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Though originally Dr Khalid Sohail
belongs to Pakistan, his literary and sociological works have embraced
humanity at large. The mystical approach in his poetry and prose, simply
written and at the same time profound, fully depicts his liberal self.
Living in Canada, he has achieved the reputation of a distinguished poet.
The South Asian community in Canada is well aware of his multi-dimensional
works.
Italo Calvino, the great Italian aesthete, once rightly pointed out that
literature is necessary to politics, above all when it gives a voice to
whoever is without a voice, when it gives a name to what as yet has no name,
especially to what the language of politics excludes or attempts to exclude.
These encompass aspects, situations, and languages both of the outer and the
inner world. We can read and fully appreciate Khalid Sohail’s articles,
poems and short stories from this perspective. His translated works include
the same ethos and direction.
Khalid Sohail takes literature not as a combination of mere thought and
words but as a kind of subjective truth, which through its content and forms
can mirror and depict the social and cultural problems of the contemporary
world. He knows that we cannot impart beauty to literature by merely
combining various means of expression. It requires an organic unfolding of
the inner essence of the writer’s life.
The chapter Mystic Poetry in the book From Islam to Secular Humanism by
Khalid Sohail is an example of the essential outlook reflected in his
literature. In this chapter, he discusses the uniqueness of the symbolic
expressions in the poetry of old and modern mystic poets. He has minutely
explored the inner truths, metaphysical approaches to formless spiritual
worlds and the real existential agony involved in mystical experiences.
Khalid Sohail has tried to provide answers to questions of transcendental
logic. This logic attempts to inquire seriously into the realms of the
unknown. Mystical poetry can provide answers to the questions posed by the
mysteries of the unknown world. Khalid Sohail has pondered those questions:
How do we talk about the world where sounds turn mute?
How do we write about a world where words lose all of their meanings?
How do we discuss a world that
transcends every logic?
How do we describe a world that has
no boundaries?
How do we conceptualise a world that defies any form?
How do we understand a world that is beyond words and sounds and colours and
space and time?
When we explore the writings of Khawaja Moeen-ud-Din Chishti, Sheikh Ali
Hajvairy, Nazam-ud-Din Aulia, Qutb-ud-Din Bhakhtiar Kaki, Ala-ud-Din Sabir
Kalairy, Farid-ud-Din Ganj Shakar, Baha-ud-Din Zakria Multani, Shah
Rukn-e-Aalam, Boo Ali Shah and Shahbaz Qalandar, we realise that their
thoughts elevate the concepts of humanism, universal brotherhood, and love
for God, equality and justice. Love for humanity is the principle message
delivered by them. Kabir Das and many other poets living outside the circles
of traditional religions too had embraced the mystical poetic traditions.
Khalid Sohail rightly says: “Mystic poets are those enlightened beings who
have had personal encounters with the spiritual world and have touched the
borders of the known with the unknown, the human with the divine, the
personal with the cosmic. They share with us their experiences that intimate
encounters with a world which is nameless, formless, timeless and pathless.”
In this context, he has also referred to Buddha, Rumi, Ibn-e-Jalali
Samarqandi Amini, Madhu Lal Hussain, Krishnamurti and several other mystic
personalities who have offered their messages of modesty, humility,
purification of hearts and spirituality to a world full of arrogance, pride,
enmity, hate, materialism, prejudice, tyranny, oppression, cruelty and other
unethical and inhuman attitudes. According to Khalid Sohail, mystic poets
have used water, fire and light as symbols. In Pages of My Heart he says:
“I think that we have reached such a turning point in history where we are
forced to make certain choices individually and collectively. I hope that we
do not proceed on the path of self-destruction, which ends in collective
suicide; rather we decide to discover new ways of living harmoniously with
other human beings, Mother Nature and ourselves. Perhaps one day we will
reach that state of communal growth and human evolution where we can accept
that whether they are children or the elderly, women or minorities,
physically disabled or mentally sick, all human beings have a right to live
with respect and grow peacefully. For our future development as a species,
we have to transcend the resentments based on class, race, gender, language
or religious differences and anger because of the conflicts between the East
and West, North and South, the First and the Third World and many other
man-made divisions.”
In one of his poems Khalid Sohail says:
In our life
We come across
Such nameless relations
Which after crossing
The old grand roads of love
and regards
Come to the new tracks of
Several nameless passions.
In our life
We travel along such nameless ways
Which after leaving behind silently
The known brightened city of
tradition
Bring us suddenly
In the nameless streets
And dark paths of an unknown
town.
In our life
We face several nameless tracks
And several nameless relations.
A poet inspired from mysticism can easily give names to nameless things. A
mystic always faces this kind of strangeness. Khalid Sohail’s poetry and
prose contain many topics. He has explored the objectives of mankind from
the perspective of human psychology. Like Iqbal, he criticises misguided
poets and poetry.
His favourite topics are human aspects of religion, Sufism for human
progress, harmony in the individual and the community, man and God,
domination as an evil, respect of man in the perspective of equality, fate
and free will, mystical evolution, the necessity for love, reason and
learning in the domain of art and culture. His books, Pages of My Heart
(poetry), Mother Earth Is Sad (short stories), Growing Alone, Growing
Together, The Holy Prison and writings in the anthologies Global Safari and
Seven Angels embrace these topics. He has earned fame through the depiction
of liberal humanism in his creations. We can find this same humanism in the
works of Ameer Khusro, Shah Hussain, Bulleh Shah, Waris Shah, Bedil, Khawaja
Mir Dard, Sultan Baho, Khwaja Farid and Ghalib. They all express their
opposition to a priesthood that often ignores the beauty of reality and
upholds traditional prejudices. We can easily point out the approach of the
mystic in their literature. They never favoured the attitudes of mockery,
amorality, artificiality and falsehood. Desirable man in mysticism brings to
light the realities concealed by a conformist theologian. He finds truth
travelling on the roads of love and beauty. Mir Dard truly pointed out,
“After coming into the world, when we looked here and there, We found you
everywhere.” |
