Mir's fame and the many frauds in his name

Urdu Adab acknowledges a past mistake of censorship and publishes, for the first time, the complete unabridged text of Zikr-i Mir, Mir Taqi Mir's autobiography

- Mohammad Kazim

For the uninitiated, Urdu Adab is the quarterly journal of Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind)—an organisation comparable to the Académie Française in the formation of the Urdu literary canon. The October 2024 issue on Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810), known as Khuda-i Sukhan (God of Poetry), marks a milestone in literary history. It acknowledges a past mistake of censorship, rectifying it by publishing, for the first time, the complete unabridged text of Zikr-i Mir, the autobiography of Mir, both in Farsi and its Urdu translation. It was published for the first time in 1926 in Urdu Adab itself and then in 1928 in book form. The Anjuman published both versions and did not carry the ‘Lataif’ (Jokes) portion that ended the autobiography in its original manuscript form. The Anjuman has now published a complete version. Sadaf Fatima, Urdu Adab’s Assistant Editor, undertook this monumental task that reaffirms a writer’s right to freedom of speech and expression. The editorial admits the historical wrong committed by the Anjuman and carries an apology for it. No literary organisation as influential has ever openly acknowledged such errors. It lays bare the hypocrisy within the Urdu literary world regarding the censorship of Zikr-i Mir, Mir’s remarkably candid autobiography, which happens to be the first by an Urdu poet. Anjuman’s then General Secretary, Abdul Haq, perpetrated the disgraceful censorship. To understand the rationale behind his decision, one must grasp his regressive minds