Ghalib was such a complex person, according to critic and poet Dr M Shamim Hanifi, who presided over the session. “He lived in difficult times,” he said. “Internal conspiracies were being hatched and there were killings everywhere. Yet the scope of his poetry is so vast that his work was translated almost in every major language.”
He said that Ghalib was modernistic to a certain extent. “He was the first from his time to transcend generations,” he said. “Some of his couplets are even about western inventions.”
According to the scholar, it was Ghalib’s curiosity about life that let him absorb the minute details of people’s behaviour. “At the same time, he was a bohemian who reflected on himself to find the answers.” He can be called the first futuristic poet of his time without any doubt, he added.
Dr Zafar Iqbal of Karachi University talked about the poet’s letters which had a lasting impact on Urdu prose. “I think every poet has his own personality. External factors like the situation of the country influence the style to an extent.” Ghalib, he said, had a God-gifted uniqueness.
Qazi Afzaal Hussain of India’s Aligarh University said that Ghalib changed the way poetry was written singlehandedly. “It was his creativity alone that altered literature.” His expression was so powerful that it set trends in Urdu literature, he added.
Khalil Tokar, the head of the Urdu department at Istanbul University, regretted that Pakistanis give precedence to English over Urdu. “People here are habitual about considering their own language secondary,” he said, adding, “They think knowing English will open all the doors. But according to some estimates at least a billion people speak or understand Urdu.”
He shared an interesting Turkish fable. A mouse smells cheese inside his hole. When he thinks of going outside, he hears a cat meow and stays inside. This keeps on happening for a few days. After some time he hears a dog bark. Thinking that the dog must have scared the cat away he comes outside to eat the cheese. The cat catches the mouse, and tells its child, “See, the benefit of knowing a foreign language?”
Tokar said that the British too, learned the native languages and then established their colonies. “Some of you must be wondering why I love Urdu,” he said. “Ghalib was Turkish. So Urdu is like my own language.”
Dr Alia Imam, a renowned writer, said that Ghalib’s poetry preaches peace and harmony. “It shuns repressiveness and supports non-violence and democracy.” She also criticised those who belittled Urdu and didn’t give it worth except for a few poems and letters. “Like all great languages, Urdu made sacrifices to reach its present stage,” said Imam.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 25th, 2011.
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