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review Sawera is a whiff of fresh air. You open it once and then there is no looking back. You find yourselves totally engrossed in the magazine that offers wonderful eclectic reading. The man behind this gigantic venture is none other than Salimur Rahman, the distingusished poet and translator. That’s why one notices that it has maintained a certain standard over the years. A
different take The class analysis
which formed the bedrock of Marxist politics, first properly formulated by
Karl Marx has been developed further keeping the objective conditions in
various regions and countries by many other scholars and politicians. The followers of the school
which studied history with political economy as its grid have usually been
blamed for their analysis not being based on the actual conditions on ground
but being derived, or even being an imitation, of the European analytical
framework. Two years ago, I was invited to a dinner party in New York. It took place on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in a penthouse apartment. Our host was not merely rich: she had a name that through long association with money had itself become shorthand for wealth. The dinner was being held in honor of a writer, by now old and famous, on the publication of his latest and perhaps final book. And because the book was about Africa, and because as a man ages his thoughts circle around questions of legacy, the writer, who was not himself African, had requested, in lieu of a normal book launch, a quiet dinner with a group of young African writers. This was how I came to be invited.
review Sawera is a whiff
of fresh air. You open it once and then there is no looking back. You find
yourselves totally engrossed in the magazine that offers wonderful eclectic
reading. The man behind this gigantic venture is none other than Salimur
Rahman, the distingusished poet and translator. That’s why one notices that
it has maintained a certain standard over the years. The present issue opens
with an erudite long essay by Dr Khurshid Rizvi, a poet and scholar, on
classical Arab literature. Rizvi is considered to be an authority on
classical Arab literature and his brilliance can be felt while going through
the essay. Next is a translation done
by Shahid Hameed of an intriguing discussion between journalist Robert Fisk
and the celebrated calligrapher from Lebanon Jamal Naja, where they discuss
the difficult art of calligraphy and why the art form is not seeing the best
of days. Nasreen Anjum Bhatti, a
trully versatile poet, is no new name to the world of Urdu and Punjabi
poetry. Shamim Hanfi, an acclaimed critic, is beholden to the Urdu verse of
Nasreen Anjum Bhatti. He writes that unlike some others, Bhatti’s voice has
always been one of restrain. Furthermore, Hanfi notes that a few of her poems
carry political undertones which remind him of the poems of Pablo Neruda,
Mahmood Dervish and Nazim Hikmet. A special portion is
dedicated to the life of Sohail Ahmad Khan. Sohail Ahmad Khan reminisces
about his family background as well the days he spent with his paternal
uncle, Agha Jan. Khan’s wife Najma Sohail, a short story writer and
novelist in her own right, also writes about the wonderful days spent with
her husband, Sohail Ahmad Khan and paints a vivid portrait of Sohail Ahmad
Khan the critic, as a human being. It is a sheer treat to read her long essay
in which one sees how committed Sohail Ahmad Khan was with literature. It was
the death of his son in law which devastated Sohail Ahmad Khan, and he was
never able to cope with the disaster. Aslam Farrukhi introduces
Hazeen Kashmiri in a very lovely prose which is his hall mark. Poet and
painter Zulfiqar Tabish ferrets out the real Mumtaz Mufti in his sketch which
is very illuminating. His meeting with Mumtaz Mufti turns out to be very
fruitful as slowly, he comes close to the rebel of a man. In the sections of poems,
there is plenty of food for thought to say the least. Nasreen Anjum Bhatti
convincingly steals the shows as one gets submerged in her world where she
conjures up fresh and alluring images. Syed Kashif Raza is quite impressive
also and so are Amir Sohail, and Tanvir Qazi. Masood Mian’s piece is
worth reading too as it puts light on a legend Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The new
issue also carries two chapters of Mustansar Tarrar’s new novel which seems
to be quite interesting. The short stories section offers old as well as few
new names. Here we see Mahmood Gilani, Iqbal Diwan, Amir Faraz, Amna Mufti,
Masood Mian and Muhammad Abbas. Amir Faraz is impressive and one hopes he
will concentrate more on his stories. Iqbal Diwan took the literary world by
storm with his two novels Jisay Raat Lay Urri Hawa and Wo Warq Tha Dil Ki
Kitab Ka, his two books. His story Vintage Iqbal Diwan is so alluring that
one is forced to read his story in one go. Muhammad Abbas is a new
name in the realm of short story and therefore one can pin up hopes on him.
Zulfiqar Tabish, Sabir Zafar, Qazi Habibur Rahman, and Amir Sohail are
present in the section of ghazals. Sawera Edited by Salimur Rahman
and Riaz Ahmad Publisher: ilqa
Publications Pages: 336 Price: Rs 250
A
different take The class analysis
which formed the bedrock of Marxist politics, first properly formulated by
Karl Marx has been developed further keeping the objective conditions in
various regions and countries by many other scholars and politicians. The followers of the school
which studied history with political economy as its grid have usually been
blamed for their analysis not being based on the actual conditions on ground
but being derived, or even being an imitation, of the European analytical
framework. There could be a reason for
it. Marxist methodology was probably restricted to Europe and it only started
to be exported to other areas after the Russian Revolution through
the Comintern-the ThirdInternational. It was conceived unwittingly,
though as much a part of the Soviet Unions foreign policy as a new way of
looking and assessing historical developments. Obviously the foreign policy
of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century grated against an independent
study of the historical and political forces in the regions that were not as
industrialised as Europe. Different conditions needed
different analysis. There is many a departure in Lenin’s works from
classical Marxism necessitated by the conditions that prevailed on the
ground. As the freedom to use the analytical tools for a Marxist
understanding of society usually was inhibited by the official versions of
the communist parties backed by the Comintern (The Communist International,
abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International
(1919–1943), was an international communist organisation initiated in
Moscow during March 1919), the same happened in India. Keeping the
subcontinent’s situation in view many analysis were propounded by Marxists
and those have now become the heritage of the various ways of looking and
assessing economic and political reality in the subcontinent. After independence in
Pakistan the same charge of a derived analysis and approach has been framed
against the parties of the left. The great schism between The Soviet Union
and People Republic of China also spawned many factions and parties espousing
different points of view, though religiously vowing to stay loyal to the
Marxist fundamentals as their basis. It led to a variety of
analyses as the objective reading was different with every faction and even
individuals. Taimur Rahman, a young academic has ventured forth to analyse
the class structure based on the model of historical materialism and to set
right many of the false or derived notions about the class composition in the
country. From the very outset he
disclaims that Pakistani society had been feudal as stressed by the Marxists.
The Indian society was agrarian managed by productive process called the
Asiatic Mode of Production and was not feudal in the European sense. Its principal features were
natural economy, absence of private property in land, public works as the
basis of the state and surplus extraction by the state. The forms of surplus
were land revenue extracted collectively from the village communities. This
only changed when the British after consolidating their control on the
various territories of India unleashed the policy of Permanent Settlement,
thus converting agricultural land into private property and redirecting the
subsequent politico economic development of the subcontinent. Industrialisation and
changes in the agricultural sector took place under the umbrella of
colonialism and its chief features like foreign domination and siphoning of
the surplus and capitalism were planted upon the Asiatic Mode of Production. This gave rise to private
property, commodity production but without the development of wage labour.
For Rahman it is not a mode of production but a distinct path of capitalistic
transition which yielded the next phase — the Asiatic colonial development,
again very different from the type of development that took place in Europe. If similarities had to be
drawn it was closer to the Junker path of industrialisation of Europe and not
capitalism as ushered through popular revolutions .In the latter, the entire
class structure underwent a change but in countries like Germany in the
absence of a revolution, the older system retained its main features, even if
the society ad embarked on the path of industrialisation. Since both in India and
Pakistan there has been no revolution to totally replace one class with
another in the true Marxist sense, the gradual change had retained the
characteristics of the old system. If there had been
industrialisation through a popular revolution in Pakistan, it was possible
to distinguish clearly the two classes in terms of their source of income and
form of production as well as their world view, values and cultural
practices. Similarly the change in agriculture has been even more muted in
this sense and has followed a gradual pattern where the differences between
the classes do not really stand out. The cultural practices have taken hold
of all the policy changes with the desired results as pronounced in the
policy not appearing to become obvious. The Class Structure of
Pakistan is probably the first serious study about the changes in the class
structure since independence which does not follow a predated framework or is
only let to rest at the level of a slogan. It points to the impediments,
difficulties and the limitations of applying one type of understanding to
another society. Some of the fundamental building blocks of Marxism need to
be modified beyond recognition to knock some sense into the given paradigm. The book though well
documented is profusely referential. One of the main benefits could be that
through the various interpretations flowing from the central Marxian analysis
one could refer back to the various strands by just glancing through and
identify the large variety of interpretations embedded within the parameters
of Marxist analysis. The
Marxists have considered
themselves to be not only arm chair or laid back
academicians but ful involved in
practical aspects of politics the
analysts should not only interpret the world but also change it.The
obvious question that arises is what next.Will Taimur Rahman write another
book focusing on the transformation of the Asiatic State into a colonial or a
neo colonial state, the role of the military in the economy, the tribal
system of class power, the economic position of women, and the terrain of
politics, culture and ideology or opt for political activism.
The Class Structure of Pakistan By Taimur Rahman Publisher: Oxford University Press Pages: 302 Price: Rs 995
Two years ago, I
was invited to a dinner party in New York. It took place on the Upper East
Side of Manhattan, in a penthouse apartment. Our host was not merely rich:
she had a name that through long association with money had itself become
shorthand for wealth. The dinner was being held in honor of a writer, by now
old and famous, on the publication of his latest and perhaps final book. And
because the book was about Africa, and because as a man ages his thoughts
circle around questions of legacy, the writer, who was not himself African,
had requested, in lieu of a normal book launch, a quiet dinner with a group
of young African writers. This was how I came to be invited. I stood in the luxurious
living room of the penthouse, glass in hand, surrounded by Morandi’s
paintings and Picasso’s prints. To the sound of a small bell The faint hiss of champagne
being poured. The clink of glasses. Far below us was the obscurity of the
East River and, beyond it, the borough of Queens, glimmering in the dark. In
all that darkness was an infinity of information, invisible under the cloak
of night. Vidia—please call me Vidia, he had said—whom the agent had told
about my work on Lagos and New York, said, “Have you written about Tutuola?”
I said, no, I hadn’t. “It would be interesting,” he said. I demurred,
and said I found the work odd, minor. There was something in Tutuola’s
ghosts and forests and unidiomatic English that confirmed the prejudices of a
European audience. “That’s what would be interesting about it,” he
said. “A reconsideration. You would be able to say something about it,
something of value.” At dinner, in addition to
Sir Vidia and Lady Naipaul, there was a well-known American actor and his
third wife. There were Vidia’s editor, our agent and his wife, our host,
and three other young African writers. The host’s family claret was served
with dinner, served after a proud announcement of its provenance, and poured
almost ritualistically. Such things are bound to disappoint, but this one was
possibly the best wine I had ever tasted. And, buoyed by it, we began to
toast V. S. Naipaul, who sat in his chair, bunched up in it, serene but a
little tired, nodding repeatedly, saying, “Thank you, thank you,” with
his characteristic bis, the repetition of language that was second nature to
him. When three or four others had spoken, I gathered up my courage and said:
“Vidia, I would like to join the others in celebrating your
work”—though, in truth, the new book, called The Masque of Africa,
ostensibly a study of African religion, was oddly narrow and stilted, not as
good as his other voyages of inquiry, though still full of beautiful
observation and language; but there is a time for literary criticism, and a
time for toasts. I went on: “Your work which has meant so much to an entire
generation of post-colonial writers. I don’t agree with all your views, and
in fact there are many of them I strongly disagree with,”—I said
“strongly” with what I hoped was a menacing tone—“but from you I have
learned how to be productively disagreeable in my own views. I and others
have learned, from you that it is fine to be independent, that it is fine to
go your own way and go against the crowd. You went your own way no matter
what it cost you. Thank you for that.” I raised my glass, and everyone else
raised theirs. A silence fell and Vidia looked sober, almost chastened. But
it was a soft look. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m very moved. I’m very
moved.” In 1890, Joseph Conrad
piloted a steamship down the Congo on a boat. That journey became his
inspiration for Heart of Darkness, a puzzling novella with nested narrators
who unfolded a shadowed, strangled, brutal tale. Heart of Darkness was
written when rapacious extraction of African resources by European adventure
was gospel truth—as it still is. The book helped create the questions that
occupy us till this day. What does it mean to write about others? Who are
these others? More pressingly, who are the articulate “we”? In the
“Heart of Darkness,” the natives—the niggers, as they are called in the
book, the word falling each time like a lance—speak only twice, once to
express enthusiasm for cannibalism, then, later, to bring the inarticulate
report, “Mistah Kurtz, he dead.” Otherwise, these niggers, these savages,
are little more than shadows and violence, either in dumb service on the
boat, or in dumb, grieved, uncomprehending and deadly attacks on it from the
shore. Not only is this primitive, sub-human Africa incoherent to any
African, it is incoherent to any right-thinking non-African too. A hundred
years ago, it was taken as the commonplace truth; it wasn’t outside the
mainstream of European opinions about Africans. But we have all moved on.
Those things are in past, are they not? “For the first four days
it rained.” Vidia’s face crinkled with pleasure. “You like that?”
“I do, very much. It’s simple. It’s promising.” “I like it too!”
he said. What I had just quoted was the first line of The Enigma of Arrival,
his intricate novel about life in rural England. I value Naipaul for his
travel narratives, for his visits to the so-called dark places of the earth,
the patient way he teases out complicated non-fictional stories from his
various interlocutors in Iran, Indonesia, India, and elsewhere. In no small
part, Vidia’s writing held my interest because he, too, after all, was one
of the natives. He, too, was thought savage and, in his cruel term,
half-made. He was a contradiction like no other. Dinner was over. We were in
conversation, Vidia, our host, and me. He was in a good mood, flattered by
the attention Our host drifted away, and
Vidia and I continued chatting about this and that. Swift judgments came
down. The simplicity in Hemingway was “bogus” and nothing, Vidia said,
like his. Things Fall Apart was a fine book, but Achebe’s refusal to write
about his decades in America was disappointing. Heart of Darkness was good,
but structurally a failure. Finally, after about twenty
minutes, Nadira came for her husband. The hand lifted itself from its resting
place on my knee. This benevolent old rheumy-eyed soul: so fond of the word
“nigger,” so aggressive in his lack of sympathy towards Africa, so brutal
in his treatment of women. He knew nothing about that. He knew only that he
needed help standing up, needed help walking across the grand marble-floored
foyer towards the private elevator. The city below. At certain
heights, you get vertigo, but you also see what you otherwise might not. —Teju Cole
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from a private elevator the old writer and his middle-aged wife emerged. He
was short and stout—a little fat, even, though you could see he hadn’t
always been so—and he walked across the marble floor unsteadily, with the
aid of a walking stick, and with the aid of his wife, a dark-haired,
dark-eyed woman, taller than him, glamorous in her pashmina. My agent, who
was also the old writer’s agent, introduced us. “Teju, meet Vidia Naipaul.”
