One popular notion about Urdu literature, at least among a certain group of scholars, is that it is Iranian in spirit; the connection of Iranian literary traditions is inevitably made with Arabic ones. Another manifestation of this kind of thinking can be seen in the notion that Urdu was one of the main causes of Partition. The proponents of this argument insisted that Urdu was the language of Muslims. The political design underlying the theory of Urdu being a language of only Muslims has been examined by many competent literary historians who have shown that this position is not true. Still, the idea seems to have a firm hold in the average South Asian’s mind, which includes Muslim minds as well.

While I would like to make clear from the first that I don’t recognise Urdu as the language of the Muslims alone, my main concern in this essay is to show that despite its so-called foreign or Iranian-Arabic orientation, the tradition and culture of Urdu literature has been and will always remain ineluctably Indo-Muslim. This is because the literature has been created by the “Indian” mind and not by an Iranian or Arab mind. By Indian I mean the indigenous sensibility of the people of the Indian subcontinent. It is the sensibility which Persian speakers referred to as Hindi, that is Indian. If we cast a glance at the history of literature and literary traditions across the world we will find that Urdu is not the only case where external literary cultures have influenced or even been deliberately imported to construct a native literary tradition and culture. English, for example, is so steeped in the Greco-Roman tradition that even its poetic meters are borrowed from Greek and Latin. It is not the external form of a literary tradition that decides its primary characteristic.

One can then ask: what determines the primary characteristic of a literary tradition? An example would serve to illustrate this elusive point. The Iranian Malik ush Shu’ara, Muhammad Taqi Bahar (1884-1951) in his epoch-making but generally misguided morphology of Persian poetic styles (Sabk Shenasi) diagnosed that the Indians had their own literary styles which he called Sabk-e Hindi. Bahar decreed that the “Indian style” be ruled out of the Iranian literary canon with the plea that it was not compatible with the Iranian mind even though he fully realised that many of the practitioners of this style have been Iranian! In fact, some of them, like Mir Tahir Waheed and Shawkat Bokhari, had never been to India.

If Iranian poets of the Indian style were marginalised from the Persian literary canon, poetry produced in Persian by non-Iranians is almost entirely excluded from the Iranian canon. Interestingly, even in Indian and Pakistani universities, very few of the Sabk-e Hindi poets are prescribed for study. To repeat, if Indian Persian literature was set aside by Iranians as not conforming to the Iranian mind, it should become clear that Urdu, which is twice removed from the so-called Iranian mind, would never be treated as having anything to do with Iranian cultural traditions. This shows that the roots of literature are in the psyche of a culture and not in the conventions and traditions that it may accept and modify for its own use.

I will further elaborate my point by drawing attention to the great 19th century Urdu poet Ghalib. Ghalib’s poetry, particularly his early verse, has always been marked with a distinct bent towards Persian-language idioms and imagery. It sounds like a contradiction in terms to say that Ghalib sounds more Indian than Iranian when he talks in images and metaphors borrowed from the Persian. For example, in the following she’r he speaks of a dark complexioned beloved:

The intensity of your whiteness absorbed the colour from your black tresses; O cruel beloved, your darkened complexion has a tantalising radiance

The mazmun of the dark-skinned beloved is not entirely new, but it has been re-formulated with Ghalibian flair. Here is another example of a dark-skinned beloved from Ghalib’s earliest (1816) divan:

Kasrat-e josh-e suvaida se nahin til ki jagah Khal kab mashshatah de sakti hai kakul ke tale The intensity of darkness has left no scope for a beauty mark How can the dancer apply that mark beneath her hair

A little black spot, usually with kaajal, is applied above the temple just below the hairline to ward off the evil eye. But the beautiful dancer is so dark that the til won’t show. The whole ghazal has a very indigenous ambiance that is enhanced with the radif “ke tale”. The word tale (beneath, below) is derived from the Sanskrit tal. The matla’ has a delicate, extremely Indic mazmun of the beloved bathing in the dew in the garden:

Voh naha kar ab-e gul se saya-e gul ke tale Baal kis garmi sukhlata hai sumbul ke tale She first bathes in dew beneath the roses Then dries her hair in the warm shade of the sumbul

Ghalib has a beautiful she’r in his early (mustarad) divan on the theme of burning in love with a stunning image taken from the Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. Diwali suggests joy and celebration; using it to signify pain is a marvel of metaphorical thinking. Diwali lamps are lit in rows and kept burning by replenishing the oil. Comparing the body as chiraghan with Diwali lamps is an original idea. My point is that he has preferred to use a native image instead of gulzar-e khalil.

Every limb of my body is the site for a fresh fire Like the lamps of diwali I burn row upon row

I can go on quoting examples but I will close the discussion with a philosophical she’r that shows the subtlety of the Indic cultural sensibility and its influence on Ghalib.

God, who is kinder than a father I roamed hither and thither because of my un-acceptance

God the Father is a Christian concept. It is not a Muslim concept. In Islam, God is unique. There is nothing like God. God cannot be compared to humans. In Hinduism, the concept of God is anthropomorphic. God is both father and mother. In the she’r under consideration, we can derive more than one meaning from na qabili: the protagonist did not accept God’s existence or God’s word that is why he couldn’t find God. Or, he did not accept God’s help which is why he roamed hither and thither. It is also implied that the protagonist is complaining that “I rejected Him but why did He reject me?” Clearly, Ghalib is influenced by Vedantic thought, the nurturing creative principle of God as Srijanhar.

As Muhammad Hasan Askari has shown, there is an organic relationship between literature and culture. Imagination can cross all boundaries but it grows from the mind and the mind or consciousness is conditioned by culture.