KARACHI: The Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi has held an event to pay tribute to eminent Urdu critic Gopi Chand Narang, who died on June 15 in the United States.

Distinguished poet Iftikhar Arif, who presided over the event on Friday evening, said in his sunset years Mr Narang had begun to feel lonely. He performed many roles in his life and did a number of jobs.

“I saw him at Jamia Millia as head of the Urdu department. His differences with colleagues there are no secret. Then he became president of the Sahitya Akademi where he also went through different phases. What happens is that when you start a journey and start achieving success in the beginning, you tend to become lonely. To be lonely is one of the testimonies to his genius. People gather around mediocrity but they don’t gather around geniuses. He was fortunate to have attracted the attention of people from an early stage,” he said.

On the body of Mr Narang’s work, the poet pointed out he was first noticed when he examined Hindustani tales and stories against the backdrop of Urdu masnavis. It was his first major critical undertaking which was acknowledged by all and sundry. And his last thesis was on Ghalib [Ghalib: Ma’ani Afrini, Jadiliyati Waza, Shunyata aur Sheiryat].

“I think after the great works Yadgar-i-Ghalib by Altaf Husain Hali, Mahasin-i-Kalam-i-Ghalib by Abdur Rehman Bijnori and Ghalib Ashufta Nawa by Dr Aftab Ahmed Narang’s book is the most important. His biggest achievement is to link the Urdu language to Indian soil. When he started writing, Urdu in India was faced with a prejudiced atmosphere. Urdu had played a part in the creation of Pakistan. So after the country came into being, Urdu had to face political prejudice (siyasi ta’assub) in India.

“In such a situation, Narang adopted Urdu. As we all know that although he belonged to Muzaffargarh [Pakistan], was born in Dukki, Balochistan and migrated to India after partition, he adopted Urdu at a time when it was synonymous with committing a crime,” he said.

Earlier, Dr Nasir Abbas Nayyar, speaking from Lahore via a video link (all other speakers except Mr Arif addressed the audience online), said: “In the last few years we’ve lost a considerable number of great individuals from the field of Urdu literature. Mr Narang is one of them. The late critic was one of those who laid the foundation for how we now understand Urdu literature.

“Everybody works, but if you accomplish feats [karnamey] by working, that’s exceptional. We should be proud that in our society there have been people who have achieved feats, such as Mr Narang. He had a strong connection with Pakistan. The subcontinent’s partition was the most important period of his life because he shifted to India and chose Urdu. At the time the Urdu language had become a metaphor for India’s division. The Muslims who had decided to stay back in India bore the brunt of the situation. Therefore Mr Narang’s connection with the Urdu language was of great significance because it would have seemed natural (fitri) if he had adopted Hindi,” he said.

Indian scholar Prof Shafay Kidwai shed light on the energy that the late critic had even after turning nonagenarian. “About a little over a month back I saw him speak for more than an hour at an event.”

He added that Mr Narang authored more than 70 books.

Writer and critic M Hameed Shahid talked about Mr Narang’s formidable work on Ghalib saying that according to him we’ve tried to discover Ghalib at unlikely places. “Something similar happened with Narang sahib,” he remarked.

Playwright Asghar Nadeem Syed said he had a close association with the critic and had a conversation with him only 10 days prior to his death. He claimed that Narang’s work discovered the collective wisdom of the subcontinent.

Dr Satya Pal Anand told the audience that Mr Narang and he were of the same age.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd, 2022