Naim Ghalib

8/12/2019 Naim Ghalib

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Ghalibs Delhi:A Shamelessly Revisionist Look at

Two Popular Metaphors

(for Ralph Russell)

M - , better known by his takhallu, Ghlib, wasborn in Agra in in a family of soldiers of fortune. His grandfather,MirzQqnBg, had come from Transoxiana to Delhi in the secondhalf of the eighteenth century and obtained a minor rank in the army ofShh lamII. Ghlibs father, MirzAbdul l-LhBg, first soldiered forthe Navab of Avadh, then for the Nizam of Hyderabad, and was seekingservice with the Raja of Alwar when he was killed in a skirmish in .Ghlibs uncle, MirzNaru l-LhBg, served the Marathas as the subadarat Agra, but he also developed such useful contacts with the British thatLord Lake, after his conquests of Delhi and Agra in , made him a

risldrof cavalrymen and also awarded him a jagir for life worthmore than one hundred thousand rupees. Naru l-LhBg, however, diedin in an accident. Ghlibwas then raised by his maternal relativeswho had soldiered for the British. In , at the age of thirteen, he wasmarried to an eleven year old, distant relative in Delhi, and soon aftermoved there, first to live with her family and later on his own. Except fora few short trips to Rampur and an extended absence of almost threeyears, when he went to Calcutta via Lucknow and Benares, Ghlibremained in Delhi until his death on February .

Revised. Originally presented at the conference, Urdu Scholarship inTransnational Perspective, at Columbia University, New York, Septem-ber, .


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Urdu literary historiography in the twentieth century has oftentended to refer to Ghlibas the last true representative of the Mughalintellectual and literary traditions and the Delhi of his experience as aMughal city, briefly resplendent in its old glory before it was destroyedor permanently changed by the British in the aftermath of the IndianRevolt of . With reference to Ghlibs Delhi, it has also been a com-mon habit of our literary historians to employ two particular metaphorsin developing their descriptive and analytical statements. According tothem, Ghlibs Delhi was a Mughal garden undergoing its final springbefore the autumn of the Revolts aftermath destroyed it forever, or thatit was a Mughal candle that sort of naturally flared into its old brilliancebefore going out for good. This paper takes a closer look at these two

metaphors and their ramifications. It, however, claims only an originalityof emphasis as indicated in the title, for what it owes to so many scholarswill soon become clear.

Alf usain l (), the first chronicler of Ghlibs life,prefaced his book, Ydgr-e Ghlib() by evoking a memory of hisown first visit to Delhi:

In the thirteenth century of the Muslim era when the decline of the

Muslims had already entered its nadir, when along with their wealth,

renown and political power there had also departed from them their

greatness in arts and sciences, there gathered in Delhi, by some great good

fortune, a band of men so talented that their assemblies recalled the days

of Akbar and Shahjahan. When I first arrived in Delhi autumn hadalready come to this garden: some of these men had left Delhi while

others had departed from this world. Still, among those who had

remained, there were many I shall always be proud of having seenmen

whose likes the soil of Delhi, nay of all India, will never produce again.

For the mould in which they were cast has changed, and the breezes

among which they flourished and flowered have veered away. 1

1Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam, eds. Ghalib, . Volume 1: Life

and Letters (London: Allen & Unwin, ), p. . In the original, lconcludes the description by tellingly quoting a Persian verse: Time has nowlaid down a very different foundation. The bird that laid golden eggs is nomore. The idea for this essay possibly first came to me while reading the abovesection in that excellent book.


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l, a native of Panipat, first came to Delhi around when hewas in his late teens, but then stayed less than two years. He, in fact, wasnot in Delhi but in Hissar when the Revolt broke out in . It, there-fore, is interesting to note that in ls opinion autumn had alreadycome to the garden that recalled for him the days of the Grand Mughals.He also ascribes the preceding spring to some stroke of good for-tunelit., some happy conjunction [usn-e ittifq]rather than to anyhuman cause. ls metaphor of a garden suggests an entity with somecontinuous identityin this case, Mughaland a cyclical change: aspring, followed by an autumn, to be followed in turn, one may presume,by another spring. In other words, a metaphor no different from the onethat he used in his most influential poetic work, the musaddas, The Tide

and Ebb of Islama tide of Islamic glory, followed by a tragic ebb, to befollowed, l hoped and prayed for, by another tide. But in the case ofthe Delhi he experienced before and which alone he identified withGhlib, lapparently perceived no possibility of revival, and made clearhis belief by adding the final sentence: the breezes among which theyflourished and flowered have veered away. Many of the twentieth-cen-tury Muslim/Urdu intelligentsia, in accord with their own self-perceptionas a community in socio-political decline and influenced by Indian andMuslim nationalisms, have followed suit, often invoking with reference toGhlibs times the motif of the last spring in the garden of a supposedMughal glory.

A later, but equally popular, literary work provided our literary histo-rians the second, and more frequently invoked, metaphor. Written byMirzFaratu l-LhBg (), it is a fictional account of amushira of Urdu poets in Delhi in . Originally titled Dill k kYdgr Mushira, Hijr(A Mushirain Delhi in A.H.), it is nowcommonly knowneven publishedas Dill k khir Sham (The LastCandle of Delhi). In his prefatory remarks, Bgwrote: It is customaryfor a sick man to recover, momentarily, before the final stroke of deathovertakes him. In the case of Urdu poets the age of the Mughal EmperorBahdur Shh II was such a momentary recovery before the finalextinction. In [his] ruined and desolate city were collected not onlypoets, but such a host of other talented men that it would be difficult to

find their counterparts in the whole of India, nay in the whole world!2

2Akhtar Qamber, The Last Mushairah of Dehli (New Delhi: Orient Long-

man, ), p. .


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Bgs literary tour de force ends with a scene in which the two candlesthat had earlier circulated among the poets are formally blown out and aherald proclaims that the last mushiraof Delhi has come to an end.The last mushira became in the popular mind the last candleaname reportedly given to the book by Khvja asan Nim, a prolific andhighly popular writer in the early decades of the last century. It happenedperhaps because the new image shared an attribute with the sick manimage invoked by Bg, namely that a candle or lamp too, before it finallygoes out, flares up, as if in a revival, and casts a brief but brilliant light allaround it.

The candle metaphor, however, was first invoked and made popu-lar by Maulav aku l-Lh, a major contemporary of Sir Syed, and an

influential teacher and writer whose textbooks on history and arithmeticwere extensively used in North Indian schools in the nineteenth century.In his Trkh-e Islmiyn-e Hind, aku l-Lhwrote, It is the rule thatwhen a lamp is about to go out its wick/flame suddenly flares up. In asimilar manner, when the lamp of the Timurid rule was about to go out itgave out so much light and was so revived that it is difficult to findanother incident like it. 3We must note that what was for aku l-Lhthe lamp of the Timurid rule became for Nimand others the candleof Delhi, in fact the last and final candle of Delhi.

The altered image of a last remaining candle about to go out was notonly unambiguous in evoking a finality and doom, it simultaneouslyimplied very strongly that life in the Delhi of the first half of the nine-teenth century was not radically different from the days of the greatMughals, that it was illumined not by anything new but only by the lastremaining candle of the multitude that had burned bright in the preced-ing three centuries, and that a radical and wide-ranging change took placeonly after the Revolt of . The prevalence of this powerful view can beseen in the writings of such popular and prolific writers of the s asRshidu l-Khairwho wrote Naubat-e Panj Rzaor Dill k khir Bahr(The Five Day Glory, or Delhis Final Spring), Khvja Muammad Shafwho wrote Dill k Sanbhl(The Last Recovery of Delhi), and Khvjaasan Nimwho devoted several short books to this theme, besides anynumber of their imitators of that time and subsequent who celebrated the

final days of the Mughal dynasty in Delhi as the swan song of a pristine

3As quoted in Tanvr Amad Alav, auq: Savni aur Intiqd (Lahore:

Majlis-e Taraqq-e Adab, ), p. .


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Muslim/Mughal culture in India. With the rise of nationalism in Indiathere developed in the public mind not only a tragic and valiant image ofthe last occupant of the Red Fort but also a belief that his court actuallymattered in the greatly alive social and intellectual life in Delhi precedingthe Revolt of , and that only the Revolts failure brought an end tothat way of life and thought and its regal source.4

The power and persistence of these two metaphors can perhaps bebest illustrated by the fact that even a careful scholar like ShaikhMuammad Ikrm, writing in the late s, casually used both withinjust three lines to describe the Delhi that Syed Ahmad Khan experiencedbetween and .

He [Syed Ahmad Khan] saw the final spring of Shahjahanabad. The Delhi of the Mughals was at the time like a lamp at dawn, but [as the

poet has said,] b^aakt hai argh-e ub jab khmsh ht hai [Thelamp still burning at dawn flares up before it goes out].5

*

Delhi has been the most gloriousand also the most unfortunateofall the cities of India, so noted Muhammad Habib, the doyen of modernMuslim historiography in South Asia. 6Auragzb, the last of the GreatMughals, died in . Delhi then was an imperial capital, with a popula-tion of close to two million people spread over its various cities. It was

the largest and most renowned city, writes Percival Spear, not only ofIndia, but of all the East from Constantinople to Canton. Its court wasbrilliant, its mosques and colleges numerous, and its literary and artisticfame as high as its political renown.7By , when the British took con-trol of the city from the Marathas, its citizens had been plundered andmassacred several times, only one or two of its ten successive emperorshad escaped being murdered or blinded, and its status had shrunk to that

4Tellingly perhaps, one does not find such claims of cultural authority being

made about Bahdur Shhs predecessor, his fatherAkbar ShhII.5Muammad Ikrm, Mauj-e Kauar(Delhi: Maktaba-e Jmia, n.d., reprint of

the nd edition), p. .6Muammad abb, Preface in Shh Valu l-Lh Dihlav k Siys

Maktbt, ed. Khalq Amad Nim(Lahore: n.p., ), p. .7Percival Spear, Twilight of the Mughuls(Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint

Corp., , reprint), p. .


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of a provincial capital of less than two hundred thousand people.8

In thefive score years of the eighteenth century, Delhi, indeed the entire NorthIndia, had suffered a sea change.

It would, of course, be false to view the eighteenth century as entirelya period of decline and despair for all of India, or even only for NorthIndia. As we well know, during that same century several regional politi-cal and cultural entities strongly asserted themselves; Delhis tragic timeshelped to bring about the glory days of the Deccan, Maharashtra, Bengaland Avadh. Yet the human tragedy of Delhi in the second half of theeighteenth century was indeed immense. The wars between the Turaniand Irani factions, the cataclysmic invasion by Nadir Shah, the repeatedscourges of the Afghans, the Marathas, the Ruhilas and the Jatsthey all

took heavy tolls in human lives and also forced much emigration fromDelhi and its environs. Then there was the great famine of in which,according to some estimates, nearly one-third of the rural population ofthe territory around Delhi starved to death. A relative peace returned toDelhi after some sixty years of despair only in the final decade of the cen-tury under the authority of Mahadji Sindhia and his Maratha forces.However, when the British took Delhi they found that it had beendivided into spheres of control by neighbouring Gujar tribes for purposesof plunder.9

Lord Lakes army defeated the Maratha troops outside Delhi inSeptember . A few weeks later, Lord Wellesley wrote to Shh lamand described the victory as the happy instrument of your Majestys res-toration to a stage of dignity and tranquillity under the power of theBritish crown.10The British were now the master of the Mughal andalso his protector, but they had no intention of allowing him again anysemblance of overlordship. In that regard they were quite different fromthe Marathas and others before them. Maratha generals, for example, hadwielded actual authority in that region for almost thirty years but hadclaimed merely to be the Regent or Deputy Regent of the Emperor.

8Ibid., p. .

9Narayani Gupta, Delhi Between Two Empires (Delhi: Oxford UniversityPr., ), p. .

10Spear, p. . Shh lam, of course, had an earlier experience of Britishprotection and financial support at Allahabad (), after the defeat atBuxar.


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nor time-servers.13

Ghlib received that amount in full only until ;after , thanks mainly to the antagonism of is own relatives, he had tostruggle hard to get his due share. He went to Calcutta, petitioned theGovernor General and the Queen, and would have carried his case toEngland if he had had the means.

Shh lams successor, Akbar Shh II, also sought to obtain what hethought was his just due. In he petitioned the Directors of the EastIndia Company and managed to get his allowance increased to Rs. lakhs, but the increase was never actually paid at all.14After Ak ba rShhs death in , his son Bahdur ShhII, who owed his accession tothe throne entirely to the British invention of a false Mughal tradition ofprimogenitureAkbar Shh had preferred a younger son, and the Mughal

throne had always been fought over and won through bloodshedtriedseveral times to negotiate an increase, but always in vain. Neither Ghlibnor the Mughal emperor was any match to the formidable intricacies ofthe British bureaucracy. The system of administration and authority thatassured the two their security and regular income, also made it impossiblefor them to receive with grace what they believed was theirs by right aswell as promise. It also placed the king and the commoner on anunprecedented equal footing.

As already mentioned, Ghlib grew up in Agra but had moved toDelhi by the time he was fifteen. He thus lived all his life knowing notemporal authority other than the British. He also watched Delhi gradu-ally gain in prosperity and population, and saw the walled city and its un-walled sprawl become more secure, [under] the judicial powers of theResident, fortified by the contingents of the army in and near the city,[protecting it] from raids by the Gujars and Mewatis.15In , the Brit-ish restored the old city canaloriginally built in the th century byFrz Tughlaqand repaired and enlarged by Shhjahin the ththathad been in disrepair and clogged with sand since the s. When waterwas directed into the channel that fed the canal in the Chandni Chowk,the people greeted the flowing water with offerings of ghee and

13Peter Hardy, Ghalib and the British, in Ghalib: The Poet and His Age,ed. Ralph Russell (London: Allen & Unwin, ), pp. .

14Spear, p. .15Gupta, p. .


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flowers.16

Ghlibmust have also seen the immediate environs of Delhiturn lush and green as old gardens were repaired and new ones planted.

More importantly, Ghlibwitnessed something that had not takenplace in Delhi for centuries: peaceful transfers of authority, not just in theFort involving puppet kings, but also in the British administration thatwielded enormous visible power. In , Edward Colebrooke, Residentat Delhi, was first suspended then later dismissed from service on chargesof corruption. It must have amazed the people of Delhi to see their virtualking removed without any breakdown of authority. In , when theincumbent Lt. Governor passed away, Ghlibwrote to his friend, MunshNab Bakhsh aqr, The Lt. Governor died in Bareli. Lets see who isappointed in his place. Just see how [good] the administration of these

people is. What tumult [inqilb] wouldnt have occurred if any similarhigh ranking person of Hindustan had passed away? But here no oneshows even the slightest concern as to what happened and who died.17

No wonder then that Ghlib, in the Persian poem that he wrote in for Syed Ahmad Khans edition of Abul l-Fal sn-e Akbar and thatSyed Ahmad Khan did not include, not only praised such Western inven-tions as the telegraph and the steam engine, but also declared that the lawof the realm [n] that existed in his own time had not been seen before,and that it had made all preceding nsas useless as old almanacs! Heclosed the poem by resoundingly declaring: Its not virtuous to nurtureand cherish the dead [murda parvardan mubrak kr nst],18a sentimentalso echoed in one of his best-known Persian couplets: b man miyvz ai

pidar, farzand-e zar-r nigr // har kas ki shud ib-naar dn-e buzurgkhush na-kard (Dont quarrel with me, Father; look at Azars son Abra-ham. For he who gains a discerning eye doesnt favor his ancestors faith).

Ghlib, of course, was a descendent of mercenary soldiers andbelonged to the current urban aristocracy; he did not know how excessivetaxes and rigid tenancy regulations introduced by the British had set in

16Ibid., p. . Gupta adds, But the farmers in Delhi Territory used up so

much of it that the quantity flowing into the city decreased and the Canal finally

dried up again [in the s].17Ghlib, Khu-e Ghlib, ed. Mlik Rm (Aligarh: Anjuman Taraqq-e

Urd, ), p. .18Text in Waris Kirmani, Evaluation of Ghalibs Persian Poetry (Aligarh:

Dept. of Persian, Aligarh Muslim University, ), pp. .


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process the ruination of the peasantry in Delhi territory.19

Nor was hemuch aware of the fact that procedural equality between the Europeansand the Indians was limited to civil cases, and that the Europeans wereconsidered superior to Indians under the criminal law.20

*

Turning to the matter of the cultural and religious life of Delhi duringthe first half of the nineteenth century, we should note that the presenceof the Emperor was felt in the city only on those occasions that involvedsome public pomp and display. The Emperors elephants paradedthrough the city in festive processions, and ceremonial durbars were

regularly held in the Red Fort. It is also true that the people of the pre-Revolt Delhi did not imitate the British in dress, food, and social behav-ior, and no doubt the etiquette of the royal court was emulated in all liteassemblies in the city, as it was in many similar gatherings all over India.But at no time was the Emperor in any sense an arbiter of the lites tasteand behavior. Similarly, the Emperor regularly took part in the twoannual Eid gatherings in the Jama Masjid, and his name was mentionedin the Friday khutbasin Delhi as well as elsewhere. His symbolic positionas the champion of the Sunnfaith also remained important, to the extentthat Bahdur Shh II had to conceal his own Shite leanings.21 TheEmperor also patronized Hindu festivals and religious processions. Butthat is all that we can claim concerning the Mughal Emperors signifi-

cance in the religious life of the people of Delhi.There was, on the other hand, a major new development in the

religious life of Delhi during the first half of the nineteenth century, andthat was the establishment of a Christian presence within the walled cityand an expansion of Christian missionary work. Though the skyline ofDelhi was still dominated by the domes and minarets of the Jama Masjid,there was now another prominent enough building not too far from it,

19Spear, p. ff.20Aziz Ahmad, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan (London:

Oxford University Press, ), p. . Needless to say, Ghlibhas no word of

praise for the new law and order in the verses and comments on his ownconfinement for three months on charges of running a gambling den.

21In fact, on one occasion, Bahdur Shh sought Ghlibs help for exactlythat purpose, and Ghlib, staunchly a Sha in his own beliefs, came to hispatrons rescue.


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namely St. Jamess Church, built inside the city by Col. James Skinnerand consecrated in . There were also instances of conversion, includ-ing at least three major cases, those of ( ) Dr. Chimman Lal, who was inthe British medical service and attended upon the Emperor too; ()Master Ram Chandra, a mathematician, who was a highly respectedand popular teacher at Delhi College; and () Maulavi Imaduddin, whocame to be known as Pdr Imaduddin and was later a most active Chris-tian polemicist. According to Percival Spear, both Chimman Lal andRam Chandra, who received baptism together in July , were firstattracted to Christianity as something more than an intellectual creed bythe services in St. Jamess Church.22According to some scholars, at leastNar Amad, the well-known novelist and translator, if not also aku l-

Lh, the first modern Muslim historian, came close to converting toChristianity, the religion chosen by the twos beloved teacher MasterRam Chandra.23 Though the full effects of the missions were felt muchlater when the whole of North India saw heated polemics and publicdebates between Christian clerics and Muslim ulama, it may be morethan a mere speculation on the part of Professor Annemarie Schimmelthat the first Urdu translations of the Qurnby the two younger sons ofShh Valu l-Lhcould have been in response to the translation activitiesof the Christian missionaries.24

22

Spear, p. . Also, adqu r-Ramn Qidv, Msar Rm andra(Delhi:Shuba-e Urd, Delhi Univarsiti, ) p. , based on Ram Chandras ownstatement in the preface to his magnum opus, A Treatise on the Problems ofMaxima and Minima(London: W.H. Allen & Co., ).

23Qidv, p. ; C.F. Andrews, Zaka Ullah of Dehli (Lahore: UniversalBooks, , reprint), p. . One should also note the presence of several verypositive Christian missionary figures in a number of Nar Amads novels.Ghlib, incidentally, is not reported to have had any dealings with Christianmissionaries.

24Annemarie Schimmel, Classical Urdu Literature From the Beginning toIqbal (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, ), p. . Shh Rafu d-Dns translation

was completed in , while the more popular translation by Shh Abdu l-Qdir was finished in . S.A.A. Rizvi, in Shah Abd Al-Aziz: Puritanism,

Sectarian Polemics and Jihad (Canberra: Marifat Pub., ), disagrees withSchimmel, arguing that the translations were done earlier than any known spreadof the missionaries work and tracts in the Delhi territory (p. ). Shh Valiu l-Lhs own Persian translation of the Qurn, perhaps the first in South Asia, wasdue to his own independent desire to have ordinary literate Muslims of his time


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While the people of pre-Revolt Delhi did not imitate the British tablemanners and social behavior, many of them were quite enthusiastic aboutWestern sciences. The city did not lack in madrasaswhere traditionalIslamic learning was available, but none gained the status and fame thataccrued to the one which eventually came to be known as Delhi College.In , the East India Company took over an existing madrasawhich, in, had only nine students and just one teacher.25The new institutionbegan with a staff of several Indian teachers and an English principal, butwith a monthly budget of only Rs. . It received a major boost when, acouple of years later, the Prime Minister of the King of Avadh left it abequest of Rs. ,. At first the College had classes only in Orientallanguages but in an English section was also opened which, within

three years, could boast of students. What was most significant aboutthis institution was that it taught Western sciences to allits students, andthat too through the medium of Urdu. Complementing the Collegeswork were the efforts of the Delhi Vernacular Translation Society whichdid an outstanding job of getting scholarly books translated into Urdufrom Arabic, Persian and English for use at the College. Maulav Abdu l-aq, in his book on Delhi College, has given a list of some booksoriginal works as well as translationsthat the Society published,including books on geometry, algebra, astronomy, physics, chemistry,calculus, geography, history and mechanics, translated by the teachers andformer students of the College. By , Delhi College had a total of students; of these, were in the English language section, while thethree Oriental languages, Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit, had , andstudents, respectively.26

Some sense of that heady time for the then young of age can be hadfrom two quotations from C. F. Andrews chapter on The New Learn-ing in his book on aku l-Lh. He quotes from Master RamChandras memoirs as follows:

directly engage with their scripture, and similar could have been the desire laterof his sons too. The issue deserves further exploration.

25Abdu l-aq, Marm Dill Klij (Delhi: Anjuman Taraqq-e Urd, Hind,

). All comments concerning Delhi College are based on the informationprovided by Maulavi Abdu l-aq. One should remember that similarinstitutions were also started at Agra and Benares, though detailed informationabout them has not been put together yet.

26By religion, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.


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The doctrines of ancient philosophy taught through the medium ofArabic were thus cast in the shade before the more reasonable and experi-

mental theories of modern science. The old dogma, for instance, that the

earth is the fixed centre of the Universe, was generally laughed at by the

higher students of the Oriental, as well as by those of the English

Department of the Delhi College. But the learned men, who lived in the

city, did not like this innovation on their much-loved theories of the

ancient Greek Philosophy, which had been cultivated among them for

many centuries past.27

Later, Andrews recalls what aku l-Lh had told him. MunshiZaka Ullah, in his old age, used to tell me with kindling eyes, how eagerly

these scientific lectures were followed, and how, after each lecture, thenotes used to be studied, over and over again, and copied out by manyhands.28

According to adqu r-Ramn Qidv, the college used to advertisepublic talks or demonstrations related to physical sciences in the city.29Itis quite possible that Ghlib, who had an inquisitive mind and remainedcurious all his life, heard details of these events from his friends if he didnot actually attend any of them. He knew the Principal of the Collegefairly well. He also knew Master Ram Chandra, and considered him adear friend; the latter, on his part, brought Ghlibmuch comfort in thoseterrible months after the British recaptured Delhi when Ghlibs non-Muslim friends alone could visit him. Much later, when the Commis-

sioner of Delhi organized a scholarly association named the Delhi Societyin , Ghlib, despite his old age, responded to the Societys invitationand attended its second meeting on August . He sat through twopapers, one on the Mahajani system in India by the Societys vice-presi-dent, Lala Sahib Singh, and the second on the benefits of studying historyby Munshi Jivan Lal. He then himself read a short noteseated in hischair for he could not stand for longon the destruction of the city andthe hard times that followed.30

27As quoted in Andrews, pp. .28Andrews, p. .29Qidv, p. .30Abdu s-Sattr iddq, Dihl Ssi aur Mirz Ghlib, in Al ig ar h

Magazine, GhlibNumber(Urdu), :(), pp. .


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Two major Muslim scholars of the time, Maulav Mamlk AlandMaulav Imm Bakhsh ahb, taught at the College, while Muft adru d-Dn zurda, another prominent Muslim scholar, was one of its HonoraryExaminers. All three were close friends of Ghlib. As for any lastinginfluence of the College, we need only recall that among its alumni weresuch future luminaries as Nar Amad, the novelist, akl l-Lh, thehistorian, and Muammad usain zd, the literary critic, essayist andone of the founders of the New Poetry movement in Urdu. The greatseminal figure, Syed Ahmad Khan, was too senior to have been a studentat the College, but when he was the Munsif in Delhi () heinformally studied with Maulav Mamlk Aland was quite familiar withthe work of the College and the Translation Society, as is evident in his

own efforts later to produce scientific literature in Urdu on similar lines.It will be no exaggeration to say that what C. F. Andrews tentativelyreferred to as the Delhi Renaissance was much more due to the DelhiCollege than to any other institution.31Except, of course, the printingpress and Urdu newspapers.

One wonders what could have been the state of general literacy andeducation in South Asia today if either Akbar or Jahgrhad ordered afew printing presses from Europe and had them set up in Agra and Delhi,if only for their own and their nobles use. The two emperors were shownprinted books and engraved pictures by their European visitorsas werethe noblesbut strangely enough neither the emperors nor the noblesshowed any interest in the revolutionary new process of producing books.One reason may have been the lack of a Protestant spirit in IndianIslam at that time. That spirit or something like it, in my tentative opin-ion, appeared in Delhi only in the early decades of the nineteenthcentury. I find it significant that when Shh Abdu l-Qdir and ShhRafu d-Dnpublished their translations of the Qurnthey felt no obli-gation to add commentaries; they apparently considered their literate co-religionistsmen and womencapable of making sense of their com-mon faith by accessing its scripture through Urdu, a language consideredtoo commonplace and unworthy for such purposes only a few yearsearlier. We get some sense of the reach and influence of these translationsin Syed Ahmad Khans note on Shh Abdu l-Azzwhere he decries a

habit among the people of his own time [i.e., the s]:

31Andrews, p. .


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[At present] every commoner [m] believes himself to be scholar[lim] and every ignoramus regards himself as a learned man. Merely onthe basis of having read a few chapbooks on religious issues and a transla-

tion of the Qurn, and that too in Urdu, with some ordinary teacher[ustd] or just through his own effort, he considers himself a jurist and anexegete and dares to preach and opine on issues. This bane of our time

that has spread like a plague over all Hindustn, but in particular inShhjahnbd was not present during [Shh Abdu l-Azzs] time.32

That spirit of inquiry and that confidence in affirming ones faitheven in the face of opposing traditions, I believe, became only strongerafter the Revolt, when lay Muslims like Syed Ahmad Khan and Nar

Amad, felt no hesitancy in translating and commenting on the QurninUrdu in the light of their own understanding and experience, and whenMirzGhulm Amadof Qadiyan began to publish his own visionary/sectarian writings within the rubric of Islam.

The first printing press in India was set up in by the Portuguese,and the earliest printed book now extant in any Indian language is said tobe a copy of the second edition of a Malabar Tamul prayer book pub-lished in .33As for Persian and Urdu, we must wait till the beginningof the nineteenth century, when books in these languages were publishedin Calcutta under the auspices of the College of Fort William. It was alsoin Calcutta that the first Urdu and Persian newspaper appeared in thes. But the true spread of the Urdu press occurred only after the newly

discovered technology of litho printing reached India. It was much lessexpensive, and, more significantly, it could also immediately use the pro-fessional calligraphers already available everywhere, thus retaining the aes-thetic quality of manuscripts. By , there were Urdu presses andnewspapers all over North India, often more than one in major cities. Thefirst important Urdu newspaper in Delhi was a weekly, Dihl Akhbr, laterDihl Urd Akhbr, which was started in ; its first editor was MaulavMuammad Akbar, the father of Maulav Muammad Bqir and the

32Syed Ahmad Khan,ru -andd, ed. Khalq Anjum(New Delhi: UrdAkam, ), vol. II, p. .

33Ndir Al Khn, Hindustn Pres t (Lucknow: Uttar PradeshUrd Akam, ), p. .


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grandfather of Muammad usain zd.34

The next important Urdupress and weeklySaiyadu l-Akhbrwere started in by SyedAhmad Khans brother, Syed Muhammad Khan, who published the firsteditions of Ghlibs Urdu Dvnand Syed Ahmad Khans ru -andd. Between and , there were at least five weeklies, two bi-monthlies, and one monthly in Urdu that were published from Delhi forvarying lengths of time, including two important journals published byMaster Ram Chandra whose role in the spread of modern learningamong the lite of Delhi, both Muslim and Hindu, is yet to be fullyunderstood.35 There were of course many other newspapers that cameinto Delhi from other cities and were quoted by local journals.

What is important for us to note is that () several of the people

involved in these endeavors also had ties with the Delhi College; () thatthese newspapers regularly carried not only news but also informativearticles on a wide range of subjects; and () that the period between and was also the time when the press in British India was relativelymost free of governmental control or censorship. Ghlibhimself was anavid reader of newspapers; he was also a natural pamphleteer, as becameevident in the controversy that raged around Burhn-e Qi. Ghlibenjoyed and exploited the benefits of printing as no Urdu poet beforehim could have conceived of. It may be fair to believe that he, thereby,rapidly reached an audience markedly different in number and kind fromwhat would have been the case otherwise.

It is important to underscore the fact that neither the aged Emperornor any member of his household was in any way involved with either theDelhi College or the various presses and newspapers in the city. Nodoubt, the Fort had its own Persian weekly, but it was merely a chronicleof the Kings daily activities. Bahdur ShhII did not patronize any schol-arly work. Even the unfinished history of the Mughal dynasty that heasked Ghlibto compose in for which Ghlibreceived three sono-rous titles and a monthly stipend of Rs. was no more than an exercisein Persian composition. The contrast becomes the more acute when wenote that, around the same time and in the same city of Delhi, HenryEliot could prepare the many volumes of his contentious History of India

34Ndir Al Khn, Urd afat k Trkh(Aligarh: Ejkshnal Buk Hs,), pp. , . My comments on the Urdu press are based on the above twoexcellent books by Ndir Al Khn.

35Qidv, pp. .


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as Told by its Historiansby exploiting the personal library of Navb iyud-Dn Khn, an intimate friend of Ghlibs, and that the VernacularTranslation Society published Urdu translations of histories of England,Rome, Greece and Iran, even a world history.36

In presenting these details, my purpose has been to underscore thereality that Ghlibs Delhi (i.e., the Delhi that lmourned) was not theDelhi of Akbar and Shhjahin fact it was not even the Delhi ofMuammad Shhand Shh lam. There was more prosperity and secu-rity in Delhi itself by the s than the city had experienced at any timein the preceding one hundred years. More importantly, there were alsomany new ideas and institutions and several new technologies, whoseimpact was gradually being felt by an increasing number of people, par-

ticularly in urban centers such as Delhi. Ghlib, unlike any other writer ofhis generation, shows an awareness of these developments in his writings.This is not to suggest that Ghlibwas a product of his times, or that hispoetry was inspired by the ideas taught at Delhi College. To dispel anysuch misconception we need only to recall that Ghlibhad completedmost of his Urdu Dvnby , when he was only nineteen years old! Infact, between and , Ghlibturned his back on Urdu and theUrdu poets of Delhi and wrote almost exclusively in Persian. His Persianand Urdu ghazals, however, share a common questioning mind boldlyengaging itself with the imponderables of human existence.

To sum up, while making any attempt to obtain a sense of whatGhlibs Delhi was like, we should at least bear the following in mind.

() Delhi indeed enjoyed in the pre-Revolt decades what later came tobe called the English Peace, and it rapidly became a vigorous, urban,consumer society, attracting to itself money and people once again. Whatthat Pax Brittanica did to the rural society and to various indigenousindustries is another matter. These things, however, did not concernGhlibhis worries were limited to his pension and his friendsand hispeers.

() The people in the Red Fort, including the Emperor, had scarceresources and also limited interests. One finds little evidence of any crea-tive energy in them. No doubt, the pathetic end of Bahdur ShhII

36The surprising ease with which l refers to Greek and Hinduphilosophers and legends in his various essays could have come only from hisfamiliarity with the publications of the College. The same may be said for hisinterest in political economy.


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arouses our sympathy, which we then extend to the Fort and what itstands for now in general estimate. But we can do better by noting whatMaulav aku l-Lhtold C. F. Andrews on that subject:

I knew Old Delhi. I also knew well the Royal Palace; for I went there

as a boy. I know what happened there better, perhaps, than anyone who is

alive today. For almost everyone is now dead who could remember it, as I

could, by personal experience of what it meant. All I can say about it is

this, that the present with all its glaring faults is better than that which I

knew when I was a boy. People speak of the good old times; but those

times, as a whole, were not good, when they are compared with the days

in which we are now living. They were full of corruption and decay.37

() It is indeed amazing to find in Delhi in the first half of the nine-teenth century such an array of distinguished people: Shh Abdu l-Azz,Shh Abdu l-Qdir, Maulav Mamlk Ali, Allma Fal-e aq Khairbd,Asadu l-Lh Khn Ghlib, Mmin Khn Mmin, Muammad Ibrhmauq, Maulav Imm Bakhsh ahb, Muft adru d-Dn zurda, NavbMuaf Khn Shfta, Master Ram Chandra, and Syed Ahmad Khan. Itwas the new sense of security which made that gathering possible; other-wise, as had happened in the second half of the preceding century, someof them might not have come to Delhi, while some others would haveemigrated from there. Of the above, ahb, Mamlk Ali and RamChandra taught at the Delhi College; zurdaand Fal-e aq served in the

British administration, as did Fal-e aqsfather and Syed Ahmad Khan;Mmin, like Ghlib, received a pension from the British, while Shftaowed his estate entirely to the new rulers. Only auqand the two reli-gious teachers, Shh Abdu l-Azz and Shh Abdu l-Qdir, did notreceive any sustained patronage from the British. We may however notethat Shh Abdu l-Azz, by petitioning the British, did manage to getback in a large land grant that he had unfairly lost, twenty years ear-lier, to a widow of the Emperor Muammad Shh.38

37Andrews, p. . Also supported by scattered reports in different newspapers

of that time.38S.A.A. Rizvi, Shah Abdul Azizs Madad-i Maash in Delhi, and the

British, in Islamic Society and Culture, ed. M. Israel & N.K. Wagle (New Delhi:Manohar, ), pp. . Inru -andd, first edition, Syed Ahmad Khanlisted a few other notable persons who were in the British service, namely akm


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() We should also be clear in our minds about the so-called DelhiRenaissance, which is now generally believed to have come to a sad endin . If it refers merely to the simultaneous presence in Delhi of theabove-named luminaries, we must note that, by the middle of the nine-teenth century, they were already fast disappearing due to natural causes.If, on the other hand, our concern is with ideas and scholarship, we maywish to make some further distinctions:

(a) So far as traditional Islamic learning is concerned, none of theabove made any original contribution, though the legal opinions of ShhAbdu l-Azz concerning English education and employment with theBritish and the Urdu translations of the Qurnby his brothers can besaid to have had significant impact on educated Muslims. A far more sig-

nificant revival and enhancement of the traditional branches of Islamiclearning had already taken place earlierin the eighteenth centuryatthe hands of Shh Valu l-Lhin Delhi and Mull Nimu d-DnSihlvin Lucknow.

(b) In the area of Urdu literature, Ghlib, of course, towered above allhis contemporaries, but he continued to be productive after the Revolt,particularly in the form of Urdu letters to his numerous admirers. Thepublication of these letters in no doubt played some role in thedevelopment of modern Urdu prose. auqand Mmin died before .They were competent poets but not of the same rank as Ghlibthey getmentioned now because they were Ghlibs peers. Likewise zurda,ahb and Shfta are remembered today merely because they wereGhlibs friends. The second seminal figure, besides Ghlib, is SyedAhmad Khan, but his greatest achievements come after . We shouldalso bear in mind that, between and , notable contributions toUrdu literature were also made elsewhere, e.g., in Lucknow by the greatmariyawriters, and in Calcutta by the munshis working under the direc-tion of John Gilchrist at the College of Fort William.

(c) In the domain of scientific thought and education, we see thatDelhi College played the crucial role. The College and the VernacularTranslation Society produced an impressive number of scholarly books inUrdu, and thus made available both the Oriental and the Westernlearned traditions to a large audience. As mentioned earlier, at the College

even the students specializing in Arabic and Sanskrit were required to

Ghulm Najaf Khn, Maulav Rashdu d-Dn Khn, Maulav Muammad Jn,and Mr Nimu d-Dn Mamnn.


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study mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, and history. Theylearned new ways to think.Delhi College was too modest a place to pro-duce research scientiststhough Master Ram Chandra, who firststudied and later taught there, was perhaps the first modern mathemati-cian of Indiabut it contributed immensely to the development of a newintellectual discourse among the people of Delhi. To return to the popu-lar metaphor of a garden, it may be rightly asserted that Delhi Col-legeas also the colleges at Agra and Benaresdid the work of plantingand seeding, and that the plants that came up were not knocked down bythe hot wind of the Revolt, though the College itself was, first throughthe wanton destruction by Indian soldiers and local hooligans, and thenby the deliberate neglect of some British officers and the increasing

importance of Lahore as an educational center. Those plants, so far as theMuslims and Urdu are concerned, in fact grew into giant trees and boremuch fruit in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the writings ofNar Amad, aku l-Lh, Muammad usain zd , and Piyr Llshb. Though not alumni themselves, both Syed Ahmad Khan andAlfusain lwere familiar with the work done at the College, and canconfidently be said to have been influenced by it. In other words, theRenaissance initiated by the College did not end with it, it gatheredgreater strength with time, and its arena expanded to include all of NorthIndia.

But there also happened certain qualitative shifts soon after theRevolt which deserve to be noticed.

First, the Renaissance was no longer definable exclusively in termsof a language, Urdu, or a place, Delhi. It rapidly took on a commu-nali.e., Muslimidentity, as its surviving luminaries and new stalwartsdevoted themselves to the cause of the two major Muslim groups whichhad directly been effected by the aftermath of the Revolt. Recalling anolder phrase, the two may be best identified as the men of sword[ibn-e saif] and the men of pen, [ibn-e qalam], who togetherformed the majority of those who as a whole were called the shuraf. Thefirst group suffered rapid decline with the expansion of the aforemen-tioned Pax Brittanica, while the second group lost ground slowly and dueto many factors: the rise in the use of English, and later of regional

languages, in administrative work; the linking of jobs with educationalqualifications as against the earlier importance of family and heritage; therelatively more rapid educational progress of the numerically largersimilar Hindu groups; and the earlier such advance made by BengaliHindus who now began to be present all over North India in various


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professional and administrative roles. The new lite Muslim identity soonbecame the old reform movements dominant defining feature, and assuch became enmeshed in time with issues of political power and nation-hood. I may add that, since its umbilical tie with Urdu was not cut, otherlanguages spoken by millions of Muslims in India, such as Bengali, Sindhiand Punjabi, were marginalized in the overwhelming perspective adoptedby Muslim leaders seeking social and political resurgence.

Secondly, the earlier urge for scientific learning in its own right wasreplaced after the Revolt with a greater concern for the economic uplift ofthe salariate classes among the Muslims, as is evident in the writingsidentified with the so-called Aligarh Movement. As a result, Urdu tooeventually got marginalized in favor of Englishthe Muhammadan

Anglo-Oriental College of Syed Ahmad Khan did not make Urdu itsmedium of instruction, as had been the case at the Delhi College. Thepursuit of scientific knowledge through the medium of Urdu was takenup again only in the second decade of the next century and only at theOsmania University at Hyderabad.

To conclude, it may perhaps be more accurate to say that experien-tially there had really been two Delhis for Ghlib, one of the time beforeMay and the other of after October , the two separated by thetraumatic days of the Revolt and its brutal aftermath. l, a person ofhumbler means and rank than Ghliband living in Panipat, never fullyexperienced the former, and later made sense of what little he had seen interms of the feelings evoked in him by the early days of the latter. Thatfirst Delhi of Ghlibs experience was not the final gasp of a candlewhich briefly lit up its surroundings, allegedly with its original Mughalbrilliance. The candle was neither of Mughal make, nor did it die outwith the Mutiny; it was something new, a product of Indo-British col-laboration, and though it sputtered greatly in , it continued to burnand give light. Nor was it a garden that had already seen its spring andwas then fully destroyed during the Revolt. If anything, it was a gardenyet to be fully created, and Ghlibwas its nightingale, singing away,warmed by the ecstasy of Imagination.39The Delhi of the first half ofthe nineteenth century was an exciting and wonderful place for those whoexperienced it, particularly the intelligentsia, because it contained some-

39Ghlibs Urdu verse: h garm-e nash-e taavvur s naghma-sanj // main

andalb-e gulshan-e n-frda h (I sing away, warmed by the ecstasy ofImagination; Im the nightingale of a garden not yet created).


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thing new and vital and was perceived by many as the harbinger of afuture markedly different from its past, and not because it displayed somerevivified past as so many later Urdu writers, confusing the citadel withthe city and overwhelmed by the rising tide of political and culturalnationalism in the country, convinced themselves to believe.

In , Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam wrote, Mughal cul-ture and English culture met in [the fifty years before the Revolt] onterms of mutual respect. This situation was ended by the upheaval of and is only now, a century later, again being generally restored.40If thatrestoration has progressedand I believe that it hasand if that restora-tion was worth the effortand I strongly believe that it wasthen afurther important step has now become incumbent upon us. Since

Benedict Andersens Imagined Communities, we have learned to thinktwice about our convenient, all-purpose imperatives of nationhood andnationalism. Now, in a similar manner, we need to be more thoughtfulabout the complex, often quite paradoxical, role that colonial rule playedin the lives of the different sections of the Indian people at differenttimes. An important ancillary to that process would be an effort on thepart of Urdu scholars to recover the life of the mind of that Urdu intelli-gentsia of long agoHindu, Muslim and Christianwho found excite-ment, and discovered new and creative ways to define and express them-selves, in that initial sustained encounter with what eventually became anoppressive colonial rule. A half century after that rules end, we need toundertake this task just as much for our own sake as for the sake of thoseremarkable people of long ago. We may be right to reject the historybooks of the mature aku l-Lhas uncritical paeans to the British rule,but we will be missing out on something precious, not only in him but inourselves, if we fail to understand the boy aku l-Lhwho could havecome running home, all excited, his head buzzing with new ideas.

40Russell and Islam, p. .

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Naim Ghalib