Eight poets of the past capture Delhi’s joys and sorrows
Saif Mahmood’s Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets offers offers a window into the life, times, and poetry of Delhi’s greatest Urdu poets from the 18th and 19th centuries, with witty and critical insight, in a conversational style that has become Saif’s hallmark in many a literary gathering.
Focusing on eight poets, he allows us to touch Delhi’s past and rethink its present through Urdu. Each chapter on a poet is divided into two sections — the first is biographical and provides the reader with insight into Delhi’s material conditions through the vicissitudes of the poet’s life. Thus, the 18th century poets are nomadic because of the post-Nadir Shah instabilities of Delhi.
The 19th century poets lead more sedentary lives, as the British Residency of Delhi provides the military support, at least until the cleavage of 1857. This upsets the tradition of the classical Urdu ghazal, and so the last poet analysed is Daagh Dehlvi, already writing in 1857, and a step-grandson of the last Mughal King, Bahadur Shah Zafar. The book also records this decline visually through Anant Raina’s photographs of the current gravesites of these poets, exhibiting the absolute lack of public or state support toward heritage maintenance.
The second part gives an excellent commentary on their poetry.
Saif’s familiarity with the tradition and his capacities for literary criticism shine through, as the raconteur in him narrates the stories of these poets’ poetry with coherence, complexity, and lucidity. The book highlights Urdu poets who are well known to Urdu readers, but not to listeners of ghazals or those interested in the literature from the outside.
Apart from Ghalib (described by Saif as ‘Master of Masters’), and Mir Taqi Mir (‘the Incurable Romancer of Delhi’), poets such as Sauda (‘the Great Satirist’), Mir Dard (‘Urdu’s Dancing Dervish’), Ustad Ibrahim Zauq (‘The Poet Laureate’), Bahadur Shah Zafar (the ‘Emperor’ who has an ‘Affair with Urdu’), and Daagh (‘the Last Casanova of Delhi’) get the attention they deserve.
The collection also brings out the specificities of their poetry including the great licence, often through satire, that many of these commanded with the ruling powers as dissenters. Tolerance for such criticism today rests uneasy with the crown. The poets extol the city of Delhi as picturesque, showing colours unimaginable, but also to be lamented after each violent tragedy, with a sense of loss, sometimes in a dedicated genre, the shahr-ashob or city-lament.
Beloved Delhi is for keeps and must be read by all with the remotest of interests in Urdu, Delhi, or poetry and poets.
Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets ; Saif Mahmood, Speaking Tiger, ₹599.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Books> Reviews / by Maaz Bin Bilal / November 03rd, 2018
Only a comprehensive, all-encompassing dialogue can resolve this situation and that is best-presented in a fast-paced drama.
Cover Image of the book ‘The Muslim Vanishes: A Play’ by Saeed Naqvi. (By arrangement)
“If we take the Muslim out of India, what becomes of the country?” This is the central question that veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi’s recent three-act play The Muslim Vanishes seeks to answer.
In a crisp preface he first explains the premise of his plot and then the choice of “play” as his genre: Politicians hold two interlocking triangles in their hands, both feeding on each other. The first is the caste pyramid, the second has three intrinsically intertwined sides — “India-Pakistan, New Delhi-Srinagar, Hindu Muslim”. Without the second, the Hindu Right will not be able to manage the first. Combine the two triangles with the deliberately misunderstood complications of Partition and you have the perfect recipe for hate. Only a comprehensive, all-encompassing dialogue can resolve this situation and that is best-presented in a fast-paced drama. Standing on this brief but compelling introduction, Naqvi dives straight into Act 1, Scene 1: a distraught and excited junior journalist rushes into a busy news studio telling two primetime anchors that all Muslims have vanished from India overnight and, along with them, has vanished the Qutab Minar. It seems they have “taken it back”. Much as this opening seems to lay the ground for what the reader can expect later, not one of the next 150 pages is monotonous.
As the scene progresses, the characters debate among themselves — What else did, or can, the Muslims take back? Writings of great poets — Mir, Ghalib, Josh. But what about Hindu poets of the ghazal — Brij Narain Chakbast, Raghupati Sahai Firaq? Can they take them back, too? And those exquisite terms used in our courts — munsif, farraash — will they also disappear? And what about our great musical repertoire, the gharanas? And food? Can they also reclaim nihari and kabab and the rista and gushtaba? Perhaps Hussain’s paintings will also magically vanish. But for those who think that the Muslim vanishing will only be about the loss of literature, art and culture, Naqvi has news. It will have far deeper socio-political consequences. It will change the power equation in a way few realise. In an early scene, a dalit, who had never dared to enter the main gate of a Hindu Brahmin leader’s house without being summoned, not only enters uninvited but also sits on the sofa without permission. The leader’s son, one of the two primetime anchors to whom the news of the vanishing Muslims was first broken, explains. “Today, without the Muslims, the battlelines have been redrawn. It is Savarnas versus Avarnas, upper castes versus lower castes”.
The problem has become so serious that a special court has been set up on the issue of the Muslim vanishing. And, this is where Naqvi shows his prowess as an eclectic thinker. To assist the court, an 11-member jury has been constituted. On the recommendation of the great Sufi saint of Barabanki, Shah Abdul Razaq, who has a deep mystical link with the Hindu court at Maihar, the jury is chaired by Urdu poet and Constituent Assembly member, Maulana Hasrat Mohani. Best known as the author of the romantic ghazal “chupke chupke raat din aansu bahaana yaad hai”, it was the Maulana who coined the slogan ‘Inquilab zindabad’. He is accompanied by the social activist Mahatma Phule, poets Raskhan, Salbeg, Abdul Rahim Khan-e-Khana, Mohsin Kakorvi and Chunnalal Dilgeer, Classical singer Alladiya Khan, Kabir, Tulsi Das, an anonymous nominee of Guru Nanak and Amir Khusro.
The lawyer in me applauds Naqvi’s jury-selection skills — four Muslim poets who are devotees of Hindu dieties (Maulana and Raskhan of Krishna, Salbeg of Jagannath and Khan-e-Khana of Ram), one Muslim Urdu poet who uses Hindu imagery in praise of the Prophet (Kakorvi), one Muslim proponent of Marathi Natya sangeet (Alladiya), one Hindu poet known for his poetry on Karbala (Dilgeer), two mystic poets whose philosophy cuts across religion (Kabir and Tulsidas) and one anti-caste reformer (Phule).
The jury chooses Amir Khusrau as its spokesperson. Again, an incredible choice. Khusrau is one of the most influential figures in the cultural history of the subcontinent and perhaps the most transformational part of the “long tradition of eclectic liberalism” that Naqvi alludes to. Who better than him, then, to speak for a composite India?
The judicial proceedings that follow through an entangled web of examination and cross-examination, unravel the rich and diverse history of the Hindustan that was. From complexities of the partition to the making of the Constitution, from mystic syncretism to the politics of conversion, from the special status of Kashmir to urban Naxalism and from cultural renaissance to quelling free speech, Naqvi steers through Hindustan’s intricate landscape with a masterly hand. Riding on his vast knowledge of politics, society, history, literature, art and culture, he moves between time and space with tremendous poise. I wish he had occasionally interspersed his scenes with some Mir and Ghalib, like he does when he speaks, but this wish arises more out of my constant greed for ‘Saeed Naqviesque’ narratives than by any insufficiency in the script.
The expression “Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb” must be one of the most misused ones in recent times. In their bid to buy an imprimatur of approval from the majority, Muslim apologists have abused the idea to such an extent that it has now entered the realm of the ridculous: “Oh, but we are secular Muslims. We celebrate Raksha Bandhan and participate in Diwali puja.” Though the very foundation on which Naqvi’s play stands is “Ganga Jamuni tehzeeb”, he does not tom-tom it as a saleble commodity to barter acceptance with. Instead, he forcefully situates the followers of this tehzeeb as equal participants in the making of a secular, democratic republic, demanding their indispensability in all decision-making processes in the present. This, to me, is his biggest win.
Sociopolitical writing has immense potential to exhaust the reader. But Naqvi’s satirical tone and terrific sense of humour compel the reader to go on, and expect something exciting every now and then. To quote Asghar Gondvi: Sunta hoon bade ghaur se afsaana-e-hasti Kuchh khvaab hai, kuchh asl hai, kuchh tarz e ada hai.
[Intently I listen to his life-story. It’s part dream, part reality and part style.] The play has immense potential to be performed on stage and I hope that, when it is performed, none other than its author is persuaded to direct.
source: http://www.asianage.com / The Asian Age / Home> Books / by Saif Mahmood, The Asian Age / Februrary 13th, 2022
The life and times of Delhi’s leading poets of the Mughal era and their enrichment of a syncretic language
Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets
Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets Saif Mahmood Speaking Tiger 367 pages Rs 599
Shaikh Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq, the poetry ustaad of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah ‘Zafar’ saw, in his lifetime, the Mughal Empire brought to its knees (though not formally ended — Zauq, perhaps mercifully, died three years before the ‘Ghadar’ of 1857, the uprising that was to so impact the fabric of Delhi’s social, cultural and literary life). But an impoverished Mughal court and an equally penurious north Indian aristocracy meant that many of Zauq’s contemporaries drifted south to Hyderabad, where there was still patronage to be sought and stipends to be earned. Zauq, however, when asked why he did not migrate to the Deccan, had famously remarked, “In dinon garche Dakan mein hai bohot qadr-e-sukhan/ Kaun jaaye Zauq par Dilli ki galiyaan chhor kar?” As Saif Mahmood translates this in his book Beloved Delhi: “Although poetry is greatly valued in the Deccan these days, Zauq, who would trade that for the lanes of Delhi?”
It is this — the connection between Delhi and her Urdu poets, an almost umbilical cord that binds the city to her greatest bards — that forms an important theme in Mahmood’s book. Beloved Delhi has, as its subtitle, A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets, and those words describe the book perfectly: it is about the Mughal city of Delhi — not the city before or after the Mughals (though there is a fleeting mention of those as well), and about its greatest poets of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Mahmood examines the life and work of eight of Delhi’s greatest Urdu poets, against the backdrop of the city. Mirza Mohammad Rafi Sauda, Khwaja Mir Dard, Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, Momin Khan Momin, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Shaikh Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq and Nawab Mirza Khan Daagh Dehlvi are the eight poets who form the subject of Mahmood’s book. For each poet, Mahmood begins with a biography (often preceded by a description of the current state of the poet’s grave or former home). The biography is followed by an insight into the most relevant aspects of the poet’s work — Sauda’s satire, Zauq’s use of everyday language, Momin’s sensuality, Ghalib’s often cryptic verses, and so on. Finally, there are selected verses (with translations) by each poet.
There are several reasons to recommend Beloved Delhi. Firstly, it’s a well-written, readable book that manages to strike a balance between being informative on the one hand and unintimidating, entertaining, even witty on the other. Mahmood handles with commendable skill a subject that is often perceived as unapproachable by those not familiar with the Urdu script, or who are daunted by the more Persianised form of the language. But it’s also a subject that is regaining popularity and Mahmood’s translations, his occasional helpful notes, and the very fact that he takes care to bring in popular connections — Hindi film music’s use of couplets and ghazals from classical poets, for example, or ghazals rendered by popular singers — helps make this poetry more relatable.
Also playing a major role in making the poetry easier to relate to is Mahmood’s approach to the lives of the men who wrote that poetry. He uses various sources — autobiographies, reminiscences of contemporaries, memoirs, correspondence, even the poetry they penned— to bring alive the men behind the verses. Sauda, so acerbic that his satire repeatedly got him into trouble. Mir, the mad egoist, who willingly wrote poetry in exchange for groceries. Momin, a brilliant hakim as well as a great poet. Ghalib, so addicted to gambling that it brought him into repeated conflict with the law (which, Mahmood, himself a lawyer, points out as being reflected in the many legal and judicial terms — muddai, talab, hukm, faujdaari, giraftaari, etc — that Ghalib uses in his poetry). Mahmood even busts some myths, such as the authorship of popular works attributed to poets like Zafar and Ghalib.
And there is Delhi. The Delhi of mushairas. A city where fakirs and courtesans could be heard singing Ghalib’s ghazals, where a language born out of a syncretic confluence of cultures and traditions was nurtured even through the turbulence and horror of 1857 and its aftermath. As much as he brings alive the eight poets he focusses on, Mahmood brings alive the Delhi that was so beloved to them.
Madhulika Liddle is a Delhi-based writer
source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Lifestyle> Books / by Madhulika Liddle / May 18th, 2019
