Shams ul Ulema, Baleeghul Mulk, Professor Allama Ehsanullah Khan Tajwar Najibabadi was a distinguished Urdu poet, scholar, decolonial theorist, lexicographer, and critical pedagogue.  He was the recipient of the titles of Shams ul Ulema,(Resplendent Sun Among Scholars), conferred by the British Empire in 1940 and Baleegh ul Mulk (Sovereignty in Literary Prowess), bestowed by Anjuman Arbab e Ilm Punjab in 1920. In British India’s literary history, Allama Tajwar is considered the last bearer of the distinguished title of Shams ul Ulema with no further individuals bestowed with this honour. Allama Tajwar was born on the 2nd of May 1894, in Nanitaal in the district of Bijnaur in the region established by Ali Muhammad Khan (1707-1748), formerly known as the Kingdom of Rohailkhand (1721-1774), that later federated into Rampur, Moradabad, Najibabad and Bareilly amongst others. Allama Tajwar was of Afghan descent originating in the fifth generational tier of the Durrani settler tribes of Rohailkhand. He was a descendant of Hafiz Saadullah Khan Durrani, a reputed scholar, military commander and relative of Ahmed Shah Durrani-Abdali (1722-1773) the founder of the Durrani Empire in 1747.  Hafiz Saadullah Khan was commissioned in Ahmed Shah's entourage to India at the behest of Shah Waliullah after the fall of the Mughal Empire. Following the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, Hafiz Saadullah Khan settled in India. There, he was bestowed the role of tutor to Zabta Khan (d.1785), the son of Nawab Najib ud Daula (d. 1770), who was the founder of the city of Najibabad (1740 /1750) in Bijnaur.

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The inception of Allama Tajwar’s scholarship can be traced to Dar ul Uloom Deoband comprising eleven years of acquisition in Persian, Arabic literature, and poetry in addition to the study of logic and philosophy. A two-year teaching stint at Deoband was followed by Tajwar’s migration from Najibabad in Northern India to Lahore in 1914 where he earned Munshi Fazil and Moulvi Fazil. In 1921 Allama Tajwar was appointed Professor at Dyal Singh College Lahore and subsequently honoured as a Fellow of the Punjab University. As the chief editor of the defining Urdu literary journals in the first half of the 20th Century such as Humayun, Adabi Duniya, Makhzan, Ittehad, Prem and Shahkaar, Tajwar invested in the cultivation of linguistic plurality and diachronic variation, extending to domains beyond non-Western literature. Hence, Tajwar is considered the proponent of the blank verse, and its inception in changing the contours of Urdu poetry. Allama Tajwar’s major work in the domain of sociolinguistics informed his predisposition to social action. His formative influence extended to the dismantling of systemic barriers, reframing of public discourse, and formation of a constructivist approach to institution building and public policy enabling societal structures in promoting equity and social justice. Tajwar realized his vision by establishing the Urdu Markaz in 1925 in Lahore with Sir Sheikh Adul Qadir, (1874 -1950). It was at the Urdu Markaz that Tajwar initiated the seminal research on literature and sociolinguistics, an endeavour that was both historicist, hermeneutic and revisionist in scope. At the Urdu Markaz, Tajwar was invested in the documentation of 500 years of Urdu literature and poetry. The extraordinary initiatives at the Urdu Markaz and its network of institutions in the various districts of Punjab examined the intersections between indigenous narratives and modernities. Tajwar contributed over 200 academic papers on pedagogy, in addition to his administrative obligations at the Dyal Singh Trust Library, his scholarly commitments at the University of London, and his undertakings at the BBC. Tajwar authored Ruh e Nazm the syllabus of Urdu Poetry prescribed at the London University. Allama Tajwar’s oeuvre signifies multiple border crossings and intra-cultural knowledge flows, indicative of his conception of an interpretative horizon that was syncretic, unequivocally plural, and permeable.