|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 
|
review Zia Mohyeddin column
review As I finished
Gurdial Singh’s slim, impressive novel in Punjabi, I was reminded of two
vivid images: one from a novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Born Yet by a
Ghanian writer Ayi Kwei Armah; the other where Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles
appear in a multiple mirrors sequence from Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai Armah’s novel The
Beautyful Ones Are Not Born Yet begins with a narrative lens, as if in a
movie, focusing on the driver of a lorry which comes to a halt at the last
station. As all the passengers but one disembarks, the reader is given the
impression that the driver is the main protagonist. So when the driver wakes
up the last traveller and asks him to hit the road, the actual protagonist is
introduced. The focus shifts. This literary device disorients the reader and
keeps one awake for the rest of the novel. The mirror sequence in The
Lady from Shanghai concerns what Lacan calls ‘objet petite a’, the
unknowable that connects the desired and the one who desires. It is this
unknowable, or unseen, that sets the desire in motion, the obscure force that
causes, setting history in motion, the cause whose effects we bear, perhaps,
without comprehension. It is also when we catch our reflection, at a slanted
angle, where reflection doesn’t look back at us — who is the invisible
being, hidden from view, who the reflection is staring at? Whose point of
view are we peeking at? This is not simply a matter of altered reality. This
is about becoming aware of a larger reality that affects one’s life,
possibilities and limitations. Let me now, finally, turn
to the novel. It opens with an old man referred throughout the novel as
Melu’s father while a tragedy unfolds in the village; the mighty with the
help of the police have dispossessed a poor family, razed their home and had
their men arrested on false charges. Melu’s father joins the
bereaved family along with other landless elders who try to set in motion
some form of redress by contacting the head of the village council, even
higher ups in the city, to no avail. The system is set up, we see, to favour
the rich. The old man lives with his wife who’s always referred to as
Deyalu’s mother, Deyalu and Chinda, the younger son. The elder son has
moved to the city in search of a better life, with his wife and two boys, who
now make a surprise stop at the old man’s house, along with the
daughter-in-law’s brother. They are returning from her parents’ house, on
their way to the city. The old man accompanies them to the lorry stop and
bids adieu. Along with the bus, the
point of view too leaves the village behind. The horrendous social reality
that afflicts the poor migrant is now brought to the reader through the
consciousness of Melu’s wife’s brother, who is made witness to the
destitute conditions in which his sister and two nephews survive. Melu’s
father is unaware of this reality. It is also through the brother that we
learn that Melu is a rickshaw-puller, spends some of his money on drinking,
and is not doing too well. There is barely anything in the house to feed the
children. The brother decides to stay overnight. As he takes one of the
nephews to a general store, the two catch a glimpse of Melu, from afar,
speeding away on his rickshaw, with a bleeding head though the two relations
can’t see that. At this point, the point of
view shifts to Melu. We are given a window into his social and political
reality. Melu received the head injury during a protest by the
rickshaw-pullers as their earnings have dried up due to the introduction of
the auto-rickshaws. Humiliated, Melu resists going home. He only does so
quite late into the night, very quietly. He parks his rickshaw without waking
up his family and as if seized by a demon, begins walking back to the
village, as if towards the womb that gave him birth, as if towards death,
completing a cycle. The point of view shifts
yet again to Melu’s father and mildly bifurcates to include that of Deyalu
and, to a lesser extent, Deyalu’s mother. Even though the novel ends, the
narrative does not, nor do we see Melu ever finally arriving. A big chunk of
the novel contains the father’s observations; yet his own identity is
subsumed by the name of his elder son. The novel seems to be making a point
that in order to understand any given social reality; one single point of
view is not enough. This is post-modernism’s greatest contribution towards
literature and its relationship with people’s actual lives. Gurdial Singh has to be
commended for highlighting the relationship between class struggle and the
changes brought by the ruling elite in such a way that benefits it. The novel
has circularity to its structure, as the narrative starts at the village and
reverts back. The case it makes is that if one wants to understand Melu’s
breakdown, one needs to know not only his environment but the causes as well,
those which like ‘objet petite a’ are not voluntarily visible. More importantly, who is
causing them? This is an important point, especially in relation to the
educated classes of Pakistan whom the system benefits, and flaunt an
inability to understand the causes of a social or political ill. Their
interest is only in getting rid of the ill as effectively as possible. Novels
such as this explain that there is a reason why certain ills persist. Moral
and political degeneration have invisible causes and, unless as a society we
deal with the actual roots, not imagined ones, we compound the mess. If Pakistan had a culture
of book clubs, this would be a very good novel to discuss. Not only does it
flesh out important and delicate human relationships, imposing a lens on
changing times, its language is simply music to the ear. Take this for
example: The register of speech is
rustically delightful throughout the novel, showing that it’s often the
rustic humour that works as a balm for the wounded. Suchet Kitab Ghar should
be applauded for publishing the novel as their December 2011 issue of Pancham,
the leading Punjabi literary magazine of Pakistan. Moazzam Sheikh is the
author of The Idol Lover and Other Stories Anhey Ghoray Da Daan By Gurdial Singh Publisher: Suchet Kitab Ghar Pages: 100 Price: Rs 50
Debunking
the myth There could not
have been a better time to come out with a book as ‘Islamophobia and the
Politics of Empire’, when the wave of democracy in the form of the Arab
spring and the recent violence across the Muslim world in protest of the
anti-Islam film makes it all the more important for us to understand the
relationship between Islam and violence. Professor Deepa Kumar was
inspired to write this book as a result of the tragic events of 9/11 in the
US, the act of a few individuals seen as inherent to Islam. This book, Kumar
explains, is about the image of ‘Islam’, the mythical creation conjured
out of the needs of empire that led even progressives to claim Muslims are
more violent than any other religious group. It is about the ‘Muslim
enemy’, and how this construction has been employed to generate fear and
hatred. Deepa Kumar is an associate
professor of media studies and Middle East studies at the Rutgers University,
New Jersey. She is the author of ‘Outside the Box: Corporate Media,
Globalisation and the UPS Strike’. Kumar has offered her analysis of
Islamophobia to numerous outlets around the world including the BBC, USA
Today, Gulf News, Al-Arabiya and others.
In the immediate aftermath
of 9/11, she writes, people who otherwise would not have had much interest in
Islam turned to the Quran to find explanation for why the attacks had
occurred. What prompted this automatic association between the actions of
some individuals and their religion? Arguably, no one turned to the Bible,
either the Old or New Testament, to understand why Timothy McVeigh bombed a
federal building in Oklahoma City. The author situates the
rhetoric of Islamophobia within the broader political, historical, legal and
social context from which it emerges to show that anti-Muslim racism has been
primarily a tool of the elite in various societies. The book begins by
looking at the first instances in the West when Muslims were constructed as
threats to Europe during the 11th century crusades. Professor Hamid Dabashi,
Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University,
terms it a “deftly argued book” which unearths a genealogy of colonial
construction that goes back to the earliest contacts between Muslims and
Europeans. But the real power of Kumar’s argument, he says, is when she
grabs the politics of ideological domination by the throat and, with an
astonishing moral and intellectual force, sets the record straight as to who
and what the players are turning a pathological fear of Muslims into a
cornerstone of imperial hegemony. The book is divided into
three sections: Section one looks at the historical context, section two
focuses on political Islam and the US policy while the last one examines
Islamophobia and the US domestic politics. In the first section, Kumar
devotes an entire chapter on the Orientalist myths, that Islam is a
monolithic religion, is a uniquely sexist religion, the Muslim mind is
incapable of reason and rationality, is an inherently violent religion and
Muslims are incapable of democracy and self-rule. Since 9/11, Kumar notes,
politicians and the media have not just promoted Islamphobia, they have
turned the dial up. Kumar sets out to debunk
the Orientalist myths with strong argument and a wealth of evidence.
Discussing the myth that Islam is a uniquely sexist religion, she notes that
there is no subjected connected with Islam which Europeans have thought more
important than the condition of the Muslim women. Citing an example, she
writes, “When Britain invaded and occupied Egypt in 1882, Cromer (Lord
Cromer) was entrusted to oversee the occupation. He wrote that ‘Islam as a
social system has been a complete failure... The degradation of women in the
East is a canker than begins its destructive work early in childhood and has
eaten into the whole system of Islam.’ The solution was that Muslims ‘be
persuaded or forced into imbibing the true spirit of western civilization.’
At home, this champion of Egyptian women’s rights worked feverishly to deny
British women the right to vote as a founding member and president of the
Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage.” This, Kumar notes, was not
a contradiction for Cromer, who was a social conservative at home but an
enlightened coloniser abroad. As a colonial overlord, he was not putting
forward a statement of principal but simply deploying arguments useful to the
colonial mission. More than a century later
US President George W. Bush billed a war in Afghanistan terming it necessary
to “rescue the Afghan women”. This stance came from a president whose
policy record was firmly anti-women and the first act after he came to power
was to cut funding to international groups that provide abortion services to
women. In response to the myth
that Islam is an inherently violent religion, Kumar argues that Christianity
too rose to dominance through conquest and conversion, first in the Roman
world and then in the neighbouring areas of Europe, Armenia, Arabia, eastern
Africa and central Asia. During the First Crusade in 1099, crusaders launched
a killing spree after taking control of Jerusalem, murdering almost the
entire population of Muslim men, women and children. The Jews, who fought
side-by-side with the Muslims to defend the city were not spared either.
Kumar cites several such examples from the history debunking the myth that
violence is inherent to a religion; rather it is carried out in the garb of
religion for the vested interest of a few influential people. The book focuses in detail
on political Islam and the US policy, the allies and the enemies of the US,
the irrational mullahs and the freedom fighters, Israel’s enemies, failure
of the Islamic revivalism, the foreign policy establishment and the
‘Islamic threat’. The entire section three of
the book is devoted to Islamophobia and the domestic politics elaborating on
issues ranging from attacks on civil liberties to surveillance, detention and
deportation, from pre-emptive prosecution to theories of radicalisation, from
the Ground Zero mosque controversy to the rise of the Islamophobic network
— and from the media propaganda to systematic racism. Islamophobia and the
Politics of Empire By Deepa Kumar Publisher: Haymarket Books Pages: 240 Price: USD 17.00
Zia Mohyeddin column On my last visit to
New York I was caught up in the midst of a convention of manufacturers of
therapeutic magnets. The hotel lobby was full of well-groomed middle-aged ladies
distributing leaflets and brochures. The pamphlet handed over to me had a Mrs
McCotter of Albany, NY, on the cover. Displaying a well-endowed bosom and a
manufactured smile, she signed a message which said, “When I feel pain in
my knees I reach for a magnet.” Therapeutic magnets is big
business in the United States of America; their annual sales exceed a billion
dollars. If you suffer from lower back pain, there is a magnetic seat
cushion; if you have a severe headache, there is magnetic headboard. There
are magnetic insoles for your shoes and magnetic pads for your bed; magnetic
wraps your arms, wrists and ankles. Being a chronic back-pain
suffer I asked my physician friend in New Jersey if I should have a magnet or
two attached to my back. He was sceptical. “You can try”, he said, “but
medical science is still at a loss to explain how magnets work. It would be
cheaper to go to a faith-healer.” Crimes are perpetrated in
the name of the Almighty everywhere. From Sweden to Swaziland there are
religious groups determined to kill those whom they believe to be
non-believers. Not just that: there are religious sects who have been
brain-washed to think that theirs alone is the true chosen path to eternal
salvation. You would have thought that the USA, the most technically advanced
country in the world, has rid itself of religious bigotry. You would be
wrong. Take the case of a man
called Horsley who cold-bloodedly murdered a doctor because he performed
abortions. Now Horsley was a dedicated Christian. In his mind, and in the
minds of many such Christians, murder is justified if it is done in the name
of combating secularism, or stopping homosexuality, and many other
‘worthy’ causes like eliminating abortionists. You would be right in
thinking that dangerous sects like the one that Horsley belonged to, are no
longer in operation. But they are. It isn’t so long since we heard of the
priest in California who burnt our sacred book outside his church. I come back to the land of
the pure only to be confronted by an incident that has shaken the world: the
murderous attempt on the life of a fourteen year old girl who wants girls to
be educated. I wonder if there is any
difference between the Taliban and the Horsleys of this world. Both believe,
passionately that we should not use the greatest gift that human beings
possess — the ability to reason. Dogma, hatred and a blind obedience to the
lunatic ravings of demagogues govern their lives. Horsley was a member of a
‘Righteous Christian’ group; there are many other organisations in
America who all act in the name of Christianity. Ku Klux Klan is the most
widely known, but the rest of them are not far behind in their sworn aims of
eliminating blacks and other infidels, academics who speak of tolerance, as
well as non-segregated schools. They all go to church and praise Jesus Christ
for giving them strength to keep killing until America becomes a truly
Christian state. They are convinced that the world (which, of course, is
America) will not be able to sleep peacefully at night as long as the blacks
— and the heathens — are lurking around. It is only because the vast
majority of Americans think of such organisations as the ‘lunatic fringe’
that there aren’t many more sectarian killings in the USA. * * * * * Scores of columns have been
written about the gruesome attack on Malala Yusufzai. Like everyone else I,
too, hope that the courageous school girl from Swat survives the attack. As I
write this column, the news is that her conditioned has improved and that she
has been flown to England for further examination. If she pulls through, and
her brain isn’t permanently damaged, will she be kept in a “safe house”
surrounded by security guards at all times? Those who attacked her have vowed
to strike again. An editorial in one of our
English dailies tells me that “At long last, Pakistanis appear to have
woken up to the consequences of extremism that has been allowed to take root
in our country.” But the fact is that we have been getting similar wake-up
calls for many years now. Today, our newspapers are
full of pictures of teen-age girls praying for the life of Malala and civil
society ladies standing in protest against the heinous crime. But what will
happen when the protest peters out? I have an uneasy feeling
that the reaction to this horrific incident will fizzle out and our rhetoric
about rooting out extremism will fade into oblivion. I remember well the
anger that erupted in our country three years ago over the video of a young
woman being flogged in Swat. The army went into Swat. And what was the
result? As one correspondent in a newspaper has noted: “The attack on
Malala has, once and for all, put to rest the myth that the Swat valley has
exorcised its Taliban ghost.” Our real issue, which we
dare not tackle, is that our society is rooted in gender discrimination.
Except in the well-off areas of big cities, a woman still cannot walk down a
crowded street unchaperoned. The place of a woman in our society is way below
the place of a man. Her function is to cater to the needs of her husband, and
his parents and her sons. If she has daughters they will be assigned a
secondary position. Even in the cities a very large majority of middle and
lower middle-class parents believe that too much education is unnecessary for
their daughters because it will not be of any use to them when they move from
their fathers household (Chor Babul ka ghar) to that of their husband’s
household. As a result, men naturally
assume that the freedoms they enjoy are their God-given right. It cannot
enter their consciousness that the women too, could enjoy the same freedoms.
In their mindset a woman who stands up for her rights has not been properly
brought up, or she has been led astray by Western notions that she has picked
up in schools and colleges. And now that everyone has
seen that a fourteen year old girl has been subjected to a vicious murderous
attack for wanting girls to be educated, I wouldn’t be in the least
surprised if many parents, not just in Swat, but in the entire Northern belt
and in many provincial town of the Punjab, decide to lock up their daughters.
|
|
