Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Have a feast of humour with Mujtuba Hussain, because taking affairs of life too seriously is a disease according to Plato. Despite the traditional recommendation of blessing anyone who laughs – “May God ever keep you laughing”  – there are few zinda dil people (who laugh and make others laugh without hurting the other or compromising truth) around and fewer zinda dil writers (writers often are either found as if weeping or bragging or envying or at least complaining about other writers) and still fewer zinda dil preachers (how many can you name?).       Taking affairs of life too seriously is a disease according to Plato. Laughter is a great wazeefa that  modern Pirs need to suggest to disciples.  For Rumi laughter reaches the deepest depths of Godhead. Mujtuba Hussain is almost perfect example of zinda dil writer. He, better than psychoanalysts, scans his contemporaries with fun and insight leaving no bitterness nor selling any falsehood...

Sufism might have theological critiques but literature provides its strongest support and in a way helps dissolve much of now mostly outdated theological critiques of Sufism. Thanks to Urdu Department CUK and Sahityya Academy we had, after much time, a seminar on Sufism and Urdu Literature. Some points that emerged in the papers and discussions may be summed up in the following propositions: Urdu literature from Khusrow till date is informed by Sufi sensibility. No great name in Urdu literature is anti-Sufi and all are to certain extent indebted to Sufism. The world could be saved by better engagement with the mystical or Sufi and especially what is called Quranic Sufism or Ihsan centric narrative. Sufism should be taken as synonymous with spirituality and that is the essence or core of religions. If Sufism becomes philosophy divested from practice and indulges in anti-social and ideologically complicit actions, it should be resisted. Sufism needs to be purged of ...

I discuss today a great book of fiction that has become popular, thanks to brilliant adaptation as a serial. Call her an angel, in sweetness, in grace, in beauty, a saint, who loves unconditionally, a martyr of love and faith, who decimates her life lest God’s name or the Quran be taken lightly, a folk philosopher, gems of wisdom she speaks are distilled from great philosophers or theosophers, Saba Kareem of Umera Ahmed’s Meri Zaat Zarai Baynishaan , must be ranked amongst the finest characters, worth emulating, ever drawn in the history of Urdu fiction. She is one of the most beautiful souls gifted with such grace, such dignity, such nobility, such serenity of spirit that one can easily identify her as heavenly hoor who is not made for this earth to which perfection doesn’t belong. Her story is a classic ordeal of love – almost Heer Ranjha incarnated –that fails to consummate on earth but does transform all the major characters resulting in their rebirth in the Realm of Spirit. N...

I think we have a good future for Urdu criticism in Kashmir if we continue our current zeal and keep ourselves updated Literature, understood as criticism of life, and criticism as refusal of any attempt to write off alternative possibilities of meaning are central to the current postmodern project of understanding the world. We need good critical works to document the mess we are passing through and the book we discuss today is an attempt to show that Urdu literature and literary criticism has insights for all of us to consider how we live in a pluralistic, open ended world of texts and contexts.   Postmodernism is many things for scholars and critics of it. We can’t avoid engaging with it as we are living in the postmodern age. I think we can agree that it is among other things, avoidance of extremes of binary polarities that define language based discourse or ideologies, skepticism regarding any claim of finality in interpretation, distrusting all narratives of progress, ema...

Life is an enigma for him and he is in search of someone, perhaps a master, to unravel it to him If art is sacrifice (yajna), form of prayer, a discipline calling for contemplation and certain moral standards for the artists though not for the art itself, we can spot only few artists around. Today art is an ideology, a thing to be exhibited and lobbied for awards, a commodity one can purchase. No wonder genuine artists and poets whom Plato thought are taught by God are rare, or not better known.  A genuine poet can’t be proud, he can’t brag, he can’t be accused of “straying in every valley” as his ethics, his faith in transcendence are there to keep him on the track.  He carves a space in our hearts. Kazantzakis once remarked that “God is the Ah that comes when seeing any beautiful thing.” I think the criterion of genuine poetry is our spontaneous Ah on encountering it. This is made possible by marriage of profound thought and deep feeling besides a command over form. All ...