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Acknowledgements

My interest in the poetry of Josh Malihabadi was stimulated by my participation as a speaker in a symposium organized in Calgary, Canada by Iqbal Haider, founder of the Josh Literary Society. In listening to the other speakers, I found myself entranced by the richness and beauty of the poetry which hitherto I had only been casually aware of. I am also grateful for various pieces of information about Josh’s life and work that I received from Mr. Haider. These were important in giving this essay its final form, leading to its publication in A Conjugation of Art and Science (2014, Amazon Books, ed. Iqbal Haider).

In revising this essay, I am happy to acknowledge Syed-Mohsin Naquvi for his detailed comments, and thank him for typing the couplets in Urdu-nastaliq script as well as correcting a translation. And, finally, I acknowledge Sadia Manzoor for unpaid proofing of the final manuscript.

— Pervez Hoodbhoy

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1 COMMENT

  1. I note from Wikipedia’s article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Malihabadi) on the poet that,

    “Josh migrated to Pakistan in 1958 – despite Jawaharlal Nehru’s insistence against it – over what is generally believed to be his concern regarding the future of Josh and Urdu language in India, where he thought the Hindu majority would encourage the use of Hindi rather than Urdu.”

    As Prof Hoodbhoy has noted in this article, and I find it really disappointing to know that,

    “It is said that at his funeral there were only seventeen persons present – this in a country where oftentimes many hundreds, or even many thousands, turn out to mourn the departed.”

    It seems that for Josh it was perhaps a better idea not to migrate to Pakistan. Perhaps he migrated without knowing that in fact Pakistan did not deserve him.

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