Urdu Ghazals and New Requirements: An Analysis

Abstract

Ghazal is a classical traditional genre, it has been influenced by modernity, but not in the way that novels, short stories and poems have been. Nevertheless, if we study this genre in depth, the ghazal created before the Second World War in response to the capitalist system, the ghazal written artificially in the sixties under the influence of the modernist movement, and the naturally modern ghazal sung in the last quarter of a century, all three experiences seem different. The ghazal that is being sung in Urdu today is naturally compatible with modern life in every respect, in its vocabulary, metaphors and symbols, and subject and thought. The era of modernity in Pakistani society is the present, therefore, modern ghazals in the true sense have been being written since the last quarter of a century. Our naive critics who are looking for post-modernity in Urdu are just like we were looking for modernity in the sixties. This is a needle in a haystack, and as a result, when they look for postmodernism in a work of art, the work of art does not confirm it because it is entirely a product of the effects of postmodernism.