Review: Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation byAnjum Altaf and Amit Basole

‘Chaltaa hun thodi duur har ik tez-rau ke saath/pehchaantaa nahin hun abhi raahbar ko main’ or ‘I go along some distance with every swift walker/I do not yet recognize the guide’ — Mirza Ghalib. Anjum Altaf and Amir Basole’s Thinking with Ghalib uses this verse from Ghalib to assess the political leaders of the subcontinent and their ephemeral but passionate followings among the populace. The verse also gives us an insight into the ambition of this genre-defying book. It is at once a self-help manual, a volume of literary criticism, a book on epistemology, an attempt at creating indigenous South-Asian theory or socio-political philosophy, a book to promote critical thinking, and, dare I say, critical writing.

Altaf and Basole take upon themselves these numerous tasks. The first is to introduce Ghalib to a readership that may have left Urdu behind unlike the generation of their parents or grandparents. To do so, they forego the full ghazal poem, but focus on 30 shers or distiches (couplets), one in each chapter. They urge their reader to read one chapter a day so as to chew on the import of each verse. For, after all, as they quote from Pritchet, Ghalib’s each verse can be a ‘meaning machine’, and they give nine different interpretations for the sher: ‘Na tha kuchh to Khuda tha kuchh na hota to Khuda hota/duboya mujh ko hone ne nah hota main to kya hota’ or ‘When there was nothing, then God existed;/ if nothing existed, then God would exist/’Being’ drowned me; if I did not exist, then what would I be?’.

Each verse is further used to ask critical questions about some fundamental aspects of life: knowledge acquisition, the nature or ontology of being as well as knowing, the political conditions, aspirations and leadership of South Asia, thinking beyond narrow confines of religion, and moving towards a humanist world view. Using Ghalib for these purposes becomes a key marker of developing an indigenous criticality as opposed to the usual idea of modernity as a Western product of the Enlightenment, even as Ghalib was himself shaped in part by the influence of the British. Still, the openness with which Ghalib approaches his subjects, and with which he leaves his reader, is sans dogma. The authors of the present volume declare, ‘Ghalib asks us to think without seeking to convince and provides a source of learning indigenous to South Asia and its own civilizational genius’.

For example, the actual religion of a devotee does not matter to Ghalib: ‘Nahiin kuchh subbha-o-zunnar ke phanday mein giiraaii/vafaadaarii mein shayKh-o-barhaman ki aazmaa’ish hai’ or ‘There is no holding-power in the snare of prayer-beads and sacred thread/ In faithfulness is the test of the Shaykh and the Brahmin.’ It is faithfulness to one’s faith, be it any faith, that matters.

Ghalib’s powerful intentional ambiguities of his verses are exploited to the fullest by Altaf and Basole: ‘raat din gardish mein hain saat aasmaan/ho rahega kuchh nah kuchh ghabraayen kya’ or ‘Night and day the seven heavens are revolving/Something or other will end up happening — why should we be perturbed?’ This sher is read both as a sign of fatalism and giving in to the will of God, but also a positive belief in change being the only constant, with a silver lining on the horizon. This is extended to South Asian politics as well.

Anjum Altaf is a Pakistani and Amit Basole is an Indian. Their coming together for this book over the greatest South-Asian poet of the nineteenth century is perhaps a positive sign in itself. We, the people of South Asia, face similar problems — of corruption, sectarianism, communalism, poverty of matter and thought — and this book, which first began in 2008 as a collaboration over two blogs run by the authors, signals towards a common way forward.

The book tends to get slightly repetitive in its strategy and import by the end, and could have used better, preferably poetic, translations of the Ghalib verses, although it does well to give the original in three scripts. While serious readers of Ghalib may wish to read more scholarly works on the poet and his poetry, the purpose of this book is to introduce new readers to Ghalib and simultaneously get them to use poetry to think critically and responsibly. I missed an aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of the verses, but the book does realize its self-admitted goals well enough. For those looking to enter the world of Urdu poetry or Ghalib in particular, without learning Urdu, this is the perfect volume to start with, and in the process to start reflecting on our own state of affairs.

Maaz Bin Bilal’s translation of Mirza Ghalib’s Chiragh-e-Dair is forthcoming from Penguin. He teaches as Jindal Global University.

‘Chaltaa hun thodi duur har ik tez-rau ke saath/pehchaantaa nahin hun abhi raahbar ko main’ or ‘I go along some distance with every swift walker/I do not yet recognize the guide’ — Mirza Ghalib. Anjum Altaf and Amir Basole’s Thinking with Ghalib uses this verse from Ghalib to assess the political leaders of the subcontinent and their ephemeral but passionate followings among the populace. The verse also gives us an insight into the ambition of this genre-defying book. It is at once a self-help manual, a volume of literary criticism, a book on epistemology, an attempt at creating indigenous South-Asian theory or socio-political philosophy, a book to promote critical thinking, and, dare I say, critical writing.

Altaf and Basole take upon themselves these numerous tasks. The first is to introduce Ghalib to a readership that may have left Urdu behind unlike the generation of their parents or grandparents. To do so, they forego the full ghazal poem, but focus on 30 shers or distiches (couplets), one in each chapter. They urge their reader to read one chapter a day so as to chew on the import of each verse. For, after all, as they quote from Pritchet, Ghalib’s each verse can be a ‘meaning machine’, and they give nine different interpretations for the sher: ‘Na tha kuchh to Khuda tha kuchh na hota to Khuda hota/duboya mujh ko hone ne nah hota main to kya hota’ or ‘When there was nothing, then God existed;/ if nothing existed, then God would exist/’Being’ drowned me; if I did not exist, then what would I be?’.

Each verse is further used to ask critical questions about some fundamental aspects of life: knowledge acquisition, the nature or ontology of being as well as knowing, the political conditions, aspirations and leadership of South Asia, thinking beyond narrow confines of religion, and moving towards a humanist world view. Using Ghalib for these purposes becomes a key marker of developing an indigenous criticality as opposed to the usual idea of modernity as a Western product of the Enlightenment, even as Ghalib was himself shaped in part by the influence of the British. Still, the openness with which Ghalib approaches his subjects, and with which he leaves his reader, is sans dogma. The authors of the present volume declare, ‘Ghalib asks us to think without seeking to convince and provides a source of learning indigenous to South Asia and its own civilizational genius’.

For example, the actual religion of a devotee does not matter to Ghalib: ‘Nahiin kuchh subbha-o-zunnar ke phanday mein giiraaii/vafaadaarii mein shayKh-o-barhaman ki aazmaa’ish hai’ or ‘There is no holding-power in the snare of prayer-beads and sacred thread/ In faithfulness is the test of the Shaykh and the Brahmin.’ It is faithfulness to one’s faith, be it any faith, that matters.

Ghalib’s powerful intentional ambiguities of his verses are exploited to the fullest by Altaf and Basole: ‘raat din gardish mein hain saat aasmaan/ho rahega kuchh nah kuchh ghabraayen kya’ or ‘Night and day the seven heavens are revolving/Something or other will end up happening — why should we be perturbed?’ This sher is read both as a sign of fatalism and giving in to the will of God, but also a positive belief in change being the only constant, with a silver lining on the horizon. This is extended to South Asian politics as well.

Anjum Altaf is a Pakistani and Amit Basole is an Indian. Their coming together for this book over the greatest South-Asian poet of the nineteenth century is perhaps a positive sign in itself. We, the people of South Asia, face similar problems — of corruption, sectarianism, communalism, poverty of matter and thought — and this book, which first began in 2008 as a collaboration over two blogs run by the authors, signals towards a common way forward.

The book tends to get slightly repetitive in its strategy and import by the end, and could have used better, preferably poetic, translations of the Ghalib verses, although it does well to give the original in three scripts. While serious readers of Ghalib may wish to read more scholarly works on the poet and his poetry, the purpose of this book is to introduce new readers to Ghalib and simultaneously get them to use poetry to think critically and responsibly. I missed an aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of the verses, but the book does realize its self-admitted goals well enough. For those looking to enter the world of Urdu poetry or Ghalib in particular, without learning Urdu, this is the perfect volume to start with, and in the process to start reflecting on our own state of affairs.

Maaz Bin Bilal’s translation of Mirza Ghalib’s Chiragh-e-Dair is forthcoming from Penguin. He teaches as Jindal Global University.