Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | Speaking Tree Website | Monday July 15, 2013

Altaf Husain Hali (1873-1914) was fond of didactic poetry and considered it superior to all others. He reviewed classical Urdu poetry from this angle and found it wanting. It appeared to him to be full of pure exaggeration and fantasy, impossible tales of love and beauty, and fictitious flights of imagination.

The people, who took pride in classical Urdu poetry and considered it a priceless heritage, did not take well of this criticism. They could not bear anybody calling their treasure trove worthless and they turned against him. They began publishing abusive and rude articles against the critic. In the face of this deluge, Hali adopted a policy of complete silence. Hence, Oudh "Punch' printed a sarcastic elegy. One of its stanzas ran

"Our attacks cast a long shadow over Hali. He is devastated like the battlefield of Panipat."

But all the accusations and the raging tempest remained totally one-sided. That is why Hali's opponents could not go on in this vein for long. After a while they grew silent. Somebody asked Hali: "What has silenced your enemies? It did no look as if they were ever going to be quite." In reply to this query Hali wrote a poem. One of its couplets

"You ask, why have the critics grown silent. They said what they had to; we kept our peace."

Only a serious objection or a scholarly criticism might be considered worth taking note of. If the criticism is sound, and further, if the argument is supported by a reasonable proof, then it should be accepted and the errors analysed.

But if the opposition is mounted merely for its own sake, is bereft of scholarship and depth, is not based on facts but resorts to nit-picking and fault-finding, then the best reaction is silence. To try to answer such people is an exercise in futility and as useless as reading a sermon to a braying donkey.

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