The Oxford India Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals.

• Author: Hyder, Syed Akbar
• Position: Book review

The Oxford India Ghalib: Life, Letters and Ghazals. Edited by RALPH RUSSELL. New Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003. Pp. viii + 572. Rs. 1125.

Mirza Asadullah Khan "Ghalib" (1797-1869) has aroused much critical acclaim and popular adoration in South Asia. In fact, he is arguably one of the most significant South Asian literary personalities, one who has figured prominently in televisual and theatrical imaginaries, political rhetoric, and socio-literary reform movements of the twentieth century. Most of his biographies have a hagiographic tone, and his devotees have celebrated the Urdu literary oeuvre he bequeathed to posterity as divinely inspired. In addition to crafting exquisite Urdu poetry and prose, he also produced a much larger corpus of Persian writing. The present book is a useful reference volume that sheds light on the verses and worlds of Ghalib. Edited by Ralph Russell, a veteran Ghalib scholar with a deep and sympathetic interest in Urdu literature, the book has two interwoven parts, the first one (two chapters) concentrating on Ghalib's prose and the second one (six chapters) on his poetry. These eight chapters have been previously published in toto or part, but much to my surprise there is no clear acknowledgment of all the other books, chapters, or articles that make up the present volume. For example, Russell, through the Lotus Collection series, published The Famous Ghalib (2000), which, for the most part, has been incorporated into the volume under review, though unmentioned there. The absence of proper bibliography is regrettable. Notwithstanding these omissions, I agree with the editor that this is "the most comprehensive compendium of Ghalib's work."

Ralph Russell has assembled much useful material generated by his collaboration with Khurshidul Islam as well as by two distinguished scholars of South Asia and Persian literature, Percival Spear and A. Bausani. These scholars not only speak with paramount authority but with an eloquence and lucidity that make Ghalib appealing to English-speaking laypersons across geographical borders. Ghalib's life and times, shaped by the vicissitudes of nineteenth-century India, are captured in the letters of the poet, as well as from contemporary sources and government records. Russell and Islam have translated Ghalib's letters--which are masterpieces of Urdu prose due to their unassuming style, inimitable wit, and measured sincerity--with great care for nineteenth-century...