Oxford University Press has brought out a series of booklets aimed at introducing leading Urdu poets to the common reader. So I have before me twenty such booklets, each offering a brief introduction to one poet. They contain short biographical notes along with a few introductory remarks about the poets’ work followed by a brief selection from their verses. Each volume is of about sixty five pages. In this installment of twenty booklets, poets ranging from Wali Deccani to Faiz have been presented.

Generally, such a series has educational value, more so in the context of our society, which is more familiar with poetry than any other literary or art form. People in our society, from different walks of life, quote from poetry on any and every occasion. In fact, poetry is among things of common use with us. This situation demands for the provision of proper guidance to people. This series will serve this purpose well.

However, this series appears to have one more significance relevant to our times. We are now living in violence ridden times. So many forces are bent on depriving us of our values — moral, cultural and humanistic. Poetry can help us counter these forces.

As for Urdu poetry, it already carries with it a tradition of liberal thinking. Classical ghazal in particular gives the impression of a resistance movement against religious prejudices, fundamentalist thinking and obscurantism. Characters such as sheikh, waiz and naseh, when referred to in the classical ghazal, symbolise conservative and oppressive attitudes. As against them, the poet likes to align characters known as ashiq and maikhwar or rind, who stand as symbols of liberalism and rejection of all kinds of prejudices — social, racial, religious.

While going hurriedly through the verse selections offered in these booklets, the one from Nazir Akbarabadi in particular attracted my attention. Nazir’s interests were many and varied. The diversity of his interests and involvements is reflected well in his verses. The selection in Nazir’s volume has ably covered all these interests excepting one. The one ignored is his deep involvement in religious rituals and legends. In fact, Nazir was a deeply religious man. His poems on Islamic festivals and legends speak of this fact. But he was a religious soul possessed with an open mind; he has written with the same gusto poems about Holi, Divali, and Janam Asthani. In his poetry, the two religious traditions, Islamic and Vedic, enjoy a peaceful co-existence. This aspect of his thinking as reflected in is poetry has been ignored here.

While making a selection from Nazir, a compiler can do justice to him only when he is able to suspend his own moral, social, cultural and religious prejudices.

As for the selection from Sauda, the compiler Raza Kazmi has rightly called him the greatest satirist in Urdu. But he could have justified calling him this only if he had taken into consideration those of Sauda’s poems in which he, with his acute consciousness of the socio-politico-economic situation, portrays his society and state in a realistic manner tinged with his dark humour.

OUP has undoubtedly done a praiseworthy job. But this job calls for an extension of the series. Some very important poets, such as Yagana and Firaq, should be accommodated in the next installment.

The present installment ends at Faiz. But Faiz will also be at the start of a new age in the history of Urdu poetry. This age brought forth two parallel schools of poetry — the progressives and the modernists. The poets belonging to these two schools need to be accommodated in another installment as do the poets who made their appearance after the Partition.