Story of ghazal in Hindi
The book is not a mere
monograph on the Urdu ghazal, but a detailed inquiry into the beginnings of the
form in Persian, the dawn of Sufism and its spread to India, the composite
culture which developed in India through the marriage of Sufi mysticism and the
Bhakti movement towards the end of thefirst millennium C.E. that nourished it,
and its journey through the second millennium C.E. and its position now in the
third.
Although there are many
books dwelling technically on the ghazal form, from the scholarly Hazaron Khawaishen Aisi: The Wonderful
World of Urdu Ghazals by Anisur Rahman to the
handbook, The Art and
Science of Urdu Ghazal , by Elizabeth Kurian ‘Mona”, the scope
of Professor Narang’s volume far exceeds them. His deep erudition and life-long
passion for the Urdu language and its literature shine through the work.
The Urdu Ghazal is a timely contribution to our era when
language and literature are marked and tracked by religious and communal
identities, losing sight of the underlying humanity of Urdu ghazals.
Amir Khusrau
The book primarily
concentrates on the “cross-cultural roots of the Urdu ghazal”.
From the 11th century
C.E., Islamic culture and Hindu culture commingled in the Indian territories,
and the resulting composite culture captivated millions of people down the
centuries. Amir Khusrau (1253-1325), disciple of the Chisti Sufi saint of
Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia, was a poet and musician who wrote in Persian
and then in the hybrid proto-model of Hindustani, his mother tongue, which he
called Hindavi. (His father was a Turkish courtier and his mother was a
Rajput). When he mixed Persian to the ghazals that he wrote in Hindavi and sang
them in Sufi gatherings, this language became known as Rekhta.
The Muslim rulers who
extended their reign to Gujarat and the Deccan took this hybrid language along,
which was called Gujari in Gujarat and Dakhani in
This is the same language
that was called Hindavi, Hindustani, Urdu, Urdu-e Mualla and Hindi.
Amir Khusrau was the
first poet who pioneered folk genres such as
The ghazal form became
quickly accepted in the languages allied to Urdu such as Punjabi, Sindhi,
Saraiki and Baluchi and a neighbouring language like Kashmiri, a form in which
many modern-day poets such as Sunita Raina Pandit are speciliasing; it has
greatly influenced several Indian languages such as Bengali, Gujarati, Odia,
Telugu and Kannada. H.S. Shivaprakash and a few other Kannada poets are known
for their ghazals in that language.
Poets writing ghazals in
the English language—ranging from stalwarts such as Aga Shahid Ali, to young
ones such as Maaz Bin Bilal and Asiya Zahoor—have enriched the genre. Nepali
and Sinhalese languages also boast of the ghazal form in their poetry.
The ghazal has conquered
the popular imagination through films for almost a century now. Narang points
out that “besides the wonder-world of metaphorical meaning and beauty, reality
and non-reality, it has its magical innate musicality.” This quality makes the
genre exclusively suitable for singing. Begum Akhtar, Kamla Jhariya, K.L.
Saigal, Mehdi Hassan, Ustad Amanat Ali Khan, Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,
Farida Khanum, Jagjit Singh and others have made astute use of the ghazal form
to hold millions in successive generations in thrall, observes Narang.
Strands of Hindavi
Three main strands of the
Urdu language, past its stage as Hindavi, determined by geographical and demographical
factors at its earliest stage of development, can be observed: Dakhani (of the
Deccan), Dehlavi (of
The earliest Urdu poets
who developed the ghazal were Dakhani poets such as Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutub
Shah, the illustrious ruler of the Qutub Shahi dynasty of Hyderabad, Deccan
(1565-1612), Mulla Wajhi (early 17th century), Mulla Nusrati, Daem Gawwasi
(both 17th century), Wali Mohammad Wali (Wali Dakhani-1667-1707) and Siraj
Aurangabadi (1715- 1763).
Dakhani poetry is
characterised by its absorption of local words, similes and metaphors. This was
because the royal patrons of this language were really sons of the soil who
loved their land. Another factor was the pervasive Mughal presence in south
Although several Delhi
Urdu poets continued in the line of Amir Khusrau, most of them confined their
creative writing to Sabke Hindi
(Indianised Persian). Wali drew them towards Urdu, which was until then primarily
Dakhani. The ghazal further developed in the hands of poets of the northern
plains—Dehlavi and Lakhnavi. It took at least three centuries after Khusrau to
see the rise of a great poet like Sauda in
The best example of this
phenomenon is Mir Taqi Mir (1723-1810) of
Sheikh Muhammad Ibrahim
Zauq (1790-1854),a contemporary of Ghalib, was appointed poet laureate at the
age of 19. He was the Ustad of Bahadur Shah “Zafar” (1775-1862), the last
Mughal Emperor and also an Urdu poet and ghazal writer. Daagh Dehlavi
(1831-1905) and Altaf Hussain Hali (born in 1837 in Panipat and died there in
1914) were the last of the great poets of Delhi who lived through the First War
of Independence of 1857, and contributed significantly to the genre of the Urdu
ghazal into the early 20th century.
The 20th century saw
eminent Urdu poets who used the ghazal form for socio-political and cultural
themes of the times such as nationalism, independence struggle, progressivism,
resistance and protest. Special mention should be made here of how the Urdu
ghazal during this period contributed to the revolutionary Progressive Writers’
Movement by incorporating epistemological and ideological shifts on a global
level, later progressing into modernism and postmodernism.
The book pays tribute to
the Urdu ghazal in a comprehensive fashion. It is divided into three parts:
Part I is devoted to the cultural landscape, to the exploration of India’s
composite culture; Part II explores the classical foundation of the Urdu ghazal
in which concepts of love, beauty and the self and rhetorical aspects such as
metaphors, similes, symbols and imagery are dealt with in a profound analysis;
and Part III details the 20th century panorama of the development and dispersal
of this graceful literary form, exploring neoclassicists, progressives,
modernists and postmodernists..
Narang begins Part I with
a picturesque quote from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who said, as quoted in The Muslim Dilemma in India by
MRA Baig (1974:52), “Hindus and Muslims are two eyes of the beautiful bride
that is
After tracing the advent
of Islam in
Hindu ghazal writers
Incidentally, Narang
places on record the contribution of Hindus in the development of the common
language of the composite culture, known by different names such as Hindavi,
Rekhta, Braj and Khari.
Kayasth Hindus, who
served in royal courts, were excellent in writing in Persian. He quotes Syed
Abid Husain from his Hindustani
Qaumiyat Aur Qaumi Tahzeeb (1946) that, “Leaving aside
Abul Fazl and Alamgir, there were few Muslim prose masters who could stand
comparison with Munshi Har Karan, Chander Bhan Brahman (1574-16620), Munshi
Madhav Ram, Munshi Lal Chand and Munshi Uday Raj.” The first Urdu ghazal was
written by Chander Bhan Brahman.
Having developed from the
proto-Rekhta model of Amir Khusrau, a hybrid Urdu with the Khari Boli dialect
of Hindi as its base, it had developed enough for ghazals to be written in it
by the time of emperor Shahjahan.
His son, Prince Dara
Shikoh, was a champion of the composite culture, having commissioned the
translation of 50 Upanishads into Persian, titled Sirr-e Akbar (The
Confluence of Oceans - 1654-55) when he was the governor of
Under his patronage,
Chander Bhan Brahman had flourished. Other Hindu poets writing in Urdu during
this period, as Narang notes, were Anand Ram Mukhlis, Lachhmi Narain Shafiq,
Kishan Chand Ikhlas, Banvari Das Vali, Syalkoti Mal Varasta, Jaswant Rai
Munshi, Shiv Ram Haiya, Tan Sukh Rai Shauq, Tek Chand Bahar and Anand Ghan.
Narang further notes that
as a symbol of perfect communal harmony in ghazal writing, Hindu ghazal writers
began with the Islamic invocation “Bismillahi-r-Rahmani-r-Rahim” and Muslim
poets began their works with an invocation to Sri Ganesh or Ma Saraswati.
Finally, he presents the
origin and development of the genre of the Urdu ghazal in great detail,
describing how it began as a part of the Arabic poetic form qasida , moved over to
the Persian poetic tradition and underwent a thorough transformation in the
hands of Iranian poets, beginning with Firdauzi (b.935); and Omar Khayyam
(1048-1131), who did not write ghazals proper, but wrote in the masnavi , or narrative
mode, and rubba’ait, or
quadrains, in which the ghazal form was subsumed; progressed through Khaqani
(1121-1190), the first major writer of the perfect ghazal in Persian; Sa’di
Shirazi (1210-1291), the author of Bostan (The Orchard) and Gulistan (The
Rose Garden); Hafiz Shirazi (1325-1389); and others, including Jalaluddin Rumi
(1207-1273), and in the final stages of its evolution, ended up as an
indigenously Indian form, with no connection to the Arabic beginnings.
Narang begins Part II
with the concept of love, which he analyses in the context of the Urdu ghazal.
The Sufi way of life, or tasavvuf ,
which is at the centre of the devotional act of offering unconditional love for
the Absolute, was the cradle of the Urdu ghazal.
This love was defined as
entirely different from the love between two human beings. Tasavvuf was
fundamentally revolutionary in that it went beyond all limits set by religious
tradition. In an age when marriages were settled taking into consideration
several factors regarding the two families involved, and not the love between
the man and woman concerned, it became almost a societal norm for married men
to visit nautch girls and courtesans and to keep mistresses. Gradually,
courtesans became the custodians of music and art, and even literature in some
cases.
However, the orthodox
religious structure of Islam was vehement in denouncing all this. Practical
licentiousness on the one side, and rigid orthodoxy on the other, produced a
hypocritical social set-up. The purdah system set married women apart from male
gaze, while the men were free to go anywhere and do whatever they liked.
However, covering the
female body with purdah hiding its beauty was not in the tradition of Indian
graphic and plastic arts. Also, love for the “beloved” in the Persian tradition
was love for the mazhar or saqi (literally
a beautiful boy who served wine in a tavern), so as to avoid reference to a
female. This was abhorrent to the Indian sensibilities. The enlightened souls
who became Sufis sought to break such earthly boundaries through tasavvuf taking
advantage of India’s pluralistic ethos, with each Sufi order developing its own
rules and practices, including singing and dancing, as against those in the
monolithic cultures of Islamic kingdoms.
Love in classical ghazals
In analysing love in the
classical ghazal, Narang delineates four categories. In the first, it is pure
and simple love for the Absolute. Only the great Sufi masters are capable of
it. He names Kwaja Mir Dard, Siraj Aurangabadi, Shah Niaz Barelvi, Abdul Alim
Aasi, and perhaps Asghar Gondavi and Jigar Morabadi in this exalted league. In
the second, the poets were influenced by certain aspects of Sufism. Though they
have apparent mystical aspirations, in effect they are earthly and mundane in
their practices. Some contemporaries of Mir Taqi Mir and Sauda qualify to be in
this category. They, however, contained their expressions of human love within
metaphors and similes, and reached high poetic levels, but fell short in the
spiritual department. The third category is truly great poetry inspired
genuinely by Sufism, but cannot be mechanically compartmentalised as worldly or
other worldly, and expresses a sublime and burning agony of separation from the
beloved. Ghazals of Mir Taqi Mir and Ghalib belong to this kind of exalted
poetry. The last category is bereft of any Sufi influence and is downright
flesh-bound and lustful, as the kind that flourished in the Lakhanvi circles.
Narang then discusses
true Sufi love, which is transcendental, and cites the cases of Dard and Siraj
Aurangabadi, Barelvi, Aasi, and others. In this context he discusses
Dabistaan-e
Creative imagination
The concept of beauty and
elegance ( husn o jamaal )
in the Urdu ghazal is also a product of
In the Dakhani ghazal, it
was the traditional Indian model that found inclusion and not a beautiful
boy.
Though the northern
ghazal initially followed the Iranian model for some time, Wali Dakhani’s
influence changed it completely. The Dakhani ghazal had contained purely Indian
imagery and female verbal markers, as against the Persian model in which gender
could not be indicated grammatically. The Dakhani ghazal writers “used the same
themes of beauty and grace that were used in regional languages such as Telugu,
Marathi and Gujarati. In later Urdu ghazals, these became the new standard.”
Narang lists here first
the names of the important Dakhani ghazal writers beginning with Sultan
Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah and then those of the north, and provides illustrations
through excerpts from their representative ghazals. He also explains the
amazing beauty of the Dakhani ghazal; Dakhani’s influence on the early Delhi
ghazal; the influence of tasavvuf; the
concept of beauty in Mir Taqi Mir; the pinnacle of beauty in Urdu poetry; the
poets and poetry of Dabistaan-e Lucknow in the context of beauty and elegance;
with the names and quotes from the works of the prominent Lakhnavi poets;
revisits Dabistaan-e Delhi; and describes the nucleus of Urdu ghazal’s new
achievements, charting the careers of Zauq, Zafar, Ghalib, Nawab Mustafa Khan
Shefta, Daagh and Hali. Finally, he discusses the Urdu ghazal as a thing of
beauty in itself.
Apart from love and
beauty, the most important element of an Urdu ghazal is the concept of self.
Helped early on by the idea of tasavvuf , the ideal ghazal would always be
concerned with the soul in total love-communion with the Absolute, the
Creator.
Along with this, deep
contemplation about the place of humankind in the world, the purpose and
meaning of life, the cross-cultural milieu in which the Urdu ghazal evolved—all
these elements contributed to the concept of self. The Hindu concept of the
creator as “Brahma”, belonging to a trinity along with Vishnu and Mahesvar
(Siva) forming a Supreme Deity, then the One Supreme Godhead which the
Vedantins propounded, and Allah being the One God in the Islamic theology, were
in fact akin to each other.
Therefore, the unity of
existence, the unity of mankind, the self as the essence of absolute consciousness,
are all discussed and examples quoted from the lines of all major Urdu ghazal
writers, listing them one by one.
Next, Narang discusses
the rhetorical aspects of the Urdu ghazal, such as metaphors, similes, symbols
and imagery, through detailed illustrations by way of excerpts from major Urdu
poets.
Lastly, the 20th century
panorama is discussed, beginning with neoclassicists, singling out the leading
lights among them who were also ardent nationalists—Hasrat Mohani, Akbar
Allahabadi, Allama Iqbal, Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Shad Azimabadi, Ram Prasad
Bismil, Brij Narain Chakbast, Yagana Changezi, Asghar Gondvi, Jigar Moradabadi,
Fani Badauni, Hafiz Jalandhari, and Arzoo Lakhnavi. The author then discusses
the prominent Urdu poets of the Progressive Writers’ Movement—Josh Malihabadi,
Firaq Gorakhpuri, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Makhdoom Mohiuddin, Sahir Ludhianvi, Majaz
Lakhnavi, Anand Narain Mulla, Ali Sardar Jafri, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Kaifi Azmi,
Majrooh Sultanpuri, Ahmed Faraz, Khatir Ghaznavi, Ale Ahmed Suroor, Ahmed
Nadeem Qasmi, Habib Jalib and Zehra Nigah—along with excerpts from their works
as illustrations.
He lists them as Miraji,
Majeed Amjad, Nasir Kazmi, Rajinder Manchanda Bani, Jameeluddin Aali, Krishan
Bihari Noor, Munir Niazi, Jaun Elia, Shakeb Jalali, Shuja Khavar, Parveen
Shakir, Shahryar, Nida Fazli, Mohammed Alvi, Zafar Iqbal, Ahmad Mushtaq,
Gulzar, Bashir Badr, Kishwar Naheed, Iftikar Arif, Javed Akhtar, Munawwar Rana,
Farhat Ehsaas, Jayant Parmar and Shakeel Azmi, with samples of their
ghazals.
The book ends with an
Epilogue which is, in effect, a summing up of the contents discussed.
The translator, Surinder
Deol, has done wonderfully well in transmitting a complex and intricate
discourse through an alien language. The thesis of the creative cultural
transformation of a popular genre is well established, and the book stands out
as a unique study of an ever-growing form:
Raah-e mazmuun-e taazaa band nahien
Taaqyaamat khula hai baab-e sukhan (Wali)
(The road to new themes
and subjects is never ending
the door of creativity is
ever open till the Day of Judgment (eternity).
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