Halqa-e-Arbāb-e-Zauq

Friday, 23 Jannuary 2026 | 6:00- 8:00 PM | A -11 Auditorium, Academic Block, LUMS

The Gurmani Centre for Languages and Literature hosted a literary session on Hassan Jaffar Zaidi’s book Mubahis, focused on what was framed as a critical period in the intellectual and organizational history of Halqa-e-Arbāb-e-Zauq. The session brought together Hassan Jaffar Zaidi, the author of the book, along with Asghar Nadeem Syed and Shahid Mahmood Nadeem, and was hosted by Shazia Mufti, the current Secretary of the Halqa. Together, the participants reflected on the historical, political, and cultural significance of the Halqa as a literary institution and on the particular moment documented in Mubahis.

The discussion foregrounded the Halqa’s role in generating the conditions for sustained literary dialogue and collective critical practice. Speakers emphasized that the Halqa was not merely a forum for the reading of texts, but a space where literature was subjected to rigorous discussion, disagreement, and democratic exchange. In this sense, the Halqa was repeatedly described as an institution that produced what might be termed a public sphere of literary critique ; one in which aesthetic questions, ideological differences, and political positions could be articulated and contested.

The discussion also shed light on the historical paradox that while the British colonial project was oriented toward extraction and control, writers and intellectuals in the subcontinent were simultaneously engaged in building cultural and literary capital. The Halqa was situated within this broader anti-colonial cultural labor: a movement that absorbed global literary and theoretical influences while producing a distinct local sensibility. Asghar Nadeem Syed emphasized that the Halqa succeeded in developing its own literary temperament by critically engaging with international intellectual movements rather than merely imitating them, thereby establishing a tradition of modernist literary inquiry rooted in local conditions.

The participants also reflected on the political conditions of the period documented in Mubahis. Drawing on the book’s historical scope, they noted that the years covered by Zaidi’s compilation were marked by relatively fewer restrictions on freedom of expression when compared to earlier and later periods of overt martial law and authoritarian rule. This relative openness enabled a more vibrant culture of debate and dissent within literary spaces, allowing the Halqa to function with greater intellectual intensity.

Speakers also addressed the internal politics, ideological disagreements, and forms of lobbying that shaped the organization’s evolving dynamics. These internal tensions were presented not as failures but as constitutive features of a living literary organisation, reflecting the deeply intertwined relationship between literature and politics. Literature, it was argued, does not exist outside political formations; rather, it both absorbs and refracts political struggles, anxieties, and transformations.

The session also emphasized the affective and mnemonic dimensions of Mubahis. The book was repeatedly described as more than an archival document: it was characterized as a memoir and a site of collective nostalgia for those who had lived through the Halqa’s most active years. The discussion suggested that the Halqa represented not simply a series of meetings but an entire way of life, and that Mubahis preserves not only debates and texts but also the atmospheres, friendships, and generational continuities that constituted the Halqa’s lived experience.

The presence of canonical literary figures such as Saadat Hasan Manto, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Qayyum Nazar, and others was invoked as evidence of the Halqa’s historical centrality within Urdu literary culture. These figures were remembered not as distant icons but as active participants in a shared intellectual space, one that fostered literary experimentation.

Finally, the discussion turned toward questions of inheritance and learning that how the Halqa functioned as a pedagogical space across generations, where writers learned not only techniques of writing but also ethical modes of engagement with literature and society. The Halqa’s legacy, it was suggested, lies precisely in this transmission of critical practice—across time, political rupture, and shifting cultural contexts.

Overall, the session positioned Mubahis as a crucial text for understanding the historical entanglement of literature, politics, and institution-building in Pakistan. By documenting a formative period of the Halqa-e-Arbab-e-Zauq, the book—and the discussion it generated—offered a reflective engagement with the past that also spoke directly to contemporary concerns about dialogue, dissent, and the role of literary institutions in public life.