International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ Volume 01 Issue 08 September 2015

Muslim Identity in Indian Anglophone Fictions Mukul sk M A, Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-202002, Uttar Pradesh, India [email protected] Abstract Since the independence of India, the Key words: minority, Muslim, secularism, minority identity, specifically the Muslim secular matrix, minorotarian position, identity, turns into a matter of great Anglophone writers question, which is further threatened by the religio-political upheavals of various IN 1947 India emerged as a secular ideology; and Muslim issues has frequently state out of the pluralist idea of religion and been staged as a serious subject by many syncretic aspect of cultural practice; and the Anglophone writers. My study delineates the Nehruvian ideology of secularism and minority identity (by minority I especially Gandhiji’s policy of religious tolerance led mean the ‘Muslim’) in secular Indian to the path of the Indian secularism. The canon in English. The canon comprises a Indian nation-state promised to provide number of contemporary Indian novels that equal treatment to each individual citizen, involve in representing the nation or the irrespective of religion, language or culture. national concern in the mode of secularism. But the way India goes today by the name of This paper examines different aspects of secularism is different from the way Nehru Muslim identity in relation to secularism and Gandhiji wanted India to be. The within the secular framework of the Indian Muslim began to exist in India as a minority English fictions. The different aspects group after the Partition, and they constantly include the question of secularism, issues of and increasingly felt threatened of their Muslim identity, and the historical certainty. Each different ideology and social relationship of the Muslim to the nation. organization now wants the nation to be Finally I put focus on the relationship directed by the radar of their own ideology, between secular matrix and minoritarian subordinating the fundamental component of position, as two contemporary concepts in secularism to their own worldview, refuting the canon of Indian English fictions. the ethnic groups’ traditions to subsume into the mainstream of Indian subcontinent. The So my study aims to present a broad novels I have chosen are of different overview of the two above-mentioned varieties: The Shadow Lines(1988) by subjects and contextualize the novels in Amitav Ghosh, Midnight’s Children(1981) relation to some of Muslim issues, in that the by Salman Rushdie, A Suitable Boy(1993) Indian secularism was found to be very little by Vikram Seth. All the three novels are successful to sustain a fair-free existence of involved in presenting the national concern, the minority after independence

Available online: http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ P a g e | 489 International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ Volume 01 Issue 08 September 2015 and premised on the pluralist idea of religion Midnight’s Children exploits a and nation, and they each present a number conflict between the radical secularism and of perspectives on Indian nationhood and the Muslim position, and forges what Homi religion. However, the gap they each show K Bhaba calls the ‘double temporality’. On between the secularism and the minority the one hand the Muslim nurtures an identity position and the way they attempt to build based on their historical attachment to the bridge between the two matrix differs quite nation, which is ensured the Indian radically. Midnight’ Children (1981) is an constitution-oriented secularism. On the amalgam of history, magic realism, an other hand, they have identity shaped by account of political disturbances during and their religious positions. Aadam Aziz, the after the Partition, and through the grandfather of the protagonist Selim, is a heteroglossic realm, dramatizes a secularism Kashmiri Muslim and is well conscious of based on a minoritarian perspective, and the political turmoil in pre-independent draws a discrepancy between the Indian India. After getting married he moves to secularism and the religious worldview. Agra, and works for the nationalist Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’(1993) stages the movement. Naseem aziz, his wife, feels conflicting religious worldviews of Hindu- disappointed and a fear of some unexpected Muslim communities and voices a consequences for her husband’s involvement secularism derived from a majoritarian in the freedom movement, and wants her perspective. Ghosh’s the Shadow Lines husband to live just under the fold of the (1988) is premised on the historical events Muslim identity. Aziz, a secular Muslim, of riots, Partition, and like A Suitable Boy however, does not avoid his citizen duty by articulates a majotarian secularism. All the entering into a ‘sectarian’ mode of three novels propound a secularism from religiosity. Aziz’s disagreement with his their own perspective and stage conflicting wife can be seen as a conflict between the worldviews of different religions in relation secularism and religious worldview. Aziz to secularism, and finally establish a need to could not bring his wife to his sideline, and, recuperate a rational secularism in the Indian in regret, refused to take any food. “The war subcontinent. As works like, Bapsi Sidhwa’s of starvation which began that day very Ice-Candy Man (1998), Chaman Nahal’ clearly became a duel to the death. True to azadi(2001), Manohar Malgonkar’s a Bend her word, Reverend Mother did not hand her in the Ganges(1965), Kushwant Sing’s a husband, at mealtimes, so much as an empty Train to Pakistan(1956), have also a plate. Doctor Aziz took immediate reprisals, historical background of communal riots, by refusing to feed himself when he was out. transformations of the community life, and Day by day the five children watched their they each attempt to put forward the fact that father disappearing, while their mother the Indian secularism must preserve the grimly guarded the dishes of food”(Rushdie unities of all ethnic relations 1981: 43). The India of Aziz is a whole tree,

Available online: http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ P a g e | 490 International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ Volume 01 Issue 08 September 2015 in that each fruit of the tree are to be labeled Muslim perspective, and call the ‘Free Islam with the same identity. Aziz wants himself Convocation’ to begin a Muslim secular to be identified by his motherland’s identity: movement. Mian Abdullah’s movement “I started off as a Kashmiri and not much of wants to form an India with Muslim fervor a Muslim. Then I got a bruise on the chest and Aziz, sidelining with him, claims that that turned me into an Indian” (Rushdie Abdullah is fighting his fight. 1981: 40). Aziz even thinks that others also should come up to form a secular modern However, Aziz should not to be India and bids his wife to think of being taken as a Muslim devoid of any national modern Indian. ‘Forget about being a good feeling. His disagreement with his wife, his Kashmiri girl. Start thinking about being a involvement in the freedom movement, his modern Indian woman’ (Rushdie 1981: 34). attempt to form a secular India lead to the His devotion to the nation makes him come fact that he wants to live under the broad out of his home and join the Ghandhi-led umbrella of Indian secularism. He protest by helping the wounded mobs. A effectively mediates between the religious large number of people gathered in Amritsar and national identity. for an anti-British protest. The mobs were Ghosh’s the Shadow Lines shot scattered by the British military force. resonates with typical national concerns and The Ghandhi-led ‘grand design’ got revolves around the historical context of ‘distorted’ (MC 340: “the shops have shut; India-Pakistan war, Hindu-Muslim riots, the railway station is closed; but now the religion-based nation Partition. There were rioting mobs are breaking them up. Doctor some other novels also in Indian English Aziz, leather bag in hand, is out in the canon that have background of the historical streets, giving help whether possible. Partition. Such as, Balchandra Rajan’s The Trampled bodies have been left where they Dark Dancer (1970), Chaman Nahal’s fell. He is bandaging wounds, daubing them Azadi( 2001), Kushwant Sing’s A Train to liberally with Mercurochrome, which makes Pakistan (1956). The Shadow Lines, them bloodier than ever…” (Rushdie 1981: however, is especially remarkable because 34-35). His extension of secular hand in this novel diverse versions of identity towards the wounded people makes the __linguistic, religious, regional__ come to novel a great endorsement of secular matrix. be sharply focused in this novel. Gosh’s Aziz, however, does not wear a novel revolves around the story of three secular identity by replacing his Muslim generations in Dhaka, Calcutta, and London, identity, rather sees India from a Muslim keeping Tridib, a cousin of the narrator’s secular perspective. He wants India to have father at the centre in the novel. He is the a Muslim secularism. Mian Abdullah, one who experiences the terrible picture of contemptuous of ‘the Muslim League’, the communal riots and becomes a victim of promotes the idea of secular India from a the danger. The story begins in the pre-

Available online: http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ P a g e | 491 International Journal of Research p-ISSN: 2348-6848 e-ISSN: 2348-795X Available at http://internationaljournalofresearch.org/ Volume 01 Issue 08 September 2015 independent India and ends just after the The narrator, who is of a secular disposition Partition. Though little space is given in this and has friends of all religions, gets novel to the presentation of the Muslim pressured with the religious identity and is subject, the Muslim issues are implicitly felt compelled to lie in order to maintain his focalized in the context the novel is set. The religious position. This leads to the fact that novel is secular in the sense that Ghosh’s the secularism is not always ease in final attempt in this novel is to show the intermixing with the religious identity, as is harmony and integrity in the diverse implicit in Midnight’s Children, too, religious and cultural ethnicity. However, wherein the secular idea of Aziz could not the novel come to be structured from the adjust to the conservative religious matrix of perspective of a majotarian secularism, as his wife. the anonymous narrator belongs to a Hindu community. The India of the shadow lines is The events of partition give rise to one with Hindu fervor, as is implicit in the severe hatred between the two communities. boy’s talking about their classmate Montu in Ghosh, however, shows that it is not terms of his ‘Muslimness’. They interrogate possible to divide the emotional bonds that the narrator for his friendship with Montu, exists between the two communities for and the narrator, sidelining by his own generations as is illustrated through the religion, denies his friend. Their incident of Hazratbal crisis. Ghosh presents conversation goes as follows: a tight bond between Hindu, Muslim and other ethnics when he writes: Then Tablu said loudly: we’ll know at Gole Park This mosque became a great centre of pilgrimage and every year multitudes of Why? Someone asked. people,

Because that’s where Montu gets on Kashmiris of every kind, Muslims, the bus. He said. Hindus, Sikhs and Budhists, would flock to Hazratbal He’ll know; he’s Muslim on those occasions when the relic is They turned to me and smiled. Of displayed to the public. This is well arrested, course, he said, Montu’s a friend of yours, isn’t even he? by those European observers whose I remember how my throat went dry as Christian sense of the necessity of a quarantine I tried to think of an answer between doctrines was outraged by Not since we moved away, I lied. I the sight of those ecumenical pilgrims (Ghosh haven’t met Montu for months (Ghosh 1988: 1988: 225) 200)

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Ghosh presents the Hazratbal Shrine In representing the bonds in which the relic (a hair allegedly belonged between Hindu and Muslim communities, he to the prophet Mohammed) is kept as an follows the line of Nehru’s secularism, who incarnation of interreligious harmony, where in the Discovery of India argues that people from all religious communities visit religious differences are subordinate to the to revere the relic. The emotional and the linguistic, regional, and cultural bonds. This moral respect for other religion’s relic are at is implicit in some events of Ghosh’s novel the peak when people of all religions get wherein we can see the initiatives taken by outraged by the theft of the holy relic, and the university communities of Dhaka and gather together for protest against it: Calcutta ‘in doing relief work and organizing peace marches’ ( Ghosh ) during There were huge demonstrations in the riots of 1964 in the whole Bengal. The Shrinagar in which Muslim, Sikhs, and author writes: “There were innumberable Hindus alike took part. There were cases of Muslim in east Pakistan giving a number of public meetings too, which shelter to Hindus, at the cost of their own lives, and equally, in India, of Hindus were attended and addressed by sheltering Muslim” (Ghosh 1988:29-30) members of all the major religious communities.

There were some incidents of ‘A Suitable Boy’ also traces the rioting and a curfew was quickly declared by the historical account of Partiton, issues of muslim communities, and their being authorities. But the target of the transformed into a minority after Partition. rioters( and with what disbelief we read of this The novel dreams of a secular nation which today) shares feature of Nehruvian secularism. The were not people --- neither Hindus, India of a suitable boy is, however, a nor Muslim, nor Sikhs---- but property identified majotarian secularism in the sense that the omniscient third person narrator is from the with the government and the Hindu communities, and there is a great police(Ghosh 1988:225). debate articulated in this novel to relegate Even the Muslim politicians, too, are not the minority communities, especially, the willing to give the protest a communal Muslim communities, to a second class colour. Maulana Masoodi, Kashmiri citizen. The major point on which a Suitable politician, is one among them who led the Boy differs from the Midnight’s Children is demonstration against the loss of the relic that the India of a suitable boy is one shaped with a pure secular mind. The author by a majotarian secularism and India shaped describes him as an ‘authentic hero’(TSL in midnight’s children is from a minoratian 225). As “it is certain that Masoodi bravely secular perspective. The only voice that oppose those who sought to lay blame for speaks for the Muslim is Begum Abida. the theft on Hindus” (Prasad 2008: 51) Begum Abida, a MP in the Legislative

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Assembly in Brahmpur, is a representative culture, namely the elite Muslim culture of the Muslim community, and voices a of north India has one of its (fictional) centres Muslim secularism. She defends the in Brahmpur…… a strong nostalgia is Zamidari system in Purva Pradesh, which perceptible in the way Seth portrays Nawabi the ruling Congress Party wanted to abolish culture; through a land reform bill. Abida tries to point out that this state is a centre of Muslim a melancholy springing from a culture, and the abolition of zamindari necessary changes a country must undergo on its system means the abolition of Muslim way to culture, their social system as well as their modernization. (Srivastava 2007: 52) identity. “It is we Zamindars who have made this province what it is__ who made it strong, who gave it its special flavor” ( Seth On the family level too, Seth 1993: 307). In this relation Neelam explores an uneasy relation between the Srivastava wrote: Hindu and the Muslim through the saga of The land reform act exemplify the four families, as is explicit in the how Muslims, in order become Indian unsuccessful union of Lata and Kabir. Lata, the main heroine of the novel, is a Hindu girl Citizens fully, had to forgo a of 19, whose mother is looking for a suitable vital of what constituted their past, their boy for her. Lata is, however, in love with Culture, in short their identity. In Kabir, a Muslim whom mrs Mehra never other words a Muslim could not be Muslim approves. The moment mrs Mehra finds her daughter infatuating with kabir, an Outright if he was to be conceived unsuitable boy in her eye, she sends her off of as modern Indian ( Srivastava 2007: 51) to Calcutta. The novel on the family level Nehru’s secular nationalism comes ends with the marriage of Lata with Mahesh, up with the future for the Indian Muslims a boy from the same religious ethnic. This that the MuslimS have to give up their past indicates that the Indian society does not culture and be absorbed into the mainstream rebel in inter-social mixing as far as the of Indian culture: religion is concerned. The Muslim community in the novel appears as an unfit The implementation of the Zamindary existence in a majority-oriented society both Abolition Act in Purva Pradesh becomes an at the family level as well as the political event level. As far as the secularism is concerned which shows how the minority identity here we are uncertain about how much the is reabsorbed in the state….the act primarily secularism is successful to bring the two communities together under its fold. affected the land-holding, therefore the entire way of life, of the Muslim elite. Nawabi

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All the three novels project a [5] Seth, Vikram. A Suitable Boy. New dilemma confronting the secularism and the Delhi: Penguin, 1993 Muslim identity, and finally establish the [6] Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s need that the Indian secularism is to be Children. New Delhi: Penguin, 2000 salvaged without relegating the religious [7] Srivastava, Neelam. Secularism in ethnics. However, there is a strong call postcolonial Indian novel: national and among the Indian elitists and intellectuals to cosmopolitan narratives in English. New bring back India a fair secular where each Delhi: Routledge, 2007 ethical or religious group live their own life [8] Prasad, Murari. Vikram Seth’s a with same ease as of others; at the same time Suitable Boy: an Anthology of Recent they will not feel hesitation, rather feel Criticism. Delhi: Pencraft International, proud to say that they are Indian with a 2005 ethnic sub-identity. [9] Shah, Nila. Novel as Nistory. Delhi: Creative Books, 2003 [10] Malgonkar, Manohar. A Bend in the References Ganges: a Novel. New York; Viking Press, 1965 [1] Ghosh, Amitav. The Shadow Lines. [11] Sing, Kushwant. A Train to Pakistan. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998 New York: Grove Press, 1956 [2] Prasad, Murari. Amitav Ghosh’s the [12] Sidhwa, Bapsi. Ice-Candy man. Shadow Lines: a Critical Companion. New London: Heinemann, 1988 Delhi: Pencraft International, 2008 [13] Rajan, Balchandra. The Dark [3] Hawley, C John. Contemporary Dancer. Greenwood Press, 1970 Indian Writers in English: Amitav Ghosh. [14] Nahal, chamal. Azadi. Delhi: New Delhi: foundation books, 2005 Penguin, 2001 [4] Nehru, Jawaharlal. The Discovery of India. Calcutta: Signet, 19945

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