Shams Ur Rehman Faruqi - the Scholar the Poet and the Novelist: The Lasting Genius of Urdu Literature
By
Mir Sajad
December
28, 2020
This year
was clouded by unusual scenes on every front. Literature and intellectual world
too has been inflicted by the deaths of many central figures in the likes of
David Graber, Robert Fisk, Asif Farrukhi, John Lewis, and John Le Carre to name
a few. In literature the role and the positioning of some litterateur becomes
almost invaluably relevant and the eras are defined by their presence. One such
name in the Asian subcontinent is the great Shams ur Rehman Faruqi. Shamsur
Rahman Faruqi (born 1935) is the distinguished Urdu poet, critic, theoretician,
lexicographer, novelist who inspired a whole chain of Urdu writers after 1970s.
Being adept in ilm-e-bayan (poetic discourse), he undoubtedly has sparked great
deal of lively debate and sustained discourse in the fading shades of literary
adaptability to the stresses of political and cultural blocks which is quite
rare in contemporary times. He initiated the movement of putting to test the
archaic compositions of Urdu literature in particular to the modern and current
methods prevailing in the world literature. No other person in the contemporary
settings could have done justice to this experiment than Faruqi itself. The
fundamentals in the structure, and layered constructs of literature are always
determined by their political, ideological and methodological rigor of the
times the language thrives in. Faruqi wholeheartedly serving the cause of
putting the name of Urdu literature in the global literary map; he always busied
himself with making Urdu rich and active by introducing the spirit of
revivalism. The intellectual eloquence and ever flowing wisdom from Faruqi made
him the lasting genius of Urdu literature.
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi (1935-2020)
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Faruqi’s
uniqueness was his non-conforming stance in understanding the pre-modern and
the modern eras of Urdu literature. He had profound knowledge of global
literature in the realm of poetics, metaphor and signs, semiotics, linguistics,
and novel, spanning the genres. He was bestowed with numerous awards and honors
with prestigious Saraswati Samman to his credit as well for his ground-breaking
endeavour in the form of Sher-e-Shor
Angez — a four-volume study of the 18th-century poet Mir Taqi Mir. His other
works comprise Kai Chand Thay Sar-e-Aasman (The Mirror of Beauty) — a fictional
description weighing at 984 pages
crafting the life and times of
Wazir Khanum, Daagh Dehlav’s mother, in
19th century Delhi, and The Sun That Rose From The Earth. Getting inspired early on in his writing career by the works
of William Thackeray, Farhatullah Baig and Malik Ram he managed to produce the
exemplary work of Kai Chand Thai Sare-Asman that is still consider as the
eternal template for novel writing in
Urdu. There is the incisive and acute commentary of scenes, dialects and the
emotional contours taken care of in the most sensitive and flawless style. The
same mesmeric and spell-binding flair traced to the memorable pages of
Sher-e-Shor Angez, it dismantled the rigid and excessive disciplining of poetic
discourses and started the rigorous and at times the sharp critics of the
reviewers that had been well placed at the positional patronage. To have the
literature growing and adapting to the externalities and the subterranean
hijacks the methods that Faruqi adopted deserve to be mainstreamed. In every
genre, he had the flawless grip which flashed from his riveting comments he
made. From Paul Ricoeur to Amir Khusrau and from Persian to Sanskrit Faruqi was
in all ways the face of Urdu in 20th century.
He wore
many hats at the same time from literary critic to novelist to storyteller.
Deconstructing the poetic sensibilities of masterpieces of poets like Ghalib,
Mir, Iqbal he would always have the surprising and novel facets brought to the
fore. He had the distinction of being different from the tribe with his radical
unravelling of technicalities of language by making the hermeneutical and
phenomenological basis of language, part of the critical framework of his work.
This is apparent from the titles of his treasured contributions he has made in
the literature from “Poetics of Coherence: Notional, Real, and Necessary
Connections in Poems of Two Lines”( A hand-out from a Penn talk on Oct. 8,
1997) to “Mazmun, Ma’ni, Isti’arah” (Theme, Meaning, Metaphor), a lecture
delivered in March 2020at Aligarh.
His
standout contribution in enriching and rediscovering the distinct and almost
endangered category of dastangoi style of storytelling has been unparalleled
and this heroic adventure almost took him more than a decade. It gives us the
sincerity and perseverance of a person who would eat, think and sleep
literature thus surely falling in the set of persons who are rare in matters of
their cherished feats and intellectual acumen. In one of his interviews curated
for New York Times he states “Of course, I was incomparably enriched by my love
for pre-modern Persian and Urdu poetry. Later, what went into my unconscious,
more than I realized, was my reading of the Dastan of Amir Hamza, a series of
loosely linked oral romances whose 46 volumes and 42,000-plus pages and more
than 20 million words I read, and in some cases reread, since about 1980. I’ll
always remain obliged to Frances Pritchett [professor emerita at Columbia
University] who directed my attention to the Dastan”. One could just imagine
the determination and passion Faruqi had for the literature and its subtle engrossing themes that had been
almost thrown to winds
The huge
efforts and the determination of Faruqi has been the hallmark of him being the
devoted warrior of Urdu. The articulateness, wisdom and the methods Faruqi
applied into the Urdu literature would truly remain the guideposts for the
further knowledge production and with the quintessence of Urdu being the potent
force of socialisation and matter of public discourse. This legacy of
relentless inquiry, questioning the power structures and always adapting to the
prevailing ideas would always be the effective mechanism for developing the
base for real literature as opposed to the codified and regimented mode of Urdu
being sarkari zaban. On this Christmas we had to receive the sad news of Shams
Ur Rehman Faruqi leaving for heavenly abode. It surely is end of an era. May
peace be upon him.
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Mir
Sajad is a Researcher at Department of Geography and Regional Development
University of Kashmir
Original
Headline: Shams Ur Rehman Faruqi: The Wizard of Urdu Literature
Source: The Greater Kashmir
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/shams-ur-rehman-faruqi-scholar/d/123932