Literary Notes: Deccan's Urdu literature and Abdul Qadir Sarwari.

Byline: Rauf Parekh

BACK in 1930, some scholars from Deccan had a perception that Moulvi Abdul Haq was not publishing enough works by the old maestros of Urdu who belonged to Deccan. These scholars decided that something must be done.

Moulvi Abdul Haq, popularly known as Baba-i-Urdu, had edited and published many manuscripts that were penned by Deccan's writers. He had introduced many of Urdu's literary works written centuries ago in Deccan. In fact, it was Moulvi Abdul Haq who had introduced Quli Qutub Shah - a 16th-century Urdu poet and ruler of Deccan whose mother tongue was Telugu - and his Urdu divan in a 1922 issue of Urdu.

Urdu was a research journal published by Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu and edited by Moulvi Abdul Haq. As a result, it was established that Quli Qutub Shah, and not Vali Dakani, was the first poet to have compiled an entire divan in Urdu. Anjuman's offices, too, were established at Aurangabad (Deccan) from where Moulvi Sahib would do his research work.

Interestingly, some scholars of today, notably Shamsur Rahman Farooqi, too, believe that the poets and scholars from North (Delhi and other literary hubs in northern India) tried to underrate or even ridicule the poets of Urdu from Deccan though Deccan was the true cradle of Urdu literature. The fact that the Urdu language was born in the North (Delhi and adjoining regions) but Urdu literature's earliest written works are found in the South (Deccan and Gujarat) is curious and fascinating. But many scholars from Deccan were not convinced with the hard work put in by Anjuman and Moulvi Sahib and felt that there was so much more to Urdu's golden era in Deccan that needed to be introduced to the world more vigorously.

So on January 1, 1931, a new organisation named Idara-i-Adabiyaat-i-Urdu (IAU) was established at Hyderabad, a city founded by Quli Qutub Shah in 1591. Later on, Hyderabad was the capital of the State of Deccan and after Deccan's forced annexation by India in 1948, it was made a part of Andhra Pradesh in 1956.

The moving spirit behind the establishment of IAU was, of course, Dr Mohiuddin Qadri Zor who had just returned from Europe after having obtained higher degrees in linguistics. Zor had joined Osmania University's Urdu department. But there were four other scholars who joined hands and are credited as being the founding members of IAU along with Dr Zor. The other four were: Prof Abdul Majeed Siddiqi, Prof Moulvi Abdul Qadeer Siddiqi, Prof Naseeruddin Hashmi...