If one looks at the publications of Edward Said, one realises that a profound shift occurred in his thought after the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arabs in 1967. Before 1967, Edward Said had published only on literary topics such as the fiction of Joseph Conrad, who was also the subject of his doctoral research. He had completed his doctorate in 1964 and had started an academic career as a teacher of comparative literature at the university of Columbia.

During and after the 1967 Arab-Israel war, the issue of the Arab world and the way it was represented in the West intensely occupied Edward Said. He had witnessed an overwhelming support for Israel in the American academy as well as in the public sphere. This made him question his role as an American citizen of Arab origins. He could no longer consider himself at home in America where his Palestinian origins were publicly aligned with terrorism and irrationality. He had to take positions. So, from writing on Conrad and Levi-Strauss, he started examining the ways in which the image of the Arab, especially the Muslim Arab, was constructed by the West.

In 1972, he published a full-length manuscript titled 'The Arabs of Today: Alternatives for Tomorrow' which marked the beginning of a lifelong commitment to the cause of Palestine and the Arab world. After 'The Arabs of Today', he wrote a highly theoretical book titled 'Beginnings' (1975) in which he made his affiliation with secularism public.

The basic argument of 'Beginnings' distinguishes between a very nuanced philosophical difference between two words: origin and beginning. According to Said, the idea of origin has its history in metaphysics whereas the idea of beginning was linked with secular inquiry. Having established his theoretical position and having displayed his expertise in extremely dense poststructuralist theory, he returned to the issue of orientalism which resulted in the publication of 'Orientalism' in 1978.

In 1978, Orientalism and postcolonial politics were not new concepts in many disciplines. What was new in the book 'Orientalism' was the discipline which became the target of Edward Said's critical appraisal: Western literature. The historical sweep of his narrative of Western misrepresentations of the Orient and its inhabitants was staggering. From Aeschylus' play 'The Persians' (472 BC) to policy statements of Henry Kissinger, Edward Said had analysed almost every important literary, political, and philosophical work for its stereotyping of the Muslims and the Arabs.

It was a great scandal. According to Bart-Moore Gilbert, there was silence for five years before anybody could speak of the political ramifications of Said's work. The erstwhile noble enterprise of literature had been stripped of its aesthetic and metaphysical pretensions. Western literature had been irrefutably declared an integral weapon in the arsenal of Western cultural imperialism. There were uncomfortable questions in the book. Why did the West want to study the Orient in the first place? Why were the Arabs shown as ignorant, irrational and lustful semi-humans? Why did Karl Marx think that British colonialism would help India join the grand narrative of history?

The book was intended to be a polemic and it became one. It succeeded in disturbing countless pro-Western secularists in the Third World, pro-Soviet Indian Marxists, such as Aijaz Ahmed, and it disturbed the cloistered sensibility of non-Western anglophiles pining away in their Raj nostalgia in newly independent societies. Literary departments the world over were politicised. Postcolonial studies and cultural studies marched to the centre of the stage. The inspiration behind all this was Orientalism, the passionate magnum opus of a displaced Christian Palestinian whose own persona was challenging all orientalist stereotypes of Arabs.

Said had Ivy League qualifications (a Ph.D. from Harvard University), played piano with conservatory-level competence, dressed immaculately, and fluently conversed in three dominant languages of the world -- Arabic, English, and French. Moreover, he had appropriated the critical vocabulary of Michel Foucault to unravel the self-congratulatory discourse of the West and was also criticising Foucault for not being political enough. All over the world, apolitical professors of literature were trying to relearn their trade because one Arab had linked the global reception of literary and cultural products with inter-civilisational politics.

As far as everyday committed politics was concerned, he was also doing his part. He had become an active supporter of the Palestinian cause and a member of the Palestinian National Council. He was critical of Yasser Arafat and his brand of cronyism in the Arab world. Still, his was a balanced commitment. He was not for the expulsion of the Jews from the Middle East and, later on, leaned towards a combined Arab-Jewish state where Palestinians and Israelis would have equal rights. Through this secular yet anti-imperialist stance, he irked many seekers of easy and partisan solutions. When Arabs maligned the West, he became a representative of Western humanism and secularism. When the West created dangerous stereotypes of the Arabs and Muslims, he excoriated the West. In book after book, he guided his readers to question authority and speak truth to power. Suspicious of postmodern relativism, he painstakingly created an aesthetic of political engagement from the perspective of the displaced, the exiled and the marginalised. Many secular humanists and anti-imperialists thronged around him in solidarity, including Eqbal Ahmed from Pakistan.

Throughout his life, he struggled, on the page and from day to day, against the seductions of essentialism and otherworldliness. Maligned by the Jewish activists in America, he was labelled 'the professor of terror' because of his commitment to the Palestinian cause. Once when he was photographed throwing a symbolic stone towards Israel, a large number of pro-Israel people tried to have him removed from his professorial position at Columbia University. The University sided with Edward Said by stating that the University did not have any authority over the private life of a tenured professor unless he had broken the law. If he had broken any law, the problem was for the police to resolve.

Edward Said also realised the enormous individual space and freedom of expression offered by American academia. Often he proclaimed that the American university was one of the last bastions of freedom left in this increasingly oppressive world.

After fighting for a decade against leukaemia, during which he maintained an active academic and political life, Edward Said died on September 25, 2003. He had written about twenty-five books and numerous articles on literature, culture, Western imperialism, and critical theory. Rescuing Islam from Western misrepresentations as well as its ready exploitation by Muslim dictators remained his main concern.

According to some thinkers, Edward Said is the greatest contribution to contemporary global culture from the Arab world. The resistive and critical discourse that he generated through his scholarship and activism will continue to inspire many generations to come.

Saeed ur Rehman can be reached at urrehman@gmail.com.

Once, the Progressive Writers Association was synonymous with Urdu. But it is no longer so, especially in India. Anjman Urdu Taraqi Pasand Musanfeen is just another wing of the PWA among others devoted to regional languages. Obviously, Hindi being the official language of India, Hindi writers are at the forefront of the Progressive Writers Association.

In Pakistan PWA was banned in the early fifties after being dubbed an anti-state political organisation. Although PWA has also had its ups and downs in India, it is now one of the leading and vibrant writers' organisations in that country.

Kamla Prasad, Secretary General of the Progressive Writers Association India, is one of Hindi's notable writers. Although he has written fiction and poetry, his specialisation is literary criticism. He is also editor of the PWA's magazine 'Earth'.

He visited Pakistan in December 2005 to participate in the centenary celebration of Sajjad Zaheer, founder Secretary General of PWA.

By Zaman Khan

The News on Sunday: Would you like to tell us about yourself?

Kamla Prasad: I retired from APS University, Riva, in 1998. Then I was director of Madhya Pradesh Kala Academy. At present I am vice-chairperson of the Kiandri Hindi Institute, Agra. It has branches all over the country.

I started writing at the very early age of 10/12. I wrote some short stories and some geet (songs). Later I studied literature; then I started writing short stories, which were published in the local newspapers. My poetry was published in local newspapers, too. I also used to recite my poems. Later on I started writing criticism, one reason for which could be that I was a teacher. A teacher has to do interpretation and critical examination of literature. I think that is how I came to specialise in criticism.

TNS: What is the situation of the PWA in India?

KP: Although PWA was established in 1936 in Allahabad, it was revived in 1975, when I became associated with it. PWA India has a membership of about 15, 000 writers. PWA elects its office-bearers at its National Convention after every three years. In fact the council elects its office-bearers by consensus. PWA was revived in 1975, in Gia, Bihar. Mr. Khahaw Thakkar was its convener. Its First National Conference was then held. I call it its revival or second birth because it was actually established in 1936. After 1953 people lost interest in it and it became weak, although it never ceased to exist. It was reorganised in 1975. That is why I call it its second birth. Then onwards it became a regular phenomenon. I was one of the delegates at Gia.

TNS: Who can become a member of PWA?

KP: Not only the Marxists, though they are in a majority, but all those who have a progressive outlook, are secular and not fundamentalists. Our declaration does not confine this organisation only to those of Marxist persuasions, but when one adopts this ideology then it becomes an internal need to be fully aware of the scientific approach.

TNS: PWA was identified with Urdu since its very inception. The Hindi-Urdu controversy was there from the very beginning. How have you been able to resolve this issue?

KP: When PWA was established, there undoubtedly was a majority of Urdu writers. And Urdu writers had been predominant in PWA. Slowly and gradually, Hindi writers came in in a big way in PWA. If you look at the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Conferences, the number of Hindi writers had been increasing. There was a time when every important Hindi writer was within the fold of PWA. It looks to me that after independence and partition, the representation of Urdu writers started declining. But our body is an organisation representing Urdu, Hindi and all other languages of India. There are both Hindi and Urdu writers in our organisation. By 1986, when PWA's golden jubilee was celebrated, Urdu writers had set up their separate unit under the umbrella of PWA, called Urdu Taraqi Pasand Musanfeen, and Dr. Qamar Rais is its chairperson. All Urdu writers are not automatically members of the new organisation. There are many Urdu writers who are with PWA -- Ali Javed, Shakeel Siddiqui, for instance.

TNS: Please tell us about short story and novel writing in India.

KP: A strong group has emerged among women writers. It is not proper to say that one writer is great in this milieu; you could say there is a group of writers, in which the novelists are Krishana Soorti, Usma, Bhandari. Short story.writers include Mr. Amar Kant, Kashan, Soom Parkash, Hardesh. Kamlasher, Yadooki, Vaish died some time ago.

Namwar Singh is very popular. He is the greatest critic of Hindi writers, and literature. People come to listen to him.

TNS: Sahir, Kiafi, Ali Sardar Jafari are big names. Why the paucity of big names in Urdu now?

KP: Struggle broadens your vision. These people were part of a great struggle. Their thinking, their attitude towards life, their ideology, their outlook, their mission; in short, everything they cherished and wrote was great and noble. Writing was their profession. They sacrificed for the cause dear to them. Today we are entangled in petty things, our struggle is sham and shallow and so is our vision and ideology. How can we have great literature in a situation like that?

TNS: Some people say Hindi has done great harm to Urdu and other regional languages in India. Is this correct?

KP: I do not subscribe to this because (the promotion of) Hindi is not against Urdu. The problem with Urdu has come up since instruction in Hindi has increased. There are more readers of Hindi and more jobs in Hindi areas. There are fewer jobs in Urdu because Urdu is not used in other disciplines; there is no teaching of science in Urdu. They recently opened an Urdu university in India and they are trying to teach science in Urdu. Things are getting translated. They are also trying to link computer science with it, I understand.

The spoken language of a country naturally affects other languages. Very good papers used to be published previously in Urdu, but now Urdu-speaking people have stopped buying and publishing them. They read Hindi these days.

TNS: What is PWA's policy towards other languages besides Hindi?

KP: PWA is all for writers of all languages. We try to translate literature from other languages in Hindi and publish it. We have appointed guest editors for Bangla, Tamil, Malayalam and Mirathi languages. Contemporary writings of other language will be published after translation into Hindi.

TNS: If I say that you are promoting Hindi by all means?

KP: No. We promote all languages. Because our language is Hindi, we deal in and work in Hindi. Our Tamil PWA publishes its literature in Tamil. Malayalam's PWA is Malayalam, the state units of other languages publish their literature in their own languages.

TNS: Do you think PWA can play some role in Pak-India relations?

KP: When PWA was created, India was united and the organisation had one vision. PWA is a formal organisation. Functions can be held in Karachi and other places and we can discuss common problems of literature. We can translate the literature of both countries. We published two issues on contemporary Urdu writers, in which eighty per cent of the writing was from Pakistan, mostly short stories. Some time back we also published an interview of Intizar Hussain. We keep on getting pieces of translation from Pakistan.

He plays a new character every week, pungently and effortlessly. His partnership with Anwar Maqsood, his long-standing friend and writer, who provides him with the mot jouste for his characters, has matured him considerably.

Much to my relief, he no longer plays characters who are fixed at a mental age of fifteen or under, the outlandish boors and half wits, who are, stereotypically, acknowledged to be the stuff of comedy. Nor does he insert bits of Americanese into his patter. He once had a penchant for including, in his comic routine, English phraseology which he spoke with a quaint Pakistani-American accent, possibly because his ears had not yet been attuned to the rhythm of English speech. His English colonel -- or aristocrat or store manager -- sounded a bit like David Jansen, the star of the American TV series called 'The Fugitive'.

In the seventies, 'The Fugitive' was one of the most popular series shown on Pakistan television. Most young men were hooked on it often behaved -- and talked -- like David Jansen. Moeen Akhtar too, might have been influenced by the laid-back manner of Jansen's speech.

I cannot be sure about it. Anyway, I dissuaded him from using English in his monologues and he was good enough not to resort to it in any of the appearances he made on my show, but I know that he used chunks of English in his other stage and television appearances. Perhaps he thought, at the time, that it gave him a touch of class.

In a country full of nondescript 'stars', it would belittle Moeen Akhtar if I were to refer to him as a 'star'. I say this advisedly. You only have to look at an inside page of some Urdu dailies to see that there are, at least, thirty-four 'stars', all of whom are treading the boards. The 'stars', whose passport-sized photographs appear in the newspapers, are mostly females who must have had it written in their contract that their names shall not appear without the prefix 'filmstar'. Publicity managers go a step further; they add trite adjectives to describe the specialiaties of their favourite stars.

Thus there is (and I translate literally) 'The Personification of Beauty, Filmstar, Hina Shaheen'; the 'Dancing Doll, Filmstar, Deedar'; the 'Goddess of Beauty, Filmstar, Shahzadi' and the 'Beauty Incarnate, Filmstar, Khushboo'. Some male actors are also billed as 'filmstar' though without any adjectives.

It never fails to amuse me that though most of these simpering ladies are members of a theatrical cast they prefer to be thought of as film stars. They, or their producers, obviously, believe that film is a far superior medium and that there can be no such thing as a 'stage star'.

I digress only to point out that if I were to call Moeen Akhtar a star I would be equating him with all the sultry sirens who, without exception, are capable only of offering the most egregious stage performance imaginable.

The fact is that Moeen Akhtar is a nonpareil impersonator who achieves his effects with a minimum of effort. This is something he has in common with the Master (Noel Coward). It has been said of Noel Coward that he made comedy into a fatigued and enervated thing. I do not agree. Coward's forte was that wearing an expression of boredom he exuded an over-flowing vivacity.

Moeen Akhtar does not do things by stealth; he is bluff and he romps and his sense of humour is ebullient. He may not have the fastidiousness of tone and gesture that the Master had, but he does, like the Master, as Tynan described so beautifully, take "sophistication out of the refrigerator and put it on the hob."

In an age which demands that the slightest detail of the personal activities of a celebrity must become common knowledge, Moeen Akhtar has managed to maintain an aura of secrecy about his private life worthy of a hermitage. He is not to be found in casinos or in exclusive disco clubs. Not for him the lavish private parties or the get-together with starlets in a beach-hut. Since he has made it known to all and sundry that he is not to be disturbed until two hours past mid-day, I assume that he is a night-bird. I hear on the grapevine that he likes chatting to his chums all night long. Perhaps it is during these sessions that he picks up the minute details of human foibles.

His comedy is no longer based on anxiety which used to allow him a surge of adrenalin to go berserk with ad-libs and sudden jumps in the script. In the limited environment of a studio-based surrounding he has acquired the expertise to perform at a pace with a delicacy that he could not have had on the stage. The eyes of an audience in the theatre can never compete with what the camera can make you see (and register) in a close-up.

Moeen Akhtar has learnt his cameras exceedingly well. He knows precisely when to deliver that sotto voice aside and to which camera. The two incredible features that he has at his command all the time are: a) the blank stare aimed straight at the camera and: b) the devastating, sharp riposte (penned by Maqsood) that he darts out, with the flick of an eye, to the camera on his left.

He is Anwar Maqsood's classic stooge. Suave and aggressive, he is the comic off whom Anwar Maqsood, the straight man, sometimes scores, only because Moeen Akhtar lets him. More often that not, he doesn't, a fact which Anwar Maqsood, a high class performer himself, accepts with a resigned sigh.

Anwar Maqsood, who deserves an entire column, if not two, is an ingenious nonesuch in his own right. He chooses Moeen's character discerningly. It is largely due to his (at times, over the top) show called 'Loose Talk' that Moeen Akhtar has blossomed into the unique phenomenon that he was always destined to become. For several years now Anwar Maqsood has written for Moeen Akhtar as Eddie Braben wrote for Eric Morecombe -- a fluid script that allows ample latitude for any off-the-cuff lines that Moeen Akhtar might wish to utter. As a result, Moeen Akhtar has burgeoned into one of the most richly quirkish and hypnotic performers in the history of our television.

Moeen Akhtar is the only performer in our part of the world who has given earnest thought to Garrick's observation that "Comedy is a serious business." A charge levelled against him is that, of late, he has become supercilious. I can only think of Sarah Bernhardt's remark: "Egotism in an imbecile," she said, "is a vice; in an intelligent spirit, a virtue."

(Concluded)