Wednesday 22 October 2014

The poetic martyr who gave away his life for freedom!!!


In Urdu he had written:

"kiye the kaam hamane bhii, jo kuchh bhii humse ban paaye; ye baatein tab ki hain aazaad the aur tha shabaab apanaa. magar ab to jo kuchh bhii hai ummidein bas vo tum se hain, javaan tum ho labe-baam aa chukaa hai aafataab apnaa."
Ashfaqulla Khan (22 October 1900 – 19 December 1927) was a freedom fighter in the Indian independence movement who had given away his life along with Ram Prasad Bismil. Bismil and Ashfaq, both were good friends and Urdu poets (Shayar). Bismil was the pen name or Takhallus of Ram Prasad whereas Ashfaq used to write poetry with the pen name of 'Hasrat'. And sing a song vande matram before hanging , both were hanged on the same day, date and time but in different jails.
Ashfaq was a very good Urdu poet who wrote beautiful couplets and ghazals with the pen-name of 'Warsi' and 'Hasrat'. But very few people know that he had also written in Hindi as well as in English. While he was confined in the solitary cell of Faizabad Jail, he started writing a diary. Few words of English are reproduced hereunder from his diary:
Patriotism brings with him all sort of troubles and pains, but a man who chooses it,all the troubles and pains become comforts and ease for him. That is why we remain cheerful up to our aim.
Only for the love of our country I suffer so much.
There is no dream, and if there is,there is only one to see you my children struggling for the same and for which I am expected to be finished.
Brothers and friends will weep after me but I am weeping over their coldness and infidelity towards our motherland.
Weep not children, weep not elders; I am immortal ! I am immortal !!
In another letter written to his beloved mother, sisters and nephews he writes: "We too had done some of the works which we could, but those were the days, we had the glamour on face and strength in the chest. But now is the hope only hope from you, you are now grown up and we are at the verge of setting like a sun in the west." Read more...