Khaled Ahmed`s TV Review

Date:05-09-06

Source: Daily Times

I agree with Intizar that language shouldn’t be treated like a factory. But if the state treats human beings as madrassa-produced clones fighting covert wars with their minds switched off, it creates a factory-like situation. Urdu suffers in consequence

Writing in Dawn magazine under the caption ‘Judging Urdu unfairly’ (September 3, 2006) my literary idol Intizar Hussain has raised some questions in connection with what I had written earlier as my comment on a Business Plus discussion about Urdu. I wish to answer them.

He challenges my remark that Urdu may have become uncreative and asks if “Manto’s short stories, Qurratulain Hyder’s novels and poems of Faiz and Rashid are not quite readable by world standards”.

I had held that creative Urdu today was in fact the “afterglow” of the British Raj and all the great writers, including Intizar and those he mentions above, belonged to it. Urdu became uncreative because of the tasks of nation building it was burdened with after 1947.

In an ideological state, thinking becomes prescriptive, which is the opposite of creative. Russian literature under the Tsars, like Urdu under British Raj, was great; under Communism, it dried up.

I hold (tentatively) that literature dries up equally under the market state. English is kept alive by its commercial thrillers. The Hispanic novel is alive because it grows in the Latin nation-state. Ironically, the nation-state today is a backward phenomenon.

When I agree with Rahat Kazmi that great Urdu literature has disappeared, I don’t have Intizar in mind. He and others, like late Qasimi, are the lurching shades of the Raj. Ideology and fundamentalism will keep Urdu hostage for a long time in Pakistan.

Intizar says Hindi is still creative in the sense of making great literature. When I referred to the exhaustion of the mother tongues I was pointing to the inability of these tongues to live under nationalism. When the great Hindi novel is written, we will all know it.

Intizar’s observation that terrorism among the youth grows in the UK, which is the home of English, invites me to a discussion of the non-integration of Pakistanis in the UK. If you are not integrating in England and are “touching base” in Pakistan in the seminaries before bombing London, you are out of the ambit of English.

Intizar says English too is uncreative. I accept that and tentatively suggest the rise of the “market state” as the reason. But the non-English can fill the gap — like Salman Rushdie and some Indian writers.

I agree with Intizar that language shouldn’t be treated like a factory. But if the state treats human beings as madrassa-produced clones fighting covert wars with their minds switched off, it creates a factory-like situation. Urdu suffers in consequence.

And finally two questions: “Khaled Ahmed says that the provinces (barring Punjab) do not accept Urdu as the language of official discourse. If so, why did Bizenjo’s government in Balochistan and Mufti Mahmood’s in NWFP care to declare Urdu as their official language?”

The Constitution of Pakistan requires that the provinces agree to install Urdu as the language of official discourse. Every year the provinces are asked. Every year the provinces refuse. This year the MMA in the NWFP has agreed, but all the provinces have to agree before the federation takes a step.

Last question: “Khaled Ahmed wrote that Pakistan made the mistake of imposing Urdu on the country. This statement needs a correction. The mistake had been committed only to the extent of East Pakistan. I need not go into its details.”

East Pakistan was Pakistan and my comment was deliberately made to remind us that we did not treat East Pakistan as Pakistan. Feroz Khan Noon actually tried to install Arabic there! When the Quaid went to Dhaka he was wrongly advised to declare Urdu as the national language of Pakistan.

Urdu was supposed to be our national language. In a way it is, but that it is not the only medium of official discourse, may be a blessing. If English is abolished and Urdu allowed as the only mode of communication, Intizar will not speak through it; most likely the clergy will.

What happens to the “mother-tongue” states after they are “ideologised”? In Iran and Afghanistan, the sealing of the public mind is complete because it was un-colonised. In Pakistan and India, a recidivist escape into the uncreative past was not possible because of South Asia’s linguistically “colonised” intelligentsia.

Intizar was not killed after he wrote his novel Basti. His angst of pre-partition heimweh has irked many. His Sheherezade kay Naam and its “civilisational monkeys” could be interpreted as subversive by some, but Pakistan is not a “mother tongue” state.

In Egypt, Neguib Mahfooz was stabbed.

The colonisation of our mind through English has saved us — to some extent — from the slavery of ideology. English is subversive. Urdu used to be subversive; alas, it is no longer so. That it is uncreative, is not the fault of Urdu, just as it is not the fault of Russian that it was deflowered once by Communism and finally by the market state.

You might ask: isn’t slavery capable of being creative? Slavery is always more creative than mastery. But ideology is a slavery that is self-imposed; or it is imposed by a despot but internalised by the common man. That makes for barrenness. *