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BA (Hons.), MA, MPhil English, University of Delhi;

PhD English, Queen’s University Belfast

Dr. Maaz Bin Bilal

Professor

Email mbilal@jgu.edu.in
Connect with me
Key Expertise Politics of Friendship, E. M. Forster, Urdu-Hindi Literature (particularly poetry), Mirza Ghalib, Multiculturalism and Secularism, Fikr Taunsvi, Translation Studies, South-Asian Muslim Identity, Creative Writing, South-Asian Writing in English, Anglo-American Modernism.

BA (Hons.), MA, MPhil English, University of Delhi;

PhD English, Queen’s University Belfast

Biography

Maaz Bin Bilal is an Anglophone poet, translator, cultural critic, writer and word artist. He has published widely in journals, magazines, and newspapers across genres. Maaz is the author of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar-shortlisted Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu and the translator of Fikr Tausvi’s Urdu diary, The Sixth River: A Journal from the Partition of India and Mirza Ghalib’s Persian long poem Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras.

His work has been widely reviewed in India, the UK and the US. Excerpts from his translation of The Sixth River are also prescribed in the University of Delhi BA English (Hons.) syllabus. His poems have been translated into Irish Gaelic, Bangla, Urdu, German, and Hindi. He has also exhibited his word art in Germany.

Maaz earned his PhD for the dissertation on “From Hellenism to Orientalism: Friendship in E. M. Forster, with Reference to Forrest Reid,” which he is now revising into a monograph, Heterodoxies of Friendship in E. M. Forster’s work.

He continues to research and write on ideas of the politics of friendship, plurality, and multiculturalism, particularly in the South Asian context. He is also deeply interested in Urdu-Hindi poetry, and continues to research and translate it. His next book is a translation from Urdu of Mohsin Khan’s novel, Allah Miyan ka Karkhana. Maaz enjoys football, cooking, gardening, motorcycle riding and collecting fountain pens.

 
  • Introduction to Literary Theory
  • Introducing Urdu: History, Politics, Poetics
  • Modernity, World Wars, and Modernism
  • Reading and Writing Verse: A Poetry Workshop
  • ‘Apocalypse Now’: Fictions of Dystopia
  • Translating India: A Workshop
  • Rethinking Friendship in the Nation State
  • Classical Foundations of Literature
  • Literature and Arts of the Renaissance
  • Literary Study
  • Akademie Schloss Solitude Fellowship in Writing, Nov 2022–July 2023, Stuttgart, Germany.
  • Shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar (Indian Academy of Letters Youth Prize) in English, 2020.
  • Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship in Translation and Writing at University of Wales Trinity St David with Literature Across Frontiers. 2018–19 UK.
  • Received International University Studentship Award. from Queen’s University Belfast, and Arts and Humanities Research Council, AHRC, UK, for the Project E.M. Forster–Forrest Reid Letters, 2011–14, including full support of the PhD tuition fee and annual maintenance for three years.
  • Received University Grants Commission scholarship given to top three General Category students at English Department, University of Delhi, in the MPhil course for 2009–2011, India.
  • Received M. M. Bhalla Poetry Prize (2008) from St. Stephen’s College.

Heterodoxies of Friendship in E. M. Forster. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Accepted with revisions.

“Ghazal: Poetic Conversations across Continents.” Solitude. Journal of Akademie Schloss Solitude. 2024. ISSN 00129976. Print and Web.

“The Somnath of My Imagination’: The Indo-Persian Religious Urbanity of Mirza Ghalib’s Banaras.” Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies. Forthcoming. 2024.

“The Passage from text to film: A study of David Lean’s adaptation of E M Forster’s Indian Novel.” Author To Auteur: Theories And Film Adaptations. Jigyasa H. Sondhi and Himadri Roy. New Delhi: Worldview, 2024. ISBN 978 81 96743 83 3. Print.

The Workshop of Allah/Kite flying in the Rain. Translation of Urdu novel by Mohsin Khan. Harper Collins, Forthcoming.

“The Overseer of the Plague: Reading Oedipus Rex during COVID-19.” Economic & Political Weekly. June 20, 2020. Vol. LV no 25. pp. 19–20. ISSN 00129976. Print.

“E. M. Forster’s Place in the Long Discourse of Friendship.” Ed. Laurent Mellet and Elsa Cavalie. Only Connect: E. M. Forster’s Legacies in British Fiction. Bern: Peter Lang, 2017. ISBN: 9783034325998. Print.

“Postcolonial Literature, Globalization, and the Indian Postcolonial.” Ed. Someshwar Sati. Writing the Postcolonial: Poetics, Politics and Praxis. New Delhi: Worldview, 2016. ISBN: 978-93-82267-15-7. 199–228. Print.

Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2019. Print.

The Sixth River: A Journal from the Partition of India. Translation, with Introduction, from Urdu of Fikr Taunsvi’s Chhata Darya. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2019. ISBN: 9789389231151.

Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras. Translation, with Introduction, of an Indo-Persian long poem on Banaras, Chiragh-e-Dair, by Mirza Ghalib. New Delhi: Penguin Classics, August 2019. Print. ISBN: 0670094323.

“What the Old Testament God Never Forgives” (On European refugee crisis). Seminar: The Monthly Symposium. ISSN: 0037-1947. October 2017. Print.

“The Afrazul Killing Video as Perfect Anti-Muslim Crime.” Economic & Political Weekly. December 16, 2017. LII no. 50. pp. 12-13. ISSN 00129976. Print.

“The Journey beyond Passage into the University: The Relevance of E. M. Forster for (Indian) Academia.” Polish Journal of English Studies. 3.2 (2017), 25–36. ISSN 2543-5981. Print.

“Santiago Nasar, the Slain Saracen: Racist Motivation of Crime in Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold.” Literophile, May 2007. ISSN: 2347-3681. Print.

Heterodoxies of Friendship in E. M. Forster. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Accepted with revisions.

“Ghazal: Poetic Conversations across Continents.” Solitude. Journal of Akademie Schloss Solitude. 2024. ISSN 00129976. Print and Web.

“The Somnath of My Imagination’: The Indo-Persian Religious Urbanity of Mirza Ghalib’s Banaras.” Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies. Forthcoming. 2024.

“The Passage from text to film: A study of David Lean’s adaptation of E M Forster’s Indian Novel.” Author To Auteur: Theories And Film Adaptations. Jigyasa H. Sondhi and Himadri Roy. New Delhi: Worldview, 2024. ISBN 978 81 96743 83 3. Print.

The Workshop of Allah/Kite flying in the Rain. Translation of Urdu novel by Mohsin Khan. Harper Collins, Forthcoming.

“The Overseer of the Plague: Reading Oedipus Rex during COVID-19.” Economic & Political Weekly. June 20, 2020. Vol. LV no 25. pp. 19–20. ISSN 00129976. Print.

“E. M. Forster’s Place in the Long Discourse of Friendship.” Ed. Laurent Mellet and Elsa Cavalie. Only Connect: E. M. Forster’s Legacies in British Fiction. Bern: Peter Lang, 2017. ISBN: 9783034325998. Print.

“Postcolonial Literature, Globalization, and the Indian Postcolonial.” Ed. Someshwar Sati. Writing the Postcolonial: Poetics, Politics and Praxis. New Delhi: Worldview, 2016. ISBN: 978-93-82267-15-7. 199–228. Print.

Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu. New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2019. Print.

The Sixth River: A Journal from the Partition of India. Translation, with Introduction, from Urdu of Fikr Taunsvi’s Chhata Darya. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2019. ISBN: 9789389231151.

Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras. Translation, with Introduction, of an Indo-Persian long poem on Banaras, Chiragh-e-Dair, by Mirza Ghalib. New Delhi: Penguin Classics, August 2019. Print. ISBN: 0670094323.

“What the Old Testament God Never Forgives” (On European refugee crisis). Seminar: The Monthly Symposium. ISSN: 0037-1947. October 2017. Print.

“The Afrazul Killing Video as Perfect Anti-Muslim Crime.” Economic & Political Weekly. December 16, 2017. LII no. 50. pp. 12-13. ISSN 00129976. Print.

“The Journey beyond Passage into the University: The Relevance of E. M. Forster for (Indian) Academia.” Polish Journal of English Studies. 3.2 (2017), 25–36. ISSN 2543-5981. Print.

“Santiago Nasar, the Slain Saracen: Racist Motivation of Crime in Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold.” Literophile, May 2007. ISSN: 2347-3681. Print.
Email mbilal@jgu.edu.in
Key Expertise Politics of Friendship, E. M. Forster, Urdu-Hindi Literature (particularly poetry), Mirza Ghalib, Multiculturalism and Secularism, Fikr Taunsvi, Translation Studies, South-Asian Muslim Identity, Creative Writing, South-Asian Writing in English, Anglo-American Modernism.
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