(This article was written by my father, Sh. Sham Dass Khanna. He was the News Editor of the Urdu daily, Hind Samachar. He was himself a great poet of Urdu and was the literary follower of Josh Sahib.)
KAAM HAI MERA BAGHAWAT
NAAM HAI MERA SHABAB
MERA NA’ARA INQUILAB-O-
INQUILAB-O-INQUILAB
(My function is to revolt and my name is youth. My slogan is revolution and total revolution.)
This couplet vividly symbolizes the revolutionary spirit of great poet, Shabbir Husan Khan, whose nom de plume is Josh. He throughout his life preached revolution and worked for it. He raised a banner of revolt against society, social, political and economic set up of the country and more over his family. He selected his own way, adopted his own principles and gave a new message to humanity.
Born on December 5, 1898 in Malihabad (Oudh) in Uttar Pradesh, Josh had his early education in Husainbad, Lucknow and Aligarh and obtained his senior Cambridge diploma from St. College, Agra. He joined ‘DARUL TARJUMA’ in 1925, where he came in contact with well known writers, poets and scholars of his time.
Later, he moved to Delhi, where he was appointed to head a Government of India publication, Aaj Kal, a monthly magazine. He migrated to Pakistan around 1956 and was appointed there as a literary advisor to the Urdu Development Board. A pupil of a well known poet Aziz Lakhnawi, the first collection of his prose and poetical composition, Rooh-e-Adab, was published in 1920. He had written some fifteen books, some of which are Shola-o-Shabnam, Ravish-o-Rang, Junoon-o-Hikmat, Saif-o-Subu, Yaadon Ki Barat and Shair Ki Raatein.
Josh spent the last year of his stormy controversial life of struggle in virtual oblivion in the Pakistani capital. A third generation poet in his family, Josh regretted till his death his migration to Pakistan, which attracted the wrath of fanatic Mullahs and the suspicion of the Military regimes of Pakistan. Even as early as December 22, 1955 Josh realised his mistake and even shared it with one of his friends in India, Diwan Singh Maftoon, an Editor of Riyasat weekly, expressing his unhappiness and worries as to what would happen to his wife and family after his death.
Tall, well built, handsome with flowing hair, Josh, a Pathan had fiery temper but at the same time he was equally sentimental, especially in religious affairs.
Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad fired his revolutionary zeal. While freedom struggle inspired him, youth and beauty bewitched him. A versatile poet of his era, Josh equally dominated in Nazm and Ghazal, but preferred the former as better vehicle for giving expression to his feelings of revolutionary thought, patriotism and anti-colonialism. Though a scion of the feudal aristocracy, he identified himself with the toiling masses and the working class and preached communal harmony.
His ‘MARSIA’ (elegy) on the death of Mahatma Gandhi is considered a master-piece in Urdu poetry. He was equally adept in prose writing of which ROOM-i-ADAB and YADON KI BARAT, a biographical account, are the best specimens. The latter became controversial though it was regarded as a trend setter in prose writing of those days.
Fond of good things of life, economic constraints took him to Bombay for a while, before he left for Pakistan in 1956. In Bombay, he wrote songs for films, some of which became hits, but literary critics accused him of “prostituting with his pen.”
Even in his age disregard for delicacy elegance colloquial usage of language courtesy and manners, Josh always regarded the Lucknow school as his bible. This is how he summed up this aspect of life :
TABIYAT KHUSH HUI AE HUMNASHIN
KAL JOSH SE MIL KAR
ABHI AGLI SHARAFAT KE
NAMUNE PAYE JATE HAIN.
Stung by allegations of being a traitor and an Indian agent, soon after raaching Pakistan, Josh gave a statement to a newspaper in Karachi declaring that he had decided to lead a solitary life so that nobody even know whether he was living or dead even if he had ever been a poet. He could not but mourn :
IN BUZDILON KE HUSAN PAR
SHAIDA KIYA HAI KYON
NAMARD KAUM MEIN MUJHE
PAIDA KIYA HAI KYON
(Why have you made me enamoured of the beauty of these cowards. Oh! why have you given me birth in a race of impotents.)
Fed up, he beseeched his friends in letters to pray to Allah to take away Josh from this world immediately. Yet he had once said
MUDATTON ROYA KARENGE
JAM-o-PAIMANA MUJHEY
(For a long time to come, the goblet and the wine measure would bemoan my loss.)
One of the last of his genre, his contemporary and somewhat elder, Raghupati Sahai, well knkown as Firaq Gorakhpuri, has spoken highly of his poetry as well as the man himself. As for ability and contribution to literature, it was always too close to call. But at the mushairas (poetical symposia), Josh always recited his piece after Firaq, a sort of recognition of his seniority.
As Josh was from a family of the Taluqdars, this background left a lasting imprint on him. When P.C.Joshi, as Secretary General of the Communist Party of India, was scouting for important Urdu poets to strengthen the cultural wing of the party, he cast his net as far as Josh, but inspite of his revolutionary ideas, he could never be cast in that role. He remained the feudal aristocrat till his death. No doubt, he did compose highly rhetorical and powerful anti-colonial poetry during the freedom struggle, which earned him the title of Shair-i-Inquilab (Revolutionary Poet), a fact which brought him close to leaders like Mr. Nehru; but a factor that contributed towards sustaining this question may well have been a shared aristocratic demeanour.
Through his fiery poems against the British imperial rulers, Josh Malihabadi inspired the Indians in their fight for freedom and defence of the country.
