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HISTORY: THE FREEDOM FIGHTER WHO BECAME STATELESS
During the hardening positions in the 1940s of the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Muslim League (ML) on the creation of a new state for the Muslims of India, there were other groups and parties that envisioned different resolutions to the “Muslim Question.”
Among these voices was that of the Communist Party of India (CPI), which was aligned with the INC in the late 1930s, yet slowly diverged from it in the 1940s. A major figure who articulated the CPI’s perspective on Muslim politics was Dr Kunwar Mohammad Ashraf — whose contribution has remained somewhat marginal in the received history of this period.
THE PALS OF MEWAT
Dr Ashraf was of Rajput stock from the Mewat region and hailed from a lower middle-class family that had settled in United Provinces (UP) in the 19th century. The Mewat region extends across Haryana and Rajasthan, where the majority population were Muslims (called Meo) and Chattriya (Rajput). A distinctive feature of the Meo community was that those Hindus who abided by the rules of the pals (the tribal groupings) were incorporated into the group, with loyalty to the pal overshadowing religious belonging.
Studies of the Mewat area from the early 20th century have shown how — in matters of birth, death and marriages — the pals would follow rituals and ceremonies of both religious communities.
Dr Ashraf’s grandfather, originally from Alwar in Rajasthan, had settled in the town of Daryapur near Hathras (Aligarh district) after 1857. The family had followed the tradition of intermarrying with Hindus and keeping Hindu names — Dr Ashraf’s father was born Murlidhar Singh, only changing his name to Murad Ali Khan when he passed the entrance examination for railway service as a guard.
A scholar, a communist and an anti-colonial activist, Dr K.M. Ashraf spent his life arguing that India’s Muslims and Hindus shared a future — and paid for it with exile, imprisonment and marginalisation from history
Dr Ashraf was born in 1903 in Daryapur, where he spent his early childhood before moving to Moradabad for schooling. At school, he was influenced by teachers who inculcated the spirit of anti-colonialism in their pupils. In due time, Dr Ashraf joined political activist Ubaidullah Sindhi’s group, Hazb Allah, and took an oath to fight the colonisers.
In 1918, Dr Ashraf passed his intermediate exams from MAO College in Aligarh and re-entered for his BA degree in 1920. These were the days of the Khilafat Movement, led by Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, which was joined by Mohandas Gandhi, with his call for boycotting English goods and Satyagraha (non-cooperation) that would lead to Swaraj (independence).
Dr Ashraf joined the non-cooperation movement and, along with his friends, agitated for the MAO College to not take aid from the British sarkar [government]. In retaliation, the college administration expelled the students. This expulsion led to the founding of Jamia Millia Islamia (October 1920) as a nationalist alternative to MAO College, which Dr Ashraf and his friends joined.
However, Gandhi’s withdrawal from Satyagraha due to the Chauri Chaura incident — in which riled demonstrators killed 22 policemen — and the abolishing of the Ottoman caliphate by Turkish revolutionary Mustafa Kamal — both in 1922 — ended the non-cooperation/ Khilafat movement.
This curtailment brought a period of disillusionment for many of the movement’s cadres and Dr Ashraf returned to MAO College in 1923. He completed his BA honours and MA, and topped his class in the LLB course by 1927.
LONDON AND THE MAKING OF A MARXIST
During the college’s jubilee celebrations in 1927, Dr Ashraf was introduced to one of the guests, the Maharaja Jain Singh of Alwar state. In his address as vice president of the student union, he reminded everyone of Aligarh’s secular tradition and spoke of his own ancestral ties to Alwar.
The impressed Maharaja arranged a scholarship for his studies; Dr Ashraf joined Lincoln’s Inn for his Bar-at-Law and enrolled as a PhD candidate in mediaeval history at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, UK.
During this first trip to Britain, Dr Ashraf lived with Maulana Mohammad Ali, also supported by the Maharaja for medical treatment in the UK. Through the Maulana, he was introduced to Shahpurji Saklatvala (1874-1936), the Communist Party of Great Britain’s (CPGB) member elected to the British parliament.
In 1928, the Maharaja of Alwar invited Dr Ashraf and Maulana Mohammad Ali back to Alwar for his jubilee celebrations. Dr Ashraf was made in-charge of the preparations and oversaw the entire event. After the celebrations, Dr Ashraf was offered the position of personal adviser to the Maharaja, but declined — having witnessed firsthand the wealth, wastage and oppression of a major princely state. In 1929, Dr Ashraf received a scholarship from a foundation in Hyderabad and, with some support from his father, he returned to the UK to complete his PhD.
This time he had a more economically difficult life but he was connected to a range of young radicals studying in Britain, who were also his friends and comrades. They included Dr Z.A. Ahmad, Shaukat Omar, Sajjad Zaheer, Mahmuduzzafar, Hajra Begum (the only female in the group) and Imtiaz Ali Khan. Under Shahpurji Saklatwala’s initial guidance, this group started to work closely with CPGB in organising Indian students on nationalist grounds.
While involved in these activities, Dr Ashraf defended his PhD thesis (University of London) in the early 1930s. The thesis, Life and Conditions of the People of Hindostan (1200-1550 CE), was a pioneering work of social history regarding the Sultanate and early Mughal period in India.
THE MUSLIM QUESTION AND THE COMMUNIST ANSWER
Due to his affiliation with CPGP, Dr Ashraf returned as a committed Marxist to India in 1932-33 and soon joined the CPI under the leadership of P.C. Joshi. In 1935, he joined Aligarh University as a history lecturer.
From the mid-1930s, the CPI had aligned itself with some progressive section within Congress — figures like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and Jayprakash Narayan — who were trying to lead Congress in a potentially revolutionary direction. Therefore, when Jawaharlal Nehru was elected president of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) in 1936, Dr Ashraf accepted a position at Nehru’s office in Allahabad, becoming secretary of the political bureau and also responsible for the Muslim Contact Cell of the INC.
In his writings, Dr Ashraf argued that the ML could exploit the resentment among Muslim masses stemming from the halted non-cooperation movement of 1922, compounded by the Nehru Report’s (1927) rejection of separate Muslim electorates and rising communal tensions. Yet he emphasised that his invitation was for Muslims to join the progressive groups within Congress. As a communist, he maintained that politics was organised essentially around class interests, which drove the exploitation of the poor and the marginalised.
In a 1938 letter to a friend, Dr Ashraf forcefully defended his work for INC, despite understanding the major reservations that a large portion of the Muslim population held against Congress politics.
In a nuanced position on Muslim politics, he suggested that his friend need not join INC and continue to work with the ML (despite Dr Ashraf’s reservations), provided he could steer the League toward holding democratic elections within the primary bodies of the party, increase its membership and organise it at the local level. For Dr Ashraf, this would lead to the Muslim community to stand up against British imperialism and not be subordinate to its dictates.
The Congress ministries resigned in October-November of 1939, as they opposed the British government’s action of declaring India as a party in the Second World War without consulting the Indian elected representatives.
The start of the War tested the alliance between the Congress and the CPI. Both parties initially labelled the war as anti-imperialist, yet the CPI went further, calling for a national revolution and mass insurrection to achieve independence. By 1941, this somewhat radical line led to the British detaining scores of CPI members, including Dr Ashraf, in the notorious Deoli Concentration Camp.
By early to mid-1940s, the CPI had also started to rethink the issue of Muslim separatism (exemplified by the 1940 Lahore Resolution), being put forward by the newly invigorated ML. In response to this shift in Muslim politics, Dr Ashraf (representing CPI) had started to hint at the nationalities question and the idea of self-determination, which would be developed later as a major policy agenda by the CPI.
According to the CPI, the linguistic and religious diversity of India had brought forward two major issues in Indian politics: the Hindu-Muslim divide and the linguistic-states problem. Was India one nation or were Hindu and Muslims separate nations and, similarly, did Bengalis or Tamils deserve different or autonomous states?
CPI’s more overt support of the ‘Muslim Question’ followed its policy of openly opposing Congress’ Quit India Movement. Although all communist members of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) at the Bombay session in August of 1942 voted against the resolution, it was passed by an overwhelming majority.
The CPI vote was reflective of how, by 1942, the party had reversed its earlier line, moving from calling the War an ‘Imperialist War’ to a ‘People’s War.’ It now linked itself to the international drive against Germany’s fascist regime. This led to the unbanning of the party and the release of the leaders. Dr Ashraf was also released in 1943, though his health had suffered due to prison hardships and a prolonged hunger strike.
After their leadership’s release, the CPI condemned the British imprisonment of nationalist leaders while simultaneously urging Congress to collaborate with the ML and accept it as the representative voice of India’s Muslims.
In September of 1942, the CPI, echoing Dr Ashraf’s earlier formulation on self-determination, presented a resolution that sought to take the question of India not as a cultural whole, but as constituting various cultures, language groups and national sentiments. In this larger context, for the CPI, the slogan for Pakistan was understood as a call for self-determination and democracy for all nationalities.
Clearly, the right of self-determination came with the right of sovereignty, equality and the right to secession. Following this argument, the CPI’s manifesto for the 1945-1946 elections demanded immediate independence and transfer of power not only to two governments (India and Pakistan), but to 17 interim ‘sovereign’ national assemblies.
However, by late 1946, the CPI had started to change its position on the partition of British India. The party was critical of both the Congress and the ML for accepting the Partition plan. Eventually, although the CPI finally accepted the creation of Pakistan by arguing for the division of the party itself (in 1948), a deep suspicion of ML politics and the agony over British India’s division was the overwhelming sentiment that was shared by most party workers.
STATELESS
The violence during the partition of British India did not spare the Mewat area. The harmony and coexistence that was the hallmark of the Meo palbandi system was breached during the months of August and September of 1947, when unexpected communal riots broke out. Within this atmosphere, rumours circulated that Dr Ashraf was mobilising a large group of Meos to create a “mini-Pakistan” in the Mewat area.
Based on the policy of self-determination related to linguistic and ethnic identities, Dr Ashraf and Syed Mutalabi (an activist and friend) in 1942 had put forward the idea of a province that included Mewat and adjoining areas (not dissimilar to the creation of new provinces in post-independence India). Closer to independence, this idea included the abolition of princely states (especially of Alwar and Bharatpur).
The Maharajas of these two states and their right-wing allies used the idea of the “Pal Province” to instigate communal riots and broke the Hindu-Muslim unity that had been guaranteed through ages by the palbandi process; a community of historically mixed religious heritage was being forced to leave. In return, Dr Ashraf was accused by the police of instigating communal violence and a case was made to arrest Syed Mutalabi and him. It was decided that both travel to Pakistan for some time.
As Dr Ashraf travelled to Pakistan, his name was sent to the Pakistan intelligence services as someone wanted as a member of the CPI, along with the additional charge of spreading communal violence. Soon after his arrival, he was detained at Karachi Central Jail, even as he battled ill health.
In prison, his health condition further deteriorated. The government of Pakistan only agreed to release Dr Ashraf on the condition that he leave the country. At this juncture, the government of India did not give him permission to return. The only option was that he left for the UK as a British subject.
While in the UK, his health remained unwell, but he put himself through a gruelling routine of research in the British Library on archives related to mediaeval India, his area of expertise. After spending five years in the UK (1949-1954), he returned to India as a British subject, with a six-month visa. On arrival, he requested Maulana Azad, his mentor and friend, to assist him in staying in India. At the expiry of his visa, no action was taken.
Dr Ashraf spent two years in Kashmir working on a state history of the region and was later appointed as visiting professor of mediaeval history at Kirori Mal College at the University of Delhi. In 1960, with his college contract not renewed, he travelled to Humboldt University in East Berlin (GDR) to conduct research and take a position as visiting professor of mediaeval Indian history.
In his later writings, Dr Ashraf reflected on the 1940s and was critical of the division of British India due to the communalist politics propagated by the British. However, he did maintain that, to fight colonial imperialism, CPI’s policy (and his own) of bringing Jinnah and Gandhi together, and to give due respect to ML’s emerging popularity among Muslims, some concessions had to be offered to their demand for a separate region.
Dr Ashraf’s close relatives were practising Hindus, including his paternal aunt, instilling in him a lived sense of coexistence and mutual respect that he carried directly into his politics. His youth and early middle age were dedicated to the struggle for the freedom of his country, and for equal rights and social justice for the masses. He bore all kinds of sufferings, deprivations and imprisonment. However, once colonial rule ended, Dr Ashraf found himself stateless and exiled in London, without income and with very little social support. Yet he persevered and continued to write and teach in Delhi and then in Berlin.
A mesmerising public speaker, a scholar of Arabic, Persian and Urdu, who wrote poetry, short stories and plays, Dr Ashraf passed away due to a heart attack at the age of 59 in East Berlin on June 7, 1962.
He is buried at the Cemetery of the Socialists in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde, where he lies with the likes of Rosa Luxemburg and others who fought for democratic rights, against fascism and for socialism.
The writer wishes to thank Alisher Karabeav (ZMO Library, Berlin), Dr Razak Khan (Freie University, Berlin) and Ananya Iyengar (St Stephens College, Delhi) for their input.
The writer teaches anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin, in the USA. He can be contacted at: asdar@austin.utexas.edu
Published in Dawn, EOS, February 22nd, 2026
Where Cicadas Sing
By Athar Tahir
Lightstone Publishers
ISBN: 978-969-716-306-9
359pp.
Athar Tahir, the author of Where Cicadas Sing, is a highly acclaimed scholar and writer. He is an English poet, an essayist, a short story writer and an artist. At one time a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he is the recipient of the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz and Sitara-i-Imtiaz, and is an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and a Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Letters.
He has also been awarded the Patras Bukhari Award for literature in English four times. His debut novel, Second Coming, was extremely well received. Where Cicadas Sing is the first independent but linked book of a quartet.
With all these credits to his name, Where Cicadas Sing had to be good. And it is. It is an elegantly structured novel, presented through the eyes of a young lad, Athar. The story spans about three years that he spends with his family in Malaysia (then called the Federation of Malaya) in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
According to the author, the symbolism of cicadas has a definite place in the novel. This humble insect figures in Greek and Roman mythology as well as in Eastern literature. It is often mentioned in Japanese poetry. It is proof of the author’s scholarship that he uses cicadas to bring the native and the foreign together for Athar.
An elegantly structured novel, told through through the eyes of a young lad, is the first part of four interconnected novels and has stellar prose but is let down by the lack of much happening in it
The writer never forgets who is telling the story, so the sentences remain short and the vocabulary stays simple. But, even within the confines of the innocence of childish reactions, the reader is made to understand the dynamics of both the boy’s immediate family and the complications abounding in the extended one.
The novel revolves around the father, for he is Athar’s hero. He is the one who shows Athar the world and interprets it for him. His most wonderful trait, from Athar’s point of view, is the love he shows to his children. He is interested in all that they do. He is a big part of their school life, eager to see them excel and willing to help in achieving this goal. Under his tutelage, Athar thrives. He learns myriad new things: to swim, to take good photographs, to keep a diary, to use a knife and fork and to behave correctly when meeting dignitaries.
Fortunately, the parents’ close relationship and love for their children create a safe haven for Athar and his siblings. Whatever changes occur in their lives, the strong and tender family bond keeps them centred and secure.
And there are changes galore. First, the family comes to Kuala Lumpur from Karachi. Athar and his sister are enrolled in a school and have to make new friends and deal with teachers whose very names are strange to them. After two years, they moved to Penang and have to get used to a new school. Athar yearns for the friends he leaves behind in Kuala Lumpur, especially for a classfellow, Azizah, to whom he has lost his boyish heart. After a year in Penang, the final change is wrought when Athar is sent to a boarding school in Pakistan. As he flies out, he wonders whether he will ever meet Azizah again.
Where Cicadas Sing is written exceptionally well. Tahir is at the pinnacle of his craft. This is a deceptively simple book, made possible only by the author’s command over the language. It is written for adults, but children can read it easily. The depiction of Athar revelling in his new surroundings, absorbing new sounds and sights and making friends and meeting people from different religions and ethnicities is masterly. The awe and wonder that young Athar feels at each new event are superbly conveyed to the reader.
The vehicle used, first person singular, gives the boy’s experience immediacy. It seems that he is relaying his impressions even as he is living through the incidents. And there are no filters. Athar’s thoughts and observations come through with the naturalness of a nine- or 10-year-old. Yet, in oblique ways, adult themes are also touched upon. With an endearing guilelessness, Athar comments upon the extramarital affair of one of his father’s acquaintances and the pornography on view in another one’s home.
Even though the first-rate prose makes the book easy to read, it is not a quick one. Interest begins to flag because nothing much happens in the story. Athar finds going on a picnic, attending a scout meeting and spending time at a funfair enthralling. But for the reader, these are all very humdrum. The absence of any real conflict or dilemma makes for a desultory read. The reader does not feel compelled to turn the page and see what happens next. The novel can be put away for later.
Moreover, many chapters are stand-alone narratives. They do not take the tale forward and can be omitted, just like a pearl on a string, though exquisite in itself, can be removed without harming the integrity of the necklace.
Many extremely captivating books have been written from children’s perspectives. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Book Thief and The Ice Candy Man are just a few of them. But Where Cicadas Sing has no mystery and no challenge. A chronicle of a happy child from a stable family going about his daily rounds of living and learning, even in a foreign country, does not make for an engrossing storyline.
However, this book is only the first of four interconnected novels. It has laid the foundation by introducing young Athar and his family. Tahir’s facility with words and clarity of thought can be trusted to take the saga to pinnacles of adventure and drama and so create an outstanding quartet.
It is sure to be worth reading since the last of the tetralogy, Second Coming, which is already in print, has already won the nation’s highest award for literature in English.
The reviewer is a freelance writer, author of the novel The Tea Trolley and the translator of Toofan Se Pehlay: Safar-i-Europe Ki Diary
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 22nd, 2026
This year, it looked like cultural and literary activities were squeezed into a small timeframe across Pakistan in general and in Lahore in particular, due to the impending start of Ramazan. It meant that all cultural and literary events had to be held before that. In Lahore, the Lahore International Book Fair, Basant, the Asma Jahangir Conference and the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) all coincided on February 6, 7 and 8.
There was a lot of hullabaloo and commotion due to Basant that was taking place after a gap of about two decades. Nobody wanted to miss it, including Gen-Z, whose memories are not attached to the cultural event that was once almost synonymous with life in Lahore. Initially scheduled for the weekend prior, LLF was forced to shift to the dates clashing with the much-awaited Basant Mela because of administrative orders and it was a brave call by the organisers to accept the new dates.
On the same days, the Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) was also taking place and some of the panellists were featured in both these festivals, taking flights from Lahore to Karachi or vice versa to ensure their presence. While booksellers and publishers were making hay while the sun of literary events was shining, the impact of all these activities did have some effect on the LLF and it was visible in the crowds.
The 14th edition of LLF appeared like an attempt to diversify the festival that generally focuses on English language literature and art. The organisers put more focus on history this time and that took the central space during all the three days. There were about 16 sessions, including book launches, on history and about an equal number of sessions on Urdu and other regional languages.
The 14th Lahore Literary Festival put its focus on history and in diversifying away from English but was impacted by scheduling clashes with the much-awaited Basant festival, among other goings on
Historian and Oxford University Professor Robin Lane Fox delivered the keynote speech to open this edition of the LLF. He, very intelligently, chose a subject that the Lahori audience as well as non-Lahori delegates could relate to — Alexander the Great, who conquered parts of India more than two millennia ago. Prof Fox painted a picture of Alexander based on facts, not the legends that are popular around the world as well the legends that he left behind when he returned.
He deconstructed the myths surrounding Alexander as well as his great teacher Aristotle, the biggest of them all being that both the disciple and teacher had no sense of geography when the former came to India. Prof Fox also talked of the five “Ws” that were important vis-à-vis Alexander’s time spent in India — war, war elephants, women, weather and wealth. Prof Fox repeated almost the same lecture when he went to Karachi later.
Other scholars featured in the LLF included Audrey Truschke of Rutgers University in the US — whose work on Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and, recently, on 5,000 years of the Subcontinent’s history is well known — and British-Pakistani Ziauddin Sardar who has written extensively about Muslim thought and societies.
Indian-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, director of movies such as Fire, Earth and Water, was perhaps the most anticipated delegate of the festival. Her session was well-attended and she spoke of how she ventured into filmmaking under the influence of her father, learning the art of editing as the start. She also spoke about how chance played a big role in leading her to make her Aamir Khan-starrer Earth. In addition, she shared the politics and political interests that brought about a backlash for some of her films, including Water.
The first day of the litfest had few sessions but its pace picked up on the second and third days, though Basant had affected the number of people in attendance.
Saad Abbasi, a vet who has been attending the LLF over the years, also felt the difference, saying that he did not find it as good as the previous years.
“There are fewer people this year. Basant can be the reason. But I did find some sessions to my liking and liked the views of the panelists,” he tells Eos. One of the sessions that he liked was about world politics, ‘Remains of the Day: The Post-1945 World Order and Diplomacy in a Time of Resurgent Great-Power Rivalry’, which included Michael Pembroke, historian and former judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales in Australia; former Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar and Mohammad Yahya, the UN’s Resident Coordinator.
Moderated by Lyse Doucet of the BBC, the session discussed the dirty role the US has been playing in the world since World War II. Pembroke pointed out that the CIA’s precursor, the OSS, played a similar role in undermining the Italian Communist Party as the CIA and Israel’s Mossad played recently in Iran. Khar referred to a “civilisational regression” in the West.
However, not everybody comes to litfests like LLF with views like those of Saad Abbasi. People attend them for a myriad of reasons. Litfests are an attraction not just for those interested in world politics, culture and literature, but also provide space for socialising with like-minded people.
Freelance journalist and rights activist Umaima Ahmed attends the LLF every year but she does not go inside the halls of Alhamra Art Centre. She stays on the lawns and sits in the food court, hanging out with friends and those she meets only at such events. “I come only for socialising,” she admits, “otherwise, nobody has time in their busy routine.”
During the festival, there were talks on art, history, economy, migration, regional languages and literature in English, Punjabi, Seraiki and Urdu languages.
At the book launch of Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple — the son of noted historian William Dalrymple — the younger Dalrymple spoke about, among other things, the real reasons for Mohammad Ali Jinnah leaving India and his return. According o to him, Jinnah left mainly because of his daughter’s schooling and returned mainly to answer Jawaharlal Nehru’s taunt that his political career was finished.
At another session on Seraiki, novelist and journalist Kashif Baloch asserted that liberal order and nationalism had replaced feudalism and its aesthetics. While Seraiki poets and writers were aware of the oppression of aesthetics, he claimed no significant parallel voices were heard in Punjabi.
Pakistani-British novelist Kamila Shamsie, in her session, spoke about the impact of migration on her. She also discussed how important it was for the writers to venture into the subjects that they are unfamiliar with, just as she did with Burnt Shadows, her novel set in Nagasaki.
Fatima Bhutto was eagerly awaited after the publication of her recent memoirs, but could not make it to the festival. The LLF was sandwiched between Afkaar-i-Taza, ThinkFest and the Faiz Festival, three main literary events of Lahore, and comparison between all three becomes natural if they happen in such close proximity.
The LLF had the least number of visitors while the Faiz Festival, the weekend after, had the most, so much so that, on Sunday, the organisers of the latter had to shut doors in some halls of the Alhamra due the rush of people. One obvious difference is that of language. The LLF caters to mainly the English-speaking class while the Faiz Festival is held mostly in Urdu and a majority of Pakistanis can relate more to the latter than the former, hence the obvious pull.
What can be the other reasons for lower attendance should be left to the LLF organisers to ponder. However, for holding the event despite the obvious challenges, including Basant, they deserve kudos. One hopes that next year the clash of schedules will have been worked out.
The writer is a member of staff.
X: @IrfaanAslam
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 22nd, 2026
I am sharing an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir: Whirlwind of the Heart:
I grew up with Urdu poetry, learning to recite verses from ghazals as soon as I could talk. Words held only visual meanings for me but that changed as I grew older and began to enter the world of poetry. Now I teach poetry whenever I can gather a group of students to take my class.
I enjoy explaining why ‘longing’ is an emotion filled with ‘rasa’ [relish] that should be experienced… Sanskrit poetics emphasises that the content of poetry is emotion and so does the classical ghazal: why love’s arrow stuck in the heart creates a wound that should not heal, why pain is a cleanser. But love is also the source of creation, the reason for existence. Love is both universal and personal; it transcends time and space; it carves light from darkness.
The heart is also a mirror of the self and, in the ghazal, the analogy of the mirror-heart is carried to great lengths. The heart’s depth cannot be fathomed; but the heart can also grow narrow or constricted. Why and how is the heart perceived as narrow? Perhaps because the pain of love is greater than the space in the heart, and the heart is filled with emotions. In the classical ghazal, another organ –– the liver, or jigar –– is equal to the heart in being a locus of love. The heart and liver are often in sync; they speak to each other and are equally affected by love. The liver, it was believed, produced blood while the heart expended it. But while the liver is perceived as the locus of life, the heart is the locus of Divine Radiance.
Altaf Husain Hali and Shibli Nomani, two important Urdu critics of the early 20th century, were critical of the role of emotions or jazbaat at the core of the ghazal. Under the influence of British colonial literary practice and Protestant values, Hali and Nomani advocated, instead, for the role of ethics as a more important component of poetry.
Another path-breaking early modern critic, Muhammad Hasan Askari, was also critical of the importance given to emotions in Urdu poetry. He emphasised the importance of qalb, the heart-mind, as the core of poetry, and argued that Islah-i-qalb or improvement of the qalb should be the goal of the ghazal. Qalb, the heart-mind, should not be confused with nafs or breath, self, soul, essence.
Askari’s thought merged the ghazal entirely with tasawwuf or mysticism. Earlier, Sufi poets such as Hafez and Rumi had taken the ghazal to profound spiritual heights, demonstrating that ishq-i-majaazi or worldly love could be a template for ishq-i-haqiqi or spiritual love. In the ghazal, love of the earthly kind can be a step or stage toward the opening of the heart to love of God.
Koi mere dil se poochhay tere teer-i-neem-kash ko
Ye khalish kahaan se hoti jo jigar ke paar hota
[Would someone ask my heart about your half-drawn arrow/ Could such gnawing pain be there if it had gone through the liver?]
While the ghazal can glide from majaazi to haqiqi love through poetic devices such as tropes and metaphors, I believe that the ghazal, in both its classical and modern forms, transcends any kind of binding themes. Within the realm of the ghazal, themes can be infinitely refined and polished, subverted and reinvented. Thus, I was shocked to discover that Askari considers this famous verse of Ghalib to be weak because it only addresses the external world of love, ishq-i-majaazi, and not the internal or spiritual realm or ishq-i-haqiqi.
He claims that if the love represented in this ghazal was spiritual or haqiqi, then its khalish [gnawing pain or compulsive thought] would continue to escalate, even if the beloved’s arrow had pierced through the heart to enter the liver. He quotes a verse from Ghalib’s great contemporary, the master poet Zauq, to prove his point.
Khudang-i-yaar mere dil se kis tarha niklay
Keh us ke saath hai ai Zauq meri jaan lagi
[How would the Beloved’s arrow leave my heart?/
O Zauq, my life is attached to it]
Zauq’s verse is undoubtedly effective, almost electrifying. Yet, I find myself arguing with Askari’s assessment. I don’t think Ghalib’s verse is any less accomplished, even if it does not allow a spiritual interpretation. After all, there is so much going on in Ghalib’s couplet. It begins with a piquant dialogue between the poet-speaker and the reader-listener: would someone ask the heart about the anguish or khalish that it is experiencing due to the arrow stuck in the liver?
The Urdu word ‘khalish’ has many meanings, including pain; one of them is curiosity or prying intensity. Ghalib’s verse enacts a playful and subtle slippage between arrow, liver and heart, where the arrow itself speaks through the liver, and addresses its question to the heart.
There is no easy way to translate jigar, a powerful and poetic ghazal trope, into English. ‘Liver’ in English, sounds simply gross. However, within the ghazal’s complex repertoire of the bodily metaphor, dil, the heart — a wayward, passionate, wounded, pain-filled, aching piece of the lover’s anatomy — is closely associated with jigar, the liver, which is constant, staid, filled with life-giving, life-sustaining blood. When the ghazal’s beloved throws her nigaah, her piercing gaze, it falls like an arrow to enter the heart, piercing its way down from the heart to the liver in one stroke, making both parts of the lover’s body consent to her power.
To take pleasure in the world of the ghazal, one must learn to appreciate the role of the liver alongside the heart. But the liver-heart connection also carries other serious physiological resonances. When one’s heart is medicated, one’s liver function is constantly monitored. The liver sympathises with the heart’s struggle, but tries to keep it in check from self-destruction.
The columnist is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia in the US. X: @FarooqiMehr
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 22nd, 2026
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