People's Democracy

WHEN the news came in at first that a certain Wali Gujarati’s grave on the outskirts of Ahmedabad had been razed by Hindu mobs, it seemed to be a case of routine vandalism that is of a piece with a communal riot.

Also, since indescribably worse things were happening with fellow human beings, there was little space or time to worry about the destruction of a little-known monument. More so, since some ancient and truly beautiful mosques and mausoleums had been destroyed with the trained precision of civic demolition squads using bulldozers and other heavy equipment.

An eyewitness account by Teesta Setalvad, a tireless campaigner for human rights, had only hinted that a mob had ransacked the grave of "a Sufi poet revered as Wali Gujarati" on the approach road to Ahmedabad city.

Inquiries revealed that the grave was indeed that of Wali Dakhani (1667-1707), who was among the first great poets of Urdu language. The initial response was one of disgust, although on the face of it there was not much cause for lament about yet another grave of an Urdu poet coming to a mournful end.

There are, or were, several more in Delhi, such as Mir Dard’s tomb on a heap of filth near the new Zakir Husain College. A public urinal had cornered Sheikh Muhammad Ibrahim Zauq’s grave until someone, shamed by what he or she had seen, had rescued it.

Mirza Ghalib’s home in Delhi’s famed Gali Qasim Jaan was literally dug up from underneath a coal depot.

Even after its semi-restoration amid much self-congratulation by the authorities, a public telephone booth continues to occupy this spot, its owner refusing to remove the eyesore to another place.

But let us come back to Wali Mohammed Wali. The poet, also known as Wali Dakhani, was born in 1667 in Aurangabad. According to an account by one Nita Awatramani, suggesting a Hindu woman admirer, Wali loved travelling, which he regarded as a means of education.

His visit to Delhi in 1700 had a significant influence on Urdu ghazal. His simple, sensuous and melodious poems in Urdu awakened the Persian-loving poets of Delhi to the beauty and versatility of Rekhta (the old name for Urdu) as a medium of poetic expression.

His visit thus stimulated the growth and development of the Urdu ghazal in Delhi. However, Wali, it is said, was not immune to the vigour and verve of Persian diction and imagery, and combined this into the body of his verse. He thus became the architect of the modern poetic language, which is a skilful blend of Persian and Urdu vocabulary.

Though Wali wrote in different verse forms --- masnavi, qasida, etc --- he specialised in ghazals. He wrote a total of 473 ghazals, comprising 3,225 couplets (ash’aar).

He was also the first poet to start expressing love from a man’s point of view as against the prevailing convention of impersonating a woman.

Wali died in Ahmedabad in 1707, and was buried there.

My first encounter with Wali’s celebrated love poems came via the mellifluous voice of Madanbala Sandhu, a hugely talented singer, a household name in Punjab, and a beautiful actress whose love for the theatre was spotted by Sheila Bhatia and Begum Akhtar. They gave her the lead role in a musical that revolved around the history of the ghazal. The chosen composition from Wali’s anthology was set to music by Begum Akhtar in Raag Bihaag.

The result was sheer magic. Its words went thus:

Wali Dakhani loved Gujarat and wrote affectionately about it, particularly about Surat, the coastal town with which he had developed a special bond.

It is this man’s tomb that has become a meaningless casualty of the genocide in Gujarat.

The razing of tombs is common throughout history, and is usually seen as an act of revenge by succeeding icons of power. But there are different underpinnings for this. In Egypt it was customary for the local people to vandalise the tombs of the Pharaohs for the rich booty that these contained. The Mughal emperor Shahjahan, on the other hand, built his new capital Shahjehanabad, after pulling down what was left of Ferozabad, created 200 years earlier by Ferozshah Tughlaq, and the city that Sher Shah Suri built.

Incidentally Shahjahan’s great Jama Masjid was looted by the Rohilla Afghan chief Ghulam Qader, who even removed a gold cupola; fortunately the others were saved by a Hindu sepoy commander, Manihar Singh, who considered it an outrage. So various factors may come into play when a monument is destroyed.

What happened with Wali’s grave in Ahmedabad was a calculated act of cultural annihilation, and nothing less. The method and the message of the desecration were both part of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s philosophy of cultural nationalism.

According to the accounts of Setalvad and several others, the grave which lay close to a busy road, was destroyed on the first day of the riots. On the second day, a saffron flag was planted on it, as was done with the few historic mosques that were destroyed. When the matter was brought to the notice of the authorities by secular Hindu activists, the flag disappeared.

And on the third and final day of the gory ritual the state officials leveled off the remaining bits of the grave and promptly covered it with coal tar, thereby obliterating --- perhaps forever --- any sign of the memorial to Wali Dakhani from his adopted home in Ahmedabad.

In some ways the episode is symptomatic of the ascendancy of right-wing Hindu fascism in India. It affects different facets of life in this secular republic.

For instance, people from Mumbai --- Hindus for the most part --- make a beeline for Goa these days during the key festive seasons. Why? Because the rabid Shiv Sena will not allow them to celebrate anything that is western and therefore "un-Hindu."

Celebrated film-maker Deepa Mehta tried and gave up the idea of shooting her film about the Hindu widows of Benares (today known as Varanasi). Why? Because the Bharatiya Janata Party government felt it was too sensitive a subject to be portrayed on celluloid. Mehta was reminded to good effect that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, all experts at breaking heads, cameras or whatever else they disapproved of, would be most unhappy if the shooting of the film was allowed. So the state of India gently moved out of the frame, leaving Mehta and her stars, Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das, to take on the goons of the Sangh Parivar at their own risk.

The plundering of renowned artiste M F Husain’s studio in Ahmedabad a few years ago was the handiwork of the same marauding mobs.

It is not as though this plunder and bigotry is one-sided. Whenever the mullah disapproves of anything that he deems un-Islamic, he leads gangs of hooligans to set fire to a cinema house or two.

Here I must point out that actresses like Azmi and Das are attacked by the rabid elements from both sides and get no state protection of any kind.

There is a move under way among India’s badly jolted secular citizenry to reverse the fascist onslaught. Plans are under way to celebrate the spirit and essence of Wali Dakhani, who is seen as a symbol of the country’s secular, syncretic culture. As part of this, efforts are being made to bring his works into public view by organising mushairas and musical mehfils across the country. From what I am told, there is also a campaign to get the government to rebuild Wali Dakhani’s grave and restore its sanctity. In a small way, it might help to assuage the sense of outrage over the desecration that Gujarat has been subject to.

The Wali Dakhani initiative by the secular brigade is part of a much wider campaign to confront the rising wave of fascism that is threatening to engulf not just Urdu, but all other languages and cultures of India that stand in its way.