Last week I wrote about the Urdu literary journals from the 1940s and ’50s. They were ventured into by publishers whose business sense allowed them to guarantee the journals’ success.

But now, times have changed. Publishers are no longer interested in the business of literary journals. However, the activity of literary journals still goes on with the same enthusiasm and it flourishes as a non-commercial literary exercise. It may be seen as a venture of individual writers and literature lovers. Their devotion to the cause of literature is encouraged by the warm reception of these journals in literary circles. Thus, in our times, we have seen writers and literature lovers taking the risk of bringing out a journal without caring a bit about the business side of the venture. Of course, at a later stage one may fall under the pressures of financial constraints and be compelled to care for the business side too.

I have at the moment a number of such journals including Muasir, Funoon, Alhamra, Duniyazad, Nazool, Gojra, Seep, Biyaz and Mukalma. All their issues appear to be special ones. Muasir and Mukalma have a history of long awaited issues. Each new issue takes near about three years in coming out.

Another category of journals include those published under the patronage of academic bodies, such as Adara-i-Siqafat-i-Islamia’s Al-Ma’arif, Quaid-i-Azam Library’s Makhzan, Majlis-i-Taraqi-i-Adab’s Sahifa, and The Academy of Letters’ Adabiyat.

I have gone through the contents of these journals too and my first impression is that ghazals are widely available to the editors of these journals. So it is easy for them to make their special issues bulky, giving them an impressive look.

As for critical analysis, I could only find one article which was thought provoking. And by calling it thought provoking I mean to say that it provokes us to think and to react. The special issue of the quarterly Muasir, published under the editorship of Ataul Haq Qasmi, carries on its pages an article by Dr Javaid Iqbal under the title ‘Muslim Siqafat ka Roshan Chehra.’ But how amazing that the esteemed scholar at the very outset warns us that “our siqafat is in fact Islamic, not Muslim.” He seems to be making, in a puritan way, a distinction between Islamic and Muslim and upholding the idea of Islamic culture in contradistinction to what we in general call Muslim culture.

However, this is not a newly developed situation. Historically speaking, the process of cultural amalgamation started in an imperceptible way soon after the arrival of Sufis, poets, artists and religious scholars in the wake of Muslim conquests. Dr Tara Chand has discussed in detail the influences of Islam on Hindu society. But cultural influences are never one sided. This cultural process soon took the shape of a two way cultural traffic. With the passage of time, a new culture evolved, which eventually came to be known as the Indo-Muslim culture.

But there has always been a section in our society known as puritans, who insist on the purity of Islamic culture while condemning our age-old social customs, cultural celebrations, and most of all, the Sufi ways, calling them un-Islamic.

The puritans, now called fundamentalists, made the Basant celebrations in Lahore an issue, branding it a purely Hindu festival, and achieved success in their campaign.

Dr Javaid Iqbal has in his own way interpreted Islamic culture as distinct from Muslim culture. He has discussed this subject in the light of Iqbalian thought. He has also referred in this respect to ‘Javaid Nama’ where Iqbal is seen engaged in a dialogue with the great Sanskrit poet Bhartari Hari.

But there is one more dialogue in this poem, that of Iqbal with Vishwamitra, whom Iqbal calls A’arif-i-Hindi. Here the Rishi is seen putting questions to Iqbal, who satisfies him by replying in accordance to his Islamic wisdom.

But is it not the same kind of two-way cultural traffic on a conceptual level which eventually brought forth a new culture, and which came to stay as Indo-Muslim culture? Iqbal, in his own way, appears to be confirming this process.