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review The
magic of metaphors
Filling in the gaps
review When Sir Syed Ahmad
Khan (1817-1898) famously founded his Muslim Anglo-Oriental College in
Aligarh, UP, in the 1870s, it was an educational project strictly meant for
the young males of the Muslim Shurafa castes (Syed, Mughal, Pathan and Shaikh)
belonging to North India. Not only were the despised lower caste Muslims
excluded from this educational drive but young women of the Sharif background
too were instructed to follow the traditional rules of segregation (then
called purdah, now hijab) and make do with the minimum level of learning at
home. The interests that he wanted to safeguard were those of the upper caste
Muslims that had survived the events of 1857. He wanted to enable them
quickly to compete with upper caste Hindus, coming in those days mostly from
Bengal, in occupying middle and high positions in the various departments of
the colonial administration. However, the winds of
change that were blowing all over the subcontinent, with their own
dialectics, made it possible in a matter of a couple of generations both for
some young men of the middle castes (e.g. weavers, butchers and the like) and
some women of the upper castes to acquire modern education, even at Aligarh,
although they had to face strong discrimination. Khan Bahadur Qaseem Beg
Chughtai, who has the honour of fathering two great stars of modern Urdu
literature — Mirza Azeem Beg Chughtai and Ismat Chughtai —belonged to the
generation which, despite being the product of the worldview promoted by Sir
Syed and serving the colonial administration in middle and high positions,
had started showing signs of rebellion here and there against the rigid,
anti-change agenda of the Shurafa. “The entire family stood together
against him for sending his daughters to a boarding school and threatened to
ostracise him… The comment made by ostensibly sensible people in [Chugtai’s]
extended family that ‘educating girls was worse than prostituting them’
only indicated the lengths to which people were ready to go in their
opposition to women’s education.” Like all disadvantaged but
spirited people of her generation, Ismat Chughtai (1911-1991) lived a life
closely associated with secular education and the printed word. She served in
the field of school education in Maharashtra in addition to producing a
large, impressive body of highly original and path-breaking creative writing.
Her creative appraisal of the condition of women of her own background —
and of other backgrounds — in North India is contemporary to works produced
by other female writers elsewhere, for example, Simone de Bouvoir’s The
Second Sex, and does not suffer in comparison. Chugtai lived a life on her
own terms, both in the words that she penned and outside them, and it
involved a number of defiant decisions, literary and otherwise. Since she was firmly and
unequivocally on the side of change — which was nothing if not an effort to
replace the established, traditional social values with modern,
forward-looking ones, she displayed no respect for the old, entrenched,
anti-freedom customs and practices. She decided to live an individual’s
life of struggle in the metropolis of Bombay, away from the decaying,
stinking provincial milieu of her biradri — although she has immortalised
the same milieu in her incisive yet sympathetic style in many of her
writings, both fiction and non-fiction. As a parent, she appears to have
given complete individual freedom to her daughters and supported one of them
when she chose to marry a Hindu. When she died, she was cremated according to
her will, just like the Pakistani poet Noon Meem Rashid had been some years
previously. Chughtai, with her fiercely
independent style both in life and literature, was certainly too hot to
handle for the Urdu literary milieu, even the so-called Progressives. Like
all great, original writers, she was larger than movements, memberships and
associations. Although she had a long relationship with the Progressive
Writers Association, as she largely agreed with its stated objectives, it
wasn’t a relationship without frictions. Her colleagues in the PWA too
found it impossible, given their finely balanced interaction with the
literary and political establishment, to support her in some of her
decisions. A friend, who had gone to Chughtai’s apartment building in
Bombay on hearing the news of her demise, recently told me how he saw Ali
Sardar Jafri leaving the place in unseemly haste because he did not wish to
be seen participating in the dead woman’s last rites in line with her will.
Chugtai did not, in any case, cared two hoots whether she got any
institutional support in her life or death. Supporting someone in a
defiant undertaking has always been a highly risky affair, as our literary
history amply demonstrates. When Deputy Nazir Ahmed (1830-1912) wrote and
published his last book Ummahat-ul Ummah a few years before he died, he was
widely condemned by the Shurafa, although he was the one who had launched the
‘condition-of-the-shurafa’ fiction in his earlier writings. It is said
that Hakeem Ajmal Khan persuaded Nazir Ahmad to hand over the entire edition
to him for safe-keeping. The Hakeem later took the lot to a public meeting to
be burned. Nazir Ahmad’s grandson Shahid Ahmad Dehlavi (1906-1967) writes
in the preface of the second edition of Ummahat-ul Ummah
(which he published in 1935 and which can only be found in photocopy
today thanks to our national penchant for censorship) that Nazir Ahmad was so
saddened by this betrayal that he never wrote anything for the rest of his
life. The second edition too had
a story which is told by Ismat Chughtai in the book under review and
commented upon by the translator (although the latter attributes the whole
episode to a wrong book which, according to him, was Ummat ki Maaein by
Rashid-ul Khairi). The story is too well-known to be confused. Shahid Dehlavi
has narrated it in his character sketch of Mirza Azeem Beg Chughtai, included
in his Ganjeena-e Gauhar (p.101-3). When things became difficult for Shahid
Dehlavi, Azeem Beg asked Shahid to send all the copies of Ummahat-ul Ummah to
him and announce that the idea of bringing out the second edition had been
abandoned. But then Azeem Beg decided to challenge the Shurafa directly. He
wrote a letter in Inqilab, Lahore, in which he declared that he had copies of
the controversial book with him and dared anyone to come and take them. Soon
he was attacked and injured by a gang armed with sticks. This was followed by
a mob raiding his house and snatching all the copies that were burned in his
forced presence in a public meeting. He was also made to publicly repent for
his sin and recite the kalima anew. It is therefore no surprise
that Chughtai — like her equally worthy fellow writer Saadat Hasan Manto
— met with harsh treatment at the hands of the (Urdu) literary and (Muslim)
social establishment. Our conservative literary critics — who, strangely,
call themselves ‘Modernists’ perhaps for want of a better word to
distinguish themselves from the ‘Progressives’ — have failed to
acknowledge the place that Ismat Chughtai holds in modern Urdu literature.
They try hard to fit her into one box or another. Either they look at her as
a part of the ‘Progressive Movement’, which, according to ‘official’
history, began in 1936 and “dissipated shortly after Independence in
1947”, or as part of the ‘women’s writings’ in Urdu that started with
men’s ‘reformist’ writing about women (such as Nazir Ahmed and Rashid-ul
Khairi) followed by mostly purdah-observing contributors to the journals
brought with the purpose of disciplining Muslim Sharif women in the dangerous
new times. The fact is that with a
whole lot of non-Shurafa castes entering the business of education and
reading, the literary tradition in Urdu, as in other languages, underwent a
deep transformation. These people had a non-traditional relationship with
everything including literature and demanded a break from tradition. As their
individual and collective lives had experienced a change with new professions
and urban or semi-urban living, they wanted literature to explore and give
expression to their lives rather than harping upon the almost
half-a-century-old theme of zawaal or decline of the royalty and aristocracy.
The new literature, launched in Urdu with the publication of the anthology
called Angarey, provided this much-needed break. The new breed of writers,
who began writing in the 1930s and 1940s, broached new themes that concerned
the new life and had little in common with their predecessors like Nazir
Ahmed, Mirza Ruswa and Khwaja Hasan Nizami who chose to talk only of the
Shurafa or Begums fallen on hard times. Similarly, Chughtai’s life and
words show a sharp break with the writing by or about women that preceded her
and that aimed at teaching young sharif Muslim women how to conduct their
lives within the limits set for them by their male authoritative minders. When an active, articulate
woman of substance such as Chughtai talks about her own life, we would do
well not to expect her to respect any conventions of autobiography-writing
and experience her writing on its own terms. The translator, unfortunately,
tries to judge it against the conventions and finds many inadequacies and
absences. For instance, of “any vignette from her married life.” He goes
on, “It is a matter of speculation as to why a brutally honest and
outspoken author like Ismat Chughtai shied away from talking about her
married life.” As if the infamous writer of “Lihaf” owed it to her
critics to make her personal life public, just as a celebrity is expected to
live her life under the public (male) gaze through paparazzi. This unjust,
even laughable demand, keeps us from appreciating the literary form that
Chughtai, as a highly original writer, has chosen to give to her memoirs. The memoirs, translated
here by M. Asaduddin, a teacher of English in the Jamia Millia Islamia, New
Delhi, were serialised in the monthly AajKal, New Delhi, during 1979-80 and
later brought out as a collection by the editor of the monthly under the
title Kaghazi Hai Pairahan in 1994. Chughtai “did not have the opportunity
to have a second look; much less edit what she had written because of other
preoccupations and her failing health.” The memoirs are a treat to read in
Urdu and Asaduddin, being a conscientious and sensitive translator, has
managed to find a voice to render it into English. A Life in Words: Memoirs By Ismat Chughtai Translated by M Asaduddin Publisher: Penguin Books Pages: 282
The
magic of metaphors The Urdu short
story is attracting aficionados from lands afar. Slowly, it is trying to
stand on its feet and there is every possibility that it can easily compete
with the literature from other parts of the world. Recently, it is Italy
where the Italian version of a Pakistani short story is being appreciated.
First, it was the great Saadat Hasan Manto whose stories have been translated
into Italian. Now, it is Mazharul Islam, a versatile and innovative writer,
whose stories have hit the bookstores in Rome. Dr Sabrina Lei, who holds a
PhD from Gregorian University, Rome, has selected and translated short
stories of Mazharul Islam into Italian. “After reading the
English translation of the stories of Mazharul Islam by Christopher Shackle,
I was fascinated by the poetic ambience of the stories. I got the impression
that his stories can be compared to that of Kafka, as both seemed to be
carrying the same message. Mazharul Islam has himself, however, stressed in
an interview that the similarity with Kafka is there in just one or two
stories. If we reflect more deeply on the way in which his stories are
constructed and the reality they describe, the fact becomes quite evident
that there seems to be an influence of Borges and Marquez in the stories of
Mazharul Islam,” says Lei via email. Lei is interested in
Islamic Theology and Sufism. “In the stories of Mazhrul Islam, one can feel
that he has fully tackled Sufi wisdom along with popular folklore with a
heavy dose of metaphors. This is what attracted me towards the strange and
sombre atmosphere of Mazharul Islam.” Lei met Mazharul Islam in
Rome a few years back. “I was impressed by the passion and vigour with
which he speaks about Pakistani fiction and poetry.” The lyrical and deeply
metaphorical stories prompted her to translate Mazharul Islam into Italian.
The translation wasn’t that easy. “I started translation after telling
the author of my desire to translate his stories into Italian. I consulted
both the original and the English translation of his stories. Through the
reading of English translation of his stories titled The Season of Love,
Bitter Almonds and Delayed Rain, I entered a world which has many facets. It
was such a wonderful experience to say the least. The main difficulty was the
musicality of his stories. Urdu is a lovely language and it was very
difficult to replicate its original ambience. I think Christopher Shackle has
done a wonderful job and his translation was unsurpassable. I tried as best
as I could to make the translation clear and flowing. “I learned to appreciate
each story When I read ‘The Sand’s Edge’ I thought I had entered in a
magical world. It reminds me of the atmosphere of a desert. Similarly, in
‘A Body in Rags’, the author tries to rebuild the struggling Pakistani
and universal human experience and portrays life in its totality. ‘Twelve
Months’ is also a haunting story in which I see the glimpses of rural
Punjab.” She adds “The symbolic
value of each story of Mazharul Islam reappears in different ways in
different stories. Every experience seems to be a door that opens. The
author’s eye penetrates deep into the everyday life and here lies the basis
strength of his stories”. Lei is more than satisfied
by the response of Italian readers towards the collection and she hopes these
stories will open up new vistas for the people of Italy. “People are
enjoying these stories and some are even wondering why it took so long to
have such wonderful stories in Italian.” Lei also plans to translate
a selection of poems of Parveen Shakir into Italian.
Filling in the
gaps Raza Ali Abidi is
known to the avid listeners of the BBC radio Urdu Service as a broadcaster
whose interests lay beyond that of the immediate news. His inquisitiveness on
how a certain happening took place rather than the mere reporting of the news
led him into the related but larger avenues of history and culture.
His programmes became
famous for carrying more than the surface news and the best decision he took
was to save the various scripts of the programmes he did for the BBC for a
later date to be researched more and then written comprehensively in a book
form. The duration of the radio
programme was one reason why Abidi decided to move on to the printed word
because the constraint of finishing the programme in a few minutes left out
quite a bit of the researched material. Being a different medium with
different constraints but not that of time, writing and publishing in book
form seemed another option that could be explored. Since Abidi left the BBC,
he has written copiously about the various subjects but they all travel back
to either history or culture — may it be the songs of films, the various
initial recordings made in the subcontinent, following the course of the
Indus River, the Grand Trunk Road or his own intellectual journey that
started with journalism in the early years of Pakistan from Karachi in the
1950s. During the course of the
various researches that he conducted he realised that a whole treasure trove
in the form of books and manuscripts has been preserved in the various
libraries of England. And, unfortunately, no copy
of those published books or manuscripts has been kept at home. Researching
about the past, especially the last three hundred years, was not possible
without the references preserved in the various libraries of the erstwhile
mother country. Publication started in
India in 1803 and the printing press made all the difference because it
initiated mass publication compared to the circulation of limited copies that
were hand written by katibs. This must have brought a
revolution as it did when the printing press was first introduced in Europe
in about the 14th/15th century, triggering off debate about the dangers of
easy accessibility of knowledge and information to the ordinary people. The same kind of debate is
rampant these days with easy accessibility and freedom to write whatever,
under anonymity on the social media. So Abidi planned programmes
for the BBC about the books published in the 19th century and, after initial
hurdles, was able to get an approval for it. As the programme was broadcast,
the feedback that it received made the management of the BBC not only
appreciate it but also to give him a freer hand to continue with the
programme for as long as he wanted. And that gave him the opportunity that he
was wishing for and he did do a thorough job of it. This was broadcast in
programmes for the BBC and still there was lots of material to be edited and
published which was left out due to time constraint. Out of the thirty thousand
publications, Abidi selected 120 books, followed a chronological order in his
research in his programme as well as in the book because he believed, and
rightly so, about the chain of events influencing each other. He paid due
respect to the historical process and did not treat history as operating in a
vacuum. Through this approach,
Abidi realised that many subjects were written about and many styles adopted,
keeping in view the prevalent conditions then. The second half of the 19th
century was in many ways a very traumatic time, the levels of oppression and
censorship too were varied and complex. The style of writing was moulded
according to the complexity of censorship and the prevalent conditions. The
subjects written about clearly indicated the issues that bedevilled
people’s lives. It also gave him the
opportunity to trace the development of the Urdu language. Urdu was as if
emerging from the looming shadows of the prestigious languages like Persian,
Arabic and Sanskrit and it was during this time period that it reached
adulthood to stand on its own feet. He also realised that, in the development
of Urdu as an emerging language, a whole cross section of population and not
one religious community contributed. Abidi divided his work into
poetry and prose giving brief descriptions of the work, the circumstances in
which it was written, publishing special details if any, laced with examples
of the original works in poetry and prose. Some of the works are known to us,
some that we had only heard about and some totally new placing us in a much
better position to assess the intellectual fund of the generations that were
colonised. The work done by Raza Ali
Abidi is thus invaluable for it fills that gaping hole from the intellectual
history of our civilization. It also became clear to him and he records with
appreciation that the books were kept in reasonable condition, in a
catalogued form and it was not difficult to find the book of one’s choice.
It was not like rummaging through a pile of books thrown around.
Kitabaen Apne Aaba Ki By Raza Ali Abidi Publisher: Sang-e-Meel Publications Pages: 540 Price: Rs 1500
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