‘They are my town and my village, and I hope you understand that my grandfather did not come to Ghazipur armed with a sword!’– Rahi Masoom Reza, Introduction, Aadha GaonThe birth centenary of Dr Rahi Masoom Reza (August 1, 1927 – March 15, 1992) will formally begin in August 2026 and continue until August 2027. Yet, commemorative programmes have already commenced.Rahi Masoom Reza – ‘Rahi’ being the takhallus (poetic pseudonym customary among Urdu poets) he adopted, was among the most inventive and versatile literary figures of the 20th century.As per the Shia belief, the Prophet, his daughter Fatima, and the 12 Imams, starting with Imam Ali (the Prophet’s son-in-law), down to Imam Mehdi, are “masoom” or innocent: those who cannot commit any wrong or sin. This assertion is based on Ayat al-Tathir (The Verse of Purification), a significant verse (33:33) in the Quran where Allah declares His desire to ‘remove all impurity (rijs) from you, O People of the Household (Ahl al-Bayt)’. It’s a key verse, especially for Shia Muslims, as it is seen as proof of the infallibility of the Prophet Muhammad’s family (Ahl al-Bayt) from sin.Adding ‘Rahi’ before his name was, in itself, an unusual whim, but Rahi also insisted on the correct pronunciation of Reza, which is generally pronounced as ‘Raza’.His creativity flourished with equal ease in the realms of poetry, prose, cinema, and television. The hostility he faced at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), which was fuelled by some members of the Rampur princely family, produced a rupture that Urdu literature could scarcely afford. Because of this, Urdu lost a novelist, poet, and progressive intellectual of rare instinct and originality. Modern Hindi, by contrast, gained immeasurably, much as it had earlier gained from Premchand’s shift from Urdu. Those less inclined to empathy dismissed his principled stand as obstinacy. Whichever way one looks at it, however, the fact remains that while Urdu continued to revere its exalted poetic inheritance, often at the expense of fiction, modern Hindi recognised the latter as the very foundation of a new national literature.Rahi was born in Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, and received his early education in a madrasa, an upbringing that delayed his university entry until 1956. His education in the school system was also delayed because of ill health. He was treated for tuberculosis first at Bhowali and then in Kashmir on its recurrence. He completed his MA in Urdu at AMU in 1960. According to Namita Singh, a Hindi lecturer at a college affiliated to Agra University in Aligarh and the wife of Rahi’s close friend, professor Kunwar Pal Singh, Rahi also read for his BA at AMU. Others maintain that he completed his undergraduate studies at Allahabad University. The most plausible reconstruction is that he first enrolled at Allahabad, but was unable to finish his degree there, and subsequently shifted to Aligarh to complete his education.GangauliHis family’s ancestral village was Gangauli, and Rahi’s family owned almost half the estate – hence the title of his famous novel Aadha Gaon. Rahi’s father, Bashir Husain Abidi, came from a zamindari family and was a distinguished lawyer who made Ghazipur the centre of his professional life. The family residence, the imposing Bashir Manzil, still stands as a testament to their former standing and prosperity. Out of affection for Rahi, whom they regard as Ghazipur’s most illustrious son, residents informally named the road outside Bashir Manzil after him; it has since been officially designated ‘Rahi Masoom Reza Road’.Another neighbouring village of Baghoi in Ghazipur hosts an Intermediate College named after him, and his memory continues to command affection across the region. Rahi’s own account of his lineage appears in the introduction to Aadha Gaon, titled ‘Bhoomika’, which unusually and rather ingeniously appears almost towards the end of the novel, after the eighth chapter. The novel consists of 10 chapters.Here, he reflects on the geography of belonging with characteristic candour:“I, Syed Masoom Reza Abidi, son of Syed Bashir Hasan Abidi, am troubled, and often I wonder where I truly belong: whether it is Azamgarh or Ghazipur. Is my home in Gangauli, a village in Ghazipur district, or in Thekma Bijauli in Azamgarh district, which I have never seen? Though my paternal grandfather, Mir Ali Mohammad Saheb Bijauli, was from Azamgarh, I feel no real connection to Bijauli. To me, Azamgarh is just one of thousands of towns in India, and Bijauli is simply a village. What if my grandfather truly came from there? I belong to Gangauli. I only know Gangauli. I know nothing about Bijauli or its house, the supposed ancestral home. What colour are its doors at Imambada there? Who recites which marsiya at which majlis, and who recites it? In other words, I lack any spiritual bond with that house in Bijauli. Ghazipur is not just another town to me, nor is Gangauli simply another village.“They are my town and my village, and I hope you understand that my grandfather did not come to Ghazipur armed with a sword!”This passage, at once intimate and defiant, offers perhaps the clearest articulation of Rahi’s rootedness in the particular part of eastern Uttar Pradesh and the emotional topography that shaped both his imagination and his prose.Set in Rahi’s own Gangauli, Aadha Gaon is the story of a village. Adopting a rather unique style, Rahi fictionalises real-life events in the novel, and many of the characters are real people who appear under than own names, as for example his brother Moonis Reza his wife and Rahi’s sister-in-law, Shehla Reza.The 10 chapters of the novel that constitute 327 pages of the unedited English translation by Gillian Wright – the 1994 version’s title, according to the 2003 reprint, was The Feuding Families of Village Gangauli – cover a period of roughly 20 years, before the start of World War II, circa 1935. The first six years were a time of carefree existence for the Shia Syeds, middling to big zamindars who collected revenue for the government and were addressed as Mir Sahab. Though they obviously did not farm themselves, they differed from the absentee landlords residing in cities.In Gangauli, the Syeds resided in two settlements, south and north: Dakkhin and Uttar Patti. Every Muharram, a sorrowing north Shia would routinely fall in a faint, something that Reza considered a humiliation for the south. One Muharram, he practised fainting and falling, but never found the opportunity to put his act into practice.The novel is livened by many such sardonic accounts. For example, there is the story of Gangauli’s heroic contribution to the Quit India movement, in which a Syed boy was shot dead by a Thanedar (modern-day SHO). It is another matter that the procession that day hadn’t set out to drive out the British or burn down the police station, but was a result of the fallout between Thakur Sahab, the Thanedar from Qasemabad, and Gangauli’s Funnan Mian.In the 20 years of the novel’s duration, three things happened that changed Gangauli forever: World War II, Partition and Zamindari Abolition. Forty to 50 boys from Gangauli and nearabout went to participate in the World War II, and only three returned, one without a leg, which he had to sacrifice to save his life. By the time the war ended, the demand for Pakistan had picked up pace. Although the Syeds of Gangauli didn’t support the demand, they had voted for the Muslim League since the Congress had vowed to abolish zamindari. Actually, this support, in general, was not for the Muslim League but against Congress policy to abolish Zamindari in the 1937 and 1945 elections under a limited franchise. This most important point has received hardly any attention in analyses of the Partition, even in the most respectable academic writings.Many went to Karachi from Gangauli after the Partition, and the Congress abolished zamindari in keeping with its promise. The Syeds fell upon hard times, while people from the “lower” castes became MLAs and sat alongside the Meer Sahebs.The novel is also a story of zamindari excesses, but it is essentially about human relationships. It is about interpersonal relationships between the members of an extended family amidst changing historical circumstances, about a family that held on to its cultural heritage despite these changes. They weren’t free of mutual jealousies, however, because jealousy is an essential part of human nature.Rahi’s illness cost him several formative academic years and some long-lasting health problems. After completing his MA, he joined AMU’s Urdu department as a temporary lecturer while pursuing a PhD on ‘Indian Elements in Tilism-i Hoshruba’ under Professor Aal-i Ahmad Suroor, the head of the department at the time. Tilism-i Hoshruba, part of the legendary cycle of Dastan-i Amir Hamza, is among the most celebrated prose romances of the Indo-Islamic world, remarkable for its magical cosmologies, ornate descriptions, and interwoven registers of Persianate storytelling. Its vast narrative architecture makes it a subject worthy of sustained scholarly inquiry.Rahi and Nayyar Jehan. Photo: Mariyam Moonis.In 1966, in circumstances that unfolded with the dramatic inevitability of a cinematic scene, Rahi married Nayyar Jehan (born on March 1, 1930). While Rahi’s nephew, Nadeem Hasnain, heard him addressing her as Nayyarah, in accordance with their daughter Mariyam’s preference, I have retained ‘Nayyar Jehan’ as she said that she never heard him addressing her as Nayyarah, emphasising that she did not remember him addressing his wife by name at all.Nayyar Jahan had earlier obtained a divorce from her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Sahebzada Muhammad Yunus Khan of the Rampur princely family. Sahebzada Muhammad Yunus Khan served in the Garhwal Rifles regiment of the Indian Army. He took early retirement from the army in the early 1960s due to medical reasons. After retiring from the military, he worked as the Hospital Superintendent at the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, Aligarh.The romance between Rahi and Nayyar had long animated the whispering corridors and shaded verandas of Aligarh’s intimate, unhurried university town, a place where the afternoon siesta until early evening is a civic institution and gossip a cherished cultural sport. Their marriage came to be regarded, and rightly so, as an affirmation of personal autonomy and dignity, an assertion of individual liberty in a society still governed by social reticence and inherited caution.Aftab Manzil. Photo: Asad Faisal Farooqui of Aligarh.Nayyar Jehan (later Nayyar Reza) was the grandchild of Sahebzada Aftab Ahmad Khan, a central figure in the Sir Syed Movement and distantly related to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan through the marriage of Sir Syed’s grandson, Sir Ross Masood, to her aunt Zohra Begum. Sir Ross Masood (1889–1937) is famously the man to whom E.M. Forster dedicated A Passage to India. The lineage of both families was disparate. Nayyar Jehan’s family traced their ancestry to Pathans who migrated from Afghanistan, and Rahi’s family were Shia Syeds.Sahebzada Aftab Ahmad Khan, zamindar of Kunjpura in undivided Punjab (now Haryana), descended from Afghan Pathans who were granted the Kunjpura jagir near Panipat – a landscape marked by three epoch-defining battles in Indian history. A distinguished criminal lawyer of his time, he had five sons: Shamshad Ahmad Khan, Shehzad Ahmad Khan (Nayyar Jehan’s father), Aabad Ahmad Khan, Khurshid Ahmad Khan, and Anis Ahmad Khan. He also had two daughters, Zohra Begum and a second, Khatun Jehan Begum, who was the twin of Shehzad Ahmad Khan, who died at the age of 16.Khurshid Ahmad Khan entered the ICS and rose to become Chief Commissioner of Delhi during the tumultuous Partition years, before being removed under political pressure by those unwilling to restore order too swiftly.Lieutenant Colonel Sahebzada Muhammad Yunus Khan was connected to the ruling family of Rampur through his sister, who was married to the Navvab of Rampur. His father, Sir Abdus Samad Khan, was also a close associate of the Navvab of Rampur. A few members of this family migrated to Pakistan, most notably Sahebzada Muhammad Yunus Khan’s brother, Sahebzada Mohammad Yaqub Khan (1920–2016), who rose to the rank of General in the Pakistan Army and served as foreign minister under General Zia ul-Haq from 1982 to 1991, and again briefly in 1996-97.Opposition to a marriageColonel Bashir Husain Zaidi, who succeeded Dr Zakir Husain Khan as vice-chancellor of AMU (1948-1957), maintained deep ties with Rampur State, and his influence lingered long after his term. Professor Aal-i Ahmad Suroor (1911-2002), head of the Urdu department (1958-1974) and general secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind) from 1956 to 1974, had earlier served as Principal of Raza Inter College, Rampur (1945-46). Vice-Chancellor Badruddin Tayabji also harboured a pronounced aversion to Rahi’s flamboyant persona, his unabashed loyalty to Indo-Persian culture, his refusal to mimic Anglicised manners, and his striking individuality. Rahi’s Salimshahi, nagra, shoes, casually unbuttoned sherwani, and paan-stained lips that scandalised the genteel sensibilities of AMU’s Anglophile elite further deepened Tayabji’s insecurities.When the interview for the lectureship took place, Badruddin Tayabji (V-C from November 7, 1962 to February 28, 1965), had relinquished charge as V-C. Navvab Ali Yawar Khan, also known as Navvab Ali Yavar Jung (March 10, 1965 to January 5, 1968), had taken over, but he succumbed to pressure from the group opposed to Rahi, who lost the job after the selection committee met.The princely family of Rampur, unsurprisingly, opposed Nayyar Jehan’s marriage to Rahi. Their displeasure, combined with the influence of the powerful Lal Khani Navvabs, ensured his removal from AMU. The Lal Khani Navvabs included the Navvabs of Chhatari and Danpur. The Navvab of Chhatari, Sir Ahmad Sayeed Khan, though formally pro-chancellor, was effectively the university’s acting head, since the chancellor, Syedna Tahir Saifuddin, the Bohra community head, remained aloof from its affairs. The Navvab of Danpur, Kunwar Ammar Ahmad Khan, sat on the university executive.Adding to this formidable nexus of influence was professor Syed Nurul Hasan – son-in-law of Navvab Raza Ali Khan of Rampur – who was residing in Aligarh at the time and, by all available accounts, actively opposed Rahi’s continuation in the university. Hasan would later rise to national prominence as minister of state for education with independent charge in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet (1971-77), and subsequently as governor of West Bengal from 1986 to 1993. He was married to Navvabzadi Khurshid Laqa Begum, a connection that further anchored his standing within the Rampur establishment. Rahi’s hostility against Hasan somehow subsided later, as he mentioned Hasan in the note of thanks when his thesis was published in 1979.Rahi’s position became even more vulnerable through another link to the Rampur household – Syed Zahoor Qasim, also a faculty at the department of Zoology, married to the second princess, Navvabzadi Birjis Laqa Begum. Qasim later served as vice-chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia (1989-91) and was subsequently appointed a member of the Planning Commission of India. The concentration of power centred around the Rampur lineage was, by this point, so formidable that Rahi’s survival within the AMU structure was all but impossible.A mending of tiesIn later years, both Nayyar and Rahi repaired their relationship with the Rampur family. Her former husband, Sahebzada Mohammad Yunus Khan, visited their home in Bombay and remained on cordial terms with them. During the 1989 Lok Sabha elections, Rahi even travelled to Rampur to campaign for Navvab Zulfiqar Ali Khan – ‘Micky Miyan’ – signalling the extent to which past tensions had softened with time.Nayyar Reza passed away on January 30, 2021 and was buried in W. Roxbury, Massachusetts. Rahi Masoom Reza had predeceased her on March 15, 1992. According to Majaz Moonis, he was laid to rest in the Muslim cemetery at Juhu, the same ground where Madhubala and Mohammad Rafi lie buried. The Rezas’ daughter, Mariyam Reza (born September 1967), is married to Dr Majaz Moonis, son of professor Moonis Reza. Majaz Moonis is a distinguished neurologist in the United States, while Mariyam is an actuary by profession.From her first marriage, Nayyar Jehan had three sons: Nadeem Yunus (also known as Nadeem Khan), Irfan Khan, and Aftab Khan. Nadeem, married to singer Parvati Khan, now lives in Bombay and has been in fragile health since an accident at Delhi Airport some years ago. His son Jatin holds a diploma in acting from FTII, Pune.Rahi moves to BombayRahi’s dismissal from AMU marked a decisive rupture. His temporary post was soon filled by other lecturers, closing the door to reinstatement. Deprived of any professional foothold in Aligarh, he moved to Bombay, where his fortunes altered dramatically, but he had to struggle for almost five years.Competing accounts circulate about his replacement at AMU. Some claim the position went to the celebrated poet Shahryar (Akhlaq Mohammad Khan), while others maintain that it was given to an obscure academic, Atiq Ahmad Siddiqui. It is also possible that two regular appointments were made in quick succession or in the same selection committee, leaving no opening even for an ad hoc position. The precise detail is immaterial. Whatever the administrative sequence, Rahi’s expulsion severed his relationship with the Urdu intelligentsia for life, though his relationship with Urdu as a cultural and emotional universe remained unbroken.None of this was his doing; it was the dirty politics of Urdu academia and the institutional feudalism of Aligarh that failed him. Above all, it was the wounded pride of former princely elites whose displeasure proved decisive.Professor Aal-i Ahmad Suroor, who headed the Urdu department from 1958 to 1974 and simultaneously served as general secretary of the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), wielded immense influence in the world then because he headed the sole Urdu organisation at that period, which had its allegiance to Sir Syed. Since the Anjuman’s headquarters were located in Aligarh during his tenure, writers perceived as being out of Suroor’s favour struggled to publish even a single line in any Urdu periodical.Rahi, already outmanoeuvred institutionally, found the world of Urdu similarly closed to him. This left him with little choice but to publish his novel Aadha Gaon in the Nagri script as suggested by his friend professor Kunwar Pal Singh, to whom the novel is dedicated. Rahi only agreed with him and considered this possibility; Singh offered to transliterate the manuscript, which he did eventually, and he also made Kamleshwar agree to hear the reading of some of the chapters on his visit to Aligarh.From that moment onwards, Rahi Masoom Reza wrote exclusively in Hindi using the Nagri script, not because he repudiated Urdu, but because he had reached a point of disillusionment in which the world of Urdu letters dominated by the Urdu elite felt complicit in his ostracisation. Never did he align himself with the emergent politics of modern Hindi. His inner world remained rooted in Bhojpuri. Bhojpuri was the language of Ghazipur and of his father’s zamindari; Awadhi entered his expressive range later. These languages, with their syncretic ethos and unembarrassed earthiness, shaped his sensibility far more than the artificial solemnity of new high Hindi.Aadha Gaon (Half the Village) was originally written in Urdu script. Before it could be published in that script, Rahi lost his teaching post. The irony was sharp: Suroor had praised the novel and even written to Rahi appreciating it. Under different circumstances, the Anjuman itself might have published the book, which unfortunately did not happen. But the ruptures caused by his marriage to Nayyar Jehan foreclosed any such possibility. The novel’s path into Nagri was shaped not by choice but by the unfolding of the adverse events. I don’t want to discuss the circumstances surrounding Anjuman vis-à-vis Aadha Gaon for several reasons, and I’m leaving this chapter unfinished, like a Khubsoorat mode, as Sahir Ludhianvi said: “Who afzana jise anjaam tak lana nah o mumkin, use ek khubsoorat more dekar chorna achcha.”During a visit to Aligarh, the Hindi writer Kamleshwar (1932–2007) heard extracts from the manuscript, on Professor Kunwar Pal’s persuasion, and immediately offered to publish it under Akshar Prakashan, the imprint he had founded with Rajendra Yadav (1929–2013). Yadav would later become known for his polemical editorial direction in his Hindi monthly Hans, especially for publishing Namvar Singh’s infamous March 1987 essay against Urdu ‘Basi Bhaat Mein Khuda Ka Sajha’. It is one of the most poisonous writings against Urdu by a Hindi writer.In 2003, Swami Ramanand Saraswati Pustakalaya in Bairgarh, Azamgarh, issued an Urdu edition of Aadha Gaon under the name of Dr Aslam Jamshedpuri of Chaudhary Charan Singh University as translator. This was untrue. The text was clearly Rahi’s manuscript, not a translation. It was an act of literary dishonesty almost unprecedented in Urdu textual culture, where fidelity to the text is a deeply internalised principle. Jamshedpuri also removed passages he considered unsavoury. The manuscript had been handed to him by professor Kunwar Pal Singh through Vibhuti Narain Rai, (born 1950), then Inspector General of Police in Meerut.This publication in Urdu came about through the efforts of V. N. Rai, a 1975-batch IPS officer renowned for exposing the 1987 Hashimpura massacre during the Congress regime. Rai had admired Rahi hugely since his student days at Allahabad University and regretted that Aadha Gaon had never appeared in the script it was written in. When he was Inspector General of Police in Meerut, he persuaded Jamshedpuri to publish it and financed the project. At his request, Kunwar Pal Singh provided the original manuscript of Rahi Masoom Reza. Yet Jamshedpuri both appropriated credit and sanitised the text. Rahi had often insisted that the earthy language of the novel reflected the natural rhythms of village speech, and in accordance with the cultural background of the characters and the plot of the novel, where obscenity appeared, it served truth, not provocation. He himself was not accustomed to coarse speech.Despite the misappropriation of Jamshedpuri and the dumping of the Urdu version, V. N. Rai organised a significant tribute to Rahi in Gangauli, bringing together a large group of Urdu and Hindi writers to honour Rahi’s legacy. Though younger and never personally acquainted with him, Rai remained devoted to Rahi’s work.Soon after Rahi’s dismissal, his elder brother, professor Moonis Reza, was entrusted with establishing Jawaharlal Nehru University. Granted absolute authority to shape its academic culture and appointments, he nonetheless never received a job application from Rahi. Perhaps temperament, pride, or reluctance to appear dependent held Rahi back.Reza (1925–1994), then a reader of geography at AMU, was already recognised as a scholar of quiet brilliance and considerable charm. From Aligarh, where he was Reader in Geography, he moved to Srinagar University as professor and dean of students’ welfare, later becoming principal of the Regional Engineering College there. When JNU was founded, he was appointed officer on special duty and subsequently became its first rector.JNU’s secular ethos, widely acknowledged even by its critics, owes much to his intellectual leadership. Known for administering through what is affectionately termed ‘Reza’s Law of Governance’, dialogue and persuasion were his signature style. His characteristic response to conflict was simple: ‘Let us have a dialogue.’Before coming to Aligarh, Reza had worked among mill labourers in Kanpur as a trade union leader, where he too contracted tuberculosis, losing part of his lung capacity. In later decades, winter often drove him to AIIMS for treatment. Yet even from his hospital bed, he continued to run the university with calm efficiency. His AIIMS stints have passed into JNU lore.Rahi had three brothers. He was the second after Moonis, followed by Mehdi, and Ahmad, the youngest. Five sisters (Baqri Begum, Qmar Jahan, Mehar Jahan, Afsari Begum, and Sarayya. Sarayya now resides in Allahabad as a retired professor. Both Moonis and Mehdi Reza served as professors of Geography at AMU, while Ahmad Reza worked first with the Reserve Bank of India and later with the International Monetary Fund. Initially, Rahi signed his name as ‘Syed Masoom Reza Abidi’ as we see in the opening sentence of Aadha Gaon’s Introduction. All the brothers later dropped Syed and Abidi from their names.Aftab Manzil. Photo: Asad Faisal Farooqui of Aligarh.It is appropriate to mention here that it was in Aligarh, at Wali Manzil, where Rahi was staying alongside Reza, that he first met Nayyar Jehan, who lived in Aftab Manzil. What began as a casual introduction soon altered the course of several lives and the canon of modern Hindi fiction. As these old mansions crumble, fragments of cultural memory vanish with them:Saqaf-o baam ki ranginiyan, raanaiyan,Dafn mazi ke tilismati nihan khane mein hain.“The splendours and colours of old rooftopsLie buried in the talismanic cellars of the past.”– Makhmoor SaeediWali Manzil. Asad Faisal Farooqui of Aligarh.BombayIn Bombay, Rahi’s career reached extraordinary heights. As a writer for cinema and television, he gained remarkable distinction and popularity. Over the years, he wrote the screenplay, dialogue, or both for nearly three hundred films, and even ventured into lyric writing at least once, for the film Aalaap (1977). His command of idiom, cadence, and character made him one of the most sought-after in the industry.And then came the TV serial Mahabharat that changed everything related to telecast in India. When it was broadcast every Sunday morning on Doordarshan between 1988 and 1990, the nation seemed to hold its breath. Streets emptied, markets paused, and households arranged their routines around the telecast. For 45 minutes each week, across regions, classes, and faiths, India stopped to listen to words Rahi had carefully crafted. Ninety-four episodes, each forty-five minutes long, held the country in collective thrall. It was the rare moment when literary imagination, popular culture, and national myth converged. Rahi had crafted an extraordinary work of narrative power drawn from the shared cultural archive of the subcontinent.The politics of languageRahi’s preference for the Nagri script, it must be reiterated, was certainly not an ideological transformation or even a shift, but a wounded and completely helpless shift to Nagri in the wake of his rejection by the Urdu establishment. He had been rendered an outcast for reasons that had nothing to do with literary merit. His estrangement from the Urdu script pained him profoundly, for he had loved Urdu with a devotion bordering on faith. Yet literature, like life, seldom follows a rational path.Urdu literary history is a landscape littered with vanity, intrigue, and the bruised egos of formidable men. Even Ghalib, whose genius towered over his contemporaries, was hardly immune to the temptations of self-regard. In his published letters written to persons of various categories in life, he unleashed some of the most scathing abuses ever penned by an Urdu writer, where his language was so coarse that one hesitates to reproduce it except under scholarly compulsion. ‘The dirty clothes of the menstrual cycle’ is one of the phrases that Ghalib used for his rival’s poetry, a reminder that even the most excellent stylists were capable of remarkable cruelty when provoked. Rahi’s anger, however, did not arise from arrogance. It emerged from deep hurt and exclusion. One can only hope that a complete and authoritative edition of his writings in the Urdu script will eventually be published. His poetry, issued before his dismissal, is already available in many prominent libraries. The National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language would do well to publish his collected prose and verse in an authentic Urdu edition. His doctoral thesis was also translated into Hindi by the late professor Seema Sagheer of AMU’s Urdu department; it was, of course, first published in Urdu.Rahi was not at all innocent as to be ignorant of the politics of the modern Hindi project, which ignored existing linguistic traditions, including his Bhojpuri, and appropriated every language of north India. These languages had served as the basis of old Hindi for centuries and imparted its richness and texture, but the process of appropriating them took a new turn after Independence, when none of them was recognised as an independent language in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.Claims that Nagri is a scientific script are little more than a convenient façade for erasing Hindi’s rich and syncretic heritage. The standardisation of Khadi Boli in Nagri for the modern Hindi project, promoted since the nineteenth century, displaced robust languages and expressions borrowed from Braj, Awadhi, Maithili, and Bhojpuri, even as it attempted to appropriate them almost successfully. Though these languages officially did not resist subsumption for several reasons, primarily political, they have stubbornly refused to merge into the new Hindi based on Khadi Boli of western Uttar Pradesh and have asserted their identity practically in their respective regions. Urdu, once widely known as Hindi, was renamed around 1775 or 1780, though the new label did not gain currency until after 1857. The subsequent divide between Hindi and Urdu was therefore more political than linguistic, and only became entrenched after Partition, when Urdu was adopted as Pakistan’s national language.A meticulous textual comparison of Aadha Gaon in its original Urdu manuscript and its Nagri edition is long overdue. Such a study would illuminate both syntactic divergences and tonal shifts.A debate and the question of refinementThe debate around Rahi’s preference for Nagri was marred by flawed logic on both sides. Urdu purists and language fanatics cast him as a traitor to the language. At the same time, modern Hindi advocates invoked the false rhetoric of scientific neutrality, urging Urdu to abandon its script. Languages cannot be lab-grown. They develop over centuries through natural processes of interaction and accretion, and continuous growth is essential for their survival. The main difference between Urdu and modern Hindi now lies in the script, which is a political issue. With the same grammatical structure and similarities at every level, including a shared cultural landscape, one language can never become two.Rahi emerged from the cadences of Bhojpuri, as prevalent in the broader linguistic landscape of the Bhojpuri region of eastern Uttar Pradesh. One of the characters of Aadha Gaon said: “Logon ka kehna tha ke bhei, kahin bahar jao tau Urdu, angrezi, Farsi bolo; apne ghar mein baap-dada ki zabaan bigadne se kya faida (People used to say: if you go outside, speak Urdu, English, or Persian; but at home, what purpose does it serve to tamper with the language of your forefathers?).”And after a few lines on the same page, speaking through another character, he, as a protagonist of Bhojpuri, made a harsher statement: “Unhein yeh Khadi Khadi zubaan nihayat bad aawaaz aur maghroor maloom lagti (To them, this Khadi Boli sounded extremely coarse and arrogantly self-important).”Rahi knew instinctively that modern Hindi lacked the linguistic refinement that comes only from centuries of disciplined chiselling, the historical and aesthetic labour that shapes a language into a supple literary instrument. Instead, modern Hindi adopted Sanskrit vocabulary indiscriminately and artificially, displacing established Persian and Arabic constructions whose meanings, pronunciations, and cultural associations had been transformed through prolonged usage and natural social processes, until the meanings and even pronunciations often bore little resemblance to the originals in the source languages. These were in no way borrowings; they were naturalised through centuries of literary practice or social transformation in which language was an integral part. Rahi understood this finer point with absolute clarity and, in Aadha Gaon, pointed to the raw, untampered texture of Khadi Boli with subtle, pointed asides that only an attentive reader would catch.At certain moments, Rahi was unsparing in his assessment of its roughness: ‘Uski boli [roughly Bhojpuri] Khadi Boli ke sakht aur belachak lafzon ko pighlakar narm kar lene par ab bhi usi tarah qadir thi, jis tarah pehle hua karti thi (Aadha Gaon: His speech [Bhojpuri] was still just as capable as ever of melting down the hard, unyielding words of Khadi Boli and softening them).”This seeks to preserve the metaphor of melting and softening, as well as the contrast between Bhojpuri’s suppleness and Khadi Boli’s stubborn, non-pliant grain, which was central to Rahi’s point.The naming of languagesThe ‘mother of the problem’, however, lies deeper: in the persistent confusion over what Khadi Boli was, is, and has been allowed to signify. Linguists and partisans of both Urdu and modern Hindi hover uncertainly over the term.Urdu was a language name imposed by British administrators, more specifically, John Gilchrist. The label Khari/Khad(i) Boli emerged similarly, most likely under his influence. Hindi, in the traditional script, must be repeated. It was the name of the language that subsequently became ‘Urdu’ in the second part of the 19th century, before it acquired its Muslim colouring after 1857. Modern Hindi changed its script to Nagri as well as its orientation and claimed the inherited name ‘Hindi’ almost at the same time. Lallu Lal’s Prem Sagar (1803), produced at Fort William College, is often cited as an early manifestation of the word Khadi Boli.The naming of languages has always been fraught. Khadi Boli designates a linguistic space distinct from Braj in western Uttar Pradesh, from Awadhi and other languages in eastern parts of the state, and from the village speech that ranges across UP and Bihar. Its texture changes sharply with geography: Punjabi inflexions dominate Saharanpur, from where Haryana begins, the very heart of the so-called Khadi Boli region. In Saharanpur, a resident of the neighbouring district, Meerut, may struggle to understand a conversation between two people from Muzaffarnagar and Saharanpur, let alone from other parts of western Uttar Pradesh. Muzaffarnagar is the next district of western UP after Saharanpur, and after it is Meerut, which is also the nucleus of what is now established as Khadi Boli; Mathura is the heartland of Braj.The geography itself tells the story. Travel by train from Delhi to Aligarh via Ghaziabad, and on one side of the tracks is the heartland of Braj Bhasha, while on the other, Khadi Boli is the dominant tongue. Sikandrabad and Khurja are located a few kilometres from railway stations. The first major station on the way to the Khadi Boli region is called Dankaur. This qasba is situated about 10 kilometres from Sikandrabad and five kilometres from the railway station. Dankaur is in the heartland of Braj, and on the other side of the railway track. However, the station itself is located not in Dankaur but in Khelni village, again in the heartland of Braj. While Khadi Boli is spoken in Sikandrabad and Khurja, Braj is the language spoken in Dankaur.Aligarh, though historically a Braj-speaking city, developed a Khadi Boli register as academia grew around AMU; the old town and the university remain divided by a language as well as a railway bridge. The language spoken in Aligarh is mainly Khadi Boli, not Braj. In the nearby qasbas, people speak the town vernacular, Hindustani, but in the villages, it is essentially Braj Bhasha, if a label must be assigned. Mathura is just a little further away. If the same route from Delhi to Aligarh is traversed by bus, Braj Bhasha is the dominant language in almost all the villages along the way. Delhi was historically part of the Punjab, and is bordered by Haryana and the Braj region. Haryana’s Khadi Boli is harsher and is highly influenced by Punjabi.I cannot help wondering how many other Urdu texts have been stripped of nuance in the hands of translators who do not grasp Urdu’s embeddedness in Bhojpuri, Braj, Awadhi, Maithili, and even Khadi Boli. Too many understand Urdu only through modern Hindi, or at most Persian, and thus miss the layered intersectionality from which its rhythm and social relevance arise.This loss mirrors a larger linguistic tragedy. The modern Hindi project, by absorbing and overwriting the languages of the north, erased a mosaic of literary traditions that flourished for centuries. Only Maithili later succeeded; after political assertion, it reclaimed a separate identity by being included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India as an independent language.In 1989, I conducted an extensive interview with Rahi for a special issue of Akhbar-i Nau on World Urdu Literature (Vol. 7, No. 39, 9–15 February 1990, pp. 1 and 24). The issue was widely circulated and reprinted several times. Editor Meem Afzal deserves credit for publishing the complete transcript. Nothing comparable on Rahi has appeared in Urdu before or after.My only meeting with Rahi took place in 1989 at B. R. Studios. He wore a loose sherwani or achkan in the old Lucknow style, paired with pyjamas; his buttons, in characteristic fashion, were undone, which I vividly remember, much to the imagined dismay of the late Tayabji’s ghost. A small paan dibiya gleamed in his hand. The unrestrained spirit and irreverence for authority often associated with Ghalib and other great Urdu poets radiated from him.Haq maghfirat kare, ajab azad mard tha!May God forgive him. What a free-spirited man he was.– GhalibAther Farouqui is the general secretary of Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), established by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in 1882. His academic work is on Urdu politics, and he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the same theme in the broader language politics of Urdu and modern Hindi at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He may be reached at farouqui@yahoo.com.Notes:All my references in the article on Aadha Gaon are from the Urdu edition published in Azamgarh, with details discussed in the text where relevant. The English translation of Gillian Wright’s references in the revised English edition is the latest publication in the Penguin Books Modern Classics series, 2003, which states that the first edition was titled The Feuding Families of Village Gagauli (1994).I am grateful to V. N. Rai for drawing my attention to this subject and for sharing a copy of Jamshedpuri’s unfortunate and distorted Urdu edition, which Rai had discarded. He also offered whatever information he possessed, though none of it related to Rahi’s personal life. That part of the narrative was the most challenging: a jigsaw puzzle assembled slowly from scattered recollections and cautious confidences. These notes form an early step in a larger project to recover the submerged histories that shaped both a writer and a language. They are written with care and a sense of responsibility. I made every possible effort not to sensationalise the story of a writer but to preserve the memory with dignity and fidelity.Very little written material exists on the personal lives of Rahi and Nayyar Reza, and what circulates is often fragmentary or distorted. Most of what I gathered came from personal interviews and may contain inadvertent gaps. One obstacle was the sensitivity surrounding the Rampur family, which made many reluctant to speak or to speak on record. I contacted Rahi’s daughter, Mariyam Moonis, as well as her husband and Rahi’s nephew, Dr Majaz Moonis. They were unfailingly kind, and despite her professional commitments, Mariyam reviewed an early draft of this note and made valuable corrections, which I hope I have incorporated well.Professor Nadeem Hasnain, Rahi’s nephew through his sister, shared whatever he knew, though he, too, had limited information about Sahebzada Yunus Khan’s family or Nayyar Reza’s lineage. Any factual errors identified will be corrected in subsequent versions.I am grateful to Sachidanand Singh, who read the novel closely and helped resolve several interpretive puzzles, particularly concerning its chronology. He convincingly established that the narrative begins in 1934. I have also drawn on his Facebook post, written after careful reading of the novel by him, and used parts of it to prepare the summary included in this article.There is a surprising scarcity of reliable written material on Rahi Masoom Reza’s life, and much of what exists is inaccurate. I consulted Hayat-i Aftab by Habibullah Khan, which provided limited but valuable information on Sahebzada Aftab Ahmad Khan. A very knowledgeable gentleman, who supplied indispensable details about Sahebzada Muhammad Khan Yunus Khan and the politics of Aligarh, insisted on anonymity. Without his guidance, this narrative could not have been assembled.Gillian Wright’s English translation of Aadha Gaon, published by Penguin in 1994 as The Feuding Families of Village Gangauli and in 2003 as A Village Divided, is the product of careful and commendable research. Yet she deliberately chose to leave Rahi’s personal life untouched. That decision, while understandable for a translator, leaves an important dimension unexplored, which is then explored in an easy, authentic way. For without the eruption he faced at AMU, an eruption severe enough to sever him from the world of Urdu publishing, Rahi may never have turned to modern Hindi at all. It is worth remembering that Aadha Gaon was conceived in Bhojpuri and written entirely in the script that is now known as Urdu script; only the rupture pushed it, and its writer, into Nagri.Here is some additional information about Rahi’s oeuvre. His Urdu books include the novel Mohaabat ke siva (Salimi Barqi Press, Allahabad, 1950). His poetry collections include Mauj-i gul, Mauj-i saba (Ilmi Electronic Machine Press, Varanasi, 1953); Naya Saal (1952); Ajnabi Shahr, Ajnabi Rasste (Vishvvidyalye Press, Aligarh, 1965); Gharib-i Shahr (Sahir Publishing House, Bombay, 1992); and Yaas Yagana Changezi (Shahin Publishers, Allahabad, 1967). Popularly known as Yagana Changezi, he is one of the outstanding poets of Urdu who has innovated in diction. He is also known for his eccentricity and temperament. One must also mention Tilism-i Hoshruba, ek Muata’la, his doctoral dissertation, published in Urdu from Bombay, 1979.’Rahi’s celebrated reception in modern Hindi owes as much to historical circumstance as to intrinsic literary merit. In that sense, his arc mirrors Premchand’s: both were embraced by Hindi not merely for what they wrote, but because disillusionment with the Urdu establishment pushed them towards Nagri. Their reputations within modern Hindi cannot be separated from these quiet acts of departure – rebellions rendered not in manifestos, but in script and language.It must also be stated unambiguously that Rahi wished to be published in Urdu script even after his expulsion from Aligarh, but circumstances did not now allow him, and in the modern Hindi world, he got as warm a reception as Premchand did. Nagri saved the great novelist, whatever we may call them; Hindi or Rahi’s turn towards Nagri stemmed not only from hostility, but also from the way he was readily accepted there, from its rapidly widening readership, and from the pragmatic logic of Bombay, where reach and success carry weight. Urdu lived in his bloodstream; he was never its adversary. It was only his wounded anger towards the Urdu elite that, at times, eclipsed his affection for the language he loved.Much more research is needed for the life of a writer who, like the great Premchand, migrated from Urdu and may rightly be regarded as second only to him in shaping the contours of the modern Hindi novel and canon. Rahi Masoom Reza left behind a layered literary legacy at the intersection of Urdu and Hindi. His life was defined by choices of the heart, choices that conservative Indian society struggled to accept.