In societies where there is no rule of law, poetry of resistance becomes a greater crime than murder. A state whose institutions are afraid of a poet and imprison him or make him disappear, the state suffers from disintegration from within. The famous British poet John Milton was against the monarchy, so he was arrested in 1660, but with the passage of time, so much tolerance developed in the British society that disagreement was considered the beauty of democracy. Democratic attitudes played an important role in ending internal divisions in British society, but on the other hand, Britain continued its looting of our region through the East India Company and tried to suppress every voice against colonial rule. The British Empire was also afraid of rebel poets and writers. This was the time when Bari Alig wrote a book called "Company Government" and unmasked democracy and human rights from the face of British government. The "company government" did not arrest poets for their rebellious poetry but charged them with such charges that they could not defend themselves in public. For example, once Mirza Ghalib was imprisoned for six months for gambling. The aim was to send a message to the poets that they should refrain from writing offensive poems about "company rule" or they would be picked up. Poets and journalists like Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar were neither gamblers nor drinkers. They were therefore arrested for their seditious speeches and editorials. The "company government" considered poets and journalists as a great threat to them because Bhagat Singh was influenced by poets like Baghi, Ghalib, Tagore and Allama Iqbal. Few people in Pakistan know that Allama Iqbal tried hard to save Bhagat Singh from hanging.
Allama Iqbal was a senior lawyer. In 1929, a special ordinance was promulgated to try Bhagat Singh for conspiring against the Company's government and a special court was constituted under the ordinance. In 1930, the Lahore High Court Bar Association formed a committee which included Allama Iqbal, Gokul Chand Narang, Malik Barkat Ali and Nanak Chand. In its report, this committee declared the ordinance issued against Bhagat Singh as unconstitutional, but nevertheless the special court sentenced Bhagat Singh to death. On February 27, 1931, Allama Iqbal filed a petition against Bhagat Singh's death sentence, which was rejected, and on March 23, 1931, Bhagat Singh was hanged in Lahore. Now think for yourself that the poet who dreamed of Pakistan was crazy about Bhagat Singh who was hanged as a terrorist by the company government. When Pakistan was formed, whoever raised this question, when will we get freedom from the black laws created by the company government, was declared a traitor and thrown in jail. After the establishment of Pakistan, every great poet of ours had to spend time in jail. Faiz Ahmad Faiz was not only a poet but also a journalist. He was arrested in the Rawalpindi conspiracy case. Habib Jalib was arrested for drunkenness and murderous assault. Shoorash Kashmiri used to write in his journal Chitan that:
If police officers are victims of politics
Accused can be hanged, where
there is no time to spare if the authorities
can't have a destination, the system of the government, because of this kind of poetry, rioting Kashmiri would have often eaten air of jail. At first, poets were arrested on one or the other charges. No longer arrested but disappeared. In 2018, a poet and journalist, Mudassar Naro, posted his Punjabi poem on Facebook, in which he said:
Kadh nain sikde jalsa rally
Khalkat da ai Allah beli
Hundi pai ai taha taha taha
Hoor keih hunda a martial law
after which Mudassar Naro is missing. They were lost and could not be recovered till date. Mudassar Naro's mother fought a vigorous legal battle for her son's recovery through the Islamabad High Court. In the same case, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif appeared in the court and assured the recovery of Mudassar Naro, but Mudassar Naro is still missing. Now in the same Islamabad High Court, the case of the recovery of Azad Kashmir poet Ahmed Farhad is under hearing, in which the government and its relatives are seen to be angry with the remarks of the court. These poems of Ahmed Farhad are very famous:
It thinks of its own will Pick it up There
is something separate from those who pick it up Pick it up
It is rude
It thinks about those it picked up before Pick it up
Ahmed Farhad Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani said a remarkable sentence during the hearing of the recovery case. He said that this is no longer a case for the recovery of Ahmed Farhad, it has become a case for the recovery of the entire nation. Today, Prime Minister Nazir Tarar is accusing the judiciary of insulting Parliament. Would anyone care to explain where the Parliament passed a bill to end enforced disappearances in October 2022, where did that bill go? If Parliament cannot implement the law it has made, it means that Parliament is the company's government. is helpless in front of Through the Criminal Laws Amendment Bill 2022, Pakistan Penal Code 1860 was amended to make enforced disappearance a punishable offence. At that time Tarar Sahib was also the Law Minister. Even today he is the Law Minister. They are requested to implement the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Act of 2022 before bringing a new law to control the media so that the impression that today Pakistan is ruled by a company and not by the Muslim League-N is removed.
0 Comments