‘I want India and Pakistan to make peace in my lifetime’ – Zehra Nigah

Posted on February 28, 2025 by beenasarwar

Some thoughts emerging from a chance encounter with one of Pakistan’s most respected and iconic progressive poets.

Indian and Pakistani writers and a filmmaker at the Faiz Festival, Lahore: (l-r) Dr Saif Mahmood, Atul Tiwari, Dr Arfa Sayeda Zehra, Dr Arvinder Chaman, Nandita Das and Zehra Nigah. Photo by Zarminae Ansari / The Joy of Urdu

Personal Political
By Beena Sarwar / Sapan News

“It’s the girls that give me hope,” says the celebrated poet and writer Zehra Nigah.

She leads a quiet life at her home in Karachi, without a mobile phone or email. Yet those who seek her are able to find her. Besides the school and college students who look to her for guidance, there are advertising companies looking for classy jingles. And there are organisers of literary festivals wanting to invite her.

These include Jashn-e-Rekhta, the three-day annual festival that celebrates Urdu — subtly countering the rightwing narrative that Urdu is a ‘Muslim’ language while Hindi is for ‘Hindus’.

When it started in 2015, Rekhta invited several prominent Pakistani poets and writers to participate. Its third edition in 2017 was the first time that there was no Pakistani participation in its sessions – due to the “prevailing atmosphere” in India, the organisers took “a considered decision” to not invite Pakistanis as “participants” but only as “guests”, reported Anita Joshua in the Telegraph, India. 

“Some see in this an instance of self-censorship to avoid trouble of the sort that has recently beset Bollywood films starring Pakistani actors,” commented Joshua.

The only Pakistani who accepted the invitation was Kishwar Naheed, then 77, another iconic Pakistani poet, for whom being invited as a ‘guest’ meant that she would at least be able to recite at the ‘mushaira’, the poetry recital session addressed by several poets, as she told me later. 

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The cross-border solidarity of Amrita Pritam and Fahmida Riaz, the student movement, and peacemongering today

Posted on January 28, 2024 by beenasarwar
Poster for the event honouring Amrita Pritam and Fahmida Riaz. Courtesy PIPFPD

The latest Southasia Peace Action Network (Sapan) newsletter we put out highlighted a commemoration in Delhi for two iconic feminist poets of Pakistan and India: How the friendship of two cross-border feminist poets symbolises our work; upcoming events, and more

Radical love, epitomised by the late Amrita Pritam and Fahmida Riaz is ‘one of the seeds of the revolutionary thought process’, to quote the Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) stalwarts who organised the event – Vijayan MJ, Tapan Bose, and Dr Syeda Hameed. Their consistent work over the decades for peace and justice is truly inspirational, and I feel privileged to know them personally.

I was also privileged to know one of the late poets personally, Fahmida ‘Khala’ (aunt) to me, who was close to my father Dr. M. Sarwar. He led the Democratic Students Federation (DSF), Pakistan’s first student movement while at Dow Medical College in Karachi, 1949-54.

I’ve uploaded archives about the movement here: drsarwar.wordpress.com. Principles of that struggle continue to show the way, like the importance of coming together across divides for a minimum common agenda. For DSF, it was student rights. For Sapan, it’s Southasia Peace. We need it now, for the sake of the people of the region, and beyond. 

The Videos section of the Dr Sarwar blog includes a playlist of video clips from the event held at the Karachi Arts Council in January 2010 to commemorate DSF and the student movement, a few months after my father passed on.

Compered by the actor Rahat Kazmi, the event featured speeches from young activists, students, and academics like Amar Sindhu, Alia Amirali, Ali Cheema, and Varda Nisar, as well as veterans like I.A. Rehman, besides the singer Tina Sani, Taimur Rahman and his band Laal, and Fahmida Riaz.

Fahmida Khala recited her poem ‘Palwashey Muskurao’ (Palvasha, smile), dedicated to daughter of late Afzal Bangash of the Mazdoor Kissan Party (Workers’ and Peasants’ Party), and the followers of other late leftist leaders. They may no longer be on this earth, but their principles and aspirations for human rights and dignity continue to show the way.

Fahmida Riaz reciting her poem ‘Palwashey Muskurao’ (Palvasha, smile), Jan. 2010, Karachi.

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