Makhdoom Mohiuddin: “Gun of a revolutionary guerrilla & sitar of a musician”

Abu Sayeed Mohammad Makhdoom Mohiuddin Khurdi—who is popularly known as Makhdoom Mohiuddin (1908-69)—picked up gun during peasant’s Telangana Armed Struggle in 1946-47 for abolition of Nizam’s rule. Through his soul-stirring poetry he mobilised youth against the British Empire and eventually for the merger of Hyderabad with newly liberated Indian Union. Jailed twice in 1941 and 1944 for his political activism, Makhdoom went underground in 1946 when the infuriated Nizam announced a bounty on his head.

Though he is widely known for his film songs today but in literary circles he is compared with Srirangam Srinivasa Rao, popularly known as Sri Sri, who did the same in Telugu, Faiz Ahmed Faiz of Pakistan and Nazrul Islam of Bangladesh. Interestingly, he never wrote for movies. The film-makers used his evocative poems due to their immense popularity. Sample his poem, Intezaar that features twice as song, separately rendered by Kumar Sanu and Alka Yagnik in Mahesh Bhatt’s Tamanna (1997):

An orphan from the erstwhile Hyderabad province, Makhdoom used to broom mosques and serve devotees in his childhood. The Sahitya Akademi awardee started out as a trade union activist and a college lecturer before emerging as a revolutionary poet and leader of Communist Party in Andhra Pradesh. He went on to become a member of State’s Legislative Council and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly in the later years of his life.

Hayat le ke chalo, kayenat le ke chalo,

chalo to sare zamane ko saath le ke chalo...

(Let’s walk along with life, lets march with the universe,

When we proceed, let’s take the entire humankind along...)

During his lifetime, Makhdoom was arguably the only poet who was admired by his fellow poets and connoisseurs of Urdu poetry in equal measure. Literary giants like Raghupati Sahai Firaq Gorakhpuri and Faiz Ahmed Faiz wrote poems, appreciating his work. Aap ki yaad aati rahi raat bhar, is one such ghazal written by Makhdoom. It has been beautifully rendered by Chaya Ganguly in Gaman (1978), a directorial debut of Muzaffar Ali. When Makhdoon died, Faiz also wrote a ghazal (Makhdoom ki yaad mein) in the same format. In one of the couplets, Faiz thus remembered his comrade: “A fragrance kept changing its body all night, And a portrait kept singing all night long....The night remained haunted with your memories.”

Makhdoom was prominently featured in Kahkashan—a TV serial (1991-92) that was produced, researched and scripted by Ali Sardar Jafri and directed by Jalal Agha. This is how Sardar Jafri introduced him: “...the worthy son of Deccan, a star from galaxy of progressive poetry, Makhdoom was a poet of labour and love. He was the excavator of new era. Just like Farhad cut the mountain in love of Sheerin with his hoe and became Kohkan (The cutter of mountain), Makhdoon cut away the mountains of dark nights of slavery and his hoe was his poetry.”

Firaq—who proclaimed in his poetry that ‘future generations will feel envious of you when they would think that you had got an opportunity to see Firaq’, was so moved by one of Makhdoom’s ghazals: “Ishq ke shoale ko bhadkao ki kuch raat kate” that he wrote a complete ghazal in the same format, to praise the concluding couplet of Makhdoom’s ghazal: “Koh-e-ġham aur girāñ aur girāñ aur girāñ, ġham-zado teshe ko chamkāo ki kuchh raat kate.”

He travelled across the globe and remained untainted as a political leader. Despite intense political activities, he successfully retained rare aesthetics of romantic sensibilities in his poetry. Sample his iconic poem: Ek chameli ke mandve tale, maikade say zara door us mod par, do badan pyar ki aag mein jal gaye, pyar harfe wafa, pyar unka khuda, pyar unki chita... (Somewhere, under the jasmine’s shade, not far from the tavern, a couple is lost in the fire of love.....love is a word of loyalty, love is their God, love is their pyre....”

His ghazal, 'Phir chhidi raat baat phoolon ki' that was used in the film Baazaar (1982) directed by Sagar Sarhadi, is another melodious example:

In his anti-war poem, “Jaaney waley sipahi se poochho”, Makhdoom like a true revolutionary in the real sense, questioned jingoism and war mongering. A cry for the young soldiers who are pushed into someone else’s war, it appeared as a song in Moni Bhattacharjee’s Usne Kaha Tha (1960), a film based on a 1915 story written by Chandradhar Sharma Guleri.

His literary work is published in two anthologies: Surkh Savera (Red Dawn) and Gule Tar (Drenched Rose). Poems from these two collections were brought out in Bisat-e-Rakhs (Dance Floor) in Urdu and Hindi later. The poet also forayed into writing plays and translated Bernard Shaw and Anton Chekhov’s works in Urdu.

Makhdoom, it is said, was so pained by the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) that he actually wanted to go to Spain to fight the fascists. Aleksey Sokhavich, his biographer, recorded how romantic-revolutionary always had a copy of Guernica by Picasso on his writing table.

This is how legendry film writer, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas once remembered his late friend: “Makhdoom was a glowing flame as also cool drops of dew. He was the call of revolution as also the soft tinkling of anklet. He was knowledge, he was action, he was wisdom. He was the gun of the revolutionary guerrilla and also the sitar of musician. He was the odour of the gun powder and the fragrance of jasmine.”