“Hindustan has to its credit two holy books, the sacred Vedas and the Diwan-i-Ghalib”; this was a sensational announcement with respect to Ghalib.

Of course, the bracketing of Diwan-i-Ghalib with the Vedas was a bit odd, but perhaps this very oddity left people wonderstruck. So the publication of the critical work under the title Mahasin-i-Kalam-i-Ghalib, along with the dramatic appearance of a new critic, Dr Abdur Rahman Bijnouri on the literary scene, took the Urdu world by storm.

The book acted as the second landmark in the history of the acknowledgement of Ghalib as a great poet, the first being Maulana Hali’s Yadgar-i-Ghalib. Now Oxford University Press, Karachi, has brought out a new edition of Mahasin-i-Kalam-i-Ghalib, edited by Dr Syed Nomanul Haq, who has taken pains to make this edition flawless by correcting the mistakes in the previous editions and writing the preface.

The text is full of references to Western philosophers, poets, and thinkers. Haq has corrected the mistakes and has written brief introductory notes where necessary.

Recently, the OUP in Lahore arranged an inaugural function for the book and invited Dr Noman as the chief guest.

Dr Noman, very politely, expressed his dissatisfaction with Bijnouri’s work. In the first place, he refused to be overawed by the names of great philosophers, painters, and poets of the Western world, who have been referred to by Bijnouri. While citing excerpts from these writers, he doesn’t bother to translate these pieces from English and other European languages in Urdu. And Dr Noman complains that those who have cared to translate them have committed blunders.

Agreeing with Dr Noman, I may add that with his newly acquired knowledge of Western philosophies, literary works and scientific theories, Bijnouri appears very exuberant and relishes quoting from the works he has read. But he has justification for this practice when, in his attempt to interpret Ghalib in philosophical terms, he chooses to refer to some philosophical works.

His standpoint is that Ghalib was endowed with a philosophical bent of mind, that the poet stands distinguished among his contemporaries because of his philosophic thinking, and that feeling the inadequacy of the current poetic idiom, he coined new phrases, new combinations of words, so as to evolve a new idiom adequate for expressing his philosophic thinking. Bijnouri presents a long list of newly coined phrases meant to be employed for the purpose of his philosophic expression. Here we find a justification for Ghalib’s Persianised expression. He had to fall back on Persian for evolving a new idiom.

Then Bijnouri takes up Ghalib’s couplets one by one and explains and interprets them in philosophical terms. It is here that he refers to some philosophical concept or a scientific theory which he thinks resembles Ghalib’s thinking. And Dr Noman has not found fault with any of these interpretations. So why should we object to Bijnouri’s references to Western philosophers?

But Dr Noman is not prepared to acknowledge Bijnouri as a literary critic. Why is that? By the way, this practice of analysing and interpreting particular poems or couplets has come to be known as practical criticism. After interpreting a large number of Ghalibean couplets Bijnouri shows us that with the passage of time Ghalib got rid of his intricate Persianised style. He succeeded in evolving an easy style. He was then able to express his philosophic thinking in simple Urdu.

However, Bijnouri exaggerates and is hardly convincing when he says that “Ghalib is a philosopher clad in the garb of poetry.”

Ghalib was primarily a poet, and a poet endowed with a superior poetic talent. However, he was additionally gifted with a philosophic bent of mind, which was well in harmony with his poetic sensibility.