As part of a week-long celebration of the centenary of Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto, The Hindi Urdu Flagship at the University of Texas at Austin hosted a series of lectures by the renowned Urdu critic and historian, Shamim Hanfi. In this informal talk, Hanfi discusses some interesting moments in the complicated history of Urdu and Hindi. Hanfi i…

The Hindi Urdu Flagship hosts this fascinating exploration of Quranic Exegesis and the development of Urdu by the renowned historian, Mehr Farooqi. Farooqi is Assistant Professor of Urdu at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. “The Secret of Letters: Chronograms in Urdu Literary Culture,” which appeared in Edebiyat: The Journal of Middle …

Renowned Urdu satirist, Mujtaba Hussain, reads selections from his extensive catalog of Urdu journalism and humor to an audience composed of Hindi Urdu Flagship students and the wider South Asian studies community at UT Austin. The recording should be wonderful listening comprehension practice for intermediate to advanced students of Urdu and/or Hi…

In this fascinating talk, Hindi Urdu Flagship Director, Rupert Snell, presents his recent work on the diverse genre of autobiographical writing in Hindi. The talk, entitled Autobiography is Another Story: “Lives” in Hindi, features audio recordings of a number of Hindi Urdu Flagship students and faculty reading from a wide variety of Hindi autobiog…

Ali Asani, professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic religion and cultures at Harvard University describes the modern Sufi rock phenomenon epitomized by Salman Ahmad and his band Junoon. Asani outlines Ahmad’s personal musical, religious, and political journey and attempted to place Sufi rock in the broader tradition of Muslim devotional literature. A n…

As part of its festival celebrating the living tradition of song and performance dedicated to the poet Kabir, HUF hosts a live musical performance by an acclaimed traditional Kabir folk ensemble led by Prahlad Singh Tipanya. Tipanya sings and plays the tambura, a five-stringed plucked and strummed instrument originally from Rajasthan, and kartal a …

As part of its festival celebrating the living tradition of song and performance dedicated to the poet Kabir, HUF hosts a live musical performance by an acclaimed traditional Kabir folk ensemble led by Prahlad Singh Tipanya. Tipanya sings and plays the tambura, a five-stringed plucked and strummed instrument originally from Rajasthan, and kartal a …

As part of his visit to the Hindi Urdu Flagship, eminent Hindi scholar Harish Trivedi conducts a roundtable discussion on issues of Hindi-Urdu translation with a diverse set of students and faculty. This second half of the discussion focuses on a stanza from the Kavitavali of Tulsidas and a mystery piece provided by Trivedi. The first half (feature…

As part of his visit to the Hindi Urdu Flagship, eminent Hindi scholar Harish Trivedi conducts a roundtable discussion on issues of Hindi-Urdu translation with a diverse set of students and faculty. This first half of the discussion focuses on the opening paragraphs of Premchand’s Rangbhumi. The second half (featured in a separate podcast episode) …