Prof Shad Ramzan: The Iron Man of Kashmiri Literature

The voyage of criticism as an academic discipline in Kashmiri Literature is less than a hundred years old, hence can not be and must not be compared with the literatures that have lived the life spanning centuries. Nevertheless, in its less than a hundred years of life it has made some dramatic strides and lessened the gap between the celebrated criticisms of the world literature. Right from Abdul Ahad Azad’s Kashmiri Zuban aur Shairi, criticism in Kashmiri literature has been exposed to many shades. The oeuvre of the criticism produced so far is as good as the famous opening sentence of Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

In its rise as an academic discipline our ‘University Wits’ like, Prof Rehman Rahi, Prof G N Firaq, Mohammad Yousuf Taing, Ghulam Nabi Khayal, Prof Farooq Fayaz, Prof Shad Ramzan etc. have made seminal and genuine contributions. Among a few earnest and solemn documents produced this century so far Sha’r Te Shareh by Prof Shad Ramzan is a ground breaking thesis. It doesn'’t encompass all or even most of the genres of Kashmiri Literature though. A hardbound anthology of twelve papers including a two page preface strives to usher Kashmiri literature into the ‘Hall of Fame’ of the world literature.

Prof Shad Ramzan has a fantastic understanding of the world literature. He has had the nectar of the Greek theory and Criticism and has received equal blessings of the European theory and literature. He is well versed in the Indian discourse and knows the current narrative with an equal understanding. He is flexible to English, Frecnh and Urdu theory and he is proud heir of his native ethos. He juxtaposes this all in the book under review.

In a society where literature and more particularly poetry has been relegated to the status of a “surrogate religion” Prof Shad Ramzan wages crusade against age old dogmas and canon. He decimates it to debris and celebrates the collapse! Living in the era of the Artificial Intelligence where robotics is expanding its empire and mankind is virtually colonised, literature has to accommodate to the new realities and maintain its relevance and appeal as it would do when there was no such serious challenge to it. Scripting a strong dismissal to the Muse and the super-natural intervention, Prof Shad Ramzan substitutes the divine inspiration with the Linguistic Intuition. He serves with an alternate explanation for

Aatay hain gaib say yeh mazameen khayaal mai
Ghalib Sareere khamah navay e saroosh hai

And

Wa naayoo seeri asraar yino aasakh vubaali
Me vuts har shayi su yaar chano kanh moe ti khali
Me sapdum geebi nida be sapdus aani Musa
Me vuth Nooray tajala ti hovum zaljalali.

A genuine poet is armed with the Linguistic Enlightenment/ Intelligence (lisaani irfaan) and a special technique of transcending prosaic into poetic. The capacity to narrate his inner experience with the creative prowess is intrinsic to a poet, believes Prof Shad Ramzan.

In the first two chapters titled as Shaar, Shaair te Shareh ( Verse, Poet and the Interpretation) and Zabaane Hund Takhleeqi Wartaav ( The Creative Use of Language), his major contribution remains associated with valorizing the role of language and the relationship between the text, the poet and the reader/ interpreter. As Dr I.A. Richards’ Principles of Literary Criticism has had an enormous impact on British Criticism and scholarship, Prof Shad Ramzan’s essays also offer a radical and polemical programme for the study. Prof Shad Ramzan like Richards and the Russian Formalists dealt with literature directly stressing the need to focus our attention on the written text rather than on the para-textual areas. Prof Shad Ramzan is one of the few critics who propose a theory to interpret and read poetry.

Prof Shad Ramzan is concerned with poetic-structure and texture. This leads him to the state where he declares the autonomy of art. To him it is intangible to find some ultimate or final semantic interpretation of a text. However, he doesn’t seem to be declaring the death of the author. In the first essay of the book he postulates that “an interpreter necessarily needs to have the similar access to the Linguistic Enlightenment as a poet/ creator has so that he reaches the destiny of the Creative Enlightenment (Takhleeqi Aaghi) and the Creative Bliss (Takhleeqi Aanand)”. (p13)
The Creative Enlightenment transcends all mathematical and methodical logic and triggers the faculty of willing suspension of disbelief as propounded by S.T. Coleridge.

Zoon khachey yo yeti me babray
Wasee zoonay bekastan khabray

Every serious reader knows that the moon can’t descend to the earth to attend some helpless woman because they don’'t share any manifest relation. To someone who sticks to the scientific truth such a submission is meaningless. However, a reader of poetry suspends the scientific truth for the drama that this folk song presents.

Prof Shad Ramzan, however, enjoins upon a critic to have the equal Linguistic Intuition and Enlightenment to the language and the diction of the poem as the poet himself. He must know symbols and metaphors used by the poet with same perfection as the poet knows. Any inconsonance shall lead to a collateral damage to the creative flight of the poet. He quotes the distraction committed to legendary poet of Kashmir Lalla Ded’s household shrukh aami pane sodrus naavi ches laman as Om ki Pane Sadrus naavi ches laman. A critic unfolds the creative beauty of a poem while interpreting its hermeneutic and linguistic dimensions.

“Hence it is imperative that the poet, verse and the interpreter must be sharing the same language. This sharing of language leads them to have access to one another” (p22)
In the second article, Prof Shad Ramzan deliberates upon the creative use of a language. A poet or an author impregnates the diction of everyday life with new meaning and novel dimensions.
“A poet or a writer liberates words from commonplace meanings and hands it with new meanings and confers them with a creative use. Its meaning becomes multi-dimensional. Turning simple words into structures, similes, metaphors and symbols, a poet allocates them with a fresh Creative Existence that introduces the reader to novel vistas. This is the Creative Use of a language that is also called Creative or Literary Language.”(p24)

Elucidating his point he shows how the usage of the word heart (Dil in Kashmiri language) has evolved into a strong metaphor:

Dil chue arshi aala tath manz haq e taala
Tawaaf kar kaabus tai chaavnus pane mas te ( Rahman Dar)

Or

Ande wande sodre wachus manz ruzekh
Sadfus manz durdane rachaan ( Shad Ramzan)

Dil or heart evolves to the seat of God and that is what a poet does with the words!

Thus word attains a very sensitive place in his theory.

“The poet takes the reader through the words to the same situations that finds its manifestation in its linguistic structure. So word is the only door to enter any experience and it is the word only that holds the key to experience any artifact” (p33)

Continuing his persistence with language he lampoons the unnecessary and un-natural adherence to rhyme at many places in Kashmiri Ghazal. He is no Prof Kalim ud Din Ahmad to bring Ghazal to a low repute and term it neem wehshi. Prof Shad Ramzan calls Ghazal the zenith of Eastern poetics. Ghazal follows a strict structural and metrical pattern and, thus, maintains its distinction. He dissects Prof Rahman Rahi'’s couplet of a Ghazal

(Lave hech chinderemech maswal wanan che wavas
Damane miyoun yem chol tas zanh qarar aasiya)

into un-even lines of a free verse. One may dissect and rearrange a couplet of a ghazal into en-even lines of a free verse or even a metrical form of vachun, however a free verse or a vachun can never be moulded into the form of a ghazal. Rubbing shoulders with his inner iconoclast, he has all the praise for the contemporary ghazal writers of Kashmiri Literature for not being subservient to any particular school of thought. It is carving its shape at its own that heralds its glittering future.

Ghazal has special diction and it is bound to follow it. Ghazal prohibits using hard and heavy sounding words like Kalashnikov, cross firing etc.
Present My Ghazal As A Gift to Ghalib is an essay valourising not only language in general but also unfolding, hitherto unknown, facets of Prof Rahman Rahi’s ghazal. Prof Shad Ramzan in his study of Rahi’s ghazal discerns no romance of Rahi with uncommon and thus difficult diction. Finding dearth of musicality in Rahi’s poetry constitutes no flaw rather it wires that it is Superior/ Higher Poetry.

“High Poetry is supposed to be read than sung and we must not sacrifice his creative beauty and highness of thought for musicality. It is to be read between the lines than to be consigned to the high-pitched utterances.” (p58)

Brought up in the nursery of the both eastern and western literatures, Prof Rahi’s Ghazal represents the High and Universal Poetry of Kashmiri Literature. He finds linguistic jugglery in Rahi’s ghazals while appreciating Rahi’s prowess of drawing portraits through his words and creating a drama in the mind of the reader. Getting close to Rahi’s diction and distinct style one doesn’t see him romancing with obscurity and ambiguity. In Prof Shad Ramzan’s words:

“Rahi is not employing some unknown diction. He is presenting new possibilities of the people's language.” (p62)
Prof Shad Ramzan’s selection of poets and artifacts is undoubtedly remarkable. The application of his theory propounded in the first two papers throughout the book showcases his deep-rooted association with his theory. In his critique of Rahman Dar’s Shesh Rang, he finds its rhyme scheme singular and distinct in the entire literature of Kashmiri language. Prof Shad Ramzan calls Rahman Dar the key-bearer of the treasure of diction. Prof Shad Ramzan while appreciating Rahi for attemting to highlight the literary and creative niceties of Shehs Rang, observes that he has failed to find the poetic character of the poem who through the physical and bodily manifestations soars to the mystic heights. He upgrades the critical antecedents and standards of Kashmiri criticism. He unwraps the linguistic intuition, technique and creative essence of Shesh Rang and declares Rahman Dar the key-bearer of the treasure of diction. Prof Shad Ramzan says:

"This reveals clearly that Rahman Dar is a representative poet of Creative Consciousness who knew that it is the diction (Literary)that clothes greatness to a verse" (p74)
Owing to its superb creative and linguistic prowess, Shesh Rang is the zenith of the entire Kashmiri poetry.

In his paper on legendary Kashmiri poets Ahad Zargar and Samad Mir, Prof Shad Ramzan selects one vachun of each and draws parallels to show that mystics wonder the similar landscape and confront the similar experiences. However, the Poets narrate the almost similar experiences in two different manifestations. A poet, unlike a common man who undergoes the similar experience, is possessed with the capacity to narrate the experience.

“Someone may raise the question that any mystic can have the similar experience and not being a poet. However like Ahad Zargar and Samad Mir he can’t versify the experience and nor shall he undergo any discomfort for not narrating it. A poet, in addition to the experience, undergoes discomfort to narrate the experience and the skill to endow the experience with a (special) linguistic shape.”(p109)
To Prof Shad Ramzan a poem is not a dead entity. He doesn't approve thestatic or authoritarian semantic representation of a poem. A poem has its independent existence and a poet is merely a source through which it comes. This essential position reminds one of Archibald MacLeish’s poem Ars Poetica which begins thus:

A Poem
Should not mean
But be:

Prof Shad Ramzan Says:

“the meaning that readers with critical understanding give to these two songs the poets themselves may not necessarily know it. Hence the only way to the reader for accessing the poem is its lexical/ linguistic structural composition.” (p112)

Prof Shad Ramzan draws parallels between Kabir and Sheikh ul Aalam’s poetry. He doesn’t nullify or belittle their message. However, he presents the employment of different literary devices by both of them and uncovers the literary and the linguistic beauty of their poetry that leads a reader to the Linguistic Bliss. It is not their association with some particular denomination that makes them great and universal. Their use of language or literary intuition does!

Prof Shad Ramzan in other articles of the book provides a solemn critique of other genres of Kashmiri Literature and delves deep to unravel novel currents and a streak of new possibilities to the fore. While discussing different phases of Kashmiri nazam, ghazal and folk-lore, he not only presents its chronological matrix but also tables a distinct interpretation of these genres. Same is the case with other topics taken in the book.

Having said all this, what makes the book a distinct addition to Kashmiri Criticism is its strong adherence to the theorisation and institutionalisation of criticism as an independent academic discipline in Kashmiri literature. Very rarely we find such a systematic and organic adherence to the theory of criticism in Kashmiri Literature. As T.S. Eliot in “ Tradition and the Individual Talent”(1919) stated: “ Honest Criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry”, Prof Shad Ramzan aims to release Kashmiri Literature and Criticism from the ‘suffocation’ caused to it. He has been successful and needs a higher scholarly attention.

The book isn't one more book written on the subject it marks the beginning of a new discourse in Kashmiri criticism. It documents hundreds of less known poets of the contemporary era and, thus, becomes a representative book of criticism in Kashmiri Literature.He doesn't subscribe to the apologetic opinion of some writers about the status of criticism in Kashmiri language. He is a celebrated poet of ours and has proven an equally significant critic too. He like T.S. Eliot has an equal understanding of the composition of poem and the criticism too. His attention to unattended niceties of a verse make him distinctly a genius critic. He comes forth with a theory and for the first time in the history of criticism in Kashmiri comes with a detailed definition of a Shaar, Shair and Shareh.

He adresses to the critic and warns him against the pitfalls awaiting his doom! He takes the criticism to the new high. Prof Shad Ramzan has an superb understanding of different genres of Kashmiri Literature. From Ghazal to nazam to Sufi/mystic poetry to rich folk literature he is the knowledge house of all. He dreams of a Renaissance in Kashmiri Literature and reminds the fareeb khurdah Shaheen of the glory of past.
Teli kone Aayokh Yeth Bazaras
Yeli Asi tele ooos. Paazaaras

He is very unkind to all the forces and powers that have rendered a very low opinion about kashmiri Language and Literature. He lambasts the abuse agar qahtut rijaal uftand se uns ra dost kamgeeri awal afgaan dovum kambo sovum badzaat Kashmiri. He is all Siyah Cheshmaan e Kashmiri wa tarkaan e Samarqandi. Unsparingly he lambasts the anti-kashmiri forces that forget Kashmir was once called the Sharda Peth, Iran e sagir, peeri veer for its rich past spanning over thousands of years! Shad Ramzan is the pole star of the Kashmiri Dream- a discourse that aims at revisiting the past of Kashmir and it's fabulous civilisational trajectory. He is the iron man of Kashmiri Literature!

Who is not familiar with Ghalib's tribute

غالبؔ اپنا یہ عقیدہ ہے بقولِ ناسخؔ
آپ بے بہرہ ہیں جو معتقدِ میرؔ نہیں

Ghalib, it is my firm belief, also supported by Nasikh,
You are not worthy of letters,
If you di not believe in the greatness of Mir.

Every future critic of Kashmiri Literature owes an equal tribute to Prof. Shad Ramzan!

BY Mohammad Shafi Rather

Mohammad Shafi Rather, Senior Lecturer English, Govt Higher Secondary School Abhama, Pulwama