ZAMEEN And GUMAAN: ETHICS And SUBJECTIVITY In RUKHSANA JABEEN's POEMS : PROFESSOR MUHAMMAD ASLAM

Zameen and Gumaan:

Ethics And Subjectivity In RUKHSANA JABEEN's POEMS 

The Poet

I know very little about Rukhsana Jabeen, though I have seen her at several literary gatherings. As far as I know, she was born in Srinagar on 1 May 1955, completed master’s degrees in Urdu and Persian, and later earned an MPhil in Persian. She retired as Director of the erstwhile Radio Kashmir in Srinagar. I have not come across any independently published volumes by her; the poems discussed here are sourced from rekhta.org.

Ahmad Ali Fayaz notes that Jabeen is among the very few women writers from Jammu and Kashmir who “carved a niche in the Subcontinent’s vast domain of Urdu poetry at the intersection of the 20th and 21st centuries.” Writing amid decades of armed insurgency in the Valley—a period that stifled much artistic expression—she nonetheless sustained her poetic voice for over three decades.

She has spoken movingly of the encouragement she received from Hamidi Kashmiri, one of the Subcontinent’s most significant literary figures. Recalling her early years, she writes: “I was thrilled when Hamidi Sahab refined my first ghazal and got it published in the annual edition of his department’s magazine ‘Baazyaft’. Under his tutelage, I learned about modern sensibility and post-modern literary trends.” According to Fayaz (13 January 2024), Jabeen has completed several translations—short stories from multiple languages into Kashmiri, as well as a translation of Hafiz Shirazi undertaken with Dr. Syed Raza of Budgam. In addition, three of her own collections—two in Urdu and one in Kashmiri—are reportedly ready for publication, though I do not know whether they have since appeared in print.

(1) TRNSLITERATION 

yeh hamaari zameen voh tumharee zameen

sarhadain khaa gayee hain ye saaree zameen

teree ḳhaaṭir hee kaṭvaaye sar be-shumaar

qeemat aisee chakaa dee hai bhaaree zameen

aaṅkh uṭhee bhee na thee teree jaanib abhee

ẓarb seenun pe lagvaa dee kaaree zamee

ghair koyee qadam rakh na paaye yahan

nadiyan ḳhoon kee kar dee jaaree zameen

aasman kaa gumaan sab ko hone lagaa

chaand taarun se ham ne sanvaaree zameen

roz ugataa hai suraj isee kokh se

aur har shaam royee kunvaaree zameen

(1) TRANSLATION 

This land is ours, that land is yours.

Borders have devoured the whole of this land.

For you alone, countless heads were severed—

The soil has paid a price unbearably heavy.

Before your gaze even turned this way,

The earth arranged blows upon our chests, cruel and exacting.

No stranger may set foot upon this ground;

The land has made its rivers flow with blood.

People began to mistake it for the sky—

We adorned this earth with moon and stars.

Each day the sun is born from this same womb,

And every evening, the virgin land weeps.

CRITICAL EVALUATION 

I don’t know when this poem was written, but the way it talks about land, borders, and bloodshed, it seems a reflection on how this earth (zameen) has been divided into different parts, each claiming ownership of its bit. Rukhsana Jabeen’s poem is a stark meditation on nationhood, sacrifice, and the violence embedded in borders, opening with the arresting inversion that “borders have eaten the land,” turning geography into a predator that mutilates rather than protects. Mohammad Hanief Rame laments this situation in this way in ‘Giraibaan’: 

main ne gulaab ke pauday se poochha

aaj kal tum par phool kam aur kaantay zyada aa rahay hain

kehnay laga main tumhara be-daam ghulaam hoon

un dinon tum dushmani ke kaantay bonay mein masroof ho

tumhein kaanton ki zaroorat hai

jis roz tum dosti ke safar par niklo ge

dekhna main kaisay phoolon ke ambaar laga doon ga

main ne faakhta se kaha

duniya mein har taraf bad-amni phaili hai

woh tumhari shaakh-e-zaitoon, woh shaakh-e-aman kahan gayi

boli: main ne to laa kar tumharay haath mein de di thi

tum hi kahin rakh kar bhool gaye ho

dekho shayad tumhari bandook ki naali mein na pari ho

main ne taaron bharay aasmaan ki taraf hasrat se dekha

insaan ke din kab phirain ge

yeh qatl-o-ghaarat, yeh khoon-kharaabi kab khatam hogi

yeh zair-daston ka sabr, yeh zabardaston ka jabr

yeh loot aur jhoot aakhir hamaray naseeb mein kyun likh diye gaye hain

ek sitara toota

aur meray dil ke takhta-e-siyaah par raqam kar gaya

“jhaank lo apnay giraibaan mein”

I asked the rosebush:

“These days, why do you bear fewer flowers

and more thorns?”

It replied,

“I am your unpaid servant.

These days, you are busy sowing the thorns of hostility.

You need thorns.

The day you set out on the journey of friendship,

you’ll see how I pile up heaps of flowers.”

I said to the dove,

“Everywhere in the world, unrest has spread.

Where is your olive branch,

that branch of peace?”

She replied,

“I brought it and placed it in your hands.

You are the one who set it down somewhere and forgot it.

Look—perhaps it never fit

inside the barrel of your gun.”

I looked longingly at the star-filled sky.

When will human days change?

When will this slaughter, this bloodshed, finally end?

This patience of the oppressed,

this tyranny of the powerful—

this plunder and deceit,

why were they written into our fate?

A star fell,

and engraved upon the black slate of my heart:

“Look within your own collar.”

Things haven’t fallen apart on their own. We, the people, are responsible and must therefore look within ourselves and take stock of the predicament. 

In Rukhsana Jabeen’s poem, zameen is feminized and embodied: it pays a price, absorbs blows, bleeds rivers of blood, becomes a womb that births the sun, and finally stands as a weeping virgin. This dual image—mother yet untouched, violated yet declared “pure”—creates deep tension, suggesting a land endlessly sacrificed for but never healed or fulfilled. The Subcontinent has seen the worst bloodshed, killing thousands of innocents, resulting in defining borders between one community and the other. The devastating portrayal of such borders is lamented in Gillian Clarke’s ‘Border’ thus:"

It crumbles

where the land forgets its name

and I’m foreign in my own country.

Fallow, pasture, ploughland

ripped from the hill

beside a broken farm.

The word’s exactness

slips from children’s tongues.

Saints fade in the parishes.

Fields blur between the scar

of hedgerow and new road.

History forgets itself.

At the garage they’re polite.

“Sorry love, no Welsh.”

At the shop I am slapped

by her hard “What!”

They came for the beauty

but could not hear it speak.

The phrase kunvaaree zameen (virgin land) in Jabeen’s poem is especially unsettling, implying that despite immense bloodshed, the land remains unclaimed and alone. Violence precedes even desire or recognition, as sacrifice occurs “before your gaze even turned this way,” suggesting anticipatory loyalty, paranoia, or ideology rather than love or necessity. The sanctification of the land through moon-and-star imagery evokes flags and cosmic elevation, yet this sacredness is built atop exclusion and bloodshed, quietly critiquing how mythmaking beautifies brutality. Although the daily birth of the sun suggests renewal, the poem closes with cyclical grief—birth each morning, tears each evening—implying endless repetition in which creation is always followed by mourning. Stylistically restrained yet emotionally dense, the poem refuses to resolve its contradictions, allowing pride to coexist with sorrow and sanctity with horror, and ultimately leaves the reader questioning whether the land ever truly asked for such sacrifice.

(2)

(2)

aik muama hai voh vaise kitna bh)ola bhala hai

aik aik rang anokha us ka, har andaaz nirala hai

shikwa hai, main chup hoon lekin itna hai maloom mujhe

mere phool se lafzon se woh kaante chunne wala hai

istifhaam ke jangal mein kab kaun kahan kyun kaisa kya

soch mein khud ko gum paaya hai jab se hosh sambhala hai

duniya mein dekha hai har su jhoot, kapat, chhal, makar o fareb

aur yeh sunne mein aaya hai jhoote ka munh kaala hai

koi samjha de saahil par maatam karne walon ko

apni marzi se kashti ko is girdab mein daala hai

apne apne taur pe ahl-e-fikr ne is ko socha hai

main bas itna kehti hoon: yeh maut ka aik niwala

(2) TRANSLATION 

He is a riddle—yet so disarmingly innocent

Each shade of him is strange, each gesture rare and new.

I nurse a grievance—silent still—but this much I do know:

From my flower-soft words, he harvests thorns.

Lost in the forest of questions—

Who, when, where, why, how, and what—

I misplaced myself the day awareness came.

Everywhere I’ve looked, the world reeks of lies:

Deceit, trickery, fraud, illusion—

And yet they say the liar’s face turns black.

Someone should tell those mourning on the shore:

The boat was steered into the whirlpool by choice.

The thinkers all have pondered it in their own way;

I say only this: It is a single mouthful of death.

(3) CRITICAL APPRECIATION 

“The boat was steered into the whirlpool by choice” is a devastating image of the unfortunate situation Kashmir was beset by in the 90s and the 20s of the previous century. The speaker is watching the mourners on the shore but knows that the tragedy that they are wailing about has been self-inflicted. In the mayhem, we came across both intellectual restlessness and moral fatigue that this poem is lamenting. “The thinkers all have pondered it in their own way” but felt helpless in finding any solution. The intellectual vacuum led to enormous problems. 

The speaker in the poem is observant, restrained, and deeply sceptical—someone who has seen too much and therefore speaks only what feels necessary. One of the poem’s key strengths lies in its economy of metaphor: images such as “flower-soft words,” “the forest of questions,” and “a mouthful of death” are compact yet densely loaded, carrying philosophical weight without slipping into ornamentation. The poem also sustains a compelling moral ambiguity, refusing any claim to innocence; the image of steering the boat into the whirlpool by choice subtly indicts not just a corrupt world but human agency itself, suggesting that suffering is often chosen rather than merely endured. This is reinforced by the controlled voice of the speaker, whose repeated restraint—her silence and finality—creates authority, as she does not argue or plead but simply concludes. Thematically, the poem explores the tension between perception and reality, where apparent uniqueness conceals harm; language as vulnerability, where softness invites violence; existential inquiry, reflected in the cascading interrogatives that mirror philosophical paralysis; and collective self-deception, embodied in the ironic invocation of the proverb about the liar’s blackened face in a world that continues to live by lies. The closing line, “yeh maut ka aik niwala,” is devastating precisely because it refuses elaboration: after all the questioning, the poet arrives not at an answer but at a verdict, a moment that feels less like despair and more like lucid, unsentimental acceptance. Herbert Nehrlich describes “moat ka niwala” this way in relation to Zimbabwe: 

I had to close the book of mankind’s history,

it told of many wars, of bloodshed and of torture,

describing in disturbing but extensive detail,

how one can split a skull and full-grown man in half,

right down the centre of his hapless, useless being.

As if he'd never mattered or deserved to live.

So many years and so much blood was spilled,

that fertile fields bore witness to man's greatest folly.

On page eleven of four hundred, many illustrated,

they had included a description of a gallic guillotine,

complete with animation, only light touch was required,

and in true colours bloody heads rolled to the bottom of the page.

I had now seen enough, of pages so explicit

and stuffed it back into the very upper shelf.

And out of sight was out of mind, all within minutes.

I’d closed the book on one man’s cruelty to others.

(3) TRNSLITERATION 

aankhon mein mere abr-e-rawaan aur tarah ke

dil mein bhi kai dasht-e-tapaan aur tarah ke; 

hain yaas tere teer-o-kamaan aur tarah ke

lafzon ke sipar mere yahan aur tarah ke; 

ahbaab sunaate hain koi aur kahaani 

hain mere hareefon ke bayaan aur tarah ke;

ajdaad viraasat mein ghutan chhor gaye hain

ta‘meer karein ab ke makaan aur tarah ke;

yeh baat bahaaron pe hi mauqoof nahin hai

mausam hain mere saath jawaan aur tarah ke; 

tum apne ko kehte ho juda sab se alag sa

aabshaar numaayaan hain kahaan aur tarah ke; 

ab shola-e-khas ki bhi koi taab nahin hai 

allah mere baandh samaan aur tarah ke; 

andeeshe mujhe gher na lein kaise bhala ho

guzre hain unhein bhi to gumaan aur tarah ke.

(3) TRANSLATION 

In my eyes flow clouds of a different kind,

And in my heart burn deserts of another heat.

Your despair draws bows and arrows unlike mine;

Here, my words carry shields of another make.

Friends tell me a story that is not my own;

Even my rivals speak in other tongues.

Ancestors have left us suffocation as inheritance—

This time, let us build our houses otherwise.

This truth is not bound to spring alone;

The seasons that walk with me ripen differently.

You call yourself distinct, set apart from all—

Where, then, are waterfalls that are truly unlike the rest?

Now even the spark of dry grass has no strength left;

O God, refashion my provisions in another way.

How could anxieties fail to surround me,

When those before me also passed through doubts of other kinds?

(3) CRITICAL EVALUATION 

The poem is structured around the insistent refrain of aur tarah ke—“of another kind”—which functions not merely as a stylistic echo but as the poem’s philosophical engine. Each repetition widens the gap between inner life and inherited or imposed narratives: eyes and heart generate their own climates, language becomes defensive rather than decorative, and even despair is depicted as armed in unfamiliar ways. The speaker resists both the consolations of community and the oppositional clarity of rivalry; friends and enemies alike are shown to speak from frameworks that do not fully touch the speaker’s lived reality. This produces a voice that is lucid yet restless, grounded in self-knowledge but wary of self-mythologizing, especially when confronted with claims of absolute uniqueness.

Equally compelling is the poem’s ethical turn toward inheritance and futurity. The ancestors’ legacy is named bluntly as “suffocation,” rejecting nostalgia and posing the question of reconstruction—makaan aur tarah ke—as a moral necessity rather than an aesthetic choice. Nature, often a site of easy renewal in lyric poetry, is pluralized and individualized: seasons age with the speaker, spring loses its monopoly on hope, and even fire fails. The final prayer does not ask for certainty or escape but for altered equipment—tools adequate to changed conditions—while acknowledging that doubt itself is inherited, though never in the same form. The poem thus articulates a modern, historically conscious subjectivity: one that accepts difference as unavoidable, continuity as troubled, and survival as an act of constant reconfiguration rather than resolution.

Reading the poem from a feminist perspective, the speaker is up against the traditions and rituals that bind a woman to the patriarchal framework, “suffocating” for generations together. Here, we find a female weaving her own world differently with a prayer: O God, refashion my provisions in another way. The speaker is up against any shackles, like the narrator in the following poem:

They built a cage of “should” and “musts,”

With walls of glass and iron rusts.

They said, “Be soft,” “Be quiet, stay,”

“And walk the path we paved today.” 

But I have learned to breathe in stone,

And claim the marrow from the bone.

My silence was a temporary loan,

I am the builder of my own.

I will not fit in boxes small,

I am the fire, I am the wall.

They thought to bend me till I broke,

But I am the fire, I am the smoke.

Look in my eyes, the gaze is free,

The architect of1/2 history.

No longer guest within this place,

I own the power of my space.

(4) TRANSLITERATION 

main hun to kyee patlaye ki kahan hun

sada tu de ke jaanun main kahan hoon

yahi hai farq mujh mein aur us mein

yaqeen hai woh, to main bas aik gumaan hoon

zameen se aasmaan tak shor kaisa

to kya sab ke liye baar-e-garaan hoon

bahum us ko faza-e-aasmani

main goya band kamray mein dhuan hoon

main phooti us ki pasli se to terhi

woh seedha teer jaisa, main kamaan hoon

khayaal-o-khwaab hai woh, aab-e-darya

teray sehraon mein reg-e-rawaan hoon

kabhi ilzaam lagta hai yeh hona

na ho kar bhi to main tuhmat-ba-jaan hoon

daleelen dher saari, tu zameen hai

ba-zid is par ke tera aasmaan hoon

yeh duniya-daar bachay jaantay hain

meray qadmon mein jannat hai ke maa hoon

(4) Translation

If I exist, let someone say: yes, you do.

Call out to me—so I know where I am.

This is the difference between him and me:

He is certainty; I am only doubt.

From earth to sky, what is this uproar—

Am I a burden laid on everyone?

He moves freely in the open air of heaven;

I am smoke trapped in a sealed room.

I was shaped from his rib, and so I’m crooked;

He flies straight like an arrow—I am the bow.

He is thought and dream, the water of a river;

In your deserts, I am drifting sand.

Sometimes simply being feels like a crime;

Even not existing, I stand accused.

You pile up proofs and say you are the earth;

I insist—stubbornly—that I am your sky.

These worldly-wise children know the truth:

Paradise lies at my feet—because I am a mother.

(4) CRITICAL APPRECIATION 

This poem is about a woman who brings children into the world, yet being a woman “feels like a crime” and “a burden laid on everyone.” The poem is a tightly woven meditation on identity, gender, belief, and moral authority, articulated through a sustained series of binaries: certainty versus doubt, sky versus earth, openness versus enclosure, straightness versus curvature. The speaker consistently positions herself as relational rather than absolute—“gumaan” rather than “yaqeen”—a stance that becomes a source of both vulnerability and quiet power. The narrator feels like the speaker in Emily Dickinson’s ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’ 

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you - Nobody - too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Dont tell! they'd banish us - you know!

 

How dreary - to be - Somebody!

How public - like a Frog -

To tell your name - the livelong June -

To an admiring Bog!

Rukhsana Jabeen uses images—smoke in a closed room, a bow bent against an arrow, sand against water—which aren’t decorative metaphors. Still, they actively argue the poem’s thesis that what is deemed secondary, indirect, or unstable is nonetheless essential, generative, and structurally necessary. The rib metaphor is especially sharp—reclaiming a traditionally derogatory trope and reframing “crookedness” as function, tension, and potential energy.

Critically, the poem’s strength lies in its refusal to resolve its contradictions. The speaker does not escape accusation, burden, or doubt; instead, she inhabits them fully, even when innocence is impossible (“na ho kar bhi… tuhmat ba-jaan”). This lends the poem ethical weight rather than mere polemic. The final turn toward motherhood risks sentimentality but avoids it by grounding paradise not in abstraction but in embodied labor and lived knowledge—“duniya-daar bachay jaantay hain.” Who are these worldly children, and why must they understand that “she is a mother” at whose feet paradise lies? ‘Mother’ is like ‘zameen’ (known as Mother Earth or Mother Nature or the Earth Mother), bearing all atrocities, killings, exploitation, and whatnot, though people know that if all of us live in peace, this could turn into a virtual paradise. That is how poets like Emily Dickinson have praised her: 

Nature, the gentlest mother,

Impatient of no child,

The feeblest or the waywardest, —

Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill

By traveller is heard,

Restraining rampant squirrel

Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,

A summer afternoon, —

Her household, her assembly;

And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles

Incites the timid prayer

Of the minutest cricket,

The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep

She turns as long away

As will suffice to light her lamps;

Then, bending from the sky

With infinite affection

And infiniter care,

Her golden finger on her lip,

Wills silence everywhere.

Rukhsana Jabeen’s poem relies heavily on metaphor and often assumes a well-read, culturally aware reader, which can make it feel less emotionally direct. Yet this very seriousness is also its strength. The poem speaks with quiet force, standing firm in its defense of those who are curved, uncertain, and unseen, and insisting on their dignity without ever raising its voice. 

CONCLUSION 

Rukhsana Jabeen’s poetic landscape centres on Zameen (earth) as the space of proof, weight, and judgment, and on Gumaan (doubt, uncertainty), which is her lived condition. Zameen claims authority through evidence and certainty—“you pile up proofs and say you are the earth”—and uses that authority to measure, accuse, and confine. Gumaan, by contrast, is fluid, unverified, and restless: smoke in a sealed room, drifting sand, a sky that cannot be pinned down. Although doubt appears weak, crooked, or even criminalized, it is also expansive and generative. Gumaan insists on being the sky to Zameen’s earth—necessary, enveloping, and enabling life rather than merely weighing it down. Gumaan is not a flaw but the quiet power that nurtures, questions, and sustains existence. 

Rukhsana Jabeen’s poetry suggests that ethics cannot rest solely on rigid certainty (Zameen), because moral judgment imposed through “proofs” often ignores lived experience. Subjectivity (Gumaan), though marked as doubt or weakness, carries ethical weight precisely because it feels, questions, and nurtures. She argues that true ethics emerges from acknowledging vulnerability and responsibility rather than enforcing fixed truths. Moral understanding, like motherhood in the last poem, grows from empathy and care, not from unquestioned authority.