Haroon Rashid Siddiqi
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PUBLISHED October 19, 2025
“Hindustan ki ilhami kitābain do hain: Muqaddas Vaid aur Dīvān-e-Ghālib.” These famous words were written by Dr. Abdur Rahman Bijnori in his seminal thesis Mahāsin-e-Kalām-e-Ghālib, which he was writing in 1918, when the merciless Spanish flu pandemic cut short his life at the age of thirty-three. Although his time was brief, he left a luminous treasure on Ghalib (published posthumously in Bhopal in 1921) that remains one of the best reflections on the poet’s genius.
His bold but deeply thoughtful commentary declared that India possessed two revealed scriptures: the sacred Vedas and Dīvān-e-Ghālib. It was no mere exaggeration but a recognition of the unfathomable depth of Ghalib’s poetry: its multiple meanings, its metaphysical reach, its inexhaustible capacity to illuminate the human condition.
Truly probing that ocean, charting its boundless expanse and revealing its secret currents has been the work of many. However, if there is one figure—whether East or West—who has come closest to this Herculean task in our time, it is undoubtedly Dr. Frances W. Pritchett.
A scholar of Urdu and Persian literature, and professor emeritus at Columbia University, Dr. Pritchett has given us what can only be described as a masterpiece: A Desert of Roses. This vast online project is not simply a translation of Ghalib’s diwan but a luminous archive of meanings, a living museum where the voices of centuries of interpreters converge. If Ghalib’s poetry is writing, then Pritchett has built for us his cathedral, an edifice at once scholarly and aesthetic, where each couplet blooms like a rose amid the desert sands of history.
Its achievement lies not only in its philological precision but also in its interpretative generosity. Resist the temptation to impose a singular meaning on Ghalib’s verses. Instead, he recognizes that his words contain multitudes. every sher [couplet] is presented with a constellation of readings drawn from the most authoritative commentators (Shibli, Hali, Tabatabai, Bekhud Dehalvi, Bekhud Mohani, Gyan Chand, Kalidas Gupta Raza, Yusuf Salim Chishti and many others) so that the reader can witness the dazzling plurality of interpretations. After all, Ghalib was a poet who relished ambiguity, who thrived on the brilliant instability of language.
Pritchett doesn’t try to “figure it out”; rather, it opens the door for us to explore its labyrinths.
Accessible to all and continually refined, its website has become an indispensable resource for scholars, students and lovers of Urdu poetry around the world. With its bilingual presentation (romanized Urdu text alongside English translations), it democratizes access to Ghalib, ensuring that the poet who once claimed no one understood him can now be found by anyone with curiosity and patience.
One of the subtle triumphs of A Desert of Roses is how it situates Ghalib within the broader tapestry of Mughal aesthetics. The Mughal world, with its architecture of arches and domes, its miniature paintings and its intricate calligraphy, is not simply a historical backdrop: it is interpretive symbolism. Pritchett’s work allows us to see Ghalib’s poetry as an extension of this sensibility: ornamental but profound, playful but serious, infinitely self-renewing. Like the Taj Mahal’s pietra dura, where semi-precious stones are embedded in the marble, Ghalib’s words shimmer with embedded allusions: to Quranic imagery, to Persian tropes, and to philosophical paradoxes. Pritchett has selected these details with the care of a master archivist, so that readers are not simply reading verse but entering the chambers of a palace, each more wonderful than the last.
What distinguishes A Desertful of Roses is its polyphonic nature. No Ghalib interpreter is silenced; rather, everyone is invited to speak. This multiplicity echoes the poet’s own awareness of the infinite suggestiveness of language.
To read Pritchett’s project is to witness a symposium across centuries, where Shibli and Hali debate meanings, Bekhud intervenes, and Pritchett herself offers explanatory notes, never authoritarian, always respectful of the reader’s imagination. The effect is fascinating. Each couplet becomes a prism. Tilt it in one direction and you see metaphysical despair; Tip it another and shine with wry wit. Ghalib once reflected that “a thousand meanings emerge from every word.” Pritchett’s work proves him right.
The project’s own title, A Desert of Roses, captures the paradox of Ghalib’s world. The desert suggests sterility, difficulty, endless thirst. Roses promise beauty, fragrance, sudden ecstasy. To pass through the diwan is to endure both: the loneliness of existential inquiry and the joy of poetic revelation. Pritchett, as a guide, does not soften the harshness of the desert, but he ensures that his roses are visible, fragrant and unforgettable.
Ultimately, Pritchett’s contribution must be considered both scholarly and civilizing. It has built a bridge between cultures, allowing English-speaking audiences to come closer to the greatness of Urdu, while deepening the appreciation of native readers by bringing together centuries of commentary in one place. The Mughal emperors built gardens to reflect paradise on earth; Pritchett has constructed a textual garden, where the roses of Ghalib’s genius perpetually bloom.
Calling her a great Halibian of our time is not an exaggeration. With A Desert of Roses, he has created a monument as durable as any marble mausoleum, as fragrant as any rose garden. It is a gift not only to literary scholarship but to the world of poetry itself. And just as Ghalib once stated, “thousands of wishes, each worth dying for,” Pritchett has given us thousands of meanings, each worth pondering forever.
As I reflect on his extraordinary achievement, I feel compelled to offer my humble tribute in verse: a qitah. [ a short detached piece of poetry] dedicated to Dr. Frances Pritchett, who toured the kingdom of Ghalib more luminously than I could have ever imagined:
Ghalib ki hai dehleez zara soch ke jaana,
Ek alam-e-afaq hai us khamagarri mein;
Har lafz jahan behre tilismaat ho goya,
Darya ko kiya bandh wahan kozagarri mein.
[Tread lightly upon Ghalib’s threshold,
for in his craft lies a universe entire;
Each word a sea of enchantments,
the ocean itself contained within a potter’s clay]
All facts and information are the sole responsibility of the writer.
Haroon Rashid Siddiqui is a freelance contributor and opinion piece writer.
