MUMBAI: It is not often that people from both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border get to celebrate something in common. Yet the legacy of Sajjad Zaheer, Marxist thinker, writer and journalist is one that is shared by both countries.

The three-day centenary celebrations of Sajjad Zaheer was inaugurated here on Friday with fond reminiscences by people from both India and Pakistan.

A barrister who studied at Oxford University, Zaheer was involved in founding the Progressive Writers Association (PWA) in 1936 and was among those who set up the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) and the All-India Kisan Sabha. He was sent to Pakistan in 1948 to establish the Communist Party there and later arrested in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case in 1951.

One of his four daughters Nadira Zaheer Babbar who is a well-known theatre director, recalled that he worked all his life for bettering the lot of ordinary people. She said even though his literary works are modest, what he wrote sparked off furious debates and his major contribution was to set up the PWA. Lucknow-born Zaheer was the son of the Chief Justice of the Oudh Court and started taking part in the freedom struggle when he was 14.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary, Prakash Karat, said Zaheer's biggest contribution was that he created a progressive literary movement, which supported the struggle of people. He said the impact of the book of short stories Angarey in which Zaheer had written five stories, led the British to ban it in 1933. Today creative and artistic freedom was again under attack and there was a need to display the same courage and direction that Zaheer showed in those days.

Shamim Faizi of the Communist Party of India (CPI) spoke about Zaheer's role in reviving Urdu journalism while IPTA president A.K. Hangal spoke of his personal association with Zaheer. Zafarullah Poshni who was a young army captain in Pakistan, among those arrested with Zaheer and Faiz Ahmed Faiz in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy case, came here especially for the occasion. Poshni was in jail with Zaheer and has now authored a book on the entire conspiracy. The Communist Party in Pakistan was virtually underground then.

"I expected Zaheer to be a man full of sound and fury as a leader of an underground party but he was quite the opposite. He was polite and well dressed and extremely well read. I am a better man for having spent time in jail, with the likes of Zaheer and Faiz," said Poshni, the only surviving person accused in that case.

Hameed Akhtar from the PWA, Pakistan spoke of Zaheer's role in setting up the Communist Party in Pakistan and said that without him, such a task was impossible. Dr. Namwar Singh, writer and critic, said Zaheer worked silently and with great love to change things and make them better. But all that is under threat once again and the fight is tougher now. There is a new imperialism coming from America and there was a need to learn from Zaheer about the way he fought such forces, he said.

Born on November 5, 1905, Zaheer died in 1973 at the age of 68, while attending a conference of Afro Asian writers at Alma Ata. As the former Prime Minister, V.P. Singh, said, "there are some people whom time cannot take away."

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