A STUDY OF SOCIO-POLITICAL OVERTONES IN SELECTED POEMS OF BATALVI

Ye haste hu phool, ye mehka hua gulshan

Ye rang me aur noor mein doobi hui raahen
Ye phoonlon ka ras peekar,
Machalte hue bhavre
Mai doon bhi to kya doon ae shok nazaaron
Le de ke mere paas kuch aasoon hain aur kuch aahen (Pyasa,1957).

This paper attempts to trace the socio-political and cultural imprints of India through Punjabi
consciousness conjoined with the aesthetics sensibility of Shiv Kumar Batalvi through
contemporary works in literature and cinema.

Batalvi appeared at the Cusp of an evolving Indian social front when political, cultural
and literary spheres were being revived throughout the world and specifically India
celebrating its independence and waking up to the Clarion Call of tryst with destiny.

His brief life of thirty six years and a decade long poetic career is an amalgamation of
classical Punjabi poetic elements, sufi and kissa tradition alongside its cultural pathos of
everyday life.

The two classical Punjabi traditions namely kissa and sufi traditions moved laterally
and co-existed while intermingling with each other to formulate the expanxively rooted
Punjabi socio-culturallife, melodious folk songs and balleeders singing tales of love and
romance.

Says Fareed
I think I am the only one, who suffers,
From top of the house I find,
Every house on fire.
The lanes are muddy
And far is the house of my love
Walking the lanes my shawl gets spoiled,
Stay home, I fail in my love. (Sheikh Fareed, AD1173-1265)

Twentieth century with its western ethos of nationalism brought juxtaposing realities
of modern life over the idealistic flavour of the traditional poems.

Few stalwarts of modern Kissa and sufi Punjabi tradition were Bhai Veer Singh
(1872-1957), Prof. Mohan Singh(1905-1978), Amrita Pritam(1919-2005),Pas(1950-1988)
and Shiv Kumar Batalvi himself. These great literary compatriots witnessed National
liberation struggle , cultural revolutions, Naxalite movement in sixties and emergency in
seventies. These homogenous writers obliged to writings of social commitment where
literature became the tool of socio-cultaral metamorphosis.

While his contemporaries were writing and calling upon the voices of Inquilabi
actions; Batalvi choses to come up with the celebrations of Birha, love and sorrow. He
allegorized his poems and beloved with that of nation and his fellow beings. He appears to
bring subverting ideas of male-female dichotomy and produced Loona a critical versified
commentary over patriarchy. He blurs the demarcations between two sexes in his poems by
positioning females as the mediator between his personal self and the sufi master.

Batalvi has been criticised on the accounts of excessive romanticising and for the
absence of contemporaneous socio-political fervour .
The pain expressed by his [Batalvi] poetry is confused and non-scientific. It is
simply his painful emotional reaction based on his unempirical view of the social and
material relations in the society. (Pash,1993)

But Batalvis art is not a mere an accident or a surge of instantaneous overflow of

loneliness, failed love experiences or pangs of separations. His art is a profound meditation
over the multitudinal problems of class, partition, post-partition disillusioned generation of
young and old, feudalism vis--vis love and pangs of separation.

Batalvis artistic genius is a fine example of acute sense of history and its
complexities. His pain is highly considerate and inclusive of his socio-political
contemporaneity versified with the lyricality of sorrow,separation and love. His personal
experiences from partition i.e losing his village Bara Pind Lohtian (District Sialkot) and the
Naxalite movement vis--vis struggles from post-Independence India gave the pain which
brought a frenzied atmosphere and that pain becomes a meditative sorrow for Batalvis
celebration which is oft avoided and scorned upon.
Man is the conditioned product of his socio-cultural atmosphere and so are Batalvis
works which seem to be an embodiment of his childhood memories. His symbolism include
imageries of drains, thorns, chambe flowers, Chimbe saanp, Chamba Valley from the
agrarian life, money lenders, businessman, landlords from feudalist setting etc.

Him being the sage of modern romantic Punjab literature problematizes, meditates
and sees world through his eyes and sings maye ni maye mere geetan de naina vich birha di
radak pawey.

The protagonist vijay of film Pyasa played by Guru Dutt reflects the
contemporaneous times , conditions and also mirrors Batalvi as he is also agonised by the
scorching pain of people around him. Vijay becomes the voice of human despair and its
humaneness in the very famous song Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya. In an another film
Rockstar(2011) wherein Jordans songs are congenial to separation and love of Heer while
a social commentary and invocation to voices and disappointemnts of millennials.

And the same humane pathos are brought up by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda(1904-
1973) who also wa mistaken as the poet of just flesh and desires. But an elusive reading
places him broadly in Chilean socio-political sphere, his people and as an universally
appealing poet .

I come from the people and I sing for them .

My poetry is my sand and punishment
I am told you belong to darkness.
Perhaps, perhaps I walk towards light.

I am the man of bread and fish

And you will not find me among books
But with women and men:
 They have taught me infinite.

Similarly Batalvis poeticity lies with the fakeers,puthra tawa of humans fatalistic
existence, labour of bhatthi valli, fire logs and flames under the kadhai, tears as an
exchange of pain, cheek-chihada of birds, mada raah towards the sufi communion,
borrowed days and knowledge from fellow beings, lamm-salammi saru trees and youthful
days of young lovers and separations.

His painful songs of love and separation is a pure epitome of failures of mans desires,
urgency to achieve things in poem main ek shikra yaar banaya which superficially refers to
the loss of love and beloved while metaphorically it implies mans whole life as a struggle in
the pursuits of numerous shikra yaar which is alluring and engaging but majority of those
shikra yaar leave one in the halfway with disappointments and demands of maas ones
complete existential being.
It also alludes to material allurings and mans enchantment with them. The poem also
impinges upon us an India of sacrifices which feeds nomore on the mere complicacies and
struggles of common life but demands bloodied offerings in its drive for modernisation and
liberation.

In the song maye ni maye mere geetan de naina vich his poetic sensibilities are shedding
tears of fragmentation and separation of dreams, promises and aspirations. He revisits and
mourns the dead, long gone moye mitran . Birha di radak symbolises Indias dissociation
with promised and ever cherished dreams of development, secular, free orld having equity,
peace and harmony.

Ik kudi jida naam mohabbat hai which has been used recently in film Udta Punjab and
been sung by various singers lyrcises mohabbat and equates love with that of nation which is
lamm salmmi saru de kadd di ; the magnanimous Indian subcontinent and its identification
with the despaired state of hunger, overpopulation, un-employment, class differences,
debauchery even if its in its nascent stage.
umar aje hai marke agg di
Par naina di gal samajhdi hai

ye wo sahar to nhi jiski arzoo lekar

Chaley they yaar k mil jayegi kahin na kahin
Falak ke dasht mein taron ki akhiri manzil.

Faiz Ahmad Faizs Ye daagh daagh ujalaechos the dawn and days of Ajj din chadheya tere
rang warga wherein Batalvi wants to embark upon the day to immortalise himself by taking
on the blame of his death and

tere chumman pichhli sang warga

Hai kirna de vich nasha jiha
Kise chimbe sang de dang warga

Speaks of the dream of this new noble dawn at nights but the day is poisoned by the sombre
resemblance of the beloved and its false promises and societal failures.

Batalvi is a passionate lover, meditative soul placed in the socio-culturally shifting society.
He celebrates death and separation which are inherent part of suffering for the mortal men.
But Batalvis celebrations are necessary as an embrace in the process of moving towards
human upliftment, journey of empathy, sensibility and in the deliberate determined journey of
a poet, society or a nation like India moving towards socio-political and cultural liberation.

Another comparable text came unto the Indian Literary front Katra Bi Arzoo by Rahi
Masoom Raza just an year after emergency(1975-77) set up in a fictional locale in U.P. It is
also a critique of political and socio-cultural disillusioned world of India. Its world of Billu-
Deshraj, Prema-Asharam, Amma-Badrulhasan, etc. and their separation is an identical
fictious narration of love, desires and pang of separation in midst of socio-political schisms.

Kathakar ka udeshya sirf kahani kehna hai, apni baateinaropit karna nahi. Wah
tathast bhav se un yatnamay sthitiyon ka chitran karta hai jinmein dard ka ehsas
mit jata hai Dard hi dawa ban jata hai.

This elixir of pain, suffering is what Batalvi choses to distribute and celebrate the sorrow in
order to reflect on life and national conscience. His poetry is an expressionof Birha as an
embedded in human consciousness, love, and an assertion of eternal long journey for what
should be an usually one never attains in life.

He indeed is Birha Da Sulatan as the name given by Amrita Pritam in his epitaph , who has
conquered the pain, suffering and sorrow in order to celebrate life and human long journey
towards its completion.