The Democracy Diary: A Journey into Jalib

After much contemplation, I have decided to start off my translation of Habib Jalib with the poem “جمہوریت/Jamhooriat”. Translating this title is relatively straightforward: jamhooriat means democracy in almost all of the contexts I’ve seen or heard it being used (any political talk show, rally or speech is incomplete without it). And so, my translation starts: 

Democracy. 

That wasn’t too hard. Now begins my “labour of love”, as Jen Hofer terms it. 

Before I get into translating the poem, I want to translate a few of my thoughts about why I chose this particular poem for translation. Or this poet, for that matter. Have I not introduced Jalib yet? Gustaakhi maaf! / Forgive my transgression! Better translated: forgive my blasphemy. But the B-word lands you in awkward circumstances (see: mob lynchings)1, so I’ll forgo it here. 

A young man in a radio station goes off-script and violates the protocols of a military dictator to rebuke tyranny; the radio program is taken down and he is arrested. A small house mourns the death of a twelve-year old boy who couldn’t receive medical attention; the police show up to arrest the boy’s father and have him tried for treason. An old man stands up in a group of two hundred ladies surrounded by a police cordon on a road, his voice ripping apart those who deny the rights of women; charged with fervor, the women throw their weight against the police cordon and break it. Struck repeatedly by police batons, blood pours down the man’s face while a photographer immortalizes this moment (picturized on the right).

This was Habib Jalib: the poet of the masses, the walking revolution. Born in Hoshiarpur, East Punjab and schooled in Delhi, Jalib was among the many who, migrating to Pakistan after the Partition of India, “found death staring at us in the face wherever we went”. His circumstances would always be destitute; he lived “in a room and a half” in a working-class district where the water tasted brackish and natural gas was unheard of. And yet, as Pakistan was thrust into an era of darkness by military dictatorships, it was this Marxist-Leninist revolutionary who became the face of resistance and subversion. Jalib’s defiant poetry, chanted loud and clear, awakened the common man and rattled dictators, who frequently banished him to prison. Jalib, however, “afflicted by a longing for democracy”, refused to give “a bad thing a good name”.2

To this particular poem, I feel an ownership or at least a proximity. It’s not very well-known at all, and so I have been unsuccessful in finding any previous translation, any information about the context of creation or any video of Jalib chanting this poem at a mushaira (poetic symposium). I realize I keep saying this poem as if poem is a monolithic genre I can squeeze all poetic forms of expression into. 

This specific piece falls under a beautiful genre of Urdu lyric poetry called nazm. The nazm, known by the natural progression between its ashaar (plural of sher, couplet), is a genre with immense versatility and freedom, hospitable to all kinds of innovative experimentalism. As a result, the modern nazm has been “the chief gate by which successive waves of innovation have entered Urdu poetry in the twentieth century”.3

What draws me towards this specific nazm? Is it because it’s seemingly undiscovered? Not really. Simply put, my mouth cannot stop chanting this nazm. Each sher of this nazm is arranged in such a beautiful rhythm that the nazm rolls off the tongue in the smoothest of ways. And at the same time, it is not an easy recital. It’s as harshly fierce as the system it sets out to dismantle. As brutal as the dastoor that Jalib rejects:

ایسے دستور کو صبح بے نور کو

میں نہیں مانتا میں نہیں جانتا 

This system, this dark dawn

I do not accept, I do not know

Anyways, enough of my preamble. Moving back to the translation. 

How I choose to translate the first line will determine how I approach the rest of my translation, so I’ve spent the past few nights thinking about this in bed with closed eyes and moving lips. It is imperative for the lips (and the tongue) to move, for the words to flow. After all, these words do not belong simply on paper. They must make you shout and subvert, chant and change, sing and scintillate. My shoulders seem heavy with the burden of preserving the sonic beauty of this nazm, as I begin the journey of translating it to something it never was. 

Anyways, اپنی جنگ رہے گی / Apni jang rahegi / My battle will persist (remain? continue? go on?): 4. Wisdom and deadlines dictate that I start translating now. 

دس کروڑ انسانو!

At first glance, this line seems pretty straightforward. Jalib begins his poem by addressing his audience: ten crore humans — the size of Pakistan’s population at the time this poem was penned. But the word crore probably seems more foreign to you than it does to me. It’s simply a unit of measurement in India and Pakistan, equivalent to ten million. I have been thinking for a few nights now whether I want to do the conversion for you, my lovely anglophone reader, and translate this to Hundred million humans. But I have decided against it. If a British poet was describing the pleasant twenty-one degree weather in London on a spring afternoon, would you translate it as the pleasant sixty-nine point eight degrees Fahrenheit…? I didn’t think so. (The most you can get is a footnote, but only if you insist.)

زندگی سے بیگانو!

This verse is trickier. Begaana means unfamiliar, estranged, alien, foreigner. Basically a term used to signify the other, or to attach it to anything that brings about this other-ing. Duniya ne teri yaad se begaana kardiya. Faiz uses it to lament upon how the world has made him begaana from the remembrance (yaad) of his lover. Here, Jalib speaks in the plural, addressing those who have been other-ed from life. And yet, this verse implicates the subject as well, so in effect: those who have other-ed themselves from life. Grown indifferent to systems of oppression. I’ll use strangers for now, and come back to it later. But what preposition do I employ here? Strangers to life? Strangers from life? Strangers of life? سے/Se is often used as from (Mujh se ye lo / Take this from me). Estranged from life sounds more appropriate, but strangers captures the plural noun begaano better. I’ll delay this decision for now, and will come back later to see what fits in better with the sonic rhythms of the rest of the poem.

Ten crore humans

Estranged/Strangers from life

I’m loving this process so much. But I’ve written more pages than I’ve translated verses. My internalized capitalism is rebelling against my inner poet. I must produce more efficiently. Let’s take the next two verses, translate first, and babble later.

صرف چند لوگوں نے

حق تمہارا چھینا ہے 

Only few people have

Snatched your right

In my head, I had first translated “Cheena” as stolen, but stolen translates to chori, so snatched is definitely more appropriate. Haq means right (as in a human right), but it also means “the true good” or “the ultimate truth”, as in “Haq Allah” (a religious poem I recited in primary school). Right, however, also refers to what is right, in addition to what is your right, so I’m satisfied here. Except for the fact that the plural “rights” seems to suit the rhythm better, so I’ll keep room for that.

خاک ایسے جینے پر

یہ بھی کوئی جینا ہے

Khaak upon such living

Do you call this life?

My labour intensifies. Khaak means dust or ashes, but is used here in the sense of “damn” or “woe”. “Damn such living” expresses this sense of condemnation, so it seemed appropriate. Everyone in my class seemed to agree, except for Alisha, the only student who spoke Urdu. She protested how “Damn” does not capture the sense of literal “shit” or “dirt” being hurled at the living, and is hence inadequate here; I could only agree. Marguerite suggested adding an onomatopoeic term instead and another student suggested “To hell with”. I’m having trouble conjuring up an onomatopoeic term that would fit here, so I’ll say “Hell with”. The second verse also detracts from the literal “is this any [way of] living”, but that structure is too strange in English (here, strange isn’t the same as begaana); mine feels better.

بے شعور بھی تم کو 

بے شعور کہتے ہیں 

Even the be-shaoor

Call you be-shaoor

Shaoor can refer to consciousness or sense, but is more commonly used to mean knowledge/sensibility. Be is used to negate/indicate the lack thereof, so here it refers to the non-shaoor/shaoor-less (people). The ignorant? Even the ignorant // Call you ignorant. I’m faced with another decision. Do I repeat in both verses whatever I translate be-shaoor into? Or can I choose a word that flows better rhythmically? I was thinking Call you dumb(-ass?), but we might need that word for the next couplet.

سوچتا ہوں یہ ناداں

کس ہوا میں رہتے ہیں

Which air, I wonder,

do these fools live in?

Mixing things up, are we? I’ve reversed/re-versed this couplet because well, that sounds better. Nadaan can be used in the sense of someone innocent (like the innocent bird/Nadaan Parindey from the popular Bollywood song), but also someone who is ignorant or foolish. Jalib, however, is attacking, not acquitting, his subjects. Fools carries a similar intensity as nadaan while also attacking the subject, so I’ve chosen it.

اور یہ قصیدہ گو

فکر ہے یہی جن کو

And these praise-singers/elegy-writers/ass-kissers/praise-writers/ode-writers

Worried who are only that

It seems that I have to offer the word qasida-go as a sacrifice to the gods of translation. Originating from Arabic poetry, the Qasida is a poetic genre which resembles a kind of ode. In this context, it refers to a “panegyric on a benefactor” or, simply put, a poem glorifying a power figure to gain benefits5. Jalib, whose poetry is a symbol of the opposite — resistance, defiance, subversion — lambasts these qasida-go (qasida-writers) who help perpetuate the tyranny of dictators like General Zia-ul-Haq. Translating all of this into a single word for qasida-go seems quite impossible. I have to make a decision. Either I use a word like praise-singers/ass-kissers which overlooks the context of Qasida to try and point towards Jalib’s meaning more directly. Or I use something like praise-writers/ode-writers, even though a praise or an ode is not the same as a qasida. I choose neither. Instead, I’m thinking of translating qasida-go as qasida-writers, while adding a footnote explaining the context I just gave you. My translation loses less, my reader learns more and Jalib doesn’t curse me from the grave. Win-win-wi- actually wait. Marguerite gave me a suggestion that seems even more interesting. If we translate it as court-poets, it captures the same idea (it was almost always court-poets who wrote qasidas) but it does justice to the syllable-to-verse ratio too. Win-win-win-win. Madame Marguerite saves the day!

ہاتھ میں علم لے کر

تم نہ اٹھ سکو لوگو

Flag in your hands / Bearing the flag (of knowledge)

You shouldn’t rise, people!

Difficulties compound. Here, it’s the word علم, which may or may not be a play on words. If the ع joins the ل as il (rhymes with fill), the word becomes ilm, which translates as knowledge. If, however, the ع joins the ل as al (like the first syllable of ul-timate), the word becomes alam: a flag. But not just any flag. This is specifically the flag which symbolizes defiance against tyranny, alluding to the alam held aloft by Abbas on the battlefield of Karbala in defiance of the tyrant Yazid — a “banner of defiance, of devotion and of victory” in Islamic history6. While the reference to knowledge seems more subtle to me, the context behind alam (much like that behind qasida) is lost in the phrase “Flag in your hands”; to my Anglophone reader, this may feel the same as the numerous US flags waved by the rioters storming the Capitol on January 6. The reference to knowledge, too, is lost. I’ll keep the original term in the verse — “Alam in your hands” —  and shall summon another footnote for my salvation. There’s another confusion in the translated couplet too: worried are the court-poets that you shouldn’t rise? No, no, they’re worried that you would rise. Yes, let’s go with that. Let’s also address the audience: You would rise, O People!  

کب تلک یہ خاموشی

چلتے پھرتے زندانو

دس کروڑ انسانو!

Till when, this silence?

O you walking cages

Ten crore humans!

This first stanza is ending here, sealed by the words that began it. Sealed also by the rhyme between the two words of address — zindaano (prisons/cages) and insaano (humans). I have chosen cages but the beauty of zindaan is lost on it. The word Zindaa means alive but adding just a ن/n creates Zindaan, which means prison/cage. Caged in the prison of life. Bearing the burden of existence. Such is the state of the ten crore humans that Jalib calls out to: as tragic as it is untranslatable.  

This poem has five stanzas, and all of them can’t fit in this 2-credit diary. But I am desperate to translate the second stanza, which is by far my favorite one. Marguerite told us to keep our projects to five pages, but I can’t resist this temptation to go on. As my excuse, I’ll ask for an exemption on the grounds that there have been too many breaks in text due to the space occupied by the Urdu verses and their translations. Oh, and is Times New Roman smaller than Arial? Hey Siri, please change my font. 

یہ ملیں یہ جاگیریں

کس کا خون پیتی ہیں

بیرکوں میں یہ فوجیں

کس کے بل پہ جیتی ہیں

Draft 1:

These mills, these properties

Are sucking/draining whose blood? // Whose blood do they leech/suck/mooch/gain/drain?

These armies in these barracks

Are sucking/gaining whose buck? // Whose money/strength/bucks do they gain/live off/drain/survive

I need to do justice to these two couplets, arguably my favorite from this nazm. I’ve tried translating them together to emulate their sonic rhythm, as the last words of both couplets create a melodic rhyme in Urdu: peeti hain(drink) with jeeti hain (live off/survive). I’ve tried putting down many different words here, which all give a sense of the action that Jalib is describing. Scanning my eyes over these, I can see that drain and gain both rhyme, so let’s make it: 

These mills, these properties

Whose blood do they drain?     

These armies in these barracks

Whose buck do they gain?

The sonic rhythm is much better here, but what about the content? If I had chosen to be truly faithful to meaning, the last verse would be: “Whose بل do they live off?”. Gosh, Jalib’s plays on words are so incredibly artful! If you connect the ب and ل as bal, the word means “strength/expense/at the cost of”, but if you connect them as bil, it means, well, a bill! Through a narrative which places Pakistan in an eternal, existential threat unless our mighty military is locked and loaded, the Pakistan Army leeches a huge chunk of Pakistan’s budget as defence expenditure: rupees which never trickle down to the masses. Strong army, wow great!7 Anyways, you can well imagine Jalib’s frustration, especially when a military dictator is running the country. But at the same time, is buck the best translation? Translating bal, I figured that expense might capture both senses better (monetary expense as well as the expense of freedom, democracy, etc). (At) Whose expense do they gain? Unfortunately, I can’t translate this into a grammatically coherent structure without beginning it with an “At”, which, in turn, kills the sonic rhythm. I’ve repeated out loud both of these versions and I think I’ll still go with buck; it is easily uttered and the alliteration with blood is a nice cherry on top. 

کس کی محنتوں کا پھل

داشتائیں کھاتی ہیں

جھونپڑوں سے رونے کی

کیوں صدائیں آتی ہیں

First Try:

Whose hard work’s fruits

do these mistresses eat/savor/lick // bare/rear/dare?

Wails and cries from the slums

Whose voices do I hear? / Why these voices at my feet?

Second Try:

The fruits of whose hard work

do these mistresses eat/keep/reap?

Wails and cries from the slums

Why do I hear? / Whose wails make this fleet?

Third Try:

Fruits of whose efforts

do these mistresses keep?

Wails from these slums

Why do they weep?

Here was another situation where preserving the sonic rhythm was so necessary, and I had to play around with the words a little bit. I’ve found this strategy quite helpful: put it all on paper, use whatever synonyms you can find, cherry-pick those that fit the sonic rhythm and re-compose the translation. You’ve heard hand-in-hand and tongue-in-cheek, but this is something of a hand-in-tongue: for your hand to be writing/typing, your tongue must be moving too! That’s what brings the lyricality that I’m really loving in this third try; I’m going to try and make this work for the next two couplets too. 

جب شباب پر آ کر

کھیت لہلہاتا ہے

کس کے نین روتے ہیں

کون مسکراتا ہے

At its youth,

When spring sways

Who is crying?

Who is gay?

At its youth,

When spring is swaying/blooming/

Whose eyes cry? / Who is crying?

Who is grinning/booming/beaming? / Whose face beams?

This first try seems quite absurd; this use of gay is both dated and misplaced here. The second one seems like a hotchpotch, but from this mess, I’ve been able to pick out two versions that I think work: 

Version 1:

At its youth,

When spring is blooming

Who is crying?

Who is booming?

Version 2:

At its youth,

When spring is swaying

Who is crying?

Who is playing?

Unfortunately, both of these versions overlook the literal in their last verse; booming and playing are both not the same as smiling or grinning, which is the action Jalib is describing. But, going beyond the literal is the only way I can get the sonic rhythm right, and that’s what I’m prioritizing right now. I can’t quite decide which of these two versions to choose, though. Let’s read them out to someone. Not Alisha, this time I need someone who knows English only. And I need someone close (it’s a quarter to eleven, I’m not running off anywhere). A while ago, my friend Kat left her phone with me in Crossett’s basement so she doesn’t fidget with it while working. She’s upstairs. Be right back! Note: I may or may not have been influenced by wanting to say Hi to the lovely Lego, Kat’s four-legged partner-in-crime.

Kat favors the second version. In the first version, the booming reminds her of the bust and a boom of an economy and certainly doesn’t bring a “who” to mind. At the same time, the second version’s swaying // playing rhythm paints a more vivid image: some (children) are crying (in a corner) while some play in the spring. Thanks Kat, thanks Lego!

کاش تم کبھی سمجھو

کاش تم کبھی سمجھو

کاش تم کبھی جانو

دس کروڑ انسانو!

I wish you understand

I wish you understand

I wish you know

Ten crore humans!

I wish you knew 

I wish you knew

I wish you only understood

Ten crore humans

O, if you understood

O, if you understood

O, if you only knew

Ten crore humans

Hand-in-tongue, I reach my last verses! Kaash translates to I wish, and I tried to keep that in my first two tries. But my tongue wasn’t happy. I needed to balance the wazn (weight) of these first three verses, the key to which lies in that syllable-to-verse ratio. “O, if” brought that balance, added a term of address to bring that final impact and still captured Jalib’s intended meaning. Pardon: still captured the meaning I, the translator, thinks Jalib intended. Jalib is dead, gustakhi maaf! I can’t check with him, but I’m content. 

Two stanzas out of five have been translated. Seems good enough for my 2-credit diary. Question: do you write conclusions to a diary that’s still unfinished? Maybe a short, catchy one. After that, I’ll put the (semi-)finished translation here, with all the decisions, edits and finishes. Chantable, not readable.

Faiz, my path was itself the destination

Wherever I reached, I found success

Read the full translation here.

1Mashal Khan, a university student, was shot, stripped naked and beaten to death on his campus in northern Pakistan after being accused of sharing “blasphemous content” on social media; Jibran Ahmed, “Pakistani student accused of blasphemy beaten to death on campus”, Reuters, April 13, 2017

2Bapsi Sidhwa, City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore, (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), 269-272.

3Faruqi, S. R., and F. W. Pritchett. "LYRIC POETRY IN URDU: GHAZAL AND NAZM." Journal of South Asian Literature 19, no. 2 (1984): 111-27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40872697.

4“Apni Jang Rahegi” is the title of another nazm by Jalib

5T. Graham Bailey, A History of Urdu Literature, (London: Columbia, 1932),  http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00urduhindilinks/bailey/000introduction.pdf

6Qasim A. Moini, “SYMBOL OF DEVOTION”, DAWN, October 1, 2017 https://www.dawn.com/news/1360777

7A reference to a video/meme where a child speaks of his intent to join the Army and “save Pakistan and destroy India”. His school-teacher shouts: “Strong army, wow great!”. https://youtu.be/wQvcv-HjBog