Meanings and Memories of Four Momentous Days: Shifting Narratives

A year after India’s Independence, an Indo-Pak mushaira was held at the Red Fort in India. It was, among others, attended by the first Prime Minister of the country, Jawaharlal Nehru. The occasion saw a gathering of a large number of poets from the two newly created states. Ustad Daman, the well-known people’s poet from Pakistan and a close friend of Nehru, also read out his compositions during the course of the event. On this occasion he read out one of his famous poems, ‘Lali akhian di pai dasdi ay, roay toosi vi ho, roay asi vi aan’ (The redness of the eyes tells us/ That both of us have wept). The poem, which beautifully highlights the absurdity and the pain of Partition, moved everyone present and left many, including Nehru, in tears. Daman was, of course, not the only one who had expressed his anger, pain and utter helplessness through poetry. There were several other prominent figures, including Amrita Pritam, Saadat Hasan ‘Manto’, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ismat Chughtai and Krishan Chander, among others, who expressed similar sentiments through literary works to decry Partition.