“WE regarded the past as the Dark Ages and imagined ourselves living in an enlightened atmosphere. This kind of thinking led to extremism. I myself committed the mistake of saying things which were wrong.” And he added, “We have borrowed terms from the West in a wrong way. As a consequence of it, the term ‘bourgeois’ turned into an invective with us. In fact, Marx himself was a bourgeois. Not he alone, all those known as great thinkers were bourgeois.”
The man who spoke these words is the late Mumtaz Husain, who is known as a progressive critic strictly sticking to the Marxist ideology in his critical analyses. Frankly speaking, it was a pleasant surprise for me to find Mumtaz Husain speaking throughout in this changed tone in the interview, which has now been included in the collection of his critical articles published posthumously by Seherzade, Karachi, under the title Adab aur Rooh-i-Asr.
Mumtaz Husain had emerged as a critic in the early 1940s under the play of the Progressive Writers Movement, which had brought its own canons of criticism based on the Marxist theory of literature. This variety has now come to stay as a well-known school of criticism, in contradistinction with other varieties such as aesthetic criticism and psychological criticism prevalent in Urdu. Mumtaz Husain enjoyed the distinction among progressive critics for his strict adherence to the Marxist principles of literary criticism. As a compliment to this faithfulness to the ideology, the progressives loved to call him the ‘red traveller’ of Urdu criticism.
But the ‘red traveller’ of Urdu criticism did not for long align himself with what he called the extremist trend among the progressives. For instance, he soon found himself in disagreement with the trend of outright dismissal of the past and indiscriminate rejection of classical literature. As a Marxist critic, he saw no harm in paying attention to the works of the classical period and trying to discover in them meanings, which were in tune with the Marxist ideology. His studies of Amir Khusrau, Ghalib and Mir Amman’s Qissa Chahar Darwaish speak of this attitude on his part.
The preface of Adab Aur Rooh-i-Asr tells us that Mumtaz Husain had also made an exhaustive study of Mir along with one on Iqbal. He had handed over these two manuscripts to a printing press for composing. In the meanwhile, he passed away. The manuscripts were lost and in spite of much search, could not be traced. However, the manuscript of the present volume was safe with the family. Mumtaz Husain had himself collected these critical articles to be published at a later date. Unfortunately, he did not find time to give it a finishing touch and get it published during his lifetime. Now his daughter, Dr Naheed Sultan, who had kept it with care, has taken care to get it published.
The volume includes critical articles written in different times and lectures delivered on different occasions along with his two interviews. The articles and lectures are, in general, in continuation of his line of thought well known to us. What I marked in particular was his dissatisfaction with the new trends that have cropped up during the last 40 years in our poetry. He appears very unhappy with prose poetry and with experimentations leading to the break-up of language structure. He refers to classical poetry, which had an artistic discipline, a respect for form, and an aesthetic sense; and was sorry to see that modern poetry in Urdu was devoid of all these qualities.
As for criticism, he thought that a literary critic should at the same time be a critic of culture. Literature, in his view, should be seen and judged in the wider perspective of culture and collective life, of which literature was a product. As far as culture is concerned, he was of the opinion that we could bring it to life by way of archaeology. It was the language that kept a culture alive. The cultures of Moenjdaro and Harappa were dead and no more relevant to us according to him, simply because this language has died.
But what makes this volume more valuable are the confessions by Mumtaz Husain in relation to his ideological stand encased in an interview referred to above. The panel of interviewers included Dr Ebadat Barelvi, Dr Suhail Ahmad and Dr Agha Suhail. His confessions also include his apologies for the Progressive Writers Movement, which, according to him, in its heyday went extremist and made certain wrong judgments. “How easily we dismissed Freud. That was wrong.” And he adds, “Freud was not all wrong. Only our study of him was defective. Even now we have not studied him properly.”
In case of Firaq, too, the progressives, according to him, were wrong. They dismissed him as an expressionist.
As for the progressives’ rejection of the past, Mumtaz Husain had a justification for it. Every revolutionary movement, he observes, in its zeal for revolution snaps off its relation with the past. However, in due course of time it makes amends.
“To err,” he says “is human. We are liable to make mistakes. With the passage of time, we learn, have more knowledge and make amends. To admit one’s mistakes is a sign of health.”
“WE regarded the past as the Dark Ages and imagined ourselves living in an enlightened atmosphere. This kind of thinking led to extremism. I myself committed the mistake of saying things which were wrong.” And he added, “We have borrowed terms from the West in a wrong way. As a consequence of it, the term ‘bourgeois’ turned into an invective with us. In fact, Marx himself was a bourgeois. Not he alone, all those known as great thinkers were bourgeois.”
