The Evolution of Urdu Literature in the 20th Century

Literature is the narration of time. Literature gives words to the thougths, emotions and desires of its age. So like time, literature too evolves and is not stagnant. The main force that gives literaure its fluidity are human thoughts. By effecting human thoughts, time makes literature. The 20th century was a turbelent time. The rapid increase in the pace of life brought with it a lot of changes in human life. Urdu literature like all the literature of the worlds was affected by it. It brought, new plot, different forms, style, and gave urdu literature a totally new trend.

India, the birth place of urdu, was a closed, simple and conservative society. Being an agrarian rural society, the pace of life was very slow or even stagnant. The simplicity and naturalism in life reflects in the stories of this region. The folk tales, love stories, legends, fables, myths and even the religious manuscripts of India are documentation of the thoughts of the society which existed. 20th century however changed all this.

Industrialization, mechanization of the capitalist society accelerated life. Now the time was no longer determined by the length of the shadow but by the alarms of the clock. The capitalist society broke the social fabric and made human being stand alone. In this society everything was weighed in terms of money, even human feelings. Man was reduced to a machine whose whole worth was the money he owned. Economic misery, social degeneration and cultural poverty were on the rise. Literature was greatly influenced by these two disiplines, and most of the advance in urdu literature came from the subjects of these two sciences.

Economic distress and financial

The miseries and hardships of the 20th century made human beings bold and rebellious. It gave them a voice to speak against the injustice and social evils. Instead of literature for the sake of literature, they wrote on life and its subjects. These writers were not afraid of rebelling against the establishment, nor were they reserved behind the veil of tradition and customs. They wrote what they saw and what they felt. Social unacceptance, ridicule, miss treatment and even law suites were not able to keep them quiet.

Literature in the 20th century became short, condense, powerful, rebellious and aggressive. The story was honest and the characters were realistic. In whole it became a distorted image of the society. The writers of the 20th century did not consciously attempted to create a new form in literature but rather it got established as an effective form of writing by itself. Every writer had different feelings about the society. There was a uniqueness and individuality of hopes, expectations, disappointments and desires. Each saw the world through his eyes and so gave his commentary on life as he felt it. The multitude and diversity of feelings gave literature the spectrum of forms and trends.

Prem Chand lived in a time when hope still lived. Leaders like Gandhi and Iqbal, gave the dream of a just world. The influence of the Freedom movement and the hopes associated with it effected Prem Chand. The desire to give a voice and freedom to all the unheard and down trodden sections of the society existed in that time. Prem Chand was the first to present this in Urdu literature. Being himself from a rural back ground he was effective in presenting the village life in a glorified or rather humanized way. Prem Chand was a realist but, like his time, he still had hopes. He can be called an idealist as he presented life as how it should be.

Time was seen differently be Krishan Chandar. He belonged to Kashmir and consequently was a nature lover. His writings contain romanticism and naturalism. He tried to find colours in the most dull and gloomy pictures of life. The symbolism of a rose in a small dark room in his story "Phool Ki Tanhaee" is an example of his romance and love for life.

The increased pace of life in the 20th century made short story content. This increased its intensity and the characters became powerful. When the story is natural and the characters are realistic, them they become significant. Life is just the story of human relationships, and interactions. Bedi explored this dimension of life by making characters the pivotal point of his story. By doing so he was able to traverse and document the life of a whole family from birth to death in a short story.

The post independence writers were quite different from the earlier ones. They were more harsh, blunt and explicit in their criticism. The tragedy and the miseries that accompanied independence killed the hopes that were associated with it. Idealism had faded and now instead of hoping for a just world, the writer started shouting for it. Writers like Manto and Ismat Chugtai presented a shocking picture of the society by just making a mirror image of it.

What has gone wrong? What is the cause of human misery and distress? Can human desires ever be fulfilled? Can man ever be satisfied and happy? These questions filled the space in this time. Some like Karl Marx, Engels and Mill tried to find answers in economics, Gandhi used religion and some like Froyd and Yung search human mind for the answer.

The race for resources and capital gave birth to new disciplines like economics, while the changes in human life due to this race made psychology. Urdu literature was greatly effected by these theories. Some followed the economic school, some like ishfaq ahmad and naseem hijazi searched religion and others like Intizar Hussian, Quratul Ain Haider and Mumtaz Mufti believed in psychology.

The author is an undergrduate student at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan. He is a regular writer for national newspapers and international journals. He has been associated with the editorial teams of various magazines and global student journals.