While a socio-cultural decay engulfs Pakistan, the current state of Urdu literature is indeed a cause for general concern. Right after independence, Pakistan had a sizable crop of laureates endowed with skills to compose poetry and produce excellent prose.
In the decades of 1930s and 40s, many accomplished laureates were writers, poets, playwrights and journalists at the same time. Muhammad Ali Jauhar, Abul Kalam Azad, Zafar Ali Khan, Abdul Majeed Salik and Chiragh Hasan Hasrat wore multiples hats at the same time. Besides poetry, the genre of short story was the mainstay of literature during the first two decades of Pakistan’s history.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Noon Meem Rashed, Majeed Amjad, Nasir Kazmi, Ahmed Rahi and Munir Niazi provided continuity to the poetic tradition from the pre-partition days. These icons in the realm of Urdu poetry remained unsurpassed not only in their own life spans but even to this day, with no one seem to be coming even close to their level of creativity and literary finesse. Similarly Saadat Hasan Manto, Ghulam Abbas, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Ashfaq Ahmed, Mumtaz Mufti and Intizar Husain made their mark in the art of short story writing.
Some writers tried their hand on novels. Of them, a few got literary acclaim and recognition, Qurat ul Ain Hyder, Abdullah Hussein and Muhammad Khalid Akhter to quote a few. Another form of Urdu prose, that attained extraordinary importance in subsequent years, was religious literature. After Shibli Nomani, Abdul Majid Daryabadi, Salman Nadwi, Maulana Maududi and Amin Ahsan Islahi wrote extensively and, as a consequence, Urdu became a primary source of transmission of Islam. That trend got accentuated after the birth of Pakistan.
All of them had one thing in common. They spent their formative years in the 1930s and 40s when North India including the Punjab (specifically Lahore) had become a melting pot in terms of literary creation. Thus the trajectories of art and literature had taken quite a different course than politics. The reality of communal separatism stood in contrast to the literary synthesis, which was depicted very clearly in Lahore.
During that time, divergent socio-cultural strands produced rich forms of literature. Not only did classical literature form an essential part of these people’s intellectual as well as artistic training, most of them were exposed to modern literary trends, bringing into their experience and articulation a novel touch. Urdu literature touched its nadir when its practitioners had the benefit of instruction and erudition of other literary traditions like Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit or Brij Bhasha infused their respective influence(s) into it.
At this point in time, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and C.M. Naim in India and Khursheed Rizvi and Khawaja Muhammad Zakariya in Pakistan represent that tradition which is profoundly embedded in classics. Thus, Urdu language and literature kept evolving, particularly in those decades preceding partition, because it was open to imbibe influences from various literary traditions. At times, sharing the same space with antithetical socio-cultural background forced them to stretch in order to compete, which brought out the best in them.
The bigger literary picture of North India was much more complex because, despite the communally-charged situation in the 1940s, the commonalities did not fade away. Such socio-political situation punctuated with a strange mix of pathos, alienation and empathy is always very conducive for literary creativity of remarkable merit. Best literature is produced in socio-cultural crevices because it is only in that space that various (sub) traditions either converge or have dialectical engagement.
After independence, the literary prose in Urdu was mostly overtaken by the event of partition. Short stories of Manto, Ghulam Abbas and Ashfaq Ahmed exemplified the human (as against the religious or communal) empathy at its best. But that trend could not last long enough. The space for a distant/objective view of human phenomenon was squeezed after an ideological straitjacket was super-imposed on any intellectual endeavour. Progressive writers were incarcerated or hounded out. People like Sibte Hasan was forced to go underground, Faiz was imprisoned and Sajjad Zaheer was left with no option but to go back to India.
Apart from such oppressive measures that dealt a big blow to the progressive streak in Urdu literature, Ayub regime was peculiarly antagonistic towards the progressive writers. With the suppression of these laureates, a big vacuum appeared on the literary horizon of Pakistan which later on was filled by the Islamists and those using symbolism to get their message across to the readers. However, the severing of literary sensibility from the local social reality was the biggest fallout, the most important aspect which needs to be highlighted on consistent basis.
However, as described earlier, Urdu became a conduit of transmitting Islam after the emergence of Pakistan. A writer like Nasim Hijazi, patronised by the right-wing establishment substituted Qurat ul Ain Hyder, who relocated herself back to India like the poet Sahir Ludhianvi. Now if a survey is conducted of the Urdu books produced in Pakistan, a staggering number of them will certainly be dealing with religious issues, with hardly any relevance to the immediate problems pestering the Pakistani masses in general.
In this scenario, particularly when young writers of Pakistan have taken to English and Urdu literature finds itself in forlorn state, the short story of Dr Saima Iram entitled Shahmosh has come as light at the end of a tunnel. This short story is published in a book having the same title, published by the Aaj publications Karachi. I am particularly enamoured with that literary piece because of its gripping theme and novelty in the treatment of its subject. Permeating a complex web of a revenue officer’s life in such a deft manner by Iram offers a delightful read.