(Commentary by Mehr Afshan Farooqi, associate professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures) If Muhammad Hasan Askari were alive, he would have completed 100 years in this world. His greatest contribution to Urdu letters was the formulation of an ‘Eastern’ response to the Western style of literary criticism that gripped literature in the Indian languages in the wake of colonialism. To commemorate his birth centenary, I humbly propose to revisit some of his path-breaking essays, notably, the essays in the collection Insaan Aur Aadmi [Humans and Men], with ...