Professor Arjumand Ara is one of the most accomplished and versatile scholars of Urdu literature working in India today. A professor in the Department of Urdu at the University of Delhi, she has built over two decades of distinguished service as a teacher, literary critic, editor, and translator — a rare combination of skills that has made her indispensable to both the academic study and popular dissemination of Urdu language and literature.
Her academic formation began at Meerut University, Uttar Pradesh, where she completed her Bachelor of Arts in 1988. She then moved to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, which became the intellectual crucible of her scholarly identity. She earned her MA in Urdu from JNU in 1994, followed by an M.Phil. in 1996, for which she edited the Masnavi Lakht-e Jigar of Munshi Bal Mukund Besabr. Her doctoral thesis, completed in 2001, involved a rigorous critical edition of Diwan-e Bayan — the collected poetry of Ahsanullah Khan Bayan — accompanied by a comprehensive scholarly foreword. Both projects revealed her early commitment to the painstaking work of textual editing, a tradition of classical philological scholarship that has remained central to her career. She also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Mass Media, which enriched her engagement with translation theory and practice.
Before joining Delhi University, Professor Ara served as a Research Assistant at the National Council for the Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), New Delhi, from 1999 to 2002, contributing to the editing of the literary monthly Urdu Duniya. She joined the University of Delhi as a Lecturer in 2002, rising through the ranks to her current position as Professor. At Delhi University, she has taught a wide range of postgraduate courses spanning the history of Urdu literature, classical poetry in its ghazal, nazm, masnavi, and qasida forms, Urdu fiction, and both theoretical and practical translation.
Professor Ara’s scholarly interests are organised around three intersecting axes: the Progressive literary movement, feminist criticism, and translation studies. Her engagement with the Progressive Writers’ Movement is extensive and sustained. She has written influential articles on Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Makhdoom Muhiuddin, Sahir Ludhianvi, Ahmad Faraz, and Asrarul Haq Majaz, situating their work within the broader currents of anti-colonial struggle, socialist humanism, and cultural resistance. Her feminist criticism —significantly inflected by Marxist feminism — has examined the representation of women in Urdu literature from the colonial period to the present, addressing patriarchy in Urdu poetry, women writers’ voices, and the intersection of gender with caste, class, and minority identity. She has also produced incisive studies of Mir Taqi Mir, Khwaja Haider Ali Aatish, and Mirza Ghalib. Her publications span Urdu, Hindi, and English and appear in respected journals within and outside India.
As a translator, Professor Ara has demonstrated exceptional range and commitment. Her 2005 Urdu translation of Ralph Russell’s autobiography, Findings, Keepings: Life, Communism and Everything — rendered as Juyinda Yabinda — was a landmark contribution, both as a literary homage and as a bridge-building exercise across borders among Urdu-speaking communities. Her other translated books include Shumaal ki Jaanib Hijrat ka Mausam (2016/17), the Urdu rendering of Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, and Sang-e Saboor (2016), a translation from Atiq Rahimi’s Patience Stone. Her Urdu translation of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, titled Bepanah Shadmani Ki Mumlikat, earned her the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize for 2021 — a fitting acknowledgement of her years of sustained work in making world literature accessible to Urdu readers.
Beyond research and teaching, Professor Ara has been a committed institutional presence, serving as an elected member of the Academic Council of Delhi University, a member of the NCPUL (2007–2011), including its Executive Board, and as Secretary and subsequently Deputy General Secretary of the Progressive Writers’ Association. She has also contributed to NCERT workshops on Urdu textbooks and multilingual education.
In her public engagements, she has consistently advocated connecting Urdu to employment opportunities and called for specialised short-term courses to sustain the language’s vitality. Through scholarship, translation, and advocacy, Professor Arjumand Ara has worked to ensure that Urdu remains a living, thinking, and generative literary language for generations to come.