The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in literature, South Asian studies, Pakistan, gender studies, feminism, political science, and related fields.
Portrayals of Women in Pakistan: An Analysis of Fahmīdah Riyāẓ’s Urdu Poetry is by Dr. Réka Máté, a lecturer at the Institute of Indology and Tibetan Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU), Germany.
The TU Library collection also includes other books about the literature of Pakistan.
The library also owns a short story collection with fiction written by Fahmida Riaz.
Fahmida Riaz was an Urdu writer, poet and activist from Pakistan.
The author of more than 15 books of fiction and poetry, she remained at the center of controversies.
The themes in her verse were at the time considered unusual for women writers.
Fleeing the dictatorship of General Zia-ul Haq, Riaz sought refuge in India and spent seven years there.
Some critics have compared Riaz to such celebrated writers as Pablo Neruda, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
The TU Library collection includes several books by and about Neruda, Sartre and Beauvoir.
On the subject of censorship, Riaz stated:
One should be totally sincere in one’s art, and uncompromising. There is something sacred about art that cannot take violation. One should read extensively to polish expression.
She also suggested:
Feminism has so many interpretations. What it means for me is simply that women, like men, are complete human beings with limitless possibilities. They have to achieve social equality, much like the Dalits or the Black Americans. In the case of women, it is so much more complex. I mean, there is the right to walk on the road without being harassed. Or to be able to swim, or write a love poem, like a man without being considered immoral. The discrimination is very obvious and very subtle, very cruel and always inhuman.
Dr. Máté describes her research as follows:
My research examines the connection between progressivism and feminist movements in the Indian subcontinent by looking into 47 hitherto untranslated poems of Fahmīdah Riyāż and analysing their themes regarding the time of Fahmīdah’s writing from a historical perspective. Drawing from a philological approach, thereby transliterating and translating the 47 poems, compiled in various nuances of Hindī and Urdū (Hindustānī) into English I tried to carve out the historical, political, social and personal influences reflected on Fahmīdah’s work and life to illustrate an image of women in Pakistan. This research aims at understanding South Asian social structures from a feministic lens and contributing to the literature about South Asia.
Here are some examples of poems by Fahmida Riaz that have been posted online:
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Come Let Us Create A New Lexicon
Come let us create a new lexicon
Wherein is inserted before each word
Its meaning that we do not like
And let us swallow like bitter potion
The truth of a reality that is not ours.
The water of life bursting forth from this stone
Takes a course not determined by us alone
We who are the dying light of a derelict garden
We who are filled with the wounded pride of self delusion
We who have crossed the limits of self praise
We who lick each of our wounds incessantly
We who spread the poisoned chalice all around
Carrying only hate for the other
On our dry lips only words of disdain for the other
We do not fill the abyss within ourselves
We do not see that which is true before our own eyes.
We have not redeemed ourselves yesterday or today
For the sickness is so dear that we do not seek to be cured
But why should the many hued new horizon
Remain to us distant and unattainable
So why not make a new lexicon
If we emerge from this bleak abyss
Only the first few footsteps are hard
The limitless expanses beckon us
To the dawning of a new day
We will breathe in the fresh air
Of the abundant valley that surrounds us
We will cleanse the grime of self loathing from our faces.
To rise and fall is the game time plays
But the image reflected in the mirror of time
Includes our glory and our accomplishments
So let us raise our sight to friendship.
And thus glimpse the beauty in every face
Of every visitor to this flower filled garden
We will encounter ‘potentials’
A word in which you and me are equal
Before which we and they are the same
So come let us create a new lexicon.
Fahmida Riaz Monday, April 9, 2012
*
The Soft Fragrance of my Jasmine
The soft fragrance of my jasmine
Floats on the breeze
Plays with the hand of the wind,
Is setting off in search of you.
The soft fragrance of my jasmine
Has curled around my wrists,
My arms, my throat.
It has woven chains about me.
It lurks in the fogging night,
Seeps through the darkening cold.
Rustling through the leafy thicket,
It’s setting off in search of you.
Translated by Patricia L. Sharpe
Fahmida Riaz Tuesday, May 23, 2017
*
Purva Anchal (On a train through Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India, under curfew)
How beautiful is this land!
Beautiful and long-suffering.
A shawl of buckwheat green
Flutters in the wake
Of this train speeding
Through the East.
As far as the eye can see,
Green fields and granaries.
This land is a peasant woman
Coming home from the fields
With a bundle on her head.
Home?
Where angry vultures wheel
Over the rooftops and threaten to lunge,
Any minute, in any direction
The grass is wet with dew,
Unless my tear-glazed eyes
See only tears.
Brick and stone
Reduced to rubble.
Mosque and temple
Still locked
In the same old squabble.
Every brow
Disfigured by a frown.
A son of this land,
Laid long ago to rest,
Wakens now
To bring you peace.
Listen to Kabir,
Who pleads with you:
Wars of hatred
Do no honour to God.
Both Ram and Rahim
Will shun a loveless land.
Near a bamboo grove
Across the unruffled River Sarju
By a lotus pond thick with bloom
Stands a Buddha tablet
A message from the wise.
‘When two are locked in conflict
And ready to lose their lives,
Neither can win in the end,
Unless both do—and equally.
A battle lost by either
Will be fought and refought
Until both are destroyed
And both are equal losers.’
Such are the paradigms of war,
Such the insight of the Buddha.
Why are we, his heirs, so blind?
The Pandit and the Mullah
Are flattered and hung with garlands
And feasted and housed like lords,
While you dear people of the land
Are drowned every time
In the bloodbaths they inspire.
Translated by Patricia L. Sharpe
Fahmida Riaz Tuesday, May 23, 2017
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)