Woman From Object to Voice Urdu Ghazal Study by Sahar Saleemi

The Evolution of Woman from Classical Urdu Poetry to Zeeshan Ameer Saleemi's Post-Postmodern Verse

Tracing the Urdu beloved's journey from Visual allure to Spiritual voice.

By Sahar Saleemi (Pakistan)

Women objectification has always remained an integral element of Classical Urdu Literature, not merely arising as an inseparable part of a poet's individual intent, rather as a structural inheritance. Classical Urdu poetry, over the course of history, overlapped with cultural values which, in turn, were overwhelmingly shaped by the patriarchal epistemologies. These patriarchal trends defined woman as an entity, as an object to be "seen" thus denying the essential integrity of her character and her independent social identity. She was aestheticized for her body, beauty, silence,

 

patience, endurance, obedience, and self-sacrifice, while her inner human traits remained largely inaccessible.

This clearly reveals that women objectification in classical Urdu poetry is something more systematic rather than incidental. Fredrickson and Roberts, in their Objectification Theory (1997) from The Psychology of Women Quarterly, suggest that numerous women are sexually objectified and represented as objects for the pleasure and the use of others.

Post-postmodern poets, most importantly Zeeshan Ameer Saleemi, deliberately deviate from this norm, transforming women's poetic status from merely an object of amusement or pleasure-seeking to that of a spiritual goddess, turning love into a divine experience. Saleemi does not necessarily revise the tradition; he unarguably exits it.

 

Classical Urdu Ghazal: Women as Visual Grammar.

In Classical Urdu Ghazal, womanhood is reduced

to a grammar of surfaces i.e, a set of defined parameters or a physical framework in terms of which she is defined as "Perfect". Her coquettish eyes, her ruby lips, her heart-stealing gait, the curves of her delicate body, her thick eyelashes, her long hair, her soft hands and sacred feet, her fair complexion, all these contribute to the overall description of a flawless feminine portrait, thus fragmenting the essential existence of women as an independent human being to that of a beauty broken into multiple fragments. Woman identity thus remains entirely unchanged in classical Urdu poetry, frozen in the perfection standards of male authority. Consider, for example, Mir Taqi Mir's

 

 نازکی اس کے لب  کی  کیا کہیے

پنکھڑی ایک گلاب کی سی ہے

 

Here the focus is not on the power of speech, but solely on the shape and delicacy of the lips, that is visual softness. Similarly, at another point Meer's poetic Lense reflects the idea:

 

کھِلنا کم  کم  کلی  نے  سیکھا  ہے

تیری آنکھوں کی نیمِ خوابی سے…

 

In classical Urdu ghazals, a woman’s beauty is often linked to a flower that blooms under the poet’s gaze. Here, the bud “learning” to bloom from the beloved’s eyes reinforces her role as an objectified ideal of beauty and influence.

Bartkey(1990) says in Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression that it becomes evident when a woman's body or body parts are isolated and treated separately from her identity, leading to her being perceived mainly as a physical object of male sexual attraction.

Mirza Ghalib’s poetry stands in lineation with the traditional classical ghazal framework, portraying the beloved as an idealized object. The beloved's value lies in her gaze, her face, her smile, her beauty and the emotional effect she produces. Thus, woman beauty becomes an instrument of desire or suffering, whereas her individuality as a human being, her voice and her identity remains largely absent.

 

 

مانگے ہے پھر کسی کو لبِ بام پر ہوس

زلفِ سیاہ رخ پہ پریشاں کیے ہوئے

 

Here, the enchanting beauty of the beloved's hair is exaggerated to unparalleled heights of physical attraction. The beloved is not a participant rather a visual object placed on the balcony to satisfy the poet's hawas(desire or longing). The coinage of this specific term here further heightens the sense of woman objectification.Similarly, another couplet from Ghalib undeniably operates within a patriarchal framework.

 

 

چاہے ہے پھر کسی کو مقابل میں آرزو

سرمے سے تیز دشنےِ مژگاں کیے ہوئے

 

Here the eyelashes(Mizgaan) specifically reflect the classical poetry trends of woman objectification. They are compared to daggers (dashna), sharpened by "Surma". The beloved is taken as a collection of sharp, aesthetic tools

 

whose intentions are only to wound the lover. She wounds through her appearance, truly epitomizing the concept of femme fatale, a woman who is dangerous yet silent.

 

 

آرائشِ جمال سے فارغ نہیں ہنوز

پیشِ نظر ہے آئینہ دائم نقاب میں

 

شرم اک ادائے ناز ہے اپنے ہی سے سہی

ہیں کتنے بے حجاب کہ یوں ہیں حجاب میں

 

Here, shyness(Sharam), is taken not as a personal moral choice, rather a "performance" to enhance her beauty or attraction, thus turning an element of women sophistication into a decorative feature. The paradox of "Veil" further demeans her status as a perfect visual specimen. In Classical Urdu ghazals, the beloved is taken more of a distant figure, indifferent towards the lover's sufferings and that difference is also the realistic portrayal of patriarchal society's accepted expectations from the "Perfect woman", the one who is shy,

 

indifferent, and innocent. Ghalib, like other classical giants, follows the core themes which are characteristic of classical Urdu tradition. He indicates a deep emotional attachment with the beloved, thus exalting her to the heights of a Poetic Muse.

 

Daagh Dehlvi's poetry epitomizes the most explicit form of sensual objectification in classical Urdu poetry. He stands characteristically unique in openly admiring bodily grace and physically stimulating charm, thus taking classical Urdu trend of woman objectification to the next level of flirtation and desire. He is well known for his linguistic playfulness and superficial descriptions of woman beauty. The couplet cited below shows how he feels captivated by the appearance of the beloved.

 

 

اچھی صورت پہ غضب ٹوٹ کے آنا دل کا

یاد    آتا   ہے   ہمیں   چھیڑنا   مانا    دل   کا

 

Similarly, another couplet encompasses the alluring presence of the beloved.

 

خوشبو وہی، وہی ہے نزاکت، وہی ہے رنگ

معشوق کیا ہے، پھول ہے وہ بھی گلاب کا

 

ہمیں ہے شوق کہ بے پردہ تم کو دیکھیں گے

تمہیں ہے شرم تو آنکھوں پہ ہاتھ دھر لینا

 

This couplet reflects the intensity of passion, treating desire as an overwhelmingly dominant power and love as a physical craving. Woman is taken as something to be seen and not as an independent human agency.

Jigar Moradabadi's classical ghazals equate the beloved's beauty with wine and intoxication, emphasizing pleasure and emotional effect. Her presence and her physical attributes serve as wine intoxicating the lover, thus leaving him "drunk" on her beauty. As per classical Urdu ghazal tradition, the beloved acts only as a catalyst for emotional way out. In one of his couplets, he follows the theme of visual consumption, labeling the beloved's eyes as a

 

powerful force that can deactivate the poet's intellect or quick wit. Hence, her physical presence acts as a sensory force.

 

جب ملی آنکھ، ہوش کھو بیٹھے

کتنے حاضر جواب تھے ہم لوگ

 

Saifi Lucknowi's ghazals also reflect the core elements of Classical Urdu poetry encapsulating descriptions of love, beauty, and longing thus analysing the beloved through the lover's poetic gaze. This undoubtedly aligns his poetry with the classical norm where woman is merely taken as an object of beauty or pleasure rather than a fully autonomous psychological subject. In the examples cited below, Saifi treats woman hair as a metaphorical snare functioning as a trap for the lover.

 

الٰہی خیر ہو، الجھن پہ الجھن بڑھتی جاتی ہے

نہ میرا دم، نہ ان کے گیسوؤں کا خم نکلتا ہے

 

وہاں بالوں میں کنگھی ہو رہی ہے، خم نکلتا ہے

یہاں رگ رگ سے کھنچ کھنچ کر ہمارا دم نکلتا ہے

 

 

All these classical Urdu ghazal trends clearly reflect that in literature, women have almost always been described in terms of their physical beauty. Men-written literature has always appreciated a woman's beauty through the undeniable charm of her body parts, like eyes, lips, breasts, waist, thighs, neck, smile, and more, thus utterly denying her intellectual capacity. Mary Astell(2002) states in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies that people tend to ignore women's innate traits and the reality that they are just capable of doing the best things as male. Classical Urdu ghazals show that the literature of that era lacked essential female voice and how male poets employed objectification tactics to depict women as the figures of desires, physicality, and pleasure, thus lacking the ability of logical reasoning. This clearly reveals how gender expectations are constructed, propagated, and maintained through poetry and literature.

 

Classical Legacy and the Poetry of Faiz.

 

Faiz inherits the form of classical ghazal but reorients it. He shows a significant divergence from the essential classical tradition of fragmenting a woman's body into aesthetic units. The corporeal fetishization is something he strikingly withdraws from. The beloved in Faiz's poetry is a presence, an inner arrival. Radically abandoning the visual grammar, Faiz shifts his poetic lens to ethical registers.

 

رات یوں دل میں تیری کھوئی ہوئی یاد آئی

جیسے ویرانے میں چپکے سے بہار آ جائے

 

Here the beloved is treated not as a physical object or an entity, rather she is experienced internally. Her memory is taken as a new arrival of spring, which signifies freshness, newness, and regeneration. Faiz undeniably positions the beloved into a moral frame crafted with modesty, restraint, and respect. This bestows the womanhood with spiritual elevation in modern literature rather than treating her merely as a sensual spectacle. In another famous poem, Mujhse Pehli Si Mohabbat, Faiz takes the

 

path less trodden acknowledging that life withholds sufferings greater than romance alone.

 

اور  بھی   دکھ  ہیں  زمانے  میں محبت کے سوا

راحتیں اور بھی ہیں وصل کی راحت کے سوا

 

At another point, he highlights the conflict between true love and the sorrows of survival

(Gham-e-Rozgaar).

 

دنیا   نے   تیری   یاد   سے   بے   گانہ   کر   دیا

تجھ سے بھی دل فریب ہیں غمِ روزگار کے

 

The word "Begaana" shows that the worldly pressures have forced him to forget her. This forgetfulness is deliberate and is not marked by a lack of love, rather is a fact that survival is arduous and deceitful(Dil-fareb). Hence, Faiz shows a great shift from romantic idealism to social realities of life.

 

 

اک طرزِ تغافل ہے سو وہ ان کو مبارک

اک عرضِ تمنا ہے سو ہم کرتے رہیں گے

 

 

Here Faiz follows the classical Urdu ghazal tradition where duality is shown most beautifully, that is the indifference of the beloved versus the eternal hope of the lover. Rather than discussing it as a cruelty of the beloved, as is generally assumed, Faiz welcomes this path of neglect(Taghaful). Rather than complaining, he effectively permits her to maintain her stance(Unko Mubarak). Faiz Ahmed Faiz does not objectify women's body, he sanctifies her presence, but that too falls short of granting her complete subjecthood.

 

Zeeshan Ameer Saleemi and the Poetic Evolution from Visual Possession to Emotional Transcendence.

Where classical poetic traditions circulated heavily around the fragmentary aesthetics in their representation of ideal beauty of women, Zeeshan Ameer Saleemi outshines as a poet of radical aesthetic refusal. He dismantles the visual grammar of women objectification, thus

 

marking a departure from the centuries-established, deeply entrenched poetic norms. Saleemi portrays feminine presence as a deeply profound experience of inner exaltation and undivided ethical entity. He consciously withdraws the camera from the female body and positions distance and separation as inner ethical and emotional awakening. Zeeshan Ameer Saleemi's beloved is neither an object of physical amusement nor a sensual spectacle, but a presence that shakes him from within. Hence, he shows a rupture that rightly positions him among post-postmodern voices. Saleemi's beloved stands as a source of spiritual respiration rather than a poetic consumption.

 

تیری ایک نظر کی لے میں، یہ دل یوں ہی گنگناتا رہا کہیں

نہ  ہی  شورِ  وصل   بپا   ہوا،  نہ فراق  دل میں  بجا  کہیں

 

As mentioned earlier, in classical Urdu poetic tradition, the beloved gaze is associated with killing or intoxication, which gives it a more cruel meaning. On the contrary, in Saleemi's poetry, the beloved's glance produces equilibrium rather

 

than chaos. Hence, she is exalted as a stabilizing presence. Similarly, in the second couplet, he says

 

تیری اس ادا کی وہ خامِشی، میری عمر بھر کی صدا بنی

نہ لبوں پہ حرفِ دعا رکا، نہ ہی دل نے شکوہ کیا کہیں

 

Unlike the silence of the beloved in classical Urdu poetry, which is taken as intentional indifference towards the lover to provoke or intensify his desires, Saleemi's beloved has a silent demeanor which is more powerful as it becomes the voice of the poet's entire life. Here the beloved is portrayed as an independent agency who commands meaning without speaking.

 

تیری بےنیازی حسن سے، میرے شوق کو یہ سبق ملا

نہ  سوالِ   وصال   رہا   کہیں،   نہ   وبالِ   ہجر   رہا   کہیں

 

 

This couplet directly rejects objectification, treating woman beauty as sovereign not consumable. Saleemi's desire is ethically

 

restrained rather than being gratified.

 

خزاں   جان   کی   وہ   جو  وہ  اِک   ہوا،  حدِ آگہی   پہ  پہنچ  گئی

نَہ ہی شَاخ خواب سے پت جھڑا، نہ ہی موسم جان ٹلا کہیں

 

In this couplet, Saleemi's dream and desire stop at the boundary of consciousness. The beloved refines the psyche rather than overwhelming it. Here Saleemi reflects the post-postmodern trend that woman is not a catastrophe; she is containment.

 

نفسِ جان کا وہ جلال تھا، مجھے خود ہی خود سے جدا کیا

نہ میں آئینوں میں بکھر سکا، نہ کوئی سمجھ ہی سکا کہیں

 

The last couplet profoundly epitomizes Saleemi's intensity of self-endurance, which is undoubtedly a unique characteristic of his poetry. Unlike Daag Dehlvi, Saleemi winds up the ghazal with the core theme that patience and self-endurance define love. Love doesn't humiliate the lover, it preserves his dignity. The poet exhibits a greater self-endurance to prove that a woman is a source of love, not a symbol

 

of the lover's destruction. Here, woman in Saleemi's poetry becomes neither symbol nor object, but a consciousness that reforms desire itself. She is not a source of sexual gratification but a subject of deep spiritual experience.

Saleemi reconfigures the classical imagery in a distinctly post-postmodern manner. The beloved's beauty, unlike classical ghazal traditions, is a radiant source of inner harmony, illumination, and spiritual resonance. The poet's poetry (Ash'aar) gain voice (Sadaa) through her presence enabling her to become a condition, a generative force, that originates poetic utterance, not merely an ornament.

 

لبِ  ہائے   نازِ  حسن، آئینۂ   نورِ  جہاں

اشعار کی ہر صدا، اُس سے ہوئی کہکشاں

 

This shift reorients the centuries-old norm of woman beauty from the male-crafted framework of objectification to that of her presence and its influence allowing her to exist as an independent, luminous force strikingly in contrast to that of a body reduced to fragments.

 

Saleemi takes the woman to cosmic heights by portraying her beauty as a reflection and source of cosmic light. He reverses the classical hierarchy where the woman body is illuminated by external metaphors and acknowledges her as a generative, meaning-producing presence.

 

روئے   نگارِ   حسن،   آئینۂ   ماہ   و   مہر

افلاک کی ہر قُبا، اُس سے ہوئی تابدان

 

Thus, doing so, Saleemi positions the woman as a metaphysical centre enabling cosmic illumination.

Ultimately, the evolution of womanhood in classical Urdu poetry marks a significant journey from an "Object" to a "Voice", from an aesthetic presence to ethical consciousness. Classical poets framed women as ornaments of beauty whereas modern poets begin to question those norms. Saleemi's post-postmodern verse shows a woman not as an entity to be seen, possessed or conquered but to be heard, felt and taken as a guiding presence. This does not signify the demise of romance but its maturation.