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September 12, 2004
REVIEW: Nothing like it
IN the words of Iqbal, it takes thousands of years for a soul of true substance to grace the world with his presence. The element of poetic overstatement apart, it indeed takes an amazingly long time to happen, poetry itself being no exception to the rule. While there has been a galaxy of great names in the realm of classical Urdu poetry, the unqualified genius of Mir Taqi Mir, Asadullah Khan Ghalib and Dr Mohammad Iqbal overshadows everyone else. Having woven their magic in three different centuries — 17th, 18th and 19th respectively — their work provides the ethereal link that even today allows the reader to have a feel of what it was like in those good old days.
Dr Aftab Ahmad has revisited the three giants with his characteristically lucid narration, discussing the streak of pantheism (Wahdatul Wajood) that he finds common in their creative consciousness. The book owes its origin to the Maulvi Abdul Haq Memorial Lecture he had delivered back in 1996 at the invitation of Anjuman-i-Taraqqi-i-Urdu, Pakistan.
Dr Aftab Ahmad obviously needs no introduction. His earlier work on Ghalib, Faiz, Ra’shed and M.H. Askari as well as ‘Ishara’at’ and the portraits he has drawn of a number of famed literary figures which are part of his masterpiece Bayaad-i-Suhbat-i-Nazuk Khayalan are ample proof of his trend-setting status in the world of literary criticism. Unfortunately, the trend is pretty hard for others to follow, for brevity and lucidity are its hallmarks as opposed to the winding complexities and arid narration that happen to be the main features of the work of most literary critics.
As the story goes, the famed Maulana Chiragh Hasan Hasrat, an authority on language and linguistics, used to write lengthy editorials during his editorship of daily ‘Imroz’. When someone pointed out the distracting length of his columns, his witty retort was that since he was a busy person, he had no time to be brief! This is how difficult it is to be brief and yet wholesome.
For the lovers of Urdu literature, it is a matter of some satisfaction that Dr Aftab Ahmad has the time — and of course the skill and the good sense — to be just that, and that’s great.
The book in hand is no more than a 100 pages, and in terms of actual text, leaving aside the foreword by Professor Fateh Mohammad Malik and a brief note by the author, the count does not go beyond 84. But these 84 pages encapsulate a world of ideas, information and arguments. It talks of the prevailing political and social conditions during the times of Meer, Ghalib and Iqbal, and how they got reflected in the poetry written by them. It touches on the family background of the three and their instinctive tendencies. It argues in length about the idioms, similes and metaphors used by Urdu and Persian poets, specially by the three on whom the focus remains right throughout the text.
It has used the element of ‘rejection of religion’, which is so common among poets, to ease into his main argument which entails locating the pantheistic streak in the poetry of the three under scrutiny. This in turn covers terms like ‘Ishq, Junoon, Khirad, Jaam, Zahid, Shaikh’ and so many others, and what do they supposedly represent when used in a couplet?
In the process, Dr Aftab Ahmad has also discussed the ‘sufi’ movement in the subcontinent, and its journey from the concept of Oneness in multiplicity (pantheism, or ‘Wahdatul Wajood’) to multiplicity in Oneness (ontological monism, or ‘Wahdatul Shahood’). This in itself is an interesting argument, as the author has linked the journey with the transient needs of the Mughal rulers, its impact on society which led to Hindu revivalism and the conundrum of ‘Deen-i-Ilahi’, as well as to the reaction from the likes of Mujaddid Alf Sani, Shaikh Ahmad Sarhandi.
The arguments raised in the book are potent and have been profusely punctuated by relevant couplets, but nowhere has the author tried to bulldoze his way through the audience. The reader may not entirely agree with some of the instances quoted by the writer as indications of pantheistic manifestation in Meer, Ghalib and Iqbal, but that takes nothing away from the effort itself. Disagreements and counter-arguments, indeed, represent the essence of scholarship, and the author, as the text clearly depicts, is quite aware of it.
Coming to the final verdict, however, there would be few, if any, disagreeing with Dr Aftab Ahmad. “The world of Mir is one of crippled and helpless creatures, while that of Iqbal is inhabited by super-humans... Compared to these two, I find the world of Ghalib to be that of perfectly normal human beings that we come across in our everyday life,” he writes.
As for the verdict on the book, there is little available on the shelves to rival it in terms of high-value contents. Mir, Ghalib and Iqbal discussed by Dr Aftab Ahmad in just 84 intellectually charged pages — nothing like it.
Mir, Ghalib Aur Iqbal: Teen Sadyon kay Teen Azeem Sha’iron ka Mutal’a aik Khas Nuqta-i-Nazar sey
By Dr Aftab Ahmad
Dost Publications, 8-A,
Khayaban-i-Suhrawardy,
P.O. Box No. 2958, Islamabad
ISBN 969-496-237-4
100pp. Rs100
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