Dr. Ikramul Haq
In today’s Pakistan—where discourse is confusing and shrill, history is selectively remembered, and dissent is increasingly termed as insurgency—Faiz Ahmad Faiz matters not because his work offers answers, but it restores vital questions. Faiz’s work is universal asking what kind of society we wish to be, and what moral cost we are willing to pay for silence. His struggle and poetry remind us that resistance is not a choice; it is a way of being. Faiz’s true legacy is not birth celebration or death remembrance, but conscience. Faiz is not a poet of anniversaries; he is a poet of unfinished journeys.
Faiz’s verses refuse closure, because the society he loved never arrived at justice and equality. To remember Faiz today—especially in the shadow of continuing anguish in some parts of the country—is to ask whether we have learned anything from our own history and mistakes, or whether we are condemned to repeat it with new victims and familiar excuses.
Faiz’s humanism was never abstract. It was anchored in lived pain—of imprisonment, exile, betrayal by rulers, and the silencing of peoples whose only crime was to demand dignity and justice for all. That is why his poetry speaks with unsettling clarity to us today. The vocabulary has changed—“security”, “national interest”, “counter-terrorism”, “foreign hands” etc.—but the grammar of injustice and oppression remains intact.
Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1910-1984)—great poet, teacher, editor, critic, human rights activist, trade unionist, journalist, thinker and revolutionary—was part of a 20th-century pantheon including the likes of Pablo Neruda, Nazim Hikmet and Mahmoud Darwish. All of them worked under the banner of Afro-Asian Writers’ Association—a progressive organisation raising the voice of the downtrodden in post-colonial era. Faiz was editor of its prestigious magazine, Lotus. Since Faiz, Nazim, Mahmoud and Neruda were very close ideologically, their works have astounding resemblances, disseminating a universal message of quest for peace and justice for humanity at large.
From Dhaka to Quetta: Unlearned Lessons
After witnessing the wreckage of 1971, Faiz wrote “Dhaka se Wapsi Par” (On Return from Dhaka), a poem that is less about geography and more about estrangement within a shared homeland. Its opening couplet still chills the conscience:
Hum ke thehre ajnabi itni mudaraaton ke baad
Phir baneinge aashna kitni mulaqaaton ke baad
(After so many encounters, we are strangers now—
After how many meetings will we be close again?)
Faiz was not describing a temporary political setback; he was diagnosing a civilizational rupture. A state that treats its own people as suspects, insurgents and territories as colonies and dissent as treason eventually produces estrangement so deep that even shared history cannot bridge it.
We persist in explaining alienation as conspiracy, resistance as sabotage, and grief as ingratitude. We blame foreign hands without asking why our own hands have failed to deliver justice. Coercion may suppress symptoms for a while, but it cannot heal a broken social contract.
Security without Justice: Recurrent Illusion
Balochistan and some other frontier areas of Pakistan continue to be viewed primarily through a defence prism. Development is discussed, but always as an adjunct to security—roads to improve troop mobility, projects to “win hearts and minds”, schemes designed as pacification rather than empowerment. This approach reflects a deeper constitutional and political economy failure: confusing control with cohesion.
Faiz understood this instinctively. His poetry consistently warned against mistaking force for legitimacy. In Zindan-nama (Prison Journal), written behind prison walls, he reminds us that tyranny can smash lamps, but it cannot extinguish the moon.
Power that relies solely on coercion ultimately exposes its own moral bankruptcy.
The tragedy is that Pakistan has already paid the price of this illusion once. In 1971, the denial of political rights, economic justice, and democratic mandates was justified in the name of national security.
The result was not stability, but dismemberment. Yet, five decades later, the same arguments are recycled, as if history were a draft that can be endlessly revised without consequence.
Alienation & Economic Condition
Alienation is not a slogan; it is an outcome. It grows where resources are extracted without consent, where royalties are disputed and opaque, where local communities see wealth leaving their land but not returning as schools, hospitals, or livelihoods.
In conditions where exploiters imposed on their own people, enjoy free hand to plunder, identity hardens, resentment deepens, and resistance—however fragmented—acquires moral traction. Faiz was acutely sensitive to this political economy of despair. His humanism was inseparable from material justice.
Faiz never romanticize suffering; he indicted the structures that produced it. Representation without fiscal autonomy is symbolism, not federalism. Provinces may have assemblies and seats in parliament, but without real control over resources and development priorities, political participation becomes performative.
The Cost of Silence
One of the most haunting aspects of “On Return from Dhaka” is its emphasis on unspoken words—truths left unsaid until it was too late:
Un se jo kehne gaye thay “Faiz” jaan sadqa kiye
Un-kahee hi reh gai woh baat sab baaton ke baad
(Faiz, what you had gone to say, ready to give your life—
Those words remained unspoken after all else was said.)
This is not merely poetic regret; it is a political warning. Societies do not collapse only because rulers commit excesses; they collapse because citizens, intellectuals, and institutions remain silent. Struggle for fundamental rights in many areas today confronts Pakistan with a similar moral test. Will we speak now, or write elegies later?
Silence is often justified as prudence, patriotism, or realism. Faiz rejected all three when they became alibis for injustice. For him, patriotism without compassion was a hollow virtue. A country, he believed, survives not by enforced obedience, but by voluntary belonging.
Faiz’s Humanism
Faiz was neither a separatist nor an apologist for violence. He was, however, uncompromising in his belief that unity imposed through fear is no unity at all. His humanism demanded dialogue, empathy, and structural reform—not cosmetic gestures.
Faiz understood that tyranny thrives not merely on violence, but on the erosion of imagination. His answer was to protect imagination itself—to ensure that even in prison, exile, and censorship, the human spirit retained its capacity to dream.
Applying Faiz’s moral lens to present day Pakistan leads to uncomfortable conclusions. Human rights violations cannot be dismissed as collateral damage. Killing of innocent citizens from any side cannot be justified under any pretext. Terrorism cannot be justified at all. Missing persons cannot be rationalized as security necessities. Development cannot be credible when delivered through coercive structures. These are not “soft” concerns; they are foundational to national integrity.
As it is consistently argued in these columns, socio-economic justice is not a concession to be granted at the convenience of the centre; it is a constitutional obligation and a strategic imperative. Education, healthcare, clean water, housing, and meaningful employment are not peripheral issues—they define citizenship itself.
Reimagining the Federation
Faiz believed in the possibility of renewal, but only through honesty. Remember his refrain: “Chale chalo ke woh manzil abhi nahin aayi.” The destination has not yet arrived, but it will never arrive if we keep walking in the wrong direction.
Time has come to for all stakeholders and institutions for a fundamental rethinking of federalism and fiscal equalization in practice. Real provincial autonomy over resources. Fiscal transparency that allows citizens to see where their wealth goes. Civilian supremacy in governance. Local governments with real authority. Dialogue anchored in economics and dignity, not suspicion.
These are not radical demands; they are the minimum conditions of a functioning federation. Denying them in the name of security only ensures perpetual insecurity.
Faiz as Conscience, Not Ornament
On Faiz’s 115th birth anniversary, it is tempting to recite his verses, organize seminars, and post tributes—while ignoring the living injustices he wrote against all his life. That would reduce Faiz to an ornament, stripped of his moral sting.
Faiz belongs with the oppressed, not with official ceremonies. His poetry stands with the all those who are searching for their missing ones, with the youth who sees no future in his own land, with all those who feel like strangers in a country that claims them as citizens.
The question Faiz left us with is brutally simple: after how many more encounters will we become close again. For all Pakistanis—and for state—the answer depends on whether we choose justice over denial, empathy over arrogance, and humanity over fear. Until then, Faiz’s words will continue to haunt us—not as nostalgia, but as indictment.
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Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996.