SHAYEARI - DUTTAI Say Unto Waris Shah
SHAYEARI - DUTTAI Say Unto Waris Shah
Amrita Pritam
Amrita Pritam (b. 1919) is a distinguished Punjabi poetess and fiction writer.
Her first collection of poems Amrit Lehrcm was published in 1936 when she
was barely 17 years old. Starting as a romantic poet, she matured into a
poetess of revolutionary ideas as a result of her involvement with the
Progressive Writers’ Movement in literature. Her magnum opus is the long
poem Sunehray which won the Sahitya Akademi Award.
Ajj Akhan Waris Shah Nun (I Say unto Waris Shah) is a heartrending poem
written during the riot-torn days that followed the partition of the country. It
is addressed to Waris Shah, the celebrated eighteenth century Punjabi poet
and author of the immortal Heer.
When Amrita Pritam called out to Waris Shah
in a heartrending ode while fleeing the
Partition riots
The immortal Partition poem turns 70 too.
Nirupama Dutt
Aug 14, 2017 · 05:30 pm
The train rolled through the dark night as though it was moving through an endless
tunnel in the fall of 1947. A sad and beautiful “refugee” wondered if there would be
light at the end of the tunnel, or whether she would keep travelling through the
darkness, with her two little children by her side.
This hapless woman was none other than the poetry diva of Lahore who had charmed
literary circles with her verses in Punjabi. Amrita Pritam (1919-2005) was born in
Gujranwala and brought up in Lahore, the city she had to flee literally in the clothes
she was wearing when communal rioting broke out at the time of Partition in the
blood-soaked August of 1947.
Brave and daring always, this pioneering woman poet of Punjabi was picking up the
shreds of life so that she could take root again. In her autobiography, The Revenue
Stamp, she recalls the train journey thus:
“Uprooted from Lahore, I had rehabilitated myself at Dehradun for some time. I went
to Delhi looking for work and a place to live. On my return journey in the train, I felt
the wind was piercing the dark night and wailing at the sorrows the Partition had
brought. I had come away from Lahore with just one red shawl and I had torn it into
two to cover both my babies. Everything had been torn apart. The words of Waris
Shah about how the dead and parted would meet, echoed in my mind. And my poem
took shape.”
This ode to Waris Shah, the Sufi poet who had penned the tragic story of Punjab’s
folk heroine Ranjha, written during a sorrowing journey, went straight to the hearts of
the traumatised, bereaved and displaced Punjabis both sides of the border, where the
land of the five bloodied rivers lay in two pieces, cut off mercilessly by the infamous
Radcliffe Line.
Unpublished, the poem reached Pakistan and was translated into English and
published. Faiz Ahmad Faiz read it in jail. When he came out, he found many people
had a copy and wept on reading it. Sadly, in India, Pritam had to face the ire of her
community on why her poem was not addressed to Guru Nanak, while Left-wing
writers felt it should have been addressed to Lenin or Stalin!
Khushwant Singh, who was to translate the poem as well as Amrita’s Partition
novel Pinjar (The Skeleton) was taken up by her “stunning beauty” and not so much
by her literary prowess. Yet of this poem he conceded: “Those few lines she
composed made her immortal, in India and Pakistan”.
NOTES
Waris Shah (1706 -1798) was a Punjabi poet, best-known for his seminal work Heer Ranjha, based
on the traditional folk tale of Heer and her lover Ranjha. Heer is considered one of the quintessential
works of classical Punjabi literature.
Qaido – A maternal uncle of Heer in Heer Ranjha is the villain who betrays the lovers.
The Punjab – the region of the five rivers east of Indus: Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej.
Massive population exchanges occurred between the two newly-formed states in the months
immediately following Partition. Once the lines were established, about 14.5 million people crossed
the borders to what they hoped was the relative safety of religious majority. Based on 1951 Census of
displaced persons, 7,226,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India while 7,249,000 Hindus and
Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan immediately after partition. About 11.2 million or 78% of the
population transfer took place in the west, with Punjab accounting for most of it; 5.3 million Muslims
moved from India to West Punjab in Pakistan, 3.4 million Hindus and Sikhs moved from Pakistan to
East Punjab in India; elsewhere in the west 1.2 million moved in each direction to and from Sind.
The newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such
staggering magnitude, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border.
Estimates of the number of deaths range around roughly 500,000, with low estimates at 200,000
and high estimates at 1,000,000.
The poetess is in a state of extreme sadness. She implores Waris Shah, her muse, to
see what is happening in her beloved birthplace. Corpses are lying in the fields.
Everything she sees has turned into red. The land of Heer–Ranjha is playing holi with
human blood. The partition of India is the root cause of all those evils. Humanity is at
stake. The message of love and purity of compassion is lost from Punjab. The poetess
hopes that the people of Punjab will listen to her lamentation and stop this nonsensical
bloodshed.
You can read the full poem I Say unto Wris Shah here.
At the parting section of ‘I Say unto Waris Shah’, the poetess asks a rhetorical question
to the readers. It is a popular figure of speech used in such emotional poems.
The poetess needs the assistance of Waris Shah badly. She is requesting him to appear
again as the moment needs him the most. The people of Punjab have killed enough
people that it turned the water of Chenab crimson red. The act of partition has
impregnated evil spirit into the hearts of people. Now the green pastures of Punjab have
turned into a graveyard. Corpses are lying here and there. Such was the condition of
Punjab at the time of partition.
Amrita Pritam thinks that some satanic force is responsible for all this hurly-burly. It has
contaminated the tributaries of the river Indus with poison. The water is now irrigating
the land with poison. It is the poison of “Divide and Rule Policy” which is irrigating the
spirit of an Indian. This poison like the diabolic policy is the root cause of what is
happening around the poetess.
Lines 18–37
In this fertile land have sprouted
(…)
along with the wedding-beds.
The fertile land of Punjab is now giving birth to poisonous saplings. Amrita Pritam
compares the saplings to hatred of men metaphorically. The hallucination of
“otherness” is ultimately a threat to the integrity and unity of India.
The poison of revenge has intoxicated the commoners. The beautiful natural landscape
of Punjab is now turned into a field of mass-slaughter. That’s why Amrita Pritam writes,
“Scarlet-red has turned the horizon/ and sky high has flown the curse./ The poisonous
wind,/ that passes through/ every forest,/ has changed the/ bamboo-shoots into
cobras.”
This metaphorical cobra is biting the people of Punjab and inserting its venom into their
bodies. The poetess is pointing here to the selfish political leaders who are trying to
destroy love, compassion, and brotherhood from people’s hearts by spreading its
venom. Amidst all of this, the daughters of Punjab are the most affected. They have
stopped singing. The “spinning wheel”, metaphor of “rural economy”, has stopped its
functioning. Girls are running to save their lives. They can’t attend the trinjan to sing
together, to share their sorrows, and to help each other in this critical situation. Even the
couples who have married recently to live a happy life, are fleeting to save their lives.
Lines 38–57
The swing has snapped
(…)
and turn over a page of the Book of Love.
Partition of India snatched everything away from the innocent people of Punjab. It
snapped the invisible thread of love existing among people.
The men of Punjab aren’t in the mood of blowing the flute. They are indulged in fighting
and killing each other. Blood is spread everywhere. According to the poetess, even the
dead will start weeping after seeing this horrid picture of Punjab.
In utter anguish, the poetess says that the men of Punjab have turned into villains. They
have become the “thieves of love and beauty” for the poet. After seeing all this the writer
can’t hold her tears. She desperately needs the help of Waris Shah whose words, she
thinks, can stop this turbulence. The refrain used at the end of the poem, emphasizes
her sincere prayer to the dead poet.