Dr Nabi Bakhsh Baloch (1917-2011) has bid us adieu only to prove that an eventful life could do wonders if lived productively. He was truly a scholar Sindh could be proud of. His magnum opus is a commentary Kalam-i-Latif and Shah Jo Risalo. I believe that no Sindhi scholar has done so much work on Shah Latif as he has done.
His ten volumes on Shah Latif have immortalised him besides 40 volumes on Sindhi folklore. It is a pity that obituary writers have forgotten to mention those works in their obituaries. Dr Baloch was a lexicographer par excellence. His volumes on the history of Sindh will always keep him alive along with numerous other works, both originals and compilations- which are rearing 156, a figure which is difficult to enumerate, in an age which doesn't pay attention to the works of literature or culture.
As an Urdu scholar I believe that only Pir Hassamuddin Rashdi could come nearer to him. For the lovers of Urdu literature his discovery of Diwan-e-Sabir entitled Diwan-e-Shauq Afza should be discussed first. Dr Nabi Bakhsh found this Diwan in a family library of Nasrpur near Hyderabad in 1962. He didn't know anything about the poet and after a great deal of research in which he was helped by Dr Ghulam Mustafa Khan and Dr Syed Abdullah, he knew that this Diwan was composed by a resident of Thatta in the latter days of Emperor Aurangzeb. The Diwan was composed in 1811 Hijri (1767 A.D) the Diwan contains 616 ghazals, 14 Rubaiyyat, three Mukhammas, one Musaddas and other compositions in every genres.
The name of the poet is Mir Mehmood Sabir. His father had migrated from Delhi during the heydays of Aurangzeb and had married a Thatta lady of a privileged family. Thus Sabir appears as a contemporary of Wali Deccani. Mir Ali Sher Qaney has commented on his poetry in his Maqalat-ul-Shuara, Sabir knew that he was a contemporary of Wali Deccani. Mir Mehmood Sabir was born in 1110 Hijri, according to a guess work. He was well versed in Persian and Arabic. It was from his date on the epitaph of Mian Noor Ahmed Kalhora (1151-1160 Hijri) that the poet's pseudonym Sabir pointed to poet Sabir in Mir Ali Sher Qaney's Maqalat-i-Shuara. His contemporary Urdu poets were Abdul Hakim Thatvi, Makhdum Muhammad Moin and Mohsin.
After discovery of Sabir's Diwan, Dr Baloch went on discovering other Biyazes of Urdu poets and his equally great work Sindh Mein Urdu Shaeri is a great contribution. I believe that Sabir, Hakim Thatvi, Mohsin and Makhdum Muhammad Moin should figure in every work of history of Urdu literature. He has Urdu-Sindhi and Sindhi-Urdu dictionaries to his credit besides the annotated Diwan-i-Hatim and his work on Maulana Azad Subhani Tehreek-i-Azadi ke Ek Muqtadar Rahnuma.
May be it was due to the upsurge of nationalism in the 50s and 60s that Dr Nabi Bakhsh, Pir Hussamuddin and even Allama I.I Kazi's researches into the origin of Urdu in Sindh couldn't be greeted by Sindh nationalism. Perhaps nationalism doesn't admit of any other interpretation of history except the one which it wants to believe in and support. It is because of this general trait found in all works of the nationalist historians that the other 'viewpoints' are sidelined and hence nationalism has been called by James Joyce, a famous Irish nationalist, to be akin to an 'one-eyed Cyclop'.
I believe quite a few histories of Urdu literature have come after the partition by Ali Jawad Zaidi, Dr Anwar Sadeed, Dr Jamil Jalibi, and Dr Salim Akhtar but none of them has paid due attention to Sindh. May be this slip or 'conscious omission' occurred because most of them didn't want to antagonize Sindhi nationalists.
I believe that nationalism has many virtues except one that it takes distortion of history as a matter of right. Toynbee has concluded in his Study of History that being an Iranian and a historian is a contradiction in terms because an Iranian cannot do justice to an Arab. This is true of nationalist movements to a great extent.
Suppose Dr Baloch's works Diwan-e-Sabir and Sindh Mein Urdu Shaeri didn't find favour with the Sindhi nationalists, it is equally ironic that the Urdu historiographers also ignored numerous Urdu poets of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb's period. After all Thatta had a Mughal Governor in 17th century and Sindh was already a melting point.
Dr Baloch's argument for the origin of Urdu poetry in Sindh is based on the assumption that the Islamic rule began in 711 A.D in Sindh to make this region Bab-ul-Islam even though Islam had conquered Makran and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwah's western points during the reign of Khulafa-i-Rashideen. Yet the naval assault of Baghdad forces on Deebal Raja Dahir's time resulted in the conquest of a region which stretched from Deebal to Multan.
Delhi was conquered in 1306 and hence the period between 711 to 1306 saw the Arabs, Iranians, Afghans mixing with Sindhis and it is not without reason that the Western Punjabi (or Lahnda) was the first variation of Urdu and this variation, on reaching Delhi and its neighbourhood had interaction with Surseni Prakrit of the Khadi Boli region and was called Hindi or Hindvi.
Dr Baloch is therefore not only a great Sindhi scholar but one whose stature in the researches on Urdu Language and poetry is a towering one. He belongs to the class of Hafiz Mahmood Khan Sheerani and Dr Mohiuddin Qadir Zor in placing his region at par with any region in claiming for itself the honor of being the most plausible nursery of Urdu language.
There is no honor which hasn't come to Dr Baloch but the greatest honor he enjoys is that he loved languages and cultures as they were the bridges to foster unity among peoples of different languages. In this world where prejudices have become a vehicle for self-service, the selflessness Dr Baloch stood far is a great legacy for all of us.
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