“The spoken language in India is Urdu — look at our films, look at Bollywood, our songs and dialogues.” — Saif Mahmood

Saif Mahmood is a literary personality, whose love for Urdu poetry is — in his own words — in his “blood and DNA”. He is also a translator, lawyer, activist and commentator and is based in New Delhi. He was in Islamabad for the fourth Islamabad Literature Festival, where he participated in and moderated sessions on a range of topics, from Urdu literature to the media, to tributes to various literary figures. 

How did you become interested and involved in Urdu literature?

You know, I’m a lawyer by profession. But I was born and brought up in a family where poetry is the spoken language, every day. We actually converse in poetry. Neither of my parents are poets, and they also have great interest in poetry, and from childhood there’s a separate Diwan-i-Ghalib and Kulliyat-i- Iqbal in every room in the house. So I think it’s just in my blood and my DNA.

That’s one thing, and [also] I used to do translations of Urdu poems. So about three or four years ago, I put up an impromptu translation of Parveen Shakir’s that I had done on Facebook, and I got a call from

Dr Rakhshanda Jalil, who’s one of the foremost literary historians of India. She said, “This is amazing, how can you do such impromptu translations? You must defect from law and come to the other side.”

So that’s how [my public speaking at Urdu forums] started.

There has been a marked trend of poetry of resistance, particularly in modern Pakistani history. Is that trend still alive today in India or in Pakistan?

There has been a long gap in [revolutionary] poetry in both the countries. Where Pakistan is concerned, revolutionary poetry was always there because Pakistan, after independence, has been facing various problems, in which revolutionary poetry and the poetry of resistance was necessary. And so we have Faiz and Jalib and everybody else.

And then, after Jalib, people kind of stopped writing — there was Faraz, and Faraz has also done a lot of revolutionary poetry. His ‘Muhasra’ (‘The Siege’) — is an absolutely wonderful example of revolutionary poetry. And Faraz only died four or five years ago — so it hasn’t stopped.

So far as India is concerned, there was a gap after the initial years of Partition, for the reason that we were not facing problems similar to ones that were being faced in Pakistan. Now, unfortunately … we are going back to where we were, where Pakistan was.

There’s this Fahmida Riaz nazm, ‘Tum Bilkul Hum Jaisey Nikley’ — so we are slowly becoming a version of what Pakistan used to be. So now, there are enough poets writing poetry of resistance, dissent, revolution, etc.

Two months ago in Delhi we had the Shankar Shad Indo-Pak Mushaira, which is an iconic mushaira in the subcontinent. And Gauhar Raza, who is a scientist and also a poet, recited a poem on this whole issue of nationalism going on in India, and against it. The poem started with, “Dharam mein lipti watan parasti/kya kya swang rachayegi” — the idea of the poem was that you can’t have religion-based nationalism. It went viral, and one of our channels called the poet a “seditious anti-national”, civil society came out on the streets saying you cannot do this — poetry of resistance is a tradition of Urdu and Hindustani poetry.

So it’s going on, it’s not as if it has stopped — it depends on the times and conditions.

Are contemporary poets engaging in newer styles of poetry in the Urdu language?

There are newer stylistic trends. I would recommend the poetry of Ali Akbar Natiq. I don’t think Natiq’s poetry is influenced by anybody, it’s a completely new style, the foundations of which are perhaps in the style of Noon Meem Rashid or somebody.

He’s also engaging himself with a lot of nature poetry, in that style, which no one has done before.

Is Urdu literature reflective of most socio­economic backgrounds, or is it becoming more elitist?

The tradition of Urdu poetry has always been extremely plural — not [just] in the sense of including pluralistic traditions of various religions but also various classes within society.

I was saying [earlier], Urdu poetry was a great equaliser. This was the poetry that brings the nawabs and the working class together.

I’m not sure if [that’s still true for] contemporary Urdu poetry, but certainly in the literature of the early and mid-20th century.

Society changes, and it’s very unfortunate that the Urdu reading audience has been reduced to a couple of thousands, really. I’m talking of India. Everybody speaks Urdu, but if you don’t read a language then your interest in the literature in that language also diminishes. So that has happened in India, and it has also affected the quality of poetry.

And the people who are now engaging themselves in poetry, earlier it used to be the preserve of the elite. And now, the knowledge of the language of Urdu doesn’t pay you anything — so people from the middle class, the lower middle class, are engaging themselves in this. And when one engages in poetry, one obviously writes about the condition that one is facing.

Is Urdu prose overtaking Urdu poetry in popularity?

Not at all. In Pakistan it might be true, but in India — no. In India, Urdu poetry is being read more, even though Urdu prose compared to Urdu poetry is far better in terms of quality in India. Nevertheless, people in India read more Urdu poetry for the sheer music that they find in it.

But it’s all premised on the same problem, which is that people don’t read the script in India. Poetry, because of the music it has, is obviously more popular.

The spoken language in India is Urdu — look at our films, look at Bollywood, our songs and dialogues. If I ask a Hindi speaking person to give me an example of what words he speaks in his common, everyday language belonging to Hindi, I can tell you he will not be able to point out more than three or four words. The rest is all Urdu.

Just because it is being written in a different script or read in a different script, doesn’t mean it’s not Urdu. Now, for instance, Punjabi here is written in the Persian script, but it doesn’t stop being Punjabi.