I feel tempted to repeat what I had said earlier in this column in the context of Maulana Hali’s feministic verse. That a writer or a literary work of the past may at any time acquire a new significance because of some change in times or in the attitude of the people. Now I am saying this with reference to two novels — Abdul Halim Sharar’s Firdaus-e-Bareen and Deputy Nazir Ahmad’s Taubat-un-Nusooh.
Let me talk first about Nazir Ahmad’s novel. Recently I had access to all his novels in the form of a collection published by Sang-e-Meel Publications. I took my reading as a journey into the fictional world of Nazir Ahmad. At the end, I felt happy and grew sad at one and the same time. At the very start of this genre in Urdu, a novelist with the promise to grow into a great novelist was born. But, alas, he was kidnapped by the preacher in him.
Nazir Ahmad possesses in abundance the qualities a good novelist is expected to have. He conceives fine characters embodying all what qualifies them to represent the temper of the society. He has full command over the spoken language, which helps his characters speak naturally and spontaneously. His descriptions are never figments of imagination. They seem to have been picked out right from the real life. He was perhaps the first in Urdu to employ, and with effectiveness, the realistic mode of expression. But then intrudes the preacher, who pushes back the novelist.
In Nazir Ahmad there seems to be a tug of war between the novelist and the preacher. How tragic that the novelist never gives a tough fight. He surrenders too quickly.
But I have began discussing Nazir Ahmad in general while I had intended to concentrate on Taubat-un-Nusooh, which coming out of the period when Nazir Ahmad had written it, has, as I feel, acquired a relevance with our times. Nazir Ahmad in the character of Nusooh seems foreshadowing the fundamentalist of our times. Nusooh being the head of the family is well in a position to dictate all the family members. And how easily they all, with the exception of one, acquiesce to his fundamentalistic religious dictates. The exception is his elder son Kalim, who, defying the dominating father, sticks to his liberalism. Nusooh has no tolerance for those disobeying his will. Kalim must submit to his will or leave the house. The defiant son chooses to get out.
Nusooh is extremist to the extent that he burns all the books of his ousted son, labelling them as obscene. They included poetic works of Mirza Savda, Atish, Insha Allah Khan, and Amanat’s Indar Sabha. And how amusing that even Darya-i-Latafat, which is a linguistic study by Insha has been labelled as obscene. In this scholarly study Insha has on one occasion offered some specimen of Urdu as spoken in different classes of Delhi and Lucknow. One is a dialogue by a fictitious character Mir Ghafar Ghaini who talks of his visits to Lucknow’s Athon Ka Mela just for having a look at the beautiful faces in the mela. Perhaps this reference to beautiful faces injured the susceptibilities of fundamentalist Nusooh.
I think Nazir Ahmad has well-conceived the two characters Nusooh and Kalim. As a novelist with his fingers on the pulse of his society, he identified two characters in the world around him representing two tendencies opposed to each other. But I feel pity for Kalim. The poor young rebel was not been allowed to realize the promise he carried with him. Here I am reminded of Turgenieve’s character Bazarov as portrayed in his novel Fathers And Sons. Kalim had the promise of rising to the heights the character of Bazarov is seen touching. But the novelist came in the way. In fact, the novelist overwhelmed by the preacher in him had willed otherwise. That is the difference between Turgenieve and Nazir Ahmad.
Turgenieve was a novelist of a different sort even when seen in the context of his own Russian fictional tradition. In contradistinction to the novelists like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, he stands as a pure novelist. He had no philosophy to advocate, no religious dogma to preach, and no moral sermon to deliver. And hence no lengthy digressions. He remained strictly faithful to his theme, allowing his characters to grow with no intrusion from the author.
The difficulty with Nazir Ahmad was that he was a reformist. And what is worse, he, in contradiction to Sir Syed, was a reformist in the fundamentalistic way. So how he could afford to give free rein to his characters, more particularly to Kalim, who had refused to carry out the fundamentalistic instructions of his father. He must pay for this intransigence and be humiliated. The novelist seems turning into a partisan. He sees to it that Kalim is insulted and humiliated at every step after leaving his parent’s home. In the last resort, when he is on his death bed, his is abruptly seen making a confession and apologizing for his behaviour. But we don’t get the feeling of any change of heart in him. The novelist wills it and the character bowing to his will does it.
Of course, it is a meaningful novel with a relevance to our own times. But how poorly it ends. And it is just because the novelist submits completely in the end to the wishes of the preacher in him.
I feel tempted to repeat what I had said earlier in this column in the context of Maulana Hali’s feministic verse. That a writer or a literary work of the past may at any time acquire a new significance because of some change in times or in the attitude of the people. Now I am saying this with reference to two novels — Abdul Halim Sharar’s Firdaus-e-Bareen and Deputy Nazir Ahmad’s Taubat-un-Nusooh.
