This was daily affair during Marshal Laws in Pakistan (the worst being Zia regime). Many writers were banned on media like (Faiz Ahmed Faiz) and were ordered to leave the country. Some of the writers opt for self-exile as they couldn’t say what they wanted to say.
Sometimes, it was used as publicity stunt as well, but who wants to leave the country willingly.
How do you see this phenomenon of restrictions and intolerance against people who don’t follow your POV?
Do you see the consequences of this specifically on Pakistani literature and on Pakistani society in general?
Whether you think of Lyari as Karachi’s Harlem or Harlem as a Lyari in New York, for Noon Meem Danish places provide a context but not a definition. ‘I am what I am’; he explains his signature with a characteristic mixture of pride and humility. Off-beat and defiant, he was a familiar figure in the literary landscape of the ’70s and ’80s. His poems expressing solidarity with the Negritude and the plight of blacks all over the world were referred to in Dr Firoze Ahmed’s social topography of the African-descent inhabitants of Pakistan. Karachi’s poet Noon Meem Danish now makes his home in the New York state of mind, and feels that he is very much in his element there. It is where I met him again after a gap of many years, as he came to the Columbia University to attend a talk I was giving. We made our way afterwards to the student centre, talking freely in the relaxed and informal atmosphere.
As we sit back for a chat, it is but natural that we start with Karachi. ‘Yes, I do think of Karachi. I remember my friends, companions and my brothers and sisters. I recall my childhood in Lyari. I want to pay a visit to Lyari, chakkar laganay ka dil chahta hai. But I cannot live there anymore. There is too much of a difference now. Throughout the days of riots in the rest of the city, it had remained a peaceful area. Perhaps it is being punished for this very crime,’ says Danish. In his youth, Lyari was a heady mixture of political activism, social consciousness and cultural activities, and in the prefatory note to his collection of poems, he has acknowledged the formative influence, but he speaks of the present situation with sadness. ‘All that has changed. The children whom I remember as eight or nine-year olds, are now hardened criminals and thugs I read about in the newspapers.
Fahmida Riaz remained an activist in her academic life. She spoke and wrote against the ban on student politics during General Ayub’s regime. In the 1980s she and her husband lived in exile in India after both of them were jailed by the dictator for their liberal and politically charged views.
She has been a prominent voice in the feminist struggle in Pakistan, where her poems, both directly and indirectly grind down at the foundations of male dominance.
“Some women thought they could not survive without men,” said Riaz, before laughing at her words and asking “Why not?”
She was appointed the managing director of the National Book Foundation in Benazir’s first term and was later persecuted during the first Nawaz Sharif government, being labelled an Indian agent and becoming virtually unemployable. She had to work three simultaneous jobs to support the needs of her young children.
In the second Benazir government, she was given a post at the Quaid-i-Azam Academy, which also ended when the government was dismissed.
Recently, she was removed from the position of Urdu Dictionary Board managing director after a Supreme Court order on over sixty-five political appointments.
sab Islam dushman anaasir ko yahoodi aur nasrani baRhaavaa dete haiN...bhale hii vo Rushdi jaisaa mardood ho yaa Nasreen jaisii Bangladeshii Khaatoon. sab kaa ek hii nasb ul ai'n hai aur vo hai jadeediyat aur aazaadii-e-raaye-dehii ke taHet Islam aur Muslims ke Khilaaf zehr ugalte rahte haiN aur afsos k ham meN se johalaa e deen aur naaqis ul 'aql unkii baatoN kii jaal meN phaNs jaate haiN.
sab Islam dushman anaasir ko yahoodi aur nasrani baRhaavaa dete haiN...bhale hii vo Rushdi jaisaa mardood ho yaa Nasreen jaisii Bangladeshii Khaatoon. sab kaa ek hii nasb ul ai'n hai aur vo hai jadeediyat aur aazaadii-e-raaye-dehii ke taHet Islam aur Muslims ke Khilaaf zehr ugalte rahte haiN aur afsos k ham meN se johalaa e deen aur naaqis ul 'aql unkii baatoN kii jaal meN phaNs jaate haiN.
sad satate of affairs! :(
is it only talking against Islam that lead to exile? Talking against Zia's policy was against Islam?
he who? Noon Meem Rashid? or you are talking about Rushdie? Faiz didn't do anything remotely closed to Rushdie. Fehmida Riaz didn't do anything comparable to Nasreen. Even Zia could not afford few lines of criticism from poets like Faraz.
Has this (sending people in exile for what they wrote) been followed in west?
Oh yes absolutely.
Karl Marx
*Niccolò Machiavelli *
John Locke
*Jean Jacques Rousseau *
Some of the best literary figures in West produced their greatest work in exile. Victor Hugo, Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence and T.S Eliot, just to name a few.
Exile in many ways was freedom! In the time of when public beheading was a common practice in Western world, many political prisoners prayed for exile.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz also wrote somewhere that life and experiences in exile did contributed to new thoughts in his poetry. He wrote his famous poems like 'mere dil mere musafir' and ' do ishq' in exile'.
Except Oscar Wilde, many writers benefited from being in exile. It transformed their writing, they managed to gather more courage and reason to be even free in their thinking, hence they became fearlessly expressive in their writing.
Except Oscar Wilde, many writers benefited from being in exile. It transformed their writing, they managed to gather more courage and reason to be even free in their thinking, hence they became fearlessly expressive in their writing.
What happened to Oscar Wilde in exile and his writings during exile?
He moved to France. Disgraced and penniless, changed his name completely, gave up writing well before his death, became an alcholic and died in a hotel.
the first Pakistani Nobel Prize Laureate Abdus Salam had to live in self-exile. Even religious scholars like Fazl-ur-Rehman](http://dawn.com/2012/11/29/crazy-diamonds-iii/) and Daood Rahbar were forced to flee the country. Recently, Javed Ahmad Ghamdi](http://newsweekpakistan.com/the-take/276) fled the country and is now living in self-exile in Indonesia. The two greatest novelists of modern Urdu literature, Abdullah Hussain (udas naslain) are living in England, Quratulain Hyder (Aag ka darya) Ustad Bare Ghulamali Khan, Sahir Ludhianvi](In her novel “Aag Ka Darya”, a world class urdu writer, Qurattulain Haider, had raised questions about Partition and had rejected the two-nation theory | Indus Asia Online Journal (Click here to go to home page)) decided to move back to India. Writer and political activist Sajjad Zaheer was extradited to India and film Director Zia Sarhadi settled permanently in England. Saadat Hassan Manto and Saghar Siddique](http://dawn.com/2012/11/29/crazy-diamonds-iii/) opted to stay in Pakistan and thus, face court trials and die in their early 40s. Zia Moyauddin and NaheedSiddiqui stayed outside Pakistan for most of their creative life. Recently, Adnan Sami decided to settle permanently in India. The first Pakistani pop singer, Nazia Hassan lived in England and shot to fame when she joined forces with Bollywood. Recently, we see new successful writers who are writing in English for international readers like Mohsin Hamid, Mohammad Hanif and Ali Farooq Qureshi. They are the brave souls who have moved to Pakistan, like Saghir and Manto. Lets see how Pakistan treats them.
This year, on 31 December 2013, as Zia Mohyeddin read from the letters written to him by his cousin, Daud Rahbar, at Lahore’s Ali auditorium, he cried. The audience, gone from curiosity to reverence listening to him over the past quarter century, was with him all the way, celebrating a maverick genius that orthodoxy is spiritually too crippled to forgive. Two assessments of Rahbar, one by Intizar Hussain and the other by Zia himself, were the mainstay of the evening’s enjoyment, matching Rahbar’s own inventive prose. Zia’s reading was masterly as usual, this time aesthetically enriched by his personal loss.
Dr Muhammad Daud Rahbar, 86, died on 5 October 2013, in a nursing home in Deerfield Beach, Florida, USA, after 64 years in exile from Pakistan. **In 1958, he was blackballed in a conference in Lahore for saying that the doctrine of “abrogation” in the Holy Quran is based on the “partial historicity” of scripture.
On January 2, 1958, Rahbar presented a paper to the International Islamic Colloquium in Lahore. Rahbar’s paper, entitled “The Challenge of Muslim Ideas and Social Values to Muslim Society” riled scholars in authority to such an extent that he was asked to leave. Reading the paper today, one can’t find anything offensive enough in it to deserve the kind of treatment Rahbar received. He had apparently hinted at sections of the scripture being “historical” rather than “eternal”. **
I know two names who were put on trial and kept in custody. One is Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who remained in jail for quote long time and then ordered to exile. His writings were banned on media (including state owned TV). Other one is Ahmed Faraz, who went through trail and remained in jail for few weeks, but he didn't opt for exile (but he kept on staying outside Pakistan in the name of self exile)