Urdu Literature and Authors MCQs with Explanations

The maqta is the final couplet in which the poet signs the poem with the takhallus. The matla is the opening couplet, a sher is any couplet, and a misra is a single line (hemistich).

The radif is the monotonous repeat following the rhyme (qafiya) in both hemistichs of every sher. Option 1 defines the qafiya itself, which is the classic confusion tested here.

The ghazal is a set of autonomously rhymed couplets without a single subject, whereas the nazm is a poem with a beginning, middle and end on one theme and usually carries a title. Length, metre and subject matter alone do not define the difference, so the other options fail.

Anis and Dabeer are the two great masters of the Urdu marsiya, the extended elegy on the martyrs of Karbala, in the Lucknow school. A nauha is a shorter lament, and the qasida is a panegyric — neither is the long narrative form associated with these two names.

A kulliye gathers everything a poet wrote in all languages, so Kulliye-e-Ghalib covers the Urdu and Persian verse together with his prose. Divan-e-Ghalib, the tempting second option, is the Urdu ghazal collection alone, and Namakdan-e-Zohri is a single prose letter, not the collected works.

Mir worked in the Delhi school (Dilli ka andaaz), noted for its sober, difficult diction and pathos, before moving to Lucknow late in life; his fame nonetheless rests on the Delhi tradition. Lucknow is the trap because it became the great poetic capital after him and is the home of the marsiya school.

Bang-e-Dra (The Call of the Bell, 1924) was Iqbal's first Urdu poetry book and includes the Shikwa-Jawab-e-Shikwa material. Ball-e-Jibril (1935), Zarb-e-Kaleem (1936) and Armaghan-e-Hijaz (1938) all appeared later.

Asrar-e-Khudi (Secrets of the Self), first published in Persian in 1915, is the foundational statement of Iqbal's khudi idea. Javid Nama (1932) and Payam-e-Mashriq (1923) are later Persian works, while Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa (1913) are Urdu poems on a different subject.

'Bol' is one of Faiz Ahmed Faiz's most anthologised songs of resistance, written in the prison-poetry tradition of his generation. Josh is the tempting distractor because he too wrote committed, militant verse, but this lyric is Faiz's.

Josh Malihabadi is styled Shair-e-Jang, the Poet of Struggle, for his combative, revolutionary ghazal and nazm. Shair-e-Mashriq belongs to Iqbal and Khuda-e-Sukhan to Mir, so both are familiar-name traps.

The movement was inaugurated at a founding conference of progressive Indian writers held in London in 1936, and its first Indian conference followed at Lucknow in 1938. The 1946 date is the trap, being close to the pre-partition Popular Front period rather than the founding.

Premchand, born Dhanpat Rai, began writing in Urdu as 'Nawab Rai' and only later adopted the name Premchand. Dagh, Josh and Miraji are genuine takhalluses of other Urdu poets, which is why they appear as plausible distractors.