Reading Women Characters of Ismat Chughtai
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Modernism and the Progressive Movement in Urdu Literature
American International Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 2 No. 3; March 2012 Modernism and the Progressive Movement in Urdu Literature Sobia Kiran Asst. Professor English Department LCWU, Lahore, Pakistan Abstract The paper aims at exploring salient features of Progressive Movement in Urdu literature and taking into account points of comparison with Modernism in Europe. The paper explores evolution of Progressive Movement over the years and traces influence of European Modernism on it. Thesis statement: The Progressive Movement in Urdu literature was tremendously influenced by European Modernism. 1. Modernism The term Modernism is used to distinguish the literature that developed out of the First World War. Modernism deliberately broke with Western traditions of certainty. It came into being as they were collapsing. It challenged all the old modes. Important precursors of Modernism were Nietzsche, Freud and Marx who in different degrees rejected certainties in religion, philosophy, psychology and politics. They came to distrust the stability and order offered in earlier literary works. It broke with literary conventions. Like any new movement it rebelled against the old. It was nihilistic and tended to believe in its own self sufficiency. “Readers were now asked to look into themselves, to establish their real connections with the world and to ignore the rules of religion and society. Modernism wants therefore to break the old connections, because it believes that these are artificial and exploitative…” (Smith, P.xxi) The people are provoked to think and decide for themselves. They are expected to reconstruct their moralities. The concern for social welfare continued. “Every period has its dominant religion and hope…and “socialism” in a vague and undefined sense was the hope of the early twentieth century.”(Smith xiii) Marxism suffered an eclipse after the Second World War. -
The Women of the PWA: the Politics and Writings of Rashid Jahan and Qurratulain Hyder
W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 5-2018 The Women of the PWA: The Politics and Writings of Rashid Jahan and Qurratulain Hyder Mehr Ali College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Asian History Commons, Cultural History Commons, Intellectual History Commons, South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons, Women's History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Ali, Mehr, "The Women of the PWA: The Politics and Writings of Rashid Jahan and Qurratulain Hyder" (2018). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 1234. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/1234 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Table of Contents Introduction: Review of Scholarship 1 Chapter 1: The Progressive Writers’ Movement 10 Chapter 2: Rashid Jahan 25 Chapter 3: Qurratulain Hyder 41 Conclusion 54 Bibliography 57 ii Introduction: Review of Scholarship The publication of Angarey in 1932 sent ripples through the Urdu literary scene as well as Indian society at large. 1 This collection of 9 short stories and a play by a group of young progressive writers, which consisted of Sajjad Zahir, Mahmudduzafar, Rashid Jahan, and Ahmed Ali, offered a scathing critique of conservative Indian society, social ills such as poverty and misogyny, as well as conservative religiosity that restricted critical and freethinking. -
Ahmed Ali ( – ): Bridges and Links East and West
Ahmed Ali (–): Bridges and Links East and West In exile my sun has set. —Ahmed Ali, “In Exile I Remember My People and Feel Sad” A , Pakistani short-story writer, novelist, poet, translator, critic, anthologist, teacher, diplomat, and businessman, died on Friday, January , in Karachi. He had been in ill health for several years. Writing in both Urdu and English, Ali produced a number of innovative literary and scholarly works which have received acclaim from critics in both South Asia and the West. Born in Delhi on July , the first child of Syed Shujauddin, a civil servant, and Ahmad Kaniz Asghar Begum, Ali started his formal education at age five by learning Qur’≥nic recitation. After his father died in , he went to live with his father’s elder brother, Syed Bahauddin, a man of circumscribed vision, attitude, and taste. Ali started his study of English in at Wesley Mission High School, Azamgarh, and in enrolled in Government High School, Aligarh, where he met and became life-long friends with Mohsin Abdullah, son of the dynamic, liberal champion of Muslim women’s education, Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah, and the entire Abdullah family, which included the eldest daughter, Rashid Jahan. In Ali matriculated at Aligarh Muslim University, where, by chance, he enrolled in an English poetry class with Eric C. Dickinson, a minor Oxbridge poet serving as Professor and Chairman of the Depart- ment of English, who then became the young man’s mentor. Ali also met another of Dickinson’s students, Raja Rao, who was preparing to study in France. At this time Ali published his first English poem in Aligarh • T A U S Magazine. -
Ahmed Ali in Conversation: an Excerpt from an Interview
Ahmed Ali in Conversation: An Excerpt from an Interview [The following excerpt is from an extensive interview with the late Ahmed Ali conducted by Carlo Coppola on August , in Rochester, Michigan, during Professor Ali’s initial visit to the United States. The entire interview, over sixty pages in length, will be published in a special Ahmed Ali issue of the Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. XXVIII, No. (Summer–Fall ), which will appear in . The interview roughly follows the chronology of Ahmed Ali’s life. This excerpt deals with the publication of his Twilight in Delhi. All footnotes have been provided by the Interviewer. —Eds.] : When did you start work on Twilight in Delhi? : In the summer of , during the summer vacation in Delhi.1 I spent the whole summer vacation in Delhi. I did not go to Aligarh to visit Mohsin Abdullah’s family2 that year. It was my habit to 1Ali was employed as a lecturer in English at Lucknow University at the time. 2Mohsin Abdullah was a high-school friend of Ali’s in Aligarh, the son of Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah (–), renowned Muslim educator and libertarian who championed the cause of Muslim women’s education, and younger brother of Dr. Rashid Jahan (–), who later became a friend of Ahmed Ali and a fellow member of the so-called “Ag≥r® Group.” This group of friends published the highly controversial anthology Ag≥r® (Burning Coals), which ushered in the radical leftist “progressive movement” first in Urdu, and later, under various names, into most of the major literatures of India. -
Chapter IV Establishment of Progressive Writers' Association
Chapter IV Establishment of Progressive Writers’ Association The definition o f‘Progressive’ according to the Association was as follows: ‘'All those things which take us towards confusion, dissension, and blind imitation are conservative; all that which engenders in us a critical capacity, which induces us to test our tradition on the basis of our reason and perception. This makes us healthy and integrated, that is what we call progressive". The rise of Progressive Writers’ Association is period of ascendancy, it played a crucial role in the struggle for independence and its unflagging spirit of resistance against injustice. The establishment of Progressive Writers’ Association is neither an accident nor a conspiracy. According to Sajjad Zaheer, ‘'it is not true that the movement for progressive literature was launched under the direction of an enemy or a foreign power. It is in fact a movement founded on patriotism humanity and liberty. Its purpose is definitely not to reject our old civilization and morals, and their manifestation in literature or the art. Instead, it attempts to revive the best elements of this country’s civilization, and with that as the foundation to create new and better literature, art and culture by adding leaven to the old culture. The Association of Progressive writers is a cultural institution for the creation of literature and the promotion of progressive views. This does not means that its members must not entertain opinions on political issues or they should not express them through their association. Progressive writers will always continue to write in support of liberty for their people, and end to exploitation of one group of people by 104 another, and protection of basic human rights. -
Out of the Zenana: New Translations of Ismat Chughtai's Work
Out of the Zenana: New Translations of Ismat Chughtai’s Work I I Ismat Chughtai in her Bombay apartment in . At the time I was doing doctoral research on her friend and contemporary, Saadat Hasan Manto. As part of my research I had read both Manto’s sketch of her, written for the series “Na’® Adab k® Mi‘m≥r” (Builders of the New Literature) and her eulogy of him, “M®r≥ Dåst, M®r≥ Dushman” (My Friend, My Enemy), written shortly after his death in .1 During what turned out to be a very extended conversation, I learned as much about Ismat’s own life and writing, some of which I had also read, as I did about Manto and Urdu literary life in Bombay in the ’s. I came away impressed with her liveliness and vitality, her genuineness as a person, and the forthrightness of her views on literature, although by that time Urdu fiction writers had embraced very different approaches than the ones she and Manto had inherited. Remembering that gracious interview, and a subsequent one in the same apartment ten years later, I was delighted to take a closer look at Tahira Naqvi’s fresh translations of her work. Ismat Chughtai was surely the leading lady of the Progressive Writers group, the generation of Urdu writers who came of literary age and pro- duced their most influential work between and . Including Ismat, Manto, Krishan Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ahmed Ali, Sajjad Zaheer, Rashid Jahan, and others, this group inherited the approach to fiction of the nineteenth-century French and Russian realists. -
Modernity at Stake in Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi Satish C. Aikant
How Progressive? Modernity at Stake in Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi Satish C. Aikant In the 1930s several interacting forces worked in the Indian society such as the national struggle for independence from the British rule, the drive for social transformation within India and the effects of the growing international polarisation between democracy and fascism. By the end of the First World War the freedom loving people were locked into a bitter confrontation with tyranny and imperialist exploitation everywhere. The new trends and ideas in the form of anti-imperialism, national independence and social revolution, which almost became obsessions in the popular consciousness of people, gave rise to d an awareness of a new mode of writing – realism. The Russian socialist revolution which simultaneously inspired socialist realism became a model for engaging with the struggles of the dispossesed for their emancipation and worked as an explosive ideological force among the younger generation. Realism designates a creative attention to the visible rather than the invisible, an unabating interest in the shapes and relations of the real world, and the systems that operate in the socio-economic space. It shares a common belief in the power of literature to bring about radical changes in society by portraying the structures of social reality, and focussing on the repressions and frustrations of the individual and collective aspirations (Namboodaripad 1986: 5). ‘Social realism’1 predicated on the belief in the indispensable role of a writer in social engagement was initially inspired in various ways by the Russian 2 revolution, Soviet communism and international Marxism. -
The All-India Progressive Writers' Association: the Indian Phase
114 URDU POETRY, 1935-1970 occasion of this June meeting, was actually presented before the French chapter of the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture in November 1935. See Baxendall, 40. 4 59. 'The International Writers' Congress', The Indian P.E.N., 3 (17 Nov. 1935), 7. 60. Zaheer is incorrect about Madame Wadia's ethnic background and her marital status; Sophia Camacho Wadia was Colombian by birth, married to a Parsi, Bahman The All-India Progressive Writers' Pestonji Wadia (1881-1958), an important, very wealthy Indian theosophist; biographical data about her usually stress that she was of 'French heritage', which Association: The Indian Phase in many circles of the time possessed a more refined social and intellectual cachet than simply being Latin American. [A] memorable occasion in the 61. A comprehensive coverage of this meeting was written by Derek Kahn in LeftReview history of Indian literature 2 (1936-37), 481-90. His report also included the full text of Andre Malraux's -Premchand speech, 'Our Cultural Heritage' 491-96. Kahn wrote a less detailed report for The Daily Worker (London ed.) (25 June 1936), 3. This 1936 London meeting should not be confused with what is generally considered the 'second' Congress of the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture. THE PRELIMINARY SETTING: INDIA, 1935-1936 This second Congress of the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture was held in Madrid in July 1937; but because of the incipient Spanish Tw o major events confronted Sajjad Zaheer when he returned to civil war and the attack on Madrid, some writers could not reach there. -
Professor Ahmed Ali and the Progressive Writers' Movement
Professor Ahmed Ali and the Progressive Writers’ Movement P ’ last week spelt the end of a legend—the legend of Ag≥r®, a book of short stories by four friends who together came to be known as the earliest initiators of the Progressive Writers’ Movement (PWM) in Urdu literature. The other three writers were Syed Sajjad Zaheer, Mahmuduzzafar, and Rashid Jahan. They had all died many years before Ahmed Ali breathed his last some days ago. While Zaheer, Zafar, and Jahan continued to be associated with the PWM quite unambiguously over the last sixty years, Professor Ahmed Ali’s position in it became somewhat confused a few years after its official beginning in . His friends remembered him as one of them because of his participation in the Ag≥r® group, but they also regretted that he had parted company with them after some time. The opponents of the Progressive Writers (PW) emphasized Ahmed Ali’s renunciation, as they called it, from the mainstream of the Movement and regarded it as a sign of its failure and ideological poverty. For many years, they continued to be thrilled at the discomfiture of the Progressives due to Ahmed Ali’s “betrayal,” until he himself issued a rejection of any such renunciation or “betrayal.” In the Afterword of The Prison-House, an English language translation of his short stories (), Ahmed Ali gave his version of his relationship with Progressivism, at once different from the versions of the opponents of the PWM as well as its official proponents. Ahmed Ali maintained that he had continued to be a progressive writer throughout his life, ever since his participation in the activities of the Ag≥r® group in Abriged; courtesy of Dawn (February, ); originally published as “In Memory of Prof. -
The Mahatma As Proof: the Nationalist Origins of The
The Mahatma Misunderstood: the politics and forms of South Asian literary nationalism by Snehal Ashok Shingavi B.A. (Trinity University) 1997 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Prof. Abdul JanMohamed, chair Prof. Gautam Premnath Prof. Vasudha Dalmia Fall 2009 For my parents and my brother i Table of contents Chapter Page Acknowledgments iii Introduction: Misunderstanding the Mahatma: the politics and forms of South Asian literary nationalism 1 Chapter 1: The Mahatma as Proof: the nationalist origins of the historiography of Indian writing in English 22 Chapter 2: “The Mahatma didn’t say so, but …”: Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable and the sympathies of middle-class 53 nationalists Chapter 3: “The Mahatma may be all wrong about politics, but …”: Raja Rao’s Kanthapura and the religious imagination of the Indian, secular, nationalist middle class 106 Chapter 4: The Missing Mahatma: Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi and the genres and politics of Muslim anticolonialism 210 Conclusion: Nationalism and Internationalism 306 Bibliography 313 ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, this dissertation would have been impossible without the support of my parents, Ashok and Ujwal, and my brother, Preetam, who had the patience to suffer through an unnecessarily long detour in my life. There are neither sufficient words nor gestures to demonstrate just how grateful I am for all of the things that they have done for me over the years. I am also greatly indebted to the intellectual support, advice, and mentorship provided to me by the members of my committee: Abdul Jan Mohamed, Vasudha Dalmia, and Gautam Premnath, and to temporary but still invaluable members of my committee, Priya Joshi and Marcial Gonzalez. -
Professor Ahmed Ali
Professor Ahmed Ali N, , , Ahmed Ali died on January , thus concluding a most important and eventful chapter of our cultural and literary history. Ahmed Ali, popularly known as Professor Ahmed Ali, was an epoch-making personality. He was the father of modern Pakistani literature; in fact, his work helped shape twentieth- century South Asian literature in both English and Urdu. He was born in Delhi in and educated at Aligarh Muslim University and Lucknow University. At Aligarh, he was a student of Eric Dickinson’s; for a time Ahmed Ali and Raja Rao were classmates there. Ahmed Ali began a career in teaching in , as a lecturer in English at Lucknow, and apart from an appointment as Director of Listener Research for BBC’s New Delhi office during World War II, served as professor at Agra, Allahabad, and Calcutta, before leaving for China in as a British Council visiting professor. Following Partition, he moved to Karachi and joined the Pakistan Foreign Service, established Pakistan’s embassies in China and Morocco, and retired in . For two decades afterward, he worked as a businessman and as a visiting professor with various Pakistani and US universities. Ahmed Ali started his writing career as a poet and playwright and soon found his forte in the short story and novel, developing fast as a bilingual (English and Urdu) writer who wrote most of his short stories in Urdu, but his plays, poems and novels in English. In fact, it can be argued that some of the characterization and symbolism in his novels Twilight in Delhi () and Ocean of Night () were drawn from the sociological and structural kernel of his plays and short stories of the s From The Nation, April , p. -
Angāre and the Founding of the Progressive Writers' Association Author(S): Shabana Mahmud Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol
Angāre and the Founding of the Progressive Writers' Association Author(s): Shabana Mahmud Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (May, 1996), pp. 447-467 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/313015 Accessed: 23-07-2016 23:56 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern Asian Studies This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Sat, 23 Jul 2016 23:56:02 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Modern Asian Studies 30, 2 (1996), pp. 447-467. Printed in Great Britain Angare and the Founding of the Progressive Writers' Association SHABANA MAHMUD The British Library The book Angare,l a collection of ten short stories by Sajjad Zahir, Rashid Jahan, Ahmed 'All and Mahmuduzzafar published in Luck- now in December I932, marks a major turning point in the history of Urdu literature. Acting as a powerful catalyst, it initiated a major change in the form and content of Urdu literature and helped to lay the basis for the establishment of the Progressive Writers Association, the most significant Urdu literary movement of the twentieth century.