Mirza Hadi Rusva – Urdu Author – Literaturforum Indien e.V.

Mirza Hadi Rusva (Mirzā Muḥammad Hādī "Rusvā", 1857/58-1931)

Biography

Rusva, whose masterpiece Umrā'o Jān Adā (published in German as Die Kurtisane von Lakhnau) — translated into many languages and adapted for film several times — is generally regarded as the first truly modern Urdu novel, is one of the most fascinating figures in Urdu literature. Born around 1857/58 in Lucknow, he received his first education in Persian, mathematics and astronomy from his father, as well as instruction in religion, Arabic, logic and English. At sixteen he lost his father, following the earlier death of his mother, whereupon close relatives cheated him out of his inheritance. He was taken in by a friend of his father's, who also arranged his marriage but himself died soon after. Despite great financial hardship, Rusva continued his education, first earning a B.A. from Punjab University in Lahore and later passing the examination at the Thomas Engineering School in Roorkee, one of the most modern technical educational institutions in British India. He then worked for several years as a surveying engineer on railway construction in Balochistan. On his return to Lucknow he set up a chemistry laboratory to pursue his passion for chemistry and alchemy through his own experiments. He was also interested in astronomy and acquired the instruments needed for his observations. But Rusva was not only technically and scientifically minded — he was also an enthusiastic flâneur and man of pleasure, personally familiar with the demi-monde of Lucknow. He financed these costly passions by working as a teacher of mathematics, natural sciences, philosophy and Persian, and by writing romantic, crime and adventure novels. His linguistic skills and his interest in lexicology secured him, in his final years, a position at the translation bureau of Osmania University in Hyderabad, where he died of typhoid in 1931.

The Literary Work

Rusva left behind a large body of novels, poetry and a number of treatises on religion and philosophy. As already mentioned, the great majority of his later narrative works served purely to earn money, but two of his first novels brought him instant fame: Umrā'o Jān 'Adā' (1899-1900) and Sharīfzādah ("A Son of a Good Family", 1900). He had already published longer romantic poems of mediocre quality and the first part of a novel before his masterpiece, Umrāʾo Jān Adā, appeared, named after its protagonist, a successful courtesan who tells the writer and poet Rusva the story of her life. In this way the author inserts himself into the frame narrative as a character and pretends his protagonist is a real person. Towards the end of the 19th century, as the novel form gained great popularity in Urdu, it was common practice to present fictional stories as true in order to lend them greater authenticity. It must be granted that, despite a fair amount of melodrama and outlandish coincidences, the author succeeded in drawing a realistic and credible portrait of his central character. That he modelled her on a specific real person is, however, unlikely. In any case, Rusva — described as thoroughly fond of life and pleasure — knew the world of courtesans intimately from his own experience and was thus able to portray it convincingly. Despite some inconsistencies in the plot, the work is an entertaining read and is regarded as a milestone in the history of the Urdu novel, above all for its lively, often subtly ironic dialogue, its successful depiction of milieu, its avoidance of stereotypes, and its overall modern, realistic style.

In her account of her life, repeatedly interrupted by Rusva's questions and by inserted verses, the heroine looks back on her carefree childhood, her abduction by an enemy of her father who sold her to a famous Lucknow courtesan, her training in poetry, song and dance, her career as a courtesan, and her unhappy love for a Nawab. Historical events such as the Indian uprising of 1857 are mentioned only insofar as they affect personal fates; what matters more to the first-person narrator, in her summing-up at the novel's end, is the transformation of conditions brought about by British rule. She adopts the colonial discourse of feudal arbitrariness being replaced by law and order, giving the individual greater control over their own fate. She sees herself as the victim of a fate that left her no choice and cast her, through no fault of her own, into a sinful life. She admits, however, that she quickly grew accustomed to the comforts of that life. Only as she grew older did she withdraw from actively practising her profession, since when she has maintained only intellectual contacts with old friends and poets.

Particularly interesting are the heroine's reflections on the position of respectable, married women compared with courtesans. She envies a former companion in suffering who became the wife of a Nawab, but ultimately admits that she could not imagine a life in pardah (seclusion). She values too highly the freedom and autonomy that her social position and her savings afford her. Accordingly, the world of courtesans appears as a sphere of female power and economic independence unthinkable elsewhere in society. Alongside the fascination of the material's underlying eroticism and the opulent feudal culture of Lucknow — at times celebrated to excess in the film adaptations — this is surely part of the story's particular appeal.

The film adaptations of the novel (1972 in Pakistan, 1981 and 2006 in India, 2003 as a television series in Pakistan) do justice to the literary original to very different degrees. While the first Pakistani film adaptation comes across more as a parody of Lucknow's feudal culture, Rekha, in the lead role of the 1981 Indian film, embodies the character most convincingly, even though the plot was condensed to a few dramatic episodes. The 2003 Pakistani television series also departs from the novel's plot in a few additional episodes, but remains largely faithful to the literary original overall. Most of the dialogue is taken directly from the novel, and it is particularly notable that training in classical song and dance, and Umrao's own poetic output, occupy a central place — elements that play a subordinate role, or none at all, in the other films. This series thus especially foregrounds the cultural significance of courtesans, which the novel itself honours through extended verse passages and a detailed depiction of singing lessons. In one key scene, for instance, the head of the establishment points out omissions to the singing teacher, thereby demonstrating her own expertise. The character of Umrao fares worst in the 2006 Indian film version starring Aishwarya Rai in the title role, in which she is reduced entirely to a helpless victim.

Sharīfzādah was, in the author's own words, his third novel and appeared at roughly the same time as Umrā'o Jān 'Adā. Although Rusva departed considerably here from his own proclaimed creed of realism and the avoidance of didacticism, the opening sections in particular paint a vivid picture of concrete living conditions. It is a kind of Bildungsroman with a hero unusual for Urdu literature — a traditionally educated young man from a good but impoverished family, whose distress reaches the point where he collapses from hunger in the street. Compassionate people carry him to a forge, where, thanks to his knowledge of Persian, he finds work as a secretary for business correspondence and as a tutor for the master's son. Through further education he manages a career that allows him to accumulate enough means to buy a piece of land and establish himself as a capitalist farmer. While the first part of the hero's life story is strongly autobiographical, their paths then diverge. Rusva's hero, cĀbid Husain, is drawn as the perfect image of the modern, reformed Muslim. He upholds a strict work ethic, with optimal time management and thrifty, efficient use of all resources. He has no interest in — and no time for — useless pursuits such as poetry, though he concedes that his circumstances would not have permitted such indulgences anyway. His sharpest criticism is reserved for love poetry and for consorting with courtesans.

Particularly notable in this work is its respect for physical labour, highly unusual both for the educated middle class and for contemporary Urdu literature. Here too it is claimed that the protagonist is a real person, and in this work as well Rusva appears as narrator, holding numerous conversations with his hero and quoting from his letters. Whereas the narrator Rusva in Umrā'o Jān Adā at times rather represents the voice of the prevailing reform ideology and moral censorship, in Sharīfzādah he defends poetry against cĀbid Husain. It is important, too, that in both works the dialogue between protagonist and narrator ends openly. Taken together, the two works paint a picture of the complex ideological debates and the various literary currents of the time, and of the conflicting impulses in Rusva's own work — enthusiasm for modern education, modern technology and the natural sciences, and for new bourgeois virtues on the one hand, and indulgence in poetry along with a nostalgic idealisation of Lucknow's feudal culture with its highly cultivated courtesans on the other.

While Sharīfzādah is largely forgotten today, the work became very popular immediately upon publication and remained part of the Urdu curriculum until the mid-20th century. It undoubtedly does not hold the same literary rank as Umrā'o Jān Adā, but deserves attention even today for its unusual subject matter and its engagement with the moral values of its time. Not least, Rusva presented here a viable life path outside the colonial administrative apparatus for a Muslim not belonging to the feudal upper class — a figure without parallel in the literature of the period.

Christina Oesterheld

Translations

Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa: Die Kurtisane von Lakhnau. Novel. Translated from Urdu by Ursula Rothen-Dubs. Zurich: Manesse Verlag, 1971 (in German)
"Satirische Ode auf die Dichtkunst", in Allahs indischer Garten, ein Lesebuch der Urdu-Literatur, selected and translated by Ursula Rothen-Dubs. Frauenfeld: Verlag im Waldgut, 1989, pp. 180-184 (in German)

Mirza Hadi Rusva (Mirzā Muḥammad Hādī "Rusvā", 1857/58-1931)

Biography

The Literary Work

Translations

Further Reading