Mirza Ghalib, who passed away 152 years ago today, is not just a personage in the history of Urdu literature but an era. The Ghalib stage in the 19th century arguably represented an apotheosis of sorts for Urdu sukhan, or the poetic aesthetic: Asadullah Ghalib (known lovingly among Urduwalas as chacha Ghalib, and to Hyderabadis simply as chicha) took the poets of his era, who were still recycling Mir Taqi Mir’s tropes, to school with his incredible riffs on philosophy, love and politics, making it clear who the real inheritor of Mir’s mantle was. Despite his poverty, cantankerous nature and needless obsession with Persian (which led him to devalue his own Urdu poetry and waste time on inferior Farsi efforts), he was recognized as a genius in his own time (at least by the cognoscenti), and in the 150 years since his death, he has acquired the status of a colossus in the poetic landscape of Urdu. The Deevan-e-Ghalib may be the most highly printed book in the history of Urdu literature, and Ghalib’s verse may be the most translated.
Yet Ghalib has also been invoked and appropriated by some leading progressive writers for his thoughts on the leading social, political and cultural issues of the day. For example, Sahir Ludhianvi – who will be celebrating his birth centenary next month – wrote in his poem “Jashn-e-Ghalib” (Ghalib Jubilee) on Ghalib’s centenary celebrations in February 1969:
Gandhi ho ke Ghalib ho, insaaf ki nazron mein
Hum donon ke qatil hain, donon ke pujari hain
(Be it Ghalib or Gandhi, in the eyes of justice
We are the murderers of both, the worshippers of both)
Sahir goes on to lament the way Urdu was treated by the Indian nation-state as it became alien overnight.
Then, just a year later in February 1970 on the occasion of the worst 1969 Gujarat sectarian riots and the end of the Gandhi shataabdi and the Ghalib Sadi, Sahir would write in his poem Gandhi Ho ya Ghalib Ho (Be it Gandhi or Be it Ghalib):
Gandhi ho, ya Ghalib ho
Donon ka kya kaam yahan
Ab ke baras bhi qatl hui
Aik ki shiksha,aik ki zubaan
Khatm hua donon ka jashn
Aao, inhen ab kar den dafan
(Be it Gandhi, or be it Ghalib
What function both serve here
This year too, was murdered
The teaching of one, the language of the other
This is the end of their festival
Come, let us arrange for their burial)
In our own time, the great feminist poet Kishwar Naheed has recently invoked Ghalib in her poem “Ghalib aur Mahatma Gandhi ka Mukaalma” (Dialogue of Ghalib and Mahatma Gandhi) in her latest poetic collection Darya Ki Tishnagi (The Thirst of the River, Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2020). She addresses Ghalib to comment on the heroic women of the Shaheen Bagh protests, comparing them to Amrao Begum, Ghalib’s wife, before returning to Ghalib again in the concluding verses to lament the fate of Urdu in Modi’s India and the increasing climate of hatred which has become the hallmark of the new dispensation:
Ae nosha-e-sukhan saaz
Teri Urdu ko tamasha bana diya gaya hai
Tum ne apne zamane ka ghadar dekha tha
Is zamane ke ghadar mein
Gairva rang chhaaya hua hai
Ab dozakh ki aag
Nafraten ban kar, shehr shehr dahak rahi hai
Dilli ki galiyon mein Amir Khusrau
Bain karta hua phir raha hai.
The full English translation of Naheed’s poem follows:
(O uncrowned king of the ghazal!
Your Delhi has been burnt
How should I charm you
I am amazed should I cry my heart out
Or beat my vitals
Today in Shaheen Bagh
A thousand ‘Amrao Begums’ are sitting
Do not console them by saying
That you call out ‘Oh flower’ as lament
I scream ‘Ah heart’ in torment.
There somewhere in that very hell
Mahatma Gandhi too would be present
When even one Muslim would be killed
He would keep a fast unto death
Today the Mahatma is helpless
Looking at the cut and torn corpses
The burnt houses
He would have said something to you
People are asking from the Mahatma this question
Were we not born here
We are people very much afflicted with destitution
In that the day we got our sustenance
That day the house stove lit up perchance
O ruined Jamuna
Your throat too is drying up
O my Amrita!
How much you cried upon the partition
Now the women of the Shaheen Bagh insurrection
Are listening to the lamentation
Upon the stairs of the Jamia Mosque
And the walls of the Red Fort
O happy poet
Your Urdu has been made into an exhibition
You had seen your own period’s sedition
In our own time’s sedition
Spread is the colour of saffron
Now the fire of damnation
Is burning from city to city, becoming an abomination
Amir Khusrau, in the streets of Delhi wandering
Is engaged in wailing.)
Yet Ghalib has also been invoked and appropriated by some leading progressive writers for his thoughts on the leading social, political and cultural issues of the day. For example, Sahir Ludhianvi – who will be celebrating his birth centenary next month – wrote in his poem “Jashn-e-Ghalib” (Ghalib Jubilee) on Ghalib’s centenary celebrations in February 1969:
Gandhi ho ke Ghalib ho, insaaf ki nazron mein
Hum donon ke qatil hain, donon ke pujari hain
(Be it Ghalib or Gandhi, in the eyes of justice
We are the murderers of both, the worshippers of both)
Sahir goes on to lament the way Urdu was treated by the Indian nation-state as it became alien overnight.
Then, just a year later in February 1970 on the occasion of the worst 1969 Gujarat sectarian riots and the end of the Gandhi shataabdi and the Ghalib Sadi, Sahir would write in his poem Gandhi Ho ya Ghalib Ho (Be it Gandhi or Be it Ghalib):
Gandhi ho, ya Ghalib ho
Donon ka kya kaam yahan
Ab ke baras bhi qatl hui
Aik ki shiksha,aik ki zubaan
Khatm hua donon ka jashn
Aao, inhen ab kar den dafan
(Be it Gandhi, or be it Ghalib
What function both serve here
This year too, was murdered
The teaching of one, the language of the other
This is the end of their festival
Come, let us arrange for their burial)
In our own time, the great feminist poet Kishwar Naheed has recently invoked Ghalib in her poem “Ghalib aur Mahatma Gandhi ka Mukaalma” (Dialogue of Ghalib and Mahatma Gandhi) in her latest poetic collection Darya Ki Tishnagi (The Thirst of the River, Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2020). She addresses Ghalib to comment on the heroic women of the Shaheen Bagh protests, comparing them to Amrao Begum, Ghalib’s wife, before returning to Ghalib again in the concluding verses to lament the fate of Urdu in Modi’s India and the increasing climate of hatred which has become the hallmark of the new dispensation:
Ae nosha-e-sukhan saaz
Teri Urdu ko tamasha bana diya gaya hai
Tum ne apne zamane ka ghadar dekha tha
Is zamane ke ghadar mein
Gairva rang chhaaya hua hai
Ab dozakh ki aag
Nafraten ban kar, shehr shehr dahak rahi hai
Dilli ki galiyon mein Amir Khusrau
Bain karta hua phir raha hai.
The full English translation of Naheed’s poem follows:
(O uncrowned king of the ghazal!
Your Delhi has been burnt
How should I charm you
I am amazed should I cry my heart out
Or beat my vitals
Today in Shaheen Bagh
A thousand ‘Amrao Begums’ are sitting
Do not console them by saying
That you call out ‘Oh flower’ as lament
I scream ‘Ah heart’ in torment.
There somewhere in that very hell
Mahatma Gandhi too would be present
When even one Muslim would be killed
He would keep a fast unto death
Today the Mahatma is helpless
Looking at the cut and torn corpses
The burnt houses
He would have said something to you
People are asking from the Mahatma this question
Were we not born here
We are people very much afflicted with destitution
In that the day we got our sustenance
That day the house stove lit up perchance
O ruined Jamuna
Your throat too is drying up
O my Amrita!
How much you cried upon the partition
Now the women of the Shaheen Bagh insurrection
Are listening to the lamentation
Upon the stairs of the Jamia Mosque
And the walls of the Red Fort
O happy poet
Your Urdu has been made into an exhibition
You had seen your own period’s sedition
In our own time’s sedition
Spread is the colour of saffron
Now the fire of damnation
Is burning from city to city, becoming an abomination
Amir Khusrau, in the streets of Delhi wandering
Is engaged in wailing.)