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The Rich Journey of the Ghazal From Longing to Spirituality
As long as the human heart remains what it is, the ghazal will keep holding up its small, two-line mirror to that heart.
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Of all the forms of poetry, the ghazal is special because it holds love, separation, pain, and joy so gently yet so powerfully, all at once. In just two short lines, a sher can create a whole world of feeling; this is why this form has touched readers and listeners across the world for hundreds of years. It began in the deserts of Arabia, grew richer in Persian, took on the grace of Urdu in the Mughal courts, and later found a new home in Indian languages such as Hindi and Marathi. Along this long journey, the ghazal picked up something from every language, culture, and age it passed through, yet at its heart it never changed: it has always remained a simple, honest way of speaking about feeling.
The word ghazal comes from the Arabic word “taghazzul,” meaning talking closely with a beloved, or speaking about the company of women. Arab poets in the seventh century first shaped this form, primarily as love poetry. Later, when Arabs took over Persia and tried to replace the Persian language with Arabic, the ghazal slowly found its way into Persian poetry, born out of this clash and mixing of cultures. From the tenth century onward, Persian poets gave the ghazal new depth. Great poets like Rudaki, Saadi, Hafiz, and Rumi did not keep it limited to romantic love alone; they brought spirituality, Sufi thought, and the beauty of nature into it also. Persian ghazals became known for their careful use of radif and qafiya, for each sher standing complete on its own, and for their clever, symbolic language. Sufi saints used the ghazal to express love for God and the search for one’s true self, so the line between love for a person and love for God often became soft and blurred.
Looking at this early history, we see that the ghazal grew out of the qasida, a long praise-poem from pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. The opening lines of the qasida, which spoke gently about missing the beloved and feeling alone while travelling, slowly broke away and became their own form: the ghazal. This is why, even today, a feeling of longing is often the first thing one senses in a ghazal. Persian Sufi poets did not use the form only for human love; they used it to speak of longing for God, for union with the divine, and for the journey inward to find oneself. So when Hafiz or Rumi writes about a beloved, it is not always a real person; often it stands for God. This double meaning gave Persian ghazals a mysterious, layered depth, which later passed into Urdu and Hindi ghazals as well. Hafiz’s “Divan” is still kept in Iranian homes with almost the same respect as a holy book, and even today people turn to its verses for guidance during New Year celebrations. Rumi, for his part, saw love itself as the path to God, and his Masnavi and his ghazals are still seen as the foundation of Sufi tradition around the world.
The ghazal came to India mainly through the grand courts of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals. Since Persian was the language of the court, Persian ghazals took root here, and it was from the mixing of Persian with local Hindavi speech that the Urdu language itself was born. Wali Dakhani is believed to have written the first Urdu ghazal in the eighteenth century, and from there a rich tradition began. Great poets like Mir Taqi Mir, Mirza Ghalib, Momin Khan Momin, and Dagh Dehlvi took Urdu ghazal to great heights. Ghalib, especially, used the ghazal to think deeply about life and philosophy, so his poems went beyond love to touch on the strange contradictions of living, the games of fate, and the big questions of human existence. Urdu ghazal is known for its free use of Persian and Arabic words, its delicate way of speaking about love and beauty, its Sufi undertones, and its mix of the earthly and the spiritual. After Ghalib, poets like Mir Anees, Ibn-e-Insha, Firaq Gorakhpuri, and Josh Malihabadi brought fresh energy to Urdu ghazal, while in the twentieth century, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Hasrat Mohani, and Sahir Ludhianvi turned it into a voice for revolution and progress. In Faiz’s poetry, love and revolution often blend so closely that a line meant for a beloved also speaks of the longing for freedom and justice. Because of poets like these, Urdu ghazal moved beyond the courts and became a voice for the struggles and hopes of ordinary people. First nurtured by the Mughals, it was later cared for just as warmly by the nawabs of Lucknow and the Nizams of Hyderabad. It was during this time that the tradition of the mushaira began, where poets gathered on one stage to recite their work, a tradition that is still very much alive in Urdu and Hindi literary life. Even today, the moment a sher is recited and the audience responds with spontaneous praise, that is seen as the truest sign that a ghazal has succeeded.
During India’s freedom struggle and in the years that followed, as Hindi spread quickly, Hindi ghazal emerged in the late nineteenth century, strongly shaped by the influence of Urdu ghazal. Bharatendu Harishchandra first planted this seed in Hindi, and later poets like Nirala, Sumitranandan Pant, Mahadevi Verma, and Dharamvir Bharati gave it greater depth of thought. Hindi ghazal built its own identity by using both tatsam and tadbhav words, and it opened its arms to social and national feelings. After independence, Dushyant Kumar gave Hindi ghazal a whole new dimension of social and political meaning; his sharp honesty and direct criticism of the system meant that Hindi ghazal was no longer only about love it became a mirror held up to society. Later, singers and writers like Jagjit Singh and Gulzar carried the ghazal into ordinary homes through their voice and their pen, and through music it reached people’s hearts more easily than ever. Poets of the next generation, like Nida Fazli, Bashir Badr, and Rahat Indori, brought Hindi-Urdu ghazal closer to everyday speech, making it simpler and more direct, while poets like Parveen Shakir and Kaifi Azmi added new notes about women’s lives and social change. Through all these stages, Hindi-Urdu ghazal grew richer, staying both classical and close to the people at the same time.
The ghazal’s journey into Marathi began somewhat later, in the early twentieth century. At first, many Marathi poets were unsure whether the ghazal was just a kind of metre or a whole separate form of poetry. It was Madhav Julian who cleared up this confusion. Between 1922 and 1933, he wrote a collection called “Gazzalanjali” and did the important work of bringing the pure Arabic-Persian metres into Marathi. He is widely seen as the one who first showed Marathi literature that the ghazal is its own independent and carefully structured form of poetry. But it was Suresh Bhat who truly planted the ghazal in Marathi soil and carried it to ordinary readers. With his 1961 collection “Roopgandha,” Bhat entered the world of Marathi poetry, and over the following decades, he made the technical aspects of the ghazal—its metre, syllable count, radif, and qafiya—accessible to common readers. Thanks to him, the Marathi ghazal did not remain confined to a small literary circle; it settled into the hearts of ordinary people, earning him the title “Ghazalsamrat,” the emperor of ghazal. Bhat, along with poets like Vinda Karandikar, Shanta Shelke, Sudhir Moghe, Narayan Surve, Grace, and F. M. Shinde, and later ghazal writers like Ilahi Jamadar, Sureshchandra Nadkarni, and U. R. Giri, made the world of Marathi ghazal even richer. Marathi ghazal built its own identity through depictions of rural life, engagement with the social questions of its time, and a fresh, creative use of familiar Marathi imagery. Just as love and separation come through powerfully in Suresh Bhat’s ghazals, some of his poems also strike hard against social inequality and the failures of the systemic failures, which is why his ghazal came to represent the whole range of Marathi feeling, not love poetry alone. The poets who came after him wrote just as strongly about the stress of city life, the pain of migration, and changing family relationships, keeping Marathi ghazal in step with its own times. Today, hundreds of ghazal collections are published in Marathi every year, and through a living tradition of teachers and students, this form keeps growing wider, which is truly something Marathi literature can be proud of. Even now, gatherings and stages held in Suresh Bhat’s name continue in cities like Pune, giving new poets a place to be heard and letting audiences enjoy and reflect on the work of established writers. Compared to Urdu and Hindi ghazal, Marathi ghazal is usually held to a stricter standard of metre, because many poets still faithfully follow the pure metrical tradition that Madhav Julian set down. Marathi ghazal has also tried to build its own set of symbols. Urdu ghazal has old, familiar images like the candle and the moth, or the rose and the nightingale, shaped over six centuries of tradition. Marathi ghazal, being much younger, is still shaping its own imagery, and this ongoing search is itself a sign of how fresh and experimental it remains.
To truly understand the ghazal, it helps to know a little about its structure. A ghazal usually has between five and fifteen couplets, and each couplet, made of two lines together called a misra, forms one complete sher a small poem in itself, with its own full meaning, even if it does not directly connect to the story of the other shers around it. The first sher, where both lines share the same radif (a repeated word or phrase at the end) and the same qafiya (or rhyme), is called the matla, and a ghazal usually begins with it. In the shers that follow, only the second line carries the radif and qafiya, and this pattern is what gives the ghazal its special rhythm and music. Saying the most with the fewest possible words is seen as the ghazal’s greatest strength, which is why it is loved as a form that pleases both the heart and the mind at once. The last sher of a ghazal is called the maqta, and by tradition, the poet weaves in his own pen name here Ghalib signs off as “Ghalib,” Suresh Bhat often as “Suresh” and this small signature has become one of the form’s most special features. Writing a ghazal is never just a matter of sudden inspiration; it requires real study and effort in metre, syllable count, and rhyme, and the poet must choose and arrange words with great care. This careful, patient work is almost a kind of craft, because making a fine ghazal takes as much skill as it does feeling.
At the center of the ghazal is a wide range of human feeling, and among these, separation stands out the most. The pain of being away from someone loved, a mind gently dwelling on memories, the longing to meet again, and the sharp feeling of loneliness all come through the ghazal in many different ways. One famous line from Mirza Ghalib comes to mind, where he asks about the way his beloved speaks, and through that simple question, a whole difficult relationship comes alive. Love remains at the very heart of the ghazal, and all its shades find a place within it the wonder of a first meeting, the intensity of passion, the difficulties love brings, and sometimes its quiet turn into devotion through the Sufi tradition. Alongside this, the ghazal has also captured life’s lighter, happy moments just as beautifully: the joy of meeting a beloved, the gentle touch of nature’s beauty, and the quiet contentment found in life’s small moments appear again and again in its verses. Along with these happy moments, the ghazal paints nature in a very poetic way too — moonlight, spring, blooming jasmine, and a dew-covered dawn all help the poet deepen the feeling of joy. At the same time, the ghazal has also spoken powerfully about human pain, the sorrow of a broken heart, the sting of social inequality, and anger against injustice.
Another special quality of the ghazal is that it can be sung. It is not just meant to be read; it is meant to be heard, and this is why it has earned its own place in the world of music too. Urdu ghazal travelled the world through the art of ghazal singing, Hindi ghazal was carried into homes by singers like Jagjit Singh, and in Marathi, many of Suresh Bhat’s ghazals still live on today as bhavgeet and natyasangeet, loved by listeners even now. This meeting of poetic words with musical notes makes the ghazal touch people more deeply than many other forms of poetry. The exact structure of the ghazal also shifts slightly from one language to another. Persian and Urdu follow the Arabic system of bahr, or metre, very strictly, while Hindi ghazal has taken a freer approach with matravrutta, letting it flow more naturally with the rhythm of the language. Marathi ghazal, however, has tried to bring together both traditions while staying true to the pure form of Arabic-Persian metres, which is why its sense of metrical discipline is usually seen as stricter than that of Urdu or Hindi ghazal. It is through this variety across languages that the same poetic form has taken on its own beauty and charm in each one. Choosing the right radif and qafiya also asks the poet to listen closely to the sound of the language, because a poorly matched rhyme can throw off the whole rhythm of the poem. This is why experienced ghazal writers often work on a single ghazal for weeks, changing words, checking the metre again and again, before they feel it is truly complete.
Even today, the ghazal’s popularity has not faded even a little; if anything, social media has given it a whole new stage. In this digital age, the ghazal has taken on yet another new turn. Young singers and poets now share their ghazals directly with millions of listeners through YouTube, Instagram, and other social platforms, giving this old form a newer, wider, and more global audience than ever before. Mushairas and ghazal gatherings are no longer limited to halls; they now reach people around the world through online broadcasts too. Indian cinema has also kept the ghazal alive through its music, and countless songs in Hindi and Marathi films are built on its very structure. All of this makes clear that the ghazal is not just a beautiful memory from the past; it is a living, growing form of poetry, still being shaped with the same creativity today, and it remains a truly universal experience that crosses the borders of language, place, and time to reach deep into the human heart. Having risen from the deserts of Arabia, blossomed in the garden of Persian poetry, and found new life in the Urdu, Hindi, and Marathi languages of India, this poetic tradition still feels as fresh and alive as ever, because its heart is tied to feelings that never grow old love, separation, pain, and joy. As long as the human heart remains what it is, the ghazal will keep holding up its small, two-line mirror to that heart, gently touching readers, generation after generation, without any doubt at all.
Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Rift.
