For its encyclopedic nature. One could imagine how demanding a work of critical appreciation of Urdu short story writers could be if a conscientitiars critic of Dr Anwar Ahmed's stature was to do this job. Each introduction proceeds with the stage by stage development of the short story writer's career.
It is not a plain narrative as it takes into account the milestone in the writer's career. I believe that there is no other work of this kind in Urdu and Dr Anwar Ahmed, who is himself a creative short story writer plus a caricaturist of standing, does well to make this reference work a very useful reading for all those who would like to study fiction writers in proper perspective.
Dr Anwar Ahmed's study of short story writers is against the backdrop of Urdu literature. For example anyone who wants to refer to Munshi Prem Chand has a fin de siecle background of the development of Urdu short story.
Let us surmise who is the writer of first short story writer among Rashidul Khairi, Yaldrum and Munshi Prem Chand. Dr Anwar Ahmed thinks that Rashidul Khairi is the first short story writer and Naseer Aur Khadija is the first short story.
The short story writers have been grouped under three sections Riwayat (Tradition), Hasil (Achievement) and Imkaan (possibility or future). The first section deals with the pioneers of the all schools of thought right from Rashid-ul-Khairi, the first short story writer, according to Dr Anwar Ahmed. There are Sajjad Hyder Yaldrum, Sultan Haider, Niaz Fatehpuri, Majnoon Gorakhpuri, Upendar Nath Ashk, Dr Rasheed Jehan, Ali Abbas Husaini, Muhammad Ali Rudolvi & Akhtar Husain Raipuri,Davinder Issar, Ibrahim Jalees, Hajira Masroor, Ram Lal, Joginder Paul and etc in this section.
The second section Hasil ie the Achievement, has writers such as Munshi Prem Chand, Manto, Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi, Ahmed Ali, Krishan Chander, Ismat Chugtai, Ghulam Abbas, Qurratul ain Hyder, Intezar Husain, Khadija Mastur, Rafiq Husain, Shaukat Siddiqui, Ashfaq Ahmed, Balraj Manra, Nayyar Masud, Surender Prakash, Sadiq Husain, Rashid Amjad, Asad Muhammad Khan, Dr Salim Akhtar, Zahida Hina, Umrao Tariq, Mehmood Ahmed Qazi, and Asif Farrukhi etc.
The third section comprises those who are showing promise and are likely to rise higher. Some of them are Muhammad Hameed Shahid, Khalid Fateh Muhammad, Mubin Mirza and Khalid Saeed etc.
Dr Anwar Ahmed mentions some writers who, somehow, didn't find anyplace in the book. May be it is a case of compiler's oversight. However, he has provided his criterion of selection for those who have been included in this 920 - page magnum opus. Only those writers who have, atleast, one published work could be included.
Dr Anwar Ahmed contests Shams-ur- Rahman Farooqi's contention that Urdu short story couldn't produce a great piece of fiction during its 70-75 years of history because it is too short a period to expect such a possibility. Shams-ur-Rahman Farooqi is wrong when he makes this point.
This statement is oversimplistic. One wonders how could Farooqi make this statement well. He has made quite a few statements which cannot be taken seriously. For example his views about modernism and modernity appear to be quite regressive - almost Mythos- driven. How could literature be studied without the socio-economic-political reference to the times in which it is being created.
Dr Anwar Ahmed has done well by giving a good exposition of Qissa and then of Urdu Qissa. It makes his view point quite clear, begging no clarification. The book contains three sections which is neither chronological nor alphabetical. Each one writer of the three sections is there if he fits in the requirement of Riwayat, Hasil or Imkaan. One wishes that a scope of each section could be fully highlighted.
Dr Anwar Ahmed makes no bones about the fact that only those short story writers have been discussed whose works have been published. It means that quite a few short story writers who may be enjoying valid credentials on the basis of their short stories published in the journals couldn't be accommodated in this important book. I believe that every work of this kind has to follow a certain criterion in order to have a clear rationale for the selection and Dr Anwar Ahmed is not the only scholar who has used his discretion.
Dr Anwar's work is the first work of this kind. He has rendered valuable service by supervising a good number of Ph.D & M.Phil dissertations on Urdu novel and short story. It can be safely said that no other Urdu academic has done more than Dr Anwar Ahmed has done to produce competent researchers during the last 30 years. Nowaday he is serving the Govt College University, Faisalabad, and I hope that this city, which excel in research on Naat poetry, will also be known as a seat of learning paying due attention to other green pastures of Urdu literature.
"Urdu Afsana - Qissa Ek Sadi Ka" is a laudable work because it will surely attract the researchers to turn their attention to Urdu fiction which has attracted more international attention than any other field of Urdu literature.
The research scholars of Japan, England, Germany & USA have taken substantial interest in Urdu fiction. Researches on Manto, Ghulam Abbas, Qurratulain Haider, Prem Chand undertaken by American, Japanese, German and Russian researchers have illuminated Urdu fiction a great deal.
Fiction deals in the portrayal of human life - its relationships having all that is frustrating, soul- elating and bewildering. Every character and event can be interpreted in as many ways as the interpreters' ways of looking at them. This pluralism couldn't exclude ideological basis of interpretation. Even post-modernism, tilting more towards cultural differentiations, cannot put aside the core issues having absolutist solutions. We have to live with the world -views we are not comfortable with simply because they couldn't be pushed beneath the carpet.
I admire in Dr Anwar Ahmed's formulations a niche for the views he doesn't subscribe to simply because it helps to discover the relevance of his own views in the context of those issues. There is hardly any world-view which doesn't have its weak points and a work of art can't be good or bad because it has been tailored to a specific viewpoint unless it fulfils the artistic cannons of literature which are almost essentialist.
Even of a Marxist of Mao Ze Dong, has clearly stated that some ideologically good works have to be vegetable stuff as they don't remain valid after some time. He differentiates durable works from the vegetable stuff.
What makes a work of art durable is that it refuses to be a transient work and has the strength to survive for a longer time by dint of its literary merit. Hence it is not right to think that all ideological works have to be transitory. After all there is a qualitative difference between Faiz Ahmed Faiz and smaller poets of protest poetry.
And the readers will find that Dr Anwar Ahmed has successfully lived up to his bias for literary merit in spite of the fact that he has an ideology to stand by. He doesn't believe in being color-blind to his ideology. However, it doesn't render him oblivious to the fact that a work of art is truly one which conforms to certain rules of the game - innovation and freshness in its exception.