Azeem Baig Chugtai

1) His Biography:

One of the well-known Urdu satirists is Azeem Baig Chughtai. His light-hearted humour is based on the youthful mischief that every person has ever known. Thus, the general populace enjoyed his satire greatly. In Jodhpur, Azeem Baig Chughtai was born. He received his elementary schooling there. He had a sickness that made him exceedingly feeble and persisted from the time of his birth until his passing.

He experienced psychological effects from this illness as well. His sister was Ismat Chughtai. She created a drawing of his brother with the working title “Dozakhi” and fascinatingly detailed his psychological issues. Azeem Baig Chughtai’s mischievous depictions of boyhood in his writings are a logical response to this frailty. He had a heart illness for a very long time. In 1941, he ultimately passed away.

He frequently does not rank among the best satirists. This is due to a variety of factors. He has no key subjects or themes. There are just sports, entertainment, and mischief-related stories. They don’t have any significant or critical themes. Because of this, all of the humour is derived from stories and amusing events. Their characters are perpetually amused. Because of this, it has been argued that the world depicted in his paintings is a chaotic one.

His verbosity is another one of his flaws. Along with writing a lot, his skill also suffers from carelessness with words. Additionally, it’s critical to keep in mind that Azeem Baig Chughtai yearned for reform after being dissatisfied with society’s vices. He created witty and satirical pieces to achieve this. “Qur’an Aur Parda,” a serious work, was also written by him. His other masterpieces, “Shariir Biwi,” “Koltaar,” and “Khanum,” all enjoyed enormous popularity.

2) Main Works:

Aqdar:

The quarterly literary Urdu magazine Aqdar was published and edited by Mirza Azeem Baig Chughtai.

Mashriq:

The Daily “Mashriq” in Karachi published a daily piece by Mirza Azeem Baig Chughtai.

Shehzori:

In Shehzori he said, that “Aye aurat tera naam shehzori hai” (O woman thy name is strength) to combat the ongoing belief in his times equating women to weakness.

Shareer Bivi (Naughty Wife):

This book depicts a young bride who is not obedient and even helps her husband defy social expectations.

3) Main Themes in his Writings:

Feminism:

Chughtai was a modernist who favoured the liberation of women. One of his most wellknown novels, Shehzori, which PTV aired in the 1970s, aims to show that women are not “kamzori” (weaklings), but rather “shehzori,” or all-powerful. This is maybe one of the earliest examples of a feminist viewpoint in Urdu fiction. Additionally, he participated in various contentious religious discussions, particularly when criticising clerics and endorsing Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s viewpoints.

4) His influence on Ismat Chugtai:

The French and Russian giants of literature, including Tolstoy, Gorky, Chekov, Maupassant, and Zola, were among Ismat Chughtai’s favourites. She added, “They were a great influence for me because I encountered them when I was looking around for a guiding spirit,” in reference to Anton Chekov and a few other authors. Chughtai might have been influenced by her brother Mirza Azeem Baig Chughtai, who had achieved success as a renowned Urdu novelist and comic by the time she started writing.

Ismat Chughtai, a renowned fiction author and Azeem Baig Chughtai’s actual sister, has talked about how happy and full of life her brother was. Chughtai was often ill since he was a little child, but he never experienced depression. Even if there were occasionally practical jokes involved, he made people laugh and made himself laugh. Ismat was mentored by Chughtai throughout her literary career and was urged to read widely, especially western literature, as well as to write. He was, as Ismat has said, a little scornful toward many conventional notions yet had a good heart.

5) His influence in our times:

His early writings on Islam and Islamic customs like the pardah or veil appeared in books and articles. He ran into issues since he was a feminist and a liberal thinker, and his books Tafveez, Hadees Aur Pardah, and Quran Aur Pardah (which supported giving the bride the right to divorce at the time of nikah), were divisive. Azeem Baig Chughtai eventually transitioned to fiction writing and many of his short stories and novels portray a young lady or young bride who is not submissive and even helps her husband overcome the odds. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s views on modernism and a critic of moulvis. Shareer Bivi (Naughty Wife) might be used as proof.

Aye aurat tera naam kamzori hai was a popular slogan during his time. It sounds similar to Shakespeare’s famous line, “Frailty, thy name is woman,” when translated as “O woman, thy name is weakness.” However, Chughtai said in a book titled Shehzori, which is Persian for “strength,” that “Aye aurat tera naam shehzori hai” (O woman thy name is strength). Because Shareer Bivi was shown on PTV as a serial in the 1970s, Chughtai’s works saw a surge in popularity. His novels give readers a lot of insight into how poorly women are treated in our nation, and even now, many years after his passing, the principles his books teach remain highly applicable.