The most provocative book in the history of Urdu literature was a collection of 10 short stories published in December 1932 in Lucknow, under the title Angaray. The publication caused a lot of tension. Muslims in particular were in a state of fury as the stories appeared outrageous to their religious sensitivities. The papers Madina, Bijnore and Sarfaraz of Lucknow took the lead and started a campaign against the book and the story writers, which included Sajjad Zaheer, Ahmad Ali, Mahmood-uz-Zaffar and Dr Rasheed Jehan.

The English-language press too did not lag behind in criticism. Leading papers such as the Hindustan Times and Leader flashed the news and condemned the writers in their editorials.

The government was quick in responding to the demand of banning the book and Angaray was banned on March 15, 1933. All copies, with the exception of five, were destroyed by the police. Of these five, three were kept by the Keeper of Records in New Delhi. The other two had been dispatched to London. One copy is now held in the Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library.

Though news of the event spread far and wide, readers had no access to the book and thus did not know about its contents. They had no option but to believe the version supplied to them by the Sunni mouthpiece Madina and the Shia mouthpiece Sarfraz and they were furious.

Now, thanks to Shabana Mahmud’s research, the full text of the book is available to us along with her findings, which include her critical assessment of the 10 stories in the book; short introductory notes about Sajjad Zaheer, Ahmad Ali, Mahmood-uz-Zaffar and Rasheed Jehan; facsimiles of cuttings from Urdu papers, such as Madina, Sarfaraz and Payam as well as from English-language papers, such as the Hindustan Times and Leader; and facsimiles of miscellaneous reports published in the U.P. Gazette 1933 and those conserved in India Office Records.

One source of information for Mahmud was Ahmad Ali, whom she had interviewed in this respect. However, she has not included this interview in the present volume for reasons best known to her. Perhaps she did not think it fit to share the information about his later differences with and separation from the group. However, he was very much with them in the early stages of publication. A statement was issued five months after the tirade against the book: “The authors of this book do not wish to make any apology for it. They leave it to float or sink of itself.” The full statement has been quoted in Mahmud’s English article, a copy of which I got from her during my recent visit to London. It further says: “[We] have chosen the particular field of Islam not because [it] bear[s] any ‘special’ malice, but because, being born into that particular society [we] felt [ourselves] better qualified to speak for that alone.”

The statement ends with a proposal to form a League of Progressive Authors and asking those interested to contact S. Ahmad Ali, Kucha Pandit, Delhi. But Ahmad Ali could not reconcile with the group’s growing political involvement. Mahmud says: “It is, however, difficult to accept Ahmad Ali’s claim in another of his articles that Angaray had no political basis whatsoever, that ‘neither the practice nor the intention of the authors was Marxist.’”

But Ahmad Ali seems justified in his perception. The stories in Angaray do not betray any political involvement on the part of the story writers. Of course, they reflect rebelliousness. But their whole protest is against the repressive conditions society had created for women. These writings are vibrant with a passion for bringing social change in a major way. But they lack the refined expression a literary piece is expected to have. Instead, we see emotional outbursts, which speak of an immature mind. However, there is one exception and that is Dr Rasheed Jehan’s short story, ‘Dilli Ki Sair’. The female character in this story narrates the unpleasant experience of an excursion in the company of her insensitive husband. The narration contains a sense of restraint.

Moreover, another credit to this collection is that for the first time in Urdu, writers employed in their stories the modern mode of expression known as the stream of consciousness and free association. These writers were Sajjad Zaheer and Ahmad Ali. Comparatively, Sajjad Zaheer employed this technique in a more mature way.