After Harinder Singh Mehboob, it Hazikant Jethwani to be in the eye of the Sahitya Akademi storm. The Mehboob controversy was raised last year by blind Indira Gandhi loyalists who said that the award-winning collection of poems “Jhanan di Raat” glorified the killers of the former Prime Minister. In the case of Jethwani, who has been given the Sahitya Akademi award this year for his collection of poems captioned “Socha Jun Sooratun” (Images of Thought), the rabid and unthinking nationalists have created an avoidable controversy.
According to Jethwani’s critics, the poet has incited the people of Sindh not to bow their head before the national flag. To be fair to the author, it is a thoughtless and hurtful interpretation by those who know nothing about poetic license,
In an interview, Jethwani has had to clarify: “It is a question of interpretation. I have mentioned a particular day of a celebration and the flag. But at no point have said that it is the national flag. I could be talking about the RSS flag or the flag of a political party.”
When Jethwani says that it was not the national flag his anger was directed against, he should be granted the honesty of a poet. But, no his detractors want his head and want the Sahitya Akademi to be revamped for honoring a book which carried the controversial poem “Havalo.” They are prepared to accept the poet’s claim that his ire is not directed against any individual or institution. Most of his poetry is based on his response to social and political reality at the tame of writing. “We have had so many political parties ruling at the Center in the past few years and I have spared no one,” he says, The most remarkable thing about the Sindhi poet is that, in spite of being a government servant, he has not surrendered his freedom of speech. For the past many years he has been preparing the news bulletins for the Sindhi service of Akashvani and has never been accused of allowing his personal and poetic convictions to come in the way of his professional work. He has reported most of the major events in the country as objectively as any journalist is capable of. His personal anguish over what is happening is reflected only in his poetry.
The reason why Jethwani as a poet is not at peace with himself is that he has not been able to forget the trauma of the partition of the country and the virtual loss of his homeland, Sindh. Son of a freedom fighter, he still has vivid memories of travelling atop a train teeming with refugees and the “fear of bullets and the bloodshed all around.”
Another reason why the rebel in Jethwani is still alive is that, in spite of the fact that there are about 30 lakh Sindh is in the country, “our language has virtually withered. In Bombay the number of schools teaching Sindhi has come down from 30 to three. In Ajmer there is just one school teaching Sindhi. My first book was printed in Sindhi. But now there is not a single press in India which has the Sindhi typeface.”
Believe it or not, Jethwani last two books are direct prints of handwritten poems,
Here is another quote from the poet of protest. “In 1970 the minister promised to create a Sindhi Vikas Board ‘soon,’ in these 22 years the government has only repeated the promise,”
(Courtesy of “The Tribune”)
Article extracted from this publication >> October 16, 1992
