(1927 – 2 August 1998)
Taufiq Rafat is known as one of the best English-language poets of Pakistan. Among the few names of Pakistani poets in this idiom which come to the mind---Maki Kureishi, Alamgir Hashmi, Kaleem Omar, Daud Kamal---his name is often adjudged to be right at the top. His influence on other poets has been considerable because he was known for trying to create a ‘Pakistani idiom’ in English in addition to poetry itself.
Taufiq Rafat was born in Sialkot, the birthplace of famous Pakistani poets Mohammad Iqbal (1878-1938) and Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911-1984). Rafat was educated in Dehra Dun, Aligarh and Lahore and then joined the family’s manufacturing business. He settled down in Lahore where, in the seventies, he became a mentor to aspiring poets who would visit him in his office. Among those who frequented such meetings were Khaled Ahmed, Tariq Yazdani Malik, Kaleem Omar, Shuja Nawaz, Alamgir Hashmi and Athar Tahir---all well known names among Pakistani poets who write in English. Athar Tahir, who has mentioned these meetings in his ‘Introduction’ to A Selection: Taufiq Rafat (1997), claims that all these poets were influenced by Rafat’s idea of using a distinctive ‘Pakistani idiom’ for writing verse.
Rafat’s poems were published from 1947 onwards. He published in the most fashionable literary magazines of the sixties and seventies: Perspectives, Vision, and Pakistan Quarterly from Karachi and Pakistan Review from Lahore. He also published in Ravi, the magazine of the Government College in Lahore which was the alma mater of many of the young poets who were, in a sense, the disciples of Rafat. His work was regarded highly and he featured in the best anthologies of Pakistani poetry in English. Thus, for many decades, Rafat dominated the English literary world of Pakistan.
Among the anthologies in which Rafat’s work was published, the most prestigious are First Voices: Six Poets from Pakistan, edited by Shahid Hosain and published by the Oxford University Press in 1965. The same press published two other famous anthologies of English poetry: Pieces of Eight: Eight Poets from Pakistan (1971) and Wordfall (1975). Finally, in 1985 Rafat published his collected work entitled Arrival of the Monsoon. It consists of 116 poems and is divided into four parts: poems written between 1947 to 1969 (‘Arrival of the Monsoon’); 1970 to 1973 (‘Going After Geese’); 1974 to 1976 (‘Wedding in the Flood’) and finally between 1977 to 1978 (‘A Rumour of Change’). This work was very well received by the few reviewers and critics of Pakistani literature in English in Pakistan and abroad. In 1997, on the occasion of the fiftieth birth anniversary of Pakistan, the Oxford University Press brought out selections of the verse of some important English poets from Pakistan including Taufiq Rafat. The one on Rafat was edited and introduced by his erstwhile ‘disciple’ and himself an English poet, Athar Tahir. The forty five poems in A Selection: Taufiq Rafat contain poems from his whole lifetimes’ work.
Rafat has also translated some masterpieces of Classical Punjabi Poetry. Among these are Bulleh Shah: A Selection (1982) and Qadir Yar: Puran Bhagat (1983). Bulleh Shah (1680-1758) is a Punjabi mystic poet whose iconoclastic verse is admired much among Pakistani liberals. Qadir Yar (1802-1850), another Punjabi poet, has written the tale of ‘Puran Bhagat’---a much wronged outcaste who finally attains redemption because of his humanity and fortitude. Rafat’s translations are free renditions into English verse which may not be faithful to the original but do have power, beauty and literary skill. The translations are important because Punjabi, although the mother tongue of most Pakistanis, is ignored in Pakistan. These translations into English, a language of power and prestige, conferred some respectability on this ancient language. They are also useful in introducing English readers to Punjabi poetry.
Rafat has also written some critical essays out of which those concerned with the style of writing appropriate for Pakistani poets are the most influential. Among these are ‘Towards a Pakistani Idiom’ (Venture, 6: 1969: 60-73; ‘English Poetry in Pakistan’ (Pakistan Quarterly 17: 2: 51-64); and ‘Contempory English Verse in Pakistan’ (Ravi 70: 1980: 6-14). He has also given brief introductions to his translations from Punjabi. In addition to this he has also written a play in English.
Rafat’s concern with a ‘Pakistani idiom’ is one expression of the conflict between tradition and modernity which has been a feature of all ex-colonies of Western powers and, indeed, afflicts the whole world in this age of globalization. The central concern seems to be with the creation of a core identity with indigenous roots and still remain free to come to terms with the outside world of modernity and post-modernity. Taufiq Rafat felt that instead of falling back on the diction of English Romantic poetry, as most young poets did in the Pakistan of the fifties, or borrowing themes from Urdu poetry, it was better to forge an idiom which could be distinctively indigenous while reflecting contemporary and universal themes. Taufiq Rafat shows his preoccupation with roots in many ways. For instance, he mentions his own birth in Sialkot as a reason for translating the story of the legendary character, Puran Bhagat, from Punjabi to English, who was also from this ancient city. Zulfikar Ghose (1935), a novelist and poet from this ancient city who like Rafat also writes in English, celebrates traditional life in his poem entitled ‘Sialkot’ in The Loss of India (1964). Maybe, the consciousness of belonging to an ancient land led Rafat to emphasize indigenousness and roots in his own work later.
Taufiq Rafat reflects this concern with roots in many poems including one called ‘Kitchens’. This poem contrasts the kitchens where people of his generation grew up, in the small towns of Pakistan. They were full of life and people sat in them discussing all important events like birth, marriages and deaths. In Rafat’s poem those are spaces filled with the warmth of the mother’s care and love. But the modern kitchen is clean ‘as a hospital’ and the coldness and unnaturalness of ‘chromium and formica’ have replaced the solidity and permanence of the homes of the traditional world which is passing away. In short, the urban Pakistani lifestyle is alienated from the supportive life pattern of rural communities which were warm and close. Perhaps it is because the countryside and its inhabitants seem to him to be closer to Nature that he praises them. In ‘A Positive Region’ the beauty of the foothills and mountains is fresh and inspiring. The men are strong and the women beautiful. However, the world of business and management force the narrator down into the plains where ‘the tall pines have dwindled to shrubs’. And, by implication, human relations too seem to take on the tenuous quality of ‘shrubs’ while in the other world, the world closer to Nature, they had the sturdiness of ‘tall pines’.
Nature provides the dominant imagery in most of the early poems of Rafat. Besides the flowers and the grass images, the poems feature animals. These range from the wild: snow leopards and snakes; to the domesticated: goats, horses, dogs. He also has an eye for birds with the list including geese, kites, sparrows, eagles, partridges and so on. This imagery reinforces the theme of the healing quality of closeness to Nature while alienation from it is the beginning of disquiet. These themes inspire some of Rafat’s best work.
Two of Rafat’s themes are loneliness and the traumatic reality of death. In a series of eleven very powerful poems, ‘Poems for a Younger Brother 1930-1979’, Rafat narrates how an younger brother faces the impending death of his elder brother who is going to London for an operation for cancer. The younger brother, who is the narrator, controls his tears but the emotion breaks through. At the end there is the consciousness of loss and loneliness. In another poem. ‘Coma’, the same themes are fused together to create depth and power.
Taufiq Rafat is also a poet of love. However, his love poems are not expressed in the cliched idiom of the Pakistani undergraduate whose poetic models are still Shelley and Keats. Nor does he use translated versions of the Urdu ghazal which are very difficult to adapt to English. His voice is lyrical, sometimes having Shakespearian echoes, so as to underline the contrast between Renaissance spontaneity and Pakistani urban Puritanism.
Rafat’s work is steeped in liberal humanist values. Such values are expressed in his sympathy for human and animal suffering. One of his poems, entitled ‘Sacrifice’, movingly portrays the slaughter of a goat as part of ritual sacrifice to bless the construction of a house. For the poet the blood-letting is the beginning of insensitivity towards suffering and pain. A society which permits this is in danger of deteriorating into fascism and organized savagery. The poem ends on the haunting lines: ‘We are not laying the foundations of a house, ‘But another Dachau’. The ultimate message of such poems is to impress upon us how our values are moving towards anti-humanitarian extremes.
He uses a poetic style which is more based on sequential, logical narrative than imagery and symbolism. Some of his best poems, such as ‘The Boy with the Bashed-in Skull’ narrate an anecdote. The best poems do not use vague, rhetorical words and cliches. Indeed the imagery is concrete and the words are direct and forceful. There is an economy of words and the narrative creates a moving effect. The best poems, such as ‘Mr Nachimota’ create a haunting sense of the inexpressible. This poem, for instance, starts as if it were an ordinary anecdote of a man who promises to give away whatever he possesses. Soon, however, it turns into a version of the great recurrent myths of history as the man gives away his son to Death. The conversational tone becomes intensely haunting and mystic.
While such a style can be immensely successful when the spirit of the work comes from a deep vision within, it can also be prosaic. Some poems, therefore, can be regarded as verse only on the strength of the spatial arrangement of lines. Otherwise they are hardly indistinguishable from prose. It must, however, be added that most of Rafat’s verse is good; indeed, he remains among the best Pakistani English poets till date as all critics agree.
To sum up, Taufiq Rafat’s contribution to English poetry in Pakistan is significant. He is a major practitioner himself besides being an inspiration for younger poets. Secondly he has initiated a debate about the kind of poetic idiom suitable for Pakistani poets writing in English which will always remain valuable. And lastly he has introduced the English-knowing public to Punjabi classical poetry and given prestige to that poetry.
Section 1: Anthologies and works by the author.
First Voices: Six Poets from Pakistan. (ed)
Shahid Hosain, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1965.
The New Harmony: An anthology of Pakistani Poetry (ed) Syed ali Ashraf-Karachi: University of karachi, 1970.
Wordfull; Three Pakistani Poets (ed) Kaleem Omar. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1975.
Next Moon: Five Pakistani Poets (ed) Athar Tahir Lahore: Quaid-i-Azam Library, 1984 Arrival of the Monsoon: Collected Poems 1947-1978 by Taufiq Rafat. Lahore Vanguard Press, 1985.
A Selection: Taufiq Rafat (ed) Athar Tahir. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Bulleh Shah: A Selection Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1982.
Qadir Yar: Puran Bhagat: rendered into English verse by Tafiq Rafat Introduced by Athar Tahir. Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1983.
Section 2: Works on the author.
Alamgir Hashmi, Commonwealth Literature (Lahore: Vision Press, 1983).
Athar Tahir, ‘Introduction’. In Taufiq Rafat: A Selection (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
Carlo Coppola, ‘Recent English-Language Poetry from Pakistan’. Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 29: 1 (January 1998), 203-220.
Shaista Sirajuddin, ‘Three Contemporary Poets: A Study of Their use of Language’, Explorations [Lahore] 1: 1991.
Shuaib Bin Hasan, ‘Rafat, Taufiq’. ‘Entry’ in Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English Vol-2 (ed). Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly (London & New York: Routledge, 1994), 1337.
Tariq Rahman, A History of Pakistani Literature in English (Lahore: Vanguard, 1991), 161-163.
________. ‘Pakistani English Poetry: A Survey’, Journal of Indian Writing in English (July 1988), 27-44.