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Urdu Political Poetry during the Khilafat Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Gail Minault
Gail Minault
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin, Texas
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Extract

The Khilafat movement, which took place among Indian Muslims immediately following the First World War, was so called because it was a political agitation designed to pressure the British government to preserve the defeated Ottoman Empire and its ruler, the Caliph of Islam. The Khilafat movement was also, more fundamentally, a campaign to unite Indian Muslims politically by means of religious and cultural symbols meaningful to all strata of the community. The movement gained added significance because it took place simultaneously, and cooperated fully, with Gandhi's first non-violent non-cooperation movement against British rule. Muslim and Hindu were thus engaged in parallel political activity: the broadening of national political participation from the élite to the mass through new techniques of organization and communication.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , July 1974 , pp. 459 - 471
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

This paper was prepared for presentation at the Western Regional Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Salt Lake City, 9-11 November 1972. I am indebted to Iftikhar Azmi of Lucknow and Nazir Ahmad Khan of Aligarh for their help in translating the poetic excerpts, and to Dr M. A. R. Barker for his interest and advice on the translations.

1 Examples are myriad; see especially, accounts of meetings on Khilafat Day, 17 October 1919, in Bombay Chronicle, 18 October. 1919, and Independent (Allahabad), 22 and 24 Oct. 1919; or accounts of stumping tours by Muhammad and Shaukat Ali in Independent, 11–13 January 1920, Lahore Tribune, 14 January 1920, and Bombay Chronicle, 23–24 February 1921.

2 I am particularly indebted to the works of Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam for the observations which follow. For a detailed discussion of the content and imagery of Urdu lyric poetry and the society which produced them, see Russell, and Islam, , Three Mughal Poets (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), Chs 4–5;Google Scholar and Russell, Ralph, ‘The Pursuit of the Urdu Ghazal’, Journal of Asian Studies XXIX, 1 (11 1969), 107–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A detailed discussion of Urdu prosody occurs in Barker, M. A. R., ‘Urdu Poetics’, in A Reader of Modern Urdu Poetry (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1968), App. I, pp. xiii–xx.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 For the development of the Urdu novel, see Russell, Ralph, ‘The Modern Novel in Urdu’, in The Novel in India, ed. by Clark, T. W. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 102–41.Google Scholar

4 Russell, , ‘The Pursuit of the Urdu Ghazal’, pp. 114–16.Google Scholar

5 Latif, Syed Abdul, The Influence of English Literature on Urdu Literature (London: Forster Groom, 1924), p. 130.Google Scholar

6 Iqbal, , ‘Ghazal 14’, from Bal-e-Jabrel, tr. by Kiernan, V. G. in Poems from Iqbal (London: John Murray, 1955), p. 34.Google Scholar

7 Khan, Zafar Ali, Baharistan (Lahore: Punjab Urdu Academy, 1936), pp. 226, 256–7, and 163.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 153.

9 Ibid., pp. 163–4.

10 Mohani, Fazl al-Hasan Hasrat, Kulliyat-e-Hasrat (Delhi: Maktaba-e-Isha'iat-e-Urdu, 1959), pp. 138–9.Google Scholar

11 Mohani, Fazl al-Hasan Hasrat, Qaid-e-Farang (Karachi: Maktaba Naya Rahi, 1958), p. 134.Google Scholar

12 Zaidi, Ali Javad, Urdu Men Qaumi Sha'iri ke Sau Sal (Allahabad: U.P.Publications Division, 1959), p. 185.Google Scholar

13 Ali, Muhammad, Kalam-e-Jauhar (Delhi: Maktaba-e-Jami'a, n.d.), pp. 72–3.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., pp. 103–4.

15 Qureshi, Abdur Razzaq, ed., Nava-e-Azadi (Bombay: Adabi Publishers, 1957) pp. 229–30.Google Scholar

16 Daryabadi, Abdul Majid, Muhammad Ali, Zati Diary ke Chand Warq I (Azamgarh: Ma'arif Press, 1954), p. 105.Google Scholar