Marsiya Writers with Fate Like Bahadur Shah Zafar

An Old Photograph of Graves of Muhib and Zakir in Panir Jagir 

Dr.Mazhar Naqvi

Panir Jagir, a small and sleepy village of Jammu & Kashmir state, needs to find map on the ‘Azadar World’ for being the last resting place of Mir Anis of Baltistan Hussain Ali Muhib and his worthy  nephew and great Shair-e-Ahlebait’ Muhammad Ali Khan Zakir. The story of the two great classic Balti poets is somewhat similar to Bahadur Shah Zafar and Begum Hazrat Mahal. They also lie buried away from their homeland like Zafar whose grave is in Yangon while Hazrat Mahal has her last resting place in Kathmandu. Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, was sent to Yangon –Capital of Myanmar by British on the charge of harboring ‘1857 Mutiny’. Hazrat Mahal escaped deportation as the British could never capture her. After losing in Lucknow, she took shelter in Terai forests and finally settled in Kathmandu with the permission of Nepali King. She died in Kathmandu and lies buried in a simple grave. While demand for bringing back the remains of Zafar is occasionally raised, no such demand has ever been raised for the Begum. Why is it so? The question has never been answered. Like Zafar and Hazrat Mahal, Muhib and Zakir also belonged to the royal family. Muhib’s father Ahmad Shah was the last independent ruler of Baltistan. While Zafar and Hazrat Mahal lived in exile due to British, Ahmad had to leave his homeland with his family following a Dogra invasion on Baltistan under the command of Zorawar Singh in 1840.

Dogras took Ahmad Shah, his family and two attendants – Abdullah Ameer Khan and Murad Khan to Srinagar as war prisoners. The Balti royals were exiled to Gomat in Jammu for nearly 3- years. Then, they were sent to dense forests of Kishtwar. Ahmad Shah did not live long and found dead one morning under mysterious circumstances. From Kishtwar, Dogras once again shifted royal Baltis Sri Nagar. They started living near Hari Parbat Fort. They also began preaching true Islam. Their growing popularity made the Dogras apprehensive and they thought as if Baltis in exile were preparing ground for a revolt against them. Royal Baltis received orders to leave Sri Nagar and move to Harwan. Their simple life, generosity and knowledge earned them a large following in Harwan also. This irked the authorities and they were finally dropped in the thick forests of Panir Jagir with the intention to keep them in isolation. How desolate the area was could be ascertained from the fact that only four houses of Baltis existed in Panir Jagir till 1970.

It was isolation and hardships of life in exile that shaped the thinking of Muhib as a marsiya writer of high caliber. His excellence is evident from the following piece from one of his marsiyas:

“Gho been hrtane Shaqsed Pa ZiZi
Akberi Feaq poeTsan ngin eto oungse

Khsambi Migi boi leakmo de gdongpo
na rgobongpo miglam po la thongse”

(Muhib says in the stanza that mother of  Ali Akbar was endlessly weeping by telling her beloved son’s gorgeous face and body seeing him through inner eyes………..Hazrat Ali was 18-year-old son of Imam Hussain and bore striking resemblance with Prophet of Islam. He was brutally martyred by Yazidi forces in Karbala).

Muhib also trained his nephew Zakir in the art of marsiya composition. His death in 1895 left Zakir to keep the legacy on and he performed his role in an exemplary manner. The craving for his lost homeland always haunted him. Apart from creative talents, he also longed to return to his homeland like Bahadur Shah Zafar who never forgot Delhi.      

During World War II, Zakir wrote a poem to lure Dogra King Hari Singh for securing permission to go to Baltistan. Some lines of the poem read:

“Hai tera naam sabzi, sar sabz hai mulk bi

Har giz khizaan na aaye, aye nau bahaar tujhko

Ab jane de watan mei, Maqpon ke qaidiyon ko

Jaakar waha duwa de, leel wa nihaar tujko…”

(Your name is everlasting, so is your kingdom

You are a new spring, may you never face autumn!

Let exiled prisoners return their homeland

They will pray for you…)

But even these ‘moving’ verses couldn’t melt Maharaja’s heart. Then, he immersed himself in elegiac poetry and died as a dejected person like Zafar in 1949.He lies buried next to his uncle Muhib in the graveyard of Panir Jagir. Both the graves are surrounded by an iron railing.A facelift has been given to the graves of the great poets by Balti Welfare Society of Jammu and Kashmir as recently as in June 2015. After lying for decades without any sign of identification, both the graves have now tomb stone depicting their brief life history and regal past. They have also earned the status of saints among the people of area. Indeed a blessing of Masoomeen who repay if anyone promotes their cause. As Muhib and Zakir remembered them in trying conditions in an unknown and unfriendly terrain, Masoomeen have blessed them with sainthood and reverence among people from all walks of life away from their homeland.(References available on request.Photo Courtesy Google image.)