UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations

256 Pages·2012·38.13 MB·English

by  Shad Naved

UCLA
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
The Erotic Conceit: History, Sexuality and the Urdu ghazal
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1x1950gv
Author
Naved, Shad
Publication Date
2012

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library
University of California
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles

The Erotic Conceit:
History, Sexuality and the Urdu ghazal

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy
in Comparative Literature

by

Shad Naved

2012
© Copyright by
Shad Naved
2012
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

The Erotic Conceit:
History, Sexuality and the Urdu ghazal

by

Shad Naved
Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature
University of California, Los Angeles, 2012
Professor Aamir R. Mufti, Chair

This dissertation pursues the literary-historical tracks of the image repertoire of “boy-love”
(amradparasti) versified for over two centuries in the Urdu ghazal. It critically engages with key
positions in sexuality studies and ghazal criticism that have reduced this theme to visible
sexuality, submerging its historical narrative elements. It is a part of my argument to show why
the ghazal (as genre and predominant form of poetry) matters to the study of modern South
Asian identities (sexual and political) and what historical forces have operated through its
aesthetic lineaments to give it the illusion of traditional cultural continuity.
The dissertation is divided into two parts presenting the concentric circles of a historical
problematic including poetry, sexual representation, the colonial archive and historiography. In
Chapter One, I broadly describe colonial reformism in which sexuality emerged as a category of
social and intimate experience. My aim is to show that modern sexual identities (e.g.
ii
homosexual) belong to a nationalist problematic whose assumptions are still with us in our
postcolonial, ‘sexually liberated’ era. Chapter Two narrows the genealogical focus on “boy-love”
as a distinct historical-narrative element in the ghazal as well as in literary-historical recountings
of its tradition. This chapter mirrors the larger argument as it places reformist (Hali), postcolonial
(Firaq) and premodern (Yaqin) meditations on the image of the beautiful boy in the same
argument.
In Part Two, I cross the threshold of the premodern into the South-Asian eighteenth
century but not before delineating, in Chapter Three, the historiographic roadblocks in
transitioning from categories of modern analysis (the state, family, subjectivity, identity) into the
pre-existing social unities of premodern life. I make a critique of revisionist historiography to
argue against a naively mimetic and sentimental understanding of literary objects from the past
and posit the condensation of an erotic terrain in the rhetorical and vignette-like patterns of
‘classical’ ghazal poetry. To highlight the operation of this terrain I study the formation of the
boy-love image repertoire as part of the vernacularizing process from which elements of later
“Urdu” first emerged. The exemplary figures here include the satiric–obscene verse of Jaʿfar
Zatalli and the iham set of poets (Abru and Naji in particular)
Finally, Chapter Four presents the case of Mir Taqi Mir and through the canonized
stability of his oeuvre I draw the outer form of its erotic content as a social value form in whose
negative relation with social conditions, a historical expanse becomes possible to imagine. In the
final turn to Mir, I demonstrate that it is possible to read historical forms of subjectivity in the
heavily routinized idiom of the ghazal, and not settle for a depoliticized history of surfaces
(images, representations, typologies) which has been the fate of the ghazal and several other
expressive practices in the postcolonial world.

iii
The dissertation of Shad Naved is approved.
Michael David Cooperson
Nouri Gana
Gil Hochberg
Aamir R. Mufti, Committee Chair

University of California, Los Angeles
2012

iv
Table of Contents

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
PART I
1. Literature, women and reform: The making of Urdu’s sexuality question .......................................... 26
2. Ghazal, Men and Boys: An alternative history ......................................................................................................... 69
PART II
3. Love of Boys: The formation of an erotic repertoire ........................................................................................ 130
4. A whip on the posturing steed: Mir’s boy-poems ................................................................................................ 179
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 226
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 230

v
Note on transliteration and translation

I have followed the transliteration scheme established by the Annual of Urdu Studies, with the
following exceptions:
1. ḳh instead of kh for the letter ḳhē
2. ġh instead of gh for the letter ġhain
3. a or i instead of the short vowel e
4. The v of conjunction is written without hyphenation
5. The hamza sign in Arabic compounds is dropped (e.g. Siḥr ul-bayān not Siḥruʾl-bayān)
All words and names from Persian (Hāfiz̤ instead of Hāfez̤) and Hindi (pardēsh instead of
pradēsh) are transliterated as they would be pronounced in Urdu. Though very few, Arabic
words and names are written using the Urdu transliteration scheme as well (except Abu Nuwas,
not Abū Nuvās).
People’s names are transliterated only at their first appearance in each chapter’s main
text. All the Urdu, Arabic, Persian and Hindi names are transliterated in their respective entries
in the bibliography. Indic place names are only transliterated when they appear as the place of
publication of non-English works in the footnotes. Other words and terms (except “ghazal”
which is now a recognizable genre of English poetry) are transliterated throughout the main text
and footnotes.
All translations of Urdu and Persian verse and prose extracts are my own, except where
indicated otherwise.

vi
Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank the chair of my dissertation committee, Prof. Aamir Mufti, for
accepting, nurturing and supervising this project about a non-mainstream literary tradition within
the departmental framework of Comparative Literature at UCLA. I am obliged to him for
helping me navigate the conspicuous institutional and intellectual roadblocks in researching
lesser known literatures and not getting lost in the cul-de-sac of nativism, nationalism and
identitarianism both ‘there’ and ‘here’. This project could not have been completed in the time it
took me and with the institutional backing of my department without his unwavering support. I
thank Professors Nouri Gana and Gil Hochberg, my other committee members, for giving me the
freedom to think comparatively, and insisting on it, about my ‘minor’ fields of sexuality studies
and Arabic literature. Along with Prof. Gana’s graduate seminars on the poetry of Mahmoud
Darwish, my other systematic classroom experience with learning the poetry and poetics of this
part of the world (west and south Asia) was gained in Prof. Michael Cooperson’s legendary
seminars on premodern Arabic literature. I am grateful to him for agreeing to be on my
committee even when my research problematic became more and more Urdu-centric, generously
reading my early chapters and giving me both editorial and critical feedback.
I also thank Prof. Eleanor Kaufman for guiding me through my early graduate-school
years and coursework. Prof. Helen Deutsch (UCLA Department of English) helped me
particularly with a detailed bibliography about satire and parody in the English eighteenth
century crucial for the third chapter of this dissertation. Prof. Joe Bristow (UCLA Department of
English) enabled me to showcase my work as a dissertation fellow for the Mellon Sawyer
seminar program on “Homosexualities, from Antiquity to the Present” (2009–2010).
vii
I must also acknowledge the financial assistance awarded me by the UCLA graduate
division in the form of a Dissertation Year Fellowship (2011–2012).
Among my peers at UCLA Comparative Literature, Malik Chaudhary, Maryam Khan,
Sina Rahmani, Safoora Arbab and Neetu Khanna have been my interlocutors and caring
comrades. Participating in the “Homosexualities” reading group, diligently led every other week
by Daniel Williford, was a rich learning and debating experience. Outside the department and
across the US, Justin Greving, Javeria Jamil, Kota Inoue, Elakshi Kumar, Talat Danish, Sana
Danish and Vaibhav Saria have helped me survive the loneliness. Michelle Anderson at the
UCLA Comparative Literature office steered me through grad-school rules and paperwork with
characteristic kindness and understanding.
The research for this dissertation was conducted at the following libraries to whose
librarians and staff I am grateful: the UCLA Young Research Library (especially the Inter-
Library Loan staff); the Raza Library Rampur, India (in particular the then Director, Prof. Shah
Abdus Salam for giving me leads in classical Urdu matters); the Amir-ud-Daula Public Library
in Lucknow, India; the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library in Patna, India (especially its
Director, Dr. Imtiaz Ahmed); and the Sahitya Akademi library in New Delhi. For housing and
caring for me at each of these places on my research trail I thank Mr. Amarjeet Sinha, Mr. Ojha
and Mr. Raju in Patna; Dr. Tariq Husain and Mr. Harsh in Lucknow; and Prof. Shah Abdus
Salam in Rampur.
In Delhi, many friends and some kindnesses: Razak Khan, Dhruv Sangari, Indu
Chandrasekhar, Dr. Sukrita Paul Kumar, Dr. Rani Ray, Swathy Margaret, Syed Faisal and
Abikal Borah.

viii