Born in Azamgarh and raised in Gorakhpur, Faruqi was a chief postmaster-general and member of the Postal Services Board in New Delhi until 1994.
Part of the first batch of the BA programme at Maharana Pratap College in Gorakhpur, he pursued a Master’s degree in English from Allahabad University in 1955. Although he topped the university, he did not receive a first-class, which he thought was probably because “he asked too many questions, or did not dress in the three-piece suits”.
He had chosen to work on a doctorate in English symbolism and the influence of French literature, and poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan was assigned as his supervisor. But after Bachchan came down heavily on him for missing a meeting, Faruqi did not return to pursue his doctorate, he had said in an interview.
“For plugging the holes in history the pamphlet is the ideal form.” George Orwell, ‘Pamphlet Literature’, January 9, 1943.
New Statesman and Nation George Orwell regretted the surprising “badness of contemporary pamphlets”. From a survey of his own library he identified nine main trends, ranging from “anti-Left and crypto-Fascist” to “lunatic”, and described them as “practically all trash, interesting only to bibliographies”.
This was surprising as “the pamphlet ought to be the literary form of an age like our own”, Orwell argued. A time “when political passions run high, channels of free expression are dwindling, and organised lying exists on a scale never before known”.
This book celebrates the composite culture of India that gave birth to and nurtured the Urdu ghazal
Gopi Chand Narang’s study of the form links it to a flourishing liberal climate in the country.
English readers have loved Russian classic writers, the French naturalists, and the Latin American greats without even bothering to know the names of their English translators.
The Translator’s Invisibility, the famous title of Lawrence Venuti’s 1995 book, can best represent the outstanding effort of Surinder Deol in making Gopi Chand Narang’s exposition of the history, beauty, and formal intricacies of the ghazal a memorable affair and yet remaining unsung.