A word about letters
By Kazy Javed
Gone are the days when philosophers, scholars, writers and even scientists were looked upon as intellectuals. A list of the foremast 100 global thinkers for 2009 complied and published by the famous and influential US quarterly Foreign Policy shows that they have been replaced by bankers and political leaders.

People to remember
The photograph published above was taken in 1941 at Delhi’s Chelmsford Club on the occasion of a mushaira. It evokes nostalgia instantly. Five of the faces in the photograph (i.e. 17, 19, 22, 24 and 29) remain unidentified as none of the contemporaries is alive to shed any light. The poets/writers and other prominent personalities had all risen to the heights of fame and recognition in their respective fields in the annals of history. Faiz Ahmed Faiz (21), Josh Malihabadi (12), Majnoon Gorakhpuri (1), Hafeez Jallandari (10), Behzad Luckhnavi (15), Tilok Chand Mehroom (18), Maulvi Abdul Haq(4), Hasrat Mohani (5) and many others became eminent poets and men of letters, except that Hasrat Mohani also dabbled in the Indian politics as a dervish like leader who always travelled in a third class compartment of the Indian Railways.

Mehr Afshan Farooqi’s two-part The Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature is quite an achievement. Covering almost 100 years of Urdu literature with 130 contributions from 90 authors, Farooqi painstakingly edited the two-volume exercise over a period of four years. Daughter of the famous critic and research scholar, Shamsur Rahman Farooqi, she holds a doctorate in history from Allahabad University and has taught South Asian Language and Literature at Cornell University and University of Pennsylvania. At present she is associated with the University of Virginia where she teaches South Asian literature and cultural history in the department of Middle Eastern and South Asian languages and cultures. She sat down with TNS for a talk on Urdu literature.

The News on Sunday: How did you start work on the anthology?

Mehr Afshan Farooqi: I was teaching courses on Indian literature in English translation at the University of Virginia and it was very frustrating because there was such limited material available in translation. I had to stay up nights translating ghazals for my ‘Poetry of Passionate Devotion’ class and I wished for a book that could be used as a reader for my class. Then I got an email from C. M. Naim asking me if I was interested in putting together an anthology of modern Urdu in translation for Oxford University Press. Naim said, "There are only two people who can do this: your father or you. I think you should do it." I was hooked. The project took four years to complete. It would have taken longer if I did not have help from family, my university and my friends.

TNS: What were your criteria for selecting a particular writer?

MAF: I began by deciding a cut off point for the anthology. I selected 1905 because around that time the short story emerges and Dagh, the last of the great classical ghazal writers, passes on. So my idea was to include those writers who gained prominence after 1905 up to the end of the century. Then I began to put together lists of poets, fiction writers, essay writers and so on. I decided for the sake of casting a wider net, that a writer could be represented only once. I also wanted to open up genres such as humour, satire, essay and historical writing in Urdu for an Anglophone audience. Everyone outside of Urdu knows Manto as a great short story writer, which he was. But I wanted to show that he was a wonderful writer of literary sketches as well. So I put Manto in that section. Overall my criterion was the importance of the writer in Urdu’s history and culture.

TNS: You ignored an important writer like Mumtaz Mufti. Why?

MAF: I started with a long table of contents and began to despair how I could pack it all into the space of 400 odd pages without reducing the entries to mere tokenism. I asked for and was granted permission to develop the work into two volumes. Even then, I couldn’t do justice to all the names in my list. At one point I seriously contemplated appending my list with the published volume. Mumtaz Mufti is not the only name that did not get included. I had to make difficult choices.

TNS: What was your criterion for selecting translators for Urdu fiction and poetry? Was it not a tough task?

MAF: Yes it was. But it was even tougher to get those who had agreed to translate to do the work in a timely fashion. In the end I did a lot of translation myself. It was a good exercise for me.

TNS: What was the reaction to the anthology?

MAF: For the most part people were delighted to see not one but two sleek, well-produced volumes. It gave a ‘lift’ to Urdu’s image, by being the first from so many of our literary languages to lead the prestigious series from Oxford University Press. Some people were surprised that Urdu was being given so much importance in India. On the whole the responses were positive. The book got wide coverage in the press. I think the first edition is sold out.

Some people felt that my selection was arbitrary especially in the section on poetry. But hasn’t Ghalib said Sheron ke intikhab ne ruswa kiya mujhe!

TNS: As an astute critic and scholar of Urdu, how would you rate Urdu fiction and poetry?

MAF: I think that literature is embedded in culture. It is an affect of culture. It is unwise to draw comparisons across cultures. Our great poets Mir, Ghalib, Dard and Sauda are no less than Shakespeare, Milton, Kalidas, Bhartihari, Jaisi, Wordsworth or Goethe. I am falling back on English, German, Sanskrit and Bhasha poets because I can’t even begin to compare them with Russian, Japanese or Chinese. Great literature can cross cultures but that does not mean that we can test one against the other.

TNS: What are future prospects of Urdu poetry and fiction? Whose future is brighter in your view?

MAF: Depends on the younger generation of writers and readers. If our children don’t read or write Urdu, its literature will languish. It can be preserved, mummified but only as an artefact. For it to live and breathe we must nurture it.

TNS: What are you working on these days?

MAF: I am writing a book on Muhammad Hasan Askari.

TNS: Askari is stated to be T.S. Eliot of Urdu literature. What is your take?

MAF: Certainly Askari, like T.S. Eliot, was multifaceted. He was a creative writer, translator, editor and literary as well as a cultural critic. He had remarkably original ideas on the role of tradition and culture in framing a literary community’s creative and critical consciousness. Much ahead of his time, he applied western literary-cultural issues and practices to classical and modern Urdu literature, while emphasising the value and viability of Urdu literature in its own right. Askari’s greatest contribution to Urdu critical thought was his insistence that every literary culture has the right to create and be judged by its own cultural norms. For instance, the ghazal need not, in fact, must not be studied and judged as if it were a lyric or sonnet. Askari’s own prose exemplified two models; one was the incisive, trenchant critical prose that could encapsulate abstract thought in lucid language; the other was the prose of his fiction, slow, subtle and measured. Like Eliot, Askari believed in creating a critical consciousness, an awareness of the language and its depth among writers. He said, "In literature it is the words themselves that are the experience."

TNS: Don’t you think the Urdu world has failed to do any worthwhile work on Askari?

MAF: Well, there has been a renewed interest in Askari. His essays that were scattered in different journals have been collected and published. His fiction has been put together and made available. There have been several PhDs on him. Nadeem Ahmad’s PhD (Calcutta) dissertation is being published as a book. The only book length study that I have seen so far is Aziz Ibn ul Hasan’s, Muhammad Hasan Askari, Shakhsiyat aur Fan. (Karachi 2007). Actually, I have been working on my project since 2004. It got delayed because I had to meet the deadlines for the anthology. I expect to have the book in press by the end of 2010.

TNS: What made you select Askari?

MAF: I was/am interested in the development of Urdu prose. In the 18th century when Urdu poetry had established the language of the Urdu-e-mualla as the most beautiful language for the expression of complex, mystical and emotional thought, there was virtually no prose in Urdu. Even tazkiras of Urdu poets were written in Persian. Prefaces and introductions to Urdu divans were in Persian. I began to study the development of Urdu prose. I proposed a project on the development of critical thought in Urdu that’s when I began to look around for a critical voice that could stand out on its own as a the leader of original, literary, critical discourse — and I discovered Askari for myself.

I had never really read Askari until 2003, when I began to read his writings in earnest and I was awed by his scintillating brilliance. I translated his important essays, and short story, Haramjadi. I began piecing together his elusive personality. Some of my work was published in the Annual of Urdu Studies, 2004. Then the work on the anthology became more demanding, so I put Askari aside for a while; but now I am working on my Askari book again.

TNS: Is there anything unusual about Askari that you came across in the course of your research?

MAF: First and foremost, his ideas were way ahead of his time. He spoke of the complexity, the multi-layers of cultural identity of the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. Even before Partition and certainly after, the question of Pakistani identity was raised by him. He asked what Islamic culture comprised.

I also noticed that he was struggling with his own space in the cultural matrix. He talked a lot about alienation, loneliness. Most of his fiction is about these feelings of alienation. Perhaps he felt uneasy because as a product of the colonial regime he had imbibed deeply in western philosophy of literature. He was unhappy with Marxist ideology but his own ideas were nonconformist. He struck his own path and was extremely reticent when it came to talking about himself. Ultimately he found refuge in mystical Islam.

I observed that he had strong likes and dislikes: His unremitting praise for Firaq Gorakhpuri’s poetry (placing Firaq in the same category as Mir Taqi Mir) suggested a skewed judgment from an otherwise astute critic. Askari’s rhapsodic language and tone, when writing about Firaq, strikes a discordant note. I have explored this further in my book.

A word about letters

Gone are the days when philosophers, scholars, writers and even scientists were looked upon as intellectuals. A list of the foremast 100 global thinkers for 2009 complied and published by the famous and influential US quarterly Foreign Policy shows that they have been replaced by bankers and political leaders.

Ben Bernanke has been placed at the top of the list. Hence he is the greatest intellectual of the year. But have you ever gone through his volumes on metaphysics, leafed through his novels or enjoyed the reading of his poetry? I am sure the answer is in the negative for the gentleman has penned none. He is a banker and the current Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve. Americans, however, are obliged to him for his admirable role in preventing the collapse of their economy in recent months. His efforts in this regard have been eulogised as "one of the greatest intellectual feats of recent years".

Number two on the Foreign Policy’s list is the Nobel Prize winning US President Barrack Obama. He has bagged this distinction for "re-imagining America’s role in the world". However, those who have pushed him to this place are not without doubts in their hearts. They are afraid he might fail. But "if he succeeds, the sea change in the US relationship with the world could become tidal".

Another banker, Zhou Xiaochuan who heads the Central Bank of China, has also been honoured. He has been given ninth place on the list. His main achievement is to remind the world that "we cannot take the dollar for granted".

The first traditional intellectual who has been blessed with a mention on the list is the French writer Bernard-Henri Lévy. We find his name on the 31st place. He is better known for picking holes in the European left than his literary creations.

The woman who was born before the Partition in a family of the then most backward NWFP district of Charsadda can easily be counted among the best and brightest Urdu novelists. Nisar Aziz Butt has won this distinction because of her novels, Nagri Nagri Phira Musafar, Nai Chiragai Nai Gulai, Karwan-e-Wajeed, and Darya key Sang that were published in 1955, 1973, 1981 and 1986 respectively.

She has been a student of Henry Kissinger at Harvard but acknowledges Oswald Spengler as her guru who caused an "outright change" in her outlook and she began to see things from his point of view. "I feel", she says, "I am living like an exile. Frankly speaking, Spengler has played havoc with me. I read his Decline of the West and from then on I was never able to adjust myself to the thinking current in our contemporary literary world. So I feel cut off from my contemporaries and fell like an exile".

Her Spenglerian worldview has provided the intellectual and metaphysical background of the novels she wrote. Nisar Aziz Butt published her autobiography under the title Gaey Dinon ka Suragh some three year ago which also gives a detailed account of her intellectual development.

Nisar Aziz Butt used to contribute articles to the daily Dawn under the caption Literary Scene during the 1960s. A collection of these articles has been recently published by the Sang-e-Meel Publications of Lahore. Titled Prelude, the 445-page volume also carries her four papers presented at international conferences and four other articles on the status of women which were first published in 1976.

Nisar Aziz Butt hosted a lunch for her literary friends past week at her Mason Road residence in Lahore. Masood Ashar, Mukhtar Masood, Mustansar Hussain Tarrar and Niaz Ahmad of the Sang-e-Meel Publications were among the guests. Afzal Tauseef, short story writer Ikramullah, columnist Sajid Khan, Aqeela Bano and Ali Sufian too were there. Siddiqa Begum, who was also there, is nowadays getting ready to bring out a special issue of her literary magazine Abab-e-Latif to mark its 75th anniversary, told me there that the special issue was going to be edited by Dr. Ziaul Hasan.

The event provided us the opportunity to once more meet Asghar Butt, Nisar Aziz Butt’s husband who is a former bureaucrat, editor of a national English language newspaper and a playwright.

The monthly Takhleeq has completed 40 years of its publication. Poet Azhar Javed started publishing this literary magazine in 1969 when as a young man he left his ancestral town of Sargodha and settled in Lahore. Those were the golden days of Urdu literary magazines and many of them, like Funoon, Oraaq, Adab-e-Latif, Naya Daur and Seep were being published from Lahore and Karachi. All of them were read with deep interest and many writers, teachers, students and other people interested in literature used to wait for their arrival at bookstalls. However, the times have now changed and almost all the popular literary journals of those days have either ceased publication or sunk into oblivion.

Some new literary journals have now been launched by universities and academies but despite being of fairly high standard, they have not been able to attract considerable number of readers.

The friends and admires of Azhar Javed planned a function to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Takhleeq. But the event was postponed at the 11th hour due to his sudden illness. Now they are all praying for his recovery to enjoy a good literary get-together as well as the new edition of the Takhleeq.

A recent example of the growing carefulness of the British High Commission in Islamabad came in the form of its denial to issue a visa to Kishwar Naheed who had been enjoying 5-year British visas in the past. A respected literary figure of the country, she also works for the promotion of human rights, peace and harmony.

In response to her an application for the grant of visa, she received a letter from the commission that said her application had been turned down.

On hearing the news, I wondered if the cat had finally come out of the bag and wise men of the commission had ferreted out Kishwar’s "links" with the Taliban. However, she told me, she had instead been "punished" for her bonds with the poor because the commission’s letter informed her that her application for the grant of visa was rejected because they "believed that her hosts in the United Kingdom," as mentioned by her in the application, "would not be able to bear her expenses during her stay with them."

People to remember

The photograph published above was taken in 1941 at Delhi’s Chelmsford Club on the occasion of a mushaira. It evokes nostalgia instantly. Five of the faces in the photograph (i.e. 17, 19, 22, 24 and 29) remain unidentified as none of the contemporaries is alive to shed any light. The poets/writers and other prominent personalities had all risen to the heights of fame and recognition in their respective fields in the annals of history. Faiz Ahmed Faiz (21), Josh Malihabadi (12), Majnoon Gorakhpuri (1), Hafeez Jallandari (10), Behzad Luckhnavi (15), Tilok Chand Mehroom (18), Maulvi Abdul Haq(4), Hasrat Mohani (5) and many others became eminent poets and men of letters, except that Hasrat Mohani also dabbled in the Indian politics as a dervish like leader who always travelled in a third class compartment of the Indian Railways.

Professor Mohammad Mujeeb (31) and Dr. Zakir Hussain (28) founded the Jamia Millia University at Delhi and the latter also became the President of India. Ghulam Mohammad (36) became the Governor General of Pakistan while Chaudhry Mohammad Ali (30) served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Sir Sultan Ahmed (6) was a Member of the Viceroy’s Council whereas Sir Raza Ali (8) was the High Commissioner of British India to South Africa. Raja Sahib Mehmoodabad (16) was a leading figure and a diehard supporter of the Pakistan Movement.

Abdur Rehman Siddiqui (29) served as the Governor of erstwhile East Pakistan. Zahid Hussain (37) established the State Bank of Pakistan and was its first Governor. He also held the distinction of serving as the Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University just before the partition.

Mumtaz Hassan (26) became the Finance Secretary in Pakistan while A.D. Azhar (32) headed the PIDC as one of its Chairmen. Dr M.D. Taseer (11) was a British trained educationist who ably ran a reputable college at Amritsar where Faiz Ahmed Faiz also had a stint as a lecturer. Dr Taseer was married to Christobel, a British lady, and their marriage contract was drawn up by none other than Dr Allama Iqbal. Later on, Faiz married Christobel’s younger sister, Alys, in October 1941 and the ceremony was performed by Sheikh Abdullah, the Lion of Kashmir. The Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, is the son of Dr M.D. Taseer.

Col. Majeed Malik (25) served in the Public Relations Wing of the Indian Army and is better remembered for organizing mushairas and other intellectual pursuits in the pre-partition days. His wife later on established PECHS Girls’ College in Karachi which is a landmark educational institution now. Last but not the least, my father, late Shujaat Ali Siddiqui (33), took over as the Military Accountant General of Pakistan. He authored a book Public Finance in Islam which is considered a credible reference book for the students pursuing higher studies in Economics with special interest in Islamic Financial System that was practiced for about a thousand years in the glorious Muslim era. After retirement from the government service till passing away, Siddiqui edited Wafaq, a fortnightly magazine in Urdu for almost 15 years from a small room in his house at PECHS Karachi. The magazine was mailed free of charge to a fairly good number of selective readers in Pakistan and India.

I therefore thought of paying tribute to him and his contemporaries from my scattered memories but more from the documented legacy with my family.

— Haroon R. Siddiqi