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classic Tracing
the origins of Pathans
Essentially romantic
classic In his essay, the
‘Echoes of the Jazz Age’, F.Scott.Fitzgerald described the Jazz Age as
“an age of miracles, an age of art, an age of excess and an age of
satire.” The Jazz era, which began with the signing of Treaty of Versailles
and ended with the onset of Great Depression, was marked by raging debate
about equality of women, when libertine women, dressed in short skirts with
bobbed hair, moved around the vast expanse of the USA, in trains and
automobiles. This Jazz Age was also termed as ‘Roaring Twenties’ due to
unprecedented material progress and prosperity, when different social
classes, disillusioned by horrors of the Great War, revolted against prudish
social conventions of the previous century, and turned to hard partying and
exuberant gaiety. Fitzgerald’s masterpiece,
‘The Great Gatsby’, is set in the Jazz Age and the ‘Roaring
Twenties.’ Told, the story is about
love of Jay Gatsby for Daisy, married to Tom Buchanan, a rich, supercilious
philanderer, and the ‘infinite hope’ of Gatsby that he can gain back the
love of Daisy by becoming a rich man. He buys a palatial residence in West
Egg, a fictional town in the Long Island sound, and throws opulent parties,
so that Daisy might show up on one of those parties. After meeting Daisy, he
manages to convince her to leave Tom; however, when Tom contemptuously
discloses that Gatsby has gained his wealth from bootlegging, Daisy
vacillates for some moments about her decision of leaving Tom, and then
decides to stay put with him. However, this is a
deceptively simplistic reading of the story, which moves around the timeless
and universal themes of loneliness, vapid human relationships, built on the
strength of material possessions, and the corruptibility of seemingly
incorruptible dream. One theme of the novel is
the loneliness of men and women in a modern society. This loneliness results
from the unbridled pursuit of pleasure, superficiality, flippancy and
cheating. Most of the characters in the novel cheat in one way or the other.
Tom Buchanan pursues extramarital relationships, beats Myrtle Wilson, his
girlfriend, and spins convoluted lies to thwart her entreaties for marriage
while Mr.Wilson is another lonely figure, who has spent his life pleasing his
wife, and couldn’t forge friendships outside marriage: “Wilson had no
friend: there was not enough of him for his wife.” Likewise, Gatsby stands
alone in the pursuit of his dream as well as social companionship. All
forsake him in the end. After his fatal shooting, Nick is hauntingly
beseeched by the corpse of Gatsby to find mourners for his funeral as if he
was afraid of leaving this world alone and unattended: “look here old
sport, you’ve got to get somebody for me. I can’t go through this
alone.” However, only one attendee of his opulent parties makes it to his
funeral. Apart from cheating, the
loneliness stems from the excessive concern of the society with material
success and acquisition of riches. Many people come to Gatsby’s parties
looking for money-making opportunities as they are “agonizingly aware of
the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was theirs for a few
words in the right key.” And rest of the attendees are social mercenaries,
who drink free champagne, dine and dance at his parties and, in return,
slander and gossip about him. However, there are people
on the other side of spectrum too; living on the outer fringes of society,
their poor neighbourhoods an eyesore for the well-to-do such as the ‘valley
of heaps’ on the way from West Egg to New York, a neighbourhood where
impoverished Wilsons live. The greatness of the novel
lies in conceptualising the character of Gatsby, a man of infinite hope, a
man with innumerable shortcomings whose grand dream endows him with heroic
proportions, worthy of mythical heroes. Nick rhapsodises about him: “the
truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic
conception of himself. He was a son of God — a phrase which, if it means
anything, means just that — and he must be about his Father’s business,
the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty.” The essentially
incorruptible dream of Gatsby goes sour because he adopts dishonest means to
achieve it; and herein lies his tragedy as well as the tragedy of other
Americans, pursuing their grand ‘American dream,’ — a dream where the
underclass lives in miserable conditions and competes to gain riches, often,
through illegal means like Gatsby, and where wealthy splash out money on
glitzy cars, glamorous parties and “smashed up things and creatures and
then retreated back into their money.” The fallibility of
Gatsby’s dream is contrasted with that of fallacy of American dream. Another theme of the novel
is the belief in ‘Nordic superiority’ and the feared rise of brown races
and the possibility of racial intermarriage. Ideas of white supremacy,
circulating in Europe and the USA in 1920s, were, mercilessly, put to
practice in Germany, a decade later, with dire consequences for the whole
world. Here is riposte of Tom
against colored people:“‘Civilization is going to pieces,.. Have you read
“The Rise of the Coloured empires’ by this man Goddard? …The idea is if
we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly
submerged.’” The Great Gatsby makes easy
and relaxed reading because of the amusing dialogues and the deftness of the
author in bringing out comic overtones even, in sinister characters ,like
that of the notorious gambler Meyer Wolfsheim. His grammatically incorrect
English: “it was four o’clock in the morning then, and if we’d of
raised the blinds we’d of seen daylight,” and thick accent, when he
describes Gatsby as an ‘Oggsford man,’ humanises him.
Tracing
the origins of Pathans Title: The North West
Frontier Essays on History Author: Sultan i Rome Publisher: Oxford
University Press, 2013 Pages: 476 Price: Rs1250 With the avowed 2014
withdrawal of foreign forces, after twelve years of occupation in
Afghanistan, there are still no clear signs of peace returning to the country
and a stable government enforcing its writ in the entire country. Ever since the Soviet
invasion, Afghanistan has not seen political stability. Over the years,
especially in the first decade of the 1980s, the Mujahideen waged guerrilla
warfare against the occupying forces and the withdrawal of the Soviet forces
under the Geneva Accords did not result in peace or a stable government. The
civil war continued till the Taliban came to power and this arrangement was
overthrown by the invasion of the Isaf/Nato forces following the events of
9/11 in 2001. It may be a better option
to look at the region’s conundrum in the light of history and analyse the
problems against its backdrop and Sultan i Rome has done exactly that. He has
written on the Afghan-Pakistan border area, which has been the centre of much
debate and war-like activity in the past three decades. Afghanistan and Pakistan
have had an uneasy relationship ever since the latter became an independent
country and inherited the problems and issues of the imperial Indian
government. Durand Line, which was demarcated between Afghanistan and
colonial India, was not recognised as an international boundary by
Afghanistan from the start. The book examines the
various points of view and whether all the parties concerned accepted Durand
Line. Both countries have had simmering differences over it. Only the
invasion and involvement of foreign forces in the last thirty odd years
created a situation of open hostility between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Though it may have been
written like a textbook, Sultan realised after he started teaching that there
wasn’t a good book on the subject for the students but it is quite
comprehensive and covers several areas that may be of interest to the
students of politics. It discusses the origin of the Pathans and sums up the
various viewpoints regarding that. It delves into history and the political
configuration especially during the colonial expansion of both Britain and
Russia. The book also focuses on
some of the current problems being the result of this adjustment between the
two super powers of the 19th century. Some of the present issues are the
result of this lack of concentricity. One theory that the Pathans
are Bani Israel was presented and preserved in written form by Khawaja
Nimatullah of Herat in about 1612. It is said that it was written on the
orders of Khan Jahan Lodhi during the reign of Emperor Jahangir. The second theory that the
Pathans are Aryans, Indo European Aryans is based on historical research and
philological evaluation of the word Pakhtun and the Pashtu language. The third theory about
origins of the Pathans being a mixed race might be closer to the truth. Due
to constant interaction and movement the Pakhtuns — Afghans and Pathans —
haven’t been a pure race or ethnic group because of the admixture of the
blood of several other races and ethnicities. It also analyses the role
of the Khudai Khidmatgars the organisation that was founded by Abdul Ghaffar
Khan. It was radically different from the other organisations because it
stressed on peace, non-violence and social service. The latter was the
instrument of political work too and helped it earn a good name for itself. It suffered slightly when
it failed to distinguish itself from the All India Congress Party; though it
was an affiliate it was not merged into it. But an even greater setback was
the rule of the party after the 1937 elections when it won the mandate to
form a government at the provincial level. Dr Khan, brother of Ghaffar
Khan, was the chief minister and he was not able to distance himself from the
British colonial rulers thus creating a perception as that he was doing their
bidding. This harmed the movement a lot and created space for the Muslim
League to operate. Even in the referendum for
the province joining India or Pakistan, Ghaffar Khan wanted a third option of
an independent Frontier region and thus boycotted the referendum which
resulted in the province voting to become part of Pakistan. Perhaps the best chapters
in the book are about the tribal administration and the status of the tribal
region in the current scenario. During the last thirty years, the tribal
regions of the country, which enjoy a special status under the agreements
signed in the past, have been the focus of attention for the violence and
insurgency in Afghanistan. It is alleged that these areas have become
sanctuaries where terrorists have set up training camps and more or less run
the place as sovereign territory. The tribal administration and then the
system of security that was set up to ensure peace and loyalty is discussed
and examined. The administrative structure needs restructuring and a change
in its status in the light of the changing realities. The main concern of the
powers has always been to secure the empires while the development of the
area, its human resource has never been the focal point. Perhaps the change
in focus may lessen the violence that has been seen to be the only means of
solving the problems by the people.
Essentially
romantic Naseer Ahmed Nasir
cannot be introduced other than as a poet of substance. His prime strength
lies in his nazm, more specifically the metric poems — a genre that
naturally conforms to his creative temperament and that he has mastered with
time. Way back in the late 1970s,
some new poets started making their presence felt on the literary scene,
primarily on the pages of “Auraq” edited by Dr Wazir Agha, an ardent
advocate of modernism. Naseer Ahmad Nasir was among those talented poets
whose poems exuded freshness and an unmasked promise of individual
excellence. That promise was finally fulfilled. In the 1990s, Nasir himself
launched “Tasteer”, a magazine that he has edited for around two decades
now. The journal remains a true representative of contemporary modern Urdu
literature in all forms of expression. Recently, Nasir has
published his entire works in four beautiful books while his ghazal
collection is expected to appear shortly. Two of these books comprise his new
poems. “Malbey Sey Mili Chizain” comprises metric poems and “Teesray
Qadam ka Khamyaza” is reserved exclusively for prose poetry. These volumes
create a collective impact irrespective of the different genres; they are
similar to the extent that it becomes more appropriate to deal with them
collectively. The collections display a
maturity and an enhanced command of a poet over his craft who has been
subjected to an unending uncertainty and displacement. This sense of exile
and loneliness has been peculiar to the works of the entire generation to
which Nasir belongs. This trauma is radically different from the pain of the
migration in 1947. The pathological aspects of society distort and frustrate
us as individuals while for a receptive intelligent writer this brings an
aura of sensitivity and wisdom conducive to creative excellence. In the face of a distorted
social existence, Nasir has discovered his own self as a strong abode where
dreams enchant him and human relations capture and interest him. From here,
he moves out to relate with the world around. His acute awareness of the
global situation and the destructive turbulence smashing everything around
him act as his sensibility that is essentially contemporary in nature. As compositions, his poems
remain lyrical and, with the battery of some specific images, he captures the
readers’ attention. There is a certain coherence and flow in almost all of
his recent poems. He has worked well to create an ambience that defines his
identity as a poet. His is essentially a romantic whose poems emit intense
sadness that is almost contagious. It may be interesting to
point out his uncontainable affinity for Hindi and English words, so
unexpectedly appearing here and there, for which the Urdu substitutes are not
only comfortably available but perhaps may serve the purpose better.
Similarly scientific terms also charm him much and he goes on to place them
in an otherwise fluent narrative. The preface of his book of
prose poems is titled “Nasri Nazm Ka Takhliqi Jawaz”. The questions
raised here, perhaps, do not need to be contested again since these were
settled long ago. He has declared the first phase, (1960s-1970s), of prose
poetry as a “failure” and considers the second phase, to which he himself
belongs, as an era of great success. Prose poem as a form
appeared in 1962 through the works of poets like Qamar Jamil, Mohammad Salim
ur Rehman, Anis Nagi, Mubarak Ahmad and a few others, soon followed by
brilliant poets of 1970s, like Afzaal Ahmad Syed, Azra Abbas, Nasreen Anjum
Bhatti, Sarwat Husain, Sara Shagufta and Abdul Rasheed. The magnificiant work
done by those poets cannot be dismissed so easily and now means the tradition
of this genre. Nasir is a marvelous poet
and litterateur of exceptional contemporary relevance. It would not be an
exaggeration to call him one of the most significant poets of our era.
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