Born on this day: Remembering Faiz Ahmad Faiz and his poetry of passion

Exclusion, ostracism, imprisonment and other variations of imaginable/unimaginable infliction seem to be the universal fate of great minds and souls and those who stand for truth. History has been unkind to its heroes and has chased them to death. As we trace this trajectory, we see Socrates holding his hemlock, Jesus carrying his cross, Hallaj fleshed alive, Meera tortured, Sarmad beheaded. Their truth displeased their contemporaries and upset the societies they lived in. “Truth is an explosive, in whose presence everything is in danger”, remarked Nietzsche. No wonder that power and societies have always been afraid of truth and pushed it to margins, lest it usurp the tyranny and brings down “the earthly Gods” from their raised pedestals. The phenomenon that Faiz would depict as:

“When, from the seat of the Almighty
every pedestal will lie displaced…”

Art and truth have been eternal twins and art has been seen as the expression of truth in its most unalloyed form. That is why artists have been haunted by the power and made to suffer on one pretext or the other. Poetry, the sublime artistic expression is the most potent and radical way of articulating the truth. Poets have mostly stood on the wrong side of the power...

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