Dr. Tariq Rahman

Book Review

Shaukat Siddiqi, God’s Own Land : A Novel of Pakistan(1959). Translated from Urdu by David Matthews – Islamabad: Alhamra Publishing, 2001. PP. 349 . Price. Rs. 295/--

Khuda ki Basti is not just a novel. It is an icon of the nether world of Pakistan -- the world of desperately poor boys, lepers, swindlers, eunuchs, crooks and so on. As it was televised in a series of plays in the early phase of Pakistan T.V., it is imprinted on the minds of the older generation. Those who have read George Gissing and Charles Dickens will invariably compare it with the miserable life of the London poor in Victorian England.

In a way, the novel is a portrayal of corruption in unban Pakistan of the 1950s. It focuses on three boys – Raja, Nausha and Shami--- Raja makes his living by pushing the cart of a leper out of whose income from begging he gets some coins out the end of the day to watch films and gamble. Nausha works as a mechanic in the workshop of a sadistic mechanic. He has a mother, a young brother Annu and a very beautiful sister Sultana. Shami’s father is a shopkeeper and he beats him mercilessly whenever he is angry. All the boys live a life of violence and squalor. No wonder, fed up with their miserable lives, they run away to Karachi. However, Shami repents and returns immediately while the other two go on to their destination. In Karachi Raja and Nausha are made captives by a thief who forces boys to work as servants in people’s houses and then enters houses to rob them. Raja does this, betraying a family which he likes, and goes to jail from which he emerges as a leper. He ends as a begger in Karachi. Nausha emerges from the jail to become a pick pocket. Shami stays at home driving a rickshaw and dying of tuberculosis.

Meanwhile life has not been kind to Nausha’s family. His mother marries the crook Niyaz who poisons her to pocket the money he has spent on insuring his life. After his mother’s death Annu, the comely little boy, is driven away from the house by Niyaz and is eventually sold as a catamite by eunuchs Sultana becomes Niyaz’s concubine and has a baby by him. When Nausha comes back and hears all this he becomes so incensed as to murder Niyaz and hand himself over to the police. In short, life deals a very unjust hand to the main characters of the major plot.

There is also a parallel, minor plot. It is that of the inefficacy of social reform in a society as corrupt as that described in the novel. This parallel story is that of the Skylarks, a voluntary group dedicated to social reform. The group is created by Safdar Bashir, a rich young man with progressive ideas. Among others, an young man, Salman, who is an admirer of Sultana, also joins the group providing the link between the two plots in the novel. The group teaches adults to read and write, provides medical help to the poor and helps people in other ways. Seeing their popularity an aspiring politician, Khan Bahadur, tries to buy their influence. When they refuse to be brihed their land is taken away by fraud and they are eventually ruined. The group falls apart and Khan Sahib prospers. The last we hear of him is that he has succeeded in getting Sultana’s property appropriated by his hired goons who also rape her in the bargain. Meanwhile Salman gets married but his wife is seduced away from him by his wily superior. In the end Salaman too finds himself jobless.

In the end the unfortunate characters; the ones whose life are warped by poverty and the machinations of the crooks, are completely broken in spirit. The crooks are prosperous, powerful and satisfied. Evil triumphs over good and one is left feeling disconsolate. In real life such a terrible end is possible but only remotely. From the artistic point of view, in my opinion, the novel is so bleak, so pessimistic, so devoid of redemptiom, as to be artistically dissatisfying. It deals with extremes and with all the misfortunes reserved for the victims of the society. This is one of the techniques of the melodrama and it detracts from the artistic power of the novel. However, perhaps the writer wants to give the massage that the social and economic system in Pakistan is so unjust that the poor and the powerless continue to suffer and have nothing but misery in store for them. If so, then the work succeeds as a documentary or a report turned into a work of fiction.

The translation is excellent so that the work reads as if were written originally in English. Unfortunately, these are far too many spelling mistakes and other typographical errors. The paper, printing and binding is excellent. The Al-Hamra publishing venture will certainly come to ago if they take more care of their proof reading.

Dr. Tariq Rahman