Ismat Chughtai’s Autobiography -- A Transalation

Dear Muniba Kamal,

It was a great pleasure of mine to read your article about Ismat Chughtai. I have enjoyed it very much. I just want to say one sher in her respect.



kitane naadaan hai.n tere bhulane vaale ke tujhe

yaad karane ke liye umr pa.Dii ho jaise

Keep it up!

Regards

A well woven story and interesting details!

Dost Mittar Jee:
As usual, an enlightening post! Having read Krishan Chand, Raj. Singh Bedi and Munshee Jee long time back, reminded me of the accuracy of your observations. Very Well Stated Points!
I have also looked into Munshi Jee`s Hindi versions and they were a little hard to grasp because of certain expressions, but then I am talking about a child who was around 10 - 13 years old. [A lot of myths were very ambiguous in that age].

Take Care

PS: It is always very enlightening to read your posts.

Ref: #34, 35, 39

Pankaj: Here is something from www.infoplease.com/

Hindustani , subdivision of the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian languages, which themselves form a subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Some authorities define Hindustani as the spoken form of Hindi and Urdu. Others prefer to call Hindi and Urdu written varieties of Hindustani. The term Hindustani can also be used to include some vernacular dialects of northern India. Hindi is the variety of Hindustani used by Hindus; it is also the official language of India. Written in the Devanagari alphabet employed for Sanskrit, Hindi is read from left to right and has a vocabulary that is strictly Indic. Urdu, on the other hand, is the form of Hindustani used by Muslims and is official in Pakistan; it is written in a modified form of the Arabic alphabet, is read from right to left, and has added a number of words borrowed from Arabic and Persian to its originally Indic vocabulary. Despite these differences, both Hindi and Urdu are written variants of the same Indic subdivision, Hindustani. The latter goes back to the Prakrits or vernacular dialects of classical Sanskrit (see Indo-Iranian) and has been greatly influenced by Sanskrit itself. The grammar of Hindustani is much simpler than that of the older Indic tongues, such as Sanskrit. For instance, the neuter gender, the dual number, and the old case endings for the noun have been discarded. The conjugation of the verb has also been greatly simplified. Instead of prepositions, Hindustani uses postpositions, or particles placed after words to make clear their grammatical function or relationship. Hindustani plays an important role in modern India as a lingua franca; the number of people who speak or understand Hindustani in India and Pakistan has been variously estimated, but it probably exceeds 400 million persons. Thus Hindustani ranks third in number of speakers, after Chinese and English, among the world`s language communities.

See G. H. Fairbanks and B. G. Misra, Spoken and Written Hindi (1966); A. Rai, A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi-Hindavi (1985).

Notice that without script there is little difference between Urdu and Hindustani. Urdu written in Devnagri script, and choosing less Persian and Arabic terms as many of the modern poets like Gulzar and Sahir Ludhianvi did, must be better called Hindustani than Urdu. The number of Persian and Arabic terms are declining both in Indian Hindustani and pakistan Urdu literature. The style of Ghalib, Zauq, Iqbal and Faiz is old and seldom practiced; Faraz, Nasir Kazmi, Saghir Siddiqui, Sahir, Sudarshan Fakir and Gulzar used much less Persian or Arabic and more of the Hindi words like agan, milan, lagan, gagan, dharti etc.

Similarly, in Urdu prose Ismat Chughtai, Minto, Munshi Prem Chand, Krishan Chander, Bedi and other modern writers used much less Persian and Arabic vocabulary. Ibn Safi`s work written in Devnagri can be equally called Hindustani or Urdu.

So what distinguishes Urdu from Hindustani?

Kabuliwalla (#42): I merely wrote post #39 from my memory. I just checked www.infoplease.com/ and it appears we both are right about calling Pali different from Prakrits or a dialect of Prakrits. Prakrits (natural) as opposed to Sanskrit (perfect) is the term used for most old indic vernaculars and Pali is considered by some as one of Prakrits and independent of Prakrits by others.

Here is a cut/ paste from the above site:

Prakrit , any of a number of languages belonging to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Indo-Iranian). The Prakrits are usually classified as Middle Indic languages that followed the Old Indic stage of Sanskrit and Vedic but preceded the Modern Indic period. Some scholars, however, use the term Prakrit to include the Modern Indic vernaculars as well as those of the Middle Indic period—in short, to designate all Indic languages other than Sanskrit and Vedic. Other authorities say that the Modern Indic languages, which began to take form between 1000 and 1200, developed from the various medieval Prakrits. The oldest written records of the Prakrits are inscriptions of the 3d cent. B.C., but the languages were in use as vernaculars by the 6th cent. B.C. The Prakrits have been described as regional or vernacular dialects of classical Sanskrit. They were popular forms of speech, but a few of them developed into literary languages. Some estimates put the number of Prakrits at 38. In the ancient Indian drama, upper-class male (and sometimes female) characters use Sanskrit, while the characters (both male and female) of the lower classes speak various Prakrits. It can therefore be inferred that in this early period the Prakrits as popular forms of speech were used side by side with Sanskrit, the language of the priests and the nobility. Pali, a Middle Indic language that became the language of the Buddhists and their sacred literature, is considered a Prakrit by some scholars, though not by all. There are important phonetic and grammatical differences between the Old Indic and Middle Indic languages. For example, the Prakrits were much simpler grammatically than classical Sanskrit, having discarded the dual number for noun and verb, reduced the eight-case system of Sanskrit for the noun, and generally simplified the verb. On the whole, the vocabulary of Prakrit is of Old Indic origin.

See A. C. Woolner, Introduction to Prakrit (2d ed. 1928, repr. 1986).

P.S. Lets fold this topic so that people can continue talking about Ismat Chughtai-if you do not mind.

A good read!

[off-topic]

Kabuliwallah #41: Interesting. Something like this was done in Telugu in the last century when the literary movement to write/publish in the colloquial as opposed to the bookish style was underway. In Telugu, like in some other Indian languages, each (English) syllable is a letter. A `code` was written to represent the English phonetics in the script. It is another thing that they dont use it, and someone not accustomed to reading the Telugu script will find the English pronunciation of the regular readers very different from the urban speakers.

#42: I dont know if its related to what you wrote, but we were made to distinguish between the Prakriti & Vikriti styles of writing with Prakriti being formal and refined and Vikriti more colloquial.

The present day Combodians` language, I think, is very similar to Pali.

sorry for the grammatical errors

re: SameerJB # 39

I was under the impression that Pali was one of the group of Prakrit languages...you have said that Pali and Prakrit are different languages...Prakrit group of languages were spoken by the masses and Sanskrit was the language of the elite...that is the reason why to make their message intelligible to the common folk, first Buddha and the Asoka preached in Prakrit languages and Pali was a langugae frequently used...Prakriti in Sanskrit (I think) means nature...and Prakrit languages, thus I`m thinking, are the languages that people spoke as if they came to them natually or something to that effect...in fact if I`m not mistaken the tripitaka and many sutras are in Pali and it was/is a language intelligible to Buddhist monks all over the world, at least to many of them...to those in present day Afghanistan and Central Asia also...and in Sri Lanka, China and Thailand also...maybe you can explain to me if I`m wrong

regards

Kabuli

re: dost-mittar # 37

I think Hindi is innovating to accomodate new sounds...za for example, can be written by putting a small dot under ja in the Devnagiri script...I don`t know about pfa in phool, but am guessing it can also be done by putting a dot under pa?...I am not sure, but maybe somebody else can enlighten us on this

regards

Kabuli

What a privilege to read this essay!

Now I know why my Urdu-speaking Uncle has been such a huge fan of Ismat Chughtai.

Pankaj(#35): Thanks for you post. Here is something that I have put together from my memory. I hope to be corrected by some knowledgeable individuals if part of this post is incorrect. This post is about the emergence of Urdu language with little background or introduction.

About two thousand years ago, most of India spoke two dialect derived from Sanskrit, Pali in what is northern India now and Prakrit in Punjab and Sindh. Both Pali and Prakrit were mutually intelligible with people having no problem in communicating in places like Taxila where Chandragupt Maurya (a Pali speaker and his buddy Chanakya (or Kautalya) a Prakrit speaker could communicate without any difficulty. The main difference between Pali and Prakrit lied more in accents. The Prakrit used lot more sh, rh, kh, ph and v sounding words whereas Pali had more s, r, k, p and b sounding instead of sh, rh, kh, ph and v respectively. Here is couple of examples: Nirvanha in Prakrit, Nibbana in Pali; Shankar vs. Sankar or Sancar. Prakrit gave rise to various Punjabi and Sindhi languages/ accents; Pali gave rise to Hindi and Bengali.

The Afghan/ Turkic invasions brought Turkish and Persian into India. The Muslim Sufis, following invaders, found it necessary to communicate in the native languages and started using native languages with varying degrees of Persian and Arabic words. However, there was another phenomenon taking place in India that many Indians/ Pakistanis are not much familiar with. It was the clear differences between Afghan and Turkish ruling elite. In general, Turkish were more violent, more tribal, less Islamic, more prejudiced against Indian people and languages. They would adopt anything Indian with great difficulty, over several generations. Their limit seemed to be from Turkish to Persian. On the other hand, Afghans were seldom powerful at the center, Lodhis and Sher Shah Suri the exceptions. They were generally lower level elite who has to deal with public more often than Turkish over-lordship. It was Persian speaking Afghans adopting Indian culture and enriching Indian culture with Persian. This gave rise to Hindustani or Urdu as early as late 13th and early 14th centuries with Amir Khusro as the most well known personality of this cultural inter-mixing.

The cultural intermixing phenomenon suffered a severe blow by the arrival of one of the worst kind of Turkish (Chughtai Turks- or Mongoloid Turks) over lordship under Babar and His Mughal Empire. Both Persian and Hindustani suffered under them until Akbar who switched back to Persian language. It was the beginning of the second phase of Hindustani/ Urdu under Akbar and it took place at his capital, Lahore more than any other place. Many Sufis and Waris Shah (of Heer Waris Shah fame), practiced mixing of Persian words in local languages using Persian (or Arabic script). Later on Akbar moved to Agra or Fatehpur Sekri and the elite went with it. The much later phenomena of Lucknow, Delhi and Hyderabad is associated with Urdu literature that was mostly independent of either elite sponsorship or Sufism. This was for the pure love of language and literature with enough audience available to appreciate literary form of Urdu, making it a distinct language.

My point is that Urdu/ Hindustani existed much before than it is credited to around 18th century. It is like suggesting Native American history only from the arrival of Columbus or reducing the American West to 30 years of late 19th century. The fixing of the Urdu origins in 18th century in northern India is not true. The negative consequence of accepting it as a north Indian language with a meteoric rise in the 18th century is the distancing of many Pakistanis from it, sounding more like the imposition of an alien language, which is not true. The fact is that origins of Urdu was a stretched out process in which the forefathers of modern day non-Mohajir Pakistanis also contributed significantly.

The last 200 years of Urdu ia not relevant here though it goes without saying that it has been more of individuals efforts than a particular ethnicity to produce beautiful Urdu literature.

P.S. I have listened to Marasim and it is good like most of Jagit Singh singing. I still feel he was at his best when he sang Ghalib ghazals for a serial named Mirza Ghalib by Gulzar.

Off-topic:
Thank you for the music, Rafi saheb
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/161100/detexc02.asp

Sameer(#34)

I did some search on the origin of Urdu and found that it actually developed at three different centers.

http://home.earthlink.net/

Pankaj (#33): I am not sure what you mean by Urdu surviving without its script. I thought there is little difference between spoken Urdu, Hindustani or Hindi except for literary Urdu and its script. Similarly, your statement about area around Lucknow to be the birthplace of Urdu is also not universally accepted. There are many scholarly works contending that thesis.

Both Jagjit Singh and Gulzar can read Urdu script though I do not know of other ghazal writers in India. I wish I had something to say about Ismat Chughtai, but I could not recall anything from reading some of her work long time ago.

Lubna#30

Well,the reality is that I lot of Indians especially North Indians are very fond of Urdu. The people in the areas around Lucknow, considerd to be the birthplace of Urdu, still speak in Hindi rich in Urdu or Hindustani. Personally I find Urdu a very mellifluous language. Most of the Hindi newspapers and magazines contain Ghazals which are typically Urdu but in a Devanagari script. If you like to listen to ghazals, I would strongly recommend ``Marasim`` by Jagjit Singh and Gulzaar. Hey I remember two beautiful lines from that album

`` Pak gaya hai shazar pe fal shayad,

Phir se pathar uchalata hai koi``.

Or `` ek parwaaz dikhai di hai,

Teri aawaz sunai di hai. ``

Thus Urdu mix Hindi or Urdu written in Devanagari is not a new concept. The fact is many Urdu writers in India do write in Devanagari script to increase the reach of their writings. However there are still a few who continue writing in Persian script. Such writers are rapidly phasing out. Perhaps Urdu will still survive in India albeit in Devanagari script which can be understood by 50 crore people.

Cheers

This is a review of a play called ``River of Fire`` written by Rukhsana Ahmed. It is produced by Kali, a British Indian theatre company, currently playing at the Lyric Studio, Hammersmith in London (review taken from Chaitime.com, by Radhika Tandon Bhatia)

{``Kali`s latest offering is a provocative commentary on Hindu-Muslim relations set against the troubled background of Bombay during the riots. Seema is an activist and scriptwriter with three children- the eldest,Zara, is a devout Hindu born of her Hindu first husband;the other two, Bobby and Kiran, are British born Muslims from her second marriage to a Muslim. On the eve of Seemas death the three gather at her deathbed. The death of their mother and the troubled atmosphere of the city combine to bring their religious differences to the fore. Ironic, because Seema was an atheist and the last thing she ever wanted was for religion to become an issue in their lives. As the three bring tragedy upon themselves, Seema stands by in spirit, unable to do anything but watch the decimation of her beliefs.

Rukhsana Ahmad`s script draws from facts, exploring people`s obsessive need for formal death rituals that comply with their beliefs,and evolving into a story about belief and its ugly flip-side- fanaticism. The character of Seema Siddiqui is inspired by the story of Ismat Chugtai, the radical feminist/scriptwriter who`s death soon after the demolition of the Babri Mosque and its ugly aftermath caused bitter debate. When her Hindu grandson had her cremated, there were accusations that he had appropriated a Muslim icon.

Shelly King`s performance as Seema was potent. A similar device of a `spirit` narrator was recently employed in `The Waiting Room`; but shelly`s performance more than matched Shabana Azmi`s. She carries the play almost single-handedly with her wry humour and intimate monologues. All the performances were adequate, but none quite matched her resonance.

As a commentary on the ultimate futility of religious strife,the play raises challenging issues and has some truly powerful moments, though the ending is abit lame- one cannot help wishing that playwright Rukhsana Ahmed had desisted from the preachy finale that needlessly reinforces the plays message, and had left us just a little earlier at the play`s climax.

On the whole a thought provoking and courageous production.Catch the play in London till November 18, or at one of its subsequent tour venues in spring 2001. For more information call Kali theatre on (London) 020 7387 7949 ``}

I will try to get to see it...... thanks for your very educational piece Muniba, it has opened my eyes to a writer and person I knew little of.

Scout:#23

Ismat was a great writer.She had tremendous talent and a chutzpah to unshackle herself from the feudal-aristocratic cobwebs.

Her stories ``Chauthi ka jorra`` and ``Nanni ki naani`` are considered to be her masterpieces.It is a shame that the ``progressives``(what an oxymoron) unfurled her as a banner to parade around their misguided though well-intentioned `Shariat-e-Marx``.The court case helped promote their debilitating `philosophies`.Lihaf is definitely not even an average story.

She would always be cherished as a keen observer of the households from a view-point of as one of them rather than of one studying `culture` as an exotic or ghetto-ised subject;a tendency prevalent among some notorious `writers` to revisit their own culture as an intellectual-tourist.

May Allah rest her soul in peace and embrace her no matter what she thought of Him.

It is those mujavirs who want to turn into a peerni to seek a legitimacy to their deviancies & depravities,by highlighting only THOSE as her ``achievment``,that I have an axe to grind with.