Adab Sarai – 2

The Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind) recently started Adab Sarai, a series of programmes to forge a link between Urdu literature and the creative literature of other Indian languages. At a session held on 29 September 2024, Mr Ranjit Hoskote, a renowned poet of Indian English, first delivered a learned talk on Meer Taqi Meer, regarded as ‘Khuda-i Sukhan’ God of Poetry. This may be found on pp 9-24 of the special issue of Urdu Adab (Volume 68-9, Issue 270-74), the Anjuman’s journal, on Meer. The talk was followed by a recorded interview with Mr Salman Khurshid (pp 25-41. The transcribed version of the interview follows — Editor. 

Salman Khurshid (SK): Only a little while ago, Mr Hoskote presented a fascinating and detailed talk highlighting the beauty of Meer’s poetry. At the same time, he elaborated on the issues he encountered while translating Meer into English. The talk would undoubtedly have delighted Meer aficionados. However, Mr Hoskote, there are still a few specific issues emerging from your talk that we would like you to throw further light on.

The first and most important question is Meer’s presentation language. We all know well that in Meer’s days, ‘Hindi’ was the term generally used for the language he expressed himself in, and it was the term he used; nowhere did he use the word ‘Urdu’. But the Hindi of that time was different from what we call Hindi nowadays, modern Hindi indeed. The real Hindi had the same script as today’s Urdu. However, the controversy regarding Meer’s Hindi and the Hindi of today has a long pedigree; we will discuss it another day. In your talk, you dwelt on the issue of Sanskritised Hindi. But as I said, this is a day of poetry, and we are glad to have a renowned poet like you. We want to discuss issues related to Meer’s poetry.

The question has long intrigued me, but I haven’t had a chance to seek clarification from a scholar like you. You referred to the title ‘Khuda-i Sukhan’ in your talk, often used for Meer. In the Preface to your work The Homeland’s an Ocean: Mir Taqi Mir, you have discussed the many genres Meer chose for his poetic expression. These include ghazals, qasidas, masnavis, and rubais. Was the title ‘Khuda-i Sukhan’ bestowed upon him because he effortlessly spanned many genres?

Ranjit Hoskote (RH): Salman Khurshid Saheb, to my mind, when we refer to Meer as ‘Khuda-i Sukhan’, we transport ourselves to the age of literary creativity when Urdu poets and writers were not mentally circumscribed, and their creative expression was not confined to ghazals, rubais and qasidas; instead, they were also involved in investigations and other scholarly pursuits. Meer wrote a tazkara (bio notes) called Nikat ush-Shuara, and he also penned his autobiography, which we know as Zikr-i Meer. Such a wide range is not found in any other Urdu poet. While ghazal was his most widely used and most effective vehicle of expression, Zikr-i Meer has a decisive importance in his prose works. Its unique significance lies in the fact that even though it was written in Persian, the research so far tells us that it was the very first autobiography penned by an Urdu poet.

Meer’s autobiography is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to a description of his father’s qualities. Meer informs us that his father was a Sufi, giving his family a definite identity. The second part is very close to being a shahr-ashob (lament on a city’s destruction, presenting a picture of the way Delhi was looted and ravaged. The third part is a small collection of obscene jokes and anecdotes. I would like to bring the audience to an appreciation of Zikr-i Meer because its text takes us close to a poet and creative writer whose vision could not remain circumscribed by this or that particular genre. At the same time, the lovers of Urdu and Persian poetry in India would consider the text of the last part of the book unprintable even in our century.

SK: You have talked about the three sections of Zikr-i Meer. Whether the poet made this division consciously or unconsciously is challenging to fathom, though this didn’t affect the quality of the work. The last section of Zikr-i Meer, which Meer himself dubbed as Jokes, has remained, as we know, unpublished so far—except in an English translation by C.M. Naim. Dr Abdul Haque, a former General Secretary of the Anjuman, got the manuscript of Zikr-i Meer converted into book form in 1928, but bereft of its last section. Only 98 years later, the efforts of the incumbent General Secretary, Ather Farouqui Saheb, have had the last section, beautifully translated into Urdu by Ms Sadaf Fatima, restored in a new edition of the book. Though I won’t enter into the question here, I think this kind of censorship was a fallout of the Victorian morality imposed upon us by the colonial regime. Today, more than a poet’s autobiography, Zikr-i Meer may well be regarded as a documentation of that age’s literary and historical trends. Now that this last section has come out, we may hope that, in this birth tricentenary year of Meer, it will add a new dimension to our understanding of the poet’s life and work. Can it indeed do so?

RH: to use the beautiful expression of Walt Whitman a poet and critic of the English language, who was a near-contemporary of Ghalib, ‘I contain multitudes’. The human mind and its complexities are indescribable. An individual has many a world within. There is a surfeit of feelings and thoughts. To me, therefore, these jokes may give rise to several perspectives for consideration and may thereby open a new chapter regarding Meer. They may also help us postmortemise our existing hypotheses. In this sense, they are a pretty valuable part of the book.

In my opinion, this third section of Zikr-i Meer also tells us that the particular kind of puritanism which we have so far been emphasising in our aesthetic treatments and reactions is a product of the current system of teaching and learning which has played a decisive role in the evolution of our moral values. The reason is that Victorian values still largely dominate our scholarly perspectives about the world. Salman Saheb, you have already referred to Victorian morality. The British Government’s policies framed our curricula, which were oriented mostly towards churning out ‘native Englishmen’ to fulfil the governance needs of the British rulers. As such, not only was our whole system of education metamorphosed under the British, but our society also assumed an entirely new shape. As I have indicated, combined with Victorian morality, the rulers’ interests were shaping our pedagogic system. It was thus that during the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, a substantial part of Indian literature was dubbed obscene, ugly and immoral. When Dr Abdul Haque published a truncated version of Zikr-i Meer, he was unconsciously driven by this mentality. On my part, I feel we should seriously reflect on this mentality, which we have internalised because of the colonial system of education so that we now view everything from a British perspective. This colonial hangover is the biggest problem facing us, and the current economic policies are boosting it more powerfully than ever in the past.

SK: The portion of deleted Zikr-i Meer does not only have obscene jokes. There are sexually explicit stories and anecdotes relating to forbidden topics during the Victorian age, such as homosexuality. Yet, our minds are still bogged down by this Victorian sexual morality.

RH: We should benefit from research about Mughal society or that period of India’s history when social attitudes regarding sex and gender identity displayed greater openness. These witticisms may inspire us to take a new look at that age.

SK: In your research on Meer’s work, have you come across similar jokes by Meer’s contemporaries from which we may conclude that the Mughal regime had different perceptions about scholarly and literary pursuits compared to British perceptions, which did not consider sex taboo?

RH: There are several such references, and I am well aware of this theme.

SK: In the course of your presentation, you cited a couplet by Ghalib:

 Rekhte ke tumhi ustad nahi ho Ghalib,

Kahte hain agle zamane mein koi Meer bhi tha.

(Ghalib, you’re not the only master of Rekhta,

They say there was one Meer in the days bygone.)

If we adopt a modern viewpoint, it won’t be wrong to say that we need to make efforts anew to rediscover Meer because our understanding is coloured by Ghalib’s towering presence in Urdu and Persian poetry. Work on this project has been afoot for the last several months. My question is: Why do I understand Meer the way Ghalib understood him? Why is it so that, compared to Meer, Ghalib appears closer to us? Is it because our views on literature derive from Ghalib’s ideas?

RH: There are three distinct and fundamental reasons for it. First, printing started in Ghalib’s time, and he could compile his poetry and publish it. At least five editions of his diwan came out during his lifetime. His published work had to pass the test of his own evaluation. To me, the second reason was that his correspondence with his friends and disciples established the image of an all-embracing personality in his lifetime. This didn’t fall to the lot of any other poet.

Such an image of Ghalib’s personality got a boost, even from those who worked on post-1857 history. However, in Meer’s case, misplaced evaluation and admiration harmed his renown. The term ‘Khuda-i Sukhan’ is the admiration of this very kind, which makes us feel that we have pulled someone down from his throne but, by compensation, have left his title untouched. Modern investigation and research on Meer have harmed him by keeping him confined to a small circle. Post-1857 critics like [Muhammad Husain] Azad and [Altaf Husain] Hali did not do Meer justice. He was presented in the image of a broken-hearted lover, an incarnation of grief and agony, though he indeed has much more to offer. I think this kind of presentation installed a particular image of Meer in people’s minds because of its repeated occurrence. The representation of Ghalib in popular culture has been an important reason for his fame. Ghalib’s couplets in Hindi cinema inspired lyrics; films were produced on his life; he was well received in TV serials.

SK: Meer and Ghalib felt their times were going through mighty tragedies. While Meer was an eyewitness to the depredations perpetrated by Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ghalib had first-hand experience of the rebellion of 1857. Suppose a modern-day reader has his eyes riveted on Ghalib’s tragedy more than Meer’s tragic life. In that case, it is because the uprising of 1857 had a more lasting and heart-rending impact on us, while Meer’s personality has a historical hue. Does this influence our perspective on his poetry, or are there other reasons for it?

RH: You may agree with me if I say that one of the reasons Ghalib influences us is that, for us, 1857 was a more tragic event and the mightiest moment of our recent history. I have used ‘we’ here, but I don’t know what this ‘we’ may mean. This may well refer to a particular generation or a specific sensibility. Undoubtedly, 1857 was a significant turn in our history. It led to the demise of the Mughal Empire and the passage of power into British hands. This started full-fledged colonial domination in the country. This was a substantial and perceptible reality for us.

Meer breathed his last in 1810. It was not in some distant past. However, to an extent, the eighteenth century is misty for us. Interdisciplinary studies welcome academic development in our times. However, understanding the eighteenth century may be quite tricky for historians because there was, at the time, a lack of framework for indigenous research and the rules of imperialist historiography were yet to develop. The country was in a vortex-induced by distinct cultures coming together. This was not confined to those living alone in north India. Various segments of the Indian population, like those of European origin, those of Indian origin and those of West Asian origin, were involved in this unprecedented process of cultural amalgamation.

All these reasons have made the eighteenth century problematic for a particular genre of historiography. Moreover, because of their non-familiarity with Urdu and Persian, many historians, let alone the common public, cannot access primary sources for the period. The study of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will likely grow increasingly complex in the coming days and also suffer more distortions.

SK: You referred to the role of cinema in Ghalib’s popularity; what could be the cause of it? When I tried to find references to Meer in our cinema, I came across one in a TV serial on Ghalib, when the latter heard a faqir singing patta patta, buta buta. Is it a coincidence that the background in the film was the same as you had referred to, or is it that the fascination with the serial was for some other reason that remained concealed because its presentation was different?

RH: This is something contradictory, though I am sure that Hindi and non-Hindi cinema experts must have grappled with it. There may have been a time between the 1930s and the 1960s when films were being made about the Mughal period, or at least were being planned, though they remained unfinished. The writers involved in such projects, including the progressive writers, were votaries of classical music and Urdu poetry, which were most suited for their purposes. This was the period when Ghalib entered Hindi cinema, though his language and ideas were too high-flown for most to grasp. The reason is that, from the viewpoint of intellectuality, Ghalib’s couplets were expressive of complex, rather extremely tedious, ideas. Compared to Ghalib, Meer deserved more incredible popularity. Meer straightforwardly expressed himself, and his language was everyday language. This is the language not of the elite but of the masses, spoken on the stairs of Jama Masjid in Delhi. I have no conclusive answer to your question which will satisfy everyone. Yet, I feel that there is now a greater focus on Ghalib’s personality in this age of social media. It has boosted him even more. We hope this ‘Adab Sarai’ series will also help take Meer’s poetry to the neophytes in the circle of Urdu lovers.

SK: We now come to the global perspectives regarding Urdu poetry in the age of Meer and Ghalib. For example, we may talk about Goethe, William Blake and William Wordsworth in the context of Meer, Shelly and Walt Whitman in Ghalib. However, must we place these two poets in a Western context to evaluate them? Do such comparisons give us a fair idea of their significance?

RH: Obviously, this is not possible. While Goethe and some of his contemporaries did have an idea of Sanskrit poetry, I am unsure how much they knew about Urdu poetry or how much the Urdu-wallas knew about the poetry of the West in that age. Suppose I have referred to these poets in the preface to my book. In that case, it is only because most often people, and more so Urdu critics, regard the eighteenth century as a dark and blind alley. Hence, we see a rising trend that regards Urdu poetry of the eighteenth century as something that does exist but without any link with other intellectual trends. As such, when we say that these poets were active in an age when the creations of Baudelaire, Walt Whitman and Alfred Hayes were coming to the fore, it by no means posits that some link existed between them. When we describe Baudelaire as a modern poet in the context of Paris, we are also aware that Heinrich Heine was striving to impart a meaning to Germany that stood badly divided in his days and that Whitman was seeking to write a new and comprehensive story for the United States. Then, why do we regard Ghalib and Meer as somewhat strange creatures of a strange language? After all, they, too, were involved in broader happenings! They, too, should be the epitome of meaning for us, more so because the Mughal Empire occupied a place of eminence on the world’s map at the time. I mean that this should prompt a study of these histories with all the more humbleness. However, what we go on shouting about is that we are proud of being Indians, and then we start boasting about one or another imaginary period gone by. We do have much more than imaginary pasts to be proud of.

SK: Let us return to our homeland, Delhi. In your book, you have referred to Khan-i Arzu, Meer’s maternal uncle. Talking about his life, you have outlined the circumstances that led to a Shia-Sunni rift in his family. Did a change of faith play some role in determining Meer’s attitude to humankind?

RH: This is a question I grappled with in my preface, yet I don’t have a positive and clear-cut answer to it. It is evident, however, that whatever happened between Meer and Khan-i Arzu’s family was because of Meer’s declaration that he had converted to the Shia faith. You may be aware of other reasons for quarrels in the family. But I feel this was the rock on which this relationship foundered. In this declaration of conversion, we may look for elements of Meer’s sympathy with the have-nots and his commitment to the oppressed because Shi’ism may be more conscious of injustice and resistance. However, it requires greater study and research to prove my point.

SK: Whenever we talk of the Shia-Sunni relationships, the nature of Delhi-Lucknow relations also comes to the fore. You also said in your preface that Meer had conquered Lucknow but still loved Delhi. This is something quite obvious. But what circumstances compelled him, like so many others, to go to Lucknow and pass the rest of his days there? What imprints did this migration leave on his poetry? How did this migration and his stay in Lucknow impact his poetic attitudes? He was settled in a city he disliked.

RH: The sequence of events is quite unclear. However, regarding his stay in Lucknow, he seems to have bogged down with disappointment. He could not adapt himself to the city in any manner. This was natural for a sensitive being like him, whose life, in its entirety, remained a journey of the mind. Of course, people like Sauda were already there, Khan-i Arzu had also left for Awadh, and Meer eventually reached Lucknow, but all this was because of changes in the equations of power and the patronage system. There is no mental trait behind Meer’s migration. It is born directly from the need to make two ends meet. Whenever we look towards the eighteenth century, we see a change in the centre of power. Power and dominance were now exercised by the navvabs, once the Mughal empire’s subedars. As we know, whether it is in Awadh, Bengal or Hyderabad, these navvabs have now become sovereigns.

I cannot say with certainty that these navvabs could not be attacked from the North West. Interestingly, these navvabs were themselves rebels, in a sense. The quest for power was all the more intense in their case, and as part of it, they were attracting the men of talent and scholarship to their side. For example, they were particularly keen on merchants and writers. They forged relationships with the East India Company, which proved their undoing. These were, however, later developments.

In my opinion, Meer’s life was marked by constant torment for a homeland in an alien land. His poet contemporaries were then at an advanced age and unable to shift their affiliations.

Meer’s sense of affinity with Delhi was powerful; I have used a term derived from contemporary sensibility (ecological thinking). I have used it to highlight his state of mind. This was no nostalgia. Meer was then not lamenting about the things that had died away; he was grieving about the present going to pieces around him. Grieving about the present, which is falling to pieces around one, is different from lamenting about the past; the force with which this finds expression in Meer’s work is quite rare. He had bid adieu to Delhi only under extreme compulsion.

We have some evidence from Aab-i Hayat in support of our contention. There are also anecdotes about how he remained disturbed and detached during his Lucknow days. When he first appeared in public in Lucknow, the youth there made fun of him and guffawed because of his appearance. What is there, you may ask, to laugh at if a person appears in courtly attire, carrying a sword at his waist and wearing a pair of pointed shoes? If you cast a look around even today, you will chance upon someone trying to scrape together the shreds of their lives and leave for somewhere. Not everyone has a feeling of sympathy and generosity for such resourceless migrants. Open a newspaper any day, and you will find a slew of stories of this kind.

SK: This is an important viewpoint about migrants of our age. You have discussed the pedigree of Hindi, Rekhta, Hindi-Urdu relationship, etc. Whatever was written in that period was Hindi. However, it differed significantly from the Hindi we know today, which Professor Alok Rai discussed in detail in his Hindi Nationalism. So, would you like to shed some light on how Hindi became Urdu?

RH: May God pity me! It is a protracted debate, though the preface of my book has sought to sum it up in a clumsy manner. The thinking behind this effort was that a particular type of linguistic excess was committed in the name of a new nationalism against languages and their continuity. What the ideologues of modern Hindi did in its name was to grab various and sometimes contradictory linguistic and cultural elements peculiarly and make them part of modern Hindi in the name of linguistic uniformity. The concerned region extends from Rajasthan to the eastern end of the Doab and from the Shivaliks to Telangana.

I have explicitly referred to Telangana because my viewpoint has something to do with it. Generally, what is not known is that since the beginning of the eighteenth century, Delhi-based poets of Urdu, Hindavi or Hindi have been steeped in the Deccani tradition. Historians of Urdu literature haven’t been large-hearted enough to accept it. A surprising thing is that Meer, too, didn’t take it. Therefore, there is a pressing need to dwell on the mutual relationship of languages. Any particular language is independent of other languages yet linked to them. Do linguistics experts scrutinise whatever give and take occurs between languages? We have indeed gained much from this process, and it has also strengthened Urdu.

It was on the foundation of Urdu that the magnificent and magical world of Hindi cinema around 1960 was erected. Some people dub it a foreign language because its sources lie outside India, but if we take the trouble to explore its history, the first instance of it is to be seen in a part of India itself. Next, in Shahjahanabad, it becomes Zaban-i Urdu-i Mualla. Urdu remained in vogue for about two decades, but then its meaning changed to something else, and this particular meaning went out of circulation. Emperor Shah Alam used the term Rekhta for his language, and Meer used the term Hindi. Around 1780, however, Urdu came into vogue for the new language, used for the first time by British linguist and Indologist John Gilchrist; before him, we don’t find the term being used as a language name. The term didn’t stick for a considerable time. Still, this deliberate attempt to impart an artificial name to the language should be considered part of the British policy to keep their subjects divided.

The popularity of Urdu as a language name started when the movement to forge modern Hindi began to gain strength; this was an attempt to import more Sanskrit-based words into the language’s vocabulary — distinct from the old Hindi or Hindavi. In his letters, Ghalib used the term Urdu only once or twice. Moreover, in one place, he even made a gender mistake and used Urdu as a masculine noun: ‘Mera (my) Urdu is better than others.’ This was because Ghalib might not have been clear about using this new, and then quite infrequently used, name for Hindi. This situation continued till the publication of standard books developed by Hali and Azad and by then, an unfortunate period had begun in the politics of South Asia when the distinction between language and religion was obliterated. This destroyed the shared legacy. An outcome of linguistic politics, communal politics, and the politics of new nationalism was that it was dubbed Hindi as Urdu, and its script was changed to Nagri.

SK: Now, there remain two rather technical questions. But I feel a poet can best answer them.

The first question is about blank verse or free verse. Blank verse and prosaic verse are very strange terms. Creative writers can express themselves in either prose or poetry. In Urdu, both azad nazm (free verse) and nazm muarra [blank verse] have metric forms. In Urdu, composing azad nazm is more difficult because we use the feet of a single metre, dividing arbitrarily in different stanzas. In nazm muarra, however, all the lines have equal length. The concept of prose poetry, nasri nazm, was never accepted in Urdu. Nasri nazm, or call it whatever you may, has absolutely nothing to do with metre or lyricality. The Hindi people used the term equivalent to ‘free verse’ in English or Azad nazm in Urdu to give heft to their prosaic verse. I beg your pardon if I am mistaken; I think free verse and blank verse are two distinct categories in English poetry, and their rhythm is generally absent from Hindi free verse. What do you think about it as a poet of English?

RH: The rhythm of an English poem is almost similar to that of an Urdu poem, though identifying this similarity is sometimes tricky because of their different cultural milieus. Rhythm is central to the poetry. I have always been perplexed by the moves that confuse the free prose poetry of Hindi with the free verse of English and free from rhythm.

As a poet, apart from sticking to a metre in poetry, the issue of acoustic continuity is no less critical. In its gist, rhythm is not very different from metre. What is the musicality of a language? How do we proceed with it? This is a fundamental question regarding poetry. We must also remember that people often loosely talk of pentameter and hexameter without any idea of their historical context. These were essential elements of ancient Greek poetry.

These metres were later transferred from English poetry to Urdu poetry by those engaged in new poetry. The question about the irkaan/ feet of metre should be raised here: Do we know the length of a run as Meer did? What fascinates me about Meer is that he continued experimenting with various irkaans/feet. I was perplexed at how his experimentation began, but then I felt his prosody experiments were derived from Khadi Boli or Braj. The main thing about poetry is not whether the rules of prosody have been strictly followed. Still, we have to see how the broad rules of prosody have been observed and how one has deviated from them in an artistic and dexterous way so that the poetry culture remains intact. This demands an extraordinary mastery of prosody.

SK: The second technical question is about how the eraab (punctuation) and, in particular, izafat are dropped in poetry by some people. In your opinion, how does it impact poetry and prose?

RH: In this translation, I have used the symbols of pause. Metaphors don’t necessarily assume multidimensionality and breadth if we drop symbols and izafat. The multidimensionality of a metaphor has to do with the mental horizon of the readers and the grasp of poetry. It has nothing to do with a critic’s explanations. In Urdu poetry, the symbols of pause and the izafat mainly come in handy for readers. Therefore, in an English translation, we need to see the meaning of every word coming out of a poet’s pen. Thus, even if a particular word has been used, the dimensions a reader can see in it depend on their calibre. This is what Ghalib termed ‘an eye seeing a veritable river in a single drop’.

SK: A renowned poet like you should also offer some advice for young translators. In your view, what are some crucial points that one should remember while translating a piece of poetry?

RH: I have always been wary of offering advice. However, I would like to know what you mean by a young translator. I am no longer young. Quipping apart, as a friendly artist, I would like to tell the new translators that they would benefit if they began to see a poem in differing contexts. When the context is clear, a poem presents itself to a translator, particularly more meaningfully. Therefore, an important thing is that it is not always easy to think about a book as a whole. Still, suppose you concentrate your attention, as a translator, on the work as a unit and the feel of its possible dimensions.

In that case, almost every aspect will be apparent to you, even those not apparent to the creator. Creation is an altogether different process. What I am trying to say here, in fact, is that translation is a very hard nut to crack. It requires a mastery of both the languages and a familiarity with their specific subject and the genres to be translated. Profit or fame shouldn’t be the goal of translation. Neither should a translator understand that it is an easy task. To me, translation is a specific kind of creation. During a translation, one fully dedicates oneself to the process. The state of a writer’s mind during creation differs from what a translator undergoes. A translator must have an idea of the world and the life that gave rise to the text. In reality, this is not a search for ‘correct words’; here, a literary concept has to be amalgamated with some other literary concept so that the creative sheen of both remains intact. While undertaking a translation, one needs to be aware of the cultural background of the time and place where that particular piece originated and, from that cultural perspective, how the words were used in the piece under translation. Only after that can a translator decide whether to take up a particular text for translation. A translator must also know the journey of the words found in the two languages. If a translator observes these principles, his work is bound to become a part of the linguistic currents and creative process.

[Ranjit Hoskote’s interview with Salman Khurshid was transcribed in English by Sadaf Fatima, who subsequently edited it.]