Politics in India since Independence The Dawn of Freedom Faiz Ahmed Faiz This scarred, marred brightness, this bitten-by-night dawn - The one that was awaited, surely, this is not that dawn. This is not the dawn yearning for which Had we set out, friends, hoping to find sometime, somewhere The final destination of stars in the wilderness of the sky. Somewhere, at least, must be a shore for the languid waves of the night, Somewhere at least must anchor the sad boat of the heart … Translation of an extract from urdu poem Subh-e-azadi We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community – because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vaishnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis, and so on – will vanish. … You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan.
You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan at Karachi, August . Faiz Ahmed Faiz ( - ) Born in Sialkot; stayed in Pakistan after partition. A leftist in his political leanings, he opposed the Pakistani regime and was imprisoned.
Collections of his poetry include Naksh-e-Fariyadi, Dast-e-Saba and Zindan-Nama. Regarded as one of the greatest poets of South Asia in the twentieth century. Dawn, Karachi, August