Ibne Safi goes
international, again. In a way he was always international since his
books used to be published simultaneously in both Pakistan and India.
Yet his work was not available in English. Random House India has now
made available Safi’s Imran Series translated into English by Bilal
Tanweer. Titled The House of Fear, the collected volume containing the
first two novels is already out. Blaft Publications is soon to publish
some novels of Jasoosi Duniya translated by the renowned Shamsur Rehman
Faruqui.
The Hindi editions, meanwhile,
are being published by Harper Collins, India. Unlike the earlier Hindi
versions of the 1950s and 60s, the names of the heroes Ahmad Kamal
Faridi and Ali Imran have not been changed to Vinod and Rajesh. Perhaps
this is the right moment to reconsider how much was lost when society
failed to locate Safi’s work in the context of the early years of
independence.
The author was born Asrar Ahmad
in April 1928 in Nara, a small town near Allahabad. One of the earliest
influences on him was Tilism-i-Hoshruba, the gigantic Urdu classic
(currently being translated into English with the first volume already
available). The next most important influence was Rider Haggard, whose
novels She and The Return of She he read soon after moving to Allahabad
for higher education.
When Safi started writing
fiction and poetry he followed the literary trends of those days, for
example the Progressive Writers’ Movement, but became disillusioned with
them some time around 1942.
It seems that he had come to
believe that purely speculative theories did not provide a very sound
basis for collective development of societies – at least that is the
impression one gets from his autobiographical essays such as ‘Mien Nay
Likhna Kaisay Shuroo Kiya’ (‘How Did I Start Writing’) and ‘Baqalam Khud’
(‘In My Own Hand’). However, he kept the company of the leading
progressive writers for as long as he stayed in India, which was till
August 1952.
The catastrophic pillage and
massacre of 1947 confirmed, at least to him, his doubts about the
ability of pure speculation to prevent social tragedies. ‘I kept
thinking and thinking, and arrived at the conclusion that such things
will keep happening until the human being learns to respect the law,’ he
later wrote.
In the later part of 1951 a
comment made by someone to the effect that only sexual stuff could sell
in Urdu provoked Asrar to launch a movement against the contemporary
trends of high literature. He picked up Ironsides’ Lone Hand, a
detective story by Victor Gunn and adapted it according to the tastes of
the Urdu reading public, adding some literary flavour of his own and
remodeling the two main characters to represent his ideals.
Dilair Mujrim which was
published by Nakhat Publications in Allahabad and distributed by A.H.
Wheeler & Co. in March 1952 sold like hot cakes.
Asrar Ahmad, who had by then
adopted the pen name ‘Ibne Safi’ (‘the Son of Safi’, since Safiullah was
the name of his father) had proven his point.
He migrated to Pakistan in
August the same year and spent the rest of his life in Karachi. By the
time he died on July 26, 1980 he had written 240 mystery novels based on
the stock characters Faridi, Hameed and Ali Imran. By his own account,
except for eight adaptations, all of them were based on original plots
and almost all were published simultaneously in Allahabad and Karachi
since the author remained equally popular on both sides of the border.
Literary critics labeled Safi a
mere ‘popular writer’ and his fiction as ‘pulp’. This overlooks the fact
that writers of pulp fiction seldom have explicitly reformist agendas
(Ian Fleming once justified the promiscuity of James Bond by saying
something to the effect that he was catering to an age where courtship
was being replaced with seduction).
Not so with Safi. He was
reinforcing the messages of commonly respected reformers such as Sir
Syed Ahmad Khan, the Ali Brothers and Allama Iqbal, while, ironically,
the writers of ‘high literature’ were trying to outdo each other in
selling sex and sadism. Also, the works of Safi touched upon a wider
range of contemporary issues – and his literary allusions covered a more
diverse range of art, literature and philosophy – than any other writer
who ever wrote fiction in Urdu.
These happen to be a few of the
issues that were brushed under the carpet by gatekeepers of literary
establishments long ago. More issues can be raised, and they are very
likely to be raised now that interest in the work of Safi is about to
scale new heights.
Online information about the
life and works of Ibne Safi can be found at
www.ibnesafi.info and
www.wadi-e-urdu.com, both non-profit
websites supported by his family, which also maintains a Facebook page
at
http://www.facebook.com/ibnesafi.
http://www.dawn.com/2010/12/05/profile-from-pakistan-with-love.html
