LAHORE: The May 9 protesters were the Mangus of Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story, the New Constitution, as they thought they had brought about the ‘tabdeeli’ trumpeted by their party, which was not the case, says playwright and poet Asghar Nadeem Syed.

He was speaking on the first day of the conference on ‘Trends of Contemporary Literature in Pakistan’ at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) on Friday.

Giving examples of two short stories of Manto, Shaheed Saaz and New Constitution, he said they had the potential to have new reinterpretations. Terming the latter a strange story, he says that Mangu, the Tongawala, believes that the constitution would change on April 1 and India would be free. Believing the change to be true Mangu confronts a British officer, getting involved in a fight with him. He is beaten and put into jail and as opposed to his thinking, nothing changed despite the proclamations of change after promulgation of the ‘new constitution’.

Asghar Nadeem Syed said that reading the short story in context of current political conditions of Pakistan would make things clear as many people here are still behind the bars just like Mangu, the Tongawala, of Manto’s story.

Two-day conference on contemporary literature kicks off; Seraikis demand teaching classes

He considered Pakistani languages as Hindustani as their roots were in Hindustan. Giving the example of Sindhi, he said quality literature was being written in it across the border as well.

“When Urdu literature was reaching its height, we did not know what was the state of our own languages. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough material in Sindhi, Seraiki, Pashto, Balochi and all our regional languages of that time.”

Syed called for exploring Sindhi language as well as Seraiki, which was not accepted even as a language until Gen Zia’s regime.

He said it was yet to be seen what traditions these languages carried parallel to Urdu literature. He suggested a reading of modern Sindhi poet Sheikh Ayaz as the picture he portrayed of poetry and literature was unseen by Urdu writers. “The Sindhi writer was exposed to international literature and philosophy in the 1950s and the 1960s but we (Urdu writers) remained deprived of it.”

Asghar Nadeem Syed said the international writers had started writing about class struggle and complexity of human emotions centering on the man long before us. The international literary trends reached us in the 1950s and 1960s.

“We have seen the tradition of the whole Urdu literature from the point of view of the four centres of the language: Delhi, Lucknow, Aligarh and Hyderabad. All criticism was written at these centres. We kept following the perspective they gave us in their texts, and never tried to reinterpret it. There was a colonial period after the colonial period and Urdu writers remained under its influence.”

Hameed Shahid said poems of Iqbal, Miraji, N.M. Rashed, Majeed Amjad and Jilani Kamran were still fresh as compared to the recent poems because the former group of poets did not write only for the sake of fashion or to prove their art but under influence of their creative instinct, hence they remained fresh forever. He said in the current time, all literary movements in Urdu literature had lost their impact, adding that in the current sociopolitical conditions, considering traditional poetry as contemporary poetry would not be the right call.

“The most popular form of Urdu poetry is ghazal despite the passage of time and growing popularity of nazm. Many experiments were done with the form of ghazal, including Saleem Ahmed’s anti-ghazal and linguistic departure of Zafar Iqbal, but readers have their specific liking for the genre.”

The biggest challenge of the ghazal poets of the new generation came in the form of Zafar Iqbal, Sehr Ansari, Khurshid Rizvi, Iftikhar Arif and Abbas Tabish and Ahmed Faraz and their contemporaries who wrote for three generations. He mentioned names of some significant names in ghazal writing in the 21st century.

While discussing Urdu nazm, Shahid talked in detail about features of poems of Rashed, Miraji and Majeed Amjad. He spoke about the new experiments in poetry in the 1960s. He referred to the contemporary poets like Javed Anwar, Abrar Ahmed and Naseer Ahmed Nasir who contributed to the development of nazm. However, added that all of them had their own style and there was no common streak among them. He also mentioned the names of those nazm poets who appeared on the literary scene in the last 23 years.

Jameel Ahmed Adeel read a paper on Urdu fiction.

SERAIKI: Seraiki poet and novelist Riffat Abbas said the Seraiki writers kept their relationship with their folk literature intact and they reinterpreted their folk literature and wisdom.

“They did not accept their folk wisdom and literature as they were,” he said in the session on “the contemporary trends in Seraiki literature” in the conference.

Abbas said the way of seeing the woman was reinterpreted in Seraiki literature. “The Seraikis have reconstructed the stories of kings even told by their grannies. They reinterpreted their literary forms, including poetry, stories and criticism and they took great care to see that their art does not validate the violent structure of the state, making sure that it is not against any human being”.

The Seraiki people had another view of the portraits by the artists of Multan who painted the attackers responsible for the bloodshed in the city, Abbas declared.

“We reinterpreted our spiritualism and questioned the Sufi when he said, Kikar tay angoor charhaya, and neechaan di ashnai koloon faiz kisay nahi paya. We raised questions who were who in these poetic lines.”

Riffat Abbas called the Seraikis the people of altars who won’t celebrate their condition. “Our existential crisis is not of any attacker from Europe but of the defeated and suppressed”.

He said the culture and language of the walled city of Multan had changed under the influence of the rulers.

Hafeez Khan read out a paper on contemporary Seraiki fiction and Ghulam Asghar Khan on Seraiki poetry. Rana Mehboob Akhtar was supported to read a paper on Seraiki criticism but he forgot his subject and read a paper on Seraiki language and its origin.

During the session, a demand was raised to start Seraiki classes at the Gurmani Centre of Languages and Literature at Lums.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2023