February 13, 2026 marks 115th birth anniversary of Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1910-1984), Lenin-prize winner poet.
Poetry, PoFebruary 13, 2026 marks 115th birth anniversary of Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1910-1984), Lenin-prize winner poet.
Poetry, Power And Unfinished Struggle For Just World
Dr. Ikramul Haq
The 115th birth anniversary of Faiz Ahmad Faiz is not an occasion for ritual homage. Faiz does not lend himself to ceremonial remembrance. He belongs to that rare category of thinkers whose work questions the present more sharply than it comforts the past. To read Faiz today—whether in Pakistan or beyond—is to confront the political economy of injustice that continues to reproduce inequality, repression, and dispossession under ever-changing guises.
Faiz was not merely a poet of resistance; he was a theorist of power in verse. His poetry captured, with astonishing economy of language, the structural realities that economists and political scientists often bury under jargon: concentration of power, capture of the state by elites, alienation of the masses, and the moral corrosion that follows when authority divorces itself from justice. Long before “inclusive growth,” “elite capture,” or “neo-colonialism” entered our analytical vocabulary, Faiz had already mapped their human consequences.
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 organization 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 Colonialism to Neo-Colonial Order
Faiz’s formative years unfolded under British colonial rule, but his mature work addressed a deeper tragedy: the failure of post-colonial states to dismantle exploitative structures. Independence, in his poetry, is never treated as an end point. It is merely a moment that exposes the real struggle ahead. This is why his famous refrain—“chale chalo ke woh manzil abhi nahin aayi”—is not rhetorical optimism. It is a diagnosis. Political flags may change, but if economic power remains concentrated and decision-making insulated from the people, the “destination” remains elusive.
As a socio-political economist, one cannot miss how closely Faiz’s poetic vision aligns with what later scholarship described as the neo-colonial state: formally sovereign, yet substantively constrained by internal oligarchies and external pressures. His poetry anticipated what the Global South would experience during the Cold War and after—states caught between imperial interests, local elites, and militarised governance, with ordinary citizens paying the price.
Love Reimagined as Political Ethic
Faiz’s most radical contribution lies in how he reconfigured the language of love. Classical Urdu poetry treated ishq (love) as metaphysical longing or personal anguish. Faiz retained its emotional depth but expanded its moral horizon.
Love, in his verse, becomes inseparable from justice. Separation is no longer merely romantic; it is historical. The beloved is not just a person, but a just social order perpetually deferred. This transformation matters profoundly today. In a world increasingly defined by transactional politics, algorithmic outrage, and commodified identities.
Faiz insists that politics without compassion is brutality by other means. His poetry refuses the false dichotomy between emotion and reason. For Faiz, a just society is inconceivable without empathy, and empathy without structural change is sentimental fraud.
Prison, Exile and the Economics of Repression
Faiz’s imprisonment after the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and his later exile were not personal tragedies alone; they were expressions of a broader political economy where dissent is criminalised to protect entrenched interests. His prison poetry—particularly Zindan-nama (1956)—is remarkable not because it protests incarceration, but because it exposes the fragility of coercive power. The state may command obedience, Faiz suggests, but it cannot manufacture legitimacy.
Faiz also converges with global voices of resistance such as Pablo Neruda and Nazim Hikmet—writers who understood that repression is not merely political but economic. Prisons, censorship, and exile are instruments used when ruling classes lack consent but wish to preserve privilege. Faiz’s enduring relevance lies in how clearly he grasped this relationship between power and fear.
Against Slogan, For Substance
What separates Faiz from many revolutionary writers/poets is his refusal to surrender art to ideology. He never allowed politics to flatten language or reduce poetry to slogans. This restraint is not aesthetic conservatism; it is political wisdom. Slogans mobilise briefly; poetry endures. Faiz understood that lasting resistance must operate at the level of consciousness, not merely agitation.
In contemporary Pakistan—and globally—this lesson is urgent. We inhabit an era of instant certainties, where moral positions are broadcast but rarely examined. Faiz offers no such comfort. His poetry unsettles allies and adversaries alike. It demands introspection, patience, and historical memory—qualities in short supply in today’s public discourse.
Faiz and the Global South
Faiz’s internationalism was not performative. As editor of Lotus, the journal of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association, he helped articulate a shared moral vocabulary for societies emerging from colonial domination. His solidarity with writers from Palestine, Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe reflected an understanding that injustice travels across borders, even when resistance appears local.
This global perspective makes Faiz strikingly relevant today, as the world witnesses renewed wars, mass displacement, and the retreat of international law before brute power. The tragedies of Gaza, occupied Kashmir, and other conflict zones echo the very themes Faiz wrote about: exile, dispossession, and the silence of the powerful.
His poetry reminds us that these are not isolated crises but symptoms of a global order that privileges force over fairness.
The Political Economy of Hope
Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of Faiz’s work is his hope. Critics often accuse him of romanticism. This is a misreading. Faiz’s hope is disciplined, not naïve. It emerges only after a full acknowledgment of suffering. Dawn, in Faiz, is never inevitable; it is conditional. It depends on struggle, solidarity, and moral courage.
For economists and policymakers, this offers a profound insight. Development divorced from justice breeds instability. Growth without redistribution deepens alienation. Faiz understood, intuitively and poetically, what contemporary political economy now confirms: societies that deny dignity cannot sustain prosperity.
Relevance in Today’s Pakistan
Faiz until to this today confronts Pakistan with uncomfortable questions. Have we dismantled the structures of exploitation he wrote against, or merely renamed them? Has the state aligned itself with the welfare of citizens, or entrenched itself as an arbiter of privilege? These are not literary questions; they are constitutional and economic ones.
Faiz does not offer policy prescriptions. What he offers is more demanding: a moral framework. He asks whether power serves justice or merely protects itself; whether silence is prudence or complicity; whether hope is cultivated or commodified.
An Unfinished Journey
Faiz’s legacy is not a closed chapter. It is an unfinished argument with history. His poetry continues to travel because the conditions that produced it persist. In a world where inequality widens, wars multiply, and truth is increasingly expendable, Faiz remains a voice of resistance—quiet, uncompromising, and profoundly human.
To mark his 115th birth anniversary is not to look backward, but to measure how far we remain from the society he imagined. The destination, as Faiz warned us, has yet to arrive. The question is whether we still possess the courage to keep walking, and more importantly in a right direction.
________________________________________________________
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.
wer And Unfinished Struggle For Just World
Dr. Ikramul Haq
The 115th birth anniversary of Faiz Ahmad Faiz is not an occasion for ritual homage. Faiz does not lend himself to ceremonial remembrance. He belongs to that rare category of thinkers whose work questions the present more sharply than it comforts the past. To read Faiz today—whether in Pakistan or beyond—is to confront the political economy of injustice that continues to reproduce inequality, repression, and dispossession under ever-changing guises.
Faiz was not merely a poet of resistance; he was a theorist of power in verse. His poetry captured, with astonishing economy of language, the structural realities that economists and political scientists often bury under jargon: concentration of power, capture of the state by elites, alienation of the masses, and the moral corrosion that follows when authority divorces itself from justice. Long before “inclusive growth,” “elite capture,” or “neo-colonialism” entered our analytical vocabulary, Faiz had already mapped their human consequences.
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 organization 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 Colonialism to Neo-Colonial Order
Faiz’s formative years unfolded under British colonial rule, but his mature work addressed a deeper tragedy: the failure of post-colonial states to dismantle exploitative structures. Independence, in his poetry, is never treated as an end point. It is merely a moment that exposes the real struggle ahead. This is why his famous refrain—“chale chalo ke woh manzil abhi nahin aayi”—is not rhetorical optimism. It is a diagnosis. Political flags may change, but if economic power remains concentrated and decision-making insulated from the people, the “destination” remains elusive.
As a socio-political economist, one cannot miss how closely Faiz’s poetic vision aligns with what later scholarship described as the neo-colonial state: formally sovereign, yet substantively constrained by internal oligarchies and external pressures. His poetry anticipated what the Global South would experience during the Cold War and after—states caught between imperial interests, local elites, and militarised governance, with ordinary citizens paying the price.
Love Reimagined as Political Ethic
Faiz’s most radical contribution lies in how he reconfigured the language of love. Classical Urdu poetry treated ishq (love) as metaphysical longing or personal anguish. Faiz retained its emotional depth but expanded its moral horizon.
Love, in his verse, becomes inseparable from justice. Separation is no longer merely romantic; it is historical. The beloved is not just a person, but a just social order perpetually deferred. This transformation matters profoundly today. In a world increasingly defined by transactional politics, algorithmic outrage, and commodified identities.
Faiz insists that politics without compassion is brutality by other means. His poetry refuses the false dichotomy between emotion and reason. For Faiz, a just society is inconceivable without empathy, and empathy without structural change is sentimental fraud.
Prison, Exile and the Economics of Repression
Faiz’s imprisonment after the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and his later exile were not personal tragedies alone; they were expressions of a broader political economy where dissent is criminalised to protect entrenched interests. His prison poetry—particularly Zindan-nama (1956)—is remarkable not because it protests incarceration, but because it exposes the fragility of coercive power. The state may command obedience, Faiz suggests, but it cannot manufacture legitimacy.
Faiz also converges with global voices of resistance such as Pablo Neruda and Nazim Hikmet—writers who understood that repression is not merely political but economic. Prisons, censorship, and exile are instruments used when ruling classes lack consent but wish to preserve privilege. Faiz’s enduring relevance lies in how clearly he grasped this relationship between power and fear.
Against Slogan, For Substance
What separates Faiz from many revolutionary writers/poets is his refusal to surrender art to ideology. He never allowed politics to flatten language or reduce poetry to slogans. This restraint is not aesthetic conservatism; it is political wisdom. Slogans mobilise briefly; poetry endures. Faiz understood that lasting resistance must operate at the level of consciousness, not merely agitation.
In contemporary Pakistan—and globally—this lesson is urgent. We inhabit an era of instant certainties, where moral positions are broadcast but rarely examined. Faiz offers no such comfort. His poetry unsettles allies and adversaries alike. It demands introspection, patience, and historical memory—qualities in short supply in today’s public discourse.
Faiz and the Global South
Faiz’s internationalism was not performative. As editor of Lotus, the journal of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association, he helped articulate a shared moral vocabulary for societies emerging from colonial domination. His solidarity with writers from Palestine, Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe reflected an understanding that injustice travels across borders, even when resistance appears local.
This global perspective makes Faiz strikingly relevant today, as the world witnesses renewed wars, mass displacement, and the retreat of international law before brute power. The tragedies of Gaza, occupied Kashmir, and other conflict zones echo the very themes Faiz wrote about: exile, dispossession, and the silence of the powerful.
His poetry reminds us that these are not isolated crises but symptoms of a global order that privileges force over fairness.
The Political Economy of Hope
Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of Faiz’s work is his hope. Critics often accuse him of romanticism. This is a misreading. Faiz’s hope is disciplined, not naïve. It emerges only after a full acknowledgment of suffering. Dawn, in Faiz, is never inevitable; it is conditional. It depends on struggle, solidarity, and moral courage.
For economists and policymakers, this offers a profound insight. Development divorced from justice breeds instability. Growth without redistribution deepens alienation. Faiz understood, intuitively and poetically, what contemporary political economy now confirms: societies that deny dignity cannot sustain prosperity.
Relevance in Today’s Pakistan
Faiz until to this today confronts Pakistan with uncomfortable questions. Have we dismantled the structures of exploitation he wrote against, or merely renamed them? Has the state aligned itself with the welfare of citizens, or entrenched itself as an arbiter of privilege? These are not literary questions; they are constitutional and economic ones.
Faiz does not offer policy prescriptions. What he offers is more demanding: a moral framework. He asks whether power serves justice or merely protects itself; whether silence is prudence or complicity; whether hope is cultivated or commodified.
An Unfinished Journey
Faiz’s legacy is not a closed chapter. It is an unfinished argument with history. His poetry continues to travel because the conditions that produced it persist. In a world where inequality widens, wars multiply, and truth is increasingly expendable, Faiz remains a voice of resistance—quiet, uncompromising, and profoundly human.
To mark his 115th birth anniversary is not to look backward, but to measure how far we remain from the society he imagined. The destination, as Faiz warned us, has yet to arrive. The question is whether we still possess the courage to keep walking, and more importantly in a right direction.
________________________________________________________
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.