 for village organisation. He opened schools and library there and promoted people to weave Khadi. Gradually, more than 200 nearby villages became part of the organisation. In Kanpur city, he worked for labour organisation. He was elected the President of Kanpur Mazdoor Sabha in 1927 and remained at the post until his death in 1931. Through his efforts, the Sabha managed to publish a weekly named Mazdoor.

\Vidyarthi as the President of U.P. Provincial
Congress Committee (1930)

"हम लोगों को....सीधे गाँवों की ओर मुड़ना चाहिए। हिन्दू मुस्लिम वैमनस्य दूर करने का एक मात्र यही तरीका है...उसी तरह शहरों की मिलों में काम करने वाले लाखों मज़दूरों के संगठन की भी आवश्यकता है। किसान और मज़दूरों का युग आ गया है।"
("We should...move towards the villages. This is the only way to eradicate Hindu Muslim animosity...Similarly, there is a need to organise millions of labours working in the cities. The age of peasants and labours has come.") 

At Odds with Communalism

Vidyarthi was a crusader against the rising tide of communalism. He believed that the strife between the two communities was mainly due to conflicting economic interests and competitive politics rather than communal feelings. In his writings, he evoked the example of Medieval practice of celebrating Ramlilas in front of mosques where both communities enjoyed the performances.

He equally confronted the Hindu and Muslim nationalists in his writings, for e.g-

"...कुछ लोग 'हिंदू राष्ट्र' - 'हिंदू राष्ट्र' चिल्लाते हैं। हमें क्षमा किया जाए, यदि हम कहें-नहीं, हम इस बात पर जोर दें - कि वे एक बड़ी भारी भूल कर रहे हैं और उन्होंने अभी तक 'राष्ट्र' शब्द का अर्थ ही नहीं समझा।...हिंदू ही भारतीय राष्ट्र के सब कुछ न होंगे और जो ऐसा समझते हैं - हृदय से या केवल लोगों को प्रसन्न करने के लिए - वे भूल कर रहे हैं और देश को हानि पहुँचा रहे हैं। वे लोग भी इसी प्रकार की भूलकर रहे हैं जो टर्की या काबुल, मक्का या जेद्दा का स्वप्न देखते हैं, क्योंकि वे उनकी जन्मभूमि नहीं...उनकी कब्रें इसी देश में बनेंगी और उनके मर्सिये....इसी देश में गाये जाएँगे।"
("...Some people shout 'Hindu Rashtra'-'Hindu Rashtra'. We must be forgiven if we say- No, let us emphasize that- they are committing a huge mistake and they have not yet understood the meaning of the word 'Rashtra' or nation....[when we get freedom,] Hindus will not be everything in the Indian nation and those who think so- from the heart or only to please people- are making mistakes and harming the country. Those who dream of Turkey or Kabul, Mecca or Jeddah are making the same mistakes because those are not their native land,...they will be buried here and marsiyas for them...will be read here.")

"He died, as he lived"

Back to March 25, 1931, Vidyarthi went to Patkapur area of the city where he saved the life of 50 odd people. From there he went to Bengali Mohal and Etawah-Bazaar. En route, he saved several Hindu families Machali Bazaar. In Mishri Bazaar, he saved more than 150 Muslim men, women and children. He was saving the lives of several families in Chaube-Gola when a frenzied mob attacked him.

A witness later stated that someone tried to save him pushing inside a house but he cried- "Why do you drag me? I will not save my life by running away. I surrender if my death quenches the bloodthirst of these people."

Vidyarthi's dead body wrapped in Tri-colour (on a pyre) 

Gandhi, himself wrote about Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi's death in his journal, Young India:

"The death of Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was one to be envied by us all. His blood is the cement that will ultimately bind the two communities. No pact will bind our hearts. But heroism such as Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi showed is bound in the end to melt the stoniest hearts, melt them into one. The poison has however gone so deep that the blood even of a man so great, so self-sacrificing and so utterly brave as Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi may today not be enough to wash us of it. Let this noble example stimulate us all to similar effort should the occasion arise again." 

He didn't die just to save several lives, but to save all of us from the vices of hatred, communalism and fanatism.

Follow the author on Twitter: @aditya_singh099

How Urdu Came into Being?

अर्ज़-ए-दकन में जान तो दिल्ली में दिल बनी

और शहर-ए-लखनऊ में हिना बन गई ग़ज़ल

ارض دکن میں جان تو دلی میں دل بنی

اور شہر لکھنؤ میں حنا بن گئی غزل

(Life in the land of Deccan, heart in Delhi

And henna became ghazal in the city of Lucknow)

This sher of Ganesh Bihari Tarz rightly represents the pan-Indian character of the Urdu

language. Urdu has a long history spanning for a little less than a millennium now. The

process of evolution from which it went through is what makes it genuinely native to this land.

The study of this process lays forward us a shared history of two modern languages, viz.,

Urdu and Hindi.

Faint Beginnings

An eminent Urdu scholar Shamsur Rahman Faruqui points out that the “Early names for the

language now called Urdu were Hindvi, Hindi, Dihlavi, Dakani and Rekhta.” Amir Khursau

(1259-1325) called it ‘Hindavi’, for Abul Fazl (1551-1602), it was ‘Dehalvi’. People of Deccan

embraced it as a language of their own, ‘Dakhani’.

Amir Khusrau has the lines:

बहुत कठिन है डगर पनघट की

बहुत दिन बीते पिया को देखे

بهت کاتهین های دگر پانغاٹ کی

بهت دین بطه پیا کو دکهه

(For the path to the river is arduous

I haven’t seen my beloved since long)

Amir Khusrau (Source: Goodreads)

Yakta, an eighteenth-century writer from Lucknow, maybe rightly describes the evolution of

the language as:

“[people]....came from all sides and all shores of the world….And most of them adopted this

paradise….as their own native place….mixed each other’s vocabulary….for neither the

Arabic remained Arabic, nor Persian, Persian; nor did the….vernaculars retain their original

form.”

Thus, a language was born which was truly Indian in nature. It would not be incorrect to

argue that Urdu was actually born in military camps of Delhi Sultanate inhabiting the people

of Turkish, Iranian, Indian origin etc. or in the bazaars of Delhi. Thus, Shah Hatim (1699-1783)

in the preface of his Divanzada called Urdu as “rozmarra-i-Dihli’’ or the daily speech of Delhi

which was born out of the mixing of Khari Boli of Delhi and Persian and Turkish.

What about Military Camps

Babur in his memoir Turuk-i-Baburi mentions the word ‘Urdu’ or ‘Ordo’ repeatedly. However,

the word ‘Urdu’ in Turkish means a ‘military camp’ or ‘cantonment’. T. Grahame Bailey, thus,

concludes that Urdu came to signify the military language (lashkari zaban) over time. 

Eventually, it became the common tongue and began to be known as

zaban-i-Urdu-i-mu’alla-i-Shahjahanabad (the language of the city of Shahjahanabad),

later shortened to zaban-i-Urdu-i-mu’alla and further to zaban-i-Urdu. By the

eighteenth-century, the language of Delhi and the area around it, came to be called Urdu. 

Persian Influence

Persian enjoyed the status of the official language of the court from the times of Delhi

Sultanate to the demise of the Mughal empire in the eighteenth century. Therefore, when

Urdu came to flourish, its poets, writers, lexicographers etc. naturally inclined towards the

Persian traditions. They imitated the themes of Persian poetry, its idioms, phrases, meters etc.

Not only that, but they also adopted different forms such as ghazal, qasida, tazkira, etc. 

However, this does not mean that the Indians did not infuse something of their own. In fact, they

started to explore the vast potentiality that Rekhta presented them. Many like Mirza Sauda

(1713-1781), who started as a Persian poet switched to Rekhta.

Mirza Rafi Sauda (Source; Rekhta.org)

Transition to Rekhta

As for the influence of Persian faded, the poets of Rekhta and Hindavi came to be recognised

and patronised from royals as well as the public. They introduced new forms and traditions into

the language such as that of satirical verse (hijv) and speaking a fresh (taza goi). 

One important figure in this respect, who can not be ignored, is Jafar Zatalli (d.1713). He was

the first major Urdu literary figure- the first Urdu prose writer, satirist and humorist. His most

important contribution is the inventive use of languages and words. There is a traceable

influence of Hindavi on Zatalli’s Persian poetry. In his verses, one can find the fading of

Persian and the emergence of a new language, i.e, Urdu.

Jafar Zatalli has the lines:

अगरची सभी कूड़ा ओ करकट अस्त

बा हिंदी ओ रिंदी ज़बां लटपट अस्त 

اگارچی صبحی کودا و کرکٹ است

با هندی و رندی زبان لٹ پٹ است 

(Although everything is rubbish and sweepings,

The language is lively with Hindi and licentiousness)

Reference should also be made of Khan-i-Arzu (1689-1765), under whose influence and

mentorship, the upstart poets like Abru, Mazmun, Yakrang, Khushgo, Sauda and Mir, started

to explore the possibility of writing in their own tongue, i.e, Rekhta.

Urdu as a Name of Language

But when does the word Urdu first occur as the name of a language? Perhaps the first

example of the word bearing the sense as we know it today comes in the writing of Mus’hafi

(1750-1824). He wrote this sher sometime after 1776, though it is not clear when:

ख़ुदा रक्खे ज़बाँ हम ने सुनी है 'मीर' ओ 'मिर्ज़ा' की

कहें किस मुँह से हम ऐ 'मुसहफ़ी' उर्दू हमारी है

خدا رکھے زباں ہم نے سنی ہے میرؔ و مرزاؔ ک

کہیں کس منہ سے ہم اے مصحفیؔ اردو ہماری ہے

(I have heard the language of Mir and Mirza Sauda,

How can I dare to say that Urdu is my language?)

Mir Taqi Mir (Source; The Print)

From here we find numerous evidence of the word Urdu bearing the sense of a language.

It became common in Lucknow after 1846 and in Delhi after 1857.

Follow the author on Twitter: @aditya_singh099