TAJ MAHAL AND SAHIR LUDHIANVI: other side of the view !! Quote of the DAy: History is, by and large, written by the victor. It is a tale of kings and queens, of their loves and conquests. Sahir Ludhianvi, in his celebrated poem ‘Taj Mahal’, offers a corrective when he asks his beloved not to meet him at the Taj Mahal, as it conceals the stories of the workers whose blood, sweat and tears built it: ‘My beloved, they too must have loved passionately / They, whose craft has gifted this monument its beautiful visage / Their loved ones lie in unmarked graves / Dark, forgotten, unvisited.’ Indeed, what of the workers? What of the people, ‘dark, forgotten, unvisited’? What of their love? Where are their monuments? Where are their stories? Where are their historians? Should we not pay attention to these too? These were some of the thoughts sparked off recently after reading The Darker Nations, which takes the cue from Sahir, and offers us a people’s history of the Third World. First published in 2007, Prashad’s book is being published in Pakistan later this year. by: By Qalandar Bux Memon & Ali Mohsin (Courtesy:himalmag/component/content/article/356.html)
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 07:35:56 +0000
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