Immediately after the emergence of Pakistan as a state that was based on the notion of Muslim separatism, it was difficult as well as dangerous to uphold views which in any way, directly or indirectly, recognised the historical fact that society in the territories of Pakistan was ancient and diverse. The fact of its being ancient and diverse militated against the politico-ideological construct of faith-based exclusivity. Being ancient showed that society with the passage of time continued to change its faith and religious practices. Being diverse meant that no single principle could work as social glue to hold it together. Such a historical reality was hard to deny but nevertheless it was loudly denied by the state and the elite. The Harappa civilisation was brushed under the carpet in order to hide our Dravidian roots. Rig-Veda, composed in Punjab by mainly Aryan Rishis (seers), was rejected because it showed our forebears as upholders of variegated strands of Hindu culture. Jainism and Buddhism were conveniently ignored which told us, once our forefathers practiced these faiths that debunked Brahmanism and produced the glorious Gandhara culture that spread over large areas of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Such an untenable project initiated by Muhajir (Urdu speaking) bureaucracy in collusion with the Punjabi political elite was an outcome of denialism; it denied what was undeniable and reaffirmed what could not be affirmed. They should have been charged with defacing the nation in the name of raising it!

Punjab, the cradle of sub-continental civilisation, was deliberately reduced to a cultural and intellectual cesspool. In the decades that followed the Partition, it was literally a criminal offence to talk of Punjab’s language, literature and culture. The state considered reading, writing and promoting Punjabi language a conspiracy against Pakistan, a threat to ill-conceived notion of national unity.

In such hostile conditions a few individuals such as Ustad Daman, Maula Baksh Kushta, Joshua Fazal Din and Dr Faqir Muhammad Faqir mounted the literary stage without panoply and asserted the linguistic rights of the people of the Punjab not through callow sloganeering but through their concrete work.

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Ustad Daman being man of the people was an exception. He was a born rebel who appeared larger than life. He always had the courage to challenge in public and private the dictates of General Ayub Khan, Z A Bhutto and General Ziaul Haq. He through his poetry and personal acts defied tyranny and suffered with stoic patience.

Dr Faqir (1900-1974) was a man of letters. He was passionately in love with Punjabi, his mother tongue and was rightly proud of its glorious literary tradition spanning over centuries. He was a poet, writer, researcher and above all an indefatigable collector of manuscripts and literary editor. He found a friend in a well-known scholar and teacher Dr Muhammad Baqir who being principal of Oriental College, University of the Punjab, had some clout with officialdom. Dr Baqir supported him in his literary endeavours. Dr Faqir was greatly worried about the literary heritage which was disappearing fast from the Punjab’s cultural landscape due to official negligence and societal indifference born of inherited colonial state policy regarding the Punjabi language. He set himself the task of retrieving manuscripts of classical writings which were gathering dust in the dark recesses of private libraries. What he retrieved was nothing less than remarkable. It was result of his overriding literary passion and hard work that made Dr Faqir a must figure in the history of modern Punjabi literature. He collected and edited the work of Bulleh Shah which still stands out as standard text. He travelled far and wide to find a reliable version of Hafiz Barkhurdar’s inimitable tale of Mirza Sahiban. He consulted different manuscripts and painstakingly evolved a text that carried an imprint of its being authentic because of internal and external evidence. It was a much greater gift than the fragments of Pilu’s Mirza Sahiban collected by R.C.Temple. It was no mean feat to have found the complete tale of great literary value which was likely to be lost to posterity. He compiled and published another stimulating book of poetry composed by intellectually inclined Hasham Shah titled “Kukaaray”. He brought out “Bol Faridi”, the couplets of Baba Farid, the first great classical poet of contemporary Punjabi. He also published Heer Wais Shah along with scores of lesser known poets. Post partition he was the first to regularly bring out literary monthly “Punjabi” from 1951 to 1960.

Dr Faqir’s contribution in retrieving classical texts is laudable. In recognition of his literary and scholarly contribution, Dr Mujahid Kamran, the vice chancellor of the University of Punjab, created Dr Faqir research chair at the Department of Punjabi, Oriental College, in 2013. Junaid Akram, a known poet and writer, and Secretary of Bazm-i-Faqir, Pakistan, was appointed as a research scholar who produced numerous research articles and two books on Dr Faqir’s life and work -- “Faqir Namay” (Dr Faqir’s correspondence with literary figures) and “Saadi Daak” (a selection of letters to the editor of the magazine ‘Punjabi’) -- which hints at the trajectory of literary struggle in the early years of Pakistan. Let’s hope the Department of Punjabi, Oriental College, will continue to encourage scholars to produce research and scholarly work which is the rasion d’etre of its existence. One expects nothing less than quality research from its current chairman Dr Saeed Bhutta who himself is a serious researcher and scholar of repute.

Setting up of Dr Faqir Chair and naming of a Government College in Gujranwala after him acknowledge, though belatedly, the contribution made by this committed scholar. As a maven of classical texts he succeeded in preserving some of the highly significant but neglected classical literary texts for the coming generations. This earned him an enviable place in the cultural history of the Punjab. — soofi01@hotmail.com