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September 19, 2004
REVIEW: The seamy side
THE book under review is a well-produced, lucidly written history of the rulers of Oudh. The author has chosen to call them Nawabs even though from the time of Ghaziuddin Haider onwards, they were dubbed as ‘Kings’ by the East India Company to drive a wedge between the symbolic Mughal King of Delhi and the independent rulers of the principality of Oudh.
The writer, who did his MA in history from the Allahabad University and has served Radio Pakistan in different capacities, has kept in view the general readers’ impatience with detailed descriptions of personalities and events. He has taken a bird’s eye view of the history of Oudh, and has written more about the seamy side of their lifestyles. Having a lot to discuss — perhaps every feature that could come to one’s mind — he has summarized as briefly as possible what the well-known historians of Oudh have taken pains to write upon extensively.
The hallmark of S. Azhar Husain’s style is that he has not dealt with any of the multifaceted features of Oudh society — the religious, cultural, literary and even economic and political — comprehensively. Had he done so, he couldn’t have been able to cover all the aspects that he has.
The book contains 12 chapters and in the end, the courts of Delhi and Lucknow have also been analyzed and compared providing information on their rise and fall.
It is surprising to see that his bibliography doesn’t draw upon Mirza Jafar Hussain or Maulana Mohammad Baqar Shams’s scores of books on the subject. Such sources would have been more useful in capturing the interest of the uninitiated and young readers. Unfortunately enough, without such sources included, the book may not be of much use to scholars.
However, we need many more lucidly written books to provide reading material for our young readers who are not able to read the works of important historians, Oudh especially being in question. I wish we could have more books like the one under review written on many other regions of the subcontinent so that the discipline of history could win over a whole mass of readers who are not reading much about our culture, literature and history. The majority of our young folks knows more about the West than their own land, which is sad.
S. Azhar Hussain has succeeded in writing a book which has all the ingredients of popular, rapid reading. The book is illustrated with photographs which the author has taken himself.
Dastan-i-Oudh: Nawaban-i-Oudh Ka Daur-i-Hukmarani (1724-1857)
By S. Azhar Husain
D-26, Karachi University Campus, University Road, Karachi.
222pp. Rs200
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