“MUHAMMAD Hasan Askari was Urdu’s first literary critic in the Western practical sense of the term: that is, he chose to set up as a critic, an interpreter, and a judge of literature.” This is how Dr Mehr Afshan Farooqi starts her discourse in her research work, Urdu Literary Culture: Vernacular Modernity in the Writing of Muhammad Hasan Askari.

The talented daughter of leading scholar and critic, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, Mehr grew up in Allahabad, “in the midst of jadidiyat (modernism) and classical Urdu,” she says. She recalls those times with particular reference to “the years when the divide between Urdu and Hindi was becoming inexorably formalised. The Progressive Writers’ Movement (PWM) had stepped into the breach.”

This movement was initiated by a small and ambitious group of Urdu’s young intellectuals and promising writers. Amazingly, it rapidly grew as an all-India movement providing a common platform to the writers belonging to the diverse languages of the country. “But,” writes Farooqi, “eventually their political-dictatorial agenda caused many writers to break away from their fold. I became interested in the stories of those who made their own path. What were the alternatives to Progressivism in Urdu literature at that time when PWM was dominant? What or who were the critiques of Progressivism? The first name that comes to mind is that of Muhammad Hasan Askari.”

Farooqi refers to an article by Ella Shohat published in 1992, wherein she asks “when exactly does the post-colonial begin.” Farooqi responds: “The evolution of Askari’s intellectual development and the chronology of his critical thought suggest our definition of postcoloniality must account for the voice that predates the advent of decolonisation.” “Askari,” she says, “speaks from the centre of a crisis of culture, both as a leader of Urdu intellectual discourse and as a subject of the rupture inflicted on Indo-Muslim literary-cultural history.”

Elaborating her point she says, “Askari’s intellectual journey commenced with cosmopolitanism, and was increasingly transformed by the last decade of his life when he began to map an exclusive Islamic-Sufistic philosophy onto Urdu’s secular literary tradition.”

“The partition of India,” says Farooqi, “split Askari’s life in two.” The pre-partition Askari gets quick approval from her because of his cosmopolitan outlook. In fact, he had drunk deep of Western literature and Western thought, in general. This enabled him to be possessed with a modern sensibility and write short stories in the newly evolved techniques employed by 20th century fiction writers such as Joyce and Proust. But he wanted to do more. He aspired to be a literary critic so as to be able to impart this modern sensibility to Urdu’s literary tradition. With this aim in view he started writing a monthly literary column in Saqi, a literary journal from Delhi. What in particular has impressed Farooqi is this series of critical writings. She calls this writing bold and original with critical insight. And it is on the basis of this writing that she finds him possessed with the virtue of cosmopolitanism.

But here too she has marked out a line at partition. The series is divided into two — pre-partition Jhalkiyan articles as well as post-partition. She makes a detailed survey of the pre-partition part and concludes by saying, “Askari held that all the literatures of the subcontinent could benefit from a creative interplay with Western literature, and Urdu was no exception. In fact, he seems to imply that Urdu, because of having imbibed Western influences sooner than almost any other Indian literature was better equipped to handle Western modernity.”

And now, as analysed by Farooqi, with the emergence of Pakistan Askari comes into force with his dream of a glorious revival of the “Muslim literary and intellectual past.” But this optimism on his part was short-lived. He soon realised that those in power have their own agenda with little respect for the idealistic dreams of the revival of the intellectual Muslim past. Farooqi has discussed in detail the different phases of Askari’s intellectual journey which eventually ends with his allegiance with Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi.

Farooqi holds Askari in high esteem in the early phase of his intellectual journey. But now, seeing him embarked on a journey in Sufistic Islam, she is no longer sympathetic in her analysis of his intellectual pursuits. She is frustrated to see him in the company of Mufti Mohammad Shafi.The limited space of this column does not allow me to reproduce her whole argument in this respect. However, differing with her I feel that this too was a passing phase in Askari’s long journey. He himself once said, “I feel no shame in changing my way of thinking when so needed.” But his untimely death did now allow him to act the way he was expected to. “He was,” as Farooqi has said, “after all only 57 when he closed his eyes.”

Briefly speaking, her analysis of this great mind is thought-provoking. We may or may not agree with her on different occasions. But there is no doubt that this book invites us, or rather compels us, to go through his writings so as to be able to see the death of a great dream with respect to Pakistan.