Articles By Anisur Rahman

Anisur Rahman (b.1950) is a poet, translator and literary critic. Formerly a Professor of English at Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University in New Delhi. He is currently Senior Advisor at Rekhta Foundation, the world’s largest website on Urdu language, literature, and culture. He has worked and published in the areas of Comparative, Translation, Urdu, and Postcolonial Studies with special reference to the literatures of South Asia, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. He has to his credit four books authored by him, six edited/co-edited volumes, and two collections of Urdu poetry in English translation. Professor Rahman has also been an academic administrator. He has served as Head, Department of English; Dean, Students Welfare; Director, Centre for Coaching and Career Planning; and Registrar, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He has been a Shastri Fellow at the University of Alberta, Canada (2001-2002) and a Visiting Scholar at Purdue University, USA (2007).

Syed Ahmad Khan who excelled in many ways as an educationist, reformer, religious commentator, historian, biographer, political visionary, and institution maker, made it possible for the literati of his times to realize the importance of political changes occurring then. He could visualize their impact on society, and think of the possible ways that might be adopted to create a better socio-cultural condition. Apart from many others, three of his contributions—the creation of Aligarh Scientific Society, the launching of a journal Tehzeebul Akhlaq, and the establishment of Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College on the pattern of Oxford and Cambridge—made way for liberal thinking in the field of education. He emphasized on Western scientific knowledge, promoted translations of Western literatures into Urdu, and reflected on issues relating to culture, society, manners, and morals. Although his impact on literature was not as direct as that of the others but he created a healthy condition that made way for the poets and writers to reflect upon the ways that could help them imagine literature as social text.

SIR SYED AHMAD KHAN

Syed Ahmad Khan, who is better known and addressed as Sir Syed, was a canonical figure of India’s intellectual history. He passed away in 1898 but stays with us with his writings on a variety of subjects that have not lost their relevance even though they are deeply rooted in their times.

love story, meera, meeraji, mad, love, urdu

Ishqnaama: The love-life of Meeraji

A major modernist poet, by all means, Meeraji is also a myth of sorts. He had to be so, for he lived a life completely atypical and totally abysmal.

Hai Munir teri nigaah mein koyi baat gehrey malaal ki

Hai Munir Teri Nigaah Mein Koi Baat Gehre Malaal Ki

Niyazi may be read as a poet of memories and reveries, fictions and fancies who drew upon them as his basic material. He was a poet of soft notes, audible whispers, and intimate expostulations. His disputes and dissents with life and time are firm, his diction is polite, and his tones of voice echo in hearts rather than heads.

Josh Malihabadi

Ishqnaama: The love-life of Josh Malihabadi

An emotionally honest Josh has remained an icon of love with a difference. In this extraordinary narrative Yaadon ki Baraat spread over 729 pages, he has narrated his love-life in 57 pages and unabashedly claimed that he loved “not once but eighteen times”.

cover heer ranjha image bolg photo love story [prem kahani

Qissa-Kahaani Banaam Heer Ranjha

Some stories never die; they are told again and again, from time to time, place to place, author to author. One such is the story of Heer and Ranjha. About six centuries old now, it was first narrated in verse by one DamodarArora during the reign of Emperor Akbar. Damodar was a native of Jhang where the story is broadly based and he had heard it from one Raja Ram Khatri who is supposed to be an eyewitness to all that happened. Since then it has been narrated variously and in various languages, both in verse and prose. One of the most notable narratives came from Waris Shah in 1766, apart from several others in Sindhi, Haryanavi, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, and English. In Persian alone, there are as many as twenty versions of this story and in Urdu not less than fifteen.

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