The Grand Old Man of Urdu

By Khushwant Singh

RALPH Russell was professor of Urdu in the School of Oriental Studies in London. During his tenure, he published several books on Urdu literature: Three Mughal Poets, Ghalib: Life and Letters (with Khurshidul Islam), The Pursuit of Urdu Literature, Ghalib: The Poet and His Age and Hidden in the Lute. The most widely circulating Urdu journal in the world, Jung, gave him the title Baba-e-Urdu — the Grand Old Man of Urdu.

There have been, and are, many foreigners who mastered the Urdu language and wrote learned theses on different aspects of its literature. The one thing that makes Ralph Russell stand out in this coterie of Oriental scholars is that he not only learnt to speak and write the language fluently but also took pains to get to know the people whose mother-tongue it was. So he visited India and Pakistan frequently and participated in seminars and mushairas. He befriended Pakistanis settled in England and stayed with their families in Pakistan’s villages, ate the food they ate, and like his hosts bathed with the men folk at the mosque well. Despite his deep sympathies with Muslims, he had little patience with Islamic fundamentalists like Maulana Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-i-Islami or Ayatollah Khomeini. Although he found Salman Rushdie unreadable, he wrote against the fatwa the Ayatollah pronounced against him. Russell discarded Christianity and belief in God at the age of 15 and proudly declared himself an atheist.

Though Russell had no use for religion, he did not question people’s right to adhere to whatever faith they wanted. In an article, he once wrote that many Urdu poets declared their lack of faith in some tenets of Islam, like the necessity of performing Haj (pilgrimage), the five daily prayers and abominating worship of idols, but still called themselves Muslims. A Muslim challenged him to provide evidence in support of his statement. Russell quoted chapter and verse to show up his statement: "Drink wine, and burn the Quran, and throw fire into the Kaba, Dwell in the house of idols — and do not harm your fellow men."

The lines are from either Khaqeni or Hafiz. Mir Taqi Mir was even more explicit: "I am a Muslim. I love these idols. There is no god but God. Come Shaikhji, pawn your prayer mat for a cup of wine. Spend all your stock of piety on wine."

"Today Mir again led the prayers in the Great Mosque — that Mir who yesterday was washing the wine-stains from his prayer mat. Does anyone practice submission (to the laws of Islam) when the clouds sway mightily in the sky? Ascetic, now is the time, if you can, to sin. Why do you ask now what Mir’s religion is? He has put on the caste-mark, sat himself down in the temple, and long ago abandoned Islam."

Right to this day Muslims take Allah lightly but take offence if anyone casts aspersions on the divinity of the Prophet — "Ba khuda deevaana basho, ba Mohammed hoshiaar. This error was made by Salman Rushdie in his The Satanic Verses. And ever since its publication he has been on the run for his life.

Ralph Russell now leads a retired life. He has been made Emeritus Lecturer in the SOAS where he spent most of his creative years. He and his admirers continue to dig up papers he had read at seminars, texts of speeches he delivered at literary gatherings and publish them. They make very pleasant and informative reading. The most recent is How Not to Write the History of Urdu Literature and Other Essays on Urdu and Islam (OUP). The last in this compilation is entitled An Infidel Among Believers. It is as clear and bold a rejection of religion as Bertrand Russell’s in his book Why I am Not a Christian. Ralph Russell writes:

"I became an atheist in 1933, at the age of 15, and have remained one ever since. I could not, and still cannot, see any rational proof of the existence of God, and it seems to me that if you assert the existence of God the burden of proof is upon you, not upon those of us who make no such assertion. I also felt, and still feel, that the common view of God held by religious people or at any rate by Christians and Muslims, that God is both all-powerful and all-merciful is totally irrational. He could be one or the other, but not both. (In later years, a Jesuit friend of mine said that God is omnipotent, but that doesn’t mean that he can do anything. For example, he can’t create another God. It didn’t occur to me until later, but this means that ‘omnipotent’ is a meaningless word.) As for his alleged all-kindness, when Milton wrote (and Christians still sing today) ‘All things living he doth feed’, he wrote something which he knew perfectly well was not true. And if, as Mrs Alexander said, God created ‘all things bright and beautiful’ He also created all things dark and ugly.

So I abandoned belief in God and looked for belief in something else. The something else I discovered was humanism, though I didn’t know that word at the time. And humanism led to communism, and I joined the Communist Party. In those days sensitive and intelligent people knew pretty well what you believed in if you called yourself a communist, but that, of course, has long ceased to be the case.

A time came when I had to explain that I was not a ‘Soviet communist’, or a ‘Chinese communist’, or an ‘Italian communist’, but just a communist communist. Here it will be enough to say that I am still content to call myself a communist, but I have never accepted, and do not now accept, any version of communism which is not in accord with humanism and respect for human rights."

Imitative humour

The limerick is as British as the bull dog and Winston Churchill. There is a lot more to it than five lines of nonsense verse with the first, second and the fifth in rhyme, and the third and the fourth with rhyme of their own. It requires pungent wit packed in a few telling words. Many Indians have composed limericks on their political, social leaders and celebrities. Few, if any, have succeeded in producing anything worthwhile. There is always an element of artificiality about their compositions. Satiric Verses by S.H. Venkatramani and illustrated by Sudhir Tailang of The Hindustan Times (Macmillan) is no exception. He was given a list of men and women to write about: he did so with the help of a rhyming dictionary. As a result not one of his limericks as much as brings a wry smile on the reader’s lips. I have picked up what I thought were the best.

This is what he has to say about Rabri Devi:
"I don’t know why the issue should spark a fierce debate
If she could manage the kitchen, she can jolly well rule a state;
As long as she can sign
Everything will be fine;
In the mature Indian democracy, she is the ultimate!"

He is marginally wittier with Dr Subramanian Swamy:
"You can never be sure about who his political allies are
He is always itching for a fight, if not for a war;
Essentially a Tamilian
He is a political chameleon;
But somehow shines for ever in the media as a star!"

K.P.S. Gill is an easier target:
"To tackle extreme insurgency, he was supremely fit,
In maintaining law and order in Punjab, he was a terrific hit;
His role in the State
Has inspired debate;
And when it comes to women, he gets to the bottom of it!"

Next is the lady of the Bombay salons, Shobha De:
In vivid detail she describes the most private part
And elevates her description to the status of great art;
She is completely obsessed
With all that you do in bed;
And implies, that is all there is to an affair of the heart!