The other Jaun Elia-I

The other Jaun Elia-I

By Zameer Abbas

The popularity of Jaun Elia (1931-2002) as a poet has risen in recent times. Despite his intellectual versatility, he was not as well-known during his lifetime as he is today mainly because he resisted getting his works published for a long time. However, the newly increased interest in Jaun Elia has overly been focused on his poetry; mostly the rhythmic, catchy and mesmerizing verses recited by him in Mushairas.

That Jaun Elia was a bohemian poet is evident from a bare reading of his sample kalaam, now available in print, e-books and of late in innumerable audio and video clips on YouTube. This easy access has spread his poetry among public at large, especially the youth, who upload and share it on social media. His online fans are based all around the world and not just Pakistan. Nonetheless, this poetry-centric approach to reading and understanding non-conformist poet has eclipsed his works in prose. Most, if not all, of the new Jaun enthusiasts consider him a poet only.

Given the richness of his thought in both poetry and prose, consideration of Jaun only a poet doesn’t do justice to his ingenuity. On deeper reading, he comes out as an individual with many personas: all fickle and stable at the same time. This contradiction in terms was a distinctive part of his personality as narrated by dozens of his friends, contemporaries, close relatives, confidants and admirers. This two part series will touch upon the other Jaun Elia, as opposed to the popularly known poet.

Jaun could not become only a poet simply because his household and social surroundings were diverse intellectual breeding grounds, poetry a small part of it. In his own words: “the time around my birth was marked by discussions around Aristotle on the one hand and on Heraclitus and Democritus on the other. Amroha was alive with debates on whether God existed”. Such debates are unimaginable in today's increasingly intolerant world. During his lifetime, Jaun wrote about many things ranging from his role as an actor in the drama club he founded to his loss of conviction in the cherished beliefs he inherited. His poetry is a panorama on philosophy, nihilism, love, lust, nostalgia, Muslim irrationality, criticism of society, existential angst, promiscuity, communist idealism and above all, his guilt about not being able to live as he wished to, perhaps like all the great artists who dream a different world other than the one they live in. However, this didn’t prevent Jaun from thoughtfully writing about these topics. If his poetry made brief references to philosophy, his prose unfolded the theme and explained it in everyday terms. If he made fun of a religious bigot in a stanza, his essays expanded with a historical perspective.  

Let us consider the unique observations and derivations of Jaun Elia on Islamic rationality; the tradition that emphasizes a greater role for human reason in understanding Islamic injunctions in Quran and Sunnah. Like many scholars of Islam who lament the loss of intellectualism and closing of the Muslim mind, Jaun emphasized free inquiry and philosophical discussions as the way forward.

He was critical of the religious fundamentalists who, in his view, had always conspired to stifle fresh thinking and punished those who had dared to challenge their parochial views. He called such narrow-minded clerics “zulmatoon kay murabbbi” (the mentors of darkness), “khizaan parast” (pro fall) and “ dushmanan-e-Jamal” (enemies of beauty) while violently opposed to enlightenment of mind. The metaphors he used for religious bigots and retrogressive Muslim leaders in society are terse, derisive, meaningful and expressive especially in the poem “Shehr-e-Ashoob” in Shaayad, his first book of poetry. But Jaun being Jaun, went beyond criticizing them and reminded how a culture of debate and inquiry marked a certain period of Islamic history until traditionalist thinking took over. His choice to be a student of both Deobandi and Shia teachers showed his open-mindedness when it came to accepting sectarian differences. Such cross-sect education is unthinkable today, generally for all the Muslims and particularly for those who attend religious schools or madaaris.  This is not to deny sectarian differences during Jaun's time, but his magnanimity to rise above those differences, as is expected of any scholar.  

Jaun’s deep knowledge of both Arabic and Persian, the languages of almost all classic Islamic scholars, enabled him to comment on many of the topics rarely discussed by later day Muslim scholars. A cursory look at the books/treatises he rendered in Urdu for Ismaili Tariqah and Religious Education Karachi shows the depth of his understanding of the languages of Islam. The titles included “Hasan Bin Sabah”, “Analytics”, “Geometry”, “Ismailism in Yemen, Syria and Iraq”, “Rasail-e-Ikhwanus-Safa” and many more. Unfortunately, most of the listed works are not available for public reference.

 Jaun went beyond a mere translation and subjected these scholarly thoughts to critical interpretation in Urdu, his mother-tongue and lingua franca of the Muslims of sub-continent, making the undiscussed  Islamic thoughts publicly  available. His discursive understanding and commentary on philosophers like George Berkeley, John Stuart Mill , David Hume, Avicenna,  Ghazali etc remains  unmatched in modern Urdu literature.

Jaun would have appreciated what Robert Reiley has argued in his book “The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis”. Reily argues that the abandonment of philosophy and logic has triggered the Muslim decline. This theme has been taken up by Jaun in many of his essays and stanzas. The “unthought”, as the Algerian scholar Muhammad Arkoun put it, in Muslim psyche has been underlined by many other reformist scholars of past and present like professor Fazlur Rehman, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, Maulana Wahiduddin and Fatima Mernissi, to name a few.

Jaun’s recipe for revival of Muslim thought reiterates opening  of mind for new thoughts and a rationalistic re-interpretation of the scripture as the Mu’tazila scholars of 8^th to 10^th century had taught. Controversial as it may seem, Jaun considered Mu’tazila thinkers to be “always unique in that they protected and revived the oldest intellectual heritage left behind by Semitic thinkers at a time when Islamic history was dominated and defined by  politics alone;…they introduced Hellenic and Roman modes of thinking to Islamic circles through an organized movement; (ideas which were) only discussed in the premises of the shrines of Antakya and Alexandria". He seemed to agree with what Fazlur Rehman called the “intellectual suicide”of Muslims because “ “(they) had deprived themselves of philosophy and thus fell in deprivation of fresh ideas”. Jaun praised the Abbasid caliphs who made Mu’tazila ideology  “the state philosophy”.  

In short, Jaun Elia was more than a poet. His ideas about revival of rationality in Islamic thought resonate with many modern scholars.  I will briefly discuss his distinctive views on philosophy in the next piece.

An earlier version of this piece was published in High Asia Herald. That link is somehow not accessible so i posted it here. ---Zameer

                

Digging Gilgit Baltistan's Buddhist Past

The rise of Buddhism during the reign of emperor Ashoka (304-232 BC) in India had seen it spread to the neighbouring lands as well. The outreach of the proselytizing king’s message can be gauged from the fact that “there are legends about Ashoka in most major Asian languages- Sanskrit and Pali, but also Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, Tibetan, Thai and Sinhala”, according to professor Sunil Khilnani. Besides the 84,000 stupas he reportedly built, messages of humanism and pluralism of his rule expressed as Dhammas or universal truths/laws, were engraved on the rock slabs and stone pillars across the length and breadth of his territory. The “federation” of satrapas that he ruled is considered as the largest central government in Indian history.
According to Sherbaz Ali Bercha, a noted historian on Gilgit Baltistan, a stone pillar most probably containing Ashoka’s edicts had remained fixed at the center of Gilgit city. The relic was shifted to Lahore Museum to make room for a commercial market in early 2000s. Assuming that the jurisdiction of Ashoka existed where there were distinctive pillars with edicts, there is no other evidence to point to Ashoka’s rule in GB besides the iconic pillar mentioned. Moreover, classic descriptions found in the writings of the colonial literature are silent about the religion of the region’s earliest inhabitants or autochthons. Yet beyond the particular religious symbolism, Gilgit Baltistan has a treasure trove of archeological insignia suggesting an era when Buddhism, among other faiths, flourished. There are rock images of Buddha in Gilgit and Skardu and a footprint of Buddha in Ghizer. Moreover, there are hundreds of epigraphs and engravings elsewhere. The inscriptions found on stone slabs across GB are records of names, journey details, the era of the time, the particular king’s reign etc according to Ahmed Hasan Dani, a late well-known archaeologist.
From the corpus of archaeological symbols, it can be assumed that Buddhism spread in GB after the era of Ashoka, probably during the era of king Kanishka of Kushan Empire in the early 1st century. Perhaps the most significant hallmark of GB’s Buddhist past is found in the Kargah area of district Gilgit. It is an image of Buddha sitting in a meditative state or Bodhisatva. This is locally known as “Yachani” or a female demon. According to Japanese scholar Dr Haruko Tsuchiya (as per a GB archaeological department account) “the figure resembles that of Chamba style, the only and other image of this type is found in Mulbe, Ladakh. There is no record of such kind of carvings in the records of Gandhara artefacts”. Kargaah is adjacent to Naupur (local name Nafoor), where a cache of ancient writings termed Gilgit Manuscripts were discovered in 1931. Written in Sanskrit, Prakarit and Pali on Bhoj or birch tree (bhoja putra), no complete deciphering has so far been made. Most of the papers are preserved at the National archives of India. The available interpretations of these documents bespeak of Buddhist dynasties in the 1st to 6th century AD (most prominent being the Patola Shahi dynasty) and their relationship with the neighbouring world. However, the religious, social, political and cultures moorings of the era and its interface with the ensuing period of various Indian kings and Muslim missionaries remains a mystery.
There is learnt and assumed ignorance about classical history in GB. Most of us cannot describe our family lineage beyond the grandfathers or great-grandfathers. Where it is known in a few cases, the descendants are unsure about the faith, customs or culture of their ancestors. Some ruling families trace the root of their family tree to Shri Badat, a cannibal semi-mythical king, implying a super natural heritage. Three Budhisatvas can be seen on a brownish rock in Manthal area of Skardu. A government information board dates the carvings to the 9th century without referencing any source for this information.
Oral historical tradition in the region often mentions a “Buddhist university” in the Darel area of Diamer district, in all probability referring to a monastery. However, no chronology exists as to when or who built it. Whereas information about other monasteries in India, most prominently about the one located in Nalanda, northeast India is well recorded. Similarly, popular legend about a cannibal king, Shri Badat, considers him a Buddhist. Though a wide range of accounts exist about the king, his persona has been described in legendary/folklore terms thereby avoiding any historicity to it. By the same token, themes like Buddhism’s inroads into GB, its proliferation, engraving of Bodhisatvas and its decline and disappearance are glaring unknowns.
The apathy towards the Buddhist past in particular and the rest of the antiquity in general necessitates an academic quest. In the absence of particular findings, some writers and scholars have attempted to fill the gap by extrapolating and borrowing historical facts from research available on the neighbouring regions of GB e.g. Kashmir, India, Afghanistan and China without subjecting it to local socio-political dynamics.
Having studied in government schools and colleges until the HSSC, we were never taught about the history of the region in the course books such as Maasharti Uloom or social studies or later on Pakistan studies. Nonetheless, there were visceral historical descriptions of how Mohammad Bin Qasim conquered Sindh in the 8th century. The past and present answer to the question “What was the socio-political state of Gilgit Baltistan in the 8th century” would be a negligent “we don’t know”. In the hindsight, to be a student in a region without being given an opportunity to know or inquire about its past was a demoralizing experience. It was as if someone had forsaken his ancestors or was forced to disown them. Thus the appetite for knowledge about the past is killed early as the young minds are taught selective versions of history at schools and colleges duly censoring the non-Muslim part of it. The truncated history focus (or “murdered history” as KK Aziz would say) underplayed the diversity and rich past of the new country let alone that of GB. Thus thousands of children like me, who studied from government educational institutes, were “forced to imbibe the truths of officialdom, many of its literate citizens have opted for the comforts of ignorance, habits of skepticism, and, most troubling of all, a contagion of belief in conspiracy theories. Instead of critical thinking marked by cautious optimism, which might be expected of a people who have weathered many storms in their country’s short but eventful history”, according to Ayesha Jalal. Before 1947, the GB’s historiography by the colonial writers was essentially presentist in essence, focusing mostly on the strategic issues faced by the British Raj. In some cases, when the past was discussed it was done to highlight the region’s connection to Europe, the birthplace of the writers or it was linked with mythical characters such as the king Shri Badat. The reference was apparently made to normalize colonialism as a phenomenon not unbeknown to the region. For example, a prolific writer Dr GW Leitner wrote: “Herodotus (484-430/420 BC) is the first author who refers to the country of the Dards (Dardistan), placing it on the frontier of Kashmir and in the vicinity of Afghanistan”. If the colonial writers tried to portray the region’s past through the eyes of European chroniclers, the post-colonial ones left out the significant portion of it pertaining to non-Muslims e.g. the Indus Valley Civilsation or Ashoka and later kings or dynasties. Without knowledge of the past or selectively studying it we may be deluding ourselves about it.

First published in the daily Morning Mail, Islamabad

http://www.morning.pk/2018/05/digging-gilgit-baltistans-buddhist-past/