Urdu literature saw a “Reform boom” in the second half of nineteenth century. Most of the literati were engaged in understanding, and presenting their views on, the rapidly changing world around them. This article analyses a text produced in 1893 by Shad Azeemabadi, enhancing the need for reform in the Zenana. By underscoring the relationship of…[Read more]

Nazir Ahmad, often considered to be the first Urdu novelist, used narratives for understanding the quickly changing world around him, and in his work, shaped expanding possibilities and new roles for Muslim ashrāf women. Although he is usually thought of as a cleric who had a traditional approach towards society and new forms of knowledge, in…[Read more]

This article explores the normalization of Ashraf Culture and Colonizers in Majalis un-Nisa. It is argued that the colonial authorities tried at their capacity to keep themselves at length from the colonized physically and disseminated the discourse of colonial difference to present themselves as role models symbolically. While preparing the…[Read more]

Identity is a cultural construction. Literary genres also take part in this process. In novel, characters’ particular traits are selected and their actions’ interpreted by the writer in their cultural context. Even the historical novel is no exception. While presenting the historical persons the selection and interpretation are derived from…[Read more]

Identity is the construction of the cultural process of a people, i.e. the social milieu in turn defines and shapes humans into the kinds of individuals they are. This shaping of identity is carried further and represented through the literature of a culture as well. It is the characters which come to stand for certain traits and the kinds of…[Read more]

To determine the social status of a person, Sorokin coined the idea of social space. This theme is useful in analyzing the relative position of a person in her/his group and her/his horizontal or vertical movement within and to other groups. Novel is a symbolic space, which makes possible for writers to construct the relative social status of…[Read more]

Generalizations in scholarly works may prove helpful in understanding different literary trends of an era but not without losing many nuances. In Urdu, 19th Century is interpreted in binary oppositional manner with Sir Syed a pivotal point and other writers were considered either his extension or his rivals. The classic example of this…[Read more]

Colonial predicament brought forth new social possibilities and challenges for Indian subjects. To accommodate, assimilate or resist these changes they used printed word. This technology provided them the space to understand, interpret and construct the situation and disseminate their thoughts and reactions in forms of literary genres. They…[Read more]

Colonial predicament made the life and its understanding complex in the Subcontinent. To represent this complexity, Urdu writers found the polyphonic genre, i.e. the novel helpful. They used different techniques of characterization to narrate the social hierarchy of characters. The novel also provided the space for them to attract the people with…[Read more]

he parallel world of words is called fiction. The imagination of writer uses her/his everyday experience and language to create this world. Rafique Hussain, an Urdu Short story writer, had spent decades in Terai’s Jungles of northern India. He uses his wildlife experience to construct his fictional world. This makes his short stories a world of…[Read more]

Urdu fiction went through a substantial change during the colonial period. The colonial discourse narrated and disseminated through different technologies of educational subjugation and epistemological usurpation in official and historical works brought forth some serious changes in the world view of Urdu fiction writers. They discovered and…[Read more]