اردو ناول میں مکاں کا تصور: تہذیبی، نفسیاتی اور علامتی جہتیں

THE CONCEPT OF SPACE IN THE URDU NOVEL: CIVILIZATIONAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SYMBOLIC DIMENSIONS

Abstract

Space (makāṅ) in the Urdu novel is rarely a neutral backdrop; more often it carries the weight of class, memory, exile and civilizational history. This article moves beyond the chronological treatment of time in Urdu fiction to ask a narrower question: what does place actually do inside these narratives? Reading across a wide range of novels — Premchand's Godaan, Deputy Nazir Ahmad's Ibn-ul-Waqt, Sajjad Zaheer's London Ki Ek Raat, Mirza Athar Baig's Ghulam Bagh, Bano Qudsia's Raja Gidh, Anwar Sajjad's Khushiyon Ka Bagh, Mustansar Hussain Tarar's Bahā’o, Waheed Ahmad's Zeno, Jamila Hashmi's Dasht-e-Sūs, Altaf Fatima's Dastak Na Do, and Shaukat Siddiqui's Khuda Ki Basti — the study identifies several distinct functions that space performs: as a marker of class hierarchy, as a civic and civilizational identity, as a site of exile where a foreign city sharpens rather than erases native identity, as an intellectual and moral meeting-ground, as a natural continuum that carries civilizational memory across centuries, and as a site of rupture where the loss of home becomes inseparable from the loss of self at Partition. The article argues that across these registers, Urdu novelists gradually stopped treating makāṅ as mere setting and began treating it as an active, meaning-bearing participant in the narrative — a shift that deserves as much critical attention as the more frequently discussed question of narrative time.