Gul Pacha Ulfat: Pashto poet, editor and head of the Pashto Tolana, 1909–1977

At a glance

• Gul Pacha Ulfat (ګل پاچا الفت) was born in 1288 SH (1909) at Aziz Khan Kash in the Qarghayi district of Laghman. His family's biography gives his death as 28 Qaws 1356 SH, 19 December 1977; Adamec gives 20 December. [2, 4, 9, 10]

• He wrote Pashto verse, prose, essays on language and literature and a book on Khushal Khan Khattak, and he wrote Persian and Arabic too. He never attended a modern school: his teachers were the religious scholars of Laghman, Nangarhar and Kabul. [4]

• He edited newspapers and magazines, led the Pashto Tolana (the Pashto Academy) from 1956–57, sat in the National Assembly in the seventh, eighth and twelfth terms, and was minister for tribal affairs from April 1963. [4, 5, 9, 10]

• He was one of the Wesh Zalmian (Awakened Youth), the reform group of the late 1940s, and held the licence of the paper Wolus, 1951–53. His editor reads him as a critic of the ruling class. A Soviet history calls Wolus loyal to the king and short of remedies. [4, 6–8]

A Laghman boyhood

The Pashto biography that Mohammad Ismail Yun put at the front of the 1999 edition of Ulfat's collected prose says a boy was born in 1288 SH, which is 1909, in the village of Mansur at Aziz Khan Kash, to Sayyid Faqir Pacha, son of Mir Sayyid Pacha. [4] The family named him Gul Pacha. As a young man he took the pen-name Ulfat, and for pieces that he did not want to sign he used others, among them "Oppressed" (ستمدیده), "Needy" (نادار), "Truth-seer" (حق بین) and "Parliamentary deputy" (پارلماني وکیل). [4] Adamec's Who's Who of 1975 has the same year and village and calls the father Mir Sayyid Khan. [9] The family's own short biography names him Gul Pacha, son of Meer Sayed Pacha, born in 1909 at Aziz Khan Kats in the Kargai district. [2]

Yun stresses what he lacked. He went to no school and no college. In the religious schools of Laghman, Nangarhar and Kabul he read grammar, logic, Quran commentary, rhetoric and the books of hadith under learned teachers, and Yun says this schooling was irregular but did much to feed the gift he already had. [4] Pashto was his mother tongue. According to Yun, his Persian was good enough for every kind of writing and for verse that ranks among good Persian poetry, and his Arabic was good enough to write articles in it. [4] The Persian critic Khan Mohammad Khasta, whom Yun quotes, said he wrote verse in both Pashto and Persian with full command. [4]

Clerk, editor and the Pashto Tolana

Yun dates his first official post to 1314 SH (1935–36), when at twenty-six he joined the office of the newspaper Anis as a scribe. Adamec's Who's Who calls him editor of Anis in 1936, and the family's account says clerk in 1935. [2, 4, 9] The next year he was taken into the Kabul Literary Society's section for writing and translation. [4] When the Pashto Tolana was formed in 1316 SH (1937–38) he became director of its journal Zeri. [4, 9] Adamec's dictionary says the Tolana was founded in 1937 by joining the Literary Society of Kabul with the Pashto Society of Kandahar, and the live article on Pashto literature and oral poetry tells the same story. [10]

The posts that follow in Yun's list are all in the written word. In 1318 SH he was deputy director of journalism at the Tolana. In 1319 and 1320 he advised the daily Islah, headed the Tolana's grammar section, and became its general inspector and the director of the monthly Kabul. [4] Adamec dates the Kabul directorship to 1942. [9] In 1325 SH (1946–47) he became director of the government paper Ittihad-i Mashriqi, and in 1327 SH director general of tribal affairs in Nangarhar. [4, 9] Yun adds that three of the Kabul annuals, for 1321, 1322 and 1323 SH, were printed under his care. [4]

The Awakened Youth and the liberal parliament

In the late 1940s a group of writers, civil servants and clergy formed a brotherhood called Wesh Zalmian in the Kandahari dialect and Wikh Zalmian elsewhere, "Awakened Youth". Dupree dates it to 1947, and Adamec's dictionary puts its founding in Kandahar and names Ulfat among its founders. [5, 10] Hafizullah Emadi says it grew from Shah Mahmud's reforms from the top and listed among its prominent members Abdul Rauf Benawa, Abdul Hai Habibi, Nur Muhammad Taraki and Ulfat; it asked for a constitutional monarchy, free elections and civil liberties. [6] The Soviet History of Afghanistan edited by Gankovsky counts the same four among the most active members and puts the whole membership at under a hundred. [7] Yun gives the branches and their heads: Benawa at Kandahar, Ghulam Muhiuddin Zarmati in Paktia, Taraki at Kabul, and Ulfat, with Khadim, in Nangarhar. [4]

Ulfat won a seat for Jalalabad in the seventh National Assembly in 1328 SH (1949), and Yun writes that in 1331 SH (1952) the people of Qarghayi in Laghman chose him for the eighth. [4] Emadi puts the first election a year earlier and names Ulfat among the Wesh Zalmian candidates who won. [6] Adamec calls him second secretary of the Assembly in 1950, and Yun says he was chosen its second deputy. [4, 9] Emadi writes that the government worked to keep the Assembly under its influence and that the liberal deputies were a minority. [6] Dupree describes the "liberal parliament" and the opposition papers it brought, published in 1951 and 1952 and then banned. [5] For the rulers' side see Hashim Khan and Shah Mahmud Khan.

Gankovsky's Soviet history, by contrast, says that no opposition candidate was returned in the election of April 1952. [7]

Yun says the group later quarrelled, and that Ulfat stayed in it to the end with Sapi, Khadim, Angar, Rishtin and Benawa, while the paper Angar kept the name of the Wesh Zalmian to the last. [4] Emadi dates the split to a year after the group began and puts its cause in Pashtun nationalism: the hardliners backed the Red Shirts of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and Ghubar, Mahmoodi and Farhang left, accusing the group of a pro-government line and a narrow Pashtun nationalism. [6] Ulfat's own part in that split is known only from Yun.

Wolus, 1951–53

Ulfat held the licence of the paper Wolus ("The People"). Yun says it ran from the month of Jawza 1330 to Aqrab 1332 SH, which is roughly June 1951 to November 1953, with most of the writing done by Ulfat. [4] The family's biography has it founded in 1951 and edited by him until the end of 1953. [2] Emadi counts it among the independent papers that followed the press law of 1950. [6]

Two readings of it stand side by side. Yun writes that after 1332 SH the national press and open political work were stopped, and that Ulfat then used his official post and turned to literary, veiled writing to keep up the national and political struggle against injustice. [4] When partial democracy came in 1345 SH (1966–67) and the press opened again, Yun says, he went back to political writing in Pashto and Persian, above all in the paper Afghan in 1350–52 SH. [4] The Soviet history describes Wolus as a private paper of a "national-bourgeois trend" that exposed the looting of the ruling circles and the people's misery but "proposed nothing concrete", only appealing to the reason of those in power, and whose publishers professed loyalty to the king as a defender of national interests. [7] Both describe a paper of protest; they differ on whether it went further.

A Soviet orientalist's survey of how the Afghan press wrote about Pashtunistan, translated in the Central Asian Review, quotes a piece by Ulfat in Islah of 28 December 1953, "Pashtun is not the name of a tribe but of a people". He argues that a people is "a collection of tribes, an association of tribes" and concludes that "the Pashtuns are those who are settled in two countries, in Afghanistan and Pashtunistan". [8] The review's editors note that the Soviet author, R. T. Akhramovich, takes the Afghan side because that is Soviet policy, and they print beside it a comment by Sir Olaf Caroe calling the article's historical basis "over-simplified and full of gaps and errors". [8] For the frontier itself see the Durand Line.

Academy, ministry and parliament

From 1335 SH (1956–57) Ulfat was president of the Pashto Tolana and a member of the Ministry of Education's higher council. [4] Adamec's dictionary dates the presidency to 1957 in his own entry and to 1956 in its list of Academy presidents, which names Benawa for 1946–51 and Siddiqullah Rishtin for 1951–56 before him. [10] In 1338 SH Yun has him head of the Afghan-Soviet Friendship Society as well. [4] He went abroad with delegations and to congresses of orientalists: Yun names Peshawar, Moscow, Leningrad, Sochi, Baku, Dushanbe, Tashkent, Tehran and Munich, and says he lectured on Khushal Khan Khattak, the Pashto Tolana and Rahman Baba. [4] Late in life he made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He also taught at Kabul University, in the faculties of literature and of law. [2, 4]

In 1342 SH (1963) he entered the cabinet, and Yun says the independent directorate of tribal affairs was put in his charge. [4] Dupree's table of the interim cabinet of Mohammad Yusuf lists Sayyid Shamsuddin Majrooh and then Gul Pacha Ulfat, dated 25 April 1963, for Tribal Affairs. [5] The family's account says he resigned in 1964 and was then elected to the Assembly by Jalalabad. Adamec's Who's Who has him president of tribes in 1964, and the dictionary gives 1963–65 for the post. [2, 9, 10] Yun records his election for the twelfth term in 1344 SH (1965). He says the people of Jalalabad sent him to the Loya Jirga in 1334 SH, and Adamec lists Loya Jirgas of 1956 and 1964. [4, 9] For the king whose governments he served, see Mohammad Zahir Shah.

Yun says that in every term as a deputy Ulfat did not misuse his parliamentary rights or trade away the nation's rights for private gain, and that, unlike many deputies, he did not bow to the power of governments; his speeches, printed in the papers and in the publications of the Assembly, are his evidence. [4] That is the view of the editor of a memorial volume. Emadi mentions Ulfat only as a Wesh Zalmian, a deputy of the first liberal parliament and the publisher of Wolus, and Gankovsky only as a Wesh Zalmian and the publisher of Wolus; neither describes his later years in the Assembly or the cabinet. [6, 7] The outline is common to every source: a reforming group in 1947, a seat in the Assembly by 1949, the Academy in 1956–57 and a ministry in 1963.

Poems and prose

Habibi, the Pashto scholar and himself a Wesh Zalmian, called both Ulfat's prose and his verse poetry. In Yun's quotation he says that the beautiful, bright-coloured flower that Pashto literature has raised in its lush garden is, without doubt, Gul Pacha Ulfat, and the pun on gul, "flower", is plain. [4] Dupree lists Ulfat with Benawa among the more important twentieth-century Afghan poets. [5] Adamec's dictionary calls him a popular Pashto poet, social critic and Pashtun nationalist. [10]

Yun's catalogue of his printed books starts with the verse. Da psarli naghma ("The Song of Spring", 1320 SH) was about forty pages; Aali afkar ("Lofty Thoughts", 1327 SH) ran to 58 pages at the Nangarhar government press; Da azadi paygham ("The Message of Freedom") holds thirteen poems dedicated to the Pashtuns; Ghwara ashaar ("Selected Poems", 1334 SH) is his largest, at 256 pages; and Da zra weena ("The Speech of the Heart", 1341 SH) is the last printed. [4] His prose includes Bala diwa (1320 SH), Ghwara nasrona ("Selected Prose", 1336 SH) and Adabi bahsoona (1332 SH), literary studies first printed in Kabul. [4] He also wrote on Pashto vocabulary (Lughawi tsirana, 1331 SH), compiled an anthology of Pashto poems and songs (Pashto sandari, 1325 SH), and wrote a book on Khushal Khan Khattak, Milli qahraman ("The National Hero"), printed in 1344 SH by the tribal affairs directorate. [4]

Yun gives two samples from Aali afkar. The first, he notes, is in the metres of Pashto folk poetry. It is a satire in short stanzas with the refrain "do not be fooled, he is a thief":

وینا ته چې یې ګورې د وطن په غم غمجن دی

پرې مه غولېږئ غل دی

Wīnā ta che ye gore, da watan pa gham ghamjan dai, paṛe ma ghwalēgey, ghal dai.

Judge him by his speech and he is grieved for the homeland. Do not be fooled, he is a thief. [1]

The poems of Da azadi paygham turn to the Pashtun honour that the site treats under nang and ghayrat:

آزادي زما مضمون دی

د غیرت او ننګ نغمه یم

Āzādī zmā mazmūn dai, da ghayrat aw nang naghma yam.

Freedom is my theme; I am a song of honour and pride. [1]

Yun describes the themes of the prose as the pains of society, its corruption, the life of villagers, poor farmers and shepherds, and the cruelty of the oppressors, sometimes with satire and humour. [4] He says the language is plain and fluent, free of strain and show, and cites Ulfat's own Likwali for his view that simplicity is a great virtue in writing. [4] One piece from Ghwara nasrona, "The innocent prisoner", opens with the plea "let him go" and holds the prisoner's name back to the last line: [1]

دا بندي څوک دی؟ پس له ډېره فکره وایم: فکر دی فکر!

Dā bandī tsok dai? Pas la ḍera fikra wāyam: fikr dai fikr!

Who is this prisoner? After long thought I say: it is thought, thought! [1]

An English translation of his poem "My Possessions" in a 1969 Kabul book on the Afghans opens: "I do not boast of possessing many a beautiful garment, / A worn hat I don, but in my head dwell new ideas and thoughts". [3]

Yun also quotes two writers on the man. Benawa called him straightforward, good-natured and sedate, with a cheerful face, his gatherings sweet and his talk full of humour. [4] Ajmal Khattak wrote in Rahbar that Ulfat's pen was restless and stirring, but that in company he was so quiet and calm that no one would guess it was the same man. [4]

The last years

Yun says that after his years as a deputy Ulfat spent about eight years at home with heart disease. Under his doctors' strict orders he went on reading, wrote political, social and critical pieces for the national papers until 1352 SH (1973–74), and went on writing poetry to the day he died. [4] His late son Aziz-ur-Rahman Ulfat arranged and printed a book of his on Islam and the structure of society after his death. [4]

He died on 28 Qaws 1356 SH and was buried in the graveyard of Mansur village at Aziz Khan Kash, beside the Kabul–Nangarhar highway. [4] Writers, poets and senior officials from Kabul and Nangarhar came to the burial. Members of the Pashto Tolana attended, the Tolana read his biography at the grave, and its president laid a wreath. [4] He left a wife, five sons and a daughter. [4] Yun prints a poem of his will asking for a funeral without show. He wished his death to be like a poor man's (غواړم چې مرګ مې وي په شان د یو فقیر), and then:

نه دې راډیو کې وي زما د مرګ اعلان

نه دې وي زما په قبر خان و بیک امیر

Na de rādio ke wī zmā da marg elān, na de wī zmā pa qabar khān aw bek amīr.

Let no radio carry the announcement of my death, and let no khan, bey or amir stand at my grave. [1]