Jadidiyat, Urdu Nasr aur Mayasir Fikri Rujhanāt

Thursday, 23 April 2026 | 6:30 - 8:00 PM | CR-07, Law School, LUMS

The Gurmani Centre for Languages and Literature hosted a panel discussion titled “Jadidiyat, Urdu Nasr aur Mayasir Fikri Rujhanāt”, centered on Dr. Sajid Siddique Nizami’s recent book Tahavvulāt-i-Nasr-i-Urdu, published by Majlis-i-Taraqqī-i-Adab, Lahore. The session brought together an engagement with the historical development of Urdu prose, questions of literary form, intellectual history, and the conceptual frameworks through which Urdu literary traditions have been understood.

The discussion opened with remarks by Dawood Hussain, who situated the conversation within the broader relationship between history and literature, emphasizing the centrality of stylistic expression as a critical category in narrating literary history. He drew attention to the conceptual distinction between tahavvul (transformation) and the more commonly used term “evolution,” arguing that the former allows for a more precise understanding of shifts that are not necessarily linear or progressive. In this framing, Urdu prose emerges not as a steadily advancing form but as a field marked by discontinuities, reorientations, and contextual reconfigurations. He further highlighted how, around the mid-nineteenth century, particularly after 1840, the very idea of literature underwent a transformation, shaping both the production and reception of Urdu prose.

Building on this, Maryam Wasif Khan offered a historically grounded and theoretically nuanced reflection on how the category of “literature” itself is not stable but historically contingent. She examined the role of Fort William College as a pivotal institutional site that reshaped Urdu prose by introducing new norms of clarity, pedagogy, and stylistic discipline. In doing so, she pointed to the shift from earlier, more ornate and heterogeneous forms of expression to a prose increasingly aligned with colonial administrative and educational needs. Importantly, she foregrounded the moral and pedagogical agenda underpinning these transformations, suggesting that the production of prose at Fort William was tied to disciplining part of a pedagogical project to regulate the conduct of colonial officials and administrative recruits, distancing them from the perceived moral ambiguities of the bazār. Her intervention also drew attention to the emergence of literary criticism, particularly in the works of Azad and Hali, as a key moment in redefining literary value, taste, and canon formation within Urdu.

The discussion further engaged with the question of British patronage from a postcolonial perspective, examining how colonial institutions and knowledge systems played a constitutive role in shaping Urdu prose. Rather than viewing this influence solely in terms of enrichment or progress, the panel emphasized the ambivalence of colonial intervention, highlighting how it simultaneously enabled new forms of prose while also reordering indigenous literary hierarchies and epistemologies.

In his concluding remarks, Dr. Sajid Siddiq Nizami reflected on the broader implications of his research, offering a detailed overview of the book and its methodologies. He underscored the importance of revisiting the history of Urdu prose through the lens of transformation, arguing that such an approach allows for a more inclusive and empirically grounded account that incorporates early scientific, philosophical, and non-fictional writings often overlooked in conventional literary histories. He also connected this historical inquiry to contemporary critical concerns, suggesting that a re-evaluation of prose traditions can inform present-day debates on language, knowledge production, and literary form.

Overall, the session established that the history of Urdu prose cannot be adequately understood through linear narratives of progress but must instead be approached as a complex process shaped by stylistic shifts, institutional interventions, and changing epistemic frameworks. By foregrounding tahavvulāt as a critical concept, the discussion opened up new ways of reading Urdu literary history—ones that remain attentive to discontinuity, plurality and interplay between language and power.