IT is a novel about our time written prophetically long before our time. The novel I am talking about is Deputy Nazir Ahmad’s Taubat ul Nusooh, which made its appearance in 1874. We have been reading it as a novel of the past, reminding us of the problems Indian Muslims faced during the post-1857 period. But now it has gained a new significance. It may now be read as a novel of our own time. For this newly-found meaningfulness of the novel we should be thankful to Asif Farrakhi who, in his study of this novel, has pointed out relevance to our fundamentalistic times. “After all”, he says, “we are living under the repentance of Nusooh”.
Asif Farrakhi started as a short story writer. But he soon drifted to literary criticism. Now we have from him a collection of critical articles published by Shehrzad, Karachi, under the title, Alam-i-Ijad.
Breaking away from the formal way of critical writing, Asif has devised for himself an informal way of talking and so, he has a different flavour and a different vision. All these articles are good pieces of criticism written in a pleasant style. I, however, am stuck at the first two articles of the collection.
The first one is, Bunder ki Taqreer, a speech delivered by the monkey. Prince Jan Alam, who was turned into a monkey after being captured by the impostor prince in Fasana-i-Ajaib, is under threat of being beheaded. The sense of approaching death has made him philosophical. It is in that philosophical mood that the monkey delivers a long speech on the vicissitudes of time and the ironies of human life. Asif has chosen to talk about the significance of this speech in relation to the dastan. The subject is tempting enough for me, too. But I am in a hurry. Another kind of metamorphosis as portrayed in the character of Nusooh by Deputy Nazir Ahmad is at the moment more tempting for me because of its relevance to the newly transformed ‘Nusoohs’ of our time.
Nusooh for his sudden transformation from an atheist into a devout Muslim is indebted to the epidemic of cholera, which in the novel plays havoc in Delhi. And what a graphic description of the havoc by Nazir Ahmad! A cholera-ridden Delhi comes alive.
But in case of Nusooh, cholera serves the purpose of purgation. Along with the bowels, his inner self too, is purified. He is repentant of his blasphemous thoughts and actions in the past and now turns pious. He goes to the other extreme. With the fervour of a zealot, he takes upon himself to see that everyone in the family repents his past sins. All the family members go on yielding to his dictates with the exception of his elder son Kaleem, who sticks to his secularism and refuses to yield to the dictates of his father.
Nusooh is seemingly a peaceful man, believing solely in his persuasive methods. It is only on one occasion that he betrays the violent zealot in him. Seeing books in the study of Kaleem, which mostly are poetic works of great masters such as Sauda, Insha and Atish, he gets furious, brands these works blasphemous, obscene and immoral and burns them. Sheikh Sadi had already been censured by him. After he had expurgated one-fourth of ‘Gulistan’, he allowed his wife to read it. But in fact half of the book, according to him, stood in need to be censured.
Deputy Nazir Ahmad doesn’t believe in the novelist’s objective approach to his characters and to the given human situation. Overwhelmed by his excessive religiosity, marred by a fundamentalistic approach, he must side with Nusooh and see that Kaleem in the end succumbs to the iron will of his father.
In Nazir Ahmad the novelist is eclipsed by the moralist. The novelist had succeeded in conceiving two very potent characters symbolizing the divided sensibility of Muslims in general and Indian Muslims in particular. At one time, the mystic and the Mullah in their tug of war represented this divided sensibility. In later times, they were labelled as the puritan and the ritualist. Now they have been branded fundamentalists and liberals. Translated on the plane of history the two may be seen as Aurangzaib and Dara Shikoh. In Nazir Ahmad’s novel, they are reborn as Nusooh and Kaleem. What a fine translation of our divided sensibility in the fictional idiom!
The novel had all the possibilities of growing into a living portrait of a nation’s inner conflict. But alas, Nazir Ahmad himself became the casualty of this historic conflict. As the novel progressed, the moralist in him pushed back the novelist and took charge of the situation. It is the moralist, who decides how this tussle should end. He will not allow Kaleem to die a martyr’s death. He is coerced into submitting to the will of his father. This is how this novel ends and how Deputy Nazir Ahmad fails as a novelist because of his moralistic obsessions.
IT is a novel about our time written prophetically long before our time. The novel I am talking about is Deputy Nazir Ahmad’s Taubat ul Nusooh, which made its appearance in 1874. We have been reading it as a novel of the past, reminding us of the problems Indian Muslims faced during the post-1857 period. But now it has gained a new significance. It may now be read as a novel of our own time. For this newly-found meaningfulness of the novel we should be thankful to Asif Farrakhi who, in his study of this novel, has pointed out relevance to our fundamentalistic times. “After all”, he says, “we are living under the repentance of Nusooh”.
