حافظ احمد علی خان شوق
یہ خبر افسوس کے ساتھ سنی جائیگی کہ رامپور کے مشہور علم دوست فاضل اور وہاں کے مشہور شاہی کتب خانہ کے سابق ناظم اور متعدد کتابوں کے مترجم و مصنف حافظ احمد علی خان صاحب شوقؔ نے اوائل رمضان المبارک ۱۳۵۲ھ میں تقریباً پینسٹھ اور ستر کی عمر کے درمیان میں انتقال فرمایا، مرحوم نہایت بااخلاق، بامروت، علم دوست اور صاحب کمال تھے، قلمی اور نادر کتابوں کے خاص ماہر تھے، معارف کے ناظرین کبھی کبھی ان کی تحقیقات سے مستفید ہوا کرتے تھے، ان کی سب سے بہتر کتاب تذکرہ کاملین رام پور ہے، اﷲ تعالیٰ غریق رحمت کرے۔ (سید سلیمان ندوی،جنوری ۱۹۴۳ء)
The Holy Qur’ān is said to be a book neither in poetry nor in prose; yet it has a unique rhyme with a metrical system peculiar to it. The science of prosody and metrics, which is linked directly to poetry with its two characteristics of meter and rhyme, is based on the inductive study of the formal qualities of the Arabic poetry. The Holy Qur’ān, though not a book of poetry, is far away from the stylistics of prosaic speech in the sense since the terminal-end points of the ayaths (verses) of its each and every surah are rhythmic and follow a metrical system of its own, which phenomenon is significant from the view- point of the science of prosody and metrics. Given this, each and every Surah of Qur’ān has a distinct quality whereby it can be recognized and differentiated from every other surah. Both Islam and the Qur’ān have abstained from going to the extent of putting an end to poetic genius; rather they have encouraged it differentiating good poetry meant for the cause of spreading Islamic message from the bad one that stands against the message of Islam. As regards the Qur’ān, its each and every Surah is dominated by multi-dimensional musical rhythms in synchrony with the total climate of its verses, which makes the listener spell-bound, and which plays an essential function so characteristic of the science of eloquent rhetoric.
Maintaining Multiple Identities: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of South Asian Immigrant Fiction South Asian immigrants on being in a foreign land, including Britain and the USA, have to make many adjustments in their lifestyles to live a less frictional and more resourceful life. Yet they cannot completely delink themselves from their original culture in which they or their parents are brought up. This results in their developing complex and multiple identities which draw force partially from their origin as well as their host culture. Fiction writings, particularly by Diaspora writers, bring out these conflicts/issues more clearly than any other means as authors masquerade behind the veils of their respective protagonists whom they give their languages, origins, ethnicities, biographical similarities, particularly identity dilemmas and crises. This study aims to investigate how immigrants of various South Asian origins and generations develop, maintain and/or negotiate the multiple aspects of their identities when they live in an entirely different host culture. With this aim in mind, the lives of characters in selected works of South Asian Immigrant Fiction have been analyzed using Bakhtin's framework of Novelistic Discourse for detecting the identity issues confronted by the immigrants as it particularly focuses on the dialogical relationship between the author and his/her characters, their languages and worldviews in the novelistic discourse. The works chosen centre around the issues of maintenance and negotiation of identities of various characters in the South Asian Immigrant Fiction in English. The ideology and identity of the authors is traced through their language use and portrayal of characters. Bakhtin's framework is aided by Sociolinguistic tools as well as Literary Close Reading, Discourse Analysis and Social Anthropology. The study reveals that the necessity of developing multiple, contradictory and compromised identities are not without their windfalls and pitfalls though; it is helpful in immigrants' assimilation and naturalization in the host culture, yet at the cost of losing a great part of their original culture, language and heritage. Grown up in their native countries, the first generation parents are able to maintain multiple identities pretty successfully by posing a 'fake' identity. In contrast, the subsequent generations (in their developmental stages) have to face many peculiar dilemmas which often result in distancing/breaking off from their parents. The biggest challenge that poses the latter is striking a balance between individualism and family unity, personal freedom and family life, adjustment in the mainstream and expectations of home and, liberty and social conservatism.