Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak

“Baley shamey ta nazar krra
Che pa sa zharri khpal zaan
Baar de wotarra Khushala
Da jaras awri fughaan”
(Glance at the lit candle’s flame
Why does it cry and itself blame
Load up and depart o Khushal
The jingle of the caravan bell finally came) – Khushal Khan Khattak.
For one of the most illustrious descendants of the great Khushal Khan Khattak, the bell did toll last week, beckoning him — quite prematurely — to his final departure. The peerless Pashtun polymath, Professor Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak, is no more. He breathed his last on Monday July 20 of a sudden cardiac event, leaving the candle of Pashto language and literature lit brightly, just as he had wanted it to be, but with its tears rolling down in deep sorrow. Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak belonged to the league of modern Pashto literary titans that started in the early 20th century perhaps with the renaissance men Fazal-e-Mahmood Makhfi and Muhammad Gul Khan Momand to the east and west of the Durand Line respectively, and went on to include giants like Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari, Maulana Abdul Qadir, Ghani Khan, Qalandar Momand and Ajmal Khattak. He was a poet, critic, researcher, writer and academic but, above all, a linguistic purist in love with his darling, the Pashto language.
Dr Khattak was born in 1952 to Mr Qadeem Shah of the Abbas Khel sub-clan of the Khattak tribe, in Dag Ismail Khel, a sprawling village in the foothills of the lovely Cherat resort, some 40 kilometers from Peshawar. He completed his early education in his native village and after matriculation moved to Peshawar where he studied at the Islamia College and Government College. By the time he was ready to graduate, his literary sparkle had endeared him to men of letters in the greater Peshawar valley like the then director of the Pashto Academy at Peshawar University, Mian Said Rasool Rasa, Professor Pareshan Khattak, Qalandar Momand, Amir Hamza Shinwari and, above all, Ghani Khan. Dr Khattak was appointed a lecturer at the Edwardes College, Peshawar, circa 1975 upon a personal recommendation by Ghani Khan to the college’s principal, Dr Phil Edmonds. He completed his masters in Pashto around the same time and eventually came to the Pashto Academy, which turned out to be his true calling.
Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak’s postgraduate thesis, ‘The literary movements in Pashto’, which was later published in book form, is perhaps the best representation of his creed, i.e. to modernise the Pashto language without sacrificing its originality, giving equal importance to the literary and popular/folk aspects of literature and promoting language as the foremost exponent of the Pashtun national identity. He called the Pashto language “the unwritten constitution” of Pashtunwali or the Pashtun code of life. In doing so, however, Dr Khattak maintained what could be described as an apolitical nationalism. Just like Amir Hamza Shinwari’s poetry, Dr Khattak’s verse comes across as totally indigenous and a refreshing blend of modern and classic trends but remains free of Marxist, ideologically-anchored nationalism or orthodox religious influences. Perhaps therein was the key to his success as a campaigner and an administrator. He earned kudos from Professor Pareshan Khattak and Mian Said Rasool Rasa to the right of the political spectrum and committed progressives like Qalandar Momand and Ghani Khan to the left.
He served as the director of the Pashto Academy for about a decade at one of the most crucial junctures in Pashto’s contemporary history. The Pashto Academy (later Academy of Sciences) in Kabul was founded in the mid-1930s thanks to Muhammad Gul Khan Momand and was the engine that pulled the research train till Maulana Abdul Qadir, who had served as an ambassador in Kabul and was inspired by the former’s work, pioneered the Pashto Academy, Peshawar, in 1955. Still, due to the different political milieus east and west of the Durand Line, the Pashto Academy, Kabul, continued to do the heavy lifting till the fall of the late Dr Mohammad Najibullah’s government in 1992 when the work there came to a grinding halt. Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak assumed the reins at the Pashto Academy, Peshawar, circa 1995 and picked up where its Kabul counterpart had left off. He wrote, spoke, networked and, most importantly, groomed a generation of scholars and literati. At a time when Pashto in Afghanistan was left at the mercy of Arab-inspired and highly radicalised Islamist legions, Dr Khattak became the torchbearer of modern methodology in research and current trends in literature. His opening doors to Afghan scholars and collaboration with linguists like Dr Mujawer Ahmad Zyar to preserve and promote Pashto literature earned him respect from Kabul and Kandahar to Khyber and Karachi.
Research and administrative work perhaps did take a toll on Dr Khattak’s beautiful ghazal (sonnet) writing. While he produced over a dozen published prose books and over 70 papers, his only poetry collection remains Sangzaar (the rocky path). He sacrificed his poetic pursuits for his beloved Pashto for which both the language and its connoisseurs will forever remain in his debt. Sangzaar, nonetheless, remains a testimony to Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak’s prowess in poetry, especially the ghazal form. He spent perhaps most of his formative years under Ghani Khan’s wing but his style in verse was deceptively simple like Hamza Baba and vibrant like Qalandar Momand. Like Hamza Baba who was an ordained Chishti Sufi, Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak drew tremendous inspiration from Sufi poets like Mirza Khan Ansari of the Roshaniyya Sufi order and Rahman Baba. Indeed, mysticism was not just an undercurrent in Dr Khattak’s poetry but also the subject of several of his lectures. He wrote:
“Bal zama aw sta tar menza raqeeb sok de?
Kho da zaan di, khpal zaan sara pa jang ye!”
(Is there my rival between you and me?
No, ‘tis me and the fight thus is between I and me!)
Dr Khattak, who used Wali, i.e. holy man as his takhallus (poetic nom de plume), is presenting in this verse the perennial Sufi Wahdat-ul-Wujood (unity of existence) theme, which has been the credo of poets from Omar Khayyam to Ghalib, with a romantic overlay. Rebellious romance and love are the leitmotif of Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak’s poetry and like Hamza Baba, he expressed it with refinement, restraint and predominantly native tropes. He steered clear of ideological sloganeering in poetry and devoted his verse to the expression of self and love of the Pashtun people, culture and lands. His literary canvas was as broad as his lands between the Amu and Attock rivers, and he painted it with his lifeblood. He once wrote:
“Ma da zhuand la paanrri paanrri taki tol krra
Ta pray soomra pa asana karkha ra-aakhka”
(My lifework word by word like petals, I collected
But how swiftly you struck a line across it).
RIP Dr Raj Wali Shah Khattak sahib. You are mourned from Kabul to Peshawar; no one can strike a line through the marvelous work you have so painstakingly done.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki