REMEMBERING SYED SAJJAD ZAHEER OR BANNEY BHAI

                                                                        

SYED  SAJJAD ZAHEER  ( 1905-1973 )

Mein Akela hi  Chala Thhaa janib e Manzil Magar

Log aatay hi gaye Aur kaarwan Bantaa gayaa

For his various firsts, the above couplet of Majrooh sultanpuri is totally and aptly applicable to the personality of Syed Sajjad Zaheer...

 Fondly known as   Banney  Bhai  ,  Syed Sajjad Zaheer was a founder member of CPI ( Communist Party of India ), IPTA ( Indian Peoples Theatre Association ) and PWAI (Progressive writers Association of India )    .  PWAI received  unstinted support  from litterateurs namely  Munshi Prem Chand , Dr Mulk Raj Anand Faiz, Makhdoom, Ali Sardar Jafri, Majrooh Sultanputi, Kaifi Azmi, Vamiq Jaunpuri, Salam MachliShahri, Sumitra Nandan Pant, Hiren Mukherjee, Sibte Hasan, Amrit Rai, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Ehtesham Husain, Ale Ahmed Suroor, Mumtaz Hussain, Krishn Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ismat Chughtai, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, Upendra Nath Ashq, Yashpal, Ahmed Nadim Kasmi, Vishnu Dey and others.

The progressive writers movement did not remain as a ’literary club’, but became a movement that stirred the soul of the ordinary man reading literature in Hindi and Urdu. It expressed the concerns of the ordinary man through literature.  

From this  platform , Syed Sajjad Zaheer    moved ahead and worked    closely With  Pablo Neruda , Nazim Hikmet  and  Faiz Ahmed Faiz  under the Banner of AAWA (Afro  Asian writers Association).

Born at Lucknow  in  an aristocratic    and educated family of  former Oudh state  , Sajjad Zaheer ‘s   father, Sir Syed Wazir Hassan  was a former chief Justice of Oudh court.And Syed Sajjad Zaheer’s  personality has many dimension that I came to know only after  reading his Biography . I   quote something  for readers .

Banney Bhai   went to Oxford in 1927 ,  studied law to become a Barrister  and returned to India in 1935 . It was only at Oxford that he was driven towards Marxism. At Oxford he once posed a question to George Bernard Shaw who had come to deliver a speech . Shaw’s speech was mainly about his impressions of the Soviet Union, which he had visited a few months earlier. When the president invited questions, Zaheer asked Shaw: “Mr Shaw, you have told us about what you saw in the Soviet Union and how you were impressed by the communist society there. If this is your belief, why don’t you work for a communist revolution in England and why don’t you join the Communist Party of Great Britain?” Shaw replied: “Young man, you ask me why I don’t join the Communist Party of Great Britain? I want the Communist Party of Great Britain to join me.”

In  India , he came under the spell of  Gandhi ji’s freedom movement  and joined Congress party and  participated in many agitations . Banney  Bhai   wore khadi clothes , stopped eating meat and slept on floor . In an interview, Sajjad  Zaheer  informs   as under .

“I was not the only communist who joined the Congress at that time. With me were Dr Mohammed Ashraf, Dr Z.A. Ahmed, Mahmuduzzafar Khan and some other people. All these people had taken their degrees in England and had come back. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was very proud of our group and he introduced us to Gandhiji and to Sardar Patel saying, " People say that Muslims are not coming in the Congress. Here is this brilliant group of young Muslims which went to England and took degrees there and had come back and joined the Congress." Anyhow, I was saying that this was the time when Panditji started his Mass Contact Movement and from the communist side, we too, were trying to develop the Congress as a sort of united national front of all the anti-imperialist elements in this country. The socialist band inside the Congress, apart from the communists, Jayaprakash Narayan, Minoo Masani, Rammanohar Lohia and others, were also in the same category of people who were thinking of new ways and means of achieving our independence ”

Sajjad Zaheer married a budding urdu writer Razia in 1938. Razia was also from an educated and progressive family of UP. Imprisoned in 1939  for two years  ,  Sajjad Zaheer   Co- founded  of CPI immediately after his release . After the Partition of the country , CPI advised him to move to Pakistan to organize communist Party of Pakistan  along with Faiz  Ahmed Faiz .Remaining underground for three long years, he travelled to the different cities meeting trade unionists, intellectuals, students and workers. But ultimately was arrested and implicated in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case along with poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz.  He was   tried  for sedition and awarded Life imprisonment .It was only through Pandit Nehru’s intervention and  international pressure that he was released on parole .His family faced many odds  and financial difficulties  in India during his absence . He returned  to India in 1955 , settled with his family  and never went to Pakistan thereafter . From 1956 to 1973, he worked intensely for IPTA, PWAI and for the creation of a forum for Asian and African writers against imperialism. He revived the PWAI  and was elected secretary of the India chapter of AAWA (Afro-Asian Writers Association ). He also edited   party Newspaper Quami Jung and weekly Awami Daur (People’s Era) that was to later become Hayat (Life). His popularity soon grew all around and writers of various countries invited him. He was among the key figures who mobilised writers against US atrocities in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In collaboration with Mulk Raj Anand, he organized the first Asian writers conference .He died of a heart attack in kazakhastan  while attending Afro Asian writers conference.
                                                                                     

                                               ( With Faiz Ahmed Faiz )

His short stories collection Angaaray  was banned by British Government in 1932 immediately after it was published. He wrote Gazals , poems and plays .His prominent woks include London Ki Ek Raat- a novel, Roshnai  a collection of essays on progressive writing and the progressive writers movement, Zikre Hafiz- A  research based book on Persian poet Hafiz and Pighla Nilam-A collection of his poetry. He also translated OTHELLO , GORA and  PROPHET  to urdu.

Najma , Noor , Nadira and Naseem are his four brilliant and talented daughters  .Najma  married   Prof. Ali Baquer  ( Died 2007 )  from Hyderbad  .Najma  was   a   professor of Biochemistry at JNU  New Delhi. Ali Baquer had worked at the universities of Oxford and London .He has been member of various high-level committees set up by the Planning Commission of India, Doordarshan, IGNOU and other national and international agencies dealing with education, health, mental health, management and disability issues.

Noor is a well known  Researcher , journalist, kathak dancer  and Writer . Her Hindi Novel “Mere Hissey ki Roshnaai” is a treat to read .  Her other Books are Surkh Karwan ke Humsafar, a travelogue of Pakistan, Bad Uraiyya, a novel, and My God is a Woman. She married Amitava Dasgupta (1947-2010) – a Marxist  and a Theatre personality (founder-director of Brechtian Mirror).
                                                                               

 ( Music Composer Ravi , Sahir Ludhianavi , Syed Sajjad Zaheer and Jaan Nissar Akhtar )

Nadira, A graduate from NSD is  a well known name in Indian   theatre ( EKJUTE )  and  is married  to Actor Raj Babbar.  Naseem  now Dr Naseem Bhatia ( Married  Historian  Prof. Vinod Bhatia  ) worked as joint secretary of UGC and later Vice Chancellor of Jodhpur University.

Adds Dr Naseem Bhatia ,

"The family income was paltry. Father received Rs 45 as remuneration for being the editor. Grandfather used to send Rs 200 every month and that’s the way the family expenses were met which included the hospitality of the guests, mostly poets  who often stayed overnight in our tiny flat." 

Adds Nadira Babbar

“Not even once, did my parents talk to us about religion. The first time that someone told us we were Muslims was at school.   Writers, activists, theatre persons were walking in and out of  our house all through the day, with the atmosphere abuzz with art and literature. From anti-nuclear protests to peace marches, to poets' meets and seminars, our  house was the rehearsal room for a range of things. We were fortunate to have parents like them. They gave us such a rich legacy of values and ideals, and without ever making us conscious of it. It was a natural part of our upbringing; much later in our lives, when we were on our own, slowly these things moved up to the surface ”

Banney Bhai’s  wife Razia Sajjad Zaheer ( 1917-1979 ) was also from a  Nationalist Muslim family . She has written many novels and short stories . Razia made name as one who perfected her craft in the language of tension and her stories, namely "Amar Jyot", "Ravan Jal Gaya", "Mojja" and "Allah De Banda Lo" were much read in the 60s and 70s. Her short story NEECH ( lowborn ) comes to my mind at the moment especially the Characters of   Shyamali and Ramavtar  she created for this story. She taught at Karamat Hussain college and wrote Novels and short stories . She was also associated with   PWAI .

Till the end Banney Bhai  remained a dedicated comrade always at the call of the party and rose to the rank of being an external member of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union).

I end this brief post on Syed Sajjad Zaheer with  lines from  a   poem of   Kurdish poet Sherko Bekas …

We were millions

An old tree

A young tree

We were seeds

The helmet of Ankara

In a bloody night came

To uproot us

They did,

They took us away long away!

On the way many old trees bent

In the cold many young trees died

They froze

Many seeds were trampled

They were lost and forgotten

Like a river in the summer we had little water

Like birds in the autumn, we became fewer

We ended up in thousands of homes

There were still seeds among us, the wind took them

The wind returned them

They reached the thirsty mountains

They hid among the rocks

The first rain

The second rain

The third rain

They grew again

We are now a forest again

We are millions

( Autar Mota 06.08.2014 )

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