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In Conversation with Afsar Mohammad

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TELANGANA / Pennsylvania, U.S.A:

‘In your final rest
on a rope-cot,

were you still dreaming
of a piece of bread?’

In Conversation with Afsar Mohammad – Borderless
Afsar Mohammad
In your final rest
on a rope-cot,
 
were you still dreaming
of a piece of bread?
 
Beloved one,
we the people
of this country,
 
of that country,
can make anything
 
but a piece of bread
for you. 

--Evening with a Sufi: Selected Poems by Afsar Mohammad, translated from the Telugu by Afsar Mohammad & Shamala Gallagher, Red River Books, 2022.

These lines send shivers down the spine and recreate an empathetic longing for immigrant souls in search of succour. They also swiftly draw an image laced with poignancy — a loss, a regret, the economics that deny innovative young men their keep and force immigration in search of sustenance. Would the poet have been one of them? 

Travelling from a small village in the South Indian state of Telangana, Afsar Mohammad has journeyed across continents and now teaches South Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Known as a trendsetting poet and literary critic for post-1980s Telugu literature, Afsar has brought out five volumes of poetry, one collection of short stories and two volumes of literary theory essays. He is also a distinguished scholar of Indian studies and has published extensively with various international presses, including Oxford and Cambridge. He is currently working on a translation of Sufi poetry from Telugu to English. In this interview, we trace his growth as a writer and editor of the webzine, Saranga, which now seems to be transcending linguistic barriers to give voice to multiple cultures… 

Tell us about your journey as a writer. When and how did it start?

It’s a long story, but to cut it short — the beginnings were somewhat puzzling… Inspired by Shakespearean sonnets, I first wrote some sonnets in English, and then switched to free verse. Since most of my friends in my high school started pushing me to write something in Telugu, I had to migrate to Telugu. Quite surprisingly, I was first published in English, and then it took me a while to get something published in Telugu. I had hard time getting published in Telugu due to its newness in expressions and most editors felt that there was nothing “Telugu” in that kind of writing. So, my early writings quite naturally found their home in some English journals!

Your poetry rings with the pain of distance, the pain and struggle from others’ suffering transcending your own self. What is the source of your inspiration — is it your past or your present?What affects you more — your being an immigrant or a Sufi?

We’re distanced by many things — not just physically!  We live in many shattered and scattered worlds, and sometimes we fail to reflect on those worlds. I feel like I’m a constant immigrant — despite my formal citizenship and legal boundaries. Sufism is merely a segment of this expansive realm. Both past and present define our destiny, right?! Of course, I try to live in the present rather than in the past, but never deny the baggage of the past.

Why do you subscribe to the Sufi school of poetry? What is Sufism all about? 

I come from an extremely local rural setting where such Sufi mystical practices openly defined my everyday life. It’s not about the technicalities and theories or institutionalised Sufi schools of their philosophies, this is more about what I learned from my childhood, and its physical surroundings dotted by several hybrid shrines. I’ve described this cultural setting in my 2013 Oxford University Press publication, The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India. This version of Sufism has more to do with everyday life rather than a spiritual domain. 

You have lived away from your country for long, and yet the past seems to still haunt you. What is the identity you seek as a poet? Is it necessary to have a unique identity or can one be like a drop that flows and moulds as per the needs of the vessel?  

In a way — physically– I’m away from my birth place, but in many ways, I’m also closer to my homeland than in my past. When I moved away from the actual picture, I see many dimensions from a new lens. Each dimension contributed to my rethinking and reconsidering the idea of India. As I wander around and meet totally different places and people, I learn more about my birthplace and moved a little closer to it. I totally understand this as a process to reconcile with the past and connect it to a new present intensified by many factors, not just personal. We’re living in a virtual world, which also looks like “real” in its sounds, colours and words. Every moment it makes me realise that I’m actually not that far. On the other hand, I also see the people in my homeland who are far more removed by their immediate reality and everyday experiences. We need to read this conditionality more in terms of perspective rather than physical distance. 

You are fluent in Telugu, Urdu and English. You started writing in English and then moved to Telugu. And all your poetry collections have been in Telugu. Why? Would the outreach of English not have been wider? What made you pick Telugu over English? 

Great question! My literary graph is neither linear nor simplistic. When I look back and reflect on it, it’s a quite messy roadmap — actually, there’s nothing like a map to get its contours.  Yes, I started writing in English and then suddenly stopped sending out the poems to magazines. In fact, I write more in my personal journals rather than in print journals. Theoretically, I saw poetry as a personal diary for my experiences for many years. Due to financial concerns within my family, I had to start working very early on and left most of my journals at home. Then, my friends found them by chance and put them together that became my first collection of poems in Telugu. The collection was an instant success for its innovative style and then that opened up my career in Telugu rather than English which was my first language of literary expression. 

You are now bringing out a bi-lingual online magazine, Saranga? What made you think of a magazine in two languages? 

Before entering into teaching career, I worked as an editor of the literary supplement and Sunday magazine for a largest circulated Telugu newspaper. When we moved to the USA, I thought it would be better to have some outlet to engage with my home language and literature. In the early phase, Saranga was primarily a Telugu webmagazine. When I started teaching South Asian literature, then I realised the importance of making Indian literary texts available to contemporary generation in the USA. That was just one reason, but there’re were many factors as our team saw a rise in the Indian diaspora writings in the new millennium. Luckily, we got wonderful support from writers and poets in various Indian languages. The humble beginnings have actually ended up as a rewarding experience. 

What is it you look for in contributors from two languages? Is it the same guidelines or different?

We’re still learning how this works! As it appears now, these two sections require two different approaches and guidelines. Since the English section has been now attracting writers from various languages, it’s moving more towards a multi-lingual base. We’re trying to accommodate more translations into English from different Indian languages. We still need to do lots of work there. 

Is the journal only aimed at South Asian diaspora or would you be extending your services to all cultures and all geographies? 

Saranga, as we see it right now, is more about South Asia and its diaspora. As you know, we need more such spaces for South Asia and its diaspora. Not sure about its future directions at this point, however, if the situation demands, we will extend its services further.

You have number of essays and academic books in English. But all your creative writing is in Telugu. Why? Would you be thinking of writing in English too because proficiency in the language is obviously not an issue?

Most of my academic writing came out of my teaching experience. As I started teaching new courses, I then realised that we need more material from South Asia. I started focusing on producing such materials primarily for my courses and then gradually, they became useful for many academicians elsewhere too. I still believe creating writing as a more personal space — that enables me to articulate more about myself. However, the publication of Evening with a Sufi, brought a new change — as I’ve been getting more requests for more writing in English for the last two years. As you know pretty well, I’m an extremely slow writer. 

How do you perceive language as a tool for a poet? 

I see language working many ways since I dwell in multiple languages. I started my elementary education in Urdu, and my middle school was in Telugu, and the subsequent studies were in English. Through the last day of her life, my mother was extremely particular about me learning Arabic and Farsi. So, I believe that helped me so much to understand how language works in a poem. When I published my first poem in Telugu, the immediate critique was it was a not a “Telugu” poem. Telugu literary critics labelled me as a poet who thinks either in Urdu or English, then writes in Telugu. Of course, most of them were also fascinated by the new syntax of my Telugu poems and the new images and metaphors—that totally deviate from a normative or mainstream Telugu poem of those days. The uses of language in a poem varies for each poet. If you’re reading, writing and thinking in just “one” language, that might be a safe condition. A contemporary or modern poet, however, belongs to many languages and cultures. We also migrate from one language to another in our everyday life. 

Do borders of nationalism, mother tongue and geographies divide or connect in your opinion? Do these impact your writing?

The response to this question might be an extension to the above conditionality of a person. Anyway, I’m not a big fan of those ideas of nationalism, mother tongue and singular geographies. They don’t exist in my world. Most of my writings both creative and academic contest such boundaries and borders. To describe this in a single term- borderless. In fact, I believe we’re all borderless, but unfortunately, many boundaries and borders are now being imposed on our personalities. 

(The online interview has been conducted by emails by Mitali Chakravarty)

Click here to access Afsar Mohammad’s poetry

source: http://www.borderlessjournal.in / Borderless / Home> Interview / by Mitali Chakravarty / July 14th, 2023

Police Action of 1948 in Hyderabad and the Muslim Question

Books (incl.Biographies - w.e.f.01 jan 2018 ), Community Involvement / Social Issues, NRI's / PIO's, ,

TELANGANA / U. S. A:

This is an excerpt from Afsar Mohammad’s latest book ‘Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad,’ which documents witness narratives of violence.

Bahadur Yar Jung with young Hyderabadi Muslims
Bahadur Yar Jung with young Hyderabadi Muslims /  Mohammed Ayub Ali Khan

Written by :Afsar Mohammed X / Edited by :Binu Karunakaran X

Continuing our Deccan Series in collaboration with the Khidki Collective, this set of six articles presents alternative perspectives on the 1948 Police Action in Hyderabad. These perspectives challenge, modify, add nuance to the mainstream narrative of Hyderabad’s integration as ‘liberation’, a narrative currently used to further divisive politics.

The following is an excerpt from Afsar Mohammad’s latest book ‘Remaking History: 1948 Police Action and the Muslims of Hyderabad,’ published by Cambridge University Press (2023). Here, the author documents almost one hundred witness narratives of the 1948 violence. This chapter narrates the memories of Quddus Saheb, a folk-performer of Muharram and Prophet Mohammed’s stories. He was one of the witnesses of Police Action. With most witnesses having now passed away, this book then remains the last document of their life stories. Since the 1948 Police Action has been barely discussed, these witness narratives or testimonies offer fresh insights into the documentation of different aspects of everyday life during 1948 in Hyderabad and Telangana.

Note from Khidki: Oral histories not only offer us different perspectives of the past but also provide insights into how those who have lived through momentous times make sense of the challenges of the present. In this excerpt, Quddus Saheb’s account reveals how much Muslim life was affected in post Police Action Hyderabad, with many being branded Razakars and not being able to carry on with their daily lives. For him, contemporary India and the difficult place of Muslims in it is a persistent and poignant reminder that the after-effects of Police Action, such as the decimation of Muslim political leadership, continue to reverberate even now.

The five-day-long “battle” of the Police Action was certainly still fresh in their memory. But they also stressed that the “main history” or “official history” (pradhāna caritra or adhikāra caritra in Telugu) was centred on the celebration of the formation of the Telugu linguistic state of Andhra Pradesh and the leftist-centred Telangana armed struggle. The celebrations of the formation of a new state of Andhra Pradesh became a form of nationalist rhetoric, while the Telangana armed rebellion turned into a leftist campaign for the general elections of 1952. According to the Deccani Urdu literary historian Samala Sadasiva:

The very usage of the term Andhra was meant to relegate the history of Hyderabad and Telangana into some immemorial past. While growing up in the late 1930s or ’40s we all identified ourselves with the term Telangana as it represents the mixed history of Urdu and Telugu. Along with the new usage of Andhra, the state-sponsored histories gradually erased the centrality of Hyderabad and its Muslims. The khoonrezi (“massacre”) of the Police Action was totally removed from the recorded histories.

Sadasiva’s comments took me back to what the folk singer Abdul Quddus Saheb said in the introduction of this book. In 2006, when I was about to wrap up our conversation, he mentioned the statements made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1998. Specifically, Quddus Saheb spoke of the Home Minister LK Advani’s speech in Hyderabad—a mammoth public meeting and, in fact, one I attended. Referring to the Police Action, Advani made a call to “celebrate” September 17 as a “day of the liberation,” later translated as vimōcana dinam in the Telugu public sphere. Advani’s usage of the term “liberation” triggered a new debate about the Police Action in the local print and electronic media, as well as in various political writings after 1998. Responding to Advani’s statement, several historians and social activists also began  to revisit the history of the Police Action. Along with the events that led to the Police Action, what to do with Muslims of Hyderabad was again a question, while Muslims were also in a dilemma about their future. The chronology of this history was repeatedly considered in the public discourse as activists from different social and political groups continued to debate.

Quddus Saheb said:

Advani  and  BJP  had  actually  stirred  the  hornet’s  nest  for  their  own political benefits! Not that we have all forgotten about it, but the way Advani fueled this issue was quite disturbing! We should talk about the Police Action, but the way Advani and his followers entered into this debate was all hate speech that caused a new antagonism between Muslims and Hindus. He and his party were just using this entire history—tārīkhu—of the Police Action to take advantage of Hindu vote.

Either Islamic or Hyderabad-related, the events from history—tārīkh— had always been a source of passion for Quddus Saheb. Growing up in the critical era of the late 1930s and 1940s, he had developed a keen interest in reading history materials both in Urdu and Telugu. Being a well-known folk performer and a public figure during the late 1940s, Quddus Saheb had also witnessed many historical events during his lifetime—from the powerful public speeches of Nawab Bahadur Yar Jung (1905–1944) to the beginnings of the Telangana  separatist movement in 2004. Quddus Saheb recalled for me that:

Bahadur Yar Jung’s party Itteh ād, later known as Majlis-e-Itteh ād’ul Muslimīn (MIM) became extremely powerful and led many political and social movements. He was such an inspiration—josh—to the young Muslims of Hyderabad that we [knew] all his words by heart. He actually provided a language for our emotions and thoughts. Most importantly, he made us realise that young Muslims need to speak out about contemporary politics and understand how Islam could contribute to improve them.

Many times, during our conversations, Quddus Saheb tried to compare the late 1990s to the late 1940s. Of particular and significant concern for him was the lack of “proper” leadership—in his eyes—in the Muslim community. Even now I remember how Quddus Saheb’s eyes glowed when he spoke about Bahadur Yar Jung’s accomplishments. In the midst of his enthusiastic recollections of the speeches of Bahadur Yar Jung, he concluded, “These days we need such an orator and activist who can inspire with words and actions. More than that we need a force that unifies the entire Muslim community from the city to the remotest village in Telangana.” When Quddus Saheb said these words, he was not so much being nostalgic, but he was speaking from a pragmatic viewpoint. Bahadur Yar Jung, according to Quddus Saheb, was a combination of many dimensions—including leadership qualities, oratory, and political awareness—that the Muslim community should emulate in any period, and he emphasised, “particularly after the saffron wave of Hindutva.” 

In speaking about the Police Action, Quddus Saheb repeatedly referred to the Battle of Karbala (680 CE), which he described as “the historical event that demanded many sacrifices from the Muslim community.” It took me a while to understand that he was making an important connection between the life story of Bahadur Yar Jung and the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in Karbala. “Just like the Imam Hussain, Bahadur Saheb was also a martyr in the  battlefield.” While Quddus Saheb’s own life was filled with many tragic events, such as the loss of family members and close friends in the violence of 1948, he had also witnessed many persons who had gone incognito, been displaced, or had had their lives uprooted, and had seen a new generation of Muslims face the stigma of “being Muslim.” Explaining further about this stigmatisation, he said:

You know how hard it was when you were being labelled as a criminal and antisocial in the name of the Razakars. All Muslims, particularly, the younger generation between the age group 18 and 30 were stigmatised as the Razakars and hunted down. They had a hard time finding work, food, and shelter in their own hometown.

I included several such testimonies from my field research in Chapter 2; some of those testimonies also stressed that “not all Muslims are extremists or Razakars.” Conflating the identity of ordinary Muslims with the Razakars was one of the narrative strategies in many nationalist writings too. According to Quddus Saheb, such demonization was due to a lack of “proper” leadership. He said:

As the times had changed, Muslims had also lost that support and empathy. Now the very word Muslim arouses some fear for many people. Things have gotten even worse now and I feel so bad about the current generation of Muslims. Where have we come?!

Quddus Saheb stressed the Urdu term hamdardi (empathy) and noted a lack of empathy towards Muslims and Muslim issues. Despite all the hardships and tragedies in his personal life, Quddus Saheb had also contributed much to the making of this new generation of Muslims. A devoted performer, he successfully inspired at least a few young men, both Muslims and Hindus, and trained them in the folk performances of Muharram (known as pīrla pand. aga or “the festival of pīrs”) that memorialises the martyrdom of Imam Hussain and the Prophet’s family in the Battle of Karbala. As a performer of Muharram songs, Quddus Saheb had travelled extensively in various regions of the Hyderabad state and the current state of Telangana. Since he feared having to abandon such public performance, he was also passionate about training at least ten or twelve young men to continue the tradition. That way, he was always in communication with the new generation Muslims and Hindus wherever he traveled. He said:

Of course, I can say I was really successful in training more than twenty young men and then it arrived—the saffron wave of the Bharatiya Janata Party. At this moment, even young Muslims were not ready even to participate in any public rituals related to Muslims. I then started witnessing another phase of hatred. For Muslims now in India, it is like every day is a Karbala. Muslims are being killed for no reason and just for a few political motives.

Quddus Saheb was not alone in comparing the fate of Muslims under Hindutva to Karbala. Many interlocutors and contemporary political activists use similar metaphoric language, particularly to speak about their condition in the times of what the political scientists like Angana Chatterji call “a normalised majoritarianism and hostility to Muslims.” During our many conversations, Quddus Saheb often referred to the Babri mosque demolition on December 6, 1992. According to him:

It was nothing but another mode of Police Action, as both religion and governmental politics had joined hands once again to destroy the entire Muslim community in India. In fact, this demolition was more than destroying a mosque and a direct attack on the Muslims. As a person who witnessed the Police Action, I felt like this one is another testing moment, not only for Muslims, but also for Hindus. Here we are at the end of the twentieth century, and I just also heard about what is happening in Gujarat—the killings of Muslims.

As a response to Advani, several Muslim activists returned to the Muslim question discussed during the Police Action. They were concerned about how the “hasty” decision of the “military invasion” by the Union government of India had led to its tragedies. Some now describe those five days between September 13 and 17 as a “battle” and as the earliest phase of Hindutva. 

pix: amazon.in

Excerpted with permission from Cambridge University Press. Afsar Mohammad is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning South Asian scholar working on Hindu-Muslim interactions in India. He also focuses on Muslim writing and Telugu studies. Afsar teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

The Khidki Collective is a network of scholars committed to building public dialogue on history, politics, and culture. This series has been curated by Yamini Krishna, Swathi Shivanand, and Pramod Mandade of the collective.

source: http://www.thenewsminute.com / The News Minute / Home> Telangana / pix: edited / September 16th, 2023