Our Greatest Poet We Didn’t Celebrate

In his lifetime, Rahi did not receive the adoration and respect he deserved, which is a sad reflection on us as a community

FOR all his stature as the greatest modern Kashmiri poet, Rehman Rahi died largely unnoticed. He also had a very modest funeral, otherwise hallmark of a deceased person’s social standing in our part of the world. As is generally the case with our cultural icons, he had long disappeared from our public discourse. People were barely conscious of his existence. Apart from a very small circle of connoisseurs of Kashmiri literature, his poetry wasn’t read or even known to a predominant majority of Kashmiris. In his lifetime, he did not receive the adoration and respect he deserved, which is a sad reflection on us as a community.

But his death has caused a deep sadness and a sudden recognition of his beautiful and profound poetry which addressed our condition as a people caught in an intractable situation. In our social media age, his videos and poetry are being circulated online and shared on WhatsApp. In some of the videos being shared, Rahi recites his own poetry. This has made our new generation aware of him.  One such poem is ‘Karav Kya’  which can be roughly translated as ‘There’s nothing that we can do.’  Every word, rhyme and rythm of the poem  speaks to our predicament.

Kathi zan assini vaar, karav kya

Veterin vaenij baar, karav kya

(What if we are powerless to speak, is there anything we can do)

(What if heart succumbs to the strain of grief, is there anything we can do)

But as with any great literary figure, Rahi will not die with his physical demise. His exquisite poetry will live on. A poetry that not only articulates the condition of his people – their sadness, loss, pain and lack of hope –  but also goes beyond it to deal with broader human condition. Witness to an extended span of Kashmir’s troubled history, right from the early twentieth century, Rahi crafted a whole new poetic idiom for Kashmir. One, which embraces in its aesthetic sweep not only the mysticism and folksiness of traditional Kashmiri poetry but also the larger spiritual and philosophical questions giving his work a universal appeal. Rahi was himself conscious of his achievement. Kashmiri poetry, he said in an interview, has always been rich in mystic elements, but it lacks intellectual content and modern sensibility. And he lent it that.

Rahi’s distinction lies in that he single-handedly honed Kashmiri, a language with a modest intellectual pedigree, into an authentic medium of  aesthetic and philosophical expression. He not only composed great poetry but in the process nurtured and  developed a language. He salvaged Kashmiri from the shadow of Persian and Urdu, which otherwise dominated the Valley’s literary scene.

Rahi was the youngest in India to receive  Sahitya Academy award in  1961. He went on to win Jnanpith award, India’s highest literary prize, the first Kashmiri to do so. However, his acceptance of the awards—more specifically, that of the latter—was viewed as a contentious political act that at the time alienated many of his admirers in the Valley. But Rahi was a far bigger poet than his awards, and he wore his greatness lightly. Eventually awards became extraneous to his overarching literary persona.

A perennial grouse of a section of our society against Rahi was that he scrupuloulsly steered clear of commenting on the prevailing turmoil in the Valley. But the criticism never obliged him to take a political stand. And perhaps, rightly so. As a creative being, he couldn’t be bound by the unconscious groupthink that pervades so much of our everyday conversation. He couldn’t take a mundane public stance circumscribed by the ephemeral political correctness of the day. This, however,  didn’t mean Rahi abdicated his responsibility. He stayed first and foremost a poet and expressed himself through his poetry. And much more powerfully and profoundly so than a routine statement would ever do.

Rahi’s panacea for our conflicted present was to return to our neglected mother tongue. Language, he once told me, represented a community’s basic identity rather than a political ideology.

“It (language) is the wellspring of a people’s unique outlook,  sensibility and cultural orientation,” he said while lamenting the squeezing space for Kashmiri in our society. “The mother tongue is the storehouse of the collective memory, which connects a community to its roots and helps it define itself.”

Unfortunately, not many of us have read his poetry. Let us hope that his death prompts us to recognise his greatness and claim him as our poet, a principal voice of Kashmiri sensibility. And, of course, may his passing also get us around to reading him.

Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer

• The author is the Political Editor of Kashmir Observer

Follow this link to join our WhatsApp group: Join Now

CLICK FOR DETAILS