We are living in a month in which we commemorate Allama Iqbal's birth anniversary, and expect the publication of a stream of new poetry.
However, if Dr Amin Rahat Chughtai's latest book Radd-e-Amal (Reflections on things past) - containing 27 critical essays on history and literature - is any indication we can say that Urdu prose has overtaken poetry, and Urdu prose literature has reached a point to negotiate serious ideas in a very lucid manner.
Dr Rahat is a considerable poet who composes Naats but he is also an experienced editor who used to edit Rawalpindi's popular Urdu daily newspaper Kohistan until it folded in the sixties. Then he moved over to the Japanese Embassy as its press advisor.
We find his rich experience distilled in the pages he writes on history, poetic personalities, and aspects of the Pakistan movement. It may be said here in passing that Chughtai is deeply attached to the idea and also swears speaks of his attachment to Pakistan.
The essays begin with a discussion of Adab Aur Vabastagi (The literature and attachment). One might be allowed a little digression here. Years ago we asked the well known columnist Khalid Hasan some tips for writing and he answered in whatever you do, please do not pontificate.
We brought in the subject because Amin Rahat is found advising writers in this chapter to motivate people in preparing for the prosperity of the state and the world.
Splendid, except that we find a host of writers saying that they write to express or to achieve catharsis. Somerset Maugham has written that it is immaterial for him whether or not finds readers - or that some one else ever reads his short stories.
But we do get a treat in three essays on the characteristics of Mongol people, the Mongol language, folk stories and literature. The four chapters run for nearly 90 pages and could have been offered as a separate book, considering that this subject is entirely new in Urdu, and has never been explored before. He says that the word Mongol is synonymous to such word as Mughal, Turk, Tartar, Uzbek, etc.
Dr Ahmad Hasan Dani, the famous anthropologist has expressed this opinion before and goes as far as to say that most people in Pakistan were descendants of Uzbeks and Tajiks. Therefore, our relations with the Central Asian states are of cardinal importance as far as our inheritance in architecture, literature, and mysticism is concerned.
This book has an essay on the French poet Zhul Laforg, who is the inventor of free verse in poetry, and also a kind of teacher to Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, of the kind of poetry we find in Ash Wednesday.
Speaking of debts owed, we find a chapter on Hafiz Mazharuddin, one of the most popular poet of Naats, as well as two chapters on Urdu poet Dagh Dehlavai, and a very special and commendable piece on the stature of poet Riaz Kahairabadi, written by his wife that makes her also as an eminent writer, and this fulfils the intention of Dr Chughtai.
It would be futile to comment on all 27 essays in this short piece, but we might as well mention chapters on the world Jewry, Mahatma Gandhi, Pakistan movement and the Quaid e Azam.
In the essay of the Pakistan Resolution Amin Rahat mentioned Abdus Salam the editor of former Pakistan Observer, that started publication in 1948 from then Dacca, and was the first and the leading Opposition newspaper published from Pakistan.
Chughtai is angry with the late Salam for insisting that Pakistan was a confederation of two states, according to the Pakistan Resolution presented by Sher e Bangla Moulvi Fazlul Haque. Could we say from hindsight that if we had accepted the proposition in 1971 we might have maintained a very close fraternal link with what is now Bangladesh?
Before leaving Pakistan for England at late night on January 5, 1972 Shaikh Mujibur Rahman made a solemn promise to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that he would establish some kind of ties with Pakistan, but he forget the matter after reaching Dhaka via London and New Delhi.
The value of 408 pages collected essays is in the flashback of our political and literary history, and that it is an eminently readable.
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