Fahmida Riyaz: A shared voice of India and Pakistan fades away

With Fahmida Riyaz’s demise another voice of courage and wisdom has left the Indian subcontinent. Her popularity in India was more due to that poem which targeted the growing fanaticism in the Indian subcontinent. It is a quirky nazm that slams this growing fundamentalism with remarkable innocence and simplicity- Turned out you were just like us.
‘So it turned out you were just like us!
Where were you hiding all this time, buddy?
That stupidity, that ignorance
we wallowed in for a century –
look, it arrived at your shores too!
Many congratulations to you!
Raising the flag of religion,
I guess now you’ll be setting up Hindu Raj?
You too will commence to muddle everything up
You, too, will ravage your beautiful garden.

You, too, will sit and ponder –
I can tell preparations are afoot –
who is [truly] Hindu, who is not.
I guess you’ll be passing fatwas soon!’

It was perhaps the year 2000 when Fahmida Riyaz recited this nazm in Delhi against the atomic tests. After Kargil, during the seething years between India and Pakistan, this poem created a different kind of stir. It is said that when this poem was being recited in JNU, an army official present there was about to take out his gun. But Fahmida was not new to such circumstances. For about 20 years Fahmida was constantly challenging the fundamentalist tendencies.

It is important to remember here that she was writing not in a democracy like India but in Pakistan which is full of the army rulers constantly trampling over democratic values, where the risks and challenges for writers were far more and far grimmer than in India. The decades of 70s and 80s were the days when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was talking of making an atom bomb even if they had to go hungry as a nation and thus was whipping up the sentiment of Pakistani nationalism and later when Zia Ul Haq had almost turned Pakistan into an islamic nation. Very few writers in Pakistan during that time had the courage like that of Fahmida, who wrote— ‘The one hidden in me is strangulating me/ either he is the Devil or he is my God/ when there is no love in the heart, the face is shimmering/ This tree has blossomed when the autumn arrived’

When her poetry collection ‘Badan Dareeda’ was published in the early seventies, she also faced the allegations of being unashamed and audacious as Ismat Chughtai had once faced. But Fahmida’s poetry, unperturbed by this bitter criticism kept vehemently portraying sensuousness too— ‘what is this joy which is making my body numb/ what is this pleasure which is making every part of my body heavy/ what is this exhilaration that even the breaths stop/ what darkness full of attachment is clouding my eyes…’

But it was Zia ul Haq's time when Fahmida had to pay for her audacious writing. Many cases were filed against her. Her husband was arrested and she herself came to India fleeing Pakistan on pretext of a marriage. She lived in India for next seven years. Her children too went to school in India. People say that at that time Amrita Pritam had talked to the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi about her. Fahmida could not return to Pakistan till Zia Ul Haq’s death. She lived in Delhi for seven years and also wrote a lovely nazm on Delhi.

She published more than 15 books. Her first poetry collection ‘Patthar Ki Zaban’ was published in the sixties. Her book ‘Apna Jurm Saabit’ which was published during Zia Ul Haq’s regime was discussed a lot. She wrote many novels. Translated Rumi. She constantly worked for social causes particularly for women’s issues.

In fact, Fahmida Riyaz reminds us and assures us that the barbarism of political power can not change the mood and spirit of literature. There were at least three poetesses of Pakistan who were widely read and appreciated in India. Kishwar Naheed, born a little before Fahmida, witnessed the tragedy of partition and violence very closely and those wounds kept carving her philosophy of life, and a path for her struggles. Parveen Shakir, born a few years after Fahmida, was, of course, a poetess of a different mood. But she too in her own way challenged traditions and her poetry too reflects that heart and mood of the Indian subcontinent which is appreciated across the border despite and beyond partition.

Fahmida Riyaz was a part of this tradition. She kept visiting India and kept reaffirming that despite all the snapping and cracks in the relations, the common people of both the countries shared the same troubles and travails; there is something which binds them, which is much beyond and much stronger than politics. With Nagarjun, Faiz and Nazim Hikmet, Fahmida too forms the creative voice of Asia.

This shared voice of Asia is unfortunately breathless and in danger. The shadow of the fanaticism that has grown in the entire world is most visible on the politics and society of South Asia. Fahmida Riyaz’s passing away in such times causes a sharp pang in the heart.