arwar-ul Hoda is one of the most perceptive critics of our time. His writings display all the qualities of fine literary criticism in their most refined form. A study of his critical work reveals remarkable thematic diversity. Hoda is as deeply engaged with classical Urdu literature as he is with contemporary writing and modern literary criticism.

One of the greatest tragedies of Urdu criticism is that many critics, without thoughtful consideration, have recorded all kinds of unfounded claims about classical poets and writers — assertions that cannot be substantiated by credible intellectual reasoning. Perhaps this is why so much of Urdu criticism reads like little more than a collection of reverential meditations. To seek genuine intellectual insight in such work is, at best, a futile exercise.

Sarwar-ul Hoda’s writings, by contrast, not only interrogate hearsay and unfounded assumptions but, at times, reject them altogether. This is precisely what gives his criticism its distinct sense of freshness. Such freshness can only emerge when a critic’s intellectual world is both wide-ranging and free from predetermined constraints.

Sarwar-ul Hoda’s recently published edited volume on Mir, Main Mir Mir kar us ko bahut pukaar raha, spans 528 pages and examines Mir’s poetry and poetic stature from multiple perspectives. Alongside this, it raises several questions about the purpose and practice of compilation and editorial selection. This book is a valuable addition to Mir studies because, within its pages, we encounter multiple Mirs, from the Mir of the Eighteenth Century to the Mir of the Twenty-first. In other words, the volume shows how Mir has been read and interpreted from the earliest stages of Mir criticism to the present day.

It also reveals where our predecessors and contemporaries have faltered in their studies and interpretations of Mir. In my view, one of the book’s greatest strengths lies in Sarwar’s extensive preface, which runs to about sixty-three pages. This section serves as a rigorous critical appraisal of the included writings. It is precisely this intellectual scrutiny that encourages readers to question the work of established Mir scholars.

The book contains thirty-six essays, most of them written by earlier critics and researchers. These essays explore various aspects of Mir’s poetry and life. It is important to remember that the study of classical poetry — particularly that of a poet like Mir — cannot be undertaken casually or for amusement. Nor is it appropriate to read Mir as one might read Juraat, or to interpret him in the manner of Muhammad Husain Azad.

In this collection, alongside the research-oriented pieces, many critical essays display a marked tendency to read Mir’s poetry in the manner of Juraat or to interpret him through the lens of Muhammad Husain Azad. The first such essay is by Ale Ahmad Suroor, who writes of Mir:

“In prose, words walk gracefully; in poetry, they dance. The walk is seen, the dance is felt. Mir’s dance is not the wild dance of a savage; it is a civilised dance.”

This remark by Suroor is linguistically elegant but logically ambiguous. To describe the difference between prose and poetry in terms of “walking” and “dancing” is not an analytical explanation; it’s a rhetorical flourish. As such, the analytical foundation of this distinction is weak. Even if one were to accept it for a moment, it is difficult to deny that both walking and dancing are, in their own ways, visual experiences. Conceptual contradictions of this sort are unsuitable for serious criticism. Further in the same essay, Suroor writes:

“The beauty of language lies neither in Persian idioms, nor in colloquial expressions, nor in the use of rhetorical devices, nor in the sweetness of style, but in the best arrangement of the best words.”

Here again, the very elements Suroor dismisses — idiom, rhetoric and stylistic devices — are in fact its essential virtues, a point he himself implicitly acknowledges. When he defines poetic language as “the best words in the best order” (a definition, incidentally borrowed from Wordsworth without citation), he seems to overlook that this “best order” cannot exist independently of idiom, expression and rhetorical structure. All these elements form the essential conditions of poetic language. As a result, Suroor’s argument about Mir’s poetry rests on a rather fragile intellectual basis.

The book also includes an essay titled Mir and Ghalib by Malik Ram, most of which is devoted not to establishing Mir’s poetic greatness but to affirming the superiority of Ghalib. Malik Ram writes of Ghalib:

University in Kanpur, India, and the author of three books Mir is a great poet of Urdu because he infused the prevailing creative temperament of his time with profound uman values.

“He composed poetry in both Urdu and Persian. Urdu was his mother tongue and Persian his acquired language. In other words, in Urdu he was a native speaker, and in Persian, a learned one.”

The truth is that Ghalib was, in fact, a native poet of Persian. Consider one of his Urdu couplets:

Pinhañ tha dam sakht qarib ashiyan

kay,

Ur’ne na pa’e the keh

giriftar hum huay.

[A cruel snare lay hidden close to the nest;

We were caught before we could even take flight.]

If Ghalib were truly a native poet of Urdu, he would not have used the word “ shiy n.” Instead, he would have said “ shiy ñ,” or perhaps attempted to construct “ shiy nah.”

From this passage — and indeed from his entire four-page essay — it appears that Malik Ram wishes to imply that a great poet must necessarily be a native speaker. However, if we look at the history of Urdu poetry, we find that those who were truly ahl-i-zab n (native speakers) — such as Juraat, Mushafi, tish, N sikh and D gh — are generally regarded as average when compared with likes of Mir and Ghalib.

The beginning and end of Malik Ram’s essay revolve around a single idea: that Ghalib repeatedly acknowledged Mir’s poetic greatness in his verses.

At this point, Gopi Chand Narang’s famous essay once again draws the attention of readers. Narang writes:

“Mir composed poetry that went against the temperament of his age. He was acutely conscious of his distinctive style and individual tone.”

The first thing to note here is that Mir’s poetic temperament was neither celestial nor entirely unique. The aesthetic disposition and creative sensibility reflected in many of his verses were in harmony with the collective poetic spirit of his time. This is perhaps why, if we were to mix many of Mir’s verses with those of Sauda or Qayem, we would find it difficult to distinguish them. For illustration, let us confine ourselves to just two couplets each:

Qayem:

Dil say tufan-i-giryah

umday hai,

Hum nay par-mizah

ko tar na kiya.

[A tempest of tears surged from the heart,

Yet I did not let even the edge of my eyelash grow wet.]

Mir:

Pas-i-namus-i-ishq

tha warna,

Kitnay añsu palak

tak aay’e thay.

[It was the honour of love that restrained me;

Otherwise, many tears had already reached my eyelids.]

Qayem:

Har dam anay say main bhi hoon nadim,

Kiya karuñ, par rah

nahiñ jata .

[I feel ashamed to come again and again,

Yet what can I do? I simply cannot stay away.]

Mir:

Bar bar us kay dar

pay jata hoon,

Halat ab iztirab ki

si hai.

[Again and again I go to her door;

Now my state is one of sheer restlessness.]

The emotional depth and creative sensibility in all these couplets appear remarkably similar. It is therefore not accurate to claim that Mir’s poetic greatness lies in his having written against the spirit of his age. Rather, Mir is a great poet of Urdu because he infused the prevailing creative temperament of his time with profound human values. As a result, at a certain level, his poetry transcends the boundaries of time and place and enters a realm of the timeless.

The book under discussion also includes several other noteworthy essays, each with its own significance, but Shams-ur Rahman Faruqi’s piece may rightly be regarded as the soul of the volume. As Sarwar-ul Hoda aptly notes, Faruqi has illuminated so many intellectual and artistic dimensions of Mir that each one seems worthy of a separate discussion.

Sarwar-ul Hoda’s book represents a major contribution to the study of Mir. It greatly assists readers and students in understanding the multifaceted nature of the poet, his era and the diverse hues of his work from a range of critical perspectives.

The writer is a poet and a critic. He is an assistant professor of Urdu at Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj