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Literary Review
Memories of a lost home
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Exclusive extracts from ALOK BHALLA's interview with INTIZAR HUSAIN, from A Chronicle of the Peacocks, published recently.
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Since a majority of your stories and novels (particularly Basti) describe in great detail a culture and a life-world that migrants to Pakistan left behind in India, I am interested in your memories of life in your father's basti...
What makes your stories even more fascinating, however, is that they function at yet another level. They seek to imaginatively recreate the shape of the entire civilisational history of the subcontinent by finding analogies for your personal memories and for the historical events of the region in the foundational stories of the Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. For example, the stories of exile acquire a strange resonance as they weave into their texture accounts of the hijrat of Hassan and Hussain and the wanderings of Hindu sages and Buddhist monks...
YES, the opening section of Basti contains a description of an ideal community... drawn from my memories of the peculiar geographical location of our house in Dibai. Our house was located near the boundary separating the Muslim locality from the Hindu. In fact, the houses of the Hindus surrounded our house. As is often the case in small bastis, our terrace merged with the terraces of other houses inhabited by Hindus. I could always walk across from the terrace of our house to those of our Hindu neighbours. During Diwali, for instance, it was difficult to tell if the diyas were lit on the parapet of our house or on that of our Hindu neighbours...
My father began my education by teaching me Arabic. He said that I didn't need to study Urdu. So, my education started with my being made to read the Koran.
In my father's library there were lots of books on Islamic culture, in addition to books published by the Arya Samaj. I read everything I could find. I don't know how I learnt to read Urdu.
In Basti, you emphasise the fact that as a child, apart from Islamic stories, you also grew up listening to stories from Hindu mythology.
Yes, the atmosphere was such that as a child I grew up listening to all kinds of stories. Don't forget that our neighbours were Hindus. Like everyone else, they too used to sit outside their homes or shops and tell stories.
Were there any tensions between your Hindu and Muslim neighbours?
As I have said, the houses of the Hindus surrounded our house. Our nearest Muslim neighbour was three houses down the lane. I suppose, if there had been riots, we would have been in great danger. But I can't recall any instance of tension between the Hindu and the Muslim neighbours. I do, however, remember that there was often tension between the Shias and the Sunnis, but, never between the Hindus and the Muslims. No, there was never any tension between the Hindus and the Muslims. It is strange to think about all that now...
Since I was educated in a Hindu school, all my friends were Hindus.
There was one teacher whom I used to admire. He was our Hindi teacher. His Hindi was very sanskritised — he was educated, I think, in Mathura. He was a good debater. I was interested in public speaking in those days. He also taught History... His name was Vijendraji...
What kind of History did Vijendraji teach? Was it anti-Muslim?
No, not at all. There was no bias. In fact, I can say that the texts were not influenced by any specific Hindu ideology. Nor did our teachers give it a Hindu slant. Our History teacher, as I have told you, was an orthodox man, but I can't remember any instance when he said something that could be construed as anti-Muslim. Not even when he spoke about Aurangzeb. In fact, I would say that he was a very good teacher...
* * *
As the question of identity became more insistent, more urgent, I decided to move further back in time, further from the immediate concerns with life before and after 1947. I asked myself: Where and how did our journey as Muslims begin in the Indian subcontinent? If the Muslims had a long historical and cultural role to play in India, why do we want to disown it? If Amir Khusrau or Ghalib lived in Delhi, shouldn't I acknowledge Delhi and all its past as a part of my identity? Why should I try to forget it? ...
Having arrived thus far in my quest for an identity, I found that I had to go back to an even more distant past...
My interest in exploring the relationship of Islam to India's past led me to read the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Vedas, and the entire tradition of storytelling in India. I read the Panchatantra, Katha Sarit Sagar, Baital Pacchisee. I read these not only as a writer of fiction interested in the craft of ancient storytellers, but also as a person interested in the Hind-Islamic culture. I wondered how I could own this tradition, how I could make it a part of my inner being...
The more I studied that past, the more involved I became in it, not only as an explorer of culture, but also as a storyteller...
What is your understanding of a Hind-Islamic identity?
As a storyteller I am not bothered about my identity as a member of a particular religious or political community. When I sit down to write a story, I only think as a writer of afsanas or stories. All other matters are left behind...
I think that a religious person, a genuinely religious person, is also a very tolerant person...
Sufis, for example, are very religious. It would, however, be difficult to find more tolerant people than Nizamuddin Aulia or Moinuddin Chishti, Kabir or Mirabai. They were steeped in religious experience, yet were never confined by the boundaries of Islam or Hinduism.
One of the myths that we grew up with was that Mirabai and Kabir were great friends. The point of the story, I think, is that the good and the saintly learn from and support each other...
According to you, the migrations and the violence of 1947 can acquire a meaning of some sort if it is placed within the framework of the foundational stories of the Hindus and the Muslims?
Yes... Similarly, one should try to find, in our time and our history, a meaning and a purpose in the violence inflicted upon and the pain endured by our contemporaries. I think that as a writer it is my duty to find that meaning.
A Chronicle of the Peacocks: Stories of Partition, Exile and Lost Memories, Intizar Husain, translated from Urdu by Alok Bhalla and Vishwamitter Adil, OUP, p.256, Rs. 395.
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