IT is quite rare in the literary world, rarer in our literature, that a writer lives on by making ripples even a century after his or her death. Muhammad Hussain Azad, who died on January 22, 1910, still lives on.

To many, Azad is an enigma His 'Aab-i-Hayaat', an elegantly written account about Urdu poets and Urdu poetry, became controversial immediately after its publication in 1880 but at the same time it proved to be one of the most influential books written on the subject; his father Agha Muhammad Baqar, a journalist loyal to Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar, was sentenced to death by the colonial British and Azad served the very colonialist regime by going to central Asia on a spying mission against Russia; despite being deeply steeped in classical poetry, Azad was instrumental in initiating a new trend in modern poetry by holding mushaeras that was a kind of rebellion against traditional poetry yet his own prose, though elegant to the point of being bewitching, is ornamental on the pattern of classical Urdu prose. He was schizophrenic in the last 20 years of his life but kept on churning out book after book, though many of them do not amount to anything.

No less enigmatic are Azad's linguistic theories he is perhaps the first in Urdu to have written on 'philology' (that's how he refers to linguistics) but while describing Urdu's genesis, he agreed to Mir Amman who had unwittingly written that Urdu was a 'lashkari zaban' or 'camp language', thereby giving credence to one of the most misleading theories of Urdu linguistics. But we still speak highly of Azad. We still quote from 'Aab-i-Hayaat'. We deem Azad's role revolutionary in introducing fresh thoughts by holding thematic and natural poetry recital sessions. We value Azad's research that emphasised the common roots of Sanskrit and Persian. We consider Azad one of the most fascinating prose writers of Urdu. And Azad keeps on making echoes, too.

The echoes of Muhammad Hussain Azad's thoughts were heard last week, exactly a hundred years after his death, when the Urdu department of Lahore's Punjab University Oriental College organised a two-day seminar on him. It was a 'resounding' success, so to speak. While scholars from Japan, Iran, Turkey, India and, of course, Pakistan, made deliberations on various aspects of Azad's life and his works, some quite interesting and unresolved issues surfaced during the seminar, which is perhaps the best thing that can happen to a seminar since it serves the very purpose of holding it. Prof Dr Asgher Abbas, a delegate from Aligarh Muslim University, who has all his life been researching and writing on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, described Azad's role as supportive to Sir Syed and his Aligarh Movement. Prof Fateh Muhammad Malik, the renowned critic and Rector of International Islamic University, took an exception to the statement and declared that Azad was an unwilling ally of the British in their 'great game' and his views on cooperating with the British at that time were quite contrary to what Sir Syed believed in. As for 'natural' poetry mushaeras, Prof Malik said it was not natural but most unnatural poetry since India had been taken over by the colonial forces and in the given circumstances only the rebellious and defiant poetry would have been 'natural'. He said the so-called natural poetry composed back then could, at the most, be termed as 'landscape poetry'.

In his paper, Prof Dr Tehseen Firaqi, Chairman of the department of Urdu, criticised Frances W. Pritchett for her inaccurate and misleading translation of Azad's signature work 'Aab-i-Hayaat'. Prof Firaqi, while appreciating the finer aspects of Pritchett's translation, quite articulately displayed that at times the translation is nothing short of being ridiculous. In fact, with some examples, he had the work in tatters. Dr Nasir Abbas Nayyar's paper, too, was among the ones that can truly be called thought-provoking. The paper discussed Azad's linguistic theories against the backdrop of post-colonial oriental studies. Nayyar was of the view that Azad could not realise that the oriental learning was an attempt on the part of the British to convert the linguistic knowledge into colonial knowledge and collect the data on the colonies. The pertinent question that ensued from his discussion was “Was Azad a part of the colonial mental framework?” Prof F.M. Malik had already replied, in a way, to the question in negative.

Prof Dr Aslam Farrukhi's keynote address was yet another presentation that enthralled the audience. With his elegant prose, the veteran scholar made the audience break into spontaneous and thunderous applauds many times over.

The time and venue of the seminar could not have been more opportune since it not only coincided with Azad's 100th death anniversary but Punjab University Oriental College, the venue of the seminar, was one of the institutions where Azad served after moving to Lahore from Delhi. Here he taught from 1884 to 1890.

The scholarly works published by the Punjab University Oriental College's Urdu department to mark the centennial include 'Fehrist-i-Makhtootat-i-Urdu'(compiled by Arif Naushahi and Ikram Chughtai),'Zakheera-i-Azad Ki Tozihee Fehrist' (by Ikram Chughtai), 'Lughat-i-Azad' (by Moeen Nizami) and 'Armaghan-i-Iftikhar Ahmed Siddiqui' (by Rafiuddin Hashmi and Aziz Ibnul Hasan).

The publication of scholarly and research works to coincide with a seminar or conference is a welcome idea and one wishes that the other universities of Pakistan may follow suit.

—drraufparekh@yahoo.com