Medieval literature in Muslim cultural languages—Arabic, Persian and Turkish-had an erotic content. It was formulaic in the sense that beauty, both female and boyish, was described in certain fixed, conventional terms. Sexual desire was also described as the normal response to beauty
The major aim of this brief version of my chapter (No. 7) from my book From Hindi to Urdu (2011) is to document the presence of the amorous and erotic themes in Urdu writings of the nineteenth century. Such themes have been mentioned is several contexts by several scholars who will be mentioned below but there is no attempt to explore the reasons why Urdu was associated with the amorous and the erotic at during the period of our study. Very briefly then, Urdu became the symbol of the Muslim political identity in India during the Pakistan movement and helped ‘imagine’ or ‘construct’—in Benedict Anderson’s sense (1983)—both Muslim and Hindu ‘nations’. After partition Pakistan’s ruling elite used the symbol of Urdu to construct a Pakistani identity which would dominate and suppress the ethnic identities of the country, an attempt which the Bengali, Sindhi, Pashto-speaking and Balochi ethnic elites contested. Since these ethnic elites often espoused non-establishment, left-leaning views, Urdu came to be associated with official Pakistani nationalism and Islam. It is also associated with non-elitist schooling in Pakistan (the elitist one being in English) as has been brought out in several publications. However, the association with Islam was gaining in strength and salience since the nineteenth century when Urdu started replacing Persian and Arabic as the major language of South Asian Islam. In post-partition India too Urdu remains a symbol of Muslim identity and is very much in evidence in Muslim minority politics.In view of the salience of these political and ideological identities of Urdu, it is ignored that from the late eighteenth century onwards till almost the end of the beginning of the twentieth century the language was associated with the amorous and the erotic as well as the other variables of Muslim identity, Islam, Muslim political aspirations in South Asia and education some of which have been given above. This particular association, with the amorous and the erotic, was primarily with Urdu poetry but, since the language was taught through literature, it was extended to the language itself. The reformers of Muslim society, aware of this nexus, tried to break it and, instead, strengthen the association with Islam which, too, was formed during the same period. As the educated gentry (ashraf) studied Persian texts till the middle of the nineteenth century, the British officials and the Muslim reformers made deliberate attempts to purge the curricula of them. The erotic and the amorous was associated with moral degeneration, decadence and blamed for backwardness and political defeat of the Muslim ruling elite. For the ulema (clergy) it was not only associated with all these but was also a great sin. Thus, in order to regenerate a powerful Muslim ‘nation’ (qaum) a new literature, chaste and moral, had to be created. This moral and political imperative and the steps taken to bring the amorous and erotic themes in Urdu literature in disrepute and create a culture shame and silence about them have been described in some detail in my book Language, Ideology and Power 2002: 499-515). Indeed, they continue to this date with the textbook committees excluding love poetry, even from the masters of the ghazal, out of the curriucula and the Pakistan Television being squeamish about a married couple holding hands on the screen.
The erotic is excluded to such an extent from the officially constructed identities of Pakistani Muslims that the classics of Persian and Arabic, which are proudly owned as being Muslim heritage languages, are not read in unexpurgated editions in Pakistani universities. Hardly any scholars touch the erotic as a subject of serious research though any writings on the subject become popular among that group of the intelligentsia of Urdu letters which can only be described as the equivalent of ‘the Other Victorians’. For instance, Zamir Uddin Ahmad’s study of the sexuality of the beloved created a sensation and has had several reprints. Works of scholarship on such themes have been published by South Asians living, or at least publishing, in the West but those published in Pakistan and India are superficial and lack analysis. This is hardly surprising considering that in Pakistan the construction of the Muslim identity suppresses the erotic, associating it with the decadent ‘West’ or the sensational nudity of Bollywood. And in India it is a theme which does not bear placing in a serious context either in Muslim politics or in the Hindutva one for both of which it is a stigma to be shunned. In short, the reformist discourse excludes the erotic and amorous for ideological and political reasons.
Such exclusion began in the nineteenth century and some of the reformist themes of the literature produced in Urdu during this period bears closer re-examination because it tells us what kind of associations existed in the minds of the educated public about much of Urdu poetry.
The place of the erotic in Muslim literature
Medieval literature in Muslim cultural languages—Arabic, Persian and Turkish-had an erotic content. This was natural, one part of life among many others, and was not the exclusive focus of the narrative. It was formulaic in the sense that beauty, both female and boyish, was described in certain fixed, conventional terms. Sexual desire was also described as the normal response to beauty. The sexual organs and intercourse itself were described in metaphorical, stylized, language though at places body parts were also referred to in words normally tabooed in society. This, however, was not in an erotic context as it is in pornography. The point is that, unlike the pornographer, the authors of classical literature in Muslim cultural languages were representing life—the whole of life that is—through certain conventional narrative devices.
Abdelwahab Bouhdiba, writing on the role of sexuality in Islamic cultures, suggests that eroticism ‘is integrated in the Islamic view of the world and is situated at the heart, not at the periphery, of ethics’. Elaborating upon this theme he introduces the concept of mujun which he explains as follows:
Observe the ambiguous and equivocal richness of the root ma ja na, which signifies, according to the lisān al ‘Arab, the density, the depth, the lack of shame, the frivolity, the gratuity, the art of mixing the serious and the lighthearted, pretended austerity, true banter. Mujūn is the art of referring to the most indecent things, speaking about them in such a lighthearted way that one approaches them with a sort of loose humour. In principle mujūn ought not to go beyond words. It is oneirism, collective experience and liberation through speech.
The One Thousand Nights and One Night (Alf Laila wal Lail) is considered an example of a narrative with erotic passages of the mujūn genre. But the famous Alf Laila, paradigmatic though it is, the not the only example of literature with a healthy, accepting, attitude towards the erotic. Almost all the classics of Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature have the same attitude.
The Masnawi of Mawlana Jalal-ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273), considered one of the most influential works in the Muslim world, and one which educated South Asian Muslims were acquainted with and held in high esteem, is said to embody the esoteric meaning of the Qur’ an (hast Qur’ an dar zaban-e-Farsi= is the Qur’ an in the Persian language). It is a six-volume work about the concept of the oneness of God (tawhid), redemption of the soul through mystical processes, the desire to seek union with the deity and other moral and spiritual themes. It is full of anecdotes, fables and aphorisms somehow related to the above deeply religious themes. And yet, in common with medieval norms of writing in the Muslim world, there are fables which would now be considered erotic and even obscene. The Mawlana also uses both the accepted, respectable words for the human anatomy and also ones which have earthy connotations and are tabooed in respectable writings today. Modern Pakistanis would find them shockingly indelicate and teaching them to students of any age would be out of the question.
In short, to understand the presence of the erotic in Urdu literature one has to consider it in a historical perspective. The Indian Muslim elite was brought up on the classics of Persian literature and also had access to such well known texts as the Alf Laila. These formative influences gave them an understanding of the conventions of literature in which the erotic had a place of its own. Thus, without invoking theories of the decadence of society as a consequence of the loss of political power, one can explain the presence of the erotic in Urdu literature with reference to history and convention.
A reading of texts from the medieval Indian period clearly shows that power was manifested in the possession of coercive ability which gave a person the ability to gratify himself (women were generally excluded from power) by possessing tangible and intangible goods (such as prestige). Among the tangible goods were sex objects—women and beautiful boys. Thus the Mughal rulers had large harems and a very active sex life. It was when political power was lost that people, especially reformers and apologists of this ruthless power, started propagating the theory that sexual excesses or promiscuity brought about the ruin of the Mughal (or other) empires.
Although Muslim political power was challenged by the eighteenth century in India, their cultural dominance was very much in place. Indeed, the British rulers themselves adopted the dress, etiquette, cuisine and the values—and even the religion sometimes—of the aristocratic Muslims becoming what William Darlymple calls the ‘white Mughals’ (Darlymple 2003). Thus, it was not a new breakdown of sexual norms but a continuation of older established patterns—established during the age of political power—which oft-quoted works like the Muraqqa-e-Dilli represent. The Muraqqa’s author, Dargah Quli Khan (1710-1766) was a nobleman from Aurangabad who lived in Delhi from 1738 to 1741. He describes the capital of the declining Mughal empire as a place devoted to pleasures of all kinds. The public places were full of beautiful women and boys and the powerful indulged themselves with both. The descriptions of boy dancers and women who painted their bare legs as if they were wearing tight trousers may give one the feeling that Delhi was the most decadent of cities in the eighteenth century. But Paris and London, at the height of their colonial power, had all the pleasures which Delhi possessed. Similarly the Lucknow of the Nawabs which Abdul Halim Sharar describes was not more profligate than, say, London, though, of course, the practice of having many women in the harem was reminiscent of medieval Muslim capitals at the height of their power. The social and literary norms for describing the sexual practices of European cities were, of course, different. But they were not any more virtuous even in Victorian England than Indian cities. Thus, the real reason why the erotic element in Urdu literature is condemned so unequivocally these days is not because such pleasures were found in certain urban centres or the rich indulged in them but because it is the product of a militarily defeated culture. And when one is defeated everything one does or possesses can be, and generally is, condemned. The defeat is not easy to explain and the tendency of everyone, most of all the reformers of the defeated party, is to blame pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, for the defeat.
The erotic theme in early Urdu writings
The earliest specimens of the erotic in Urdu poetry go back to the time of Muslim power not to its decline. A certain poet called Qureshi wrote a masnavi called ‘Bhog Bal’ in 1613 in Dakkani Urdu. It has twelve chapters describing sexual matters.
However, since Urdu came into its own at the time of the decline of Muslim political power, probably the most obscene of the Urdu poets is also one of the earliest, at least in north India. This is Meer Mohammad Jafar Zatalli (d. 1713). He was a satirist in both Persian and Urdu and the obscene words he uses are not a part of the Urdu erotic tradition. Nor are they meant for evoking sexual pleasure. Instead, they are obviously meant to shock, outrage, express contempt and belittle others. Zatalli lived at a time of political instability after Aurangzeb’s death. He responded to it by making fun of it. He was murdered, probably at the instigation of king Farrukh Siyar (r. 1713-1719), in 1713. Zatalli created no tradition. His effect on Urdu literature is minimal. So it is not because of his use of obscenities that Urdu literature came to be associated with love and sex.
Another 18th century work is Sayyid Sirajuddin Aurangabad’s (1715-1763) Bustan-i-khayal (written before 1783 when he stopped writing poetry). This is actually a sufi narrative—major theme of both Persian and Urdu poetry—about finding the source of permanent bliss. The narrator loves a boy who is indifferent to him. Although another boy, the son of a chief (Sardar), gives him attention, the narrator remains disconsolate. The beloved alternates between warmth and cold disdain till the narrator turns to God in whom he finds real love.
Najmuddin Shah Mubarak Abru (1683-1733), a poet of Urdu, wrote a poem called ‘Advice for the adornment of a Beloved’. In this the narrator meets a beautiful boy who was, however, unsophisticated in the art of charming men. The narrator starts advising him how to behave like a ‘beloved’. Above all, the boy must know when to stop behaving like a ‘beloved’(mashuq) and become a lover (ashiq)in his turn. So, when the hair on his face coarsen, he must ‘then give up the desire to be adored/don’t overdress or act coy any more’. That is when he must transit to the role of the lover and ‘enjoy the company of beauteous ones’.
But Abru’s focus is not pornography; not even erotica. He is discussing the norms of role-playing in a conventional society. Moreover, he is upholding decency because, like the behavioral norms enjoined upon the Greek boy (eromenos or ephebe), there were certain forms of good behaviour expected form the amrad also. Abdul Haleem Sharar also tells us that adolescent boys combed their hair in such a way on their foreheads that ‘attraction like women was created in them also’.
This is a short version of Chapter 7 entitled ‘Urdu as the Language of Love’ in my book From Urdu to Hindi: A Social and Political History (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 164-198. It is being reprinted with thanks to the Oxford University Press, Pakistan.
| The writer is Distinguished National Professor Emeritus of Linguistic History. |