literary notes: Europeans who composed poetry in Urdu and Persian
IT was Ram Babu Saksena (1896-1957) who first carried out extensive research on European poets of Urdu. It took him some 10 years to sift through all the relevant works and manuscripts and his book was finally published by Naval Kishore, the legendary publisher from Lucknow. Though the print data on Saksena’s book titled European and Indo-European Poets of Urdu and Persian mentions 1941 as year of publishing, a foreword by Tej Bahadur Sapru, penned in 1943, shows it was published much later than 1941.
A civil servant by profession, by the time his book on European poets of Urdu and Persian appeared, Saksena had already established himself as a notable critic and historian of Urdu literature: his earlier work A History of Urdu Literature (1927) had made him quite a well-known figure in Urdu’s literary circles. Mirza Muhammad Askari rendered this book into Urdu (1929), eclipsing the original English version and remaining in print for over half-a-century.
European and Indo-European Poets of Urdu and Persian was the first one on the topic. Later on, Khwaja Muhammad Yousufuddin published Tazkira-i-European Aur Indo-European Shu’ara-e-Urdu (1959) and Shafqat Rizvi penned a book namely Urdu Ke European Shu’ara, or European Poets of Urdu (Karachi, 1981; 2nd ed. 1997), but both had much benefitted from Saksena’s work and many of the verses reproduced by them as samples of Urdu poetry were simply taken from Saksena’s work.
Since by ‘Indo-European’ Saksena meant ‘Anglo-Indian’ in this book, it includes poets of Urdu and Persian who were either Europeans settled in the subcontinent or their descendents who chose to live in the subcontinent and turned to Urdu and/or Persian poetry. It shows that Europeans and their descendants had begun composing poetry in Urdu as early as in the 18th century. Though some of the Europeans had compiled and, in many cases, published their Urdu divan in 19th century, they were hardly mentioned in literary works. Before Saksena’s book only a few tazkiras — or biographical accounts of poets and selections from their poetry — had mentioned Europeans who composed poetry in Urdu and Persian. Moulvi Sardar Ali in his book Tazkira-i-European Shu’ra-e-Urdu (1925, 2nd ed. 1944) had mentioned those tazkiras. Aside from that, Europeans’ Urdu poetry was rarely discussed.
But Saksena thoroughly analysed many sources other than tazkiras including manuscripts. In the beginning of the book he mentions some divans published in the 19th century and they include (penname or takhallus is mentioned in inverted commas): divan of Alexander HeatherleyAzad, published in 1863; Urdu and Persian divans of George Paish Shor; divan of general Joseph Bensely; divan of Major Florence Filose, published in 1869, which also included specimen of poetry composed by his father and grandfather; divan of Joseph Manual ‘Joseph’, published in 1868; divan of William Joseph Burvett William, published in 1878; masnavi by Montrose Muztar; qit’aat-i-tareekh or chronogrammatic poems by Thomas William Beale; verses by Duarey Ashiq; and some others.
During his in-depth research Saksena also came across several unpublished poetic works and divans of many Europeans, for example, Kulliyaat of Quinn Farasau; divan of Fanthome Sahib; divan of Joseph Lezau Zarra; verses by Zafaryab Khan Sahib, son of General Samru; verses by Balthazar Aseer; poems by Daniel Nathaniel Socrates Gardener Shukr; poems by Augustine de Sylva Maftoon; etc.
Saksena also discovered a good number of bayazes, or sort of scrapbooks or notebooks containing verses of choice composed either by oneself or other poets, and they included Shamsuzzaka, by Quinn Farasau; bayaz by George Paish Shor and another by Hakeem Joseph de Sylva. Other works cited by Saksena are too many in numbers to be mentioned here as they include literary and historical works and official records such as gazettes, too.
Saksena in his book has listed the poets of Urdu according to their nationalities, such as, English, Italian, Portuguese, German, French, Danish and American, a pattern followed by Shafqat Rizvi. Over a hundred of poets who composed poetry in Urdu and Persian have been mentioned in Saksena’s book with the specimens of their poetry. A large number of European women too composed poetry in Urdu and some of them are: Allan Christiana Gardiner, Annie ‘Malika’, Sara ‘Pari’ alias Bi Majjan, Bi Sualeha ‘Ma’shooq’ and some others. In this 770-page book, Saksena has devoted about 400 pages for reproducing specimens of Urdu poetry from these poets and it is a treasure-trove.
It would not be fair to judge the poetry of these European poets by today’s standards or compare them with their contemporary native poets, yet some of them show an amazing mastery over the Urdu language and often surprise the readers by the tropes they use.
It simply means Urdu had conquered the conquerors!
Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2024