Sir Syed and Urdu Literature

Sir Syed and Urdu Literature

In all of Sir Syed's achievements the character of reformation and improvement is seen everywhere; but among the things that, through his reform in particular, grew from a speck of dust into a sun, one is Urdu literature. It was through Sir Syed alone that Urdu became able to leave the circle of love and lovers and to express every kind of subject, national, political, moral and historical, with such force and effect, breadth and range, simplicity and clarity, that its own teacher, the Persian language, has not attained it to this day. Today there are great prose writers in the country, each the ruler of his own special field; but there is not one of them who can raise his neck from under the weight of Sir Syed's favours. Some were brought up wholly under his training; some have benefited from afar; some, as rivals, have struck out a path of their own; still, how could they remain quite free of what they received from Sir Syed? At the time when Sir Syed was growing up, Delhi was a gathering place of accomplished men, and a taste for learning had spread from the nobles and chiefs down to the lowest class. The chief members of the society to which Sir Syed belonged were Mufti Sadr-ud-Din Khan Azurda, Mirza Ghalib and Maulana Sahba'i. Each of these was an author of books, and it was the effect of the company of these elders that the learned pursuit Sir Syed took up from the very beginning was the writing of books.

At first, as the custom of the day required, he came into the field of poetry, took the pen name Ahi, and wrote a short *masnavi* in Urdu, one line of which I remember hearing from his own lips: "The name was mine, the work was theirs." But the truth is that he had no aptitude for poetry, so he very soon left that lane and turned to prose. Since he was inclined from the beginning towards facts and events, he began to investigate the buildings and monuments of Delhi, and having finished this work with great labour and effort, in 1847 he wrote a full book that is famous under the name of *Asar-us-Sanadid*. At that time some fine models of Urdu prose were indeed before Sir Syed, especially Mir Amman's *Chahar Darvesh*, which was compiled in 1802 and whose simplicity, clarity and narrative skill can still claim equality with the writings of today. Besides, the subject he had chosen, the history of buildings and monuments, refused artifice and strained effect; yet in *Asar-us-Sanadid* the manner of Bedil and Zuhuri is seen in many places.

The reason for this was that Sir Syed was day and night in the company of Maulana Imam Bakhsh Sahba'i, and the Maulana was so devoted to Bedil that he swore by him, and whatever he wrote he wrote in that style. Sir Syed told me himself that certain passages of *Asar-us-Sanadid* were written entirely by Maulana Imam Bakhsh Sahba'i, who wrote them on his behalf and in his name. In any case, where the book shows off the force of fine writing, this is a sample: "His honour's penetrating nature draws the conclusion of the fourth figure of the syllogism sooner than men of understanding and intelligence draw it from the self-evident, and the nail of his thought unties the insoluble knot sooner than the finger of the wave unties the knot of the bubble. Such is his grasp of meaning that he has rightly understood what the tongue of the lily said, and such his reading of hints that he has truly learned what the glance of the narcissus signalled. If his bright judgement worked miracles, it would divide the imaginary point with a finger, and the indivisible atom into two."

Long before this, it is true, in 1836, Maulvi Muhammad Baqir, the honoured father of Maulvi Muhammad Husain Azad, had started an Urdu paper under the name *Urdu Akhbar*, and Sir Syed himself had started a paper named *Sayyid-ul-Akhbar*; and the language of both papers, as need required, was simple and clear. Still, until then this language was not thought a language of learning, so when anyone wrote anything of a learned kind, he wrote in that Persianised style. For this reason Sir Syed too, where he made use of fine writing in *Asar-us-Sanadid*, used that same style.

A little while after *Asar-us-Sanadid* came out, about 1850, the famous Delhi poet Mirza Ghalib turned to Urdu, that is, he began to write his letters and so on in Urdu; and since, whatever direction he turned to, he always struck out a lane of his own, he went against all his contemporaries and turned the letter into a conversation. In his letters he expressed his meaning exactly as if two men were sitting face to face and talking. Besides this, in many letters he expressed human feelings, such as grief and sorrow, joy and gladness, longing and helplessness, with great beauty. In many places he set out events so naturally that the picture of the event passes before the eyes. In this respect it is not wrong to say that the foundation stone of the present manner of Urdu prose, whose renewer and leader was the late Sir Syed, was in fact laid by Mirza Ghalib. Sir Syed's connection with the Mirza is well known; so there can be no doubt that Sir Syed certainly profited from the Mirza's style.

In the same period Urdu newspapers were started in great numbers in every part of India, and prose writing advanced day by day. The newspapers had to deal with every kind of moral, social, national, religious and historical question, so every kind of subject was written about; still, no particular style of prose had been settled. Besides, whatever there was, was in an early state.

In 1287 AH, some twenty-seven years ago now, Sir Syed started the paper *Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq* for the reform of the nation's condition, and raised Urdu prose to a rank beyond which it is not now possible to go even one step. What Sir Syed brought into Urdu he has himself written briefly in one place in *Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq*. His own words are these: "As far as we could, we have striven through our humble papers for the advancement of the Urdu language and of learning and letters. We adopted a straight and clear way of expressing a subject. We avoided the ornate style, which is full of fanciful similes and metaphors, whose grandeur lies only in words and words, and which has no effect on the heart. We tried that whatever charm there is should lie in the expression of the subject; that what is in one's own heart should fall into another's heart, so that it comes from the heart and settles in the heart."

In this article Sir Syed set out many other principles of prose, which for brevity we leave aside here.

The greatest excellence of Sir Syed's prose is that he wrote something, indeed a great deal, on every kind of subject, and whatever subject he wrote on he raised to a level beyond which it is impossible to go. There have been great poets and prose writers in Persian and Urdu, but not one of them could do justice to every kind of subject. Firdausi falls short at the feast; Sa'di is no champion in the field of battle; Nizami is master of both battle and feast, but knows nothing of the lane of ethics; Zuhuri can write only prose of praise. Sir Syed, on the contrary, wrote on ethics, society, politics, the scenes of nature and so on, and whatever he wrote was matchless. As examples we quote a few scattered sentences from some of his essays. He wrote an essay on the joy of hope, in which he addresses Hope; a few of its sentences are these:

"See, the ignorant, helpless child is in the cradle; his careworn mother is busy at her work and keeps rocking the cradle's cord too; her hands are at her work and her heart with the child, and with her tongue she sings him this lullaby: Sleep, my child, sleep; image of your father and coolness of my heart, sleep; bud of my heart, sleep; grow and flower and fruit; may autumn never come upon you, may no thorn ever sprout on your branch, may no hard hour ever come to you; sleep, my child, sleep; light of my eyes and joy of my heart, my child, sleep; your face will be brighter than the moon, your nature better than your father's; your fame, your ability, the love you will give us will comfort our hearts. Sleep, my child, sleep; sleep, my little one, sleep."

"These were the joys of hope the mother had when the child could not even babble. But when he grew a little bigger and began to gladden his mother's heart with his innocent laughter and learned to say 'Mama, Mama', and his dear voice began to reach his mother's ear in half-formed words, he became able to inflame the fire of his mother's love with his tears. Then he had to do with school. At night he began to recite to his mother, with a sorrowful heart, the lesson he had learned in the day; and when he began to rise under the shade of the stars, wash his face and hands and stand with his mother and father in the morning prayer, and to call on the name of God with his sinless heart, sinless tongue and guileless thought, how much greater still the joys of hope became! And our dear Hope! It is you who are with us from the cradle to the grave."

"That brave soldier stands on the field of battle, tired with march upon march; on the field of battle, when rank upon rank of brave men stand silent and the field is a desolate world, there is in their hearts a strange courage mingled with fear; and when the time for battle comes and he raises his eyes and looks at the field most bravely and wholly without fear, and when swords and bayonets flashing like lightning are before his eyes, and he hears the sound of guns thundering like clouds and raining fire like volcanoes, and when he sees his comrade lying on the ground smeared with blood; then, O strength of the arm of the brave, O mother of the brave! it is because of you that the thought of victory strengthens his heart, and in that sound of the kettledrum he hears the voice of your song."

You can see how in these few lines he has drawn a picture of nature, and how much feeling and effect he has put into it.

The path of politics is quite different from this. When a university was being founded in the Punjab, in which great stress was laid on Oriental education, Sir Syed came to think that its purpose, on political grounds, was to keep us from higher education. At that time Sir Syed wrote three articles one after another. These articles so alarmed the founders of the university that hundreds of essays were written in answer to these very articles, and they were gathered together into a separate book. We regret that for brevity we cannot quote any part of these articles.

Among the ways Sir Syed devised for the advancement of prose, one was that he gave many first-rate English essays the mould of the Urdu language; not by translation, for that method has so far proved useless, but by expressing English thoughts in Urdu with the qualities of Urdu. The essay on the joy of hope, from which we quoted some sentences above, is in fact taken from an English essay. In English, Addison and Steele were great essayists. Sir Syed expressed a number of their essays in his own language.

The great excellence of Sir Syed's prose is seen when he discusses some learned question. Since Urdu was never used as a language of learning, it has very few learned terms, learned words and learned allusions; so if you wish to write on a learned question in Urdu, the words do not help. But Sir Syed expressed the hardest questions with such lucidity, clarity and charm that the reader thinks he is reading an entertaining story.

Professor Renan, who was a great French author, wrote in one of his essays that "the Arabic language has not the capacity to express philosophical questions." The questions for whose expression Renan thought the Arabic language unfit (though in fact his idea is simply wrong), Sir Syed has expressed in a poor language like Urdu. What Sir Syed wrote on the philosophy of religion in his various writings consists of philosophical questions of the highest order.

The world knows that I differed sharply from Sir Syed on religious questions and thought many of his beliefs and ideas quite wrong. Yet I could never deny that no one else could ever have expressed these questions in Urdu as Sir Syed did.

In Sir Syed's writings there is wit and playfulness here and there too, but with great refinement and delicacy. The late Maulvi Ali Bakhsh Khan Sahib, who used to write tracts refuting Sir Syed, went to the two holy sanctuaries and brought back from there a *fatwa* declaring Sir Syed an unbeliever. On this Sir Syed writes on one occasion in *Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq*: "We too are eager to see the *fatwas* brought back by the gentleman who went to holy Mecca to obtain *fatwas* of our unbelief, and who, thanks to our unbelief, was granted the great Hajj.

See the miracle of my idol-house, O Shaikh:
When it falls in ruin, it becomes the house of God.

Glory be to God! What an unbelief ours is, that it makes one man a *haji* (pilgrim) and another a *haji* (satirist), one an unbeliever and another a Muslim.

The rain, in whose gentle nature there is no difference,
Grows tulips in the garden and thorns in the salt marsh."

When *Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq* closed, the opening sentences of the essay Sir Syed wrote at its end are these:

"We shake sleepers so that they may wake. If they get up, the purpose is fulfilled; and if, on being roused from sleep, they mutter a little, are a little cross, toss a hand this way and a foot that way and lie sprawled asleep, there is still hope that after a while they will wake. Perhaps our brothers have reached this last stage. If this thought is right, we too should not tease them too much. Children, when being woken, cry out, 'If you keep waking us, we'll lie here longer; wait, we'll get up by ourselves.' A child taking bitter medicine pulls a face and says to his mother, 'Bi! Don't keep saying, Well done, son, drink it, drink it; you be quiet, I'll drink it myself.' Well, brothers! Now we too will not say, Get up, get up; drink it, drink it."

The truth is that two or four pages cannot suffice to set out in detail the effect Sir Syed had on Urdu prose. This is in fact the work of Maulana Hali; he will write it and write it well, or rather it should be said that he has already written it and must have written it well. I was pressed by the College: at this time, when the sound of mourning for Sir Syed echoes through the whole country and everyone is eager to hear of his achievements, something should be written at once, however briefly. I have done as asked; otherwise I have no right to intrude on the land that Maulana Hali holds, and I do not wish to become an example of this verse:

What is the use of needless trouble over it?
The landlords have already taken up those lands.