We Will See: Urdu Poetry and the Possibility of an Islamic Universal Ethical Discourse

This paper will think through the seeming paradoxes of an Urdu poem full of Quranic imagery—Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s famous Ham Dekhenge (We Will See) –becoming a widespread anthem of protest in defense of the secular character of India in the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019 and 2020. I argue that the poem’s reception history opens up a way for us to understand the critical role poetry plays in the Islamic tradition, and also the ways in which Urdu poetry acts a medium for Islam as a universal ethical discourse beyond the boundaries of Muslim religious identity. It also shows us how the rapid spread of the internet and social media in India has given rise to an extraordinary mimetic archive(Mazzarella 2017) of Urdu poetry that has deeply informed and transformed Indian public culture and ethical life far beyond the boundaries of Muslim identity.