Mir’s fame and the many frauds in his name

For the uninitiated, Urdu Adab is the quarterly journal of Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind) — an organisation comparable to the Académie Française in the formation of the Urdu literary canon. It is the only journal in Urdu that is respected across the globe. The October 2024 issue on Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810), known as Khuda-i Sukhan (God of Poetry), marks a milestone in literary history. It acknowledges a past mistake of censorship, rectifying it by publishing, for the first time, the complete unabridged text of Zikr-i Mir, the autobiography of Mir, both in Farsi and its Urdu translation. It was published for the first time in 1926 in Urdu Adab itself and then in 1928 in book form. The Anjuman published both versions and did not carry the ‘Lataif’ (Jokes) portion that ended the autobiography in its original manuscript form. The Anjuman has now published a complete version that features the original Farsi text alongside an outstanding translation into the colloquial Urdu of Mir’s era. This language resonated on the steps of the Jama Masjid. Sadaf Fatima, Urdu Adab’s Assistant Editor and a distinguished JNU alumna undertook this monumental task, directly impacting literary scholarship and reaffirming a writer’s essential right to freedom of speech and expression.

The editorial candidly admits the historical wrong committed by the Anjuman and carries an apology for it. No literary organisation as influential has ever openly acknowledged such errors. It lays bare the hypocrisy within the Urdu literary world regarding the censorship of Zikr-i Mir, Mir’s remarkably candid autobiography, which happens to be the first by an Urdu poet. Anjuman’s then General Secretary, Abdul Haq, perpetrated the disgraceful censorship.

To understand the rationale behind Abdul Haq’s decision to censor a very significant section of Mir’s autobiography, which remained concealed from the literary world and historians working on 18th- and 19th-century Delhi and later Mughals for nearly a century, one must grasp his regressive mindset. He was, in fact, ideologically aligned with the separatist group of Aligarh during the British era and was inclined towards religious fundamentalism. This group was responsible for merging Sir Syed’s Mohammadan Educational Conference into the Muslim League in Dhaka in 1906. Haq’s ultimate ambition was to relocate the Anjuman to Pakistan to back MA Jinnah’s politically charged theory of Urdu as the sole language of Muslims. His efforts were thwarted by nationalist leaders, particularly Maulana Azad and Dr Zakir Husain, with the full support of Jawaharlal Nehru.

History clearly shows that Jinnah’s attempt to appropriate Urdu and declare it the national language of Pakistan, choosing Dhaka for this fatal announcement in 1948, came at a significant cost to the nation. Abdul Haq, too, chose Dhaka to play a pivotal role in this debacle. In 1953, he travelled there with renowned Islamic Studies scholar Syed Suleiman Nadwi as part of the Haroof ul-Koran movement. He aimed to convince Bengalis to adopt Urdu, claiming that its script was identical to the Koran’s. This claim was blatantly false, as Urdu shares only a few letters with Arabic, and the two languages differ significantly in pronunciation and meaning. After Haq’s inaugural speech that evening, he and Nadwi woke the next morning to find their hotel surrounded by the Pakistan Army, keeping at bay a furious Bengali mob intent on attacking them. The Pakistan army arranged a special aircraft to transport them to Karachi.

Reviving the censored text in Urdu Adab now is the most effective way of making reparation for Haq’s misdeed. This omitted section sheds light on Mir’s era’s pervasive social unrest due to the political instability following Aurangzeb’s death. Mir was compelled to relocate to Lucknow after the devastation caused by Nadir Shah’s massacre in Delhi. The Nawabs there, mere puppets of the British, cultivated a facade of politeness and gaiety. This mirrors, incidentally, the false sense of progress in Raza Shah Pahlavi’s Iran and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Pakistan.

Despite the resurgence of Urdu through social media, both voluntary and government-funded Urdu organisations remain in dire straits. Aside from Urdu Adab, no literary publication of merit is available in bookstalls, let alone Amazon-type online platforms. Regularly published Urdu literary journals are virtually non-existent, with only a few substandard ones surviving on government funding. Urdu Adab, though, maintains its scholarly standards and is now an indispensable resource in major university libraries across the West, including nearly all Oxbridge colleges. Remarkably, the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind) has also consistently published, since 1938, the weekly Hamari Zaban.

The content of this special issue is refreshing. Departing from monotonous themes and jaded arguments that have long prevailed in Mir studies — a discipline formally established in 1984 — most of the contributions offer entirely original perspectives. Instead of recycling obscure and outdated arguments, they provide a fresh theoretical framework for studying Mir’s poetry and his time. Only a handful revisit familiar material, and even these are thoughtfully repackaged. One of the most interesting sections of the issue deals with Ranjit Hoskote and his recent translation of 150 of Mir’s couplets, which has added a contemporary dimension to the appreciation of Mir’s work. It contains an article based on Hoskote’s speech at Adab Sarai, the Indian languages forum of Anjuman, which is a melting pot for creative writers. It also includes a compelling interview with him in which he says that any given format to understand Mir will limit the understanding of metaphors he uses. It is, in general, an injustice to a metaphor.

Another section reproduces articles by Ralph Russell and Sardar Jafri. Although a reproduction, Jafri’s article is very timely as it deals with the transliteration of Mir in Nagri script at a time when other Urdu poets are also being published in Nagri.

Indian languages, in general, are not so conscious about plagiarism, mainly because no software is available to identify it in these languages. One section deals with a strange case of plagiarism, a rather blatant dacoity, when a person asked a professor of Delhi University, Arjuman Ara, to help him transliterate Mir into Nagri. Transliteration is not a mechanical process and the professor worked hard to do justice to Mir in Nagri. However, the publisher Rajkamal Prakashan was not informed of Ara’s effort and the transliteration was published under the other individual’s name as editor.

READ MORE: Mir and modernity

Mir’s fame has resulted in several other innovative frauds too. This special issue also deals with an article by a Pakistani professor, Moinuddin Aqeel, who produced a new collection of Mir, a seventh divan, by merely adding a few unauthenticated couplets to the old ones already in circulation. It is noteworthy that Mir has only six collections (divan) of poetry. This fraud was possible because not all of Mir’s divan manuscripts were available in one place.

This issue is the most noteworthy contribution to collecting Mir’s manuscripts on the poet’s tercentenary. The Anjuman dedicated last year to Mir’s tercentenary celebrations in collaboration with eminent institutions such as the Indian Habitat Centre and India International Centre. This immediately lifted Urdu and Mir from the increasing ghettoisation of the language and its poets and poetry in recent years.

Urdu has no standard-setting manual like the Chicago manual, and there is a massive variation in Urdu journals concerning language. Unfortunately, the concept of a copy editor does not exist in Urdu. Urdu Adab, however, is edited like any internationally reputed academic journal and is, therefore, unique in Urdu circles.

One can only hope for more journals like this one and more concerted efforts to bring the public’s attention to the unholy nexus of Muslim politics, atavism, and Urdu.

Mohammad Kazim is a theatre personality and a professor at Delhi University.