Between the 16th and 18th centuries, Persian language poets in Iran and India established a parallel universe of poetic expression, which sought to engage the mind with complex metaphors, personification of abstract concepts, and imagery that was both intellectually complex and marvellously fresh. Despite its focus on engaging the intellect, like all sophisticated artistic expressions about the human condition and its subjective reality, it was also emotionally moving.

This style of poetry came to be known as Sabk-i-Hindi (Indian style), which critic Nasir Abbas Nayyar calls the modernist movement of Indian Persian poetry, and which preceded the modernist movement in the West by four centuries.

Some of the greatest proponents of Sabk-i-Hindi were Baba Faghani Shirazi (d. 1519), Jalaluddin Muhammad ‘Aseer’ Shahrestani (d. 1639), Abu Taleb Kalim Kashani (d. 1651), Ghani Kashmiri (d. 1666), Nasir Ali Sirhandi (d. 1697), Muhammad Ishaq Shaukat Bukhari (d. 1699), Ghanimat Kunjahi (d. 1713), Abdul Qadir Bedil (d. 1720) and Mirza Qateel (d. 1817).

In Rang-i-Asrar-i-Digar [Transcendental Hues], internationally acclaimed poet Afzal Ahmed Syed offers, in Urdu translation, a selection of nearly 450 verses from Abdul Qadir Bedil, the prince of Sabk-i-Hindi poetry, whose influence reaches beyond India and Pakistan into Central Asia and all Persian-speaking regions. He also left a profound impression on both Ghalib and Iqbal’s thought and poetry.

Nasir Abbas Nayyar’s insightful preface to this important selection offers a useful frame for understanding the reasons why Afzal Ahmed Syed has translated Bedil and other Sabk-i-Hindi poets in the past, and how Syed’s engagement with Bedil and this tradition has helped to integrate it into the world of contemporary Urdu poetry.

Nayyar writes: “Modern Urdu poetry has faced a rupture since its birth in the late 19th century, and to express itself, it has employed the logic of the same rupture. The resulting vacuum is simultaneously historical, cultural and aesthetic. To be a modernist poet in our time is to completely negate the classical tradition, history and the indigenous literary canon. This negation becomes absolute when not only the corpus of classical poetry, classical aesthetics, and the temporality which provides them meaning are sidelined, but the ingredients of the narrator’s selfhood are also changed. And not only that, to legitimise this negation and change, progress is presented as an overriding principle…

“In our time, the one who has addressed this rupture creatively is Afzal Ahmed Syed. Others have explained this rupture with the ideas of nationhood, religion, history and metaphysics; Syed has only focused on literature… Syed does not see classical and modern traditions from a post-colonial lens. He bases his understanding on literature’s free-spirited, feral nature. This is the main reason for his interest in the Sabk-i-Hindi poets, especially Bedil…

“The reason he is not striving for a revival of the classical literary world view is because the desire for revival sprouts where the past remains a static, sanctified presence and one feels an existential alienation towards the present. It is something extraordinary that he studies the Sabk-i-Hindi poets like contemporary poets. He sees many commonalities in poetical approach between them and the exponents of modern poetry, which is to say that he sees a continuation of the poetic vision introduced by the Sabk-i-Hindi poets in the contemporary poetry, in his own work and in the work of his contemporaries… In simple words, he does not consider Bedil a fossilised presence from the past, but an eminently engaged poetic presence.”

The poetic world view presented by the Sabk-i-Hindi poetry was so novel that it was not immediately appreciated and, for 200 years of its existence, poets writing in this tradition faced an inner exile from the accepted literary tradition of their time. The Sabk-i-Hindi poets were heretics in the established poetic order of their time.

The ultimate test of any artistic expression is whether or not it is able to engage our humanity. Through their abstraction, the Sabk-i-Hindi poets created a rarified vision of human existence that is both delicate and endearing and imbues our physical and emotional existence with venerability.

I have attempted a translation of some verses which give a flavour of the couplets Syed has selected for his translation:

Aik shokh [mashooqa] jis ki aasteen rag-i gul se bani hai, humain giraftar karnay ki ghaat mein hai
[Magar woh itni nazuk hai ke] Rang-i-hina ke saaye se [bhi] uss ka haath [jaisay] pathar ke neechay aa jata hai

[A coquette whose sleeve is made from the veins of rose-petals, sets her eyes on my conquest/ When her hands are [so delicate they are] bruised even by the imprint of henna]

Meena khana-i-hairat ki aaghosh mein bohat si nazakatain hain
Palkon ko na jhapka ke kahien tu rang-i-tamasha ko bigaarr na de

[Many subtleties exist in the embrace of existence›s mirror house/ Do not snap your eyelashes or their interplay would go awry]

Saari umr teray saath jaam takratay rahay aur hamara
ranj-i-khumaar nahin gaya
Kya qayamat hai ke tu hamaray pehlu se hamaray pehlu tak nahin pohanchti

[We knocked cups together a lifetime and could not dispel hangover’s pangs/ What a pity you did not budge from my side to my embrace]

When an oversized presence like Bedil appears on poetry’s horizon, and leaves a lasting imprint on his own and subsequent ages, it saturates the poetic vision with multifarious hues. Afzal Ahmed Syed’s selection from Bedil is also important in that he has delineated his own imaginative and intellectual galaxy from the universe created by Bedil.

This selection is a demarcation of the metaphors, abstractions and ideas in Bedil’s poetry that appeal to Syed and, in this respect, it is also a perpetuation of his own poetic expression.

The columnist is a novelist, author and translator.
He can be reached via his website: micromaf.com

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 19th, 2026