MUSHFIQ Khwaja is no more with us. His death has brought an abrupt end to a scholar’s journey, who always wanted to come up with something new in the field of research. I am looking for words that can aptly describe the sense of loss that the people associated with Urdu literature in Pakistan and India have experienced at his untimely death.
Not only was Mushfiq Khwaja a remarkable scholar, his humane qualities had also endeared him to the literary world. He was the kind of a man whom we like to call in Urdu a Hardil Aziz Shakhsiyat. He was a genuine scholar and a genuine individual. In fact, it was Mushfiq’s genuineness in his research work as well as in his personal relations that distinguished him as a personality commanding deep respect and admiration of his friends, admirers and readers. He was courteous to anyone who would seek help from him, and if someone phoned him to discuss a certain issue, he would often say Farmaiyai in his sweet, cultured voice.
Mushfiq Khwaja belonged to a vanishing breed of people known as ‘cultured men’. His behaviour, steeped in traditional culture, never allowed him to be rude or harsh to anyone. Even when he would be critical of the attitude of a writer in his literary critique, he would make sure that his criticism did not border on insult. Here, I would like to refer to his columns in which he discussed his contemporaries and their writings.
Mushfiq Khwaja was primarily a scholar who liked to indulge in research work. A writer belonging to this category can hardly become a good columnist. The two disciplines are quite different from each other. But in Mushfiq Khwaja we find a strange combination of a genuine scholar and a successful columnist. For a few years, he wrote a column for a weekly in which he would discuss books and their authors. While writing his column, he would be a different kind of prose writer, devoid of any scholarly attitude. His columns were/are fine pieces of prose full of wit, humour and satire. He would never miss an opportunity to point out what’s superficial and superfluous in a book and what’s ridiculous. And he would always be polite, and never blunt.
As a columnist, he earned a recognition that was unknown to Mushfiq Khwaja the scholar. Pretty soon he sensed that his columns would eclipse his scholarly work. Therefore, he discontinued his column-writing, paying no attention to his readers.
His achievements in research work have already been discussed in obituaries published in different newspapers. I need not recount them. But I must inform my readers about one of his last research endeavours, a compilation of Yagana’s works.
At the fag end of his literary career, Yagana suffered a lot at the hands of his hostile contemporaries in Lucknow. The orthodoxy also severely condemned him. In his last years, he lived in isolation as a condemned soul. The verses that he churned out at the time, indifferently treated by the publishers, went completely unnoticed. And Yagana was forgotten as soon as he died.
It was under these circumstances that Mushfiq Khwaja chose to do some research work on Yagana. For a decade or so, he remained engaged in collecting his pieces of writing. He retrieved, bit by bit, all his verses and prose writings. His compilation, published under the title Kulliyat-i-Yagana, is rightly considered a significant accomplishment.
One would never find Mushfiq Khwaja in a hurry. He had the patience to wait for years to have access to some revelatory material related to his subject. His research work would be a combination of painstaking labour, love and devotion. His friends endorse his passion for Yagana in the decade he was trying to compile the latter’s complete works. He would try and justify every aberration that Yagana’s critics might associate with the poet.
As a I have already mentioned, one never found Mushfiq Khwaja in a hurry. He had long-term plans to undertake research work on several subjects. But, somehow, he forgot that the angel of death always has his own plans, and is in a hurry to complete the task assigned to him.
Mushfiq Khwaja has passed away leaving a number of his research projects unfinished. His death is a great loss.
MUSHFIQ Khwaja is no more with us. His death has brought an abrupt end to a scholar’s journey, who always wanted to come up with something new in the field of research. I am looking for words that can aptly describe the sense of loss that the people associated with Urdu literature in Pakistan and India have experienced at his untimely death.
