Rivalry and Debate on the Margins of Bâzgasht in 19th Century India

India and Indian poets feature prominently in understandings of bâzgasht-i adabî (“literary return”), both in the way the movement is considered to have developed in 19th century Iran and in its construction as a conceptual category in the 20th century as inaugurated by Muhammad Taqî Bahâr (d. 1951). This paper moves away from India’s more passive place in such understandings to the way in which debates in India itself were taking shape in the mid-19th century, alongside the emergence of bâzgasht. It takes as an example the court of the Last Nawab of Arcot (d.1855), one of the final official epicenters of Persian literary activity in post-Mughal times. Framed by the Nawab’s promotion of Persian poetry through an exclusive society, and the competitive practice of tazkirah writing at his court and its environs, this paper delves into the heady world of personal clashes, competing networks of poetic instruction, and high-stakes debates defining the climate of this far-off outpost of Persian literary culture in South India. At its core, lies the heated rivalry between the local poet Maulavi Muhammad Mahdî “Vâsif” (d. 1873), on the one hand, and the Nawab and his deputies, on the other, culminating in a debate over the style of Abd al-Qâdir Bîdil (d. 1721) and what constitutes acceptable poetry. In disentangling such a rivalry, this paper draws attention to the way some poets of mid-19th century India understood their place within the greater literary landscape of the time as well as within the spectrum of Persian literary history, in particular in relation to the great “masters.” In doing so, it gives a fuller sense of how larger literary trends occurring elsewhere, such as bâzgasht, were being understood and received by some poets of mid-19th century India, on the margins of an increasingly fracturing Persianate world.