Prudery in South Asian Muslim Literature : The British Legacy
Introduction
The British
conquest revolutionised the curricula of all subjects, including those of
languages, in South Asia. The
revolution was no less than the change from a pre-modern, oriental world view
to a modern, Western one. This article
will consider only one aspect of this change how the medieval language texts of
north Indian Muslims became puritanical i.e how their erotic aspects were
bowdlerized and their oral, pre-modern world view was replaced by the modern,
Victorian world view. The main argument
presented in the following pages is that Muslim literature in India took
certain forms of eroticism as natural and it was only after the British
conquest, and because of British prudery and puritanism, that the Muslim
reformers came to regard them as `shameful' and abandoned them. In short, contrary to the popular belief
among South Asian Muslims that they (the Muslims) were `modest' while the British
were not, this article argues that the sexual prudery so commonplace in
Pakistan today is a consequence of the changes in world view brought about by
the British.
The British
intervention, though revolutionary in effect, began on a much more conservative
note than did the Muslim one in the 11th century. The British Orientalist policy continued with the teaching of the
classical texts -- Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit -- so as to create as little
change in the prevailing way of life as possible. Thus the first educational institution established by the British
in 1781 was a Muslim theological seminary (the Calcutta Madrassa) in which the
traditional Dars-i- Nizami language-teaching texts in Arabic and Persian were
taught. None of the vernacular
languages, neither Bengali which was spoken by the ordinary people of Bengal
where the Calcutta Madrassah was located nor Urdu which was by now the most
commonly used language of North India, were taught. Indeed, William Adam pointed out in his reports on Bengal, Bihar
and Orissa (1838) that `Urdu is used for the explanation of Persian and Arabic
but it is never taught for its own sake or what it contains' (Sufi 1941:
105). The British were to change all
this but the changes were slow till 1835 when the Anglicist policies took
over. After that they gathered
revolutionary momentum.
At the time of
the arrival of the British the Indian Muslim world view, so far as it is
represented in the textbooks of the period, can only be described as belonging
to an oral and pre- modern culture. In
this language took on a special significance. It was not only a means of
communication but an index of one's cognitive and creative abilities. The use of metaphorical language,
witticisms, idioms and verse showed one's mental power and, therefore, won the
admiration of the hearer. The most
commonly known model of linguistic ingenuity was, therefore, the Maqamat of Al-Hariri of Basra whose
protagonist, Abou Zaid, won the admiration of everybody despite his fraud and
chicanery. He appeared in assemblies
generally posing to be a man fallen on bad days, and tricked people into giving
him alms which he spent in drinking and enjoyment. This book, despite its reference to drinking and debauchery, has
been used in the madrassas of South Asia since the twelfth century (Sufi 1941:
17) till now. Arabic poetry, especially
erotic Arabic poetry of pre-Islamic days of which W.A. Clouston provides
examples in English translation (Clouston 1986) was, however, phased out later
and the notorious Abu Nuwas was never taught at all.
Apart from the
special importance given to language in this world view its other features were
that it was unabashedly undemocratic. It emphasized hierarchy, unquestioning
belief in the supernatural and the non-rational and a non-political
understanding of power relationships.
The realm of the sacred -- whether that of high culture with Arabic
texts and fixed rituals, that of the holy man, or the tombs of saints -- was
not to be questioned just as the social hierarchy was not. The realms of both
the spirit and the world were unequal and undemocratic and this was considered
`natural'. Like society, where certain zats (classes) or occupational groups
were higher than others, the family too was unequal. One's age gave one status and etiquette demanded that people paid
respect to one's elders.
The description
of beauty and erotic desire too was problematised differently so that texts
which were considered ordinary would be considered scandalous nowadays. Although, or perhaps because, womens'
sexuality was under stringent control by the institution of the segregation of the sexes and they
were not even visible (Papanek 1973), literature presented then mostly as sex
objects. Thus allusions to sex, descriptions of feminine (and boyish) beauty were
commonplace in literature. Indeed, a
paradigmatic text in Arabic -- Alf Laila
wal Lail (One thousand and one Nights) -- celebrates the joys of the body
much before Western civilization made it a fashion. In this tale, the narrative formula is simple. Shahrazad, the beautiful virgin offered to a
misogynist king who kills virgins after deflowering them every night, manages
to stay alive by keeping the king curious about what would happen next in a
never ending tale. Within the tale are
tales within which are again tales featuring a world of magic, fantasy, beauty
and eroticism which provided the model for all the stories told by human
narators, parrots, maina birds and so on.
The symbolic significance of Alf
Laila is described by Abdulwahab Bouhdiba, a scholar of sexuality in Islam,
as follows:
... The Thousand and One Nights is erected as a monument to the glory
of fundamental unity. But we can now
see that at the level of everyday life and at every level of social life the
sacral and the sexual support each other and are both engaged in the same
process: that of the defence of the group.
This ethos of marital affection based on a frenetically lyrical vision
of life leads to a veritable technique of Eros that is itself indissociable
from its religious base. Just as there
is a religious ritual, there is an erotic ritual and each parallels the
other. Arab eroticism, then, is a
refined learned technique whose mission is to realize God's purpose in us. It is therefore a pious, highly recommended
work. Indeed it is a matter of helping
nature, concretizing life in its most beautiful, most noble aspects and
realizing the genetic mission of the body (Bouhdiba 1975: 139).
Another explanation, and one
which may be more convincing for modern readers, is that the whole narrative is
mujun. The term mujun comes
from the Arabic root ma ja na which,
in the words of Boudhiba, signifies `the art of mixing the serious and the
lighthearted, pretended austerity, true banter'. It is `the art of referring to the most indecent things, speaking
about them in such a lighthearted way that one approaches them with a sort of
loose humour. In principle mujun ought not to go beyond words. In
fact it is fantasy present through words.
It is oneirism, collective experience and liberation through speech'
(Bouhdiba 1975: 127). In short, the
tales -- and especially their erotic parts -- prevent Muslim civilizations from
becoming humourless, intolerant and dour.
The taboo on the frivolous and the erotic, it may be speculated, turned
the Victorian civilization into a guilt-ridden, hypocritical and (if Freud in
to be trusted) neurotic civilization. However true this might be, in the early
part of the nineteenth century the British were ascendant and the definition of
what was wrong and right, healthy and decadent, serious and frivolous, mature
and puerile was in their hands.
The British
encountered the texts of Muslim India initially at the Fort William
College. The most common text which was
used there was Bagh-o-Bahar, written
by Mir Amman of Delhi at the behest of John Gilchrist in order to teach Urdu to
British officers. Mir Amman's Bagh-o-Bahar (The garden and the spring)
is described by Duncan Forbes, who edited it in 1846, as `the best work that
has been yet composed in the Hindustani language' (Forbes 1846). By then it had been used for nearly half a
century for examining British officers, both civil and military, in India. As such it was the world view in this book,
rather than the reality of India itself, which impinged upon the consciousness
of the newly arrived English youths. English stereotypes about the Muslims --
for the book was created by and placed in the Muslim world -- must have been
influenced by this book. Thus, the world-view presented in this book is significant
for understanding British attitudes towards Indian Muslims.
Bagh-o-Bahar is a collection of tales,
like the medieval Arabic classic Alf
Laila, within an overall narrative framework (Akhtar 1992). The world view of the tales is contingent
upon a pre-modern, oral world of enchantment.
It is a world where the supernatural dominates the imagination; a world
peopled with genies, fairies, magicians, princes and princesses. Power is accepted as a given, it is an
unquestionable factor. Kings and princes feel free to give orders to kill
people arbitrarily. This must have
appeared to the British as evidence for
the view that Indians are childish, superstitious and accustomed to despotic
rule.
Sex is another
factor they must have found scandalising.
In Bagh-o-Bahar heroes and
heroines get infatuated at first sight.
Women are voluptuous. They drink
wine and enjoy the company of men.
Sexual desire is mentioned openly and at places, though not in an erotic
context, tabooed words for the anatomy are used1.
As the writing of
the book was probably supervised by Gilchrist, and in any case he must
have read it before approving of it as
a textbook (Siddiqui 1979: 130-132), he could not have disapproved of it. In all likelihood he must have regarded
these characteristics as the `normal', distinctive, part of `native' literature
. Later tastes, shaped by Victorian
prudery, were, of course, scandalised.
These later charges of salaciousness against all `oriental', especially
Muslim, literature must have gained strength from this early exposure to this
compulsory text.
Besides the Bagh-o-Bahar most educated people, who
had to study Persian to be called educated at all, came across other books
which were as erotic as Bagh-o-Bahar
and Alf Laila. One of the most popular textbooks of Persian
was Bahar-i-Danish written by
Inayatullah sometime in 1650-51? It
must have become part of the syllabi of Persian schools because it is mentioned
in a manuscript copy of Khulasatul
Makatib, written in 1688 A.D (Sufi 1941: 98). Thus it was used in all the Persian schools and educated men (but
very few women), both Muslims and Hindus, were acquainted with it in Mughal
India. During British rule too,
according to the education reports, it was taught in nearly all the schools and
its `style and idiom' were `regarded as the best models of composition' (Reid
1852: 54).
The story begins
with the author, Inayatullah, going into a garden with his friends. As the friends are enjoying the beauty of
the garden a Brahmin youth (Brahminzada) comes in. The youth is so beautiful that all of them are smitten by his
good looks. The Brahminzada warns them
against being seduced by mere externals and narrates a tale, within which there
are other tales, to illustrate this philosophical truth.
The tales
themselves are not relevant here. What
is relevant is that they belong to the magical, medieval world view to which Bagh-o-Bahar, Alf Laila and Tuti Nama
(The Tale of a parrot) belong. The other point is that the representation is
unashamedly in the male chauvinist tradition.
Women are cunning, lustful, unfaithful, unchaste and inconstant. This is especially driven home by the tale
of four women who vow to deceive their husbands.
The four
beautiful wives are enamoured of a handsome youth with whom they fornicate in
the presence of their husbands. One
ties a bandage on her husband's eyes and, while he milks a cow, enjoys herself
with the youth. The second one pretends
to be possessed by an evil spirit which can only be exorcised if she is carried
on the shoulders of her husband and other relatives. The spiritual healer, who
is none other than the same youth in disguise, is inside the litter where he
has sexual intercourse with her. The
third one takes her husband to a tall palm tree with supposedly magical
properties. She tells him that if he
climbed up the tree he would see incredible sights. When he does so she calls the youth who copulates with her in
open daylight. Seeing this the husband
shouts at her and hurries down only to find her all alone -- the youth having
run away by this time. She then climbs
up the tree herself and accuses her husband of being in the act of committing
sodomy with a boy. He tells her to
climb down and believes her story that the tree makes one hallucinate. The fourth pretends to be ill and the cure
lies in the hands of a certain physician (the same youth) using a certain
method -- i.e being with the patient behind a curtain. The youth then has
access to her body while she places her head on the husband's knee outside the
curtain.
The sex scenes
are quite explicit though metaphors and similies are used instead of explicit
tabooed words2. The burden
of the stories is the moral inferiority of women. The men, who are their
partners in fornication, are never vilified to the same degree nor are men in
general seen as being deceitful, inconstant, lustful and wayward as women
are. The idea that women should be
controlled by men is not only illustrated from the tales but also reiterated as
a formula repeatedly.
Another thing in
which modern Western ideas do not agree with those found in Muslim medieval
texts are about the sex of men's object of erotic and aesthetic desire. In the modern Western view the proper, or
natural, object of such desire should always be female. In the Muslim texts
females and beautiful boys and youths (called amrad) are placed in the same category (Rahman 1988 and 1990). Thus, both boys and women are seen as
possible sex objects of men as they were in texts from ancient Greece (Dover
1978; Foucault 1984). Indeed, the
change from regarding a man who desired women or boys as normal (but lustful or
sinful) to one who was `sick', `effeminate' or `abnormal' occurred sometime
during the transition from the pre-modern to the modern world view in the West
(McIntosh 1968; Plummer 1981: 55;Foucault 1984; Rahman 1988). Since such a
transition had not taken place in India, the texts here treated boy-love,
called amrad parasti, as part of
love. Thus Maulana Muhammad Akram
Ghanimat's Masnawi Nairang-e-Ishq
(called Masnavi Ghanimat) was a well known Persian tale in verse (masnawi) which almost every educated
Muslim in Mughal India knew. The story
is abut Shahid, a poor boy whose beauty captivates men and women alike. Even judges, teachers and religious people
are smitten by his charms. When he
enters a city he gathers such crowds of admirers around him that the ruler
throws him promptly out. However, the
ruler's son, infatuated with Shahid, brings him back secretly and instals him
in a magnificent house. Later on Shahid
leaves him for a beautiful girl who is as smitten by his good looks as the man
lover. The story ends, as usual, on the
mystic theme of all earthly quests ending in nothingness and beauty being but a
symbol and evidence of God.
The Gulistan and Bostan, poetic collections of Sa'adi, without having read which
nobody could pretend to be learned or even educated, too mentioned the love of
boys as if it were as natural as the love of
women. In chapter 5 of the Gulistan one tale begins as follows:
I saw a religious man so
captivated by the beauty of a youth, that his secret became public.... (Sa'adi
179).
and another one:
There was a certain youth of
most exquisite beauty, to whom his tutor, through the fraily of human nature,
became so attached .... (Sa'adi 184).
Rhymed tales, or dastans, were also part of the
traditional course of Persian studies.
The Khulasatul Makatib (1688)
mentions, among other books, Yusuf
Zulaikha, Sheereen Khusrau, Laila Majnun in verse and Tuti Nama, Anwar-i-Suhaili, Iyar-i-
Danish and Bahar-i-Danish in
prose. The Anwar-i-Suhaili of Husain Va'iz, a very well known text, is said to
be a Persian version of the old Sanskrit Fables
of Vishnusarman which is also the original of the Arabic Kalilah Wa Damnah (Clouston 1986:
397). In a sense then, these fables
drew upon a lore common to some of the greatest pre-modern civilizations of the
world. The rhymed tales -- such as
Yusuf-Zulaikha and Sheereen-Farhad -- are mostly about romantic passion. This was generally love at first sight
between a man and a woman (or a boy as in the Masnawi of Ghanimat). The
passion was so intense that it made the lovers oblivious of social hierarchies,
norms of society, societal taboos, material well being and even pain and
death. Interpreted in a mystic way it
served as a metaphor of the mystic's (sufi's)
quest for an immanent deity. Falling in
love with the beloved, then, was like an epiphany -- `the encounter with a god'
as the Greeks called it. It may also
have been a symbolic act of rebellion against rigid hierarchies and norms of
social intercourse which made the expression of spontaneous human feelings
extremely difficult. Indeed, such are
the barriers between inter-ethnic marriages in general and all love marriages
in particular in Pakistan even now, that ordinary love affairs take on epic
proportions. The epic, which generally
ends in tragedy, is redeemed in the eyes of the people whereas mere love
affairs are not.
The love tales,
like all other tales, are formulaic. The hero and the heroine are beautiful
beyond description. They fall in love
but there are circumstances which prevent legal cohabitation. In the end they generally die. In Yusuf
Zulaikha, since Yusuf is described as a prophet of God in the Quran, the
impediments in the way of the union are his own moral scruples. Zulaikha is
married to his Egyptian benefactor and, no matter how much she tries to tempt
him, he remains oblivious to her charm.
In keping with prevalent literary norms, the description of Zuleikha's
bodily beauty and the methods she adopts to tempt Yusuf are erotic. Yusuf-Zulaikha was not only taught in the
schools, it was also translated in Urdu and became a part of popular
entertainment for educated Indians in the nineteenth century.
Notwithstanding
the aesthetic and erotic aspects of these texts, they were meant to condition
people to become conservative, subservient to authority and reluctant to
question the legitimacy of power (Metcalf 1984; Minault 1998: 20).
Although medieval
Persian and Arabic literary texts were full of Rabelaisian humour and erotic
scenes, they would not get the approval of modern liberal humanists. The reason is that they are anti-feminist,
indeed misogynist. Women were regarded
as lustful, foolish, cunning, faithless, deceitful and unitelligent. They were always to be controlled through
men and through the fear of eternal punishment. Thus, if they were to be taught at all, they were to be denied
such skills as would empower them.
According to the Qabus Nama,
an eleventh century Persian manual of behaviour: `if you have a daughter ...
When she grows up, entrust her to a preceptor so that she shall learn the
provisions of the sacred law and the essential religious duties. But do not teach her to read and write; that
is a great calamity' (Iskandar circa 11C : 125). Another classic of didactic literature, the Akhlaq-i-Nasiri (circa 13C) by Khwaja Nasir uddin Tusi, also said
that women should not be taught how to read.
Indeed, as C.M. Naim tells us, women like Bibi Ashraf who learned how to
write had to struggle against the weight of these opinions (Naim 1987). Gail
Minault, also discussing the beginnings of womens' education in colonial India,
points out that `the taboo on writing was based on the anxiety that if a girl
knew how to write, whe might write letters to forbidden persons' (Minault 1998:
24). In short, a woman was seen as
being so irresponsible, iniquitous and lustful that she could not be expected
to behave with restraint and propriety if she was given the power to express
herself.
The British
started with approval of the major Persian classics. Later, this changed to
mere acquiescence though complaints about `immorality' became more
frequent. In the end they replaced the
classics with new books which had been written by people who, like them,
considered the classics immoral. The complaints can be dated roughly from the
middle of the nineteenth century when sexual prudery, which became the hallmark
of the Victorian age in England, was just beginning to influence morality in
England (Craig 1963). H.S. Reid,
responsible for education in what is now U.P in the 1850s, called Bahar-i-Danish `highly objectionable' in
tone (Reid 1852: 54). He felt that the Hindus could learn from the literature
of the Muslims as their own literature was even worse but lamented about `the
indelicacy of many of the popular authors' (ibid 35). Colonel Holroyd, Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab in
the 1880s, also found the Bahar-i-Danish
`of a highly immoral tendency' (Edn-P 1882: 35-36). by the late nineteenth century, of course, Englishmen in India
came to regard the eroticism of the Persian and Urdu classics as proof of the
degeneracy and perversity of the `natives' in general and the Muslims in
particular. Then came the imperative to
change such a scandalous state of affairs.
The desire to
change was part of the growing confidence of the British and the feeling that
their civilization was superior.
Oriental literature and history, argued the Anglicists, killed the
reason. As Gauri Wiswanathan puts it:
By the term of this argument, not only did oriental literature lull the individual into passive acceptance of the most fabulous incidents as actual occurences; more alarmingly, the acceptance of mythological events as factual description stymied the mind's capacity to extrapolate a range of meanings for analysis and verification in the real world (Wiswanathan 1990: 111).
People so incapable of
thought might be docile but they remained aliens. Their minds were forever in the control of mullahs and pandits. For the British this by itself could be
politically dangerous in the long run.
In any case they sincerely believed that their system of rule was
rational, hence better, for Indians.
But the Indians would understand this only if their prejudices, which
the old texts only reinforced, were removed. Besides, the erotic aspects of the
Muslim classics appeared so embarrassing to the British -- especially
references to paederasty (the unspeakable vice of the Greeks) which was
boudlerized in Greek lessons in English public schools -- that they thought of
purging them from the curricula altogether. To bring about change was not difficult for the British
because they controlled the schools, colleges and the universities. They influenced, but did not directly
control, the madrassas and the Hindu
seminaries which were, therefore, less affected by them. In the schools they introduced new
textbooks. In 1830 the school book
society reported that it had published textbooks in Bengali (9 in number),
Hindi (3), Arabic (2), Persian (5), Hindustani (1) and English (6) ( Fisher 1826:143). According to a report of 1878 on the
vernacular textbooks the textbooks were supposed to include lessons on:
i. Reverence for God, parents, teachers,
rulers and the aged.
ii. A simple sketch of the duties of a good citizen, and universally admitted principles of morality and prudence.
(Textbooks 1878: 243)
The British also
set out to change the world view of not only the school textbooks but also
creative literature. The Governor of
the Punjab, Sir Donald Macleod, told the senate of the Punjab University how he
had written letters for the improvement of `native literature (Proceedings
1871: 23). Colonel Holroyd, Director of Public Instruction at Lahore, made
efforts to make the poets write only on `healthy', `natural' subjects. In a historic poetry session in 1874 in
Lahore, the Colonel stated: `This meeting has been called to discover means for
the development of Urdu poetry which is in a state of decadence today'. He said a new kind of poetry would have to
be created since that which existed was not suitable for the classroom. What would be suitable was what he suggested
-- poems on subjects such as the rainy season.
The Anjuman-e-Punjab would hold monthly mushairas in which, instead of reading out ghazals, poets would read out poems on the prescribed subject
beginning with the `rainy season' (Quoted from Pritchett 1994: 35). Holroyd implied that it was the English
poetic tradition which had to be held up as a moral ideal. The conquered civilization and its cultural
artefacts, the products of its world view, were to be dominated, and at least
partly replaced, by the culture of the conquering civilization.
Those who joined
Holroyd, and English reformers in general, were some of the most brilliant
literary figures of the day -- notable among them Mohammad Hussain Azad and
Altaf Hussain Hali (1837-1914). Frances
Pritchett tells us how Azad and Hali discredited the themes, values and ideas
of the old literature of Urdu (and by implication Persian) and recommended new,
essentially Victorian, models (Pritchett 1994).
Mohammad Hussain Azad
in his Aab-e-Hayat (1880), an epoch
making history of Urdu literature, regrets that Urdu should be so full of
exaggerations and empty rhetoric. Like
Hali he too finds the description of the beloved unnatural and reprehensible
and implies that Urdu literature should change its linguistic basis. As a model Azad proposes English which, he
claims, can express ideas and themes which the less developed Urdu cannot do so
(Azad 1880: 57).
Hali too proposes
change. His model too is the `natural'
language and literature of England.
Indeed, he mentions many English poets as models to be emulated. In his Muqaddama-e-Sher-
o-Shairi (1893), which Pritchett calls `by far the most influential work of
Urdu literary criticism ever written' (1994: 43). Hali finds faults with the poetic diction; poetic technique;
themes and, above all, the eroticism of the old poetry. Such is his puritanism that he does not only
content himself with condemning the description of boyish beauty but goes on to
proscribe such descriptions of feminine beauty too (on the grounds that if she
is a wedded wife it is mere shamelessness to advertise her charms and, if she
is not, one is revealing one's own vices) (Hali 1893: 112-113; full treatment
in Pritchett 1994: 179-182).
So contemptuous of
traditional literature was Hali that he went so far as to deliver himself of
the following vitriolic diatribe against it in his Musaddas (1879):
afoomat men sandas se jo hai badtar
Zameen jis se hai zilzale men barabar
Malik jis se sharmate hain asman par
hua ilm o deen jis se taraj sara
Vo ilmon men ilm o adab hae hamara
(My
transliteration of the original Urdu)
(That obscene
collection of poems and panegyrics,
which is more
noisome than a dunghill,
which shocks the
denizens of the earth,
of which the
angels in heaven are ashamed,
which has ruined
both learning and religion –
that is the sort
of literature we have).
(Translation from Urdu in Sadiq 1964: 44).
Moreover, Azad
and Hali were not alone in their contempt for the old literature. Sir Sayyid, another notable reformer, in his
letter of 10 June 1879 to Hali acknowledging the receipt of his musaddas (excerpt out of which
lampooning the old literature is given above) agrees with his scathing
condemnation of the old poetry. He goes on to praise Hali's musaddas as follows: `It is surprising
that themes have been expressed without exaggeration, lies, far-fetched
similies which are the pride of our poets and poetry' (Khan 1879 -- my
translation from Urdu)3.
Another famous contemporary, Nazeer Ahmad, is said to have based his
famous novel Taubat un Nusuh (1873)
on a puritanical English model, possibly written by Daniel Defoe's (1660-1731),
(Siddiqui, I 1971: 348)4.
The protagonist, Nusuh, becomes a reformer and rails against obscene
literature. In a climactic scene he
enters his son Kaleem's room and burns his books in the courtyard.
Among the books
which are destroyed are : Fasana-e-Ajaib,
Qissa Gul Bakaoli, Araish-i-Mehfil, Masnavi Meer Hasan, Bahar-i-
Danish and several volumes of Urdu ghazal (Ahmad 1873: 152). As Pritchett puts it: `The rejection of the
old poetry (and prose) was thus enacted in a literal form as well, as a gesture
of violent, deliberate physical destruction' (Pritchett 1994: 186).
In the same novel
another character, a schoolboy called Aleem, tells his father, Nusuh, that he
was once asked by a priest to read Bahar-i-Danish:
That day's ill starred lesson was so indecent and frivolous that reading it aloud in that crowd of people was difficult for me (Ahmad 1873: 83).
Even the Gulistan, that archetypal text, was not
fit for ladies. Nusuh blackens out one
fourth of it when he teaches it to his wife (Ahmad 1873: 156). Another reformer, Mumtaz Ali (1860- 1935),
is known for his pioneering role in Urdu journalism for women. He founded the weekly newspaper Tahzib Un-Niswan in 1898 in Lahore in
partnership with his wife Muhammadi Begum (for details see Minault 1998:
73-95). But Mumtaz Ali too wonders
whether Mir Amman's Bagh-o-Bahar,
appropriate though its simple Urdu style may be for learners, is `appropriate
for either boys or girls'. However,
Mumtaz Ali does allow Mir Amman despite his misgivings though he would draw the
line at Bahar-i-Danish and most of
the modern romantic novels (Minault 1998: 83). Syed Husain Bilgrami, a famous
personality from the princely state of Hyderabad Deccan, attacked Urdu
literature as `course, pernicious, and unclean' -- references no doubt to the
amorous and erotic aspects of this literature -- and suggested that it was a product
of aristocratic (nawabi) culture
(Bilgrami 1900). Indeed, so apologetic
was the attitude of the upholders of the new literature that, like the British,
they are either silent about the erotic aspects of the classics or dismiss them
as trash.
Apart from the
reformers, the ulema too had their
agenda of reform the focal point of which was the Islamization of South Asian
Muslims who, in their eyes, followed tradition more than Islam (as interpreted
by them). Thus, one of the foremost of
them,Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi, wrote his Bihishti
Zevar (for translation see Metcalf 1990) to Islamize women (and men
too). The Maulana excludes all the
traditional textbooks of Persian and Arabic in vogue substituting in their
place didactic works such as the Urdu translation of Shah Refiuddin's Qiyamat Nama (The Last Judgment). As Gail Minault points out, novels and
romantic tales are the special objects of the Maulana's wrath. Among the
`approximately thirty harmful books are, predictably, a number of novels and romantic
tales, including the Dastan-i-Amir Hamza
(Tale of Amir Hamza), Alf Laila ....,
book of poetry (none are specified: it seems to be a blanket condemnation)' and
so on (Minault 1998: 71-72). The only
novel which the Maulana does allow is Nizir Ahmad's Taubat un Nusuh which, as we have seen, condemns the very
literature the Maulana finds so offensive.
Inexplicably, the
Makamat of al-Hariri was not thrown
out from the madrassas (the very
place which educated the maulanas) though not all the makamat were taught.
However, it is somewhat surprising and ironical that the students of madrassas still read a book in which the
principal character (Abu Zaid) enjoys himself as follows:
With charming cup-bearers
and brilliant lights around him,
And myrtle and
jasmine, and the pipe and the lute,
At one time
calling for the contents of the wine-bins,
And then inviting
the notes of the stringed instruments;
At one time
inhaling the fragrant odours,
And at another
caressing the graceful attendants
(Preston 1850: 190).
Moreover, Abu Zaid
eventually wins the admiration of the narrator despite his way of life. However, apart from a few exceptions like
al-Hariri, the eroticism of medieval literature was in everybody's bad books.
The stage was now
set for the exit of traditional language and literary texts. The British did not have to ban them.
Indeed, Thomas Arnold, a very enlightened man, reported that not all Persian
books but only those which were `grossly indecent' were banned (in Richey 1922:
302). But the British puritanical definition of indecency was not contested any
longer. If anything, Indians became even more prudish than the British. These new attitudes, reinforced by the
paradigmatic model of Victorian English literature, can therefore be seen as
being indirectly created by the colonial order. However, the new values were
internalised quickly and, blessed as they were by the ulema who had always opposed erotic, amorous and even aesthetic
products of the imagination, they came to be accepted more as part of Islamist
reformism rather than a concession to the dominance of Victorian morality.
Conclusion
The change in
world view changed the pattern of the distribution of power. Power now came to
be located in the British, the controllers of the apparatus of the modern
colonial state. To a lesser extent it
was controlled and exercised by those Indians who were employed by the colonial
state. All that was old-fashioned was
dismissed as being irrelevant at best and foolish at worst. Criteria of learning (knowledge of Persian,
Urdu and Arabic poetry); sartorial propriety (turbans, frock coats etc); dining
(sitting on one's haunches and eating with fingers); architecture (living in
segregated, walled houses with courtyards) -- indeed of life as a whole --
changed. The dominant criteria now were
Western and one was civilized and respectable to the extent one adhered to
them. Sexual prudery was an important,
possibly the most important, component of Victorian respectability. It now
became an equally important component of Indian Muslim literature. This change occurred because of modernity;
was influenced by the British colonial administration despite the Widespread belief
among Muslims that their societal norma were `modest' while those of the
British were promiscuous and `shameless'.
The new paradigm, that of modernity, is still dominant however much it
may be in dispute. Indeed, the resistance to it appears so strong because it
has been so powerful -- Huntington's `clash of civilizations' is nothing
new. It was with us when the British
won the battle of Plassey in 1757 and it is still with us.
But there are no
easy ways out. Anyone who looks at the
puritanism of contemporary Pakistani literature may be tempted to go back to
the Rabelaisian humour and erotic abandon of the Bahar-i-Danish and the Gulistan.
But if such a person is at all sensitive to the rights of women he or she would
be appalled by the male chauvinist, indeed misogynist, assumptions of these
works. The truth is that we are the
products of modernity, even those who react against it either as
post-modernists or as religious revivalists, and as such we can no more hope to
slip back into an unproblematic past than we can to travel through time.
Notes
1. While describing the congregation of women on the death of
his wife one narrator tells us that the women would bare their vagina and
buttocks. The words he uses are never
used in respectable writing nowadays (vagina = kus and buttocks = koon)
See (Akhtar 1992: 198).
2. An example from the Anwar-i-Suhaili illustrates this. The example is:
How shall I
describe her hips and waist?
How has seen a
mountain (kuh) suspended by a straw (kah)?
Here the play on words (kuh and kah) are used to describe feminine beauty.
3. The Musaddas of
Hali, along with the revivalist verse of Mohammad Iqbal were later used to
support Pakistani nationalism, based as it is on Islam and Western
nationalistic ideas, in Pakistan later.
Its inclusion in school curricula is recommended by a government report
of 1966 (CSPW 1966: 28). 4. I have
been unable to find the purported original by Defoe mentioned by Siddiqui.
However, Defoe is puritanical and may well have served as a model for
the moral tone of Nazeer Ahmad's work.
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