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How an Indian freedom fighter and Urdu poet expressed his love for Krishna

Hasrat Mohani is known as the person who coined the term ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ in 1921 and also wrote devotional poetry in Urdu and Awadhi dedicated to Lord Krishna

Hasrat Mohani 

In a Facebook post by literary historian Rakhshanda Jalil, she reminded people about notable freedom fighter and Urdu poet Hasrat Mohani and his love for Lord Krishna on the occasion of Janmashtami. Mohani is known as the person who coined the term ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ in 1921.
 
“Janamashtami Mubarak… reminded of the Urdu poet Hasrat Mohani and his great love for Hazrat Krishan ji Maharaj,” she wrote in her post.
 
Mohani kept his pen name after his birthplace Mohan in Unnao. He died in 1951 in Lucknow India but there are institutions and roads named after him in Pakistan as well.
 
Full text of Jalil’s post:
 
Janamashtami Mubarak… reminded of the Urdu poet Hasrat Mohani and his great love for Hazrat Krishan ji Maharaj…
 
Hasrat was a devout Krishna bhakt who went to Mathura often to celebrate Janamshthami and also wrote the most lyrical ballads devoted to Krishan ji Bhagwan. Some written in chaste Urdu others in the Awadhi dialect, these love songs to Krishna contain a combination of irreconcilables that melt away in the face of true piety. Calling the Blue God Hazrat Shri Krishna Alaihi Rahma (‘The Venerable Shri Krishna Blessed be His Name’), he shows how it is entirely possible for a panch-waqta Musalman, one for whom worship of any deity is kufr, to adore the ‘other’:
 
Maslak-i ishq hai parastish-i husn
Hum nahin jaante aazab-o-sawaab
 
The path of love leads to the worship of beauty
I know neither reward nor punishment
 
Offering a clue to the light of love that lit his path — be it to Mecca or Barsana, Medina or Mathura, Ajmer or Nand Gaon, he writes of the fragrance, the boo-i uns, that permeates both:
 
Irfaan-e ishq naam hai mere maqaam ka
Haamil hun kis ke naghma-i nai ke payaam ka
Mathura se ahl-i dil ko woh aati hai boo-i uns
Duniya-i jaan mein shor hai jis ke dawaam ka
Labrez-i noor hai dil-i ‘Hasrat’ zahe naseeb
Ek husn-i mushkfaam ke shauq-i tamaam ka
 
The name of my destination is Love’s Knowledge
The message of whose melodious flute I carry
The scent of Oneness wafts from Mathura to the people of heart
And suffuses the living world
It is Hasrat’s good fortune that his heart is brimful with the radiance
And love of that musk-scented Beautiful one
 
Seeing no duality between his assiduous roza-namaz and ardent krishn bhakti, this bearded, shervani-clad gentleman from Mohan in the Unnao district of western Uttar Pradesh, resorts to the more rustic Awadhi register to express his grand passion when the chaste Urdu meter fails him:
 
Mann tose preet lagai Kanhai
Kahu aur kisurati ab kaahe ko aayi
Gokula dhundh Brindaban dhundho
Barsane lag ghoom ke aayi
Tan man dhan sab waar ke ‘Hasrat’
Mathura nagar chali dhuni ramaye
 
My heart has fallen for you, Kanhai
How can it think of anyone else now?
I searched for him in Gokul and in Brindavan
I even went till Barsana looking for him
Having sacrificed everything for him, I Hasrat
Am now going to set up my abode in Mathura
 
Locked up in the Yervada Central Jail in Poona for his ‘seditious’ activities, with the coming of Janamashthami he cannot contain his longing to go to Mathura:
 
Mathura ka nagar hai aashiqui ka
Dam bharti hai arzu issi ka
Har zarra-e sar-zamin-e Gokul
Daara hai jamaal-e dilbari ka
Barsana-o Nand Gaon mein bhi
Dekh aayein hain jalwa ham kisi ka
Paigham-e hayaat-e jaavidaan thha
Har nagma-e Krishn bansuri ka
Voh noor siyah ya ki ‘Hasrat’
Sar-chashma farogh-e-aagahi ka
 
Mathura is the city of love
All my desires are centred on it
Every particle of the dust of Gokul
Possesses loveliness and comeliness
Even in Barsana and Nand Gaon
I have seen that certain someone’s splendour
Whose message of reality is eternal
As is every note from Krishna’s flute
Like a dark radiance or is it Hasrat
Like a spring of water gushing knowledge

Rakhshanda Jalil is an Indian writer, critic and literary historian. Author of Invisible City: The Hidden Monuments of India. Founder of Hindustani Awaaz, devoted to the popularization of Hindi-Urdu literature and culture.
 

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