ANGAARAY

• “The most provocative book in the history of

Urdu literature---” Intizar Husain

• Published in December 1932

• Banned in March 1933
• All copies destroyed with the exception of 5!
• Still not available in Pakistan or India
• Yet regarded as a milestone
These writers all came together in the hope of
challenging censorship in its conjoined twin
form: censorship as a symbol of both colonial
repression, and religious conservatism and
orthodoxy. Here is how their manifesto in part
read:

1) It is the duty of Indian writers to give

expression to the changes in Indian life and
to assist the spirit of progress in the
country by introducing scientific
rationalism in literature. They should
undertake to develop an attitude of literary
criticism which will discourage the general
reactionary and revivalist tendencies on
questions like family, religion, sex, war and
society, and to combat literary trends
reflecting communalism, racial antagonism,
sexual libertinism, and exploitation of man
by man.
2) It is the objective of our association to
rescue literature from the conservative classes
--- to bring the arts into the loses touch with
the people-----

3) We believe that the new literature of India

must deal with the basic problems of our
existence today – the problems of hunger and
poverty, social backwardness and political
subjection.

4) All that arouses in us the critical spirit, which

examines customs and institutions in the light
of reason, which helps us to act, to organize
ourselves, to transform, we accept as
progressive.
But it was this double phenomenon –
censorship coupled with literary protest – that
cemented Angaaray’s career in Urdu letters. So
important was the phenomenon of Angaaray’s
publication and censorship that it has variously
been understood to inaugurate two different
literary movements (which later were in
opposition to one another): progressivism
(which later became the banner of a more
doctrinaire Socialist Realism) and modernism
(whose later practitioners found themselves in
conflict and tension with some of the stalwarts
of the Progressives).

Snehal Singhavi, The Angaaray Collective