AFTER the Urdu short story completed a hundred years, a scholar conceived an ambitious project to write, in detail, an account of these years. After much research and an in-depth study of the short stories during this period he brought out a volume titled Urdu Afsana: Aik Sadi ka Qissa.

So now we have an exhaustive history of Urdu short story as it started and deve-loped. The author of this work is the well-acknowledged scholar and critic, Dr Anwaar Ahmad, and we can therefore rely on the authenticity of this stupendous work and compliment him for this labour.

For long we have been under the impression that this literary form started with Premchand and so we decided to call him the father of the Urdu short story.

However, according to Dr Ahmad’s research, the short story started well before Premchand made his appearance on the literary scene. Rather, Rashidul Khairi’s story “Naseer and Khadija”, which originally appeared in the December 1903 issue of Makhzan, was the starting point of the Urdu short story.

Dr Ahmad has, as a gesture of compensation, titled Premchand as the first realist story writer in Urdu. Frankly speaking, Premchand needs no such compensation; the credit of writing the first short story pales in comparison to the fact that it was Premchand’s prolific use of this newly imported literary form because of which the short story took root in our language and a tradition of short story came to be established in Urdu. Premchand can thus well be considered the father of the Urdu short story.

But let us take a closer look at Urdu Afsana. The volume starts with a detailed preface divided into two parts. In the first part, Dr Ahmad discusses the art of short story. In the second part, he discusses in detail the short story as it started and developed in Urdu in  different stages, each stage having distinct characteristics. And at the end of his study he arrives at the conclusion that in this short period our short story has come in contact with a variety of trends and modes of expression, which it has successfully absorbed, and which have now become part of its tradition.

Dr Ahmad asserts that our short story enjoys a distinct superiority over our other literary genres as it has developed the capability to stand as a document of our national history. In addition, it has undergone an evolution of the kind that it now possesses an artistic richness.

The main part of the book looks at a hundred short story writers considered to be leading figures of the century, each discussed in detail. An additional list of fifty writers follows. While I was surprised to read Qazi Abdul Ghaffar’s name in this supplementary list, I was wonderstruck when I saw that Professor Ahmad Ali was not considered deserving enough to be included in the leading hundred of the century. He has been accommodated as a contri-butor to Angaray. In fact, apart from this contribution, Ahmad Ali stands disting-uished among his contemporaries because of his modern mode of expression which had been recognised as the hallmark of 20th century fiction in contrast to the realistic mode of expression known to be associated with the 19th century fiction of the West. His story, “Hamari Gali”, was considered one of the few stories which represented the sensibility of its age.

What distinguishes this tazkara from such other accounts of Urdu short story is the full-length introduction of each and every writer included in the list. Dr Ahmad has taken pains to provide a detailed assessment of the writers’ work. This is followed by a separate chapter of biogra-phical notes on the writers.

This exhaustive tazkara of short story writers provides us with all kinds of information about them. In my opinion, the volume stands unparalleled in the world of Urdu literature.