Remembering Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor and one of the first freedom fighters on 157th anniversary of the revolt of 1857 against the British empire.


Mirza Abu Zafar Sirajuddin Muhammad Bahadur Shah, the last Mughal emperor was more a poet than a ruler. He used Zafar as his takhallus(pseudonym). He was a lover of poetry and great Urdu poets like Mirza Ghalib and Sheikh Muhammad Ibrahim Zauq were a member of his court.

As the Indian rebellion of 1857 spread, Sepoy regiments seized Delhi. Seeking a figure that could unite all Indians most rebelling Indian kings and the Indian regiments accepted Zafar as the Emperor of India under whom the smaller Indian kingdoms would unite until the British were defeated. Zafar was the least threatening and least ambitious of monarchs, and the legacy of the Mughal Empire was more acceptable a uniting force to most allied kings than the domination of any other Indian kingdom. Zafar was captured by the British army after the rebellion failed and was sent to Rangoon prison, Burma in 1959 where he remained until his death. Zafar remained sorrowful and wrote a number of ghazals in prison which became one of the masterpieces of Urdu language. Here is a very popular and one of the best ghazals which Zafar wrote in Rangoon:



لگتا نہیں ہے جی مِرا اُجڑے دیار میں
کس کی بنی ہے عالمِ ناپائیدار میں

بُلبُل کو پاسباں سے نہ صیاد سے گلہ
قسمت میں قید لکھی تھی فصلِ بہار میں

کہہ دو اِن حسرتوں سے کہیں اور جا بسیں
اتنی جگہ کہاں ہے دلِ داغدار میں

اِک شاخِ گل پہ بیٹھ کے بُلبُل ہے شادماں
کانٹے بِچھا دیتے ہیں دلِ لالہ زار میں

عمرِ دراز مانگ کے لائے تھے چار دِن
دو آرزو میں کٹ گئے، دو اِنتظار میں

دِن زندگی کے ختم ہوئے شام ہوگئی
پھیلا کے پائوں سوئیں گے کنج مزار میں

کتنا ہے بدنصیب ظفر دفن کے لئے
دو گز زمین بھی مل نہ سکی  کوئے یار میں


"Lagta nahi hai ji mera ujde dayaar me
Kiski bani hai aalam e na'payedar me

Bulbul ko hai pasban se na sayyad se gila
Qismat me qaid likhi thi fasl e bahar me

Keh do in hasraton se kahin aur ja basein
Itni jagah kahan hai dil e daaghdar me

Ik shaakh e gul pe baith ke bulbul hai shaadman
Kaante bicha diye hain dil e lala zaar me

Umr e daraz maang ke laaye the chaar din
do aarzu me kat gaye, do intezar me

Din zindagi ke khatm hue shaam ho gayi
Phaila ke paanv soyenge kunj e mazar me

Kitna hai badnaseeb "zafar" dafn ke liye
Do gaz zameen bhi mil na saki ku e yaar me"


Translation:

"My heart has no repose in this despoiled land
Who has ever felt fulfilled in this futile world?

The nightingale complains about neither the sentinel nor the hunter
Fate had decreed imprisonment during the harvest of spring

Tell these longings to go dwell elsewhere
What space is there for them in this besmirched heart?

Sitting on a branch of flowers, the nightingale rejoices
It has strewn thorns in the garden of my heart

I asked for a long life, I received four days
Two passed in desire, two in waiting.

The days of life are over, evening has fallen
I shall sleep, legs outstretched, in my tomb

How unfortunate is Zafar! For his burial
Not even two yards of land were to be had, in the land of his beloved."

"The magician poet"- Sha'er e Sahir Hafez Shirazi

Hafez i Shirazi was truly the sha'er e sahir(magician poet) who could hypnotize people and actually did capture the hearts and minds of numerous people of different ranks and from widely separated walks of life.

Many people came up with their theories explaining the magical uniqueness of his poems. Some said it is due to his mastery of the "zaban e isharat" i.e. the art and the science of the language of allusion while others said it was the use of metaphors and equivocations to induce multiplicity of meanings and imagination. But still there is no unanimity in explaining why his poems remain fresh to this day, so fresh that still almost every Persian speaking man reads Divan i Hafez.

But the secret is quite open and evident. The reason why Mawlana Hafez's poetry touches the spirit of every man from every generation is that the central concept of his poetry has always been pure, unconditional and spiritual love and surrender. Every soul is thus attracted to Hafez because every soul wants freedom and Hafez gives the formula of liberating the spirit. And hence, his works are also known as "fal e Hafez" i.e. "the oracle book of Hafez". It is a tradition in Iran to open a random couplet from Divan i Hafiz in the morning to know how the day is going to be. His poems are not merely poems but a guiding light for every spirit looking for freedom from this material world.

"The lover's drunkenness begins with a drop of God's love which makes him forget the world. The more he drinks the closer he draws to his Beloved, and the more unworthy he feels of the Beloved's love; and he longs to sacrifice his very life at his Beloved's feet. He, too, does not know whether he sleeps on a bed or in a gutter, and becomes an object of ridicule to the world; but he rests in bliss, and God the Beloved takes care of his body and neither the elements nor disease can touch it."

Creation of the intellect

God said "Be" and it was. He created his best creation- the human intellect. He then showered it with all his blessings and gave it his divine powers. He told the angels with proud, this is my best creation. It can unveil all the divine secrets without any direct perception. It is what will make humans superior to angels and will take them to the sky without any divine miracle. It is the intellect that will connect humans to me and through it humans will recognize, understand and worship me. It is through it that humans will be able to distinguish the good from the evil, light from the darkness.

After showering all the blessings and praises he then put a curtain over human intellect. The curtain of doubt. Now, the intellect having lots of powers have this curtain of doubt over it. God then put instincts in the intellect which are supposed to be evil and humans are supposed to defy them. Now, he asks us look but don't touch. Human intellect is under the curtain of doubt. God who put that curtain now blames humans for doubts. Where is the justice? Justice is nothing but what God does, he says. Justice is defined through God and not what human intellect says. So, the perfect creation of God turns into the his arch enemy and the enmity reaches a point where intellect denies the existence of God. The curtain of doubt is still there. The blessing becomes the curse.

But God is all merciful and he claims his regime is not authoritarian. He gives us this extraordinary gift rather a curse, of "free will". Now God totally disassociates himself from human actions. He is no more responsible since we have a free will and a free intellect with divine powers. But what to do with the curtain of doubt? It was put by God himself so that we can doubt the evil but we doubt the divine as well. God's own weapon turned against him. How can humans be blamed for it when the creator is God?

When all these questions were put before God he answered, I did put the curtain on the intellect but I also gave you the will and sources to remove it but it was man's ego and his obsession with the self that does not let the curtain of doubt to be removed. Man could not recognize his self, how can he recognize me, said God. And thus the secret was revealed- "Know thyself and you know your Lord".

And God said in the voice of Iqbal: "Apne man me doob ke paa ja surag e zindagi, tu agar mera nahi banta na ban, apna to ban"

"By delving deep into your soul find the secrets of life, if you don't become mine at least be your own"

What is the Truth?

The question that has been troubling philosophers and thinkers since centuries is still unanswered and as much troubling as it was in the time of Socrates. But why are we looking for the truth in the first place, asks Nietzsche. Nietzsche was the genius who put the classical philosophy upside down, questioning the very basis of philosophy. He asks us a soul shattering question. Why are we looking for the truth and not untruth or even ignorance?

But we love to believe in an ultimate truth. Because denying or doubting one ultimate truth will make our lives nihilistic and we don't like nihilism. We try to fill this nihilist void with our own truths. Some people with God, some with nature, others with mathematics as being the ultimate truth. We don't want to feel like useless creatures, simply a piece of flesh having no more importance than flies and ants. Now, how do we overcome this nihilism? So, we invent the idea of an immortal soul. We are so obsessed with the idea of our existence that we do not want to let go of it. We want to exist, even after death. The idea of an immortal soul must have been invented by a very dishonest philosopher and the later philosophers put all their efforts to satisfy this obsession of philosophers and theologians. We dislike randomness and love harmony. So we invent ideas to bring all the beings in harmony with the universe although thermodynamics suggests that the universe moves towards randomness with increasing entropy.

So what do we do? How do we overcome this skepticism and this depressing nihilism? Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher suggested an answer- "leap of faith". Leap of faith is what has brought our lives in harmony with the nature, even if the harmony is just our mental construct. Or may be truth can not be attained through philosophical discourses and rational arguments but through mystical experiences like the mystics and sages have claimed. And I sincerely hope the claims of those saints and mystics are true and truth is as beautiful as they say. May be someday we become like the Budha and see everything as they are but until that day what choice do we have but to take the "leap of faith"?