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On February 17 Victor Gordon Kiernan passed away at the age of 95. In Pakistan he is known mostly as the translator of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Urdu poetry into English, Poems by Faiz, published under the auspices of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Earlier he also translated Iqbal’s verse into English, Poems from Iqbal, published in the Wisdom of the East series.
In the academic world and among the left intellectuals in general, Victor Kiernan is known more widely for his contributions to Marxist historiography and his incisive works on imperialism and colonialism. Among many other books and essays he is the celebrated author of The Lords of Humankind, and America: The New Imperialism. Next to political history, world literature was Kiernan’s most ardent passion.
Kiernan was drawn to the critical study of colonialism and imperialism in 1930s when he was a student and later a fellow at the Trinity College of Cambridge University. This was the time when Russian Revolution, followed by the great depression, and Spanish Civil War had created a strong sentiment in favour of a more humane socialist world order among the younger generation of European intellectuals. Academics like Kiernan saw no contradiction between the pursuit of their academic disciplines and political commitment to build an equitable world free from war, colonial exploitation and imperialist domination. When he graduated in history, with high honours, in 1934 he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1938 he decided to visit India to observe the working of the raj first hand.
On way to India he is said to have carried with him a secret document of the Comintern for the Indian Communist Party. This was not something unusual in those days as one can read in The Chains to Lose, recently published memoirs of the veteran communist worker, Dada Amir Haider Khan. In the decades of 1930s and 40s the British authorities felt no greater threat to their colonial hold on India than the spread of communism in the country. Any form of communication between European communist organizations and Indian political activists was ruthlessly suppressed.
Having arrived in India Kiernan stayed in the country for eight long years making Lahore his base of activities. This was due perhaps to the presence in the city of his old Cambridge friends, Som Nath Chib and M. D. Taseer. It was also here that he discovered the political and philosophical currents of the time flowing in the works of Urdu writers. Muhammad Iqbal, the great Urdu poet had just departed from this world as young Faiz Ahmed Faiz was making his mark. Poetry for both was not merely a “display of ornamental skill.†Kiernan found both Iqbal and Faiz “animated by something fresh and great, some cause above themselves,†with which he could relate as a committed historian and student of literature. During the height of the independence movement in India Iqbal’s message of bold and self-confident action to break the bonds of class oppression and colonial subjugation was inspiring not only Muslims but also Hindu and Sikh nationalists. His poems, direct and simple in idiom, were being frequently recited from political platforms and rallies calling for India’s freedom.
Kiernan who strongly believed in the cross-fertilization of ideas and ideals emerging from the East and the West took it upon himself to translate into English first Iqbal and then Faiz. This was indeed an ambitious project which required an in-depth study of Urdu language and literature. Besides, Kiernan as a historian of Ideas found it necessary to explore the political and cultural geography of Urdu and its literature in order to better understand the significance of what he was going to translate.
When Kiernan arrived in India, Punjab and its capital city Lahore were in many ways the picture of a “Sleepy Hollow where life moved at the pace of the feeble cab-horses drawing their two-wheeled tongas; where young men could indulge in old carefree idle ways, with long hours of debate in coffee houses and moonlight picnics by the river Ravi.†There was little modern industry or urbanization. Big landlords, many the creation of British rule and loyal to it, dominated the society.
Yet, tides of history were making ripples even in this seemingly uneventful place. Its very geography had ensured that Punjab would not remain isolated for any length of time. It was always the meeting-ground of ideas, as of trade-routs and military excursions. Although seldom an intellectual leader since early Indo-Aryan times, observes Kiernan, Punjab “has repeatedly been plunged by forces within and pressures from without into emotional and social turmoil.â€
In the 1930s and 40s there were two interrelated developments unfolding which were to stir up Punjab’s political and social climate once again. Firstly, political independence was on the horizon and the land of the Five Rivers was awakening to nationalist and socialist ideas. The prospect of political independence was firmly linked to hopes for a radical change in the social order leading to an end of mass poverty and class oppression.
Secondly, Urdu language which had grown around the capital cities of Delhi, Agra, Lucknow and Hyderabad was becoming the popular medium of literary expression in Punjab. Prominent Urdu poets and story tellers had emerged from all three communities, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh and for these writers, “national and social emancipation seemed to go together.†The Progressive writers’ Association was acquiring a strong presence in Punjab.
In locating the poems of Iqbal and Faiz in this political and social background, Kiernan has left behind some keen insights which are worth revisiting today. While comparing the two poets he observes that each was acutely aware of his human environment as a committed poet. “Both combined older modes, elegiac, romantic, introspective, with a fresh note of criticism of society, and desire to alter it.â€
Regarding their sources of inspiration and public concerns, Kiernan observes that:
“Iqbal and Faiz both looked abroad for ideas as well as at home. Their Punjab has for ages been receiving from outside, from Persian, Greek, Turk, Briton, and yet has remained itself. Iqbal was only going to one more source when he brought Nietzsche into the Punjab and Faiz when he helped to introduce Marx. Iqbal wrote of tribulations of the poor majestically as if looking down from heaven; he preached revolt of downtrodden peoples, relief of downtrodden classes by wealthier men infused by Islamic fraternalism. Faiz belonged to a generation that examined poverty at close range, with its dirt and sores and he learned its problems in social, economic detail.â€
Finally, Kiernan makes an interesting observation about the two poets as citizen role models for the future of Pakistan. Iqbal, he says, was an “Islamic thinker†who is venerated as the moral founder of Pakistan. Faiz might be called a socialist, who did not consider himself religious in a specific sense, but was imbued with Muslim culture and feeling. “Pakistan’s chance of growing up as a nation both truly modern and genuinely founded on Islamic past will depend, it may appear at least to an observer outside, more on the contribution of such ‘cultural Muslims’ than on anything else.â€
These were the expectations of “an observer outside,†and one might add those of many a thoughtful citizen from inside, which were lost perhaps irreversibly some time in 1970s. The political and social crisis that the nation finds itself in today has surely something to do with that loss.
The author is a professor emeritus of sociology and anthropology. Among his other writings, is a translation of Siraiki poems, Tenements on Sand, published in 1991.
All quotes in the above text come from Kiernan’s introduction to Poems by Faiz, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 1973.
