Lack Of Criticism In Urdu Literature Of Pakistan

A few days back I posted a post on social media regarding Urdu Literature being created in Pakistan, saying:

“Pakistani Urdu literature being created nowadays is like that tobacco paan that one spits out immediately without a second thought.”

Some of my social media friends accused me of hate speech, while some others called it a sweeping statement, while some asked: “why to criticize Urdu literature only?”

According to me this is neither hate speech, nor a sweeping statement, it has firm grounds, firstly, I came to this conclusion by reading Urdu novels and short stories that have been published in recent past, secondly even the scholars of Urdu literature have mentioned this in their research works.

In answer to why only Urdu literature; as a writer and reader I am free to give my opinion on literature of every language, secondly Urdu literature has more readers in Sindh as compared to rest of Pakistan. In this regards I had a discussion with an employee of Fiction House, Hyderabad and he told me Urdu literature has more readers in Sindh as compared to rest of the country. He also claimed that even though Urdu publishers have been unable to touch the market of Sindh properly.

Recently I have come across with Urdu novels and short stories like Jagy Hain Khuwab Main, Sasa, Char Darvesh Aur Aik Kachuwa, Ratain Meerwah Ki, Bahao, Jab Shama Jali, Lahoo Lahoo Wadi, Do Loog (Indian novel) and in short stories Khaani Bol Parhi and some other books. After reading these novels and short stories I have come to conclusion that Urdu literature in Pakistan has lost its glory.

However, there is no doubt that quality work in field of translation is being done in Urdu, though people like Nangar Chana and others are doing a fair job in field of Sindhi translation but a lot of work is required as far as translation is concerned in Sindhi.

Right from the beginning Pakistani literature has gone through some basic problems, which have been never resolved at the state level, in Pakistan arts and literature have never been taken seriously, and have been ignored. Here are few major problems related to literature being created in Pakistan:

(i)                  Lack of freedom of expression: To create something a creator requires complete freedom so that his/her thoughts and ideas are completely expressed. Writers, journalists and intellectuals across the world have given endless sacrifices to gain freedom of expression. It is the power or right to express one's opinions without censorship, restraint, or legal penalty. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, freedom of expression is the right of every individual to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. But unfortunately Pakistan is among those few states, where there is hardly any concept of freedom of expression. Every new idea and thought is considered blasphemous, you just open your mouth to say something and people start getting offended, you are labelled with tags like traitor and a threat to national security. Since a creator doesn’t get complete freedom of expression, likewise he/she doesn’t allow any freedom to others.

(ii)                Pakistani writers are only Right or Left wingers: As Pakistan was formed on pure religious grounds, so at state level propagation of a particular religious ideology was promoted, due to which the diverse values were oppressed, this had a negative impact on everything including Pakistani literature. Writers ignored every other theory and they became either right wingers or left wingers (progressive), they kept on promoting their respective ideologies, for them political ideology was more important than techniques of different literally genres, and both of these groups became two sides of the same coin, their sole aim became revolutionization of society with their respective ideologies, as Marxist literary theory defines it: to promote the idea that literature should be a tool in the revolutionary struggle. It attempts to clarify relationship of literary work to social reality. It is political in nature. It aims to arrive at an interpretation of literary text in order to define political dimensions of the literary work.

(iii)              Ignoring the literary trends: As Pakistani writers just took their positions in two above mentioned camps, they completely ignored other literary trends like surrealism, magical realism, existentialism, modernism, post-modernism, feminism, fantasy and other such important literary trends.

              Lack of Criticism in Pakistani Urdu Literature:

Renowned Sindhi novelist and short story writer Rasool Memon while giving a lecture at Karachi claimed that the Urdu literature being created in Sindh, is not connected to the land, and it would loose its importance if it is not connected to the land.

Criticism is considered as an important aspect in literature, it doesn’t mean to degrade but to correct the mistakes and pointing out shortcomings. The problem with Pakistani Urdu literature is that there is hardly any criticism. In this regards Rafaqat Razi in preface of a book titled Fiction, Discourse and Cultural Spatiality writes that:

“From past three decades there has been death like silence as far as criticism in Urdu literature is concerned. The major reason behind this is unawareness of principals of literary criticism and second the critics are unaware of literary theories. The result of which is there is no proper criticism and an ordinary writing is taken as a masterpiece. While majority of critics follow the golden principal of ‘you scratch my back, I would scratch yours.’ Or the critics rather following the modern methods of criticism, carry on with age old methods.”

Likewise another renowned Urdu critic Nasir Abbas Nayar in an interview with Daily Dawn claimed that:

“Though most of the story of modern Urdu literature revolves around resistance narratives, some exceptional episodes present us with alternative narratives as well. I have focused particularly on discovering and analysing the narratives that were produced by colonised people in their struggle to emancipate themselves and to reclaim what had been lost.”

In an answer to question regarding criticism he said that:

“No. As far as theory is concerned, Urdu has not produced any critic of global repute. It must be admitted that only theorists can transcend local boundaries and influence critical minds of different cultures. In the absence of theoretical underpinning, Urdu critics have confined themselves to writing practical criticism. Worthwhile though it is, practical criticism, being text-oriented, remains confined to a single language. It cannot even hope to be universal.”

  So, rather getting offended we must realize the problem and try to solve it, otherwise nothing but garbage would be produced in the name of literature.