The volume Urdu Ki Nai Bastian, compiled by Dr Gopi Chand Narang and published by Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, tells us about Urdu’s rapid expansion during the post-Partition years in a number of countries of the East and West.

The expansion has not only been on a linguistic level and has extended to the literary level too. The poets, in particular from among the settlers, started their activity in the form of the mushaira, which flourished well in these foreign lands. They, with the help of their successful mushairas, created a world of their own, feeling no need to develop a relationship with the social, cultural and literary world of the land.

A full chapter in Urdu Ki Nai Bastian has been devoted to the activities of Urdu-walas in England. Thanks to the long history of the British Raj in India, these Urdu-walas, with their familiarity with the English language, did not find themselves estranged in England. But here too, happy in their own mushaira world, they are hardly seen making a mark on the cultural world of their adopted land.

But, lo, here comes happy news from England. An ambitions young poet comes out of the musharia shell, makes inroads in the elevated English world and proceeds to Buckingham Palace, where he is honoured as a poet.

This poet is Basir Sultan Kazmi, the son of the celebrated poet Nasir Kazmi. He informed me about this honour, writing to me exuberantly: “I am the first Urdu poet and writer to receive an award from the Queen for services to literature. It is MBE for services to literature as a poet.”

The award was announced in June last year, but Basir waited for the day when he actually received the award to make this disclosure. The ceremony was held in February 2014, at the Buckingham Palace, and he received the honour from Prince Charles.

Basir recounts: “After decorating me with the medal, he said, ‘I have heard you write beautiful poems in Urdu.’

‘I try my best and then translate them into English as well and I also write plays,’ I replied.

‘Do you? There must be many poets in England, who write in Urdu.’

‘Yes.’

‘There must be a lot of competition then? Anyway, well done. Congratulations.’”

Prior to this, Basir was invited to the reception given by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Buckingham Palace to celebrate contemporary British poetry. The guests were individually introduced to the Queen and the Duke. Basir tells me that Debjani Chatterjee, the Indian-born British poet, was also present at the occasion. She said to the Queen, “Basir is from Pakistan and I am from India. So at the moment we are representing the subcontinent.”

Born in 1955 in Lahore, Basir had developed an interest in ghazal writing at an early age under the influence, and later the guidance, of his father. In later years he also developed an interest in drama. After doing his Masters in English in 1975 he started teaching and in 1990 proceeded to England with a British Council Scholarship to study further at the University of Manchester.

Though originally a poet, Basir’s first publication was a stage play titled Bisat. It was published in 1987 and was later translated into English and published in England. His first collection of ghazals was published in 1997 in Lahore under the title Mauj-i-Khayal.

In Generations of Ghazals, Chatterjee tells us that “in the 1990s Basir made two lasting friendships among British based writers — first with fellow teacher and writer Simon Fletcher and through him with myself, Debjani Chatterjee. It was also in 1996 that the three of us along with my Anglo-Irish husband, Brian D’Arcy, decided to establish a multicultural and multilingual poetry group, Mini Mushaira. Mainly under Basir’s impetus [the] Mini Mushaira poets experimented with creating ghazals in English. Pennine Pens published the poetry of three Mini Mushaira writers in the collection A Little Bridge, Basir’s ghazals appearing in English translation.”

Chatterjee later developed a fascination for the form of ghazal. She chose to make a study of this form with particular reference to Nasir and Basir. In fact Generations of Ghazals is a collection of ghazals by Nasir and Basir as translated into English with a detailed introduction by Debjani as the compiler.

Such was the way Basir got introduced to the English readership as a ghazal poet, eventually leading to his recognition in a befitting way.