taaj tere liye ik maz.har-e-ulfat hī sahī
tujh ko is vādi-e-rañgīñ se aqīdat hī sahī

To you, my love, the Taj is a symbol of love. That’s all right.
All right too that you venerate this, the valley where it sets.

merī mahbūb kahīñ aur milā kar mujh se
bazm-e-shāhī meñ ġharīboñ kā guzar kyā ma.anī

But meet me somewhere else.
The poor visiting the royal assembly? Absurd.

sabt jis raah meñ hoñ satvat-e-shāhī ke nishāñ
us pe ulfat bharī rūhoñ kā safar kyā ma.anī

What’s the sense of lovers journeying on 
That road which bears the prints of royalty’s contempt?

merī mahbūb pas-e-parda-e-tash.hīr-e-vafā
tū ne satvat ke nishānoñ ko to dekhā hotā

Look at the emblems of arrogant majesty, my love, 
The backgrounds to this sign of love.

murda-shāhoñ ke maqābir se bahalne vaalī
apne tārīk makānoñ ko to dekhā hotā

Do dead kings’ tombs delight you? 
If so, look into your own dark home.

an-ginat logoñ ne duniyā meñ mohabbat kī hai
kaun kahtā hai ki sādiq na the jazbe un ke

In this world countless people have loved.
Who says their passions weren’t true?

lekin un ke liye tash.hīr kā sāmān nahīñ
kyūñki vo log bhī apnī hī tarah muflis the

They just couldn’t afford a public display like this
Because they were paupers—like us.

ye imārāt o maqābir ye fasīleñ ye hisār
mutlaq-ul-hukm shahanshāhoñ kī azmat ke sutūñ

These buildings and tombs, these abutments and forts 
Are a despot’s pillars of majesty,

sīna-e-dahr ke nāsūr haiñ kohna nāsūr
jazb hai un meñ tire aur mire ajdād kā ḳhuuñ

Embroidery on the hem of Time in that color 
Which is mingled with the blood of your ancestors and mine

merī mahbūb unheñ bhī to mohabbat hogī
jin kī sannā.ī ne baḳhshī hai use shakl-e-jamīl

Who, my love, must have loved, too.
It was their art that shaped this exquisite form.

un ke pyāroñ ke maqābir rahe benām-o-numūd
aaj tak un pe jalā.ī na kisī ne qindīl

But their beloveds’ tombs stand without name or fame; 
Until today, no one even lit a candle for them.

ye chaman-zār ye jamunā kā kināra ye mahal
ye munaqqash dar o dīvār ye mehrāb ye taaq

This garden, this place on the river’s bank,
These carved doors and walls, this arch, this vault—what are they?

ik shahanshāh ne daulat kā sahārā le kar
ham ġharīboñ kī mohabbat kā uḌāyā hai mazāq

The mocking of the love of our poor 
By an emperor propped upon his wealth.

merī mahbūb kahīñ aur milā kar mujh se

My love, meet me somewhere else. 

Sahir Ludhianvi, Taj Mahal (tr. Carlo Coppola)

The Taj, mayhap, to you may seem, a mark of love supreme
You may hold this beauteous vale in great esteem;
Yet, my love, meet me hence at some other place!
How odd for the poor folk to frequent royal resorts;
‘Tis strange that the amorous souls should tread the regal paths
Trodden once by mighty kings and their proud consorts.
Behind the facade of love my dear, you had better seen,
The marks of imperial might that herein lie screen
You who take delight in tombs of kings deceased,
Should have seen the hutments dark where you and I did wean.
Countless men in this world must have loved and gone,
Who would say their loves weren’t truthful or strong?
But in the name of their loves, no memorial is raised
For they too, like you and me, belonged to the common throng.
These structures and sepulchres, these ramparts and forts,
These relics of the mighty dead are, in fact, no more
Than the cancerous tumours on the face of earth,
Fattened on our ancestor’s very blood and bones.
They too must have loved, my love, whose hands had made,
This marble monument, nicely chiselled and shaped
But their dear ones lived and died, unhonoured, unknown,
None burnt even a taper on their lowly graves.
This bank of Jamuna, this edifice, these groves and lawns,
These carved walls and doors, arches and alcoves,
An emperor on the strength of wealth, Has played with us a cruel joke.
Meet me hence, my love, at some other place.

Sahir Ludhianvi, Taj Mahal (tr. K.C Kanda)

Laazim hai ki hum bhi dekhenge
Woh din jiskaa ke waada hai,
Jo lau-e-azl mein likha hai

Inevitably, we shall also see the day
that was promised to us, decreed
on the tablet of eternity.

Jab zulm-o-sitam ke koh-e-garaan
Rooi ki tarah udd jaayenge,

When dark peaks of torment and tyranny
will be blown away like cotton fluff;

Hum mehkoomon ke paaon tale
jab dharti dhad dhad dhadkegi,

When the earth’s beating, beating heart
will pulsate beneath our broken feet;

Aur ahl-e-hukam ke sar oopar
Jab bijli kad kad kadkegi,

When crackling, crashing lightning
will smite the heads of our tormentors;

Jab arz-e-khudaa ke kaabe se
Sab but uthwaaey jaayenge,

When, from the seat of the Almighty
every pedestal will lie displaced;

Hum ahl-e-safaa mardood-e-haram
Masnad pe bithaaey jaayenge.

Then, the dispossessed we; we,
who kept the faith will be installed
to our inalienable legacy.

Sab taaj uchaaley jaayenge.
Sab takht giraaey jayyenge.

Every crown will be flung.
Each throne brought down.

Bas naam rahega Allah kaa,
Jo ghaayab bhi hai, haazir bhi,
Jo manzar bhi hai, naazir bhi.

Only His name will remain; He,
who is both unseen, and ubiquitous; He,
who is both the vision and the beholder.

Utthegaa ‘An-al-haq’ kaa naara
Jo main bhi hoon, aur tum bhi ho,

When the clarion call of ‘I am Truth’
(the truth that is me and the truth that is you)

Aur raaj karegi Khalq-e-Khuda
Jo mai bhi hoon, aur tum bhi ho.

will ring out, all God’s creatures will rule,
those like me and those like you.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, "Hum Dekhenge" (We Shall See) [tr. Mustansir Dalvi]

One must take a closer look into the usage of this phrase by Faiz and the stanzas following it. This is a famous phrase from the Sufi mystic Mansūr al-Hallāj (858-922 BC) who like other Sufis was heavily towards a personal relationship to God, to the extent of arguing that there is an element of the divine in all beings. Mansur was executed for having proclaimed such a statement. While even amongst Sufis there were several (mostly the early Sufis) who disagreed with this stance, but eventually the late Sufis were able to acknowledge his prominence. Mansur was also part of the Zanj Rebellion.

This is to reinstate that when Faiz quotes this phrase and other instances of him mentioning Allah/God, he is not reinstating the same theocratic tyranny which this nazm is against, but he is using the device of Sufism--which we have to remember is a radical outcast in the Islamic world--to reach those who were being oppressed under ul-Haq.

Among other things, what Sufism achieves is that it shatters the hierarchical structure that sometimes appears in Islam by elevating the mundane, the dirty, the outcast to a divine status, not by virtue of them "achieving" anything but by simply existing as a human being. It is not a surprise that those who wish to protect the tyrannical structure of hierarchy, dogmatism and idolatry will feel threatened by the likes of al-Hallaj.

I am not a Sufi--even though I try to read a bunch of Sufis--neither was Faiz a Sufi. He lived as an agnostic atheist for all his life. Yet, Faiz was at his deepest a romantic--something I cherish in him--and it is this romantic disposition that allows him to speak using various linguistic and other voices to render the terror of oppression, the anger towards the oppressor, feeling of solidarity, and the cracks of hope one seeks to redeem themselves.

In my opinion, the device of Sufism in this nazm helps in reverberating the rebellious spirit of overthrowing crowns and thrones with a pinch of spirituality to redeem the oppressed as worthy of divinity equally as everyone else ("the truth that is me, and the truth that is you").

Seikilos epitaph, the Greek translates to:

while you live, shine
have no grief at all
life exists only for a short while
and Time demands its toll.

The Cathedral of the Not-Made-by-Hand Image of Our Saviour in the Winter Palace, by Eduard Hau (1866)

My room and this distance,
awake upon the darkening land,
are one. I am a string
stretched across deep
surging resonance.

Things are violin bodies
full of murmuring darkness,
where women's weeping dreams,
where the rancor of whole generations
stirs in its sleep . . .
I should release
my silver vibrations: then
everything below me will live,
and whatever strays into things
will seek the light
that falls without end from my dancing tone
into the old abysses
around which heaven swells
through narrow
imploring
rifts.

Rainer Maria Rilke, At the Brink of Night

Released silhouettes
flow incessantly like water,
flow between mountains
swiftly like a kaleidoscope.
The solitude of  the North Pole
bustles with human silhouettes.
Endless transmission of  ABC.

On the shredded shore
a silk hat burns
like a mirror trick,
like a human echo
burns a silk hat endlessly.
Then the flames
were received like ABC.

On the night of a beautiful lunar eclipse
the silhouettes smiled.

Shuzo Takiguchi, Rene Magritte

“The atmosphere of the home is prolonged in school, where students soon discover that (as in the home) in order to achieve some satisfaction they must adapt to the precepts which have been set from above. One of these precepts is not to think.”

— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism (2022)

Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism (2022)

Exploitation transfers value to capital under the guise of a free contractual exchange: in return for the use of their labor power, workers receive wages that (are supposed to) cover their costs of living; while capital appropriates their "surplus labor time," it (supposedly) pays at least for their "necessary labor time." In expropriation, by contrast, capitalists dispense with all such niceties in favor of brute confiscation of others' assets, for which they pay little or nothing; by funneling commandeered labor, land, minerals, and/or energy into their firms' operations, they lower their production costs and raise their profits. Thus, far from excluding one another, expropriation and exploitation work hand in hand. Doubly free wage laborers transform looted "raw materials" on machines powered by confiscated sources of energy. Their wages are kept low by the availability of food grown on stolen lands by indebted peons and of consumer goods produced in sweatshops by unfree or dependent "others," whose own reproduction costs are not fully remunerated. Expropriation thus underlies exploitation and makes it profitable. Far from being confined to the system's beginnings, it is a built-in feature of capitalist society, as constitutive and as structurally grounded as exploitation.

Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism (2022)

Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism (2022)