DR Aziz Ibnul Hasan is a critic belonging to the newly-emerged group which can easily trace its descent from Lahore’s Oriental College. Mohammad Hasan Askari may be taken as an added source of inspiration for him. However, he has now added one more name in this respect. In the foreword to his recently-published book, Urdu Tanqeed, Chand Manzilain (by Poorab Academy, Islamabad), Dr Hasan informs us that he has drawn inspiration from two sources, Askari and Shamsur Rahman Farooqi. And he adds, “of course, they have a few differences, but I have tried to bring them closer.”

We, in general, trace the start of the tradition of Urdu criticism from Maulana Hali’s epoch marking book, Muqadma-i-Shair-au-Shairi. But Dr Hasan is going to tell us something different.

Every culture, he says, has the prerogative to devise its own critical scales and standards in accordance to its own aesthetics. Indo-Muslim culture too had devised such scales and standards. Of course, the term ‘criticism’ was not available to them. Nor were the mechanics in written form. Urdu Tanqeed aims at searching these mechanics.

Of course, Dr Hasan is seen here seriously engaged in such a search. And Askari Sahib is also seen helping him in this endeavour. He has been able to discover a lot in this respect. But, unfortunately, he is too late. We are already under the spell of the West. The tradition of literary criticism as cultivated by the West has already come to stay with us. Askari Sahib himself was very late in discovering what was lost to us. Till then he had achieved much as a critic, so much so that Mehr Afshan Farooqi informs us that “M.H. Askari was Urdu’s first literary critic in the Western practical sense of the term.” The steps already taken could not be retraced. What he wrote after his discovery of our own literary principles and scales may be seen as what we call in Urdu Sijda-i-Sahv on his part.

Dr Hasan is wise enough to realise that we have already a well-established tradition of literary criticism built in accordance to Western principles. So he has reconciled to the situation and has chosen to tell us how this tradition of Westernised criticism started and continued to develop.

Maulana Mohammad Husain Azad, Maulana Hali and Maulana Shibli are, according to him, three leading figures, each with seminal books of criticism. These three books are, respectively, Aab-i-Hayat, Muqadma-i-Shair-au-Shairi, and Shair-ul-Ajam. The three were, says Dr Hasan, “born at a time when the cultural and literary history of the subcontinent was faced with a great change.”

They proved instrumental in bringing this change in the history of Urdu literature. The credit of being the first in bringing this change goes, according to Dr Hasan, to Azad, when Aab-i-Hayat was published in 1880. It stands as the first history of Urdu literature written along modern lines. Next comes Hali’s Muqadma-i-Shair-au-Shairi (published in 1893). It drew influences from Ab-i-Hayat. Maulana Shibli’s Shair-ul-Ajam is said to have absorbed influence from the two aforementioned books.These three books, taken together, says Dr Hasan, laid the foundation of modern criticism in Urdu.

After discussing this in a suitable way, Dr Hasan seems to have lost track, knowing not how to proceed further. The next chapter has been devoted to Imdad Imam Asar and his book Kashif-ul-Haqaiq. Has the man really played any role in promoting Urdu criticism? Is Dr Hasan trying to find a place for him in the rank of the aforementioned fathers of Urdu criticism?

In the next chapter too Dr Hasan seems sidetracked and engages in a discussion about what is known as Romantic literature in Urdu, forgetting that he is expected to trace the further development of Urdu criticism. While presenting a list of the Romantics, which also includes the names of Majnoon Gorakhpuri and Niaz Fatehpuri, he does not mention that apart from his Romantic fiction, Majnoon Gorakhpuri also emerged as a critic. In fact, in later years he carried the reputation more of a leading critic than a Romantic. And while talking of him we should not forget the other Gorakhpuri, I mean Firaq Gorakhpuri, who had emerged in those very years as a critic with a developed critical vision. And how can we ignore Dr Kalimuddin Ahmad. But Dr Hasan has ignored them all in his fervour for Romanticism.

Now we were at the threshold of a great age most favourable for the development of Urdu criticism. I wonder how a scholar surveying the origin and development of Urdu criticism can afford to ignore the period of the ’30s and ’40s, which immediately after its start brought two schools of criticism. The first was the progressive school, armed with the Marxist theory of literature. It readily brought into play such firebrand critics as Akhtar Husain Raipuri and Ali Sardar Jafri followed by Ehtsham Husain, Mumtaz Husain and Zoe Ansari.

The other was the school of modernist criticism which brought out its own firebrand critics who, fighting for the cause of free verse, stood in revolt against tradition, specifically targeting the form of ghazal.

The third, which was a one-man school of criticism represented by Mohammad Hasan Askari, stood single-handedly against the Progressive Writers’ Movement, challenging the Marxist theory of literature.

During this period, Urdu criticism developed with full force.