Marsiya Writing by Shaheen Sultan Dhanji

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Culture
Marsiya Writing
by Shaheen Sultan Dhanji

(Friends, the following is a short point of view on my knowledge of Marsiya writing. Please except this article as a free lance thought and not of a detailed analysis of the Poets mentioned)

Many great writers have given us insight with the Urdu translations of Ghalib's poetry, but, it was Partau Rohilla who reached Lahore with Urdu translations of Ghalib's Persian letters under his arms and was warmly welcomed by Husain Majrooh and his friends in Gymkhana Club. This was a second literary get-together arranged by him within a fortnight. The literary observers in the city wondered if he, after retiring from secretaryship of Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq, is trying to create a new literary forum. During his tenure in Halqa, he had demonstrated his extraordinary ability as an organizer. The experience he has gained gained during this period can well help him to create a new literary forum more living and meaningful than we have at present.

As for Partau Rohilla, he is a well-known poet equally well versed in three poetic forms – ghazal, nazm and noha. In recent years he has shown his ability of translating from Persian to Urdu. He has chosen to be a translator of Ghalib's Persian letters. The volume published under the title of Namahai Farsi Al Ghalib may be seen as his first attempt of this kind. The letters now translated by him were compiled by Syed Akbar Ali Tirzmi and were published in a volume by Ghalib Academy of Delhi.

The collection of his translations was published in 1999 by Adara-i-Yadgar-i-Ghalib. The importance of these letters lies in their being related to Ghalib's journey to Calcutta. But if Partau Rohilla had chsoen to translate these letters in Urdu, it was more because of their diction to their content.

Encouraged by the success of his first attempt, he chose to translate rest of his Persian letters. So now we have from him one more volume of Ghalib's letters translated in Urdu from Persian. The letters translated here are ones included in his collection Bagh ai Dau Dar. The translations are followed by introductory notes on the addressees of these letters.

Here too Partau Rohilla seems more concerned with the diction than with the content. And he tried to do justice with it. It is because of this fact that he has taken pains to be faithful to the text in contradiction to his predecessor Prof. Wazirul Hasan Abdi, who too had translated these letters. Rohilla is critical of Abdi's translation for the reason of its being done in idiomatic Urdu. Because of being translated in idiomatic Urdu, the letters turn more readable. But, he argues, because of it we lose sight of the diction the letters have been written in. Rohilla seems very much enamored of the intricacies and subtleties of Ghalib's Persian expression. He is not going to sacrifice this beauty of expression for the sake of readability. So here we see a desperate attempt to keep close to the text and to the way of expression.

Partau Rohilla was welcomed as a guest from Islamabad. Now a few words about the other poet, a local, receiving compliments for his achievements in the field of poetry. He was Syed Wahidul Hasan Hashmi, in whose honor a function was arranged in Lahore Art Council presided by former prime minister Malik Mairaj Khalib. Hashmi is chiefly known as a Marsiya writer. And as we all know the audience and readership of a marsiya writer comes from the crowd attending Majalis and participating in the rituals of Muharram. It is very rare that a marsiya writer gains poetic qualities enough to cross the limit and win in addition to his traditional audience readers from the general reader-ship of poetry, and admirers from the literary circles.

Hashmi seems to have achieved this status. We found here in this function on audience very different from the one we see in a Majlis. And those who spoke on this occasion and read papers were mostly ones belonging to literary circles. Foremost among them were Shahzad Ahmad, Anwar Sadeed and Ajmal Niazi. As a Marsiya writer, Hashmi is known for some significant innovations he introduced in this form of expression. The idea of a short marsiya or a long marsiya is attributed to him. If in the field of fiction we can shift from novel to a short story, which is now a genre in its own right, why can't we shift from long-drawn marsiya spread in hundreds of stanzas to a marsiya of a limited length. Such was his argument.

The changed conditions of Muharram's Majalis where marsiya writer has now been relegated to a secondary position provided a justification for his innovation. So his attempt of writing short marsiya, say one limited to forth or fifth stanzas soon gained popularity. And now it is short marsiya which is in currency. Hashmi is ranked among the architects of modern marsiya, which is now recognized as something distinct from the classical form of marsiya. But Hashmi has not restricted himself to the form of marsiya alone. He is known as a ghazal writer, too. Moreover, he has to his credit a number of critical writings, which have been collected in a volume titled as Tanqueedi Jahtain.

In the field of research his most recent work is a tazkara (narration) of marsiya writers of Punjab. Here he has been able to dig out a number of Urdu marsiya writers who flourished in past but with the passage of time fell into oblivion.

September 9, 2007

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