Monthly Archives: October 2017

India’s May 1998 nuclear decision forms the backdrop to the contributions in this edited volume. In general, Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream is a critique of the nuclear tests, the motives underlying the decision, as well as the immorality, dangers and costs inherent in developing a nuclear arsenal.

What is the history of science a history of? The answer to this question is not as self evident as might appear. The answer that it is a history of “science” simply invites the further question: what is science? How are its boundaries to be demarcated? By whose authority are certain practices to be designated as “scientific?”

As I googled Muhammad Khalid Akhtar to research his life and times, ¬¬the search engine showed up results for Che Guevara instead. Akhtar would probably have chuckled and found enough fodder there for yet another goofy story.

In his translated collection of short stories What Will You Give for This Beauty?, the Urdu poet, novelist and short story writer, Ali Akbar Natiq presents us with twelve stunning tales of lives shot through with heartrending cruelty, deprivation and injustice, but not without moments of genuine resistance and hope.

Nadeed (1989) by Joginder Paul is an unusual novel in Urdu in the sense that it has no defined plot or storyline but is held together by a metaphor and abstract, metaphysical reflections on this metaphor. The tradition of the novel in Urdu has not been known to be very robust (though short story is) to admit of radical innovation and experimentation.

A handsome, new translation of Ismat Chughtai’s memoir, Kaghazi Hai Pairahan (KHP from henceforth), by OUP is cause for celebration in itself. To readers of Indian literature, Chughtai needs no introduction, given how lionized she is in multiple canons.

Although the Nehru-Gandhi family alone has dominated accounts on political dynasties so far, it is not the only powerful family/dynasty within India, leave alone South Asia. Indeed, the number of influential families striding the political stage in the region is rather large. In addition, dynasties abound in the world of industry, film, music and many other fields.

When Master Abdul Ghani praised Manto for his story ‘Hatak’ and cleared his debt as a mark of respect for the man who had written the story, Krishan Chandar notes that Manto became sad and furious. Manto, he writes, was displeased and depressed and cried out, ‘Saala! He believes that Hatak is my good story, Hatak? Hatak is one of my worst stories.’

Madhav Godbole’s book, Public Account ability and Transparency: The Imperatives of Good Governance is one of the outstanding additions to the literature on governance and the contemporary political, administrative social scenario in the country, including the largely untouched areas of judiciary, media and corporate governance.

Around the time of the centenary of Manto’s birth, a major seminar to commemorate the author’s writings was held at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. At this event, scholars and writers from across South Asia paid tribute to the enfant terrible of Urdu letters, including Intizar Husain from Lahore.

Qurratulain Hyder, fondly known as Annie Apa, seems to be so present in her different characters in the novel Chandni Begum that meeting them in the novel brings back fond memories of her. Particularly in this novel in its English avatar, that emanates the Lucknavi ambience she understood so well.

‘Each day, we wake slightly altered, and the person we were yesterday is dead. So why, one could say, be afraid of death, when death comes all the time?’ —John Updike. The fear of death is the most confounding of all fears. And also the most compelling. For, death is a certainty, a foretold conclusion of a life, any life. That which is born must die yet the feelings and emotions death evokes surpass the beauty and mystery and grief of life.

This is a collection of five long stories, rendered into English by the author himself, who first published it in Urdu in 2001 from Karachi, and, from Allahabad in 2003, with title, Savaar aur Doosray Afsanay (lit. The Rider and Other Stories). It is set in the 18th-19th centuries north India, specifically the region stretching from Delhi to Bihar.

When Jameel Akhtar took on the Herculean task of interviewing Qurratulain Hyder at length, her initial reaction was, ‘I don’t give interviews. I’m fed up with people. All those stupid boring questions, the same old stuff repeated over and over again, talking rot—No! No!’

For avid readers of Urdu who may not be its scholars, Urdu prose, especially,
genres such as short stories and novels mostly trigger the names of Prem Chand, Qurratulain Haider, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Rajender Singh Bedi, Krishan Chandar and the like.

The All India Progressive Writers’ Movement (AIPWM) has engendered much interest among scholars and academics. Most histories and critical estimations of Urdu literature dwell on the radicalization it brought about.

Tum Kabir (2017) is the seventh col-lection of poems of Fatima Riaz—a celebrated Progressive Urdu writer of Pakistan who challenged both the traditional form and idioms that have dominated Urdu poetry since its inception.

In his important essay, ‘The Task of the Translator’, German philosopher Walter Benjamin argues that the aim of translation is not to convey the literal meaning of the original, but rather to show how two languages are related to one another through their connection to a greater, imaginary language.

A biography of Faiz in English has long been overdue. There has been a biography in Urdu by the distinguished Russian Writer/Urdu scholar Ludmila Vasilyeva, friend and translator of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Faiz: Hayat Aur Takhleeqat,

This is an endearing biography of Raghupati Sahay or ‘Firaq Gorakhpuri’ one of the great Urdu poets of the last century. Written by a close relative it is an admiring but not uncritical portrait of the poet and largely based on conversations with and personal diaries and letters of the poet’s other close relatives.