THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC of Pakistan was born in 1947 in the midst of chaos and war—a result of the partition of India into Hindu and Muslim majority states, which created history’s largest human migration (described by Intizaar Hussein in his personal account, “The First Morning”). While India thrived under the rule of the Congress Party in the 1950s and 1960s, Pakistan became mired in economic and political turmoil. The elation of independence, so apparent in Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s 1947 poem, “Freedom’s Dawn,” written to commemorate the country’s founding, gradually turned to bitter disappointment as Pakistan devolved into an authoritarian state where, in Faiz’s words, “no man now dare walk with head held high.” In 1958, a decade after its creation, Pakistan’s civilian government was overthrown in a military coup d’état. And while civilian rule would be temporarily restored in the 1970s, two more military coups—as well as two more wars with India and a 1971 civil war that would transform East Pakistan into the nation of Bangladesh—set the course for what would become the near-permanent militarization of Pakistani politics.
The poets and writers whose words had inspired the creation of the Pakistani state soon became the nation’s most vocal critics. (Faiz even spent time in prison on charges of conspiring against the government.) As Pakistan struggled to reconcile its national and religious identities, and neighboring India was racked with violence between its Hindu and Muslim citizens, the entire Indian Subcontinent appeared to be on the verge of devastation. And yet, despite the uncertainty and insecurity that marked the post-Partition period—or perhaps because of it—Urdu literature thrived on both sides of the border. In Pakistan, Urdu became the official language of the state, while in India (where the government briefly tried to ban the teaching of Urdu in schools), Urdu literature remained a powerful tool for conveying the continuing struggle for social progress and political autonomy.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, Urdu literature gained new vigor through the work of the so-called modernists. Writing in a deliberately unadorned style, the modernists focused their lens on the social and political tumult surrounding them. The short, deceptively simple lines of poets such as Ali Sardar Jafri and Akhtar ul-Iman became the norm in Urdu poetry, while an empowered group of women writers—poets and novelists alike—added a feminine voice to a literary tradition that had, until then, been dominated by men.
In the 1960s, the short story finally established itself as a rival to Urdu poetry. Popular prose writers such as Ghulam Abbas (“The Room with the Blue Light”) and Abdullah Hussein (“The Refugees”) became more assertive and more defiant of conventional norms. In many ways, the short story was an ideal vehicle for communicating the sociopolitical complexities of the time. Poetry, however, remained the dominant form of literary expression in Urdu. Nearly a thousand years after its birth, the ghazal—still the most popular form of poetry in Urdu literature—evolved to tackle not only traditional themes of love and mysticism but also the social and political realities of the modern world. Indeed, even today, as Pakistan continues to vacillate between civilian and military rule, between war and peace, between security and instability, Urdu poetry remains a powerful means of artistic and political expression throughout South Asia.