Noor Zaheer takes the lead

Writer’s latest book is reminiscent of the writings of 20th century’s progressive Urdu writers.

ISLAMABAD:

To the left-leaning activists, writers and intellectuals assembled at the launching ceremony of her short stories book Rait per Khoon (Blood on the Sand), Indian writer and activist Noor Zaheer speaks as if she is their leader.

Engaging them with stories and pithy one-liners that have the potential of becoming political slogans, she gets them to applaud and perhaps, dream again.

As she speaks, she exudes a certain sense of optimism and fearlessness. Some of that fearlessness she might attribute to her training in theatre and some, to genetics.

Zaheer, 55, is one of the four daughters of renowned Urdu writers Sajjad and Razia Sajjad Zaheer. Her father, Sajjad, is revered as one of the greatest Marxist thinkers and revolutionaries of the subcontinent on either side of the border.

He co-founded the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) in pre-partition India; the association spearheaded the progressive movement in Urdu literature through its members’ struggle and advocacy to end socioeconomic oppression.

Now, Zaheer is carrying on her parents’ legacy in modern-day India, through the pen and activism as a member of the Communist Party of India. She is in Pakistan on invitation from the PWA to promote her book.

Her short stories, as speakers at the launch mention, highlight socioeconomic problems in a manner similar to that of the 20th century’s progressive Urdu writers. She pens her book at a time when there are only a few writers who are focusing on social realism in Urdu stories or poetry.

Zaheer, who has previously published two books, connects the lack of people-oriented writing to the larger, and more unfortunate, dearth of social movements in South Asian countries.

“Movements for the people have to be strong enough to throw up writers who take up these causes,” she says. “I think that since the movements [in South Asia] have become weaker over the past decades, writers are not taking up these very important issues.”

Such socially emancipating movements once thrived in India. But they have been hurt because the resistance is not as simple as it used to be in colonial times when the aggressor was just one entity, Zaheer says. According to her, nongovernmental organisations that only work for a cause from project to project have also hurt the movements.

She feels that leftist forces in India and Pakistan, which should theoretically champion the cause of the masses, need to have more internal discussions and reach out to the public.

Meanwhile, contemporary South Asian literature’s shift away from social realism, according to Zaheer, is mostly because “very important issues have become very casual.” Of these important issues, perhaps the most pertinent is the death of a human being — a reality that has been trivialised by wars.

Across the region, she has noticed the sensitivity for human life transform into dissociation from death.

“Even when you take up the issues, of say farmers, what do you harp on? What is your focus point? That they are tortured so much [by socioeconomic conditions] they die or commit suicide,” she says. “An accident should be shocking enough to provoke good literature or poetry, but that is not happening.”

Quite haplessly, the PWA has become almost irrelevant in Pakistan. There could be a lesson for Pakistani writers from India though, where, Zaheer shares, efforts are being made to revive the progressive movement and raise relevant issues through writing.

She mentions two important initiatives that are being focused on in India: revival of the “people’s publishing house,” which would publish more books from regional languages; and the concept of a “people’s literature festival.”

Zaheer, who has been working for a decade in Himachal Pradesh on restoring Buddhist monasteries and documenting oral traditions there, thinks corporations and private organisations that sponsor literature festivals will eventually try to dictate the content of contemporary writing.

The people’s literature festival is a way of circumventing corporate control on literature, she says. At this point, the previously felt optimism and fearlessness in her become manifest again.

The first festival is planned to be held in Azamgarh, India, the birthplace of the great Urdu poet, Kaifi Azmi. The festival could be the spark that reignites progressive movements in South Asia.

It is difficult to predict the future, but it seems that Zaheer is willing to fight till the end for the people and the people’s literature.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2014.

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