A Survey of Urdu Literature, 1850-1975 by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi
Conflict, Transition, and Hesitant Resolution: A Survey Of Urdu Literature, 1850-1975 by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi [Note: the definitive version of this article was published in K. M. George, ed., Modern Indian Literature--An Anthology; Volume One: Surveys and Poems (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1992), pp. 420-442.] For much of North India, the world changed twice in 1857. It first changed in May, when columns of Company soldiers marched into Delhi and proclaimed the end of Company Bahadur's rule. The world changed again in September, by which time it was clear that the brief Indian summer of Indian rule was decisively over. If the first change was violent and disorderly, it was also fired by a desperate hope, and a burning anger. Anger had generated hope--hope that the supercilious and brutal foreigner, who understood so little of Indian values and Indian culture, could still be driven out, that he was not a supernatural force, or an irrevocable curse on the land of Hindustan. The events of 1857-1858 drove the anger underground, and destroyed the hope. The defeat, dispersal, and death of the rebels signalled the end of an age, and the ushering in of a new order. It was an order which was essentially established by force, but which sought to legitimate itself on the grounds of moral superiority. It claimed that its physical supremacy resulted from its superior intellectual apparatus and ethical code, rather than merely from an advantage in numbers or resources. It was thus quite natural for the English to try to change Indian society from both the inside and outside.
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