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 On
April 17, 2002, eminent Urdu poet and lyricist Kaifi Azmi was bestowed
with the highest literary honour, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship.
The function was held at ISKCON Auditorium, in Mumbai, and attended
by the bigwigs of the film and the literary world. K. Satchidanandan,
secretary, Sahitya Akademi, read the citation. Shri Ramakanta Rath,
president, made an address speech after the conferring of the Fellowship.
Shaukat Kaifi, wife of Kaifi Azmi, who is recovering from surgery
in the hospital, accepted the award on behalf of her husband. She
and Javed Akhtar read excerpts from Kaifi Azmi’s poems. Balraj Komal,
eminent Urdu poet Namwar Singh, distinguished Hindi critic offered
felicitations. The concluding speech was made by Gopi Chand Narang,
vice-president of Sahitya Akademi
The Sahitya
Akademi is privileged to confer its highest honour of Fellowship
today on Sri Kaifi Azmi (Athar Husain Rizvi), one of the most renowned
and celebrated poets of India, writing in Urdu.
Kaifi Azmi was
born on 23.2.1925 im Nijwan, Azamgarh Distt., U.P., in a deeply
religious Zamindar family. However, he turned out to be a rebel
from his very youth, abandoning his studies during the 1942 Quit
India Movement and identifying himself with the Progressive ideology.
He joined the Communist Party at the age of nineteen, started writing
from the Party’s paper, Qaumi Jung and moved to Mumbai. He
has been actively associated with the Progressive Writers’
Movement in Urdu. He wrote his first ghazal, ‘Itna to Zindagi
Mein Kisi Ki Khalal Pade’ at the age of eleven. It was immortalised
by Begum Akhtar and is sung even today. He has so far published
four collections of poems Jhankar, Aakhir-e-Shab, Aawara Sijde and
Sarmaya, which established him firmly as a poet of great eminence.
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Shaukat
Kaifi receiving the award on behalf of her husband
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Kaifi Azmi was
deeply conscious of the problems posed to the revolutionary movement
by the breaking up of the Communist monolith at the international
level due to the bickerings between China and the Soviet Union,
and the rift among the various Communist groups in India at the
national level. These posed problems of immediate personal concern
to him and formed a part of his poetic experience.
Awara Sijde,
which appeared twenty-seven after the publication of his first volume,
made a sharp departure from the old pattern. The poems in this collection
have all the characteristic qualities of his writing — vigour,
powerful expression and breadth of vision. They also reveal a poetic
sensibility, modern in its grasp of the contemporary situation.
The admirers of the powerful directness of Kaifi Azmi find poems
like Telangana, Bangladesh, Farghana, Moscow and Husn typical. The
poet’s verve and vivacity are at their best in his poem on
Telangana, which ends in a militant note. But the dominating tone
of the collection is determined by poems like Makan and Ibn-I-Maryam.
In Makan, man’s quest for shelter has been traced from the
days of the caveman down to feudalism and capitalism, whereas in
Ibn-I-Maryam the poet’s frustration and anguish at the failure
of religion to emancipate mankind has been expressed through the
inverted symbol of the statue of Jesus Christ erected in a smugglers’
township of Mumbai facing the seashore. The commitment of the poet
to the final triumph of man over all impediments is expressed forcefully
in poems written after he suffered a severe attack of cerebral thrombosis.
The last poem of the collection, Charaghan, is about the yearly
event of Independence Day symbolised by an earthen lamp. It is this
radiance of eternal hope that shines through Kaifi Azmi’s poetry.
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K.
Satchidanandan, Ramakanta Rath, Namwar Singh
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He wrote his
first lyric for Buzdil, directed by Shahid Lateef in 1952. His noted
film songs are from Shama, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Shola Aur Shabnam, Anupama,
Aakhri Khat, Haqeeqat, Hanste Zakhm, Arth etc. Apart from writing
songs, he also wrote the script and dialogue for Chetan Anand’s
film, Heer Ranjha entirely in verse, creating history.
A selection
of his poetry, translated by Pavan Verma into English, has been
published by Penguin Books. A weekly column that he used to write
in Urdu Blitz entirely in verse is now being published as an anthology
titled Nai Gulistan by Rajkamal Prakashan. A selection of his film
lyrics, Meri Awaaz Suno, also published by Rajkamal Prakashan, is
now coming out in an updated edition. The script of Heer Ranjha
in verse is being published by Vani Prakashan.
Kaifi Azmi
has also acted in Saeed Mirza’s award-winning film Naseem.
He has visited
a number of countries as a member of writers’ delegations.
He is the recipient
of Padmashri, Soviet Land Nehru Award, 1975, Sahitya Akademi Award,
1975, Yuva Bhartiya Award, Maharashtra Gaurav Award and the prestigious
Afro-Asian Writers’ Lotus Award. He won the National Award
and Filmfare Award for the screenplay and dialogue of M.S. Sathyu’s
masterpiece, Garam Hawa. He has also been honoured with doctorate
from many universities in India, including the most prestigious
Vishva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan.
He has had several Jashn-e-Kaifi in his honour, both in India and
abroad, in countries like the United States of America, Dubai, Qatar
and Pakistan.
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Balraj
Komal, Javed Akhtar and
Shaukat Kaifi
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Kaifi Azmi now
lives in Mijwan, the tiny village he was born in. During the last
15 years he has transformed Mijwan from a village in oblivion to
a model village. It now has three schools, a hospital with a maternity
ward and a computer training centre. His dream now is to build a
Degree College there.
In recognition
of his efforts, the U.P. Government named the road leading to Mijwan
as Kaifi Azmi Road, and the highway from Sultanpur to Phulpur, the
Kaifi Azmi Highway.
Kaifi Azmi
is married to the noted stage actress Shaukat Kaifi and has two
children who are celebrities in their own right — Shabana Azmi
and Baba Azmi.
For his pre-eminence
as a poet writing in Urdu the Sahitya Akademi confers its highest
honour, the Fellowship, on Sri Kaifi Azmi.
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Address
of Shri Ramakanta Rath, president, Sahitya Akademi at the
function held on April 17, 2002, at Mumbai to confer the Akademi
Fellowship on Shri Kaifi Azmi.
“The
Sahitya Akademi has today the privilege of admitting Sri Kaifi
Azmi to the community of Fellows of the Akademi. This community
is a small community, comprising not more than twenty-one
writers and scholars who have made exceptional contribution
to Indian literature. I take this opportunity of conveying
to Kaifi Sahab the Akademi’s respect and good wishes.
“Not knowing Urdu, the language that was the vehicle
of Kaifi Sahab’s creativity, I would not venture an appreciation
of his poetry; this will be done, I am sure very competently,
by Sri Balraj Komal, Sri Namwar Singh, Sri Gopi Chand Narang
and other speakers. Long long ago, I met Kaifi Sahab in the
lyrics he composed for films. I am not one of those who think
film songs can not be good poetry. Maybe the larger number
of today’s film songs support their theory, but the songs
Kaifi Sahab wrote were different, were superb poetry. At the
risk of being alleged of plebeian taste, I would insist that
the poetry of songs like ‘Waqt ne kiya...’ (Kagaz
Ke Phool), ‘Ya dil ki suno...’(Anupama), ‘Chalte
chalte...’ (Pakeezah), ‘Tum itna jo muskura rahe
ho...’ and ‘Jhuki jhuki si nazar... (Arth) is poetry
very few poets are capable of. It is a tragedy that the caste
system in literary scholarship would dismiss good poetry on
the ground that it was used in films, and applaud mediocre
poetry because it has pretensions to ideology or philosophy.
“I would submit that we would not do justice to him if
we insist that his most significant writing is what he wrote
when he was an active member of the progressive movement.
His writing during this phase is remarkable for its passion,
its quality of fusing the voice of victims of capitalist imperialism
with the poet’s voice, its commitment to the brotherhood
of all men. If he was influenced by any political ideology,
the influence must have been small and incidental; the inspiration,
I have no doubt, issued from his own poetic temper that sought
beauty in life and that protested against whatever tarnished
beauty. The tone of his poetry is therefore not the tone one
hears from a platform; it is lyrical, sad, contemplative.
Consider the tenderness of lines such as these:
Ghaneri
zulfon ki chhaon mein muskarake mujh ko chhupa hi logi
(Will you, smiling, hide me in the shade of your cloud-like
tresses)
or
Surkh aankhon ki qasam, kaampti palkon ki qasam,
Thartharte hue aansoo nahin dekhe jaate.
(I swear by your eyes red with sleeplessness, and by your
quivering
eyelashes, I cannot bear to see those tears ready to fall),
and consider
also the sadness of reluctant withdrawal conveyed by these
lines:
This city died before dusk fell
Who is knocking at the door?
Raise high the encircling walls
For the noise will enter the courtyard.
Tell them the tavern is closed now.
Let me sleep tonight... and then decide if such a poet
can be given a single label, if the poet does not traverse
the whole of life. Protest, love, sorrow, weariness —
the entire range of our emotions — are ingredients of
his poetry. Take the whole of his poetry and you will find
that here is a poet whose canvas has a place for almost everything
in man’s life.
“In
enlisting such a poet as a Fellow, the Akademi is itself honoured.
It also hopes that poetry’s voice will continue to be
tender, compassionate and intimate, as Kaifi Sahab’s
has been.”
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