Sajjad Zaheer-Roshnai

Progressive objectives
(DAWN Books and Authors; June 11, 2006)

Sajjad Zaheer recalls the euphoria of the days when the Association of Progressive Writers was born

This is the English translation of Sajjad Zaheer’s Roshnai. Containing vignettes of famous personalities of the time, it is considered to be the most authentic record of the Progressive Writers Movement which transformed Urdu literature and also had an impact on the literatures of many other languages of the subcontinent

Those were days when it felt good to be alive, as if a new dawn were breaking in our country. It seemed as though somebody had quietly pushed away the heavy slabs of darkness that had been weighing on our hearts and minds. Like the contentment that the body feels when cool breezes blow after an airless and uncomfortable night, there was joy in the souls of the young. Although the brightening red on the horizon of our motherland was still mixed with blackness, it seemed that the soundless and delicate shower of freedom’s celestial light had spread through the atmosphere, and was stirring in our veins and muscles.

The period between 1936 and the end of 1939 (when the Second World War began), was a time of new ideas, revolutionary movements, noble resolutions, and glimmering hope for our country. There was never a time, during all of our enslavement to imperialism, when the yearning for freedom was absent from the hearts of our people.

Insurrections took place repeatedly during this period, restlessness surfaced in many different forms, hatred and rage against external domination was continually expressed, those who supported the foreign rulers and joined them in oppressing their own people were despised, and the common people always derided and looked down on people who copied the living style of the British rulers.

For about one hundred and fifty years these feelings and perceptions of the people had been faithfully reflected in our literature. But the new awakening had some prominent features of its own: Now when people’s freedom was discussed, a major part of our countrymen understood the word “people” to mean the farmers, labourers, and the members of the ordinary, middle class. The new interpretation of “freedom” was the overthrow of foreign imperialist domination, to replace it with a social system in which the exploitation of the working classes was stopped, power was vested in their hands, and the means of production were under their control so that cooperation and sharing became the basis of producing wealth which would be distributed according to the laws of justice. These thoughts had been present in the minds of certain segments of the people ever since the Russian Revolution, but during this period they began to spread with an extraordinary speed.

The influence of socialist ideas among the intelligentsia, students, and the lower and middle classes became especially widespread. In the largest political party in the country, the Congress, there was a dramatic increase in members of the left wing. A Socialist party was formed within the Congress, and many young political workers who had been incarcerated for the Civil Disobedience of 1930 and 1936, had become communist by the time they were released from prison.

Another peculiarity of this age was that, with their awakening and animation, the land workers began to gather into their own independent organisation, the Kisan Sabha. The leadership of this land workers’ movement came from communists or socialists, or from the left wingers in the Congress. The trade union movement of the industrial labourers became more united and more active, and new trade unions were formed in large numbers. Their leadership came from the left wingers, and that of the students’ organisation came from young men of socialist or communist leanings.

After the 1937 elections, Congress ministries were formed in many provinces. The Congress victory in the elections was itself a defeat for imperialism. Even though the ministries were controlled by right wing Gandhian reformists, public pressure ensured more civic liberties. Within two or three years, land workers’ and industrial workers’ movements and left wing political parties too, experienced great enhancement. For this prevailing political animation and awakening there were fundamental national and international economic reasons. We can neither view nor understand the Progressive Writers’ Movement if we separate it from these causes.

There was, in truth, a political and economic tumult in the minds of our country’s intelligentsia. They had begun to regard with suspicion the standpoints of Gandhian and revivalist philosophies, the politics of reformism, and vague nationalism, after experiencing them for almost 25 years.

Simultaneously, there had appeared on the international horizon, the success of the Soviet Union’s five-year plan and the magnificent structure of the socialist society on the one hand, and the manifestation of capitalism in the terrible form of fascism over Western Europe on the other hand. This spectacle was making a deep impression on some sections of the intelligentsia. So much so, that even from within the Congress, which was dominated by the politics of Indian capitalists, Jawaharlal Nehru was announcing (in his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Congress in Lucknow) that the Soviet socialist “experiment” had proved successful, and that sooner or later the whole world would have to give up the capitalist system and adopt the socialist economic system. After the Congress ministries were established, although the Indian Communist Party continued to remain unlawful, its workers had relatively more freedom to work among the people and
propagate their political views.

It now became easier for Progressive intelligentsia to discard the politics, and ways of thinking and behaviour of the bourgeois classes, and to take part in the movements and activities of the workers. It was no longer unavoidable to have a vague or unrealistic idea of “the people”; for now when they shouted slogans of “Long live the revolution” or “Long live the rule of the workers”, they could see in their minds eye the labourers and farmers whose meetings they attended and addressed, in whose strikes they participated, and whose red flags they saluted. When the educated patriots depicted in Premchand’s novels went to the village, they carried with them Gandhiji’s ideas of uplifting the village and improving the lot of the untouchables. On the contrary, young men of the present era entered the rural areas with the red flag of the farmers, and brought with them the concepts of unity, organisation, and revolutionary struggle.

These days one often hears that the Association of Progressive Writers should confine itself to being a literary body, and should have nothing to do with politics. The reason for this is that official circles justify their harsh treatment of the Association’s workers, and depriving them of jobs and all resources of the government that are able to grant livelihoods, by asserting that the Association is a political party. Moreover, intellectuals who are employees of the government are prohibited from joining the Association. Obviously, this is merely a ploy to crush and maim the Progressive writers and their movement. That this is so is borne out of the fact that government servants who support the politics of the ruling party, and use government resources and institutions to further its interests, are never questioned. On the contrary, such partisan and sycophantic officials are facilitated and granted concessions in many forms, by the government.

The Association of Progressive Writers has never been a political party. Its real function of creating and promoting Progressive literature is not a political activity. Yet this does not mean that the Progressive writers and their association should give up the right to hold and express their own independent political viewpoint under the pressure of threats and hardships inflicted upon them by conservative rulers. Or that those members of the association who are affiliated with political parties and have a political status as well as a literary one, should leave the association. The reactionaries want to push us into such a position. But doing this would mean cutting off the wings of the association, severing it from the developing peoples’ revolutionary fervour in the country, isolating it from the bonds that connect it to the people and their struggle. And this would be like killing it by stopping the circulation of fresh blood in its body. If, among the
Association of Progressive Writers, there emerge “scholars” who are repulsed by the grimy garments of the common workers, their “uncivilised” ways, their dirty and sometimes blood-soaked clothes that bear signs of struggle, and their dark and disease laden habitations, and if these “scholars” find such conditions un-literary or un-poetic, then, for such gentlemen the doors of many other literary associations are open, and they should go there rather than try to belittle and unman the Association of Progressive Writers.

During the first three or four years of the movement, which we are here discussing, the possibility of such things did not even occur to us. Most of the active workers of the association also worked for one or the other left wing peoples’ organisation, such as the Communist Party, the Congress Socialist Party, the Students’ Federation, Kisan Sabha, or a trade union. The conferences of the association were usually attended by left wing political leaders and common workers, politically aware labourers and farmers, and politically inclined students. In those days, since left wingers were a part of Congress, it so happened, frequently, that an all India conference of the association was called to coincide with a large session of the Congress. Young Progressive poets would attend the conferences and political meetings of labourers, farmers, and students, and would read their poetry there. It was an old custom to read poems in meetings and conferences, and it was
revived mainly by the Progressive poets.

During the period between 1936 and 1938, our movement spread mainly among young Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali writers. Since Urdu and Hindi were spoken in the same region, the branches of the association in this area included both Urdu and Hindi writers. But on the whole, the Urdu speaking writers were more influenced by the movement, and were present in greater numbers in the association. Yet, despite that, we were proud and happy that during the very period when the Urdu-Hindi conflict was turning ugly, and the poisonous atmosphere of sectarian, conservative politics was tainting even literary gatherings, the conferences and meetings of the Progressive Movement offered the only venue where writers of the two languages met to hear readings of each other’s works, and discussed them.