LAST week I was on a short visit to Delhi at the invitation of the Ghalib Institute. The occasion was the institute’s annual international seminar and this year the subject of discussion was ‘Founders of Modern Urdu Prose: Muhammad Husain Azad, Hali, and Shibli.’

We will be more accurate in saying that these three personalities, who emerged in the post-1857 period as leading prose writers, laid down the foundation of literary criticism in Urdu: Maulana Muhammad Husain Azad’s Aab-e-Hayat, Maulana Hali’s Muqadma-e-Shair-au-Shairi and Allama Shibli’s Shair-ul Ajam and Muwazna-e-Anis-o-Dabeer.

As for modern Urdu prose, we are required to trace it from the Fort William School. It was at Fort William that for the first time writers like Mir Amman, Haider Bakhsh Haideri and Nihal Chand Lahori, along with a host of other writers, said goodbye to ornate prose and started rewriting old dastans in easy and simple Urdu. Thus they paved the way for what we call modern Urdu prose. The other milestone was Delhi College where newly emerged scholars engaged in translating scholarly English works into Urdu. They too chose simple expressions in their translations as well as in their original works. Ghalib stands third in this respect. When writing letters to his friends he later decided to write in Urdu. With the change of language he also changed his style, writing with such a facility and spontaneity that it seems as if he is in conversation with them.

So Azad, Hali and Shibli were in line with their above-mentioned forerunners. But as far as literary criticism is concerned, they were the first to try writing critically in Urdu. The four books referred to above may be seen as the first specimens of critical writing in Urdu. Taken together these writers may be the first batch of critics in Urdu. Each of these books made a stir in the literary world that led to some kind of controversy. Eventually they were acknowledged as epoch-making works in Urdu.

But how amazing that the scholars participating in the seminar went on talking about Hali and Shibli. None cared to pay attention to Azad and his Aab-e-Hayat — not even a passing remark about the author and his book. And in the case of Maulana Shibli, only his Shair-ul Ajam attracted the attention of the scholars and the speakers. His Muwazna, which had remained the subject of a heated controversy for a long time, went unnoticed. Of course, a few questions were raised in the case of Shair-ul Ajam too. But by and large this work, which runs in volumes, was acknowledged as a great work, an exhaustive history of Persian poetry. Perhaps it was left for me to bring into discussion these two important critical works which had unjustly been ignored by the article writers and speakers. But at least in the last session, Anis Ashfaq from Lucknow chose to discuss Muwazna in detail.

That Muhammad Husain Azad was totally ignored appeared a bit enigmatic to me. Was it intentional? Among the important names of Urdu prose writers Azad stands as a great with his peculiar prose style and with his shrewd critical judgments.

A few words about Aab-e-Hayat. Researchers left no stone unturned in trying to dismiss this book. As Jameel Jalibi tells us, the famous Urdu scholar Qazi Abdul Wadood has gone to the extent of detecting more than 50 research mistakes in the book. Hafiz Mahmood Sherani too is no less cruel in pointing out research mistakes. Jameel Jalibi himself agreeing with them has pointed out a number of faults in the book. But in spite of the vicious campaign of researchers, Aab-e-Hayat stands as a great book which is more than a history of Urdu poetry.

Azad has relived the whole age along with the personalities representing that age. And the age comes alive to us with all its cultural aspects. In fact, it is more than a history of poetry; it may be seen as a living portrait of a culture, the Ganga Jumni culture, or, to be more exact, the Indo-Muslim culture. Apart from the critical judgments of the poetic works we have here portraits of poets along with the ways in which they behaved, their manners, their social life. So amidst the histories of Urdu literature this book stands distinguished as a living depiction of a culture and the personalities and the poetry born out of it.