Traditionalism and Urdu literature

A new article discusses the encounter with Traditionalism of one of Pakistan’s leading literary critics, Muhammad Hasan Askari (1919-1978, see photo). It is by Arian Hopf, "Muhammad Hasan Askari: Mulla-Turned Modernist or Saviour of Tradition?" Zeitschrift für Indologie und Südasienstudien 39 (2022): 1-32. 

Askari was one of Pakistan’s leading literary critics, earlier a member of the socialist and anti-colonial Progressive Writer’s Association, influenced by Anton Chekhov and T. S. Eliot. After hearing of Guénon in 1947, he wrote “perhaps he expresses some satisfactory ideas.’’ After reading Guénon, he became a “hard” Traditionalist, following Guénon’s line mostly letter for letter, and preparing—but never publishing—what was in effect an Urdu version of Guénon’s Crisis of the Modern World, entitled Modernity, or a History of Western Aberrations (Jadīdiyat yā maghribī gumrāhiyūn̲ kī tārīkh). He called tradition revāyat, literally ‘narration’, and distinguished it from ʻādat, custom. 

Askari applied Traditionalism to the question that had occupied him for most of his professional life, Urdu literature. While he had once argued in favor of strengthening the Urdu element in a fusion of Urdu and Western literary norms, in his Traditionalist phase he argued that Urdu and Western literature could not be combined as they were fundamentally different. Western literature was based on individual experience and a study of character precisely because the West had lost tradition, while Urdu literature was the literature of a Muslim culture that had not lost the tradition. As such, Urdu literature should be based in traditional metaphysics and serve as a means to self-realization (ʻirfān). 

Askari was, however, pessimistic about the chances of Urdu literature achieving this ideal, given the extent to which it had already been adulterated by Western literature. Perhaps he knew the realities of the modern Orient better than the young Guénon.