Re: A Hindu wrote Pakistan’s first national anthem
this is from dawn. I never knew about that though.
**
A word about Jagan Nath Azad**
By Ashfaque Naqvi
I saw Tilok Chand Mehroom when still at school in Lahore and was greatly impressed by his personality. A tall, robust, figure, dressed in a long coat with a 'lungi', he had long whiskers. He looked every inch a Muslim, but I was told that he was a Hindu and headmaster of a school in Mianwali, the place to which he belonged. And then I read his poems which happened to be in our Urdu textbooks. One was about the pathetic condition of the last resting place of the Mughal empress, Nur Jahan. I still remember two of its touching lines:
*Din ko bhi yahan shab ki siyahi ka saman heh
Kehtey hein keh yeh maqbara-e-noor-e-jahan heh*
Well, that was long before partition. Even in those days his son, Isakhel born, Jagan Nath Azad was counted among the prominent poets of the Punjab. It is not commonly known that after the establishment of Pakistan, the first national song (qaumi tarana as we like to call it) broadcast from Radio Pakistan was not by Hafeez Jallandhri or Faiz Ahmed Faiz but by a Hindu called Jagan Nath Azad. It ran like this:
*Aey sarzameen-i-pak
Zarrey terey hein aaj sitaron sey tabnak
Roshan heh kehkashan sey kahin aaj teri khak*
His devotion to Allama Iqbal has been intriguing for many. But then, he has himself said:
***Merey yaqeen ko dekh amal par nazar na kar
Mera yaqeen heh daulat-eeman liye huey
Ahl-i-haram mujhey na hiqarat se dekhna
Kafir hun eik qalb-e-Musalman liye huey* **
I am grateful to Dr Syed Moeenur Rehman for sending me books which keep adding to my knowledge. It is never too late to learn, as they say. I knew a lot about Jagan Nath Azad but the book sent by him tells me much more about him. It is the thesis written by one of his students, Aasma Aziz, for her master's in Urdu. Somehow, it has been printed and produced by Crescent House Publications of Jammu in Occupied Kashmir. It only deals with Jagan Nath Azad as a prose writer.
Third in line after the more famous Azads - Maulana Muhammad Hussain and Maulana Abul Kalam - Jagan Nath was born in 1918. After doing his MA in Persian from the Punjab University in 1944, he served in different capacities in some Urdu and English newspapers. He also remained assistant editor of the important Urdu journal, Adabi Dunya.
After serving for a while as a lecturer of Urdu at Lahore's DAV College, he moved to Delhi after partition. Securing a job in the Press Information Department, he was posted to Srinagar. Offered the professorship of Urdu in the Jammu University, he moved there in 1977. After retirement, he continues to be there as professor emeritus for life.
Jagan Nath Azad has been attending mushairas and delivering lectures and has written about most of his foreign trips. However, while writing about Pakistan he never calls it a foreign country. Even Gen Ziaul Haq told him that he should consider it to be his own country and come here whenever he felt like it. He openly accepts that the reception he receives in Pakistan is totally different from what he experiences in other countries. His love for Pakistan is evident from his verse:
*Sham key saey mein Jamna ki ravani dekh kar
Mujhko aey Azad Ravi ka saman yad aa gaya*
Jagan Nath Azad has won several awards from Pakistan, India, Russia and other countries. For the naats composed by him, he was given the Seerat-i-Pak Award by Bradford Publications of UK. Not only that, Jagan Nath Azad has written a long poem condemning the destruction of the Babri Mosque. Says he:
*Hamarey dil ko tora hey imarat ko nahin tora
Khabasat ki bhi had hoti hey aey had torney waley*
The books authored by Jagan Nath Azad include some on literary criticism while about eleven, both in English and Urdu, are on Iqbal. It would be interesting to know that soon after partition, Iqbal was almost banned in India. It was only through the efforts of Jagan Nath Azad that Iqbal is as highly respected there today as Khusrau, Meer or Ghalib. Even in Pakistan, it was Jagan Nath Azad's whisper into the ears of Gen Ziaul Haq that led to the establishment of the Iqbal Chair in the Punjab University.
Many Indians, like Iqbal Singh and Hira Lal Chopra, have done extensive work on Iqbal. Dr Chaman Lal Raina has gone to the extent of converting his verses into Hindi. On his part, Dr Rafiq Zakaria, former chancellor of the Urdu University in Aligarh, has written a full book under the title, Iqbal: The Poet and the Politician, in which he has expressed surprise why Iqbal is not revered in India.
It goes to the credit of Jagan Nath Azad that he has all along tried to emphasise the fact that great and durable poetry transcends all barriers of caste, creed and colour. Being a humanist, Iqbal's poetry echoes the sentiments and feelings of humanity at large. There is no denying that he has championed the cause of the exploited and oppressed people of the world.
