Latest news with #Faiz
Time of India
2 days ago
- Time of India
Police make sixth arrest in Sarvodayanagar shooting case
Lucknow: Ankit Chaudhary, the sixth member of a notorious gang wanted in connection with daylight shootings in Sarvodayanagar, was arrested late Saturday. Ankit was apprehended just a day after the arrest of Farman Ali, who allegedly opened fire at hotel owner Mursalin on May 25. The gang, known for moving in convoys of Thar and Fortuner SUVs without number plates, had earlier seen the arrest of four members — Aman Kaushal, Arshal Ghazi, Faiz, and Samriddh Singh, the latter carrying a Rs 10,000 bounty. Police say the group functions like a street cartel, projecting dominance through social media threats and public violence. Survivors of attacks are often coerced into joining the gang; refusal often results in retribution. With over two dozen criminal cases — ranging from extortion and assault to attempted murder — the gang's footprint spans multiple police stations in Lucknow. Several members are out on bail, allegedly exploiting legal loopholes to resume criminal activities. Police say the gang's signature style involves chasing targets for kilometres before firing bullets or hurling crude bombs. Shivam Singh and Ayush Arora, named in past attacks, remain key figures under scrutiny. In one 2022 case, 12 gang members on sports bikes ambushed Nadeem Siddiqui near Nilansh Water Park. In 2024, Arshal and Faizal Ghazi allegedly tried to run over a man with a Thar SUV. Aman Kaushal, now in custody, was linked to a bomb attack in Chandhan village last year. Notably, in 2019, Faiz reportedly ran over three men in a Safari due to an old feud, killing two. He was recently released on bail and allegedly resumed violent activities.
Mint
6 days ago
- Politics
- Mint
Omar Abdullah invokes Faiz's iconic couplet on hope to draw tourists back to Kashmir: ‘Lambi hai gham ki shaam'
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on 28 May chaired a meeting of administrative secretaries and other top officials in Gulmarg health resort as part of his governmentís efforts to bring back tourists to Kashmir after the deadly Pahalgam terror attack. The visit came a day after he held a symbolic cabinet meeting in Pahalgam, the site of the April 22 terror attack that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. Abdullah is leading from the front the campaign for revival of tourism in the Valley, which was hit by the unprecedented terror attack. The chief minister's visits have infused a new hope among stakeholders and increased the chances of a turnaround after the tourist season this year was washed out due to the terror attack. In Gulmarg, speaking with media, Abdullah also quoted a couplet of Pakistani Urdu poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, 'Dil na umeed to nahi, nakaam hi to hai, lambi hai gham ki shaam, magar shaam hi to hai,' as he tried to explain why optimism is pivotal in adversity. 'These lines, which I also quoted at the recent NITI Aayog meeting, serve as a reminder that even in dark times, hope must prevail. What happened recently marks one of the most difficult phases in recent years, but we have endured worse over the past four decades and always found a way to bounce back,' Abdullah was quoted as saying by local newspaper Greater Kashmir. The couplet loosely translates to: 'The heart is not hopeless, just defeated for now. The evening of sorrow is long, but after all — it is only an evening' Born in British Punjab (now in Narowal District, Pakistan), Faiz was considered one of the most celebrated, popular, and influential Urdu writers of his time. His revolutionary ideas remain widely influential in Pakistan and beyond. People who analysed his work often say that it was difficult to differentiate if Faiz's beloved in his Ghazals is his country or a person. Urdu poetry lovers cite this and other couplet as an examplify Faiz's ability to blend sorrow with resilience. The 'Dil Na Umeed to Nahi..' line is actually a couplet from Faiz's famous Ghazal 'Hum par tumhari chaah ka ilzam hi to hai…(All I am accused of is loving you)' that he wrote in 1954 while in Rawalpindi's Montgomery prison. On March 9, 1951, Faiz was arrested with a group of army officers under the Safety Act, and charged with the failed coup attempt against Liaqat Ali Khan's government that became known as the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. He was sentenced to death and spent four years in prison before being released After chairing the meeting at the Gulmarg Club on 29 April nestled in the meadows and surrounded by mighty pine trees and sparsely snow-clad mountains, Abdullah took a Gondola (cable car) ride to Kongdori, a bowl-shaped area that lies between Gulmarg and the summit of Apharwat mountain range where the first phase of the ropeway ends. At Kongdori, a group of tourists from Gujarat and Mumbai requested the chief minister's security detail for a meeting with Abdullah. The chief minister promptly acknowledged the request. He met the tourists with warm hand shakes and smile, and sought from them feedback about their Kashmir visit. Abdullah lauded the courage of the tourists, and happily posed for photographs and selfies with them. The chief minister appealed to the tourists to promote the Valley as a safe and peaceful destination. The visitors expressed gratitude for Kashmir's hospitality. They lauded the government for the arrangements that made their stay comfortable. The visits by Abdullah are seen as an effort counter the "boycott Kashmir" campaign. "Terrorists also want this, that you don't go to Kashmir. Those people are enemies of this country. They are not only enemies of Kashmir, they are enemies of the country. Of India. They are enemies of India who are running such a campaign. Because they are doing the same work as the terrorists did on April 22," Abdullah told NDTV. Two weeks after the Pahalgam terror attack, India on 7 May conducted precision strikes on at least nine terror camps in Pakistan in what is now known as 'Operation Sindoor'. India and Pakistan indulged in four days of military action post Operation Sindoor. The two nations agreed on an understanding to halt military action on 10 May. The CM also said that if Prime Minister Narendra Modi could convene a meeting to review tourism in J&K and tour operators from Maharashtra and Gujarat could visit the region voluntarily, not because they were invited, but because they want to contribute to the normalisation process. 'Then it was imperative for the J&K government to take the matching steps,' he said. Dil na umeed to nahi, nakaam hi to hai, lambi hai gham ki shaam, magar shaam hi to hai.
Indian Express
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Faiz's ‘Hum dekhenge' is not about country or religion. It is anti-oppression
In the Subcontinent, Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz's uncompromising 1979 poem Hum dekhenge ('We shall see') has mostly travelled with ease. This famed protest song, written against General Ziaul Haq's conservative rule, has outlived regimes, resurfacing in moments of protest across both sides of the border. But in recent years, it seems to be increasingly caught in the crosshairs of cross-border hostilities. Last week, Pushpa Sathidar, wife of actor and Dalit rights activist Vira Sathidar (who was seen as Narayan Kamble in Chaitanya Tamhane's National Award-winning film, Court) and two others, were booked under Section 152 of the BNS, for 'endangering the sovereignty and integrity of the nation', Section 196 for promoting enmity between groups and Section 353 for statements conducing to public mischief, after she organised a memorial for her husband in Nagpur. It is at this memorial that the members of Samata Kala Manch — an Ambedkarite cultural outfit that often speaks of class, caste and Brahminical hegemony — sang the Faiz poem. In the FIR, right-wing activist Dattatraya Shirke alleged that the poem by a Pakistani poet was sung at a time when the country valiantly fought Pakistani forces in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. He accused the organisers of using provocative language that could incite unrest. In this moment, I wonder about Faiz, the humanist, the star of Progressive Writers' Movement in undivided India, who opposed communalism, who condemned terrorism, whose writing grieved the scars of violence and lauded the resilience of the downtrodden, who wrote Hum dekhenge against the atrocities of his own government. In 2020, IIT Kanpur formed a panel to look into the recitation of the poem on their campus by some students. The committee had concluded that the poem was 'unsuitable to the time and place' and recommended 'counselling' for those involved. Faiz's work was also removed from school textbooks in 2022. One is left wondering whether all of this stems from a lack of understanding or simply an unwillingness to engage with a poet whose work is accessible, deeply documented and who spoke not for Pakistan or India but for a better, more inclusive world. Days after Partition was announced, when the streets on both sides of the border were rife with violence, a deeply anguished Faiz wrote, 'Yeh daagh daagh ujala, yeh shab gazidaa seher/ Woh intezaar tha jiska, yeh woh seher toh nahin' (This smudged first light, this daybreak battered by night/ This dawn that we all ached for, this is not the one) [Subh-e-Azadi (Dawn of Freedom)]. Faiz's poetry, its universality and its constant endeavour to uphold human dignity are what make it significant. Written in Beirut, where Faiz was living in a self-imposed exile, after his blunt political views were condemned for being 'anti-Pakistan', Hum dekhenge quickly became a symbol of dissent, first in Pakistan and then in the Subcontinent. It also found significance in ghazal singer Iqbal Bano's oeuvre, when she sang it in 1986 at Lahore Arts Council's Alhamra auditorium, a year after Faiz's death, clad in a black sari — an act of rebellion at a time when saris were banned at public venues and on television. She sang it with vigour, pausing often as the exhilarated thousands who'd gathered in and outside the hall chanted Inquilab zindabad. This rendition, in one of the darkest periods of Pakistan's history, took the song to the common man. It was surreptitiously recorded by a technician. The recording was banned; so was Bano from singing in public. They thought the poem was 'anti-Muslim'. In India, the poem has often been called 'anti-Hindu'. Which is it really? If one really pays attention, it's not hard to see that it is anti-oppression. The lines that bothered Pakistan then and bother India now, including in the current FIR are as follows: 'Jab arz-e-Khuda ke kaabe se, sab butt uthwaye jaayenge/ Hum ahl-e-safa mardood-e-haram, masnad pe bithaaye jaayenge / Sab taaj uchhale jaayenge, sab takht giraaye jaayenge (From the abode of God, when the icons of falsehood will be removed/ When we, the faithful, who have been barred from sacred places, will be seated on high pedestal/ When crowns will be tossed, when thrones will be brought down)'. Shirke has claimed that the thrones being brought down constitute a direct threat to the government. And yet, songs can't overturn governments; they can only gnaw at the illusion that power lasts forever. In 1989, almost a year after Ziaul Haq's death in an aircrash and the return of democracy to Pakistan, Bano performed at Delhi's Siri Fort, with the hall brimming with ghazal enthusiasts who had one demand from her — Hum dekhenge. If convicted, the punishment for Pushpa and the others can be imprisonment and a fine. That is for the courts to decide. But Hum dekhenge has and should endure — as a reminder of the courage art is capable of. To quote Faiz, 'Bol ke lab azaad hain tere/ Bol ki zubaan ab tak teri hai… Bol ki sach zinda hai ab tak/ Bol jo kuch kehna hai keh le' (Speak, for your lips are yet free/ Speak, for your tongue is still your own/ Speak, the truth is still alive/ Speak: say what you have to say).
Time of India
20-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Poetry on trial: When ‘Hum Dekhenge' meets Section 152
As the Business Head for The Times of India, I lead strategic initiatives and drive growth for one of the nation's most influential media organisations. My journalist friends believe I've crossed over to the proverbial dark side. Living on the edges of a dynamic newsroom, I dabble infrequently into these times that we live and believe in the spectatorial axiom – 'distance provides perspective'. LESS ... MORE There's an old newsroom rule: if satire starts feeling like reportage, double-check the dateline. Today's dateline reads Nagpur, May 20 '25 — and yes, the news is real. Three people, including filmmaker Veera Sathidar's widow Pushpa, now stare at 'anti-national' charges because someone recited Faiz Ahmad Faiz's Hum Dekhenge at a memorial service. The FIR leans on the shiny new Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, our fresh-minted successor to sedition. Let that sink in: a poem written in 1979 to needle Zia-ul-Haq's martial law is apparently dangerous for Indian sovereignty in 2025. My inner sub-editor wants to label this Irony, Grade A. My inner citizen just sighs. A couplet, a complaint, a country on edge According to the complaint, Faiz's verses 'raise an anti-establishment chorus' and risk communal disharmony. No arrests yet, the police assure us — they're merely investigating. Translation: the process itself is the punishment. Court dates, lawyer fees, the slow grind of bureaucracy — all for a few lines of Urdu that begin with a Quranic echo and end in goosebumps. Faiz's scaffolding is Islamic, sure — 'Wa-yabqaa wajhu rabbika…' — but the architecture is stubbornly secular. He topples tyrants, not temples; thrones, not theologies. The crown that gets tossed could belong to any despot with a Wi-Fi connection and a fragile ego. The lightning rod, of course, is 'An-al-Haq' — Mansur al-Hallaj's heretical 'I am the Truth.' Read slowly and you'll hear its Sanskrit cousin 'Aham Brahmasmi.' Two languages, one rebellion: the divine spark within every mortal throat. When Faiz smuggles Hallaj into his stanza, he isn't preaching Islam; he's detonating hierarchy. The truth, he suggests, is portable — and intensely personal. The image depicts people protesting with their fists up. (Image credit: AI generated) During the anti-CAA protests, Hum Dekhenge became the unofficial background score, equal parts anthem and lullaby. That resonance clearly spooks those who'd prefer their dissent nicely laminated and out of earshot. So here we are, hauling a 46-year-old poem into the witness box. Spare a thought for Pushpa Sathidar. She gathered friends to remember a husband who once acted in a film literally titled Court — a biting drama about the Indian justice system. Now life imitates cinema with cruel precision. Every time we criminalise a couplet, we shrink the idea of India by a syllable. The Constitution promises the 'freedom of speech and expression.' But freedom with asterisk after asterisk is just parole. Ask yourself: if Hum Dekhenge is communal, what isn't? Kabir's couplets? Amrita Pritam's Aj Aakhaan Waras Shah Nu? If metaphoric thrones are off-limits, our literature syllabus will soon look like a censored WhatsApp forward. Why this matters (Even if you never quote Faiz) Because poetry is a canary. When the state reaches for penal codes to silence a stanza, you can bet tougher tools await the prose. Journalism, cinema, academia — the queue forms quickly. Because conflating dissent with disloyalty is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook. Change the act number, rename sedition if you must; the choreography stays the same. Because a republic confident in its own foundations should laugh off a poem, not litigate it. Let's read Faiz aloud — in Urdu, Hindi, Bengla, even Klingon if that helps. Let's pair 'An-al-Haq' with 'Aham Brahmasmi' and watch the borders blur. Let's remind ourselves that metaphors don't carry Molotovs, they carry mirrors. And while we're at it, maybe update that FIR template. Replace 'endangering sovereignty' with 'triggering uncomfortable self-reflection.' At least it'll be honest. Faiz ends with a promise: 'Hum dekhenge, lazim hai ke hum bhi dekhenge.' We will see, it is inevitable that we too shall see. Yes, we will — the verdicts, the backtracking, the memes, the inevitable tumble of overreaching laws. Truth has survived worse regimes than ours. It usually does. The question is whether we'll still recognise ourselves when the curtain falls. Until then, keep the poems handy. They make excellent flashlights. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Time of India
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
An arresting moment
Police action against Prof Khan shows little logic & raises several larger questions Today, the Supreme Court will hear the appeal against the arrest of Prof Ali Khan Mahmudabad of Ashoka University. That the original complainants were a Haryana govt appointee and a BJP sarpanch shouldn't have made any difference to local police's response. But Khan was taken into custody for a social media post that contrasted 'rightwing commentators'' praise for Col Qureshi with their stand on 'lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing…'. Let's assume that some can disagree with him. Or that some may even hold the view that Khan's argument was ill-timed. But can anyone seriously argue that Khan allegedly committed the following crimes – 'sow communal divisions', 'endanger India's sovereignty and unity' and insulted 'the modesty of women'? Yet these were the crimes Haryana police charged him with. Among the provisions used was BNS Section 152, which bears a striking resemblance to IPC's sedition provision. A local court promptly sent Khan to 48 hours police custody. Khan's attempts to clarify his post after he received the Women's Commission's summons didn't make a difference. The Ashoka University faculty association's statement that the arrest was 'calculated harassment' was spot on. Many larger questions come up via this case. First, is there any application of mind by local police when complaints are made by those associated with governing parties in various states? Second, isn't it now clear that BNS Section 152 is as much a blunt instrument as the sedition provision was? Third, is criticism protected by free speech? For police and some politicians, the answer seems no. Recall here what SC had said when it quashed the case against Imran Pratapgarhi, who had posted a Faiz poem – the court said standards of free speech can't be decided by those 'who always perceive criticism as a threat…', that those taking objection should respond by 'counter-speech', not by demanding police action. But as SC yet again hears a case that should never have seen the light of day, all thinking Indians must also ask why a professor who praised, logically and cohesively, GOI's military response to Pahalgam found himself behind bars. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
