Agha Hashar Kashmiri


Agha Hashar Kashmiri was an Urdu poet, playwright and dramatist. A number of his plays were Indian Shakespearean adaptations.

Early life

He started to show interest in stage dramas and moved to Bombay at the age of 18 and started his career as a playwright there.

Career

Agha Hashar Kashmiri'is first play, Aftab-e-Muhabbat, was published in 1897. He started his professional career as a drama writer for the New Alfred Theatrical Company in Bombay, on a salary of only 15 Rs. per month. Mureed-e-Shak, his first play for the company, was an adaptation of Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale. It proved to be a success and his wages were later raised to Rs. 40 per month due to his growing popularity. In his works, Agha had experience introducing shorter songs and dialogues with idioms and poetic virtues in plays. He then wrote several more adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, including Shaheed-e-Naaz and Shabeed-e-Havas.
Yahudi Ki Ladki, published in 1913, became his best known work. In the coming years, it became a classic in Parsi-Urdu theatre. It was adapted several times in the silent film and early talkies eras, notably Yahudi Ki Ladki by New Theatres, Yahudi Ki Ladki and by Bimal Roy, as Yahudi starring Dilip Kumar, Meena Kumari and Sohrab Modi.
His most popular plays are Sita Banbas, based on the Ramayana; Bilwa Mangal, a social play on the life of a poet with a passion for whores; Aankh ka Nasha which deals with themes of treachery and the evils of prostitution; and Rustom O Sohrab, a Persian folk story and tragedy. Several of his notable Shakespeare-inspired plays are Safed Khoon, based on King Lear and Khwab-e-Hasti described as "a mutilated version of Macbeth."
Towards the end of his career, Agha created the Shakespeare Theatrical Company but could not stay in business for long. He also joined Maidan Theatre.
Agha was married to Mukhtar Begum, a renowned classical singer from Calcutta and elder sister of Farida Khanum- a Pakistani singer.

His ghazals featured in film and television

Kashmiri died on 28 April 1935 in Lahore, British India. He is mentioned in some detail in the literary memoirs of the late Hakim Ahmad Shuja, with whom he collaborated on several dramatic projects.
His 70th death anniversary was observed in Karachi in 2005 at an event organized by the National Academy of Performing Arts at the Arts Council of Pakistan in Karachi. Zia Mohyeddin, chief of the 'National Academy of Performing Arts' and other speakers paid tributes to him. Anwar Sajjad said," Whenever the history of theater in the subcontinent is written, Agha Hashar Kashmiri will certainly hold an important place in it".

Writings

Kashmiri's plays include: