Pakistani Urdu criticism written during the last 70 years is like an enormous rainbow with numerous hues. The literary theories, trends, ideologies and movements crossing each other’s path at times make it look chaotic. Let us have a look at some of the colours of this chaotic rainbow.

Progressivism

At the time of Independence, many Progressive stars shone brightly on the literary horizon, with Progressive literary and critical theories being quite popular — in those days, it was in vogue to be Progressive.

But soon the Progressive stars began to slide. Firstly, their attitude alienated writers who were not Progressive. Some such writers had attended the Progressive writers’ conference held in Lahore on Dec 6, 1947. As put by Shahzad Manzar in his book Pakistan Mein Urdu Adab ki Soorat-i-Haal, these non-Progressives tried to table a resolution demanding plebiscite in Kashmir and its annexation to Pakistan. Hardcore Progressives blocked the move. The non-Progressive writers became estranged from their Progressive friends and started a new debate over the question of writers’ commitment and their loyalty to the state.

Part 10 of the series exploring Pakistani Urdu writing over the past 70 years

Secondly, the Progressives’ attitude towards Pakistan and Pakistanis was almost always scornful. The creation of Pakistan was labelled a ‘tragedy’ and called ‘partition’ instead of ‘freedom.’ When the Communist Party of India’s second congress was held in Calcutta [Kolkata] between Feb 28 and March 6, 1948, out of 632 delegates only three were from Pakistan. “Surprisingly,” wrote Professor Fateh Muhammad Malik in his book Anjuman Taraqqi Pasand Musannifeen Pakistan Mein, “in this meeting ... the establishment of the Communist Party of Pakistan was announced and rather than nominating anyone from those three Pakistanis, Sajjad Zaheer, an Indian national, was nominated as president of the Communist Party of Pakistan.” According to Malik, Zaheer was secretly sent to Pakistan on fake documents and he remained underground, constantly changing his residence to avoid arrest.

Thirdly, the Progressive manifesto presented at the Progressive writers’ conference held in Lahore in November 1949 was so politicised and extremist that, according to Manzar (a Progressive himself), it was difficult to differentiate between the writers’ manifesto and that of the Communist Party. Writers who did not agree with the manifesto were expelled from the organisation and the Progressives decided to boycott their writings. Ironically, these ‘expelled’ writers included such giants as Akhtar Husain Raipuri, a pioneer of the Progressive literary movement in India; Saadat Hasan Manto, one of the liberals; and Aziz Ahmed, an enlightened writer and critic much respected for his scholarship. Though the Progressives realised their mistake and withdrew this manifesto in their 1952 Karachi conference, it was too late and the damage was irreparable. What the Progressives ignored was the fact that Pakistan was meant to be a semi-liberal, semi-religious democracy. They refused to accept that Pakistan was not created to be a communist state as religion had played a vital role in its creation, with many of the traditional and religious beliefs being part of the collective consciousness of the people of Pakistan. Without creating conducive conditions first — such as eliminating feudalism and the sardari system — radical change was always to remain a pipedream.

Progressive literary ideas, based on Marxism, retreated further when the movement was officially banned in Pakistan in 1954, though Progressivism remained very much alive. Even after the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, many Progressive writers and critics stuck to their guns. Today, Progressive literary criticism and trends in Pakistani Urdu literature still go on, albeit only theoretically. But there can be no denying the fact that the movement enriched Urdu literature and criticism in many ways. Some of Urdu’s literary masterpieces are creations of the Progressives, though Progressive literature was criticised, too, for vapid sloganeering in the name of literature and being one-sided and insensitive to social and literary norms.

Some Pakistani Progressives known for their critical works are Sibte Hasan, Mumtaz Hussain, Zaheer Kashmiri, Majnoon Gorakhpuri, Arif Abdul Mateen, Ibadat Barelvi, Waqar Azeem, Mujtaba Hussain, Ahmad Hamdani, Agha Suhail, Hanif Fauq, Muhammad Ali Siddiqi, Anwaar Ahmed, Qazi Abid and others.

Pakistani and Islamic literature movements

The Progressives inspired at least two literary movements in Pakistan’s early days. One was the Pakistani literature movement initiated by Muhammad Hasan Askari, emphasising loyalty to the land and people of Pakistan and portrayal of Pakistani culture and values nurtured during the centuries of Islamic rule in the subcontinent. The other was the Tehreek-i-Adab-i-Islami [Islamic literature movement] stressing that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and Pakistani literature must reflect Islamic morals and values. Many supporters of the Islamic literature movement belonged to the Jamaat-i-Islami and the writings of Maulana Maududi were inspiration for them. Both movements were, in fact, trying to create a theoretical framework for their ideas, philosophising literary theory in their own way and — frankly speaking — neither could create literature that could be termed truly extraordinary. In fact, some literary pieces created by them can be termed as sloganeering as that by the Progressives, although the criticism written by them is, in some cases, extraordinary.

Askari first debated the issues related to Pakistani literature and then amalgamated them with Islamic literature, earning the ire of the Progressives as well as some Islamists as he felt that Amir Khusrau, Mir Amman and Ghalib were as much part of ‘Islamic’ literature as Rumi and Saadi. Askari said Islam was not only a metaphysical philosophy, but a cultural force too. In other words, he believed in an Islam very different from the mullah’s Islam. But Askari was a restless soul. In 1949 he declared that Urdu literature was suffering from jamood [inertia]. But it was only an overture to another of his ripple-effect statements: in 1953 Askari pronounced the “death of Urdu literature.”

Prominent critics of the Islamic literature movement were Naeem Siddiqui, Farogh Ahmad, Mahirul Qadri, Haroon Rasheed, Siraj Muneer and others. The Pakistani literature movement was, of course, spearheaded by Askari and with him were Samad Shaheen, Mumtaz Shirin, Saleem Ahmed, Shamim Ahmed and others. When a debate between the Progressives and others ensued as to what constituted Pakistani literature, many critics supported those who stressed moral and spiritual values as well as depiction of local Pakistani culture. They included Jameel Jalibi and Abul Lais Siddiqi. Fateh Muhammad Malik had been bracketed with the Progressives earlier, but recently he has shown a marked tendency towards Pakistani ideology and issues that relate Pakistani society to Pakistani culture and spiritualism.

Modernism

What Askari felt was not inertia or death, but — as Manzar says — the transitory period of Pakistani Urdu literature. Changes were occurring at the time, but were too slow to be perceptible. These changes became more tangible in the 1960s in the shape of new writings by modernists such as Intizar Husain and Anwer Sajjad. These writings were the harbingers of modernism in Pakistani Urdu literature, though the group from Lahore that launched the Nai Shaeri ki Tehreek [New Poetry Movement] in the early 1960s was not modernist in the precise sense of the word. Unlike modernists across the border, such as Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, the ‘new poetry’ group leaned towards linguistic experimentation rather than any modernist or aesthetic literary theory. But for doing so they deemed it necessary to reject established linguistic structures and all previous Urdu poetry, especially that of contemporaries such as Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi and Qayyum Nazar. Inspired by the semantic experimentation in Western literature and led by Iftikhar Jalib, Jilani Kamran and Anis Nagi, the group fizzled out soon — albeit not without making ripples — because of their stress on linguistic iconoclasm and failure to produce any remarkable pieces, thereby explaining what they meant by new poetry. It was left to Zafar Iqbal to show through his poetry what new diction and linguistic experimentation really meant.

It was perhaps Wazir Agha’s critical theories and his literary magazine Auraaq, which nurtured new literary and critical trends in Pakistan beginning in the late ’60s, that can be termed modern literary trends, if not modernism.

Aestheticism

Along with the new poetry movement, the Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq, established in 1939 in Lahore as a literary circle, should also be considered an extension of modernism. The Halqa was not an opponent to Progressivism, but the Progressives perceived it as an adversary, perhaps because the Halqa did not believe in utilitarianism and did not favour imposing any ideological restrictions on writers. The Halqa was not a movement in the real sense of the word and had no manifesto. It became popular and effective when the towering figure, Miraji, joined it.

Inspired by Walt Whitman, Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and other Western writers, Miraji — though he lived a short life and died in Bombay [Mumbai] in 1949 — gave the Halqa a new direction. It became a centre of literary ideas that valued symbolism, psychoanalysis, aesthetics and literature for the sake of literature. Interestingly, latter-day critics from different ideological backgrounds, some even Progressive, frequented the Halqa’s meetings as it never put restrictions on its members. Some critics that were considered somehow associated with the Halqa include Salahuddin Ahmed, Waheed Qureshi, Sajjad Baqar Rizvi, Wazir Agha, Saleem Akhter, Anwer Sadeed, Muzaffar Ali Syed, Suhail Ahmad Khan, Ziaul Hasan and many more.

Structuralism and postmodernism

Muhammad Ali Siddiqi was one of the first critics writing on structuralism in Pakistan. It was in the mid-’70s when he wrote articles in Auraaq. Later, Wazir Agha, Saleem Akhter, Qamar Jamil and Fahim Azmi joined the fray. Other Pakistani critics known for discussions on structuralism, post-structuralism and postmodernism are Zamir Ali Badayuni, Qazi Qaiser-ul-Islam, Rauf Niazi and Nasir Abbas Nayyar.

Traditionalist school

Askari’s treacherous journey through the ideological wonderland took him, one after the other, to social critical theory, aestheticism, psychoanalysis, Pakistani literature and then Islamic literature. His final destination was Sufism and he founded a school of thought aptly called the Traditionalist school as opposed to modernism (not modernity). He not only impressed many, but found many followers, too, including Saleem Ahmed, Jamal Panipati, Siraj Muneer, Shamim Ahmed, Suhail Umer, Tehseen Firaqi, Mubeen Mirza and others.

Academic and pedagogic criticism

Often scornfully called pedagogic, criticism written by academics (college and university teachers, to be precise) is usually looked down upon. So it is better not to mention any names.

The writer is a former chief editor of the Urdu Dictionary Board and now teaches Urdu at the University of Karachi

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 30th, 2017