‘Politicians, intelligentsia’s indifference widened gulf between Sindhi, Urdu speakers’

There was a time when prominent literary figures in Sindh simultaneously produced works in both Sindhi and Urdu languages. People like Sheikh Ayaz, Dr Ilyas Isqhi, Afaq Siddiqui, Himayat Ali Shair, Amar Jaleel and Mohsin Bhopali did a lot of work to connect the two languages and their speakers.

However, a rift emerged between the speakers of the two languages and those at the helm of political affairs actually helped widen it and the intelligentsia remained indifferent to it, resulting in a collective failure to address the issue that led to the current situation.

Poet Iftikhar Arif made these remarks in conversation with Ambareen Haseeb Amber at a session on the second day of the Sindh Literature Festival at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi, on Saturday evening.

He said events like these festivals gave hope because they provided an opportunity for dialogues among people from diverse cultures. “We should not be worried about differences because when different people sit together and talk, both agreements and disagreements are bound to happen,” he opined.

Arif said we should highly value people like Rasool Bux Palijo, Ibrahim Joyo and Sobho Gianchandani, who remained committed to an ideology. “The ideas that those intellectuals develop were not a result of their deliberations of one day and such people are the ones who remain associated with their land and its people,” he added.

He said real intellectuals transcended the borders of languages like Palijo who had an exemplary command over the English literature that few have. “Such people also differed with each other. The ideology of Makhdoom Talibul Moula doesn’t necessarily conform to that of Sheikh Ayaz and Tanveer Abbasi and the differences of opinion among those giants reflected in their literary output. The stories written by Jamal Abro or Ghulam Rabbani Agro were quite different than those penned by Amar Jaleel,” Arif remarked.

He lamented that we have stopped producing people having command over languages. Earlier, we had people like Agha Saleem who could translate Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai into another language while retaining the aesthetic content of the original verse, he added.

When asked whether his own poetry had colours of local culture, Arif said no writer could escape from the influence of the music, history and culture of the land where he lived.

Praising the political role of Sindh in Pakistan’s history, the poet said Sindh never sided with the establishment. Sindh had also historically been the land of sufis, he maintained, adding that the real sufis were neither radicals nor passive observers as they resisted injustice and status quo. He gave the example of Shah Inayat Shaheed in this regard on whom Sibte Hasan had written an extensive piece.

“A creative person can never support status quo. Literature is in its essence is a form of protest and resistance and its purpose is to change the status quo,” he asserted. He went on to say that those writers who do not want to change the status quo actually do jugglery and their outputs could not be termed literature. He added that even in the worst of times in human history, writers didn’t support oppression and injustice.

Similarly, he remarked that Sindh had always been progressive in its attitude towards women. “Which poet in the world had written as brilliantly about women as Bhittai had written in his surs?” he asked.

Arif also praised pluralism in Sindh which was evident from the places of worship of various religions spread all over the province. He maintained that Sindh’s culture was different from the rest of the country and religious intolerance could not flourish. Minorities didn’t feel as secure anywhere in the country as they felt in Sindh, he added.

Regarding the standard of literature produced by writers of Sindh, the poet said Sindh had produced world class literary figures like Sheikh Ayaz, who is lauded globally and his poetry had been translated into many languages. Ayaz had a deep understanding of the history and culture of this region and his love poetry was as great as his poetry of resistance.

He lamented that the educated class of the country knew Russian, French and Latin American writers but they did not know who Shah Inayat was. “We had very superficial knowledge of our great writers and people even could not talk about Sachal Sarmast in detail as they had never been educated about such personalities,” he said.