A Marxist Sufi Vision: Punjabi literary imaginaries of radical change in the work of Najm Hosain Syed (b. 1935)

Abstract

This paper will explore the contours of a Sufi Marxist imaginary in the poetic, theatrical and literary critical work of Najm Hosain Syed (b. 1936), a major figure in the Punjabi language movement of Pakistan. The Marxist affiliations of Syed and allied cultural workers have been the focus of most readings of Syed’s corpus, as we can see in the work of Sara Kazmi, Virinder Kalra, and Waqas Butt. This article builds on this prior work to understand the ways figures such as the Sufi poet Shah Hussain (16^th c.) represent, for Syed, a means for imagining a radical present grounded in a radical religious inheritance. Through this example, we explore a broader reading of Marxist thought and practice, and simultaneously consider the radical potentialities of this religious position within a broader socialist analytic.