Jalib’s poetry is against corruption: Rabbani

ISLAMABAD: Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani Monday said that Habib Jalib’s poetry was against corruption and for a society with rule of law and constitutional supremacy.

He noted that today the gulf between have and have-nots had increased. Rabbani was speaking as chief guest of a ceremony held to pay tribute to revolutionary poet, Habib Jalib, at Lok Virsa on Monday evening.

The Senate chairman said that Pakistani society today depicted unequal distribution of wealth and such a society was neither the Quaid’s dream nor Jalib’s.

Rabbani said that Pakistan, the federation, today stood on the crossroads, where all the roads but one leads to destruction. He said that the middle class, civil society and labour class needed to question the elite about their due rights otherwise the consequences would be for the generation to pay.

He said that politics, struggle and literature had lost their connection and the resultant vacuum had created materialism. He said that Jalib identified his poetry with the victimised class of Pakistani society.

The civil society and political workers stood up against the dictatorship of Ayub and Zia because they found inspiration in Jalib. Today political parties had scattered and workers were demoralised as there was no inspiration.

Rabbani said that even law in today’s Pakistan was discriminatory and there were five different scales for implementation of law for the military elite, civil elite, bureaucracy and collaborators and for Jalib’s citizens.

Former senator Afrasayab Khattak of Awami National Party recalled his days in jail with Habib Jalib and said that his poetry was part of ideological manifesto and his message became the message of youth’s resistance. He said that even people with no knowledge of Urdu used to attend his gatherings.

The National Party’s Senator Mir Hasil Bazinjo said when he was a student in 1980s, there was hardly any student of Baloch Student Organisation who did not know Jalib and if one student started reading Jalib’s verses, everyone came along.

Mujahid Barelvi, a media person, who cherishes long and old relationship with Habib Jalib, narrated his poems with historical references to them. From the popularity of his poem ‘dastoor’ to his gatherings at Murree Club and from his voice against the army operation in East Pakistan to his poems of last days, the historical account made the audience go back in history.

The ceremony witnessed climax when Jalib’s daughter Tahira Jalib read out the poem ‘dastoor’ in the same way, his father did. The ceremony also witnessed the first ever Habib Jalib courage award being given to women rights activist Nasreen Azhar and a classical performance on one of Jalib’s poems.