Marking the hundredth anniversary of his birth, it would have been apt to call Syed Sibte Hassan a genius, but it would be a disrespect to the man in today’s world where it is getting easier by the day to become a ‘legend’ by doing something ‘fabulous’, or, better still, ‘mind-blowing’ — for instance, singing one decent song, hosting some popular morning show and such other trivialities and inanities. Words, especially when they are about praise and tribute, have lost their meaning, making one wonder how to describe a lifetime of sustained intellect, as that of Hassan’s, in a time of ‘lunchtime legends’.

One of the few words that have still retained their classical worth in the face of media-led linguistic abuse is ‘visionary’, and Hassan was one by any yardstick that one may choose to measure his contribution to human thought.

The centennial, which poetically and poignantly enough, also happens to be the 30th anniversary of his death, is a fitting time to revisit a life that was defined by a vision that Hassan spelled in about a dozen books, each of which has seen multiple editions. This in itself is a remarkable achievement in a country where books die young. An instant demise was often the fate of the non-fiction variety that Hassan penned, and yet he attracted the masses in his time and remains relevant even today.

Sibte Hassan, whose birth centennial falls this year, viewed the world through the prism of leftist ideology without being dogmatic

Though he watched the world through the prism of leftist ideology, it remains to his eternal credit that he worked hard to pre-empt any chance of that ideology itself becoming a dogma for him; a fate that hit many of his comrades and left them with a myopic existence. It was his keen interest in human history that probably was behind Hassan’s success in this regard.

His subsequent command over the subject joined his scholastic attitude to give him the rare capacity to contextualise events both historical and modern, making him a visionary who could look backwards to understand the present and foresee what others could not. This ability to see the invisible — vision — is what separates men from the boys, and Hassan was a giant among men.

Famed French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry famously said that if a leader wants to build a ship, it is not for him to herd people together to collect wood and assign them tasks and work. Anybody can do that, he argued. A visionary, for him, was a person who would rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. Hassan spent his whole life teaching just that to the young and the elderly alike.

It is no wonder that there are more people in Pakistan who understand history and human progress through his books such as Mazi Ke Mazar, Moosa Se Marx Tak and others, than those who learn it through, say, textbooks. With this massive reservoir of hardcore knowledge at its base, the calmness of manner and demeanour in Hassan was as genuine as was his difference of opinion and outlook with his fellow comrades.

It is no wonder that there are more people in Pakistan who understand history and human progress through his books such as Mazi Ke Mazar, Moosa Se Marx Tak and others, than those who learn it through, say, textbooks. With this massive reservoir of hardcore knowledge at its base, the calmness of manner and demeanour in Hassan was as genuine as was his difference of opinion and outlook with his fellow comrades.

In his book, Leaving the Left Behind, Syed Jamaluddin Naqvi, who once ran the show at the Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP), recounted a few such episodes that bring out the thinking man in Hassan. “Since my CPP duties included generating pamphlets, magazines and other literature, I had the occasion to differ with what the Lail-o-Nahar [edited by Hassan] would say on a matter of importance. For instance, during the 1970 elections, Sibte Sahib favoured a sort of understanding among three parties; the NAP, the PPP and the Awami League of Mujib. The CPP position was clearly against Bhutto whom we used to describe as the ‘spare-wheel’ of [the] Pakistan Army. Such conflicts allowed a measure of debate with Sibte Sahib from which he never shied away,” writes Naqvi.

Elsewhere in the book, he recalls the time when Hassan sort of conceded ground as well. It was about a Lail-o-Nahar editorial that had used a phrase to the effect that “two angles of a triangle are always bigger than the third”. The CPP “smelled a bit of military jargon in the phrase” which made the entire force of the editorial suspicious. Hassan, in Naqvi’s words, “did a lot of explanation, but we stuck to our position”. He finally settled the matter “by conceding” that it had been penned by someone who had been among the accused in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and had spent “time under military supervision”.

Such sabre-rattling between the CPP and the man speaks highly of Hassan being his own man. He was too learned a soul to be toeing the so-called party line. During the Khomeini-led revolution in Iran, he opposed the development, while the CPP was in favour of the Shah’s dismissal. This, according to Naqvi, was under the influence of the erstwhile Soviet Union as it was against monarchy and the change had come through a ‘revolution’ which was a word close to the leftist mindset. With the aid of hindsight, Naqvi concedes that Hassan’s stance was correct and that “I was in argument only because of the CPP blinkers that were obstructing my vision”. Hassan was surely a man without blinkers.

The clarity of thought that he enjoyed would not have been so widely spread had it not been for the linguistic felicity of the narratives he generated that are coherent and lucid. That he chose Urdu as his preferred medium of expression over English over which he had as much command was perhaps reflective of the days that he spent in Hyderabad Deccan.

From 1935 to 1945, he had almost a decade interacting with the likes of Maulvi Abdul Haq and Qazi Abdul Ghaffar. Recalling those formative years of his life in Shehr-e-Nigara’n, Hassan has spoken highly of Jamia Osmania, calling it a “monumental splendour worth taking pride in”. As noted by him, the Jamia was “the only institution globally where history, geography, political science, sociology, philosophy, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, even medicine and engineering were taught in Urdu.”

He was greatly impressed by the university’s Bureau of Translation, which had “expanded the horizons of [the] Urdu language (by) adding massively to the lexicon, proving beyond doubt that even the most complex of issues and the most difficult of thoughts can be expressed in Urdu”. His books only confirm the authenticity of his remark about Urdu.

A highly learned soul that he was, Hassan always had time for the young, but he kept his distance in a calculated manner aimed at staying away from the frivolous, for frivolity was one thing he was never known to have a stomach for.

Dressed almost always in his spick and span all-whites, he lived a life of great value away from people who found fault with his decision to turn down a much-acclaimed literary award simply because it was sponsored “by a capitalist” as he sustained himself with the assistance of another capitalist. Come to think of it, his situation was not unlike that of Karl Marx who needed the liberty of capitalist England to formulate his socialist thoughts.

Hassan, however, found it beneath his dignity to even respond to such remarks, sticking to a suggestion he had received early in his life. He recalled it in Shehr-e-Nigara’n thus: “I asked Maulvi [Abdul Haq] Sahib for some advice before leaving. He said he didn’t believe in either receiving or giving advice, but he did have a thought to share. ‘Wherever you work, do your job in a manner that when you leave, there should never be a perfect replacement available ever’. It has been years, but I still hear Maulvi Sahib’s voice in my ears.”

It is only appropriate that 30 years after his death there is no replacement of the man that Sibte Hassan was.

The writer is a Dawn member of staff.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 2nd, 2016