While it can be argued that the ‘beloved’ is a bit of a conundrum in Urdu poetry, for it can refer to not just the lay or the divine lover but equally to a man, woman or child, there is no such ambiguity about the woman. She appears in all her resplendent glory, her manifold beauty, her many guises: temptress, seductress, tease, beguiler, goddess, teacher, mother, daughter, and yes occasionally, companion and fellow traveller. Sometimes, the ‘she’ in a seemingly romantic ghazal, especially of the Old Masters, might appear to be about a woman, whereas couched in the vocabulary of the ghazal (the ghazal itself being an amatory ode meaning ‘talking to women’), it could be about tasawwuf, or mysticism, where the ‘beloved’ is God.
On International Women’s Day, let us concentrate on the ‘progressive’ representation of women in Urdu poetry, one that is unequivocally about women.
But here, let us extend the argument to the decades preceding the arrival of the writers associated with the powerful literary grouping known as the Progressive Writers’ Association that burst upon the literary scene in the mid-1930s.