By TCN News,
New Delhi: The VII annual Sajjad Zaheer Memorial Lecture was organised by the Department of Urdu in Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) on Thursday. The lecture was delivered by Professor Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, eminent Urdu scholar, at Tagore Hall, Dayar-I Mir Taqi Mir, JMI.
The lecture was chaired by Professor Sadiqur Rehman Kidwai, former Head of the Department of Urdu, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The programme was anchored by Professor Shahzad Anjum; Professor Wahajuddin Alvi, HoD, Urdu, gave the introductory remarks and welcomed the speaker. Dr Kausar Mazhari provided a brief outline of Sajjad Zaheer’s life and literary career.
Professor Shamsur Rahman Faruqi gave an interesting account of his memories of Sajjad Zaheer and noted that despite the differences in ideology, (Sajjad Zaheer being one of the pioneers of the Progressive Writers’ Movement and Faruqi the leading proponent of Modernism in Urdu) they could appreciate and learn from each other. He described Sajjad Zaheer as a brilliant and magnetic personality.
Thursday’s lecture’s focus was on Urdu writer Manzar Saleem. Faruqi pointed out that behind glamorous names like Kaifi Azmi, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Jan Nisar Akhtar, Khadija Mastoor, Ismat Chughtai and others, there stood concealed, some people who made the name and fame of the above mentioned writers possible.
He went on to explain, that for every generation to have its “star writers”, there is required an environment, in other words, a climate, which is created by people of quality, who, for various reasons may not have been given their due by the readership of the times. Manzar Saleem is one such case. He stands out amongst the Progressives for displaying the presence of a “self”. One could say that even his love poetry is exploratory and contains an admission of suffering with no element of the “panchayati tone” in it. The lecture was made even more pleasurable by some very relevant she’rs which were read out by Faruqi in his flourishing classic manner.
The lecture was very well attended. The audience included eminent international scholars, like Professor Chaudhary Naim, Rizwanullah Farooqui, Professor Khalid Mahmood, Dr Shahnaz Anjum, Dr Asmat Jahan and other faculty members of Jamia Millia Islamia.