Mahjoor was also a historian and took deep interest in numismatics. He collected 500 rare coins mostly belonging to the period of Queen Deda of the Varma dynastry which rules Kashmir several centuries before the advent of Islam in the state. He gathered a number of documents and manuscripts in both Persian and Sanskrit languages. One of the manuscripts, Shar-e-Tul Islam, which deals with Islamic years old. He also acquired barch paper treatises on grammer written by Abhinavagupta and Mammatacharya.
This collection, fondly named “Kutubkhana” by Mahjoor himself, was offered by his descendants to the Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, Srinagar, to be lodged in a national monument where it could be preserved safely. But due to what the grandsons of the poet term as “shortsightedness” of the authorities in the state, this was not to be. The academy undervalued the treasure (it offered only Rs. 38,000) and Mahjoor’s grandsons later sold it to the National Archives for Rs. 71,000. Six years ago this “Kutubkhana” thus found a niche in the premises of the National Archives, New Delhi, under the title of “Mahjoor Collection”.
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From life-sketch of Mahjoor by T.N. Kaul in his book Poems of Mahjoor (Sahitya Akademi, first published 1988)
After being buried in his ancestral village Mitrigam, Mahjoor was later to be buried one more time. His body was exhumed and with full State honours reburied by the side of Habba Khaton’s grave in Athwajan on the outskirts of Srinagar, or by the side of what was believed to be the grave of Habba Khatoon.
Later research was to prove that the 16th century famous commoner-poet-queen Habba Khatoon, Zoon, was in fact buried at Biswak village in Nalanda, Bihar alongside the grave of her husband, Yusuf Shah Chak.*
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*Came across the info. in T.N . Kaul’s Poems of Mahjoor.
There’s an old Qurratulain Hyder short story having a minor character of a tribal woman whose most precious piece of jewellery was ‘tooria’ – a necklace of coins embellished with the image of Queen Victoria.
And I thought nothing could top that. Then I came across something bizarrely interesting in Walter Rooper Lawrence’s Valley of Kashmir. Visiting Kashmir in 1889 as the Land settlement officer, he noticed that –
“An interesting fact about the Hindus of Kashmir is that they worship the likeness of Her Majesty the Queen Empress. This prevails not only among the Pandits of the city, but also among the village Hindus. It appears to be their custom to regard as divine the sovereign de facto, but in the case of the emperor Aurangzeb they made an exception, and his likeness was never worshiped, for he was a persecutor of the Hindus.”
I tried imagining how that photograph or an etching (or a coin) would have sat in the dark thokur kuth, God room, of the Pandit. It wasn’t hard to imagine. Kashmiris were apparently quite happy with the coming of British. After the incompetence of Chak regulars, indifference of Mughal lords, the barbarity of Pathans and in-humaneness of Sikhs, the Queen must have appeared like a Goddess to put an end to all their sorrows. With the coming of British came the post service, the telegraph, the education system, the hospitals, the canals, etc. And it was all done in the name of the Queen. Francis Younghusband writes how easily he found hospitality in the remote North just because of the good work done under Queen Victoria’s name. With the British came the British sense of fair-play. It is said that around that time a distressed poor Kashmiri could often be heard saying (often half-meant threats) that he would take his case to the Queen herself and that she shall dispense justice. Talk about Mata ka Darbar. (Isn’t it interesting that only Mata Ranis hold darbars?)
Decades later, Tagore wasn’t the only one singing odes to British Empire. During World War 2, owing to the lack of enthusiasm among Kashmir Muslims for joining the British Army and to counter the German propaganda that fighting Germany meant going to war against the Ottoman Caliphate since the Turkish forces had joined hands with Germany, Mahjoor, the Kashmiri Bard, was assigned the task of writing a moving qaseeda for the British Empire. Mahjoor came up with Jung-e-German which became a rage in Kashmir (I wonder if Jum’German finds its origins in the popularity of this qaseeda). Mahjoor wrote:
When the liberal, benign and unassuming
British came to aid governance
Our destiny woke up from sleep
Long live our Gracious Emperor!
King of England who rules the world,
Grant him power and pageantry
May his kingdom be blessed
Long live our Gracious Emperor!
The poem also praised the Dogra ruler. He went on to write two more panegyrics praising Maharaja Pratap Singh and his successor, Maharaja Hari Singh. It is safe to assume Mahjoor the nationalist hadn’t yet been born, in fact may be that concept hadn’t yet taken seed in the Kashmiri mind. Interestingly enough Mahjoor never got any benefit for writing the poem. He was told that since he hadn’t brought in any volunteers personally, he wasn’t entitled to any special benefits.
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Information about Mahjoor and the lines from Jung-e-German comes from Trilokinath Raina’s work on the poet.
Image: A rare image of Queen Victoria laughing. Found it in The People’s Almanac presents The Book of Lists (Bantam Edition, 1978) by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace.
Aazaadee
O bulbul, let the freedom urge possess your soul !
Bid good bye to your cage, step out,
Gather your flowers and enjoy their bloom !
Speak out bold and clear. Your voice
Need not falter with fear
As when you sang within your cage.
In bondage, they served you ample food.
Now gather in the fields what grain you can,
And see how sweet is food in freedom !
Though unfreedom made you stammer,
Your call enchanted the birds of the air,
For it was born of love.
You can’t remain with folded wings !
Plume them, fly and see the world.
See flowers now with eyes of freedom.
You don’t know the latest about the garden !
Forget about the past; sing new songs now
Mabjoor, throw away this belt of bondage !
From now, you are free as a bird.
Your heart commands, your voice obeys !
Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor (d. 1952) the most beloved poet of Kashmir was born in 1888 ( but some give the date as 1885 ) at village Metragam, Pulawama. Born Ghulam Ahmad, he took the pen name of ‘Mahjoor’ and became popular in Kashmir by this very name. At the height of his renown, he was called “the Wordsworth of Kashmiri poetry” by great Rabindranath Tagore.
After passing the middle school examination from Nusrat-ul-Islam School, Srinagar, he went to Punjab where he came in contact with urdu poets like Bismil Amritsari and Moulana Shibi Nomani. He returned to Srinagar in 1908 and started writing in Persian and then in Urdu. However, it was in Kashmiri language that his poetry truly excelled. He is widely revered in Kashmir for being the person who solely revived the Kashmiri languages from the regress of lost literary circles and brought it to the seeking common masses. It was largely due to the success of Mahjoor with Kashmiri language that his contemporaries also gave up writing in Urdu and Persian, and started writing in Kashmiri.
Mahjoor worked as a Patwari (Pathva:r’) in Kashmir. A Patwari is the offical responsible for keeping record of land, maps and land dealings. The post of Patwari was held in high esteem as in those days in far-flung areas, Patwari was the sole representative of the administration. This job required him to work closely with poor landless peasants and was to condition his sensibilities and help him understand the cause of the sufferings of the poor and destitute folks of his land.
Mahjoor had his first Kashmiri poem ‘Vanta hay vesy‘ published in 1918. In his earlier days, Mahjoor used to write only love poems (mastering at this, as his love songs or lyrics are still sung and remain very popular) but these songs were not the love songs of the rich or of tavern, songs like ‘Vanta hay vesy‘ were love songs of simple folk like – in this particular case – a country
lass. These love songs had the melody of the earlier lol lyrics of sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but their rhythm and singing quality seems inspired by the popular Hindustani geet and song of early decades that came to Kashmir through the Punjab.
The turbulent Kashmir of 1931 did not leave him untouched and the poet in him was now stirring with patriotic fervor.
Mahjoor is also treated as a revolutionary poet. His entire poetry is divided into three parts: kala:m-i-Mahjoor, paya:m-i-Mahjoor, and sala:m-i-Mahjoor. He was a patriotic poet and was moved by the suffering of the people under the alien rule. He awakened the common masses towards the need of protecting their homeland from invaders and alien rulers. He sang about beauty and charm of the valley. Mahjoor has made a significant contribution to genres of gazal and nazm. He retrieved the language itself from the old Personalized styles of poetry and brought it close to the speech of its native speakers.
Mahjoor was a nationalist at heart, and this can be fathomed from some of his poems. Because of his vocation as a Patwari, Mahjoor understood the feudal system well enough to know how rich landlords were exploiting the poor landless people. He wanted a new identity for them, an identity that he combined with Kashmiri nationalism. It was for these people that Mahjoor became a voice in turbulent times, a voice clear and loud. It was for the Freedom of these dejected people that Mahjoor wrote poems, poems that became songs etched in the Kashmiri minds.
An another Freedom Song
Aazaadee
Let us all offer thanksgiving,
For Freedom has come to us;
It’s after ages that she has beamed
Her radiance on us.
In western climes Freedom comes
With a shower of light and grace,
But dry, sterile thunder is all
She has for our own soil.
Poverty and starvation,
Repression and lawlessness, –
It’s with these happy blessings
That she has come to us.
Freedom, being of heavenly birth,
Can’t move from door to door;
You’ll find her camping in the homes
Of a chosen few alone.
She says she will not tolerate
Any wealth in private hands;
That’s why they are wringing capital
Out of the hands of everyone.
There’s mourning in every house
But in sequestered bowers
Our rulers, like bridegrooms,
Are in Alliance win Freedom.
Nabir Sheikh knows what Freedom means,
For his wife was whisked away.
He went on complaining until
She bore Freedom in a new home !
They searched her armpits seven times
To see if she was hiding rice;
In a basket covered with a shawl
The peasant’s wife brought Freedom home.
There’s restlessness in every heart,
But no one dare speak out –
Afraid that with their free expression
Freedom may be annoyed.
Unlike many other famous poets of Kashmir, Mahjoor was not a mystic and yet his words now sound prophetic:
If thou wouldst rouse this habitat of roses,
Leave toying with kettle-drums.
Let there be thunder-storm and tempest, aye an earthquake.
These lines are from his famous poem Arise O Gardener. In this particular poem, the poet urges his countrymen, whom he compares to Gardeners looking after the beautiful garden Kashmir, to attain freedom through thunderstorm, tempest and earthquake. The state force arrested Mahjoor for writing these lines, but was soon releases. These lines became so popular that the National Conference adopted it as a national anthem. It is ironic to note here that to a Garden all of the three – thunderstorm, tempest and earthquake, are actually quite damning.
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The translation to the poems is from the book:
The Best of Mahjoor
(Selections from Mahjoor’s Kashmiri Poems)
J&K Academy of Art, Culture and Language, Srinagar, 1989
Translated by: Triloki Nath Raina
History of Srinagar, 1846-1947: A Study in Socio-cultural Change (1975) written by Mohammad Ishaq Khan, provided some great information about the poet.
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Much later, under the government of Sheikh Abdullah, poet Mahjoor was arrested.
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In 1972 a bilingual film named Shayar-e-Kashmir Mahjoor was released with the Hindi version starring Balraj Sahani. The famous “left leaning” Hindi film actor Balraj Sahani, one of the pioneers of IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association), already knew Mahjoor and held him in great esteem. Bhisham Sahni, the younger brother of Balraj Sahani, most famous for his novel and television screenplay Tamas, writes in Balraj, My Brother (1981) that many years before the making of the movie, Balraj Sahani having heard the renown of Mahjoor, went to him in a remote village in the interior of Kashmir. Mahjoor at that time was still working as a revenue official.
History of Srinagar, 1846-1947: A Study in Socio-cultural Change (1975) by Mohammad Ishaq Khan , quotes Balraj Sahani on Mahjoor:
“ His songs and his poems are the cherished property of very man, woman and child, living between Baramulla and Pir Panchal. If Mahjoor writes a poem today it will be on the lips of the populace within a fortnight. Children on their way to school, girls thrashing rice, boatman plying the paddle, laborers bending in their ceaseless toil, all will be singing it.”
The author gives the source as The Vishwa-Bharati Quarterly, November, 1938, vol iv, part III, new series, pp. 213-221)
There’s an old Qurratulain Hyder short story having a minor character of a tribal woman whose most precious piece of jewellery was ‘tooria’ – a necklace of coins embellished with the image of Queen Victoria.
