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Filling in the blanks

Mirza Athar Baig on his new novel, philosophy and the beauty of writing in Urdu
By Sardar Hussain
It has always been a pleasure to talk with Mirza Athar Baig. With a strange serenity and sobriety writ on his face, he looks more like some sage from the Middle Ages. But as you get to know him better, this philosopher of sorts melts into a casual, frank and witty companion, someone you would love to be with. 

The new approach
An anthology of essays evaluate Muhammad Husain Azad, a key figure in the literary developments of the 19th century
By Sarwat Ali
After his father Baqir Ali, an activist and an intellectual who was executed by the British for his political views, Muhammad Husain Azad made his way from Delhi to Lahore and was taken on board as faculty at the Government College. 

Returning to the scene of the crime
Yasmin Saikia’s meticulously researched book seeks to understand how the 1971 war was actually experienced by human beings
By Dr Tariq Rahman
Yasmin Saikia occupies the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studiesat the Arizona State University. She is a historian with focus on South Asia. Her book, Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh, Remembering 1971, is the fruit of hundreds of interviews of the victims, perpetrators and witnesses of the violence of the year 1971 in present-day Bangladesh. It is the second book using the technique of in-depth interviewing which has come out in 2011, the first being Sarmila Bose’s Dead Reckoning. 

 

profile
Filling in the blanks
Mirza Athar Baig on his new novel, philosophy and the beauty of writing in Urdu
By Sardar Hussain

It has always been a pleasure to talk with Mirza Athar Baig. With a strange serenity and sobriety writ on his face, he looks more like some sage from the Middle Ages. But as you get to know him better, this philosopher of sorts melts into a casual, frank and witty companion, someone you would love to be with.

If in classrooms or seminars he speaks fluent English, in the not-so-formal meetings, he talks both in Urdu and Punjabi, laden with some English phrases. If you happen to be in his circle of friends (most of whom are his ex-students), he is easily tri-lingual, shifting from one language to the other, depending on his mood and what he has to say or share.

I go to see Mirza Athar Baig at the Government College University, Lahore where he teaches philosophy. He has been working on a new novel with another strange title ‘Hassan Ki Soorat e Haal: Khali Jagain Pur Karo’. It is not just the titles; there are also new words and phrases that he comes up with in his writings.

“That is yet another gimmick I fall back on after failing to startle the reader in any other way,” he laughs away my query as to why he does so. Seeing me not satisfied, he adds, in more serious tone, “You see, it is all a personal game; my continuous struggle to fish out some new moves from the infinite possibilities of this amazing genre called novel — though I must apologise for the effrontery of involving others in this personal game.”

About his new novel, he says, “It deals with a state of writing and existence which is tantamount to a total perceptual and cognitive collapse. It is an attempt to create a narrative order in a semantic and conceptual chaos.”

Thinking it must be too complex to handle for a newspaper reader, I ask him a simple question. “Without making it a spoiler, tell us about the story, if there is any?” And “Is it, the story, interesting to read, or….?” “The novel,” he cuts me short, “is already so spoiled that you can’t spoil it further.” He enters the realm of self-mockery.

“Basically, the new novel is based on a short story ‘Uchattay Khauf Ki Daastan’ which was published in The Ravi a couple of years ago,” he seems ready to spill the beans. “The novel is a deconstruction of the story; deconstruction in the sense that when I completed the story — and also while I was writing it — I felt there were leads and definite thematic possibilities which could be explored further.”

Hassan is a man who has the strange habit of observing things which “intrigue him, bother him”. He tries to build some framework to explain things he sees. This was a unique perceptual situation that Baig wanted to “explore through the character”.

Though Athar Baig has taught philosophy throughout his academic career, he chose fiction as a medium of expression. After graduation with science subjects, he turned to philosophy.

He stated writing fiction in his early boyhood when “almost everyone tries his/her hand at writing poems and stories”. Before his first novel, Ghulam Bagh, came out in 2007, he had been writing plays for PTV. With around 15 serials and 100 odd plays to his credit, he seems to draw on his experience as a playwright while constructing the narrative of his novels.

He is not all too optimistic about the prospects of philosophy. “Science and philosophy are not possible in the religious society we live in.” He writes fiction because he can’t help it, not because he cherishes some lofty ideals about art and literature which he says are a “pastime of an elite club”.

Is there some relationship between the subject philosophy, and the fiction he writes? “Fiction purges philosophy from my system and vice versa.”

His works are not a great deviation from his core philosophy i.e. “hate for elitism, all kinds of elitism”.

Though the novel, Ghulam Bagh, is very broad in scope as “it is about everything as well as about nothing”, just like life. Among other themes, the theme of dominance at various levels runs throughout his works. Ghulam Bagh’s Kabir rises up against the oppression and status quo. When he decides to ‘re-write’ (which means he wants to write history from the perspective of the marginalised), he can’t survive the powerful status quo forces.

His second novel, Sifar Se Aik Tak, is not as wide in scope as the first one. Unlike Bagh, it deals with how our society has undergone transformation over the last three decades. It gives an insight into the socio-cultural texture of society and the workings of feudalistic power structure. It also delves deep into how information technology and internet has affected the lives of individuals in this part of the world, and how this technology can be used to challenge the feudals’ grip on power. Baig had realised the idea before Imran Khan or Shahbaz Sharif started talking about computerisation of the land record.

There is one thing that Athar Baig seems obsessed with: the theme of self-referentiality, or self-reflexity. It was there in Ghulam Bagh and Sifar Se Aik Tak, and even in one of his short stories the book, Bay Afsana, is named after. His new novel Hassan Ki Soorat e Haal is no exception to it. Rather here, the theme dominates the narrative of the novel.

He has a reason for it: “I realise that through fiction, I can study the whole phenomena of fragmentation of life.” He is deeply concerned with how “the fragmentation, as it is ‘given’ can be incorporated into a narrative.”

So, in this sense, the new novel — which he says will be in the market in a couple of months — appeals to the reader at large. Through the technique, not very new, he has also “tried to capture the sensibility of our time, the dilemma of the Muslim world at large”.

If his novels, especially the first one, have been the talk of the town (especially among the youth), his book of short stories did not grab that much attention. This is because of what Baig calls, “our limited literary space”. Almost all short stories are almost perfect in both content and style. No two stories are alike in treatment or theme — each story is unique in its own beautiful way. They are like the monads of Leibniz — independent and fully self-reliant in terms of effects and the package of meanings they carry. Unlike novels, it is an entirely different world. Reading them, one feels like desiring more such stories from Baig.

When asked what kind of reaction Hassan Ki Soorat e Hall will generate among the readers, Athar Baig says he is not concerned. “Maybe, the novel will generate another controversy, controversy in every sense of the word,” I share laughter with him, as I realise he is referring to the “established writers” who have been indulging in “hesitant mutterings” about his works, not speaking out for or against his “harmless literary pieces”.

I bring him back to his new work. “Fill in the Blanks” is the subtitle of the novel. “Actually, ‘filling in the blanks’ is one of the major metaphorical devices I have used in the novel. The metaphor is used in a very wide sense in the literary space; it is highly philosophical.”

 “After his perceptual collapse,” he elaborates, “Hassan tries to fill in the blanks through his own effort.” Baig maintains that fiction is an attempt to fill the emptiness of life, and “sometimes this filling in a series of blanks of life generates further blanks”.

About other aspects of the novel, he says there are also biographies of things in it. “Sometimes, in a narrative, stories of things tell a lot about the people who use them.”

The novel sounds to be very ambitious in scope as there is “so much in it. Very interesting, and some eccentric characters like Irshad Kabarya (dealer in ‘scrap’), Jabbar The Collector and Bona (pygmy).” The latter fascinates the author so much, personally.

A sub-theme of the novel is also the question of “voice” and “multiple voices of characters and things create a surrealistic situation.”

Seeing that he wants to reveal no more about the novel, I ask him about the prospects of writing in English. Though he wants to write a popular novel in English, become rich and “spend the last phase of his life as a dirty old man”, he finds himself unable to succumb to the temptation when he sees “how our contemporary writers in English have to follow the commands of the international fiction industry”. He terms it a trade-off. For him, the beauty of writing in Urdu is that he can “write in total disregard of the market forces”.

 

The new approach
An anthology of essays evaluate Muhammad Husain Azad, a key figure in the literary developments of the 19th century
By Sarwat Ali

After his father Baqir Ali, an activist and an intellectual who was executed by the British for his political views, Muhammad Husain Azad made his way from Delhi to Lahore and was taken on board as faculty at the Government College.

This was the time when the British, in Northern India, on having set up their institutions were taking stock of the intellectual and academic matters. The systems of education were being revolutionised and the fund of knowledge, indigenous knowledge for want of a better word, was being reassessed under the framework of the developments that had taken place in the mother countries.

Working with Leitner and Holroyd, Azad too ventured forth in initiating projects guided by this new approach to the arts and literature. The classical expression in poetry was cast aside; a new approach was adopted by holding mushairas where a certain theme was given rather than a tarah misra. This experiment in what is popularly known as naturi shairi, seemingly, was more responsive and open to the external conditions in nature and society than the very arcane and heavily wrought expression of the ghazal and masnavi.

Azad then, in the tradition of critics, went about taking another critical look at the tradition of our poetry. Eliot had said that every hundred years or so a critic should make a fresh evaluation of the poetry and set the poets and poetry in a new order. Azad under the new horizons, which were being opened, took a fresh stock of the situation and wrote Aabe Hayat, one of the first books to have set the poets and poetry in a new order keeping in view the sensibility that was being nurtured in the later half of the 19th century. He also took stock of Persian poetry and of the intellectual categories of our tradition during the same time.

Altaf Hussain Hali, being on the same page, was similarly developing a new approach towards the evaluation of poetry and the arts. His Maqaddame Sher Shairi, a seminal work on criticism, heavily influence by the views on poetry by the Romantics is considered to be the first book of formal criticism in Urdu.

Hali too was in Lahore and this city had become the centre of the movements that were taking place. If Calcutta was the centre in the 18th century, Delhi became the rallying ground in the first half of the 19th century, then Lahore progressed doing the same in the second half of the 19th century. Urdu developing in Lahore under the same glow laid the foundation of critical thinking and canons, which were to serve for the next fifty odd years before being displaced by the forces of Progressive Writers Association.

Intellectuals and critics who followed Azad, while looking back during the course of the twentieth century, have been critical of the line he took because they assessed him against the backdrop of the developments that had taken place in their times or just before that. They hastened to castigate Azad for having derived his critical canons from the intellectual powerhouses of the colonists and western thinkers, thus placing them on a higher pedestal and in the process rejecting the sources of indigenous knowledge and the arts. He was accused of aping rather than making substantive addition to our understanding and sensibility. His employment at the most prestigious college in northern India and then travels to Central Asia have been cited as more overt decisions advancing the cause of western imperial power.

Azad due to the oppression of the colonists was more exposed to the realities of the times. His effort at coming to terms with it must have resulted in his policy of coexistence and a certain type of compromise, which all reasonable forces were impelled to make due to the intellectual dominance of the British. It was not merely dominance by force; this realisation no matter how galling was based on a correct assessment of the situation.

This rather harsh verdict on the work, which Azad undertook, can be neutralised. His approach should be accepted with justified remorse of the intellectual tradition having gone defunct, becoming bankrupt and needing infusion of new ideas. This came from the sources in the West. Some of it was thrust upon the natives while the other was accepted due to its dynamism, relevance and ground breaking potential. Azad ushered in a new approach to assessing our literature and intellectual past. His contribution is relevant because he did not stay slavishly loyal to the traditional ways of thinking where any departure from the Indians and Muslims traditional thinking was labelled contrary to the belief system.

Azad showed us the way of looking at reality under a changed perspective and tried to develop new ways and means while still staying connected to what had remained relevant in our tradition, cultural and intellectual traditions.

Perhaps time has arrived at another re evaluation and of setting the poets and poetry in a new order. The flush of the Progressive Movement too has been on the ebb and many other intellectual developments have taken place which necessitates a fresh look to be cast, new criteria to be developed, new parameters to be framed to take stock of what is happening in the world and in particular parts of world like ours. The momentum of the ball that Azad set rolling into the modern world should be kept up for that is the truth of the times. Any blockage will turn that into a cesspool.

The articles compiled in the book are by K.N.Pandita, Ali Jawaid Zaidi, Abida Samiullah, Shakoor Ahsan, Dr. Muhammed Sadiq, Sheikh Inayatullah, Sir Abdul Qadir, Ram Babu Sakesena, Grahame Bailey, J.A.Haywood, Frances W.Pritchett, Ralph Russell, W.R.M.Holroyd, Safdar Mir, Salim ur Rehman, Shamsur Rehman Farooqi,Tehsin Firaqi,Ursula Rothen Dubs, Mukhatr Zaman, Mustafa Ali Hamdani, Abdus Salam Khursheed, Sajun Lal, I.A. Arshad, Qaiser Afzal, Margit Pernau, Irfan Sheikh, Yehia Syed,  Syed Hasan Tahir, Shuaib Bin Hasan, J.H.Stockqueler, Rab Nawaz, Agha Muhammed Akbar, Jefferey Price Perill, Jeffery Diamond, Sajjad Baqir Rizvi, Asadullah, and Irshad Ali.

 

Returning to the scene of the crime
Yasmin Saikia’s meticulously researched book seeks to understand how the 1971 war was actually experienced by human beings
By Dr Tariq Rahman

Yasmin Saikia occupies the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studiesat the Arizona State University. She is a historian with focus on South Asia. Her book, Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh, Remembering 1971, is the fruit of hundreds of interviews of the victims, perpetrators and witnesses of the violence of the year 1971 in present-day Bangladesh. It is the second book using the technique of in-depth interviewing which has come out in 2011, the first being Sarmila Bose’s Dead Reckoning.

 While Bose’s objectives include correcting some of the myths and exaggerations of the Bangladeshi nationalist historical narrative about the war, Saikia seeks to understand how the war was actually experienced by human beings. She also has the distinction of being the only historian to focus on gender violence. As she says “I tell the story of the war as a human event of individual losses and personal tragedies suffered by both women and men.” And this Saikia does by either summarising the stories of the victims of gender violence or, even more effectively, telling them as closely to the original as possible.

The book is divided into three parts.  In part one: ‘Introducing 1971,’ Saikia gives an account of the war making the point that it was not only a war between Pakistan and India. That, in fact, the Indo-Pakistan war followed two internal wars: that between the Bengalis and the Biharis and isolated Pakistanis in which the latter were victims; and that between the Bengalis and the Pakistan army in which the Bengalis were victims. And after the formal establishment of Bangladesh, the Indian soldiers victimised the citizens of the new state. Moreover, once again, the Biharis were victimised by the triumphant Mukhti Bahini and others. Of course, the Bengalis victims were greater in number than the Biharis and the Pakistanis but it is important for historians like Saikia to mention Biharis, as they are ignored in the nationalist histories in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. In all these different conflicts the author has chosen to focus upon the sufferings of women — especially sexual abuse— and, like a true dispassionate researcher, she gives space to all victims.

Saikia also dwells upon the normative concept of insaniyat (humane behaviour, decency or compassion) which both victims and perpetrators invoke from time to time. It appears that in times of upheaval people abandon the concept of insaniyat to perpetrate unspeakable evil in the name of the nation, dynasty, creed, honour or manliness. In narrating the stories of their suffering—or atrocities—they find relief and reclaim their humanity. I find this concept both vague and unconvincing. After all, it very much part of the human condition to device ingenious ways of giving pain to other humans and animals. Human beings can also be compassionate but it would be false to equate only compassion with the condition of being human. I would, therefore, reject insaniyat as an analytical concept as it does not have adequate explanatory power. Another way to explain the case of perpetrators— especially the unrepentant ones hiding behind the mask of military duty and nationalism—is with reference to Philip Zimbardo’s book The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil which argues that structures of power differentials create roles of oppressors and oppressed which people play out unquestioningly. Some, of course, indulge their own sadistic fantasies while very few opt out or resist oppression. Indeed, the disturbing insight is that most people go on to obey orders, however cruel or oppressive they may be for other human beings, even if they appear to be normal citizens otherwise. That is precisely why so much evil is possible when people in authority give orders for “suppressing a rebellion in the name of the nation” for, in such cases, the sadists indulge in their fantasies while the others simply obey orders.

The second part: ‘Survivors Speak,’ comprising of the stories of the survivors, is the empirical evidence which takes us to the heart of the human suffering the book aims to reveal. This suffering has been graphically described in several Bangladeshi accounts about Bengalis. It has also been described in memoirs of Biharis and Pakistanis about their own people.  Saikia, however, is the only one who takes into account both Bangladeshis and Biharis. Besides, as mentioned above, she focuses on rape which, given the puritanical values of South Asia, is hardly mentioned by name even by the victims themselves.

In this context the moving account of Nur Begam is a case in point. She was kept, along with 50 or 60 women, in a bunker and raped for months by soldiers. Her daughter, called Beauty in the book, was born as a result but Nur Begam always pretended that she was legitimate as she had been conceived before her capture. Another interview is of Firdousi Priyabhasani who, she declares, was a victim of violence even as a child because her father was a tyrant. She too was subjected to gang-rape but one redeeming feature of the whole sordid episode is that a Pakistani officer, called Altaf Karim, genuinely helped her and both loved each other. Her last reference to this kind man is moving, “When he left me for the last time, he gave me a salute and told me, “Maybe, I will be killed.’ I never saw him again.” These are also other accounts of rape victims such as Taslima’s mother from Dinajpur and Nurjahan Begum. It was because of Nurjahan_Begum that the author visits a Bihari camp and notes its squalor. Here Saikia notes that, although she empathised with Bengali sufferings, she could not ignore the suffering of other women. The Biharis had, as a group, sided with Pakistan but individual members of the group, especially women, are victims of whatever narrative the opinion-makers of their group believe in. Thus, she did not blame the whole group and especially sough to give voice to the sufferings of women. As a result, Saikia deliberately went to the Bihari camp and listen to accounts of rape and cruelty which are every bit as shocking as the accounts of Bengali women. And here she gives a definition of being Bangladeshi which is worth reproducing. It is: “Muslim, Hindus, Christians and Buddhists, as well as Chakmas, Biharis, Jayantias and women of indigenous groups.”

The experience of war for women is not confirmed to suffering only.  Saikia also interviews the women who actually fought as Mukti Bahini— they were very few but they were fervent volunteers. Among these women Laila Ahmed, Mumtaz Begum and others have testified to their experiences.

In the postscript, Yasmin Saikia gives a synopsis of her interviews of 123 Pakistani army personnel, two of them very senior officers, to find out about “perpetrator” memories. She reports that no hurdles were put in the way of her research— something very commendable because she is originally from Assam in India— and that she was offered warm hospitality in the some of the interviewees. However, as one would expect, hardly anyone actually confessed to raping women and the standard excuse for the killings and oppression — in common with all armies was that it was a military duty as the Bengalis were perceived as rebels against the nation. In common with soldiers in modern nationalistic wars “violent nationalism limited the ability of these armed men to see others as similar to them, as citizens and, above all, as fellow human beings.” These stories have not, however, been given in the narrators own words with the exception of a few excerpts. The author tells us she intends to write a sequel to this volume in which they will be given the space they deserve.

Oral history in the hands of an objective historian can be a powerful tool to create an in-depth understanding of the human anguish which is part of every war. Nationalist histories, on the other hand, are mere glorification of the nation and the military. They perpetuate the myth that war is something heroic whereas, in fact, it is a negation of the façade of civilization we create with effort. If civilization can be defined as the growth of compassion then war is a throwback to our previous state of barbarity.

Saikia must be commended for her originality, hard work, courage and compassion. These have produced a book which has given a voice to the voiceless and a name to the unspeakable suffering of women in 1971.

Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh, Remembering 1971

By Yasmin Saikia

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011

Pages: 320

Price: Rs 675

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