Another outcast was the short
story writer Sa’adat Hasan Manto. He portrayed in most of his stories
one of the most miserable classes of our society; prostitutes and pimps.
He was indifferent to the political philosophy of the progressives, with
the result that both disowned each other.
In the West, detective
literature and science fiction occupy a significant place. This is not
so in Urdu in which detective literature consists mostly of translations
while science fiction is almost non-existent. There may be many reasons
for this deficiency. For instance, a general apathy towards science can
be considered to be a discouraging factor. However, the most dominant
cause seems to be the general perception, created by the Progressive
Writers’ Movement, that literature must reflect real life.
Detective stories have a rich
history in other languages. Some of the stories in the Arabian Nights
can be described as belonging to such a genre. Modern detective fiction
in the West is believed to have been born in the mid-19th century and
some of the most celebrated writers of detective fiction are Willkie
Collins, Edger Allen Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.
In Urdu, except for Ibne Safi
(1928-1980), there is no other notable writer of detective fiction.
Before his advent, detective literature in Urdu almost entirely
consisted of translations of western writers. Munshi Tirath Ram
Ferozepuri was the most prolific translator of such fiction. Another
well-known translator was Zafar Umar Zuberi, whose most popular work was
an adaptation of a western detective novel which was given the title
Neeli Chhatri.
Today a few magazines in Urdu,
called digests, do publish detective literature and science fiction.
However, the stories that appear in such magazines are mostly
translations or adaptations. Some of these are acknowledged as such,
while others remain unacknowledged giving rise to a wrong impression
that these might be original.
Ibne Safi, the only significant
original writer of detective literature in Urdu, began writing in 1952
while he lived in India. Later he migrated to Pakistan. His stories
became immensely popular and were a blend of adventure, spying and
humour. He was also a poet and composed poetry under the pen name of
Asrar Narvi. Despite his massive readership, critiques of literature
were not prepared to grant Ibne Safi the status of a literary writer.
A.C. Clarke, a famous sci-fi
writer, once said, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.’ In Urdu, before the short story and the
novel made their advent, we had many dastaans in circulation, such as
Tlism-i-Hoshruba and Fasana-i-Ajaeb, which made extensive use of magic
as well as non-human characters like genii, fairies and demons. However,
the introduction of short story and novel in Urdu was soon followed by
the Progressive Writers’ Movement. Today, sci-fi in Urdu has remained
far behind and is available on a very limited scale.
There tends to be occasional
efforts put in here and there like television plays in the category of
science fiction. Some of the notable ones include plays such as Peela
Pani which deals with water pollution, Locoshed, which is about genetic
engineering, Jang Jari Hae, which highlights the sale of injurious
medicines, while Tamasha displays a high degree of frustration and
disappointment with the advancement of technology.
So far, no significant writer
of science fiction has emerged in Urdu literature and there are no signs
of any such development in the immediate future. In the West, television
has proved to be a catalyst for the creation of science fiction yet in
Pakistan television channels are so pre-occupied with soap operas that
there seems to be little hope of them turning to science fiction.
