Liking Progress, Loving Change

Abstract

The aim of this book is to trace the birth, development, and decline of the Progressive Writers’ Movement (PWM) in the context of Urdu, and study the reasons thereof. This study begins not with the first All-India Progressive Writers’ Conference in April 1936, nor even with the publication of a book called Angarey in 1932 which is generally regarded as the harbinger of literary radicalism in Urdu literature. Instead, it begins with tracing the gradual emergence of political and social consciousness from the mid-nineteenth century as reflected in the Urdu literature of this period. Noting the appearance of modern trends in Urdu prose and poetry, the initial chapters establish the existence of revision, reform, and even radicalism in Urdu literature. Subsequent chapters show how the introduction of socialist thought served as a catalyst for this process of change and the communist ideology strengthened the idea of socially engaged literature. However, for every liberal there was a rigid practitioner of progressivism, and some members of the PWA could not escape the pitfalls of ‘excessive devotion to a cause’. The diktat of a core group of ideologues cleft the PWA and caused many who were sympathetic to the progressive cause and ideology to drift away from PWM. Independence and the creation of Pakistan, as well as the rise of Modernism, further contributed to its decline.