My friend Rakhshanda Jalil is singlemindedly pursuing her interests and dreams. Her latest book of translation has attracted attention from critics as well as high profile media persons such as Khushwant Singh.
In his latest column he talks about RJ and her new book.
Bihar in translation
One of my lasting regrets is that when I migrated from Pakistan to India in August 1947, I did not learn to read and write Hindi. It was not entirely my fault as I got postings abroad and even lost much of the Urdu I knew. I was about to pick it up again in my years in Bombay. I envy those who are equally at ease with Hindi, Urdu and English.
One of them is Rakshanda Jalil of Jamia Millia University. She has written extensively about Delhi in English and translated Hindi novels. Though she is equally adept in Urdu, she does not write it, but uses it as her source material.
Rakshanda Jalil’s latest offering is translations of 10 short stories by Phaneshwar Nath Renu — Panchlight and other stories (Orient Black Swan). I had heard a great deal about Renu but was never able to lay my hands on any of his writing in English translation. I was aware that Renu (1921-77) was a Bihari from a tiny hamlet in Purnea district. He was deeply involved in the freedom movement and was jailed many times. His story Maraa Gayaa Gulfam was made into a highly popular feature film. Renu’s stories have the earthy fragrance of the soil of Bihar.
Raza Rumi relives the enchantment of the dastans (published in The Friday Times)
Musharraf Ali Farooqi and the Urdu Project have revived a tradition that was fading in the age of instant communication, sms lingo and a dying reading culture. When I started reading the book, I could not help remember the day when my Uncle, Zaheer Ahmad Bhutta, a man of letters and book-lover handed over a set of Tilism-e-Hoshruba to me in my early childhood. I distinctly remember the summer when I devoured all the abridged versions, feeling thirsty for more. So I read them again. As a young man I dared to read the originals and could not help being pleased with myself. Tilism and its magical kingdom remains a part of me, and of many others of my generation who grew up on its diet of bravery, magic, lust and a peculiar aesthetic.
Tilism is a wonderful product of our composite Indo-Muslim culture that took centuries to evolve. This is why it defies the clergy’s diktat and religious bigotry, and its characters are a mix of all that the Indian context offered to outsiders such as Arabs and Central Asians. It is a larger than life metaphor for our past that has been lost now. Perhaps forever.
Hoshruba, Book One: The Land and the Tilism begins by telling us how Amir Hamza and his armies have chased the giant Laqa to the dominions of King Suleiman Amber-Hair on Mount Agate. While out hunting nearby, Hamza’s son, Prince Badiuz Zaman, follows a unique fawn and enters the land of Hoshruba.
Before his death in July 2009, KK Aziz had accomplished one mission that he had set for himself, i.e. to write about the Lahore Coffee House, the glorious nursery of ideas. Luckily, despite his failing health, Aziz finished a draft that was meant to be a shining part of his autobiographical kaleidoscope. “The Coffee House of Lahore: A Memoir, 1942-57” was published in 2008 and Aziz, in the opening chapters, tells us about the genesis of his passion to document this memorable phase of our contemporary history.
Whenever an intellectual, cultural and literary history of Lahore (or the Punjab and Pakistan) is written, the diverse circles which met and discoursed in the Coffee House will have to be described in detail and the ever-widening waves of their influence recorded. As nothing has been written so far on the subject and I don’t see anything in the offing, I give below a list of the important persons who I can recall.
Quite diligently, Aziz sets forth to list two hundred and six names that would include a wide array of thinkers, scholars, artists, writers and even some CSPs who obviously changed their life course despite the influence of their Coffee House days. For those who want to know about Lahore and its not-so-old diversity, KK Aziz’s memoir is a must-read. It is
‘The Message of The Qur'an’, has been acclaimed as one of the best, if
not the best, translations of the Quran into English. It is a
translation and brief commentary by ‘Leopold Weiss’ [Muhammad Asad] on
the Muslim holy book based on his own knowledge of classical Arabic
and on the authoritative classical commentaries. ,although it has been
criticised by some traditionalists for its Mutazilite leanings.
Published in The Friday Times last week:
A new collection of translated short stories reminds us how Urdu literature needs to connect with a global audience, says Raza Rumi
As I hold the recently published “The Oxford Book of short stories” in my hands, I cannot help bemoan the fact that Urdu literature has been almost invisible from the arena of global literature. Admittedly, translation is difficult; the tediousness of translation daunts many a brave heart. Having said that, there have been a handful of remarkable translators such as Khalid Hassan, Alamgir Hashmi, CM Naim, Aamer Hussain, Umer Memon and Rakhshanda Jalil, to name a few. But a wide corpus of Urdu literature lies forlorn and hidden from global readership, which alas is dominated by English language readers. For this very reason, Amina Azfar has done a remarkable job of compiling a collection of Urdu short stories. Her earlier translations have been competent and quite often lyrical. For instance, Akhtar Hussain Raipuri’s Gard-e-Rahh (the dust of the road) and Sajjad Zaheer’s Roshnai ( the Light ) are noteworthy for their tone.
The book has a nice little foreword by Aamer Hussain, who is correct in stating that Azfar’s collection provides a fine introduction to the genre of the Urdu short story. The stories selected encompass a range of various experiments undertaken by the great Urdu writers. The stark realism of Munshi Premchand is counterpoised by Khaleda Hussain’s two short stories that are allegorical and somewhat postmodern in their sensibility. Iftikhar Arif, the renowned poet-bureaucrat, in his formal introduction quotes Dr Jamil Jalibi, terming the selected short stories “in the category of the very best”.
Book: The Romance of Raja Rasalu and Other Tales
Story telling has been a primordial urge, never quite expressed in its fullest measure, but always lingering and floating like life. There was a sub-continent before the colonial interaction that brought in its wake an aesthetic hardened by the industrial revolution and its uniformity of life and space. This was a world rich with myriad identities, of whispers and tales all interlaced in a peculiarly complex kaleidoscope. Since the 19th century that particular aspect of folk story telling and transfer of generational accounts gave way to what is now known as education and knowledge - instruments and reflections of power and a linear world view set elsewhere but adapted awkwardly to the local context.
This is why Simorgh Women’s Resource and Publication Centre in Lahore, under the leadership of Neelum Hussain, have undertaken the challenging task of reclaiming the rich heritage that lies in our folklore especially that of the Punjab. “The Romance of Raja Rasalu and Other Tales” is a stunning compilation of the romance of Punjab’s legendary hero, Raja Rasalu and, while it draws heavily on the
colonial storytellers, the book twists the narrative in a manner that brings us closer to the origins of our cultural sensibilities. The tales are sheer magic. The romance, the intrigue, the bravery and the integrated nature of human existence where it finds communication even with birds and trees comes to a full life throughout the narrative.
It is one thing to produce an admirable compendium but it is another matter to ensure that the purpose and spirit of the tales are adequately reflected in the illustrations. This particular touch of originality is provided by the eminent artist Laila Rehman whose breathtakingly attractive illustrations add a new layer of meaning and sensibility to the folk stories. It is, therefore, as has been rightly stated in the introduction, a book for pleasure: a pleasure that moves beyond the immediate and the momentary and merges into the real or imagined pleasure of living. Laila’s paintings and sketches are evocative enough to generate a parallel story within the larger narrative. It is as if the reader is traversing into several worlds. One minute
Sufism, often considered exotic and esoteric, belongs to ordinary people of faith.
Sufism: The Heart of Islam; Sadia Dehlvi, 2009, HarperCollins, p 384
By the early thirteenth century Delhi had emerged as the beating heart of the Sufi movement that had sprung in Central Asia and swept across much of north India. Sultan Shamsuddin Iltutmish (1210-35) had set himself up as the ruler of Hindustan and e stablished his capital at Delhi. Central Asia and Iran had fallen to the Mongol hordes and a virtual exodus had begun — of scholars, holy men and wandering
mendicants. While Ajmer and Nagaur remained important centres of the Chistiya silsila, Delhi was fast gaining popularity as the axis of the Islamic east. And it was to Delhi that they came – to set up hospices, to gather the faithful around them, and to spread the word about a new kind of Islam. In the years to come, the Islam of the Sufis spread
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Zarina and KK Aziz, Lahore, 2007
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KK Aziz, aged 11 years
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Author with the grand historian of Pakistan, 2007
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KK Aziz, aged 10 years
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KK Aziz at MB high school, Batala, 1941-42
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KK Aziz at Government College, Lahore, 1946
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It was a humid evening in Peshawar when I found out about the demise of Pakistan’s neglected, grand historian KK Aziz. As it is, visiting Peshawar these days is quite depressing, and this news hit me for its stark, brutal reality. This was the physical death of the historian, for the scholar had already been marginalized from the mainstream of an anti-intellectual Pakistan. Only a week before, I had spoken to Zarina Aunty, his wife, and inquired about Aziz’s health. I am overwhelmed by the regret of not having met him for months, knowing full well how fragile he had been for the past few years.
It had become a routine over the years to meet the historian at his Lahore house and spend long, engaging afternoons duly arranged in advance. Aziz was an old-fashioned gentleman: proper, entertaining and hospitable. It was his wife, Zarina, who was more of a light-hearted character in their lonely house full of books and research materials.
At school, our exceptional history teacher had introduced us to KK Aziz and his writings; and the experience of reading shoddy, deceitful textbooks and Aziz’s reasoned critique was both revealing and entertaining. It was years later when my friend Faheem, with whom I explored history, introduced me to K.K. Aziz. That was a fantastic moment, for meeting Aziz was always a mixed experience: exciting, disquieting and sometimes depressing. He peeled away layers and layers of the ignorance and half-truths that have been so viciously grafted on to historiography by Pakistan’s nervous and irresponsible state.
Khursheed Kamal Aziz, commonly known as KK Aziz, was born to Barrister Abdul Aziz, in Ballambour near present-day Faisalabad on December 11, 1927. KK Aziz’s father was acclaimed as “a historian in his own right” for work on Heer Waris Shah, and in the Urdu work “Woh Hawadis Ashna” KK Aziz elucidates his family legacy and his father’s history.
True to his lineage, Aziz was to pen dozens of historical works and there is little doubt that he shall be remembered for generations of academia and independent scholarship. He was an alumnus of Government College, Lahore, where his tutors included Professor Ahmad Shah Patras Bokhari and Professor Sirajuddin. Later, Aziz became a full professor, and over the years taught courses in politics, history, Islamic Studies and Asian studies at various universities in Lahore, Toronto, Cambridge, Heidelberg and Khartoum. His research interests and capacities were emboldened by this international exposure. However, he yearned to bring back his experience and expertise to his country, but each time the co-joined twins of the Pakistani state and its ‘ideology’ were to harry him. Independence in scholarship is not a trait respected by officialdom, for it tends to promote and honour the cop-outs and the conformists.
Aziz served as an Official Historian to the federal government, Chairman of the National Commission on Historical & Cultural Research, and a Special Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister between 1973 and 1978. In these official capacities, he was characteristically important in the historical definition of Pakistan’s ‘life’ as a nation. In 1978, he was heading the National Commission of Historical and Cultural Research in Islamabad when he was forced to leave Pakistan by Zia-ul-Haq.However, this did not dissuade him from his passion and his academic pursuits.
Even before the draconian Zia era, K.K. Aziz faced various impediments from the state. For instance he related to me how the state censored certain portions of Fatima Jinnah’s monograph “My Brother”, where unsavoury remarks about Liaqat Ali Khan were kept under lock and key lest they demolished the official mythologization of Pakistan’s early leadership. Jinnah in Ziarat apparently had refused to see Liaqat Ali Khan, and only on the persuasion of his sister did Jinnah agree to see him, along with Abdur Rab Nishtar. Jinnah reportedly told his sister that the visitors, on the pretext of inquiring after his health, had come to check how soon he was going to die.
Such flagrant abuse of power and distortion of facts has led us to a point where we exist as an imagined fortress of Islam seeking glories, while in reality society and the state are struggling to survive. This is why the exit of KK Aziz is significant, for we have lost the home-grown voice of sanity which gave primacy to facts over spin-doctoring.
Aziz authored “The Pakistani Historian: Pride and Prejudice in the Writing of History” in 1993, elaborating upon the experience from his own professional career and the kind of life that a historian in this country would live through. In the same year he also wrote “The Murder of History”, a succinct rendition on history and how it is presented or obscured by official raconteurs. It was in the 90’s that he also admitted to having ghost-written “The Struggle of Pakistan”, published under the name of Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi. In 1995 he attended the 62nd anniversary celebration for the name “Pakistan” at an event in London, where he elucidated upon the history of the word “Pakistan”, taking initiation from Rehmat Ali’s declaration “Now or Never” in January 1933. In 1997 he was elected to the coveted Aziz Ahmad Memorial Lectureship at the University of Toronto; signaling his position as a political scientist, as a historian and as an instructor/lecturer of global repute.
The works of KK Aziz testify to his penchant for detail, of verified sources of information and astute analysis. His seminal work, “The Making of Pakistan: A Study in Nationalism”, is a standard textbook and is a superior work on Pakistan’s troubled nationalist identity. His other well-regarded books include “Party Politics in Pakistan 1947-1958”, “History of the Partition of India” and “Britain and Pakistan”, among others. He also authored a diverse range of books that dealt with pre-Partition history: “Public Life in Muslim India: 1850-1947”, “Muslims under Congress Rule 1937-1939: A documentary record”, “British Imperialism in India”, and “The All India Muslim Conference 1928-1935: A documentary record”. His original works on political science and history, such as “Studies in History and Politics” and “Britain and Muslim India” are also well-known. Another well-researched document, “Rahmat Ali: A Biography” was published in 1987, and this is a magnificent tribute to an elusive historical figure who coined the term ‘Pakistan’ in the first instance.
From being an avid nationalist, KK Aziz also journeyed through a phase of disillusionment with the country that he had cherished. I recall a meeting where he was brutally frank about Professor Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, who had doctored historical facts to serve the new state, and created a fabricated account of Pakistan’s creation. Even though he had contributed to the writing of the book, Professor Qureshi had tinkered with the truth and set a wrong precedent for coming generations. It is no wonder that historiography in Pakistan is nearly extinct. A handful of Pakistani academics, mostly working in Western universities, such as Ayesha Jalal, are keeping the torch ablaze. But they are condemned and mocked by the guardians of official truth within the country, who cannot view Pakistan’s history beyond the right-wing narratives of anti-Muslim biases of the Hindus. Aziz in his last years was not as firm about his earlier views on the creation of Pakistan, and he did make a few revealing statements that I would rather not quote, for he should now rest in peace and not become a target for self-styled nationalist Mullahs.
It is not a coincidence that Qurratulain Hyder, grand dame of Urdu literature, is remembered whenever we are faced with crises of state and society. Hyder was not just a fiction writer but a chronicler, for her sense of history remains unparalleled in the annals of South Asian vernacular literature. Her magnum opus “Aag Ka Darya” (AKD) was written and published in the highly contested milieu of the post-partition Indian subcontinent, when the new nation states were re-writing their historical discourses. In Pakistan, AKD was a sensation right from the time when it was published in the late 1950s. The controversy it created remains pertinent despite the passage of five decades.
Hyder’s nuanced and highly sophisticated vision was not easily apparent to officialdom or to state-sponsored literary critics in Pakistan.
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Flight of the Falcon: Story of a Fighter Pilot,
by S. Sajad Haider.
Published by Vanguard Books,
45 The Mall, Lahore & Lok Virsa Building, Jinnah Supermarket, Islamabad
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Nur Khan, Asghar Khan and Abbas Khattak at the launch in Islamabad
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Haider signing his book
at the launch
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Sajad Haider with his squadron of Pathankot fame
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Sajad Haider with his sister Kausar Haider who is an
eminent educationist
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Sajad Haider (extreme right) with children Zaeina, Adnan, and Zohare
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“Butt, the prosecutor, had not an iota of self-esteem in his body or soul; he was the most pitiful human being I have seen crumble so quickly from such a high perch. I continued brushing my teeth as I heard him say the CAS had ordered my immediate release and a service car would be there to drive me home”
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When Haider bid farewell to the PAF, he had Rs 17,000 as his total savings. No plots and other assets that we are now familiar with. He started from ground zero. But his lesson for men in uniform is: “If you serve with total dedication ... nature rewards you for your pride in the profession”
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This is a book review that was published in The Friday Times (June 19-25 issue)
This was a hot May afternoon when I found myself at the book launch of Flight of the Falcon. I had no plans to be in Islamabad until the author informed me of the launch, an event to be remembered in the culturally stifling environs of Islamabad. I have known Air Commodore (retired) Sajad Haider for years. He is an exceptional man, able to connect across generations. The articulate and hospitable Haider can hold forth on any subject under the sun without cavil. As a young man, I had heard the delightful, adventurous and sometimes sad accounts of his stint with the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). In many ways, the rise and fall of the PAF is a mirror image of Pakistan’s institutional trajectory, depicting how good we are at making a hash of things and persecuting our heroes.
Flight of the Falcon essentially sums up Haider’s grand story of valour, tribulations and commitment to the country. As he told me, this book “is my endeavour to fulfil my small responsibility towards my country. During the 1965 and 1971 wars with India, which I participated in as a commander leading the No 19 Squadron of the Pakistan Air Force, and as head of the fighter tactical wing respectively, I was a witness to history in the making.” During the 1965 war, Haider had collected the best fighter pilots and put them under the “warriors” training regime. The results achieved by his squadron were spectacular: an unmatchable six Sitara-e-Jurats were bestowed on the pilots, including the fighter-author. The 19th Squadron carried out the most difficult missions of the 1965 war and these have been documented by British, Indian and Pakistani experts. Whilst most accounts recall the operational episodes narrated by second-hand sources, Flight of the Falcon attempts to provide a candid account of these two controversial wars from the cockpit of a fighter air craft. Interestingly the book challenges the conventional mantra of victory trumpeted by state histories: in both the wars, there was no clear winner, and the book chronicles that honestly.
Haider holds that after four decades, the truth about what happened must come out without any embarrassment. “We owe it to our future generations, particularly today’s young commanders and students of military history, to set the record straight,” he adds. Not surprisingly, reticence to carry out an honest analysis of the lessons of the wars against India is rooted in the effort to protect the incompetent and short-sighted leaders whose mistakes cost the lives of many gallant men, not to mention the tragic break up of Pakistan in 1971.
Flight of the Falcon is not just a dry historical account. It is an eminently readable autobiography as well. Sometimes, the episodes appear stranger than fiction, especially when Haider’s air chief framed him in a conspiracy to overthrow the government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and charged him with treason and with inciting mutiny. We also learn how the Shahinshah of Iran, Raza Pahlavi, told Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to punish Haider for denigrating him. The sensational bits make the book impossible to put down. There is the incident where Zia ul Haq lectured the armed forces, trying to explain the reasons why he had carried out a military coup, and why the nation was not fit for democracy. The author retorted, “The pride with which I have worn this uniform and defended my country with my life has been denigrated to the point where I see contempt in the eyes of Pakistanis who had once adored the sight of this very uniform. As part of your constituency we are now the conquerors of Pakistan rather than its defenders.” Of course, Haider lost his career and Zia was reported to have said that he wanted to see Haider with a begging bowl in his hand!
The story gets more inspiring as Haider, instead of acting as a depressed careerist, does not look back, and rebuilds his life as a successful businessman. The message is clear: “never cave into coercion, nor surrender to the self-righteous.” These are words that are most relevant as we wage war against the forces of darkness in twenty-first century Pakistan.
We also read interesting anecdotes about Haider’s personal life. His father emerges as a role model, held in high respect by the Baloch Sardars; and his mother is revealed as a woman who emphasised education for all her children. From a ‘mama’s boy’, the author landed into the rough terrain of life and achieved success on merit, and through sheer dedication and hard work. The role of Air Marshal Asghar Khan in upgrading the PAF also gets illuminated through the text. But the sad events following Ayub Khan’s coup in 1958 get a detailed treatment. Indeed the author, many would say for the right reasons, is unsparing towards the 1958 coup – a “ midnight coup supported by second rate generals of the army,” to use Haider’s words. The only person to challenge Ayub was Asghar Khan. The Pakistan army since the 1960s has followed “a course of nepotism, corruption and cronyism that has been hard to rectify in all these years”, laments Haider.
Pakistan’s client status is also discussed at length when the author narrates how the Americans pushed Ayub Khan into creating a spy base at Badaber near Peshawar. Haider laments how this tradition was carried on by Ayub’s successors, especially Yahya Khan, who kept waiting for the 6th fleet in 1971, which was checkmated by the Soviets.
The false sense of importance that we have nurtured and polished as the core to our foreign policy continues unabated.
Haider tells us how Ayub feared his own shadow and constantly suffered the trepidation of coups and assassination attempts which was more of a phantom. Purges from within the ranks led to a situation where the army was starved of young captain and major level officers. In Haider’s words, the “not so obvious young Turks managed to survive.” Ayub pushed Pakistan into the 1965 war, which turned out to be a tactical debacle leading to the dismemberment of Pakistan. As we find out from Flight of the Falcon , the PAF was kept completely in the dark about the plan to annex Kashmir through guerrilla warfare, and Asghar Khan was deliberately kept out of the loop until the Indian air force rattled the rafters of Musa and Ayub’s bunkers. Tragically, the leadership thought that India would not react violently against Pakistan. The gallant men who infiltrated into Indian- held Kashmir were ill-trained. Some youths from the streets of Azad Kashmir towns were given as little as three weeks training to fight a guerrilla war of attrition. “There was no plan of exfiltration, and the secrecy of this plan met its Waterloo when two Muslim Kashmiris reported the presence of Pakistani Mujahid forces to the Indian police as well as to the local army headquarters. A tragic massacre of our valiant men followed,” says Haider. We have been bleeding due to the Kashmir conflict for decades, and brave men have shed their blood without knowing the power-games and megalomania of our leaders.
Book Review
Name of the Book: Sacred Kerala—A Spiritual Journey
Author: Dominique-Sila Khan
Publisher: Penguin, New Delhi, 2009
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand
The southern Indian state of Kerala has a unique population mix. A little less than half of Kerala’s inhabitants are Hindus, who belong to various castes. The rest are Muslims and Christians, in roughly equal number, and a miniscule number of Jews, who form India’s oldest Jewish community. In contrast to much of north India, inter-community relations in Kerala have always been fairly harmonious, although the situation is beginning to change today. At the popular level, economic and social ties and inter-dependence between Kerala’s different religious communities have given birth to a strong sense of Malayali identity that transcends religious boundaries. This has been facilitated by the use of the Malayalam language by all of the state’s communities as well as a long-standing tradition of religious overlapping or shared religious identities, which is what this fascinating book is all about.
Published in The Friday Times (May 22 issue)
Raza Rumi discusses a new book on Sufism by Sadia Dehlvi
Getting a visa to India is a nightmare for ordinary mortals. My application was not very politely returned last month with technical objections. It was only when a letter from Harper Collins arrived that the High Commission rather efficaciously allowed me to enter enemy territory, that too with special instructions that cantonments were out of bounds. I guess the South Asian officialdoms have yet to discover that Google Earth has permanently altered the shape of boundaries and secrecy.
I am sharing a message from Suhayl Saadi here: The website associated with my forthcoming novel, Joseph's Box has been launched. There are stories - fables, one might say - tangential to, and drawing from, the main narrative of the book as well as other information. The site will develop over time. If you pre-order the books now from the site, you will get them early. Happy reading!
About the novel: 
Recently bereaved Zuleikha Chashm Framareza MacBeth wades into the Clyde one morning and recovers a large box, with which she becomes obsessed. The discovery brings her together with Alex, a lute-playing clerk, and they manage to open the box – only to find six more boxes inside, each of which can be opened only by following a cryptic clue. The clues lead Zulie and Alex on a physical and emotional journey, modulated through music, across Glasgow, Argyllshire, Lincolnshire, Sicily, Lahore, and finally the frozen peaks of the ‘Roof of the World’. Meanwhile Zulie, a troubled doctor, has been sucked into the vortex of the terminally ill Archie MacPherson, an ambivalent, visionary Second World War airman and Glasgow shipyard worker. In the manner of a lord of misrule, Archie’s dying consciousness begins to shape and ultimately define Zuleikha and Alex’s quest as they progress through the seven Sufi stations of sacrifice, truth, power, obedience, life, memory and beauty. Drawing on a wide framework of cultural and spiritual reference, uniquely blending contemporary Western literature and traditional Arabo-Persian storytelling, this is an extraordinary and ambitious novel with a visceral sensuality and subtle touches of magical realism, in the vein of Okri, Murakami and Pamuk.
ISBN 9781906120443; trade pbk 216x138mm (with coloured endpapers); 688 pages.Joseph's Box will be available on publication date as an e-book via this website and the publishers' website only.
Natana DeLong Bas’ Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad is not a bad book, but it is not a particularly helpful book either. One of its strong points is how adroitly DeLong-Bas eases the reader into topics. This is no small feat since the protagonist is Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab (d. 1792) , a controversial Shaykh who lived during the eighteenth century. The reformer made an alliance with Muhammad ibn Saud, ruler of a small market town Diriyya, and this led to the formation of a state which claimed to live under the guidance of the Shariah and tried to bring the pastoral tribes all around it under its guidance too. More than I care to admit, the book was a page-turner for me, in spite of its moderate heft.
However, the simplicity comes at a price. The narrative, especially when it discusses Shaykh Ibn Abdul Wahhab, is afflicted by a linearity that becomes unconvincing after a while. The book proves incredibly readable throughout, but the one-dimensional character that DeLong-Bas chooses to maintain for the Shaykh quickly becomes a cartoon superhero- too good for his own good, so to speak, and quite unbelievable.
Review by Dr. Mahmood Ghazi
Title: Slippery Stone: An Inquiry into Islam’s Stance on Music
Author: Khalid Baig
Publisher: Open Mind Press
Year: 2008
384 pages.
Slippery Stone: Cultural Colonialism and the Music Question
The dawn of the colonization of Afro-Asian world in general and the Muslim world in particular brought in its wake efforts by the western academia to justify colonization in a variety of ways.
By PANKAJ MISHRA (NYT) reviews an interesting book that I must read.
Visiting India in 1921, E. M. Forster witnessed the eight-day celebration of Lord Krishna’s birthday. This first encounter with devotional ecstasy left the Bloomsbury aesthete baffled. “There is no dignity, no taste, no form,” he complained in a letter home. Recoiling from Hindu India, Forster was relieved to enter the relatively rational world of Islam. Describing the muezzin’s call at the Taj Mahal, he wrote, “I knew at all events where I stood and what I heard; it was a land that was not merely atmosphere but had definite outlines and horizons.”
Author Wendy Doniger, Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago’s Divinity School , writes on this blog about her new work. This new work further consolidates the view that much of the now politically packaged Hinduism was actually a product of colonial scholarship in the ninteenth centruy.
The Battle over Hindu History
For years, some Hindus have argued that the 16th century mosque called the Babri Masjid (after the Mughal emperor Babur) was built over a temple commemorating the birthplace of Rama (an avatar of the god Vishnu) in Ayodhya (the city where, according to the ancient poem called the Ramayana, Rama was born), though there is no evidence whatsoever that there has been ever a temple on that spot or that Rama was born there.
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand
Muslim family laws have for long been—and continue to be—a hugely controversial subject. Critics contend that these laws seriously militate against basic human rights, especially of women. On the other hand, conservative ulema and Islamist ideologues hail these laws as the epitome of divine justice and refuse to consider any changes therein.
Ziauddin Sardar's review for The Independent is worth a read:
Aatish Taseer grew up in Delhi with his Indian mother, a Sikh journalist. The Muslims of Delhi, he says, saw him as one of his own. But his estranged Muslim father in Pakistan was in another country. The troubled personal relationship, he asserts, must have some deep historic and religious undercurrents. To get close to his father, he must understand what Islam means to contemporary Muslims.
Barricaded Islamabad enveloped by the ghosts of national gloom has one little corner of hope. The Pakistan Academy of Letters, under its dynamic and committed Chairman, Fakhar Zaman, continues to weave narratives that still inspire. Even when the bitterness of our grim present affects us all, Fakhar Zaman was forthright in his views on Pakistan, its future and most importantly, its literary tradition. The venue was the book launch of Fahmida Riaz’s novel Godavari that has been translated into English. Fahmida Riaz is better known as a poet but her unique prose is lesser known. Her short stories and novels are extraordinary pieces of literary works rendered into sheer poetry. Often it is difficult to determine the genre of her ‘prose’ works as the lines between watertight compartments blur and fade away, only to reappear as a gentle reminder to the readers that our author is experimenting in her inimitable style.
Godavari was published last year by the Oxford University Press and Fakhar Zaman organised its launch under the aegis of PAL only to ensure that there are many indigenous, native voices in English that have yet not caved in to the pressures and inducements of Western publishing houses. Godavari is a deceptively simple story of a few characters visiting a holiday hill resort in Maharashtra a little before the communal riots that shook Bombay and India in the 1980s. But deep within its lines, sub-textual connotations and shifting moods lie tales of discrimination, communal hatred and the unfettered spirits of its universal female characters. The heartening aspect of this book launch was that there were a few dozen enthusiasts present on the occasion, and a few powerful
Finally Sadia Dehlvi's book, Sufism: The Heart of Islam (HarperCollins), is published and was launched last week in Delhi. India's eminent writer Khushwant Singh and historian Mushirul Hasan launched the book while Vidya Rao and Oroon Das rendered Sufi verses with music and subtle intonations befitting the Sufi path.
The book is a labour of love and I am fortunate to have seen the book evolve over the last four years and it is finally a beautiful edition with tributes to the great saints and their teaching. Below is an excerpt and a report on the book launch.
Tariqa – the Way of the Sufi
At many stages in life I came close to giving up on the idea of God altogether. Growing up in the seventies one inherited a mixed bag of values. Progressive writers professed agnosticism and friends jeered at the idea of hell or heaven. Churches, temples, mosques and monasteries were simply not fashionable in the
Many months ago I received this link to the online journal of the Government College University, Lahore. It has an impressive editorial board and the editor, Tahir Kamran, is a respected historian whose efforts and contributions to revive the near-dead discipline of history deserve more than appreciation.
The said issue of The Historian has diverse articles including On the Making of Muslims in India Historically and Evolution and Impact of Deobandi Islam in the Punjab. And, there are some brilliant book reviews as well. The book that interested me were Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and M.J. AKBAR's, Blood Brothers: A Family Saga.
I was once a student at this institution albeit for a year only. After years of state control, the recent reforms have improved the quality of instruction and of course the management. Thus the glorious tradition of the Government College shall not wane despite the awful stateof education that haunts Pakistan.
Do visit the website and browse through the pieces if history is your cup of tea.
Book Review by Sumaira Samad
Curfewed Night is the memoir of young Kashmiri journalist Basharat Peer, recounting his youth in the troubled valley during the '80s and '90s. A harrowing look at the political strife and armed conflict that has torn Kashmir apart over the last 30 years, Curfewed Night is nothing if not personal. The people, places and events Peer describes are ones he encountered and experienced first hand. They are his parents and neighbours and friends. Yet, despite this intimacy, essential to any good memoir, Peer's narrative is refreshingly honest, frank and unbiased. His is no polemic, and sentimentality, self-pity and melodrama take a back seat.
Beginning in the years before the struggle, Curfewed Night invites the reader into a beautiful, peaceful mountain paradise where the regular, slow rhythms of village life make up one's existence. Peer lives a happy, uneventful childhood, surrounded by a loving family and tight knit community. But this apparent serenity, as it turns out, is merely the glassy surface, hiding a quagmire beneath. The shadow of Kashmir's turbulent history and unresolved conflicts never quite goes
My dear friend Bhupinder alerted me to his post that talks about Tamas, a great novel (and subsequently a gripping TV serial) on the Partition. Now the serial can be watched online. This is what Bhupinder wrote:
Thanks to the indefatigable AG, the TV serial Tamas broadcast by Doordarshan in the late 1980s is now available online. (including some commercial ads from those days!) Based on a novel by Bhisham Sahni on the partition of India, it hit the TV screens in the backdrop of Babri Masjid- Ramjanmabhoomi imbroglio and brings back memories of some very fine TV serials made at time- Shyam Benegal’s The Discovery of India, Gulzar’s Mirza Ghalib and Arvind N Das’s documentary India Invented based on DD Kosambi’s works. Happily all these are now available at youtube and/or google videos.
Changing mindsets by SYED ALI NAQVI
One might cry out, humanity is dead if there was any, in disgust and disbelief after going through the events of the partition of the subcontinent. It is hard to believe that hatred and instinctual savagery can derive men to the edge of morality. Politics, religious bias and ethnicity do have the poison to make men so vulnerable that they get ready to put everything at stake.
Partition of the Indian subcontinent is seen as one of the most brutal and unfortunate events in the world history. There are incidents of mass murder by every religious and ethnic community of each other as well as rapes and abductions of women, looting and separation of families during the
Yoginder Sikand's new book Issues in Madrasa Education in India published by Hope India, Gurgaon is a promising publication. Here is a review by Nasir Khan:
A number of books have been recently published on the madrasas of India, and, in addition to this, madrasas have become a subject of considerable debate in the mass media. This latest addition to the writings on Indian madrasas makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the subject.
The issue of madrasa reform is much debated today, and several of the articles in this volume examine the question from various angles. The opening article of the volume, titled 'A Day in Deoband', based on the author's visit to the Dar ul-Ulum madrasa in Deoband, India's largest madrasa, suggests that even many traditionalist ulema, wrongly berated as being wholly opposed to change, actually do support madrasa reforms to some extent, although the way in which they imagine the project of reform substantially differs from that advocated by many outside the madrasa system. This emerges even more clearly in the following article, titled 'The State and Madrasa Reform: An Indian Deobandi Perspective'. The point is reiterated in subsequent articles, such as one on a Deobandi madrasa in Kashmir which is engaged in providing new forms of technical education in addition to traditional religious instruction, another on traditionalist madrasas in Kerala that have launched innovative experiments to combine religious and secular education, and yet another, on the educational model of the founder of the Jamaat-e Islami, Syed Abul Ala Maududi. A piece on the growing number of women's madrasas in India makes the argument that promoting women's rights from within a broader Islamic paradigm is also part of the project of madrasa reforms as even several traditionalist ulema see it. The author argues that this might have important consequences
in the future for the nature of religious authority as well as gender-relations among the Indian Muslims.
The Untold Charminar -Reviewed By Asif Noorani
Way back in 1954 when I greeted a grand old lady, who had migrated to Karachi from what used to be Hyderabad Deccan, with the customary Assalam Alaikum, I was admonished for my ‘bad manners’. She reminded me that I was not her age, which was why I was supposed to say Aadab and bend my neck slightly.
That was the Hyderabadi tehzeeb (a combination of good manners and courtesies). A recently published collection of writings Hyderabad: An Untold Charminar, imaginatively compiled and intelligently edited by Syeda Imam, has much more to say on the subject. The old-worldly charm in Hyderabad co-exists with the great strides that the city has taken in becoming a high profile IT city, which is why it has been nicknamed Cyberabad.
This new book by Yoginder Sikand has been published by Global Media Publications in 2008.
Messianic hopes and expectations are common to almost all religions. Jews expect the Messiah to arrive to re-establish their temple in Jerusalem; Christians pray for Jesus to return to earth in his 'Second Coming'; Hindus believe that Kalki, the tenth and last avatar of Vishnu, would appear just before the end of times; and the advent of the Imam Mahdi, who will usher in the end of the world, is a cardinal tent of the faith of Shia and many Sunni Muslims.
The messianic figure that almost all religions expect to arrive some time towards the end of the world is generally portrayed as representing the forces of good, as an agent of God and as eventually vanquishing, in a war of global and cosmic proportions, the forces of evil.
The Feast Of Roses is a sequel to Indu Sundaresan's widely appraised novel The Twentieth Wife. As can be expected it is the story of Mehrunnisa, the powerful woman in Indian history as well as in Mughal dynasty. The novel begins where the other novel ended with the marriage of the long separated lovers Emperor Jahangir and Mehrunnisa.
Mehrunnisa's long cherished desires come to life as she enters the Mughal dynasty. Even though she is the last wife of the emperor in the harem, the union of love makes Mehrunnisa into Empress Nur Jahan. As time goes by Emperor Jahangir is given into drinks and Nur Jahan takes the reins into her hands. It was not that easy. She forms a junta with her father, brother and the heir-apparent to the throne, Shah Jahan as well with their supporters.
On the way Nur Jahan ruthlessly exploits Jahangir's love to seize ever-increasing authority and power. However, she has tom pay the price for it. A well-contrived accident in the harem terminates Mehrunnisa's pregnancy and her potential for mothering a dynasty...
Read more here
From the Guardian
Water is potent: it trickles through human dreams, permeates lives, dictates agriculture, religion and warfare. Ever since Homo sapiens first migrated out of Africa, the Indus has drawn thirsty conquerors to its banks. Some of the world's first cities were built here; India's earliest Sanskrit literature was written about the river; Islam's holy preachers wandered beside these waters. Pakistan is only the most recent of the Indus valley's political avatars. I remember the first time I wanted to see the Indus, as distinctly as if a match had been struck in a darkened room. I was twenty-three years old, sitting in the heat of my rooftop flat in Delhi, reading the Rig Veda, and feeling the perspiration running down my back. It was April 2000, almost a year since the war between Pakistan and India over Kargil in Kashmir had ended, and the newspapers which the delivery man threw on to my terrace every morning still portrayed neighbouring Pakistan as a rogue state, governed by military cowboys, inhabited by murderous fundamentalists: the rhetoric had the patina of hysteria. But what was the troubled nation next door really like? As I scanned the three-thousand-year-old hymns, half listening to the call to prayer, the azan, which drifted over the rooftops from the nearby mosque (to the medley of other azans, all slightly out of sync), I read of the river praised by Sanskrit priests, the Indus they called 'Unconquered Sindhu', river of rivers. Hinduism's motherland was not in India but Pakistan, its demonized neighbour.
At the time, I was studying Indian history eclectically, omnivorously and hastily – during bus journeys to work, at weekends, lying under the ceiling fan at night. Even so, it seemed that everywhere I turned, the Indus was present. Its merchants traded with Mesopotamia five thousand years ago. A Persian emperor mapped it in the sixth century BCE. The Buddha lived beside it during previous incarnations. Greek kings and Afghan sultans waded across it with their armies. The founder of Sikhism was enlightened while bathing in a tributary. And the British invaded it by gunboat, colonized it for one hundred years, and then severed it from India. The Indus was part of Indians' lives – until 1947.
RAKSHANDA JALIL 
