Summon them, those who are proud of India
Show them these streets, these lanes, these sights Ye kooche, ye galiyaan, ye manzar dikhaao Also, see Saadat Hasan Manto, who was not a member of the PWA as far as I know, though he did have certain things in common with them)Īs their name implies, the PWA writers leaned left politically - and not just a little left! And while the communist slant of some of this writing may not be appealing to many readers, the radical stance they took gave these writers the freedom (and will) to openly criticize the failings of the post-independence governments of India and Pakistan. (I wrote about another PWA writer, Ismat Chughtai, here. The rest of Prashad's review is about the poets themselves - the writers of the Progressive Writers' Association - who wrote as much about politics as they did about love. (I frankly don't know what to make of Aishwarya Rai's remake of Umrao Jaan.) Recent films like Fanaa have temporarily revived popular interest in Shayari (the recitation of poetic couplets), but in my view it's more a gimmick than anything else. Of course, the cinematic culture (i.e., the tawaif, or courtesan film) he's referring to is now long dead, as the writers who wrote the songs and scripts of Bollywood's early Urdu films are now gone (Kaifi Azmi died in 2002). This is an interesting analysis of the appeal of Ghazals and the musical Mehfil culture of to many non-Muslims. The elegance of the language thrilled many urbane Indians, who enjoyed the patois but felt uncomfortable with the working-class and rural sections that actually spoke it. (Muslim culture would be further rendered exotic in 1982 in two films, Nikaah and Deedar-e-yaar.) These are all films of decline, where a supposedly homogenous Muslim culture is rife with problems – some easy to overcome (divorce rates), and others intractable (the demise of the kotha culture). Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan allowed non-Urdu speakers to revel in the richness of Urdu culture, which most of us non-Muslims saw as exotic and attractive, yet distant. At the end of each show, majnoohs walked out of the darkness humming tunes and reciting ghazals. In 1981, the cinema theatre near my home in Calcutta became a mehfil-e-mushaira.
Prashad's opening by itself raises some interesting questions (and memories): yet, this Indian book-seller will send it to you for $7.00 USD + postage.) The book is called Anthems of Resistance, and it's edited by Ali Husain Mir and Raza Mir, two brothers from Hyderabad who now teach at universities in the U.S.
Dard bhari shayari - Dard Bhare Sher (1).
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