Ghalib's Letters: When an Accurate Answer Is Entirely Off-Target
A Class 12 candidate in a three-hour UPMSP Urdu paper reaches the 10-mark long-answer question: 'Ghalib ke khatoot ki adabi khusoosiyat likhiye.' The candidate writes 210 words, all of it biographical - birth in Agra in 1797, migration to Delhi, the pension dispute with the British, death in 1869 - and closes with a single evaluative sentence: 'Ghalib bahut achhe khatoot-nigar the.' There is no mention of Ud-e-Hindi, no letter is quoted, and no correspondent is named. The marking scheme the examiner is holding awards 4 marks for content points, 4 for textual illustration and 2 for language and presentation. The examiner has 42 scripts to finish in two days and is tempted to award 6 out of 10 because every fact in the answer is accurate. A circular from the head examiner says only that 'relevance precedes accuracy' and does not explain how to apply that rule to an answer that is factually flawless and entirely off-target.
1. Under the marking scheme, what should this answer score, and what annotation should go on the script? Show the mark-by-mark reasoning.
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Mark by mark:
- Content (4 marks): 0. The key word is khusoosiyat - features of the letters. Birth, migration, pension and death are halat-e-zindagi, not features of a prose style. Nothing in the answer names a quality of the correspondence, so there is nothing for these four marks to attach to. The final sentence ('bahut achhe khatoot-nigar the') is an unsupported verdict, not a point.
- Illustration (4 marks): 0. No letter is quoted, no collection is named, no addressee is identified. There is no textual evidence to credit.
- Language and presentation (2 marks): 1. The sentences are grammatical and the answer is paragraphed, so it is not illiterate; but it shows no critical vocabulary and no quotation, so the upper half of this band is not available.
Total: 1/10.
Why not 6. The 6 the examiner is reaching for rewards effort, length and factual truth. None of those is a criterion. The marks belong to the demand of the question; a candidate who supplies 210 true words about the wrong thing has not begun the task. Awarding 6 would also be unfair to the candidate who wrote 120 words naming four features with quotations and got 8.
Annotation to write on the script: 'Sawal khusoosiyat-e-khatoot ka hai, sawanih-e-hayat ka nahin. Content 0, illustration 0 - see scheme.' The annotation matters more than the mark, because the same candidate will meet the same question type in Paper II.
2. Write the four-point content skeleton, with one concrete illustration for each point, that would have earned the full 8 marks for content and illustration.
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1. Khat as guftugu (conversational prose). Ghalib writes as he speaks: he drops the ornate Persianate opening ('ba'is-e-tahreer hai ki…') and begins mid-conversation with his correspondent, addressing Har Gopal Tafta and Nawab Zia-ud-din Ahmad Khan directly, often as bhai. Illustration: any letter that opens with a complaint or a joke rather than a eulogy of the addressee.
2. Diction and syntax. Persianised abstract vocabulary - the same stock he uses in the Diwan - is carried into short, everyday Delhi Urdu sentences; the idiom of the bazaar sits next to a Persian noun. Illustration: a sentence where a Persian abstraction is followed immediately by a Delhi colloquialism.
3. Tanz and self-mockery. Ghalib jokes about his debts, his laziness, his pursuit of the pension through British offices, and calls himself a fakir. Illustration: the mock-serious account of chasing the pension file from office to office.
4. Documentary value. The letters are a record of 1857 and the ruination of Delhi, of mushaira life, and of Ghalib's own opinions on poetry and on his contemporaries. Illustration: a passage describing the emptied city after the rebellion.
Closing move (language marks): name Ud-e-Hindi as the collection and use two or three critical terms - guftugu ka andaaz, tanz, izhar-e-zaat - rather than one vague adjective.
Structure this as four short paragraphs of two sentences each: claim, then evidence. That is 8 marks for content and illustration, plus the language marks, in fewer words than the biographical answer used.
3. The same candidate later pads a 4-mark short answer on Abul Kalam Azad with the same biographical material. What does the examiner do in the script and in the classroom, and what does the pattern suggest?
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In the script: mark it the same way - 0 or 1 for content - and say so in the same words. Consistency is the whole point of moderation; a lenient mark here would teach the candidate that padding works when the examiner is tired.
Diagnosis: a candidate does not invent this habit. It comes from guidebook answers that open every question with a birth date, and from a missing distinction between sawanih (life) and khusoosiyat (features). Treat it as a taught error, not carelessness.
In the classroom - a two-column drill:
| Halat-e-zindagi | Khusoosiyat-e-nasr |
|---|---|
| Born 1888, Mecca; editor of Al-Hilal; Congress president; died 1958 | Ghubar-e-Khatir: letter-essay form, reflective, digressive, personal |
| Imprisoned 1942 | Oratory in Al-Hilal: fusion of religious and political rhetoric |
| Prose rhythm carried over from the sermon and the khutba |
Then make them rewrite one padded paragraph as a claim-plus-evidence paragraph of 60 words.
Also teach the question verbs: khusoosiyat likhiye, tashreeh kijiye, tanqeed kijiye, mulaka kijiye each demand a different object. A candidate who underlines the key word before writing avoids this error at no cost.