Gul Khan Naseer’s vision of an Ideal Baloch By Munir Ahmed Badini
Gul Khan Naseer’s vision of an Ideal Baloch
By Munir Ahmed Badini
It is very difficult to get acquainted oneself with the vision of a poet and a creative writer. The difficulty arises of the fact that, unless you yourself have passed through the same experience then possible you might not be successful in comprehending the full meaning of a creative mind’s vision about things and events! Therefore the work of a critic is very difficult, and mostly critics analyze the work of a poet and writer through their own so called set principles of criticism. And I do apologize for such a blunt attack on the literary criticism and on the critics! But I do confess that no creative work perhaps is chiseled out and is refined unless looked at critically. However, the deep experience on the vision of a poet and a writer remains still shrouded in a mystery! And this mystery in fact is the _____ of a creative mind which perhaps is beyond the comprehension of the critic but also beyond the comprehension of the creative mind himself! And this mystery is the meaning of all creativity be it religious, poetic, philosophic or scientific discovery. And it is this mystery which compels a poet to compose poetry and a writer to unite his literary piece into words which are the only tools available to the creative mind or for that matter to all of us as we the ordinary people also require a language through which we run or day to day business and to that language our minds might have become deaf and dumb!
The vision of a poet or a creative writer is in fact an attempt on his part to create unity in a world which is chaotic and disintegrated into many parts and an ordinary man’s words and sentences can only describe what they see on the surface of this chaos but what is beneath and deep is something invisible from the eyes of an ordinary man! It is the inner eye of a poet and a creative writer who brings a sense of unity into our broken, distorted and chaotic expressions of life. And this vision is far different than what we perceive through our five senses! It is a poet’s vision, a new world created out of this chaos which surrounds us all!
Therefore, if we define a poet or a creative writer’s vision then we can say with all our confidence that vision is a deep experience which can’t be defined but can only be felt and experienced! It is the lived experience of ours, deep into the folds of our inner self. And a poet’s words ignite and incite that to bring soul towards the heights where we feel ourselves one with the world and our all sense of separation and alienation are eliminated and we feel going along the track which the poet’s words have created for us! And this is very rich and elevating experience for which we salute our poets who bring us face to face with such joy and happiness, as John Keats has said that a thing of beauty is joy forever!
And now moving onto describing the vision of Gul Khan Naseer’s Ideal Baloch. I must say that this vision of G.K Naseer was then with him long before he faced the odd of his day to day life. Rather his political life and its hazards sharpened this vision into a reality. He had the deep sense to describe a Baloch as he had perceived this vision in his early youth through the norms and customs of his tribal family which believed in truthfulness, sacrifice, love, tolerance, bravery, courage and hospitality. And he inherited these qualities from his mother and from his father’s sides. His mother was the daughter of the head of Rakhshani tribe, Sardar Rahim Khan who had rebelled against the Farangis and had fought against them and who was once incarcerated in a Kabul prison. And from his father’s side his forefathers were given land and water at Noshkay in compensation to their land and water at Kalat and its surroundings. They were sent by the Khan here at Noshkay to protect the Baloch borders with Afghanistan, being valiant and reward branding warriors of Mengal tribe. Therefore, Gul Khan Naseer’s early perception of the history of his tribe like the history of his land Balochistan did exert one way or the other at the back of his mind at a very early stage and he was proud of his ancestry and its legacy. Later on in his life when he devoted his entire life to Balochistan and Baloch cause his early vision of Baloch learnt from his family’s ethical code which later he developed as his philosophy of life and his vision being of aggressive Baloch Nationalism to some! And his urban qualities as a poet had ignited more his vision of aggressive Baloch Nationalism. And I think that if he were not a poet then possibly he wouldn’t have played an important role in the history of Balochistan. It was his vision of Baloch which inspired him to bear the brunt of history and bear its vigours, bias, anguish, loneliness, rejection, alienation and what not! And I have come to this conclusion regarding G.K Naseer’s vision that first came his poetry and then his politics. Politics was a tool, a way of life for him to translate his vision into reality. And the politics of his lifetime were under the yolk of British rule. However, he had experienced the fresh air of independence when living with the Khan of Kalat who thought of himself a sovereign ruler between Iran, Afghanistan, India and the Arabian sea. But G.K Naseer and his political colleagues were visualizing dark days of the Khan whose rule had always been under the threat of the tribal chief and Sardars, and who were now long into good terms with the Britishers each at his own ignoring Khan of Kalat and his so called sovereignty! But G.K Naseer now hardly entrenched into the politics of Balochistan couldn’t sit alone composing poetry, but finding himself in the thick of the battle he tried to warm up his best, thanks to his poetry. Knowing fully well that the times in which he lived didn’t suit to his vision of Balochistan and Baloch. The Baloch society was illiterate, tribal and under the influence of tribal chiefs and above all in the paramounting British Raj controlled from Dehli and Bombay through its representative A.G.G at Shal.
Therefore, G.K Naseer wanted to attach himself with the progressive forces beyond Balochistan borders to get inspiration and hope to a better future for the Baloch and Balochistan. The Khan, the tribal chiefs and tribalism of old times was not a remedy to the continuous old ills of Baloch and Balochistan unless coupled with a new vision. And following the new emerging trees of progress and prosperity, he became member of a political party which represented the leftist followers of the country.
And at Karachi, Peshawar, Dacca and Lahore he met with progressive writers, intellectuals and political workers. His vision broadened and his poetry reached to its heights. Through his poetry he visualized a Baloch who was clear headed, brave, courageous, tolerant, firm, confident and a believer in the upcoming geo-political changes for socialism, liberalism and nationalism.
But G.K Naseer’s poetry remained Baloch focused although his politics was based on the universal principles of justice and fair play to all human beings but in his poetry he was prejudiced to Baloch cause alone, and he never moved an inch from that vision. The land of Balochistan was a Macahani Mass, motherland and Baloch was the son of this mother whose lips were dry and in whose eyes were tears and who gave the looks of misery, pain and anguish!
But his vision of Baloch was linked with an ideal Baloch. Though this vision created by G.K Naseer didn’t exist on this planet but belonged to the heavens! But Naseer couldn’t avoid being roused to this ideal to bring it from the heavens to the earth. Like Pluto he too had his ideal world. For G.K Naseer suffered in history and had to go through a hard struggle and in his poetry he struggled hard to bring the ideal to the real and is never even tired of his efforts. And it is this quality of G.K Naseer which differentiates him from the rest of our poets whose town was more localized and regional without an ideal vision. Only in G.K Naseer’s poetry do we find an expanded vision of Baloch and Balochistan who is a universal Ideal Man, but who in the annuls of history is renown as Baloch with his distinct national characteristics. This distinct national characteristic is not something supreme in G. K Naseer’s poetry like Superman of Nietzsche or like the Marde Mujahid of Iqbal in search of a religious ideal, but an ideal whose base is a tribal Baloch society whose form no doubt changing but its contents are the same! And Gul Khan wants to change the form of Baloch society so that the Baloch may find the ideal as real and modern with new thoughts and ideas adapting to the modern changing world but keeping intact his essence, his content. And this essence and contents are Baloch’s courage, thankfulness, confidence, resilience and love of his freedom his family and legacy.
G.K Naseer sometimes laments on the plight of a Baloch when he finds him in his slavery, i.e political slavery, cultural slavery and economic slavery which is all due to his lack of education and continuous old tribalism which the Britishers imposed upon him through the divide and rule policy and through repression of all kinds.
This broader vision of Baloch is perhaps not found so sparsely in our Classical and modern Balochi poetry both as found in G.K Naseer’s poetry where his vision is expanded on the bed rock of our classical poetry. G. K Naseer had a deep vision of Classical Balochi poetry of Mullah Fazul, Mullah Qasim, Malik Deenar, Reki, Mast Beeberg and many others. It is his vision of modern ideal Baloch which is lacking in the rest of our Classical poets and this vision exists only in G.K Naseer’s poetry which has taken Balochi literature to its depths.
Lastly one final word on the vision of G.K Naseer that his vision is like a boxing punch which when hits the man takes a ____ and the test of his life is based on this hurting pain of that punch…. Now the poet himself may interpret his vision and his creativity and the creative powers in many different ways but the fact of the matter is that the poet sees his inner and the outer worlds in this hurt which he might have once confronted after his birth or before his birth, who knows? And receiving this punch he sees the life in that way i.e rolling, and hurting in pain and anguish bearing well that is meaningless around him, but more even forgetting the pain of his creativity the punch! Therefore, G.K Naseer suffered to that punch of his life and remained true to it to his last. The critics may find faults in his poetry or may find inspiration but to the poet and to the creative writer it is that punch and its pain which matters most irrespective of all value judgments of good and bad!
G.K Naseer is no more with us but sometimes we do feel that punch in the inner most depths of our being which compelled Naseer towards poetry, and perhaps compelled us to feel the brunt of that punch on our faces. Naseer faced and lived that hurt and expressed it into his immortal words through which we reach its meaning. Can we really find out what the exact vision of a poet is? Poets and creative writer’s world is a mystery, therefore, we have to understand our mystery before understanding the mystery of G.K Naseer, Rumi, Iqbal and Goethe’s Poetry.-