The ghazal in Urdu represents the most popular form of subjective
poetry, while the nazm exemplifies the objective kind, often reserved
for narrative, descriptive, didactic or satirical purposes. Under the
broad head of the nazm we may also include the classical forms of poems
known by specific names such as masnavi (a long narrative poem in
rhyming couplets on any theme: romantic, religious, or didactic),
marsia (an elegy traditionally meant to commemorate the martyrdom of
Hazrat Imam Hussain and his comrades of the Karbala fame), or qasida (a
panegyric written in praise of a king or a nobleman), for all these
poems have a single presiding subject, logically developed and
concluded. However, these poetic species have an old world aura about
their subject and style, and are different from the modern nazm,
supposed to have come into vogue in the later part of the nineteenth
century.
In order to understand the distinguishing features of the nazm it will
be helpful to place it by the side of the ghazal and mark the point of
contrast and resemblance between the two. The ghazal, as is well-known,
is a short poem, generally of seven, nine or at most, of a dozen
couplets in the same metre. It always opens with a rhyming couplet
called “matla”, and ends with the “maqta”, which often includes the
pen-name of the poet. It follows a set rhyming pattern: aa, ba, ca, da,
and so on. The nazm is not bound by any such considerations of length
or rhyme scheme. There could be a long nazm like Iqbal’s “Shikwa”,
which contains as many as 186 lines, or a short one like Iqbal’s “Ram”,
with only twelve lines. Further, the poet of the nazm is free to adopt
any metrical arrangement that suits his subject or mood. A large number
of nazms, such as Mir’s “Khwab-O-Khayal”, or Josh Malihabadi’s
“Kissan”, are written in separately rhyming couplets which, however,
observe the discipline of a uniform metre throughout the poem. Some
nazms like Chakbast’s “Ramayan ka ek scene”, or Mehroom’s “Noor Jahan
ka Mazaar”, use another popular poetic measure called “musaddas”, a
unit of six lines, consisting of a rhyming quatrain and a couplet on a
different rhyme. Iqbal’s poem, “Ram”, follows the rhyming pattern of
the ghazal in all the couplets but the last, which, to give the effect
of finality, makes use of a new and different rhyme.
A group of progressive writers of the early decades of the 20th century
have successfully exploited the freedom and flexibility of the nazm.
Taking a cue from English poets like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, they
reject the rigidity of the regular rhyme, dispense with “radif” and
“qafia”, and opt for the medium of blank verse or free verse. A poem
written in blank verse is called “nazm-e-muarra” in Urdu. Such a poem
breaks with the tradition of “radif” and “qafia”, but observes the
sanctity of metre, and sticks to lines of equal length. The free-verse
poem called “Azad Nazm” goes a step further, for it not only discards
the rhyme, but also feels free to use lines of unequal length in the
same poem, or even in the same stanza. With the skilful manipulation of
the internal pause, and by avoiding the frequent use of end-stopped
lines, the practitioner of this form can give a greater degree of
flexibility and naturalness to his lines, so as to bring them as close
as possible to the intonation and rhythms of natural speech. However,
even the poet of the “Azad Nazm” is careful to preserve the inner
rhythm and cadence of his verse and obeys the laws of metre, without
which his poem may forfeit its claim to be classed as poetry. It may
not be out of place to mention that despite the outstanding achievement
of “free verse” poems in the hands of poets like N. M. Rahid and
Meeraji, the traditional kind of nazm continues to delight the readers
with the incantation of its musical measures.
The nazm differs from the ghazal in another important way. The ghazal
prides itself, among other things, on the detachability and
completeness of its individual verses, which retain their sense and
effectiveness even when divorced from their context in the poem. The
verses are not bound by the law of unity and consistency. The poet of
the ghazal is at liberty to talk about love in the first verse, death
in the second, envy in the third, mysticism in the fourth, and so on.
Such is not the case with the nazm which owes its strength and identity
to the logical evolution of thought and theme. A nazm must have a
controlling thought or idea, discussed, developed and concluded, with
due regard to the laws of poetic composition. That’s why a nazm, as
against the ghazal, always carries a title summing up its central
theme. The various units of the nazm, besides subserving the need of
the central thought, must be mutually interlinked, so as to contribute
to the forward movement of narration which should culminate in an
aesthetically satisfying close. And this reminds us of the etymological
meaning of nazm, an Arabic term implying a stringing together of
pearls, or an artistic ordering of words and lines.
Although the nazm, in the aforesaid sense of a specific theme logically
developed and metrically presented, has existed in Urdu poetry since
the very early times, as can be evidenced by the nazms of Quli Qutab
Shah (1565-1611) or of Nazir Akbarabadi (1732-1830), the nazm in its
modern form may be said to have begun in the later part of the 19th
century. One cause for the revival and popularisation of the nazm was
the growing realization among the poets and readers that the
traditional ghazal was too narrow and restrictive to serve the larger
interests of life and society. No doubt, the ghazal, in the hands of
the master-poets like Mir, Sauda, Zauq or Ghalib, has demonstrated its
capacity to deal with the whole range of human experience, its one
staple subject has been love: love, earthy or ethereal, which it
treats, because of the exigencies of its form, in a characteristically
condensed and suggestive manner, with the aid of images and allusions,
without stating its case directly or in detail.
The foundation of the modern nazm was formally laid on 30 June, 1874,
when, under the aegis of the “Anjuman-e-Urdu”, a new kind of
“mushaira”, called “Munazama” (literally, a symposium of nazms), was
organized at Lahore (Pakistan). This was a unique symposium for the
reason that it gave to the participating poets not a “tarah misra” (a
line of poetry which was to serve them as a model for their poetical
exertions, in terms of mood, metre, and rhyme), but a specific topic to
build their poems upon. In fact, the “munazama” extended the freedom of
the poets not only in the choice of the size and shape of the poems,
but also in the matter of subject and theme. The poet of the nazm could
now write on any subject under the sun, provided it stirred his
imagination, and contained the potential for striking a responsive
chord in the hearts of the readers. The first topic prescribed for this
poetical gathering was “Zamistan” (Winter Season), which shows a
turning towards the poetry of nature from an age-long obsession with
amatory themes. Mohammed Hussain Azad read his poem, “Shab-e-Qadar”, on
this occasion, which was highly acclaimed.
But it was Altaf Hussain Hali, who in his poems like “Hub-e-Watan”,
“Barkha Rut”, “Chup ki Daad”, and “Bewa ki Munajaat”, as also in his
masterpiece, “Musaddis-a-Hali”, blazed a new train and used the long
Urdu nazm as an instrument of social and moral reform. Hali also used
the nazm for interpreting the beauties of nature - a theme which was
more or less neglected, or treated marginally by the poets of classical
ghazal. It was he again who in his prose treatise,
“Muqaddama-e-Shair-o-Shairi”, underscored the limitations of the
classical ghazal and pointed out the hollowness of its hackneyed
themes, thus putting the nazm on a surer path of progress.
Hali’s poems draw into focus an important feature of the nazm. While
the ghazal has been primarily used as an instrument of aesthetic and
intellectual pleasure, and a source of courtly entertainment, the nazm
combines pleasure with purpose, and expends its resources in the
service of society. It is more useful, more pragmatic, more earth-bound
form of poetry, loaded generally with a moral and a message. It
believes in the dictum of art for life sake, as against the aesthetic
creed of art for art sake. This as true of the poems of Hali, as of
Akbar Allahabadi, Chakbast, Mohammed Iqbal, Josh Malihabadi, or, for
that matter, of the poems of Nazir Akbarabadi, which, though written
long before the revival of the nazm in the modern form, are all
addressed to the needs of the common man, and deal with issues of
universal import, in a language that may truly be called the language
of every-day speech.
There is another relevant point to be noted. The nazm which began as a
reaction against the domination of the ghazal gives precedence to
reason over imagination, and not vice versa, as was done heretofore.
Instead of taking the reader into the intricate depths of the human
mind, or on flights of fancy beyond this world, the nazm prefers to
keep its feet planted on this earth, which is the earth of all of us,
and is content to portray real life in a relatively realistic way.
A peculiar beauty of the ghazal lies in its brevity and suggestiveness,
in its ability to express in just two lines what will need a much
longer space if stated directly and in detail. As the nazm is not bound
by the restriction of length, or by the discipline of the rhyming
order, it can afford a more discursive, and a more detailed exploration
of its essential subject than the ghazal. The availability of a larger
canvas enables the poet of the nazm to survey and record the vast
panorama of life including the sights and scenes of nature, oddities
and jealousies of man, vagaries of time and fate, atrocities of the
strong and the sufferings of the poor, besides, of course, the
all-important affairs of the heart. It is significant that Faiz Ahmed
Faiz, when he turns to take stock of “problems other than those of
love” (dukh aur bhi hain zamaane mein mahabbat ke siva), chooses the
mould of the nazm in preference to that of the ghazal, though he is
equally at home in both these genres. The capaciousness of the nazm
makes it specially relevant to the modern world, riddled as it is with
ever-new problems of social, cultural, or political sort.
That the form of the nazm is capable of responding to the changing
needs of the times, is borne out by the works of several poets
contained in this volume. When the movement for Home Rule was at its
height, it found its voice in the poems of Chakbast, when Hindu Muslim
unity was the need of the hour, poets like Hali and Iqbal came out with
patriotic songs such as “Hub-e-Watan” and “Tarana-e-Hind”; when, under
the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the flag of rebellion was unfurled
against the British regime, Josh Malihabadi came to the fore with his
stirring poems like “Baghawat”, and “Zawal-e-Jahanbani”, and when
socialistic ideas gained currency among the Indian intelligensia, a
group of progressive poets such as Faiz, Sahir and N. M. Rashid emerged
on the scene to defend the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, and to
glorify the Red Revolution. The nazm as such has always measured up to
the needs of the people, something which the ghazal alone could not
have so successfully done.
Lest we overstate the useful and hortatory role of the nazm, we should
read the poems of Akhtar Sheerani and Majaz Lucknavi, both of whom
return with a vengeance to the world of love and lyricism, though this
lyricism, in the case of Majaz at least, is mingled with a strong note
of protest against the inequities of the social order. The romantic
note insistently heard in their poems is meant to remind us that,
despite our preoccupation with social and political issues, love will
continue to play a pivotal role in the arena of art and life. And then
there are poems like “be karan raat ke sannaate mein” (N. M. Rashid),
and “samunder ka bulawa” (Meeraji), which demonstrate that the poet of
the nazm has not surrendered his right to be introvert or
introspective. He can, if his subject demands, take the reader into the
interior realm of his mind and thought, and back again to the world of
physical and social realities. All this speaks volumes for the sweep
and scope of the nazm.
I would conclude this note with a word of caution. Despite the multiple
merits of the nazm, and despite its relevance to the drama of real
life, it holds no threat to the power and popularity of the ghazal,
which in the hands of such consummate artists as Jigar, Asghar, Faiz,
Fani or Firaq, has amply proved its worth as an imperishable art form,
fully equipped to fathom the mysteries of the human mind, or tap the
complexities of love and life. As a matter of fact, the ghazal and the
nazm are complementary rather than mutually exclusive poetic forms, and
their areas of artistic functioning have a tendency to overlap. The two
together enable us to make the two essential voyages: the voyage
within, to strange countries not visible to the actual senses, and the
voyage without, in the external world of social, religious, natural, or
political phenomenon.
