Dareechah-e-Nigaarish

Munir Niazi: Urdu Ghazals

Munir Niazi (1928-2006) wrote Urdu ghazals that turned out to be an amazingly successful attempt by this innovative artist to carve a modern path that is distinct from everyone else writing Urdu ghazals.

The uniqueness of Munir's ghazals is rooted in three main attributes:

Firstly, Munir Niazi is a maestro of narrative poetry and his ghazals, many individual couplets, are mini-stories. He loves to tell these stories and sketches just the right amount of detail in them to make them strike a chord with the reader. He shows his eagerness for telling his mini-stories again and again !

Secondly, Munir Niazi is a master word craftsman. His choice of Urdu words is very diverse. Like all great poets, he exhausts his era's Urdu diction. Here I am quoting Wichaar Webcast's Dr. Manzur Ejaz, a critic with a revealing analysis of Munir Niazi's poetry . . . see this link to my YouTube channel Goonj's uploaded video of Dr. Manzur Ejaz's critique of Munir Niazi's poetry.

Thirdly, Munir Niazi championed the art of imagistic poetry. Here I am quoting Dr. Anis Nagi ... see my YouTube channel Goonj's video where Dr. Nagi expresses his views on Munir Niazi's poetry. Munir excels in painting mesmerizing images of the colorful universe he is surrounded by and with which he communicates in an awed child's innocence and directness !

Just like his poems, the world of Munir Niazi's ghazals is also a cosmos of sleeping, moonlit cities, abandoned ancient ruins, young girls on rooftops and lovers wandering city roads at night and mourning their unrequited love.  This magical realism (similar to the world of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novels) sets him apart from everyone else writing Urdu ghazals in the modern era.

Munir's poetry is brimming with the colors and images of wide open landscapes, close ups of tender moments in the lives of men and women and above all with the pure and innocent wonder of a poet as he looks at people and places around him and the universe that he inhabits.

Above all, Munir's poetry is a portrait of the moment . . . full of wonder at the beauty inherent in a particular fraction of fleeting Time . . .  immediate,  palpable, alive!

 Dareechah has uploaded two videos of rare interviews with

Munir Niazi in a new web page "Munir Niazi: Interview Videos" in the Urdu Poems section)

Munir Niazi: Biography

Munir Niazi was born in 1928 into a Pashtoon family of the Niazi tribe in a small town or qasbah called Khanpur near Hoshiarpur, in the heart of eastern Punjab in British India. Munir has written many poems about poems about his home town Khanpur (Khanpur Ae Khanpur,  Sapnaa aagay jaataa kaisay, Watan mein Wapasee, page55, Jungle mein Dhanak) which describe this dreamy town and its people. Also, this town is described in Ashfaq Ahmed's Preface Sar e Kohsaar in Munir's first collection of poems Taiz Hawa aur Tanha Phool published in 1959.

His father, Fateh Muhammad Khan Niazi worked as a government officer in the Irrigation Department of Punjab and his mother was well educated compared to the general state of women's education in the 1920s Punjab of British India: by this I infer that she had finished high school (Reference: Begum Naheed Munir Niazi interview of January, 2022 on YouTube; click here to see this video).

Munir's father passed away in 1930 when he was just two years old. Munir's father's family arranged for Munir Niazi's mother to be married to a younger brother of Munir's father: that is to the young widow's brother-in-law.   This was a common practice at that time both in Muslim and in Hindu families. Munir's stepfather fathered three sons and five daughters from Munir's mother in the course of time. (Reference: Begum Naheed Munir Niazi interview, January, 2022 on YouTube; click here to see this video).

Munir Niazi's stepfather did not treat him fairly and as Munir grew up, he became a rebel due to the negative treatment by his stepfather. There is a poem titled Aik Baaghi Baitay kee tasveer (page79 of his 2nd collection Jungle mein Dhanak) which describes the scene when Munir's stepfather passed away: Munir was a man in his thirties when that happened. 

Munir matriculated from Khanpur probably in 1942-1943 and joined the British Navy as a sailor for sometime. But the discipline here was against his temper. During his working days, he would sit alone on the shores of Bombay and read Saadat Hassan Manto's stories and Meera Ji's poems published in "Adabi Dunya". In those days his literary interest flourished and he resigned from the Navy and completed his education and at the same time began a regular career in writing.  

In 1943, he enrolled in Sadiq Egerton College, Bahawalpur and completed his F.A. probably in 1945.

For his B.A. he went through 3 colleges before graduating probably in 1947: he started as a B.A. student at Dyal Singh College, Lahore, then transferred to Amar Singh College, Srinagar and ended up graduating from Islamia College, Jalandhar in 1947 (Reference: Shaheen Nazli's Preface to Safar Dee Raat, Munir Niazi's first collection of Punjabi poems).  

At the time of the creation of Pakistan in 1947, he migrated with his extended family of uncles to Sahiwal (Montgomery). His extended family transferred all their financial assets which included Munir's father's assets as well as his stepfather's assets and started a successful passenger bus transport company from Sahiwal (Reference: Manzur Ejaz YouTube interview; click on link here) . 

In 1948, Munir Niazi demanded his share of his stepfather's transport business. At this demand, his stepfather again treated him unfairly by putting a condition that if he wanted his inheritance then he must marry a recently widowed woman of the Niazi clan who was older in age than the 20 year old Munir Niazi. Munir also felt that his share of the inheritance was not calculated fairly: that his stepbrothers and stepsisters were given a bigger share than him because he was an orphan. In any case, Munir Niazi married Sughra Khanum in 1948 at the age of 20 and his bride was older than him and had been married before. (Reference: Begum Naheed Munir Niazi interview, January, 2022 on YouTube; click here to see this video).

 In 1949, Munir Niazi announced that he would be a full time Urdu and Punjabi poet from now on and would support himself and his wife from the inheritance he had received. In 1949, he established an Urdu weekly "Saat Rang" from Sahiwal, published Noon Meem Rashid's poetry collection and also developed a life long friendship with the great modern Urdu poet Majeed Amjad. 

Munir Niazi then moved to Lahore, probably in 1950 or 1951. He started attending meetings of Urdu literary societies in Lahore and would visit Pak Tea House and other hang outs for poets and writers of Lahore. In the 1960s, he wrote some memorable songs for Urdu films ("Jis Nay Meray Dil Ko Dard Diya and Jaa apnee hasraton per for Film "Susraal", Kaisay Kaisay loag hamaray jee ko jalanay aa jaatay hain etc.) and went on to publish many collections of his Urdu and Punjabi poems and ghazals. In 1960, he set up a publishing company "Al-Misaal" in Lahore.He also wrote for newspapers, magazines and radio. He was later associated with Pakistan Television's Lahore studios and the famous singer Naheed Akhtar sang his ghazal Zinda rahein to kiya hai which was broadcast from the Lahore Studios of Pakistan Television.

Munir's first wife Sughra Khanum died in 1985 and Munir's close friend and short sory writer/playwright Ashfaq Ahmed arranged for him to marry Naheed Begum (Naheed Munir Niazi after marriage) the same year.  Munir and Naheed Begum had a peaceful married life till the end when Munir Niazi passed away in 2006.