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Representation of Azad Khayal Ashrafia in Nineteenth Century Urdu Prose

GULL-I-HINA ASLAM Reg. 21-PHD-His-2008

Department of History Government College University Lahore

Representation of Azad Khayal Ashrafia in Nineteenth Century Urdu Prose

Submitted to Government College University Lahore In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the award of degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY IN HISTORY

BY GULL-I-HINA ASLAM Reg. No. 21-PhD-HIS-2008

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY GOVERNMENT COLLEGE UNIVERSITY, LAHORE III

DECLARATION

I, Gull-i-Hina, Roll No. 21-PHD-HIS-2008, student of PhD in the subject of History session 2008-2011 hereby declared that the matter printed in the thesis entitled “Representation of Azad khayal

Ashrafia in Nineteenth Century Urdu Prose” is my own work and has not been printed, published and submitted as research work, thesis or publication in any form in any University, Research

Institution etc. in Pakistan or abroad.

Signature of Deponent

Dated: IV

RESEARCH COMPLETION CERTIFICATE

Certified that research work contained in the thesis entitled

Representation of Azad khayal Ashrafia in Nineteenth Century Urdu

Prose” has been carried out and completed by Gull-i-Hina

Registration No. 21-PHD-HIS-2008 under my supervision during her

PhD (History) GC University Lahore.

Dated:

Supervisor

Name of Supervisor

Submitted Thorough

Chairperson Department of History

GC University Lahore

Controller of Examination GC University Lahore V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful Alhamdulillah, all praises to Allah for the strengths and His blessings in completing this thesis.

To my most respected teachers whose wisdom, devotion, commitment and extraordinary attention served a beacon of light for upgrading my knowledge. My heartiest thanks go to my valued supervisor, Dr. Tahir Kamran and Dr. Tahir Mehmud who guided me in the most professional way and imparted the finer points of the modern day knowledge. I am also very thankful to Professor (Emeritus) Dr. Khawaja Muhammad Zakriya , Director, Department of History of Literature in Punjab University, who helped me to identify the areas of my research work for broader insight. Dr. Tahir Jamil without him, it is impossible to complete this task. To all those who contributed in this work even in a small but expedient manner, I extend my profound thanks, especially to my parents whose prayers, love and care gave me enough strength and courage to accomplish this challenging task. I must acknowledge the support of my beloved husband, Amir Raza Khan who with the aid of his vast journalistic experience facilitated me in a great way not only in my research but also in our matrimonial affairs. My special thanks are to my little loving daughter, Amna who sacrificed in a big way by never crying to see a laptop in my lap, her favorite place to get closer to me. My gratitude to all my family members who provided me congenial environment in which I worked really hard on this project with ease and comfort and without meeting any inconvenience.

Last but not least, I‘m highly grateful to all my well-wishers who did help me before the surface and beyond the scene for the successful execution of my research. VI

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to the greatest benefactor of humanity; the Holy Prophet (PBUH) who promoted Islam despite barriers, intense hardships and flourished the light of knowledge and peace everywhere in the world.

He dies not who devotes his life to learning. (Narrated by the Holy Prophet; May peace be upon him.) VII

ABSTRACT

Literature has become a credible source for writing History by which we can explore the past, and in the light of that we can analyze our present, which helps us to have proper perspective for the future. Literature provides us with a prism through which the changes accruing to the value can be identified. Literature is indeed a tool of hastening the process of history. Such monumental events like reformation and renaissance in Europe could be made possible through the endeavors of laureates. Besides, history and literature are complimentary to each other in particular respect to the social history. To trace the social history of the populations, prose writin gs provide the basic information related to contemporary issues, culture of ruling elite and the extent of their relationship with the masses. Thus, nineteenth century Urdu literature verily was an instrument for the renaissance among the Ashrafia (Muslim aristocratic) class. Urdu prose writers pushed their pens, depicting the state of Muslim elite which was the central theme of the literary activities in Delhi and Lucknow. In Urdu prose Deputy Nazir Ahmed was the harbinger of that particular trend. He brought into his literary focus the culture, language and lifestyle of the Delhi Ashraf in his writings and set out to explore the merits and demerits in their weltanschauung. Lukhnow was the other centre where Urdu literature flourished in the nineteenth cent ury and Rattan Nath Sarshar was the key laureate. Both, Nazir Ahmed and Sarshar gave a good account of the Ashraf which was being influenced by the western lifestyle and also clinging onto the tradition. Both the authors have demonstrated quite adroitly the complex state that Ashrafia had been caught up with. Hence their works and the central themes that they had engaged with, forms the central focus of this study. VIII

CONTENTS

Introduction 1-27

Chapter No. 1 28-71

Genealogy of the term „Ashrafia‟ in linguistic and literary registers,

Chapter No. 2 72-98

The epistemic conquest of India: nineteenth-century

British constitutional and educational reforms

Chapter No. 3 99-126

Conflicted modernity: debate over the first Indian novel in Urdu Novel

Chapter No. 4 127-163

Imaging Muslims: class and gender in Nazir Ahmed’s novels

Chapter No. 5 164-203

Inventing Individual Freedom: Lucknow Ashrafia in the Novels of Ratan Nath

Sarshar

Conclusion 204-217

Bibliography 218-253 1 Introduction

This study investigates the role of Indian Ashrafia in the reconstruction of Muslim identity in the context of transition from Mughal rule to the British rule in the sub-continent during nineteenth-century. No attempt has been made in the existing literature as in this study to systematically investigate this theme through all the available prose literature produced in relation to Delhi and Lucknow schools of thought. The case study of Muslim Ashrafia sheds important light on the broader picture and is helpful to delineate Indian life style overall. Muslims‘ response towards new cultural conflict was mixed and marked by confusion as they found it hard to have readjustment to the new situation. Therefore, in the present study it has been attempted to deploy the cultural and class expression used by Muslim Ashrafia in contrast to the modernity, introduced by the British in the form of modern education and cultural reconstruction of India. Nevertheless, the response of Muslim Ashrafia to modernity was mixed and can be drawn on a spectrum ranging from modernity to conservatism.

In order to substantiate the primary contention of the research Urdu prose is adopted for anecdotal convenience. It is the most documented genre of the time and has been duly used in the research to support the leading argument. It can be ascribed as the best representation of the Muslim Ashrafia which was undergoing a cultural transformation. Their intellectual engagement with the modernity brings out a best dialectic where they are hesitant but at the same time prone to accept the socio-political and economic reality of the period.

Edward Said (1935-2003) writes about the way in which societies were studied by colonizing Europeans. He defines the meaning of Orientalism as "a western style of dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient." He further states, "A body of knowledge (has been) produced by text and institutional practices of the West." However, he indicates that because of ‗Orientalism‘ the Oriental was not a free subject of thought or action. He claims that all scholarship was based on imperialism and for the sake of the West.1 Regarding the press and media coverage of the Oriental world, he observed astutely

1 - Edward Said, Orientalism, Western Conceptions of the East, (Delhi : Penguin Book, 1978), the ideology and thinking derived from the Introduction of the book 2 that it was not a matter of freedom of expression but how the West used information and created profiles of subjugated peoples. This is the main idea on which this study is based on that how the concept of an apologetic modernity was the main agenda of the nineteenth- century liberal Ashrafia promoted by Urdu literature and how it espoused the agenda of the British or colonial modernity.

During nineteenth-century, it was the press and contemporary print media that expended the success of how Ashrafia thinkers were trying to reconstruct or reshape Islamic thought in interaction with modern challenges. The media helped motivate the Ashrafia for social and political movements which were favouring western imperialism, materialism and modernism. All these circumstances paved the way for contemporary writers to debate these ideas in vernacular languages and Urdu was the best choice for the authors at the time to reach a wider audience. The scientific and technological advances that colonialism introduced changed the landscape. The invention of printing press made possible the easy publication of books, journals, magazines, and newspapers which enlarged the scope of literature and ultimately cleared the way for the popularity of novel and short stories among the reading masses. It also made them open to being controlled and influenced. Nineteenth-century Urdu literature represents the decline of the Mughal Empire and the transitional phase among the Ashrafia of large urban centres like Delhi and Lucknow.

The tragedy of 1857 has not been documented adequately from the Indian perspective and even Syed Ahmed‘s pamphlet Asbab -e Baghawat-e Hind is more by way of an apology written and sent to English public servants by a loyalist. It was perhaps left to factionalists to document the grave social and cultural repercussions of 1857 and we have examined through the didactic fiction produced at the time how it reflected these concerns. The fiction represents the interests of the Ashrafia class, the upper class of courtiers, military men, nobles in the administration and landowners who were left with no means of livelihood. The main argument of the study is the evolving concept of Ashrafia originally related to caste later converted into class, when ‗old caste barriers were eased and social mobility increased,‘ and how did this class responded to vicissitudes of times in varying degrees of accommodation with the ruling powers. Their recently acquired articulation into a middle class led them to greater conservatism as is common in periods of unrest, and an 3 essentialisation of the identities of middle class women and people from other classes to mark their own territory. While accepting much from western education, this middle class of the intelligentsia remained embattled with the cultural consequences of British conquest in its interface with colonial modernity. Moreover, the major focus of this study is the work of two littérateurs who articulated this new Muslim middle class and its aspirations, particularly the men who imagined and created this middle class and its women; Nazir Ahmed as an insider to Muslim culture and Ratan Nath as an outsider to it, both reformers who looked at the passing away of a way of life. The work of other educators and reformers of the time like Zaka Ullah, Muhammed Hussain Azad, Shibli Naumani and Syed Ahmed Khan who administered the formation of a "modern" identity for the Muslims of India is also the focus in the narration, at the same time reiterating the accommodation convened between the old and the new, and how did this new class identified itself at last.

Muslim interaction with the Modernity was problematic. The Urdu novels also depict Muslim interaction with "modernism": Nazir Ahmed and Rattan Nath Sarshar are also found to be advocating a particular interaction with western rationality. However, Nazir Ahmed circled back to some form of the "Islamic modernism". But Ratan Nath, moved in his later work towards the construction of modern but Indian nationalist identity. This study further deals Muslims as a "cultural entity" and their reaction to colonial modernity. It is evident in the movement for the English language education. In fact, it was not going to come without the adoption of western cultural values and this was the idea that troubled reformists like Syed Ahmed. This concern later became a point of discord between Nazir Ahmed and his mentor.

Some of the important questions being addressed in this research are: How was this new class of Ashrafia being imagined and defined? Who were the prime movers of this idea and who did they exclude or include in this class? What was their position on Muslim women and their social status, education and personal freedom from patriarchy? What was happening to Urdu language in this period from being the common language of Hindustanis to being considered the language of the Muslims of India? How did novels in Urdu reflect these turbulent times and negotiate the interface with colonial modernity? 4

The Ashrafia had prominent portfolio, rank and status during Muslim rule (1206- 1526 AD) and played a vital role in the administration and were politically eminent. Bernier denotes forgien adventors as Omrahand he wrote that between1206-1399 AD, foreign warriors and adventurers such as the Turks, the Persians, the Afghans, the Abyssinians, the Egyptians and the Mongols came to India with conquering armies, some of them settling in India. These Muslims were administrators, soldiers, teachers, landlords, peasants, artisans and traders. During Mughal rule (1526-1707-1857 AD) Muslims maintained their prestigious positions and formulated their identity and culture separately from local Hindus.2Ather Ali mentioned the formation of aristocratic class during Mughal period and wrote ―term ‗nobility‘ generally denotes a class of persons who are officers of the king and, at the same 3 time, formed the superior class in the political order."

S.C Misra mentions several sub-divisions among the early Muslim settlers: ―the average Muslim did not change his old environment which was deeply influenced by caste distinctions and a general social exclusiveness." He also mentions that the various classes of which the Muslim community was composed began to live aloof from one another even in separate quarters in the same city. Although there is no information on the interactional patterns among the various groups, it seems that, in matters of intimate socialalising it was internal grouping rather than the wider religious category that was more relevant. It may be asked why early sociological literature lays great emphasis on the categories of the 'Ashraf' and 'Ajlaf' rather than on the more relevant and meaningful smaller units. It seems that the emphasis upon the 'Ashraf-Ajlaf' dichotomy has been carried over into sociological writings from historical literature. We have argued here how medieval historians came to accept the distinction between foreign and Indian Muslims as real in politics and government. The early sociologists, interested in the study of Muslim social structure, uncritically accepted the belief currently in historical literature as well as among the race-and-birthconscious members of the urban nobility regarding 'Ashraf' and 'Ajlaf' as the bases of hierarchical distinction in Muslim social stratification. Having done this, they concentrated their attention 4 on analyzing the interaction between these two categories".

2 K.S.Lal, The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (New Dehli: voice of India), for detail see chapter 5. 3 Ather Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, (Bombay: 1966. 2nd edn, New Delhi, 1997) p.2. 4 See, S C Misra, The Rise of Muslim Power in Gujarat, (Bombay:Asia Publishing House) 1963 25-26. Quoted by Ahmad. The Ashraf-Ajlaf Dichotomy in Muslim Social Structure in India, Indian Economic & Social History. 5

During the early phase of Muslim rule, the Turkish impact seemed to be the most pronounced. The reasons for Turkish cultural influence blending into Indian society were far too many. A very large number of immigrants had come over from Central Asia and had ethnic amenity with the Turkish race, but with the onset of Mughal rule, the Persian influence became prominent. A number of characters presented in Urdu literature reflect the impact of 5 the Persian and the Turkish cultures.

In the nineteenth-century, there was widespread political anarchy under the later Mughals, and the rule of the nawabs, the Marathas, and the Sikhs deteriorated. In such a state of affairs the East India Company got an opportunity to enlarge their political domain and annexed more area. It was only after the war of 1857, that British attitude towards the native changed completely and they introduced their own values and systems of governance instead of respecting local ones. This meant a change in educational policy changed from being Orientalist to Anglicist and, instead of honouring local customs and ways of living, the British now openly promoted their own value system. As a result, Indian society underwent a cataclysmic change and Muslims in particular had major adjustments to make. The age of social reform had set in among the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.6 These changes in fact were the outcome of new British policies and constitutional development. The British 7 administration had its own political and cultural perception of Indian society and culture.

5 -Abdul Halim Sharer wrote in a unique style. His characters belong to the Indian society but a backdrop that he presents as Central Asian, Turkish and Persian. The example are such stories like Malik Virginia, Hasan Anjilina (1889), Qais-o-Lubna (1891), Ayam-e- Arab (1899), Firdus-e-Bareein.

6 Kenneth W. Jones, The New Cambridge History of India: Socio-religious reform movements in British India, Vol.1-3,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) . Kenneth had presented his view related the success of British rule in India that numerous nineteenth-century movements for social and religious change--Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Zoroastrian--that used various forms of religious authority to legitimize their reform programs. Such movements were both indigenous and colonial in their origins, and the author shows how each adapted to the challenge of competing nationalisms as political circumstances changed. The volume considers the overall impact of British rule on the whole sphere of religion, social behavior and culture.

7 Babra D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, a Concise history of India, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.2002) 19. 6

The impact of British rule on Indian society is unparalleled; when a wave of westernization overwhelmed the Indian society, mind and culture through the activities of British missionaries, administrators, politicians, traders and reformers. They studied the past history of India to obtain knowledge about the people and their culture, changing history or wanting to define it in their own way. "We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood 8 and color, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect."

Post 1857, Muslim Ashrafia was caught in the double bind of being considered untrustworthy and backward by British rulers. In the decline of Muslim rule, their sense of class identity also suffered, especially the upper classes of nobles and aristocrats but also the conditions of Muslim women deteriorated because there was greater gender segregation and conservatism. While insisting on the seclusion of women and not educating them well, men from this class found no partner in their wives and were often to be found at salons of cultured and independent courtesans. The writers of the ‗New Light‘ wrote in defense of this secluded housewife and campaigned for her education and her dignity in their novels. Several Urdu prose writers took up the contradiction between earlier cultural traditions and norms and those brought in by the colonizers by creating characters caught between the old and the new. In the second half a new generation of Muslim nobility emerged post 1857 as the Brown Muslim Saab or the Babu or gentleman.9This was the western educated elite in various professions who worked as lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists and businessmen.

Modernity was a spinoff of colonialism and seemed to involve only men as citizens and subjects. About the changing lifestyle of the people of the subcontinent, Bipen reflects on how modern ideas spread through many channels; through modern education introduced in India that was complex and full of contradiction. The first impact of British liberalism on the Indians was to stimulate them to reflect on their own culture, to question some of the customs and practices that they had earlier accepted with equanimity and to move in the direction of

8 B.D. Basu, History of Education in India under the Rule of the East India Company (Calcutta: 1933), Pp.91-92. 9 In 19th century the word gentleman came in common use to signify not a distinction of blood, but a distinction of position, education and manners and title was adopted a western style native of the people of sub-continent. 7 reforms. Throughout this period, western-educated Indians looked up to their British rulers and admired and tried their best to emulate them. They considered them culturally and socially more advanced.

According to David Lelyveld: "In nineteenth-century British India, in the category of censuses and ethnographic descriptions, British social surveys purported to locate and count the `Ashraf' and attribute to them a range of stereotypic characteristics."10 During the same period, however, the usage of the adjective Sharif and the alternative plural noun Shurafa took on an increasingly flexible usage of genteel respectability that referred at least as much to comportment and literary education as to descent and frequently applied to non-Muslims as well as Muslims. As an indication of status attributions, both words, Ashraf and Sharif, were matters of controversy and negotiation, as in marriage arrangements, legal jurisdiction, or access.

Members of the Ashrafia were clearly divided into two distinct groups: the `conservatives‘ who remained obdurately aggressive to the British; and the liberals who realized that British power was here to stay and was not to be challenged for many years to come. Their strategy was one of withdrawing from the political contest and cultivating the traditional knowledge system that largely, though not exclusively, concentrated on religion. One such Muslim centre of learning was the theological seminary at Deobond, U.P., established in 1869. The other well-known centres were the Nadvat-ul-Ulum in Lucknow, established in 1894.11 Many historians regard these institutions as `traditionalist‘ because they aimed at making western scholarship accessible to Muslims without uprooting them from their own cultural tradition.

The Azad Khayal Ashrafia (roughly, liberal intelligentsia or modern Muslim Elite) came to be known as the champions of the "New Light" or enlightenment. A liberal section,

10 See for detail, David Lelyveld, Aligarh‟s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India. (New Jersey: Princeton University press,1978)

11 M. Asaduddin, the west in the nineteenth-century imagination: some reflections on the transition from a Persianate knowledge system to template of Urdu and English, www.urdustudies.com/AsaduddinPersianate.1/18/07 8 although very small, did exist in the Muslim community from the beginning of the nineteenth-century and was fascinated by western education and culture. Unlike the orthodox, these liberals cared much for their own worldly progress and the material prosperity of Muslim society. Although they did not ignore their religious education in quest of material progress, they thought it necessary for the sake of keeping pace with the times not to give in to fear and find refuge in conservatism. They learnt English and advised the Muslims to learn from the West all that was good.12 In their minds, scientific progress and moral superiority were interconnected. They were convinced that it was the mastery of modern science and the adoption of modern ways of life that had been the basis of British pre-eminence.

Mujeeb says about the early phase of Muslim liberalism: ―Muslim liberalism in India dates back to the early nineteenth-century. It grew slowly at first but gained momentum after 1857. The number of enlightened Muslims- poets, teachers, scholars etc., was so small before 1857 that they could not exert any influence upon the mind of the Muslim community.‖13 But after 1857, the Ashrafia responded favourably to British rule and western culture, although they considered it to be a temporary phase. They got enrolled and involved in western values, idea, and institutions. This class of people was greatly impressed by European rationalism, empiricism and dynamism and they looked forward to a new India transformed by contact with western culture. Teachers, scholars, and writers are as sensitive as poets to the problems of society and frequently express their opinion freely and frankly. A number of such men of repute responded favourably to western ideas and institutions.

Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) conceived the idea of a special journal Tehzeeb-ul- Akhlaq14to disseminate these ideals. Since he knew he was addressing an audience largely orthodox in its religious outlook, he broadened his approach by setting down as a basic principle of Quranic exegesis that if a passage could be given a naturalistic explanation, that

12Mujeeb Ashraf, Muslim Attitudes towards British Rule and Western Culture in India, in the first half of the century (Delhi: Idarah-iAdbiyat-i Delli, 2009), p.261.

13 Ibid, p.269.

14 This journal was started in 1870 which set a new pattern of independent and critical thinking in social, moral and religious spheres. 9 explanation must be accepted. Even paradise and hell could be interpreted as allegories and metaphors. The Aligarh Institute Gazette exhorted Muslims to ―distinguish laws and social 15 customs and institutions from religion in its strict sense.

The younger generations within this class were increasingly taking English education and new ideas were fast pouring into their minds. New sentiments which were unknown earlier began to germinate and hence the ways of orthodox thinking and feeling began to wither away. Thus, the society that emerged after the war of 1857 witnessed the disappearance of the Mughal courtiers, the establishment of modern administration, the spread of new ideas and new education.

C. A Bayly articulates the condition of India in the nineteenth-century, and throws light on some of the broader issues regarding liberalism and multiculturalism. He underlines the political arguments of Mill, Spencer and Comte that were spread to the educated classes of nineteenth-century through English and later vernacular newspapers, books and pamphlets. Indian liberals tried to marry individual liberty with the idea of spiritual freedom and Islamic ideas of good society drawn from the akhlaq tradition. They rapidly came to call for intervention in society to promote economic development, justice, social equality and public health. They wanted to build a ‗public‘ or, in today‘s terminology, a civil society. They wished to improve society by promoting education, particularly self-education, with the help of peers through writing and travelling. They wished the enlightenment of women through 16 education to abolish women‘s seclusion and the domestic tyranny of patriarchy. The impact of western civilization roused Indians from their medieval torpor and gave a rude shock to their cherished ideals. The challenge of a new, imperial culture forced them to revise their orthodox ideas and the spread of English education made them give up their attitude of uncritical deference to authority, tradition and customs and they gradually became the 17 pioneers of almost all movements for social and political reforms.

15 www.urdustudies.com/AsaduddinPersianate 16See for further detail , C.A. Bayly Recovering Liberty: Indian thought in the age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2011).

17 - Ibid., .p.172. 10

David Lelyveld intertwines the guidance and training of the students of Aligarh institution as an attribute of `Sharif Culture‘18 that had particular features and categories in the specific family environment.19 During the same period, the usage of the adjective Sharif and the alternative plural noun Shurafa took on an increasingly flexible usage of genteel respectability that referred at least as much to comportment and literary education as to descent and frequently applied to non-Muslims as well as Muslims. As an indication of status attributions, both words, Ashraf and Sharif, were matters of controversy and negotiation, as in 20 marriage arrangements, legal jurisdiction, or access to government patronage.

Bayly argues about the nineteenth-century generation of colonial India in how the commercialization of royal power during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries encouraged the development of a rooted service gentry and a unified merchant class. The service gentry had perpetuated its sense of identity and its economic dominance through the institutions of the rural qasbah town. 21 In British ruled territories, the conditions of imperial rule made available educational opportunities which ultimately led to the emergence of a western- educated and westernized elite. This elite, whose members often were sons of the traditional elites, had supra local cultural, economic and political orientations. They knew the language and understood the culture of the ruling authorities and some sought access to the highest positions of governance in the colonial administration. Others took employment in modern, urban professions. Pernau argues that religious identity became central for Muslims only in the third quarter of the nineteenth-century, and this was closely linked with the creation of a middle class whose members described themselves as ashraf, or 'men from a good family'. The new concept of respectability or sharafat on which the middle class was

18 (Lelyveld ,1978) Lelyveld used this term to describe the family culture, environment and etiquettes of middle class Muslim families with the reference of first generation of Aligarh. He also quoted the family background, life history and family traditions of the prominent students and their forefathers. 19 Ibid, p.35 20Imtiaz Ahmed, `Ashraf-Ajlaf Dichotomy in Muslim Social Structure In India‘,Sage,Journal of Economic and Social Historical Review, July, 1966. 268-78 download from, Ahmad. The Ashraf- Ajlaf Dichotomy in Muslim Social Structure in India, Indian Economic & Social History Review, 2/09/11 21 (Baylay, 1992, 450) 11 based allowed it to draw a distance from the old nobility, bring the learned section of the community closer to the businessmen, and demarcate it sharply from the subalterns. 22

Due to the war of 1857, tremendous changes took place among the colonials and in the second half of the nineteenth-century the impact of British rule and of Victorian values were so great that the character of Urdu literature was transformed by it. The defeat of the great ‗mutiny‘, as the colonials described it, made it impossible for the old outlook of the Muslim elite to continue unchallenged. This did not immediately become evident because in the early days of the war of 1857 it must have seemed to many people that the hope of Muslim rule and influence being restored was still possible. The Urdu prose of the time promoted an appeal to reason and these writings introduced a vast range of the topics and themes reflecting real life. The main theme of this new reformist writing was to introduce education on modern lines, highlight moral and religious values for character building, and describe new responsibilities to family and social life. These prose writers also introduced various new techniques in writing combining letter writing, verse, biography, drama and fiction in Urdu prose. This new style had a tremendous impact on the value system of the 23 Muslim community because they shook traditional values.

These stories were written at the time when Indian society, particularly the Muslim society, was facing socio-economic and political unrest and chaos posed by the rising of the British power and the fall of the Mughal Empire. The nawabs and Jagirdars were under the protection of the British Raj, and some of them were confined within their palaces. The common people were neglected on the various social and economic fronts. As a matter of fact the glories of the past and the precarious condition of the present created a deep sense of inferiority and frustration which compelled them to invent pastimes. They invented different types of games, like fights of animals and birds to display their chivalry. They composed poems with colourful themes especially related with women or wine and wrote enchanting stories to forget their miseries of the time.

22 -Margrit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in nineteenth –century Delhi, (Oxford University Press: 2013) 23 Syed Fazal Rab, Sociology of Literature,(Lahore: Sang-e-Meel1990, 5) 12

In Urdu prose and poetry from this period, this situation was rightly portrayed by Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) whose poetry and prose (in the form of letters) were most representative of the despair of the times.24 In the history of Urdu prose his letters have a significant place due to their simple language, conversational style and humour.25The growth and development of Urdu literature pointed towards the emergence of Urdu as the common language which also became the medium of instruction among Muslim families. Books and journals from this period oftenly depict family problems and the role of the individual. The rise of the Urdu novel26 in particular was closely associated with the `dilemma of the period' or the shift in the attitudes amongst late-nineteenth-century Indian Muslims. Historically, this change can be traced back to the reform movements.

In Urdu literature, the champions of the ―New Light‖ shared what may be called a `translated‘ sensibility. Their minds were shaped to a considerable extent by their readings of western texts in translation and their active participation in the process of translating and editing those texts. Translation into easier and simple Hindustani was started by John Gilchrist with the establishment of the Fort William College in Calcutta in 1800. Later, the Delhi College performed a seminal role in making western knowledge available in simple

24 Russel, Ralph, Ghalib, 1797-1869: Life and Letters. Vol.l (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969). Ghalib‘s writings are also the primary source to locate the cultural, political and economic situation of nineteenth-century colonial India. Ghalib talked of the 1857 revolution in many of his letters which portrayed the pain and sorrow that he had felt. However, he was careful not to say anything that could offend the British. His attitude towards the 'rebellious' Indians was not sympathetic at all and at least on one occasion he denounced the Indians that killed British women and children during this war. Ghalib had many friends among British officers and he had been trying for at least three years to earn more favours particularly an award and pension from the British.

25 Among his Urdu letters written during the war of independence, many were addressed to the ruler of Rampur, a friend and benefactor of Ghalib. As the letters contained some political advice and spoke on the aftermath of the revolution, apparently not too sympathetic or reverent towards the revolt and the Mughals, Ghalib had requested that the letters be destroyed once read. For further details consult, Mahar, Ghulam Rasool.,Khatoot e Ghalib: Majlis e Yadgar e Ghalib (Letters of Ghalib: Meeting for The Memory of Ghalib) (Lahore: Senate Hall, 1969).

26 - Encyclopedia Americana, New York, Americana Corporation, p. 510

The world `novel‘ has been derived from the Latin adjective `novellus‘ diminutive of `novus‘, meaning new. When applied to fiction it means a new tale or story. It was adopted in the sixteenth century by the English language through an Italian word `novella‘, used to describe a short tale portraying the incidents of everyday living. Hence, the novel is that type of prose fiction which is written as a serious imitation of reality. 13

Hindustani. The onslaught that the Persian knowledge system faced with the advent of western ideas and thoughts was stupendous.

While reform took many forms, one of the best-documented movements of the period was the Aligarh Movement led by Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898), who focused on education and social reform to improve the destiny of the Muslim community. He was founder of the College at Aligarh which has grown to the status of the Muslim University. Syed Ahmed belonged to Delhi, the home of Urdu in its purest form. He introduced a style of writing which in its directness and simplicity is difficult to beat and employed it in his well-known journal Tahzeeb-ul-Akhlaq as well as in his speeches and lectures. A group of other distinguished writers of Urdu prose and poetry gathered around him. This group included famous scholars like Nazir Ahmad, Zakaullah, Altaf Hussain Hali (1837 – 1914) and Shibli Naumani, to mention only a few of the more distinguished names among them.

A famous prose writer whose style is exceptionally attractive and inimitable was Muhammad Husain Azad of Delhi.27 Azad‘s literary criticism can be seen as reflective of the Mughal Ashrafia's values; reformist literary criticism of the time such as Hali's Muqadama reflects, in turn, a changing definition of who constituted the ruling class in India a hundred years ago. The ruling elite was beginning to expand, and it was no longer necessarily the feudal elites and their retinue in whom power would be solely invested. On the contrary, the most virulent colonial discourse on Indian moral turpitude was directed toward them. Hali and Azad were obliged to defend themselves and their class against the attacks of an essentially middle-class British administration, which was more favourably inclined toward the emerging, English-educated, Indian middle-class than the former Mughal nobility with which Maulana Azad Hussain identified so greatly.

27 Muhammad Sadiq, Muhammad Husain Azad: His Life and Works (Lahore: West-Pakistan Publishing Co., 1974). The main influence on him was that of a European Educationist Col. Holroyd, who was the Director of Public Instruction at Lahore when And came from Delhi and took service in the Education Department in the Punjab. The capital of the Punjab was the scene of his labors throughout his life and his famous books like the Qisasi-Hind, the Ab-i-Hayas and the Dathar-iAkbari were also written at Lahore. For futher detail see, Abida Begum, Urdu Nasr KaIrtaka 1800 1857 (the evolution of Urdu prose 1800-1857) (Dehi: Maktaba Jamia, 1988) 14

It is also significant to note that while progressive reform was taking place in Muslim society, the growth of a more conservative brand of Islam was also being propagated throughout northern India. The Deoband Movement exemplified the latter which was antithetical to the ideals of western modernity. These contrasting schools of thought found expression through prose and poetry and targeted a new reading public. One example of this is Bahishti Zevar (Heavenly Ornaments), a book of religious conduct for women of Ashrafia class written in the early 1900s by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanavi (1864-1943)28, a leading Islamic scholar from Thana Bhavan in the United Provinces. The book enjoyed huge popularity amongst a growing female readership and remains in circulation as a textbook on etiquette for families of Muslim Ashrafia, especially for women.

Urdu prose was pioneered in Delhi and Lucknow by authors exposed to European texts in translation. This also led to the development of the Urdu novel that was experimented with by Nazir Ahmed and Ratan Nath Sarshar where the authors explored the merits and demerits of local value systems and those introduced by European rationality. While Muslims remained the targets of British anger, Hindus found it easier to assimilate the new values. 29 Muslims had held distinctive positions in the administrative and religious institutions during Mughal rule and enjoyed privileges and a luxurious lifestyle. In the changed circumstances, many of them tried to ingratiate themselves with the rulers to recover their status and were dubbed as gentleman or ‗babu‘. Under the influence of western culture, Nazir Ahmed wrote many books for the reform of Muslim society along modern lines. He sought to warn his countrymen and co-religionists against a blind pursuit of western values and systems. He believed that the craze for the western way of life was a temporary phenomenon and that it would soon pass off.30 This is reflected in the character of Ibn-ulWaqt (1836-1912) that started an intellectual debate against the elite that only stood for

28 This book was written as a guideline for Muslim women and given as dowry to young brides. It was published in 1905. Translated in English by Barbra D. Metcalf by the name of Perfecting Women:Molana Ashraf Ali Thanawi‟sBihishtiZewar (Berkeley: Oxford University Press, 1982)

29 See for furthter detail, Syed Razi Wasti, Political triangle in India and Pakistan (Lahore: Sange-e- Meel Publications, 1980).

30Mujeeb Ashraf, Muslim attitude towards British Rule and Western Culture in India, in the first half of the century (Delhi: Idarah-i Adbiyat-i Delli, 2009)231. 15 immediate material gain. The character of Ibn-ul-Waqt demonstrates that to procure employment in government offices, one had to win the favour of the British. The characters of Nasuh, Kaleem and Mubtila were also a symbolic revolt against the Muslims who indulged in 31 worldly affairs, neglecting their religious and social obligations.

The present study also signifies the position of women; how these women were imagined in the cultural context and how that contextualization was duly impacted by the reformer like Nazir Ahmed. So far the new cultural ambience was concerned, with a modern or western as opposed to a classical education in Persian and Arabic, this did not include women and the working classes. The new middle class defined its boundaries very firmly against women, who were placed at the lowest in the hierarchy than the Brown Sahib, armed with the Protestant work ethic and extolling frugality, guiding the husband‘s career and bringing up children who were as reasonable as they were ambitious. The Ashrafia woman was still an essentialized trope relegated to a particular role within the home and family. Class was defined in terms of gender roles as much as it was defined in terms of exclusion of the working classes. Therefore, in Nazir Ahmed‘s Mirat-ul Arus and Banat-un Nash this great disdain for the working classes is vividly expressed. This study deals with the women that Nazir Ahmed creates in his writings; the narration of Akbari and the Asghari opposition depicting the woman as good or bad according to the new definition of the Ashrafia. Nazir Ahmed is also found to represent the ashrafia like the reformers of the time Syed Ahmed who did not believe in educating women well but just enough to manage the household.

Ratan Nath Sarshar (1845-1903) was among writers considered the bearers of the ―New Light‖ who extolled western social reform in his novels. Through the Fasana-e-Azad, Jam-e-Sarshar, and Sair-e-Kohsar Ratan Nath Sarshar depicted the rot in Ashraf cultureof Lukhnow, particularly nawab culture, but he also laid out a map of modern values. Both Nazir Ahmed and Ratan Nath Sarshar were hugely popular in their lifetime due to their writing skills and the realist topics they chose that seemed so relevant to the troubled state of the people. Delhi and Lucknow were both epicentres of political and social life of the people of the subcontinent and generated intellectual debate. A number of writers from both these

31 (Lelyveld, 1978, 23) 16 places, Hindu and Muslim, rose in these times to build the shattered hopes of a nation. In the present study, an attempt has been made to analyse the representation of Ashrafia in nineteenth-century Urdu novels of two prominent writers to gauge the arguments raging over cultural changes and how they conflicted with traditionalism in the Delhi and Lucknow schools of thought. The novels of Nazir Ahmed were selected to evaluate the changing mores of the Ashrafia of Delhi, while Ratan Nath Sarshar was chosen to represent the Asrafia of Lucknow in the context of their negotiations with colonial modernity.

This is analytical study deals with the transitional phase of the nineteenth-century colonial India. The main argument related with the concept of the Ashrafia prestige in nineteenth-century colonial India that had its root from the establishment of the Muslim rule in India. In analysis of the historical writings primary and secondry Urdu and English sources are used. In the present study, an attempt has to made to analyse the representation of Ashrafia in nineteenth-century Urdu prose as depicted by the prominent Urdu prose authors and find out to what extent they represented the dominant argument of the liberalism and traditionalist in the context of Delhi and Lucknow school of thought in their writings. The descriptions of `dominant socio-cultural themes and evolution of Urdu literature have been added with a view to provide a background which helps to ascertain the representative characters of the novels. The method applied here can be called historical, which is essentially descriptive. The historical narratives chalked out to assess the transitional phase of Ashrafia with the decline of Muslim rule and arrival of British, impact of modern western thought and response of the Muslim Ashrafia, their prestige and state of nostalgia, so, primarily is the reason for under-taking present study in which the representation of Ashraf would be looked into, as an emblem of cultural identity through the prism of Urdu literature. Genealogy of the term `Ashrafia‘ in linguistic and literary registers and to search out the linguistic and historical identity of Asahrafia in language and culture, writing techniques, representation of theme regarding the Azad Khayal Ashrafia the primary and secondary English and Urdu sources are use. The writings of the well-known historians use as authentic source to strengthen the argument of the study.

The authors like K.S Lal in legacy of Muslim Rule in India and The Mughal Harem explore the various attribute of Muslim Culture and outlined the legacy of Muslim rule and 17 formation of Muslim ruling class as an advocators of cuture and Art. Fidus Anwar denotes immigrants nobility and the wealthy Independence landowners became the courtiers of Mughal Hussain Yousaf in Glimpses of Medieval Indian Culture and K. M. Ashraf Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan emphasized the cultural difference of the nobility in style, dress, manner, aesthetics and above all, language and literature.Bernier, Ibn-e-Batuta, K.S. Lal, and Harbans Mukhia gave detail about the Muslim ruling class that nobility had significant place and the facilities and privileges they enjoyed were due to the services rendered to the rulers. It made their lifestyle lavish and artistic but as point out by Hans Raj and S.M Ikram, with the passage of time, they indulged in immoral activities, the central authourity was unable to control them, there was widespread political anarchy under the later Mughals, and the rule of the nawabs, the Marathas, and the Sikhs deteriorated. To trace the decline Anil chandra point of view is Aurungzeb Daccan policy, Bannerji emphasised on the weak sucessors of Great Mughal , Mughal Moreland‘s represents the economic position, changing land used revenue practice in India and influence of the sucessive reighns and rulers. Rita Joshi wrote circumstances, expediency and exigency of the situation mainly determain the Emperor‘s attitude towards Afghan policy Sri Ram Sharma, Jadu Nath Sarkar, Syed Abas Ali shed light on the factors to decline of Mughal era. William Irivine underlined military inefficiency in later Mughal , Narayani Gupta gave the detail of Nadir Shah Durani invasion that paved the way for immediate decline of Mughal. Sri Ram Sharma give emphasis to the independence state weaken the centeral authourity, Sir Jadu Nath Sarkar highlighted the system of inheritance was replace to loyal to un-loyal nobility, they have their personal interests. The role of Courtesans was also the cause of the decline of Mughal Era which paved the way for the economic decline.

In such a state of affairs the East India Company got an opportunity to enlarge their political domain and annexed more area. It was only after the war of 1857, that British attitude towards the natives changed completely and they introduced their own values and systems of governance instead of respecting local ones. This meant a change in educational policy changed from being Orientalist to Anglicist and, instead of honoring local customs and ways of living, the British now openly promoted their own value system. As a result, Indian society underwent a cataclysmic change and Muslims in particular had major adjustments to make. The William Darlymple ‗white Mughals‘ James Mill‘s book The 18

History of British India, and Dennis Kincaid‘s book named British social life in India 1608- 1937 are very reliable source to trace the social history of British India used in this study. The book of Mrs. Meer Hassan Observations on the Mussulmauns of is the original sources used in study and work of M. Mujeeb The Indian Muslims are used to draw the picture of transitional phase of Muslims.

These changes in fact were the outcome of new British policies and constitutional development Babra D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, in a Concise history of India provides the agenda of British policy that the British administration had its own political and cultural perception of Indian society and culture.32 There have been a number of outstanding studies on nineteenth-century, Narayani Gupta focuses on the period following the 1857. Percival Spear‘s represents the early nineteenth-century Delhi, Francis Robinson, R.N., Mukherjee, Lini S. May, also elucidate the factors to re-emergence of the colonial communities of India due to British reform policies during nineteenth-century.

Besides the original sources of undertaking authors a number of individual studies look at the various Muslim socio-political traditions which converged in nineteenth-century colonial India. There have been extensive studies on the nineteenth-century Urdu prose in English and Urdu language. The writings of Margarit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Delhi. Naregal Veena, Language politics, elites and the public sphere: Western India under Colonialism G.Vishwanathan Masks of Conquest, Literary Study and British Rule in India, Ruby Lal , ‗Gender and Sharafat: re-reading Nazir Ahmed‘, the writings of Mushirul Hassan , C.M. Naim, and Ayesha Jalal use as historical analyses of the nineteenth-century prose writings and the contextual circumstantial construction of the representation of the Ashrafia, their shifting standing and response to British reforms in nineteenth-century colonial India. To interlink the argument with nineteenth-century prose writings of Meenakshi Mukherjee. Gopi Chand Narang, Ralph Russel Ghalib, 1797-1869: Life and Letters, the Development of the Novel in Urdu, Ram Babu Saksena Shaista Akhtar Bano Suhrawardy, Christina Oesterheld, G.C Narang, and are interweave as authentic sources in the present study. To representation of Lucknow

32 - Babra D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, a Concise history of India, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.2002) 19

Veena Talwar Oldenburg in The Making of Colonial Lukhnow1856-1877, Rosie Liewellyn- Jones, A fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the city of Lukhnow, Violette Graff ,Lukhnow: Memories of A City are utilized in the study.

So, this study is significant in a sense that it attempts to establish the degree of awareness that Muslim intellectuals in the second half of the eighteenth century had in the Colonial India. Such a consciousness is traced back through a number of contemporary works about the Indian social structure produced by various writers in Urdu prose who attempted to explain the rise and fall of the nineteenth-century Muslim Ashrafia in the sub- continent as well. In fact, with the expansion and consolidation of the British imperial rule in India, Muslim intelligentsia came to identify the spontaneous and non-serious performance of the ruling Ashrafia also their neglect and indifference towards resolving the issues related to the natives. The nineteenth-century reformers did their pioneering work using the medium of Urdu literature. By the second half of the nineteenth-century, the need for producing a new kind of literature had become imperative: one which reflected the far- reaching, indeed cataclysmic changes that had taken place in the social and political life of the country. The western impact on society and culture of the sub-continent paved the way for a diadactic understanding of Urdu authors, who clamoured and reasoned for social reforms with the Ashrafia as its central figure in the particular contexts of Delhi and Lucknow schools of thought. This involvement of a reformist thread in the prevalent Indian culture with its peculiar customs and colourful diversity, its superstitions and ethical values could only find expression in a language and idiom which was drawn directly from the people, and throbbing with the infinite variety of colloquialisms, transcending the rigid bounds practiced by the traditional prose writers of Delhi and Lucknow, who had sustained themselves generation after generation.

The present study is divided into five chapters:

In the first chapter, Genealogy of the term „Ashrafia‟ in linguistic and literary registers, the evolution of the term has been traced where it comes to mean the upper class, generally considered ‗respectable‘ people. Class is an elusive concept to define and we deal 20 here with it not strictly in terms of economic categories ensconced in the European capitalist theory or even of critical Marxism but as a community based on shared values of ―respectability‖ that theoretically anyone could gain access to, a class not based on bloodline or inherited land but on modern education and the work ethic. But this is always in theory and Margrit Pernau‘s excellent study is at pains to determine the rules that defined this community in mid nineteenth-century north India. The categories of landowning `ashraf‟ and the educated professionals, the `ajlaf‟, no longer explained much since economic realities had changed.We also see how caste was the main articulation of class in Indian society based on bloodline and family occupation and how this was changing as a class based on education and the professions. Bernard Cohn, Ronald Inden, Dirks, Baley, and Tarachand help trace the hierarchies within the Muslim nobility between 1206-1857 AD.

The study verily reflects the literary and historical term Ashraf developed over time in its usage by different authors and texts, the significance of the Ashrafia in Muslim Society and how in nineteenth-century the caste emerged as class. To trace the`hierarchies within the Muslim Ashrafia‘; caste was the main instrument for the articulation in Indian society based on bloodline and family occupation and how this was changing as a class based on education and the professions. However, a new definition of the class was needed in nineteenth-century when `old caste barriers were eased and social mobility increased.‘ Ronald Inden, identified caste as one of four major essences constructed by westerners in order to 'control' India by denying it a history of its own. Dirks‘ argues that it was thoroughly reconfigured by British rule and he even suggests that caste was 'a conscious design of British colonial policy' and invented to facilitate colonial rule. To Susan Bayly British did not invent caste but they were important players in the transformation of caste as a congealed category of individuation and identity.

Tarachand explicates that among Muslim the social division marking a close parallel to the Hindu caste system and it not rigid as Hindu caste system. According to the political history of Muslim India, the elite intelligensia was known as Ashrafia and the word was used for nobles and courtiers, army commanders and provincial governors; in fact, fort all high officials of the Muslim government formed the upper classes. Among the civilian upper 21 classes could be counted the ulema and the mashaikh, scholars and historians, and some very 33 rich Muslim merchants and landowners.

During later Mughal rule, the court and courtesans rivalry between Turani, Irani, and Hindustani nobles paved the way for internal and external crises. This made it easier for imperial powers to make inroads into Indian territory. Post 1857, Muslim Ashrafia was caught in the double bind of being considered untrustworthy and backward by British rulers. In the decline of Muslim rule, their sense of class identity also suffered, especially the upper classes of nobles and aristocrats but also the conditions of Muslim women deteriorated because there was greater gender segregation and conservatism. While insisting on the seclusion of women and not educating them well, men from this class found no partner in their wives and were often to be found at salons of cultured and independent courtesans. The writers of the ‗New Light‘ wrote in defense of this secluded housewife and campaigned for her education and her dignity in their novels.

In the second chapter, The epistemic conquest of India: nineteenth-century British constitutional and educational reform dealswith how the new rulers of large parts of India, the British, sought to understand the peoples they ruled over by establishing a number of Orientalist schools to study local languages and literature. In this period, they cultivated all the men of letters and showered benefits on them. Later, as they consolidated their territorial supremacy, they turned Anglicist, particularly after 1857 when all local knowledge was discarded and looked down upon to be replaced by ideals of European modernism. They changed policy step by step through constitutional and educational reforms. The first Orientalist institutions of importance were the Fort Saint College, the Royal Asiatic society, Fort William College, institutions that translated local classics and contributed to world culture but this also paved the way for Macaulay‟s Minute on Education (1835). The educational policies of Lord Hastings, Lord Cornwallis and Lord Wellesley for the local people are main focus of this chapter. Lord Bentinck found a new function and purpose for the teaching of English literature in India and later to all colonies when literature was not taught in any British university at the time. The main reason for introducing English literature was to inculcate European ideas and ideals by reshaping the Indian imagination,

33 - http://www.bharatvani.org/books/tlmr/ch5.htm 22 especially of its educated classes. The local literati responded with fervor to this and became active advertisers of an English education and manners. Orientalism needed to be nurtured to cultivate the indigenous elite or Ashrafia that was to be co-opted into western values and they followed by the middle class. The link between the orientalists and Urdu literature was also part of this chapter. Like the other local literatures, Urdu literature was also initially patronized by the British and institutionalized Urdu poetry and prose.

The emergence of Delhi College luminaries of Urdu literature like Nazir Ahmed, Piyare Lal Ashob, Muhammed Hussain Azad, Altaf Hussain Hali, and Dr. Leitner, set the new literary traditions among the Muslim intelligentsia. Aligarh College was on the top of the list of such institutions one reason why Aligarh remained as a movement and it took three generations before the benefits of an English education had taken effect and produced the Mulsim Brown Sahib. Syed Ahmed Khan was a loyalist even after 1857 and a pragmatist who wanted the Mulsim middle classes to rise once again to positions of power. Other institutions like Osmania University, Darul-uloom Deoband, Nadvat- ul-uloom, and Farangi Mahal are also mentioned here to explicate the raging debates of the time between Mulsim modernists and traditionalists. Then, during the period of 1837-1857 AD the invention and acceptance of the printing press led to widespread dissemination of newspapers and periodicals that nourished intellectual debate and the Urdu literary intelligentsia. But this was when Muslim negotiations with colonial modernity started assuming the apologetic mode, which was neither oppositional nor reactive but seemed opportunistic. It has been seen in this study as a negotiation with a new kind of authority.

Conflicted modernity: debate over the first Indian novel in Urdu Novel is the theme of chapter three. The novel writing is a European experiment in lieterature and came to India during the Orientalist phase when a number of translations of European classics was made into local languages, particularly Urdu. The novel has often been considered a typical creation of bourgeois literature expressing the class interests of the middle classes. Claiming a stake in reality and representation, the novel was also a most effective tool of propaganda that did not look like propaganda. Earlier forms of narrative fiction in Urdu were the dastaan and the fasana that were entertaining medieval romances with no moorings in or claim to representing reality. In speaking of these earlier forms Nazir Ahmed writes: ―This literature 23

(traditional) teaches us falsehood and flattery. This literature suppresses and wipes out the real beauty of facts.....excites unwholesome passions...thanks to the study of English, I have gradually come to realize the defects of our literature". The printing press and the public education system that had replaced the gharana and karkhana method of skill based instruction meant the Indian mind was more open to being influenced by the British. The reading public was greatly influenced by the rulers and their tastes in literature turned realist or at least that is where the new novelists like Nazir Ahmed and Ratan Nath took them. Urdu fiction writers struggled to align their sensibilities to western values and the novel developed slowly with a commitment modernist values of realism and individualism. The Indian novel had in that phase an ―ideological ambience" and a social function was assigned to it. Fasana-e- Azad (1877-8) by Rattan Nath Sarshar was a huge tome in several volumes that was his first attempt at novel writing. Nazir Ahmed attempted dialogue that was simple and realistic but heavily moralistic. The translations of European novels influenced people as diverse as Syed Ahmed Khan, Molana Altaf Hussain Hali, Azad Hussain, Nazir Ahmed,Rattan Sarshar, Molana Shibli, Zaka Ullah, and Syed Ameer Ali and their works promoted Muslim modernism.

In the fourth chapter, Imagining Muslims: class and gender in Nazir Ahmed's novels deals we see a Muslim middle class identity emerging that was not as much about religion as it was about class and gender. This was the beginning of what later became full blown communalism because Nazir Ahmed emphasises religion as cultural identity. As a social reformist, the main objective of Nazir Ahmed‘s writing was constructing Sharif women and Sharif men for Muslim families, this new middle class of respectable people who had very small means of survival. His first book, Mirat-ul-Arus, (The Bride‘s Mirror, 1869) is a tale of two sisters which opened up a debate about correct and incorrect behaviour for women of the middle classes. The women in his novels were slightly better educated than before but still not as smart as their men, still secluded if they were good women. They were thrifty and pragmatic guiding the men‘s careers and helping the large household marry off daughters well to establish stronger ties within the community; the Ashrafia woman was going to get her class privileges back, even though these were hard times for her. But, like Bahisti Zewar's women, Nazir Ahmed‘s heroines were self sacrificing and deferential, with no desires of their own. In the novels, there was also a clear and sharp divide between the 24 working classes and the Ashrafia. As the character of Akbari depicts, the bad sister mixes with lowly women of the neighbourhood - the wives of the greengrocer, the tinker, the water carrier - for which she is heavily castigated by her husband. Meanwhile, the "educated" Asghari chooses only the daughters of Ashrafia young girls from her mohalla. In the sequel, Banat-un Nash (Daughters of the Bier) the author suggests how women need to be educated and trained through his favourite Asghari who sets up a home school or maktab. She teaches reading, writing, and fancy needlework which is sold to pay the expenses of the school. The stress on dress, comportment, politeness and thoughtfulness are paraded as the traits of a Sharif woman in the writings of Nazir Ahmed. They are not independent in economic terms, because they don‘t have their own source of income, as Ayesha Jalal comments on how mid- nineteenth-century writing on women saw them as symbols of cultural identity. They were allowed to be "literate but domesticate, wise but chaste, intelligent but submissive.34"

The third novel Taubat-un Nasuh (The Repentance of Nasuh, 1877) is different for being cast as a religious morality tale. In this novel the author‘s concern is to construct an authorial, patriarchal voice of the Ashrafia in the character of Nasuh through the characters of father and son, Nasuh and Kaleem, the author sets up the conflict between the old and the new with the father winning out and the son dying. Ibn-ul-Waqt, literally "the man of the moment" was published in 1888 and represents the consequences of Macaulay‘s Minute on Education with the emergence of a full blown Brown Sahib among the native Indians. This novel is an intimate encounter between a young Indian Muslim with a high official, a British, the two mirroring each other‘s biases and prejudices and learning to change their opinion. The main issues regarding the relationship between the British rulers in India and the local population - particularly the educated middle class Indians - is the focus of this novel.

In Fasan e Mubtila ( The story of Mubtila,1885)Nazir Ahmed explored the social evil of second marriage, homosexuality, and relationships of the Asharfia with courtesans. The author also writes about the problem of uneducated housewives and interference and harmful role of working class women in the family structure. Nazir Ahmed represented the typical binary of the good but careless housewife and the cunning courtesan. The depressing

34 AyeshaJalal, Self and sovereighnity: individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850(Rouledge, 2004) p.71. 25 condition of Mubtila is a comment on the evils of polygamy which was his answer to the critics of Muslims, the British, who thought Mulsims awwere all polygamists. Ayama (1891) is another novel where the author is in dialogue with the colonial charges against native Indians of ill treating their women as proof of their anti-modernity. In his answer to that charge, Nazir Ahmed creates the characters of Khwaja Azad, a man with modern ideas about raising his daughter, Azadi Begum. Nazir Ahmed represents the tussle between Azadi‘s liberal father and her conservative mother. Riway-e Sadiqa (The True Dream or Sadiqa‘s Dream, 1893) has been called a treatise by the author, more openly a discussion on religion and its role in modern life. It is a debate on the modern values being propagated by institutions like Aligarh College for men.

The fifth chapter, Inventing Individual Freedom: Lucknow Ashrafia in the Novels of Ratan Nath Sarshar is a study of a very different place and literary tradition where Urdu flourished at the time. Ratan Nath and Nazir Ahmed were among the first few Indians affected by the Anglicist mission of the British in Lucknow and their work reflects and deflects these values in different ways from each other.As a centre for Urdu literature, Lucknow was not content to maintain the standards set by Delhi and this was most evident in how the arts, particularly in Urdu poetry, flourished in the new capital of Avadh. The Lucknow school was known for its sensuality while the Delhi school stood for formalism. Lucknow made several other contributions to Urdu literature before the turning point in 1857 after which writing changed quite fundamentally and reformist writing came to the fore.

Mirza Hadi Ruswa writings were also reflecting the picture of nineteenth- century Ashrafia of Lucknow. He was critical of their careless, hypocritical ways of avoiding reality but since it is limited to nawabs and courtesans, Ruswa‘s pictography of Lucknow is incomplete. It took Ratan Nath to fill that gap with his voluminous Fasana-e-Azad where he presented the conflict between the old and the new world as a battle of ideas, ideals, beliefs, customs and traditions and promoted the new order based on western, colonial modernism. The writer was a critic of the old order for being steeped in superstition and stifled in convention. In Lucknow of the period under study, Urdu was still considered the language of all Hindustanis and Ratan Nath wrote as an insider to it, about his city and its ruling classes. He addressed the Muslim social and was engaged in the project of making Muslims modern. 26

As a person, Ratan Nath was not tied to British patronage and was independent in his thinking and in his writing. He moved around jobs, annoying almost all his employers including the nawab of Hyderabad for his independent ways and his unconventional lifestyle. In this, he may be closer to the way in which artists‘ turbulent lives are thematised in biographies but he was certainly no establishment man and wrote copiously but with great feeling and concern for the way their times were changing, and as an advocate of women‘ s education and emancipation that was way ahead of his time. It is interesting then how he wrote about the life of the decadent Muslim nobility in his four major literary works: Fasana- e Azad (in four volumes serialized in the periodical Avad Akhbar (1878-1879); Jam-e Sarshar (1887); Sair-e Kohsar (1890) and Karram Dham (1893). He also translated one of the biggest and finest European novelist Cervantes Don Quixote into Urdu and wrote several minor novels and short stories many of which are out of print and inaccessible. As we know from biographers‘ accounts, he attended some Congress meetings in his time and followed the Bengali Brahmo Samaj movement of Ram Mohan Roy which influenced him greatly. Roy was a Brahmin by birth and studied Arabic and Persian but later gained mastery over the English language and wrote in it. He applied western rationalism to Hinduism, condemning rituals like idol worship, pre- pubescent marriages, and the ban on widows from remarrying. Ratan Nath‘s views regarding the social position of women were quite radical and he openly opposed purdah in all its forms – in the seclusion of women‘s quarters, the covering of the head in public, segregation in public which are the focus of all his works since women‘s emancipation was his great passion.

He was very different form Nazir Ahmed although he too had started dealing with thornier issues of Indian identity. Initially, an ardent admirer of everything British, as an ardent supporter of the rationality the Europeans had introduced to Indian society, in his earlier works there is uncritical appreciation of the superior ways of Europe, their beautiful, elegant and confident women, and the English breakfast with tea. He speaks of the modern living standards of British people as compared to Indians, their healthier eating habits, for instance, not eating so may spices and oils, but gradually we see the novelist developing a critical consciousness. In his later works is a more aggressive interface with the British colonial and his arrogance, the difference between locals and foreigners is becoming pronounced and the author through his protagonist strikes a delicate balance between valuing 27 modernity and learning new ways but not thereby becoming enamoured of British rulers. In this, Ratan Nath was very close in spirit to Syed Ahmed Khan whom he openly and vociferously supported in his newspaper columns, considering him a messiah for the Muslim middle classes.

At the end, It is concluded in the study that While historians of South Asia have long looked at the colonial encounter that transformed both the British and Indians forever, giving rise to new identities that were based on religion, caste, gender and class, and the gradual rise of communal identities, what is far less clearly documented is the Muslim interface with colonial modernity in its cultural prescriptions. The interface between colonial modernity and the Muslims of India have been called ―apologetic modernity‖ by Faisal Devji in which there was little intellectual interaction between the British and Indian Muslims. But we see that Syed Ahmed‘s Asbab-e Baghawat-e Hind was addressed to the British civil servant and administrator. The next most eloquent defense of modernity within Islam came from Dr. Muhammed Iqbal (1877-1938), educated in both western and eastern philosophy, who rejected the binary of colonial modernity versus indigenous traditionalism. 28 Chapter: 1

Genealogy of the term ‘Ashrafia’ in linguistic and literary registers

In the period 1707-1857 that witnessed the political decline of the Muslim aristocracy, a number of reformers came to the fore to protect their identity and interests under British colonial rule. Some of them launched a religious movement while others tried to compete by enforcing social reforms, and several among them took to the pen to convey their ideas through writing. By the mid eighteenth century, the Muslim nobility commanded enough education and exposure for Urd u literature to come into its own. It was literary debates set in motion by the Urdu novel and short story that represent the Muslim interface with modernity as defined by the British colonials.

Even as the political fortunes of later Mughals declined, Urd u language thrived in the two centres they had set up – in Delhi in the north, the imperial capital and in Luknow in the south where rulers had moved some centuries ago. It was under the patronage of the last Muslim rulers of India that Urdu literature came into its own with lyrical poetry being introduced by Deccan poets where the amorous life of men found ample expression and in the development of the socially realist short story and novel in Delhi. Such freedom of expression was hitherto unknown to local literature and broke with tradition promoting modernist notions of individual freedom and rationalist thinking.

Definitions of the term in official lexicons 29

The literary and historical term Ashraaf developed over time in its usage by different authors and texts.

Three important literary sources remain one, the Ganj Khubi(1802) written in Persian language that was later translated into Urdu by Fort William College according to which ―Hakim e Waqt means Ashraf-ul-Ashraaf‖. 35 The other source is the much respected, Ain e Akbari (1648) written by the Mughal courtier Abu ul Fazal about the period of Akbar the Great(1556 -1602), ―People belonging to different stations have different features. One is known as the Ashraf, linked to wise men, ulema and sadaat‖.36According to Abu-alFazal, the Ashrafia comprised a higher, more respectable group in society known for its intelligence and religious knowledge or the companionship of religious personages or association with the family of the Prophet Hazarat Muhammad (SAW). These were the standards according to which higher posts were awarded to the nobility in medieval times.

The third source is Molana Moulivi Abdul Salam, according to whom the idea of are spectable nobility is linked to religion and morality. His book Zat aur Shrafat (Caste and Repectability, 1898) is an important source that reflects the concept of the nobility or the Ashrafia in nineteenth century Indian Muslim society. He writes, ―Real nobility is the quality of human beings due to his Akhlaq-e-Husna (excellent manners) and Amaal-e-Husna (excellent actions), not his bloodline or his caste being Syed, Shaikh, Pathan and Rajput or if he belonged to a family of the eminent religious or political personages. 37 The real worth of a human being is his creation as Ashraf-ul- Mukhlokaat (Crown of creation). The status of human beings is dependent on their action and morality, according to their character and nature. The respect

35 Khwaja Ahmed Farooqi, trans. and edit., Ganj Khubi (Delhi: Delhi University Press.1988) ,p.2. 36 Abu-al-Fazal‘ Alami, Ain –I Akbari, (Trans.),Colonel H.s. Jarrett, (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society, 1978), p.417.

37 Molana Moulivi Abdul Salam, Zat aur shrafat (caste and esteem)(Lahore: Matbua Shamas-ul-Hind Press,1898),p.3. 30 due to the elders is not according to the teachings of Islam but the faith, personal prestige and 38 actions in the religion of Islam.‖

According to various dictionaries, the words Shareef, Ashraaf, Shurfa and Ashrafia vary in meaning in different dictionaries and encyclopedias. The Urdu Science Dictionary defines the word Ashraaf in several ways: as a good man, gentle, meek and mild, refined, courteous, urbane and well mannered. 39

The word Ashrafia is used for men who are:

1. Nobles, noble men, persons of rank, grandees, gentlemen, men of high extraction, gentry, gentle folk, squirearchy, magnate.

2. Preux chevalies, or honorable men.

3. In Rohil Khund and Benaras, it referred to a class of cultivators who 40 claimed certain privileges.

In the Jama-e-Lughat Vol. 1, the word Ashrafia is used in one of several ways. As the plural of ‗Sharif‘, or someone who belongs to a high ranking family or people of a rare breed; and a rich, noble, gentlemen, good natured, of high social standing and a renowned family who is kind, well-mannered, and 41 courteous

In Farhang-e-Asifia, the term has more nuanced meanings, for instance, a gentleman, belonging to the gentry, pure blood, distinguished person; and, a simple, poor, noble, civilized, good tempered, polite. 42

According to the Dictionary of Urdu (on historical principles) vol.I, the term refers to the best among Shurfa, the select 43, and also give the ancillary meaning of Ashraaf referring to someone who is kind and pious. 44

38 Ibid 39 Dr. S.W Fallon., Urdu- English Dictionary, (Lahore: Urdu Scince Board, 1976) renewal edition of New Hindustani English Dictionary with Illustration from Hindustani Literature and Folklore, p. 94. 40 Ibid 41 Khawaja Abdul Mameed, edit. Jama e Lughat vol.l, (Lahore: Urdu Science Board, 1989), p.89. 42 Syed Ahmed Dehilvi, edit.,Farhang- e- Asifia, vol I (Lahore: Maktaba Hassan 1974 ),p. 43. 31

The Urdu Muarf-e-Islamia defines the term as the plural of sharif, or pure, as in a dignified person who belongs to a wealth y well known family; an independent and enlightened person who belongs to an eminent and distinguished family.

In the Concise Persian English Dictionary the word is used to represent the aristocracy, the najaba, the government of nobles; the word is also applied to 45 anyone of noble temperament or the ruler.

In the Larger Persian English Dictionary, the term is a derivative of Sharif and refers to men of noble birth or extraction, aristocrats and a gove rnment 46 of nobles or an oligarchy.

In Farhang-e-Farsi (Moeen), the same word is used in farhang e farsi hindi 47 and farhang-e-farsi (Moeen), in Farhang-e- Nawesi used as ACRAF.

In Nouveau Dictionnaire, Persan Francais this word is used as Achraf translated as aristocratic man, notables bourgeois and grand personages. 48

In the Arabic English Dictionary, Ashraaf is used as the plural of Sharif which means noble, projecting part of the body (ear and nose). 49

In Jami-English-Urdu Dictionary, the word is used as aristocracy, a government of outstanding people or special and unusual nobility or najaba,

43 Dr. Moulvi Abdul Haq and Dr. Abu ul Lais Siddique, edit., The dictionary of Urdu (on historical priciples) vol. I (Karachi: Taraq-i-Urdu quomi Zuban, 1990), p.68. 44 Darsi Urdu Lughat, (Karachi: Muktadra quami Zuban, 2008), p.66. 45 Abbas Aryanpur (kashani) and Monocher Aryanpur, edit., The Concise Persian English Dictionary (Tehran: Amir Kabir publication 2007), p.78. 46 The Larger Persian English Dictionary, (Tehran: Farhang Moaser, 2000),p. 47. 47 Farhang Farsi Hindi edited by Syed Baker Abtahi , Vol. 1 (New Dehli: Raj Kumul Parkashan, 2001),104. Farhang e Farsi Moeen,vol 1 (Tehran:AmirKabir publication, 1962), p.282. Farhang Awesi, vol 1 (Tehran: Kitab Farooshi Khayam), p.264.

48 Dr. Murtaza Maulam, edit., Nouveau Dictionnaire, Persan Francais, , (Tehran: Amir Kabir publication, 1984), p,114. 49 F. Steingass , edit., Arabic English Dictionary, (Lahore: Sang-e-meel Publications, 2001),p. 45. 32 where outstanding refers to people of unusual intelligence and capability who 50 have influence over history and politics.

In all formal registers – whether as literary production of the courts or as coded lexicon in dictionaries – the predominant meaning of the term Ashrafia has been people of noble birth, wealth and power who generally form a part of government. The personal devotion of such noblemen being pious and well tempered are of only secondary importance.

The nobles constituted the ruling bureaucracy in the period 1206-1399, when foreign adventurers and warriors monopolized appointment to high office. Initially, the Turks formed the bulk of the ruling elite along with men of Persian, Abyssinian, Egyptian, and Afghan descent and those who had converted from Mongols. Under the Lodhi sultans (1451 -1526), Afghan adventurers of various tribes and clans flocked to India like ‗ants and locusts‘, according to K. S. Lal. Even in Mughal times (1526 -1707-1857) the imperial service remained predominantly for eign with Iranis and Turanis forming the core of the ruling cadre. 51

Significance of the Ashrafia in Muslim Society

During early Mughal rule, the Ashrafia comprised the courtiers, army commanders, provincial governors and all high officials of the gove rnment. Among the civilian upper classes could be counted the ulema and the mashaikh, scholars and historians, and some rich Muslim merchants and landowners. The middle class was referred to as ―Ajlaf‖.52 There were only a

50 Kalim-ud-Din Ahmed, edit., Jami- English-Urdu Dictionary (New Dehli: Bureau for promotion of Urdu- Department of Education, Ministry of Human Resources development- govt of India, 1994), p.254. 51 - K.S. Lal, The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (New Dehli: voice of India), chapter v. http://www.bharatvani.org/books/K.S.Lal

52 http://www.bharatvani.org/books/tlmr/ch5.htm 33 few instances in early Muslim rule when locals were given any prominent 53 portfolio and they mostly remained the subjects and not the masters. 54

Imtiaz Ahmed highlights ethnic difference among the early Muslims in these words ―It is obvious that the distinction between the Ashraf and Ajlaf as drawn in literature is primarily of an ethnic type between Muslims of foreign and local origin respectively. Like the higher Hindu castes, they consider it degrading to engage in menial occupations or to handle the plough, and they look down upon all other Muslims whom they call ‗ajlaf‘. This includes the various functional castes such as the weavers, cotton - carders, oil-pressers, barbers, tailors, etc. as well as the converts of 55 originally humble castes.‖

About the division and sub division among the Muslims, he references S.C Misra in these words:

Distinction between Muslims of foreign origin and local descent became real in government and administration, at the social plane each of these broad categories was further divided into a number of small units which determined intimate social intercourse. The historical information on the structure and composition of these units is extremely scanty and it is not

53 Birth as a principle of status honors was considerably important in the early Muslim society in India." In the administrative system the positions of status 'and authority were assigned to members of the families of foreign origin who had either originally accompanied the invading armies or had descended from the original immigrants. K.M Ashraf, Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (Delhi, Jiwan Prakashan, 1959), Pp.61-63. see ?S C Misra 1963, Pp.25-26. Misra writes: 'It is quite possible that these converts were in a relatively better position than their fellow Hindus. They did not have to pay the 'jazya' and charitable institutions were open for their use. But this was the nearest they approached to the centre of power represented by the Turkish aristocracy.' 54 http://www.pu.edu.pk/departments/doh_journal/naumana 9/15/09 Feroz Shah Tughluq clearly announced that one who embraced Islam, would be exempted from Jaziya. In result, large number of Hindus accepted Islam but such instances are only rare., Shams Siraj Afif, Tarihk-iFeroz Shahi trans H.M. Elliot and Dowson, in The History of India As Told by Its Own Historians Vol.1 (1867; reprint, Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2001), p.366.

55 (Ahmed, 966. 268-78) 34 possible from the available evidence to describe the relationship between the smaller units and the broader categories. 56

About the nineteenth century concept of Ashrafia Imtiaz Ahmed referred to the nineteenth century British Census Report with the refer ence of E.A Gait in these words: ―Distinction between Ashraf and Ajlaf corresponds closely to the Hindu division of the community into Dwijas, or castes of twice -born rank which comprised the various classes of the Aryan invaders, and the 57 Sudras or aborigines whom they subdued.‖

The Sayyed, Shaikh, Mughal and Pathan who are, or claim to be, descendants of the early immigrants to India consider themselves part of the Ashrafia. However, there are several internal hierarchicies according to the country of origin and the degree of nearness to the Prophet (SAW). Thus, the Sayyed who trace their descent directly from the Prophet's(SAW) daughter Fatimah(RA), are regarded as the highest in status and honour, followed in order by the Shaikh, Mughal and Pathan. The Ajlaf category includes converts from high Hindu castes, artisans and serving castes, and the untouchables. Like the Ashraf, the Ajlaf too had distinctions and clear ranks according to criteria of original caste status, traditional occupation, and caste c ustoms and practices. It is further sub-divided into a number of smaller, hereditary, endogamous groups.

56 Ahmad. "The Ashraf-Ajlaf 8/8/11

Quoted from S.C. Misra, The Rise of Muslim Power in Gujarat (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1963), P.23.

57 -E.A Gait, 'Census of India' 1901: Bengal Report 6 (1), Bengal Secretariat Press, 1902, p 439; the following description in 'Imperial Gazetteer of India', v. 2, pp 329. 'As the twice-born Aryan is to the mass of Hindus, so is the Muslims of alleged Arab, Persian, Afghan or Mughal origin to the rank and file of his co-religionists. And just as in the traditional Hindu system men of the higher groups could marry women of the lower, while the con- verse process was vigorously condemned, so within the higher ranks of the Muslims a Sayyid will marry a Shaikh's daughter but will not give his daughter in return; and marriages between upper circle of soi-distant foreigners and the main body of Indian Muslims is generally reprobated, except in parts of the country where the aristocratic element is small and must arrange its marriages as best as it can. 35

Birth as a principle of distinction was considerably important in Mughal India. "In the administrative system, positions of status and authority were assigned to members of the families of foreign origin who had either originally accompanied the invading armies or had descended from the original immigrants." 58 Misra also mentions several sub-divisions among the early Turks, and Ashraf, pointing to the fact that, "by converting to Islam, the average Muslim did not change his old location that was deeply colo ured by caste distinctions and general social exclusiveness ...... the various classes of which the Muslim community was composed began to live alienated from one another in separate quarters within the same city. Although there is no information on the interaction between groups, it appears that in matters of intimate social interaction it was the small, neighbourhood group rather than the wider ethnic identity that became 59 relevant."

It may be asked why such emphasis is placed on the Ashraf and Ajlaf categorization in early sociological literature rather than on the more relevant and meaningful smaller units. This misplaced emphasis has been carried over into sociological writings from historical literature. We have shown above how medieval historians came to accept the distinction between foreign and Indian Muslims as decisive in politics and in government. Sociologists interested in the study of Muslim social structure uncritically accepted the belief current in historical literature regarding Ashraf and Ajlaf as the basis of Muslim social stratification. Having done thus, they

58 Mohammad Yasin, A Social History of Islamic India 1605-1748 (Luckhnow: The Upper India Publishing House, 1958),Pp. 5-19.

59 K M Ashraf, 'Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan', (Delhi: Jiwan Prakashan, 1959),Pp. 61-63 Also see S C Misra, 'The Rise of Muslim Power in Gujarat', Bombay, Asia Publishing House, 1963, Pp.25 26. Mohammad Yasin, A Social History of Islamic India 1605-1748 (Luckhnow: The Upper India Publishing House, 1958), Pp.5-19. Misra writes: 'It is quite possible that these converts were in a relatively better position than, their fellow Hindus. They did not have to pay the 'jizya' and charitable institutions were open for their use. But this was the nearest they approached to the centre of power represented by the Turkish aristocracy.' 36 concentrated on analyzing the interaction between these two categories. ‖ 60 In fact, caste was far more important to study since it was a social rather than a religious institution. Conversion from one religion into another had no effect on the social standing and caste of the convert.

Caste as class in nineteenth century India

The concept of the Ashrafia or aristocracy falls within the purview of political economy which defines class positions. Karl Marx had rejected all existing ideas regarding class differentiation in a society and formulated a dichotomous division of social classes as the fight between the bourgeois and 61 proletariat.

He wrote:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serfs guide master and journey man, in a word, oppressor and the oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either, in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common run of the contending classes of social production and employer of wage labor 62.

By proletariat, Marx signified the class of modern wage labour who had no means of production of their own and were reduced to selling their labour

60 Ibid, p.23. 61 The classes are differentiated on the basis of their specific economic interest. ―The complicated arrangement of the social classes, as found in the earlier decades of the history is now being replaced by the sharp distinction between the two social classes of the capitalistic society viz. Bourgeois and Proletariat. Exploitation of the weaker by the stronger is a constant factor in history. The capitalism has created the two great hostile camps—Bourgeois and Proletariat and new forms of struggle as well as oppression 62 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Literature and Art (New York: International Publishers, 1947), p.55. 37 power in the marketplace.‖ 63 Any change in the economic structure, according to Marx, is always followed by a reciprocal change in th e class structure within society. In modern capitalist society, class struggle had assumed a simpler form 64 and the base of labour or economic activity defined all intellectual, spiritual, cultural and aesthetic activities, including its philosophy and creeds.

In the Indian subcontinent, the Hindu caste system was so strong and pervasive that it affected all those who came to live permanently in India.65 It enabled the absorption of foreign invaders into the fold of Hindu society66 except for Muslim invaders who could not be thus absorbed into Hinduism. In fact, the Muslim invasions and conquests of the Indian subcontinent during tenth and twelfth centuries AD, had the effect of hardening the caste system and there were mainly two reasons for this: first, Muslims possessed a strong and coherent culture of their own, and second, idol worship was not allowed to Muslims. It was to protect the boundaries of Hinduism that the social and religious rules and regulations of the caste system became more rigid. Hindus shut themselves up within the four walls of their

63 Karl Marx had also given a materialist conception of history. The social relationships, according to this co nception, are linked with the forces of economic production and primarily economic in nature. When the forces of production change it brings a rift between the economic factor and economic relationships. The entire social super structure which is based on economic relationship consequently changes along with a transformation in the process of production. ―But the social or economic order does not conform to the gradual emergence of the economic demand. For the older order has created its ideologies and its vested interests. It is those who are fettered by the now `obsolescent order who awaken to the consciousness of its decay and accomplish to its overthrow. A social revolution thus attends the birth of each new stage of society. The ideology of the class wh om• that order suppressed and when the new would liberate. Thus in the words of communist‘ manifesto, `the history of all hither to existing society is the history of class struggle.

64 R.N Mukherjee, A History of Social Thought, (Mussorie: Saraswati Prakasha,1960), Pp.115-116.

34. Marx, Engels, Lenin. Pp.26 -27. 65 The caste system has been a means of expansion of Hinduism. It enabled the absorption of foreign invaders into the fold of Hindu society. 66 From the days of Alexander‘s invasion to coming of the Muslims, ancient India was constantly invaded by foreign tribes and peoples. These endless invasions led to two results; first they made caste system rigid and second new comers form new caste and sub castes. 38 caste, lest they be influenced by Muslim contact. Although Muslims were not absorbed into Hinduism they were affected by this system and adopted the caste system within their ranks in a modified form based on restrictions against inter marriage between Muslims of different social status and professions.

In the 1980s, American anthropologists and historians challenged the view on the caste system in India. Inspired by Edward Said and the broader tendency within historiography to question the origin and authenticity of allegedly timeless 'traditions', they began to view many of the features of traditional India as 'invented' by the colonial state and western observers. A leading figure was the Chicago-based professor Bernard Cohn who summed up the constructivist position in the following way:

In the conceptual scheme which the British created to understand and to act in India, they constantly followed the same logic, they reduced vastly complex codes and their associated meanings to a few metonyms ... India was redefined by the British to be a place of rules and orders; once the British had defined to their own satisfaction what they construed as Indian rules and customs, then Indians had to conform to these 67 constructions

Such a view implies that, rather than being an age-old essence of Indian society, caste was a colonial invention. In a similar vein, another Chicago-based historian, Ronald Inden, identified caste as one of four major essences constructed by westerners in order to 'control' India by denying it a history of its own68. In 2001, Nicholas Dirks, who studied with Cohn in Chicago, published Castes of Mind, Colonialism and the Making of Modern India,69 which makes a comprehensive argument for a constructivist understanding

67 S.C Berrnard Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge in the British in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1966), p.162.

68 Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Oxford University press,1990),p. 56.

69 Castes of Mind argues that caste must be understood as part of a body of strategically produced colonial knowledge, but Dirks seems, however, to be aware that he cannot push this argument too far. In the introduction he states that he does not wish to 'imply that [caste] was simply invented by the too clever British' and he presents his basic argument in surprisingly uneasy terms: 'I hope to weave an argument far more complicated 39 of caste. Dirks' interpretation of caste stands in stark opposition to Dumont. He argues, ‗Caste as we know it today, is not in fact some unchanged survival of ancient India, not some single system that reflects a core civilization value, not a basic expression of Indian 70 tradition.

Although caste existed before colonialism, Dirks argues that it was thoroughly reconfigured by British rule and he even suggests that caste was 'a conscious design of British colonial policy' and invented to facilitate colonial rule71. Two years earlier - in 1999 - Susan Bayly published Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age. Bayly explicitly attempts to find a middle course between the essentialism of Dumont and the constructivism of Dirks. She sets out declaring that 'caste has for many centuries been a real and active part of Indian life and not just a self-serving Orientalist fiction', but immediately adds that caste was beget consolidated and its importance enhanced 72 under colonial rule.

To Bayly, caste has since its formative period - which she identifies as relatively late in the period between the Mughal and the British empires - been reshaped in constant interplay with economic, social and political developments in India. Thus, the British did not invent caste but they were important players in the transformation of caste as a congealed category of individuation and identity. Bayly not only insists on the social reality of caste outside its colonial conceptualization, but also maintains that in so far as caste was constructed during colonialism, Indian contributions to this construction were important.

than that the British invented caste, though in one sense this is precisely what happened' (. It appears that the constructivist line of argument has certain limits.

70 Dirks Nicholas B., Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. (Princeton: Princeton University Press.2001), p.5.

71 ibid, p.249.

72 Bayly Susan, Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999) Pp.3-4. 40

Thus, to Bayly 'so called Western "constructions" of caste had a considerable effect on Indian 73 life, especially where such views were shaped by contributions from Indians themselves'.

Tarachand looked at social divisions in Muslim society, especially the role of the elite, as marking a close parallel to the Hindu caste system. He wrote:

Like the Hindus, the Muslims too were divided into two social orders - the higher castes were known as Sharif and lower castes known as Ajlaf. Among the former were Saiyids, who followed the profession of learning, Mughals and Pathan, who were warriors, and Shaikhs who were devoted to gentle avocation- most of them were converts from the higher Hindu castes. Muslim Rajput followed the noble profession of fighting. The lower order consisted of groups whose occupations were agriculture, arts, crafts, trades, business, or pursuits considered lowly, for example, butchers, 74 sweepers, etc.

As compared to Muslims, the caste system was quite rigid among the Hindus and it was impossible for members of one caste to marry into other castes. This fact was highlighted by Dr Tarachand: ‗...among the Musalmans, however, the caste system was less rigid than it was among the Hindus. The flexibility is borne out by the following well-known line "I was a cotton-dresser originally, but then I became a sheikh. If grain becomes cheap, this year I will 75 become a Syed.‘

According to Molana Abdul Salam, there were four castes among the Muslims of the subcontinent. Primarily, the Syed, second to whom was the Mughal and then the Pathan and the Sheikh, in decreasing order. But in the real sense these were the aptitudes and titles of the people indicating their relationship to their specific area or nation or ability. The word Syed defined a chief, a commander or nobleman; the word Mughal was used for the inhabitants of the Mughlia or Mongolia of China; and Pathan is an Arabic word derived from the word

73 Ibid, p.97.

74 Dr. Tara Chand, Society and State in The Mughal Period (Book Traders : Lahore1979), Pp.29-30.

75 (Tara 1979, 31) Titus also highlighted these words:-, the low-born Indian Muslim became elitist with rise in economic status. There was a saying: "Last year I was a julaha, this year a shaikh; and the next year, if the harvest be good, I shall be a saiyyad.‖ 41

―fatan‖, the literary meaning of which is mischievous, seditious, and turbulent. It was the title given to people who entered the subcontinent from the Koh-e-Suleman.

Hierarchies within the Muslim Ashrafia

Indian Muslims were described by Mannucci in these words:

those who are descended from the family of Muhammad (SAW) but were remote from the Sayyids. These races held land and also remained in service at the courts, great and petty; they were very subtle and had great intelligence, very litigious and were great lawyers. Others became recluses and holy men and by that false 76 pretence gained a living.

During Muslim rule in India, Muslims were divided into different categories, according to their professions. 77 There was the primary difference in position between immigrants and locals and foreign settlers occupied high ranking civilian and military jobs. 78 The governors of the provinces were also

76 Quoted By Firdos Anwar, Nobility Under the Mughals (1628-1658), (Manohar Publishers & Distributors: New Delhi ). He describes the Niccolao Manucci points of views from his book Storia Do Mogor, Storia do Mogor or Mogul India, Eng. Tr. William Irvine, 4 vols, first pub. 1907; New Delhi, repr. 1981. William Irvine, The History of Later Mughals, (Lahore: Universal press, 1958), p.30.

77 http://www.bharatvani.org/books/In the subcontinent the caste system of Hindus was so strong and pervasive that it affected all those who came to settle down permanently in India, so much so that although Islam is basically an egalitarian creed which repudiates castes, the Indian Muslims succumbed to the Hindu social organization of caste. Both the Muslim groups, those who migrated from Islamic countries and the converts from Hinduism, fell under its influence. Thus we find that the Arabs, Turks, Persians and Mughals, and Pathans, Saiyids and Shaikhs, acquired the characteristics of caste, and the Indian Muslims—Rajputs ,Jats, Gujjar, Brahmans and Kshatriyas, etc., retained their ancestral social exclusivenesses and the customs of marriage, inheritance and status which they possessed before conversion.

78 Mohammad Yasin, A Social History of Islamic India 1605-1748 (Luckhnow: The Upper India Publishing House, 1958), p.27. http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ 42 important leaders and were awarded large or small jagirs (Iqta)79 according to their station and in lieu of their service to the state. 80

The nobles or higher ranking courtiers were known as Umra. In the Sultanate period, they were graded as Khans, Maliks, Amirs and Sipehsalrs, and were known Mansabdars under the Mughals. 81Athar Ali 82 in his book entitled The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, recounts the administrative structure of the Mughal Empire and role of the nobles in the last years of rule. According to him, the term ‗nobility‘ generally denotes a class of persons who are officers of the king and, at the same time, formed the superior class 83 in the political order.‖

Athar Ali writes about the composition of the nobility that Shahjahan inherited as heterogeneous. Akbar had opened the way for this but this, inclusivity on the part of the Mughal nobility cannot be interpreted as a sense of equality or open hearted welcome to all meritorious candidates. The nobility was an elite class and closed to ordinary people. It was not possible

79 Abul Qasim Ferishta, Tarikh-i-Ferishta Vol.I (trans.) John Briggs, History of the Rise of the Mohammedan Power in India (1829; reprint, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1977), P. 230. It was only Alaud din Khilji who tried to overcome the power and authority of the iqta-holders while confiscating the whole land but after his rule the same old system came into practice again. http://www.bharatvani.org/books/

80 http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ Kunwar Mohammad Ashraf, Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan 1200-1550 A.D. (1935; reprint, Karachi: Indus Publications, 1978), p.341.

81 Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb (Bombay, Oxford University Press,1968); Zia-ud-Din Barani, Tarikh-i-Feroz Shahi trans Elliot and Dowson, in The History of India As Told by Its Own Historians Vol.1 (1867; reprint Delhi: low Price Publications, Reprint 2001), p.145.

82 M. Athar Ali (1925-1998) was a prominent scholar of mediaeval Indian history, this book is based on the his PhD thesis submitted with the same title to the Aligarh University. It was first published in 1966.

83 Ather Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, (Bombay: 1966. 2nd edn, New Delhi, 1997) p.2. 43 to enter their ranks whatever the merits. 84 Bernier describes the foreign settlers at the court during seventeenth century Mughal Ind ia in these words:

The Omarah mostly consist of adventurers from different nations who entice one another to the court and are generally persons of low descent, some having been originally slaves, and the m ajority being destitute of education. The Mughul raises them to dignities, or degrades them to obscurity; according to his own pleasure and caprice.The Mansabdars were not only government officers but also the richest class in the empire. They formed a clo sed aristocracy and entrance into this class was not usually possible for the common people. The matter of birth and bloodline defined merit to rule. Naturally, therefore, the most important factor which was taken into account when nobles were appointed was heredity. The Khanazads, as the sons and descendants of Mansabdars, had the best claim to such 85 appointments.

Wealthy landowners were another class of people whose elders and relatives had not been in Mughal service since they were families of independent means. They played a pivotal role in the political, economic and cultural life of united India before Mughal rule and were courtiers when the

Mughals came to power. 86

Even before Shahjahan, the Mughal court wore a heterogeneous look with religious and racial minorities being accommodated. The court included Turanis, Iranis, Afghans, Sheikhzadas Rajputs, etc. The Deccani were accommodated in the seventeenth century with the advancement of Mughal power in that region. These differences were incorporated i nto the Mughal

84 Ibid, p.11. 85 K.S. Lal, The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India, (New Delhi: voice of India, 1980),chapter v

86 Firdos Anwar, Nobility Under the Mughals (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 1975), 25. 44 court largely as a result of historical circumstances but partly, as in the case of the Rajputs, as a result of planned imperial policy. 87

The immigrant nobility came from various parts of the world and as mentioned and categorized by the Firdosi: ―the leading components of this category were Iranis and Turanis, Afghans, Rajputs, Decannis, Marathas etc."88 W.H. Moreland wrote: ―There were huge prizes to be won... and one need not wonder that the service should have attracted to the court the ablest 89 and most enterprising men from a large portion of Western Asia."

The Turani were people from Central Asia whose mother tongue was Turkish language. 90 The fourteenth century Persian chronicler, Ziyauddin Barani, who was born in India traced his ancestry to a Turkish noble, credits the foreigner Turks with all possible virtues and the Indian Muslims with all kinds of imperfection. They occupied the large part of Northern India and established their rule between1206-1526.

Since Akbar, the Turani formed an important faction of the Mughal darbar. It was during his rule that a major transformation took place in the structure of the Mughal nobility when the essentially Turani complexion gradually gave way to a ―homogeneous nobility" drawn from various racial and religious stock.

The Irani were people whose mother tongue was Persian were an important part of the Mughal darbar and came from th e areas presently extending across Iran, Iraq to Afghanistan. 9 1 They held considerable influence on the politics, economy and society of Mughal Empire and had

87 (Ali 1963, 15)

88 (Anwar 1975, 27) 89 Moreland, India at the Death of Akbar, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), Pp.69, 71.

90 (Lal 1980,chapter v)

91 Ibid 45 more privileges and facilities as compared to other noble. 92 They usually took the title of Mirza. This group emerged as a powerful faction in Mughal rule. Under Akbar and Jahangir, they enjoyed high esteem due to their excellent service, devotion and sincerity. As Firdos Anwar reflects on their powerful status in these words:

The Iranis emerged as a powerful faction even during the reign of Akbar due to their `undivided support‘ to the Mughal crown. The process continued during Jahangir‘s reign. Their excellent services, devotion and sincerity carved out a distinct place for them in the court of Jahangir. The Iranis maintained their improved and elevat ed position during Shahjahan‘s reign. They emerged as the only dominant group of nobles. In spite of all fluctuations in the number of the nobility and in the political currents of this period, Iranis maintained 93 their hold as the only major faction of Shah jahan‘s nobility.

The word Deccani was applied to nobles who had been in the service of the Deccani Kingdom before joining the Mughals. 94 Deccan is a triangular peninsula, surrounded by the ranges of Vindhya and Satpura in the north and the two eastern and western Ghats on its two sides. It is a plateau cut into many parts by several fast moving rivers and deep valleys. The state of Deogiri was conquered by Alla-ud-Din Khilji in I492. Muhammad Bin Tughluq decided to shift his capital from Delhi to Deogir i in Deccan and renamed it Daulatabad. He constructed many palaces and other buildings there and ordered his nobles to do the same. The entire population of the old capital was compelled to shift to Daulatabad under great hardship. People

92 For further details see, Iqtidar Alam Khan, ―The Nobility under Akbar‖, p. 35, Richards, Cambridge History of India, p. 145. Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility under Aurangzeb, Pp19-20,35.

93 (Anwar 1975, 29)

94 Ibid, p.34. The word `Deccani‘ was generally applied to those nobles who had been in the service of the Deccani kingdoms before joining the Mughals. 46 brought their culture and habits and their language also flourished in this region which is known as Urdu. During the last years of Muhammad Tughluq, the Tughluq Empire began to break up and two independent states came into being in the namely, the Behmani Kingdom 95 in the northern Deccan and the Vijianagar Empire to its south. These two states had an acrimonious relationship that was fostered by the Hindu rulers of Vijianagar as a Bulwark against Muslim invasions from the north. The Behmini Kingdom being Muslim had a note worthy impact on Urdu literature when the rulers of this state made Urdu the official language and p romoted men of learning. But this state declined in power due to the internecine conflict of Decanni Muslim who were Sunni and the foreign Muslim settlers who were of Arab, Turkish or Persian descent. In 1686 AD, Aurangzeb conquered this region and made it a of the Mughal empire.

The people of Afghanistan were in common parlance known as Afghans, a term which includes different races of Afghan, Pathan, Ghilzais, Tajik and Hazara. The Afghans held a prominent place in the political life of India since the days of the sultans of Delhi. Under Balban, the Khaljis and Tughlaqs, they were trusted for their bravery and were favoured by the rulers. They came to the fore during the Sayyid period, when the Lodhi Afghans came to rule. In the Mughal period, right from t he days of Babar down to Akbar, there had been an almost constant armed tussle between the Mughals and the Afghans. Akbar put no trust in them due to his bitter experience, but they rose to prominence during Jahangir‘s period. Khan -e- Jahan Lodhi came so close to the emperor that he had no rivals at the court. Shahjahan inaugurated his regime with a favorable policy towards the Afghans.

95 In 1347 the 100 Turkish nobles whom the Sultan sent to crush the reblion in deccan, themselves revolted under the Afghan leader, named Ismail Makh. When he proved unfit to lead the, they elected another person, named Hassan Gangu, as their leader. He captured Daulatabad in 1347 and made it the capital of his kingdom and ascended the throne with the title of Hassan Bahman shah. 47

Babur did not distinguish between Pathans and Afghans. He gives the names of a large number of Pathan tribes but does not refer to them as Pathans but calls them Afghan and their language Afghani. 96 In the Mughal period from Babar down to Akbar there had been an almost constant armed tussle between the Mughals and the Afghans. Khan-e-Jahan Lodhi came so close to the emperor that he had no rivals at the court. Shahjahan inaugurated his regime with a neutral, favourable policy towards the Afghans. Rita Joshi comments:

As regards the attitude of the Mughal ruling family towards them, it was neither of aversion and hostility, nor was it very friendly and cordial. Circumstances, expediency and the exigency of the situation mainly determined the Emperor‘s attitude towards his Afghan nobles. It may, however, be admitted that there was a constant fear in the minds of the Mughal Emperors that too much laxity towards them might provide the Afghans with an opportunity to oust the Mughals and regain 97 their lost sovereign power.

It is beyond doubt that throughout this period, foreigners continued to dominate the Mughal bureaucracy. Moreland‘s analysis is that Mughal service was predominantly foreign in nature. While commenting on the list of mansabdars in Ain-i-Akbari, he says that about 70 per cent of the nobles, whose origin is known, were immigrants. 98 There were other groups of 99 foreigners at the court such as the Arabs and the Abyssinians.

The rise or decline in the number of the nobility was closely associated with the prevailing conditions and the increasing or decreasing utility of this

96 Zaheer-din Muhammad Babur Badshah Ghaznavi, Babur-Nama (trans.), Annette S. Beveridge, (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 1987), p.201. 97 Rita Joshi, The Afghan Nobility & The Mughals (1526-1707), ( New Delhi; 1985), p.185.

98 (Rita 1985, 194) also see (Moreland 1988, 69 -70)

99 Ibid,P. 36 48 group. After Shahjahan‘s involvement in the Deccan, more active support was required from this class, hence more promotions and new addition s to the mansab. Political expediency also required the association of Deccanis in the Mughal nobility. They were rewarded with high mansabs for their betrayal of their earlier masters. Old nobles too were rewarded for their services. All this led to a rise (from 274 to 342) in the number of the nobility in the first phase. In the second and less eventful period (1637 -41), also due to the death of many nobles, a sharp decline may be seen in their total strength. The number again rises in the last phase, esp ecially in the case of mansabdars, from 1000 to 2700. This raised the total number of the nobles from 255 to 448, and exposed the futility of Shahjahan‘s efforts in the second phase to control the size of the nobility.

Decadence in the lifestyle of the Muslim aristocracy

In the Sultanate period, 712-1526 AD, Muslim aristocracy or Ashrafia settled in separate localities, and just as in Balban‘s time there were Abbasi

Street, Khwarzam Shahi Street, Alwi Street, etc. 100 Since they were prosperous, they commanded authority and influence over the general public in the period between 712-1857AD. Their services to the ruling classes cemented the bases of their power and the Ashrafia introduced different agendas and initiated new styles in politics and economics, b ut also in culture and the arts, particularly in architecture that gave them a place in history.

The facilities and privileges they enjoyed were due to the services rendered to the rulers. It made their lifestyle lavish and artistic but, with the passage of time, they indulged in immoral activities like spending money on gambling and on courtesans which often cost them their estates and the

100 Sabahuddin Abdal-Rehman, Bazm-i-Mamlukiyah (Urdu) (1951; reprint, Lahore: Printline Publishers, 2001), P.185. 49 prestige of their forefathers as they fell into debt and disrepute. The ulema and nobility were exempted from paying any kind of the tax while they enjoyed a number of facilities that were not available to the common man. 101

The Ashrafia of this period spent luxurious amounts on their food and clothing, as a result of which great taste was acquired in cuisine and in comportment. They used meat, butter, spices, pickles and desserts in their diet. Ibn-i-Batuta has given a detailed description of the eating h abits and cuisine that was offered to guests, 102 where slave girls and boys were employed to cook and serve the food. 103 As for their dress, they used expensive but pure cloth like silk or fine muslin, according to the requirement of the weather. The sultan and his nobles wore a dignified head dress, the Kulah, and a tunic of brocade and velvet with a white belt. The ulema used large turbans, a head-dress as well as insignia of knowledge; the Sufi wore an abaya of coarse cloth, and the taqiyah, a four -cornered skull 104 cap.

Ibn-e-Batuta also highlighted the lifestyle of the nobles in the Sultan period in these words:

The houses of the rich were constructed after the pattern of the Sultan‘s palace. The buildings were spacious, consisted of big rooms, drawing rooms, baths, a spacious courtyard and even a library. Separate apartments for ladies and slaves were constructed. Household and furniture of such dwellings was very costly which includ ed chairs, decoration pieces, costly utensils, carpets, mats, vessels and many

101 Hans Raj, History of Medieval India (Delhi: Surjeet Publications, 1986), Pp.145-147; S.M. Ikram, History of Muslim Civilization in India and Pakistan(Lahore: Star Book Depot, 1962), p.162.

102 Ibn-e- Batuta, trans. Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354 H.A.R.Gibb (1929; reprint, Rawalpindi: Service Book Club, 1985),.p 88.

103 for further detail consult Ashraf, life and conditions, 182-83, Mujeeb, Indian Muslims, p. 220

104 Ashraf, Life and conditions, 175. Mujeeb, Indian Muslims, p.221. 50

other items. Beds were of light weight and covered with silk mats and 105 pillows.

As times changed, the Muslim Ashrafia gained in power during the reign of the Mughals from 1526-1707.The ostentatious lifestyle of the nobles during Mughal rule has been much documented and commented upon by different writers. Their lifestyle was unparalleled and the most sumptuous court of the world could not compete with their richness and m agnificent 106 standards.

K.S Lal highlights the luxurious lifestyle and splendour of the upper classes during Mughal rule:

Their splendid life-style may be studied in its two aspects - private inside the harem and public outside of it. They lived in magnificent mansions some costing four to six thousand gold tankahs (dinars) and provided with all amenities. By the seventeenth century, the Mahals of the nobles had gained in architectural excellence and constructional 107 designs at Agra, on the banks of the Jumna.

There is also a description of the palace of Asif Khan, the prime minister of Jahangir. Many people had erected build ings of three or four storeys, but Asaf Khan‘s palace was exceedingly beautiful and costly, while the others were equally elegant. The basic pattern of the mansions of the nobles was the same. One portion of the building was the Diwan Khana or the men‘s quarters, but the greater portion was occupied by their ladies and was called Zenan Khana, ―In the houses of the nobles, the women‘s apartments are in

105 (Battuta 1985, 90)

106 Manucci, II, 330. Also Francsico Pelsaert, Jahangir‟ India: The Remonstratie of Francisco Pelsaert, Eng. tr. W.H. Moreland and P. Geyl, Delhi, 1972; first pub. 1925. Pp.1-5. 107 K.S Lal, The Legacy of Muslim India chapter.v , http://www.bharatvani.org/books/ 51 the centre, and it is generally necessary to traverse two or three large 108 courtyards and a garden or two before reaching there. ‖

K.S Lal also quoted the observation of Bernier on the outstanding living standards of the Mughal nobility and their houses, spacious with inner courtyards and outer gardens with basins of water, small fountains in the hallway and handsome subterranean living quarters furnished with large fans. All the arcades and galleries were covered from top to bottom with brocade and even the pavement was dressed with a rich carpet. 109

At the end of four generations of rule, the vitality of the imperial Mughals was exhausted and the living conditions of later Mughlas differed considerably in the period between 1707- 1857A.D. This became evident from the sixth generation onwards in the reign of Jahandar Shah and Muhammad Shah, who ruled for about thirty years but dissipated themselves in debauchery and indulgence in opium. Aurangzeb‘s weak successors had a direct responsibility for the decline of the peerage being incapable of selecting prudent advisors and aides and attracting vigorous new blood to the nobility, of promoting devotion and loyalty, and of functioning as masters and guides in the management of affairs. As a result of their indiscretions, the imperial throne ceased to command respect and to function as the supreme integrating factor. Left to themselves, the nobles approached political and military issues for personal and group interest. This is well illustrated in the rivalry of the Irani, Turani 110 and Hindustani nobles in the period following Aurangzeb.

M. Athar Ali points to specific reasons for the decline of Mughal rule in the reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707). He writes of the selfish attitude and interests of the Mughal nobility which blinded them to all future danger. They lacked administrative skill and were extremely short sighted and insincere in their commitment to their subjects. They had no interest in

108 Ibid, quoted by William Finch, Early Travels in India, 165, Pleasart, Jahangir‘s India, 393. G.K Kuppuram., India through the Ages-History, Art, Culture and Religion, vol.ii

109 (Moreland 1998, 68.) 110 Anil Chandra Banerjee, History of India (Calcutta: Bankam Chatterjee Street,1922),p. 214. 52

public reform but encouraged the fine arts and literature on a small scale. 111 Internal disputes paved the way for external crises as William Irvine (1840-1911) author of The Army of the Moghuls: its organization and administration (1903) writes: military inefficiency was the principal if not the sole cause of the decline of the Mughal Empire. All other defects and weakness were as nothing as compared to this. The later Mughals did not enhance their military power and equipment, depending on mercenaries to defend the empire. After the death of Aurangzeb Alamgir in 1707, a familiar pattern emerged of the dissolution of a great empire with numerous rival successors fighting each other. The degeneration of the imperial family synchronized with the degeneration of the nobility. In the period following Aurangzeb, the Mughal nobility excelled in fractious intrigues rather than in political and military acumen which had distinguished 112 their predecessors.

The process of decline was hastened by invasions from the north -west, which resulted in the attack and sacking of Delhi by Nadir Shah. 113 He was an adventurer and chief commander of the Persian army and when he heard of the internal crises of the Mughal rulers and the wealth of India, he decided to try his fortune. Thereafter, the Mughal Empire ceased to exist as a major political force and India was ruled by a number of competing Hindu and Muslim powers. Among the latter were the independent states established by two former grandees of the empire in Hyderabad in the south, and in Awadh in the UP, with Lucknow as its capital.

As Sri Ram Sarma writes, the rulers want to continue the privileges and amenities of the Mughals: ―the new rulers of Oudh, Bengal, Hyderabad and Karnatak continued calling themselves Nawab Vazir, Nawab or Nizam,

111 Athar Ali, The Mughal Nobility, also see for detail Satish Chandra, Parties and Politics at the Mughal Court, 1707-1740. Aligarh, 1959.

112 Dr. Ghulam Hussain gives detail description about the decline of Mughal power and warrior and immoral history of later Mughal. The men of learning were also affected and their heart was full of sorrow, this grief also highlighted in their poetry and prose, P.123. 1 1 3 Narayani Gupta, Delhi Between two Empires: 1803-1931,Society, Government and Urban Growth (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981),P.45. 53 positions which their founder had occupied in the Mughal administration."

114 Neither state was able to establish itself as a viable successor to the Mughals, not least because of the establishment of a British presence in 115 Bengal after Clive‘s Victory at Plassey in 1757.

The decline of central authority was the outcome of the decline in the nobility, the pillars of administration. In his last days, the emperor was surrounded by parasites, flattering clowns, politically juvenile and non-serious people, instead of competent and efficient men of character. These people thought more about accumulating wealth and securing their social position without realizing that this would not be possible if the honor and prestige of the Mughal Empire declined. As Jadu Nath Sarkar writes:

To the thoughtful student of Mughal history, nothing is more striking than the decline of the peerage. The heroes adorn the stage for one generation only. Abdur Rahim and Muhabat, Sa‘dullah and Mir Jumla, Ibrahim and Islam khan Rumi, who had made the history of India in the seventeenth century, were succeeded by no son, certainly by no grandson, even half as capable as themselves. The Rajput nobility, which was a pillar of strength for the empire, did not produce in the eighteenth century any one 116 comparable to Man Singh and Mirza Raja Jai Singh."

While the earlier Mughals had ruled with the help of a strongly loyalist nobility, later Mughals neglected this building of consensus and the support of a diverse group. They were not as interested in governance as they were in enjoying the

114 Sri Ram Sharma., Mughal Government and administration, (Bombay: US Mohan Rao Hind Kitab Lt., 1951) , p.2. 115 David J. Methew, Shakle, Christopher and Hussain Sharukh, Urdu Literature (Islamabad, Alhamra, 2003), p.98.

116 ( Banerjee 1922, 215) 54

fruits of power so, instead of looking to secure the boundaries of their empire, building military strength and establishing a sense of justice and well being among their subjects, they whiled away their time in luxury. 117 Rulers like Jahandar Shah and Muhammad Shah were notorious for their interests in dancing women and wine and hundreds of dancing girls and prostitutes were admitted into the royal harem. Lal Kanwar, Udham Bhai, and Zeenat Afroz were prominent and influential ladies of the

royal court who had been initially brought in as entertainers. 118

British rule and the Ashrafia

The opulent lifestyle of the Ashrafia declined with the advent of the British. The colonials brought new methods of governance and new cultural norms in the form of western modernity where rationality and instrumental thinking was introduced to the lives of the people of subcontinent. This affected the lifestyle and ways of thinking of the local Indians forever. 119

Initially, the British sought to mimic the local rulers, adopting some of their ways as the ―white Mughals‖ 120 Dennis Kincaid comments on the lavish ways of governing of the early British rulers. His book is a portraiture of British officers:

A gentleman‘s house had to be stocked with an army of servants. They descended the grand staircase between a double file of servants who bowed like Mughal courtiers at their approach. Hickey ( a British

117 Zulfiqar Ali Khan and Syed Brothers and Itmat-ud-Daula were selfish and dishonest in characters; they secured their own interest and were responsible for blood shed of innocent people and decline of the Mughal Empire.

th 118 Syed Ali Abbas, Socio-Economic Crises in the 18 Century, (Lahore: Oxford University Press, 1999)p.76 ] 119 James Mill, The History of British India vol.iii, (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributers, 1992) detail description is defines about the British reforms and governor generals.

120William Darlymple, White Mughals Love and Betryal in Eighteenth Century India: (London: Harper Colins, 2002) 55

officer), not a wealthy man by Calcutta standards, employed sixty - three servants, including ei ght whose only duty was to wait at table, three to cut the grass in the garden, four grooms and one coachman, two bakers, two cooks, a hairdresser and nine valets. The richer merchants employed upwards of a hundred servants and some of them were styled by most outlandish names. The wig-barber (superior employee, the hairdresser) was as inevitable in every fashionable house as the Hooka burdar, who not only tended the gentlemen‘s hookahs at home, kept the silver chains and rosettes brightly polished, blew on the charcoal and renewed the rose water, but also accompanied his master abroad even to dinners at Government House, at which, after the ladies had withdrawn, the hookah -bearers entered in solemn procession, each taking up his position near his master, to whom he handed the ivory mouthpiece after unwinding the enormous coil of piping from round the fleck of the hookah. It was important to arrange the hookahs properly, for it was considered an insult to step 121 over another‘s hookah-snake.

The British initially came to India for the purpose of trade, to export raw material for their industry in Britain. They encouraged trade among local nobles and established cordial relations with both the Muslim and the Hindu gentry. This gave rise to what C. A. Bayly call s the service gentry, the commercialization of royal power during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which encouraged the development of a rooted service gentry and a unified merchant class. The service gentry perpetuated its identity and its economic dominance over the institutions of the rural qasbah town. The merchant class was formally divided by caste and function. 122 It was the need of the hour to garner the support of these classes and Bayly writes:

121 Kincaid, British Social Life in India , p.82. 122 C.A Bayly., Townsmen and Bazarrs, North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770-1870, (London: Oxford University Press, 1992),p.450. 56

Eighteenth-century rulers were at the mercy of powerful interests which provided the tools for state- building. They depended on the support or at least the acquiescence of autonomous bodies of mercenary soldiers, Indian and foreign merchants or revenue entrepreneurs, families of administrative `gentry‘ 123, and mobile bands of specialist peasant farmers. Such groups straddled several petty kingdoms and were able to redirect their service between one and another, enhancing their own economic security and se nse of 124 identity in the process.

Bayly adds that the weakness of central structure paved the way for the growth of service gentry.

... `decentralization‘ of political power during the eighteenth century encouraged the further growth of a rooted service gentry and a homogeneous merchant class operating around small town centers. In the early colonial period, British government deflected these changes with a cost-cutting, centralizing policy which had seriously eroded the bases of the `eighteenth-century‘ political economy by the 1830s and 125 1840s.

This gave rise to a new class among the Hindu-Muslim community who tried to secure their interests by working with the British even at the expense of their own people. They secured illegal and legal means to pursue this and were aided by the ruling elite. 126 The Muslim nobility was not as keen to work with the new British masters since they had known better times under

123 The rulers required a constant expansion of revenue by conquest or agricultural growth to `satisfy the aspirations of the nobility and official classes. If they could not provide office, honor and land-grants, then its own servants began to lose the will to play the Delhi game. These magnates found other, parochial ways of satisfying their urge to become kings or landed gentry, independent of the emperor or even in opposition to 123 him

124 (Bayly, Townsmen and Bazarrs, 1992, 5-6) 125 Ibid., Generations of Europeans regarded the Mughals as a magnificent predatory horde. Mughal rulers seemed to be operating a vast system of plunder which frustrated the development of a landed gentry or a secure mercantile society in South Asia.p.7 126 As a supporter of British government thae were awarded the titles of Khan Bahadur, Sir ,Roy.. 57

Muslim rule. They were not trusted by the British for this reason while the Hindus made better allies for the British and were eager to please their new rulers. The Muslim Ashrafia was caught in a double bind of being considered untrustworthy by the British and looked down upon as dishonourable if they tried to ape their new masters.

The period after the failed war of 1857 was a particularly dark time for the Muslims of India who felt betrayed by their rulers and hostile to the new order. Their situation was aggravated by the ulema who opposed western education and their civilisational values. It must be admitted that this was perhaps the last defense of the Muslim population in attempting to withstand colonial modernity and holding on to an indigenous sense of values.

After the war, the British consolidated their rule with greater vigour, the Muslim Ashrafia split into two equally weak factions: the conservatives who held on to the memory of their past glory and splendours of the Mughal court, and the liberal or Azad Khayal Ashrafia who tried to get closer to the rulers and follow in their steps.

Dennis Kincaid mentions the dissimilarities between British and Indian culture which becomes the salient feature of post war 1857 Ashrafia. He writes:

They neither understood nor liked each other as a general rule; but the Indian nobles had learnt their manners in the Mughal court and the English residents or soldiers were men of the world with something of

the cynical tolerance and outward polish of that century. 127

A new generation of Muslim nobility emerged post 1987 as the Brown Muslim Saab or the Babu128 gentleman.129 This was the western educated elite

127 Kincaid, Dennis, British social life in India 1608- 1937, (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p.106.

128 Dr. Ghulam Hussain Zulfiqar, Dr Zulfiqar used this word for the new elite who can speak weak English and follow the lifestyle of British they showed their privilege status among the native but remained coward in front of rulers. P.74 . 58 in various professions who worked as lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists and businessmen. They set up new urban residential quarters on the pattern of western towns, following the western pattern of constructing separate drawing and dining rooms, bedrooms with attached bathrooms and front lawns and gardens for private parties. Accommodation was provided to the servants – the servant quarters- and when private parties were of a more formal nature, these servants spread carpets and cushions under the shade of mango trees with mosquito nets hanging from branch to branch to create a netted tent. The interiors of houses were no longer full of heavy and huge carved furniture, side boards and tables. Instead, clean smooth China matting to cover the floor, ―a few basket chairs, and a fine-toned piano and a good billiard- 130 table‖ were sufficient furniture.

This new generation was also inspired by the eating habits of the Europeans. There would be fish and cold meat and fruits and a gre at variety of drinks and other dishes on the table. They tried to eat light instead of the oily and spicy Indian food. The English breakfast was a particular snobbery, using porridge, butter, jam, egg and toast with soup, salads, and fruit for lunch and dinner.131 They imitated the western style of smoking instead of the Hookah. Dennis writes about the young smokers:

It was becoming a subject for comment that the gentlemen smoked as they drove, but this roused a great deal of criticism. A hookah after dinner or in the seclusion of a box at the theatre was permitted, but the smoking of cheroots in public provoked a journal to protest angrily against the young men who could be seen lolling in their buggies, puffing away with the greatest nonchalance possible.

th 129 In 19 century the word gentleman came in common use to signify not a distinction of blood, but a distinction of position, education and manners and title was adopted a western style native of the people of subcontinent. 130 ( Kincaid 1938,53)

131 For further detail see (Dennis Kincaid,1938), he portrays their amusement, lavish lifestyle in India. 59

Even in 1856, a newspaper critic was disgusted to note that "several young men light their cheroots as soon as the dark of evening is s ufficient to prevent a full recognition of their persons and veil their impertinence." But criticism failed to check this practice. The young men hung around the bandstand at twilight, lurking in the shadows of great mango trees and the more respectable citizens were so incensed at the sight of the glowing pinpoints of light that evidenced a group of open-air smokers that there was some demand for police 132 action."

This new generation of Muslim men went to English schools and spoke the English language. 133 Within this group, old caste barriers were eased and social mobility increased. In eating, clothing and accommodation they adopted western mores and tried to avoid their past practices in this regard. This mixing of cultures generated trouble for both the natives and their foreign rulers as Dennis Kincaid writes: "Europeanized Indians and Indianised Europeans were not typical of India." 134 There was angry response from both ends by the conservatives of each culture: "Lingering Victorian values, implicit in the lives of the British and the Domiciled Europeans, deemed it necessary to set an example of fine behavior, demonstrating their superiority to the "backward" Indians. 135 This notion of behavior linked to moral rectitude set a code of conduct by the Raj ICS officers down through to the working classes. In line with these cultural norms, Domiciled

132 (Dennis Kincaid 1938, 145-146)

133 Dr. Ghulam Hussain Zulfiqar, Urdu Shairee ka siasi, In the social system of British India the low ranks person emerged as privildge cl1ass they were awarded lands as the result of loyalty with British, they were educated with the lord Macaulay English system, p.74.

134 (Kincaid 1938, 106)

135 www.alphalink.com.au/identified dmiciled european/ 11/16/08 Margaret McMillan, Anglo-Indians and the Civilizing Mission 1880-1914 in Contributions to South Asian Studies,(India 1982: ) , Pp.78-82. 60

Europeans considered it essential to maintain a strict code of etiquette in their 136 everyday family lives."

The most important issue for British officials serving in India was the upbringing of their children. British mothers generally depended on Indian wet nurses 137 to nurse their children, ―as European wet nurses were not available and British physicians advised mothers not to breast-feed their own children since the climate was thought to be too debilitating." 138 Most British parents believed that if their children stayed in India for too long the climate and environment would weaken their constitution, perh aps forever. Even an English nurse was not a sufficient protection from this danger, so British parents sent their children back to England at a very early age, boys usually leaving India by the time they were five-years-old, and girls by the age of 139 seven or eight.

136 Ibid

137 The wet nurses, commonly called ammahs, were low-caste Hindus or Muslims. Many Memsahibs (British married women in India) hired an Indian wet nurse for the infants and Indian ayahs (nurses) for the other needs of their children, although many greatly disliked the idea. Besides having an ayah, many Anglo-Indian parents hired a male servant, or bearer, for their male children. Anglo-Indian children spent most of their waking hours with Indian servants. These domestics, serving frequently as playmates, taught the children local words like bhaia (brother) and baba (infant), and often "papa" and "mama" as well. Children generally developed a close attachment to their ayahs and bearers and the close bond served to provide comfort to the children when the families were in transit. As the time came for the Anglo-Indian mothers to take their children to England, some took their children's ayahs or bearers with them. 138 www.fags.org/childhood/British-Colonialism-in-India/4/30/12

139 www.encyclopedia.com/11/23/11 Colonialism influenced the texture of British family life in India. Anglo- Indian children lived in the Indian subcontinent without a lasting home base. Soon after their birth, many children had to be separated from their fathers for six to seven months to avoid the summer heat. Their daily routines were disrupted by their fathers' recurrent job transfers. By the time these children reached the age of seven, many of them returned to Britain without their parents. Thus, unlike their contemporaries in Britain, the Anglo-Indian children seldom had a stable home life with both parents around. Although it was common for upper- and upper-middle-class children in Victorian Britain to go away to boarding school for months at a time, the Anglo-Indian children were often not able to see their parents for periods extending over many years. 61

The confusion caused by the blurred identity of the Domiciled European community, initially categorized with the British and subsequently with the racially mixed blood Anglo-Indians, resulted in historians such as Coralie Younger designating it a status of the "neglected children of the Raj". The British ruling elite intensified racial, cultural and caste differences in society because any elite based on racial or caste "purity" would discourage inter-marriage since these liaisons blurred distinctions. 140 And yet, this racial mixing could not be prevented. British soldiers had physical relations with local women and some of them got married while others maintained concubines. The children from such marriages were so numerous 141 that this gave rise to another ethnicity of mixed races, the Anglo I ndian, who was placed as an elite group within natives and an inferior group among the British. 142 When their children grew up they usually served in the East India Company or as government servants. "During the period between 1830 and 1880, a large number of British children either went to India with their parents or were born there and children born from the Indian women were known as Anglo Indians." 143 The Anglo-Indian community in its modern

140 www.alphalink.com.au/identified dmiciled european/ 11/16/08 Corralie Younger Anglo-Indians: Neglected Children of the Raj (Delhi: B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1983), p. 40. 141 The Oxford Dictionary's definition of "Anglo-Indian" is "Of mixed British and Indian parentage, of Indian descent but born or living in Britain, or chiefly historical of British descent or birth but living or having lived long in India"Current historiography acknowledges the existence of Domiciled Europeans in colonial India, often referring to them as "poor whites, who held inferior jobs on the railways and in commercial firms"; - Coralie Younger Anglo-Indians: Neglected Children of the Raj (Delhi, B.R. Publishing Corporation, 1983), 40. David Arnold, "European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the Nineteenth Century" in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, (Vol.VII:2, 1979), 104. and Lionel Caplan "Cupid in Colonial and Post-Colonial South India: Changing ‗Marriage‘ Practices among Anglo-Indians in Madras" in South Asia (Vol. XXI, No.2, 1998), Pp.6-7.

142 -The East India Company's Board of Directors did not allow families or wives to travel along with its officials and soldiers to India. The English missed the companionship of their women and many of them had relationships with Indian women. The offspring of these mixed marriages and relationships are known as the Anglo-Indians. In 1687, the EIC encouraged marriages between European soldiers and Indian women, and even paid the mother of mixed offspring five rupees on the day the child was christened. This detail information also describes by the Shams ur Rehaman Farooqi in his novel Kea Chand They Sare Asmaan. 143 www.encyclopedia.com/british colonialism in india/11/23/11 62 sense is a small minority community originating in India. They consist of people from mixed British and Indian ancestry whose native language is English." 144 There is also a description of the Anglo-Indians in the Article 366(2) of the Indian Constitution:

A person whose father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is domiciled within the territory of India and is or was born within such territory of parents habitually resident therein and not establi shed there for temporary purposes only." 1 45 They considered themselves part of the British community, as opposed to the racially mixed European and Indian community who were called Eurasians or ―half castes", those from mixed unions with fair skins began to call themselves Anglo- 146 Indians.

Patronage of Urdu literature by the Ashrafta and the rise of the Delhi and Lucknow schools

After the death of Aurangzeb and in the period of later Mughals, Urdu literature thrived as the court not only patronized poetry but some of the later Mughals were also noteworthy poets of their time. Although there was great political upheaval, this did not have an adverse effect on the development of Urdu language and literature in India. The emperor Shah Alam II (1761-1806) was familiar with Arabic and Persian and was also well -

The accounts of children's lives are in parents' letters and diaries, and in contemporary domestic manuals. If all of these writings are read as a corpus, a picture emerges about British childhood in India. Detail and biographical bio data of these child also highlighted by Shamas-ur-Rehman Farooqi, Kae Chan they Sar-eAsmaan, Karachi, Scheherazade, Karachi, 2006.

144 www.medbid.com/anglo-indians/8/21/10

145 R. Dean, Wright and Susan W. Wright, The Anglo-Indian Community in Contemporary India. (Midwest Quarterly XII Winter, 1971), Pp.175 - 185.

146 www.alphalink.com.au/identified dmiciled european/ 11/16/08 Dorothy Mcmenamin, identifying domiciled Europeans in colonial India: poor Whites or privileges Community. 63 versed in Turkish and Hindustani languages. 147Mohammad Shah (1719- 1748) was a great patron of art and literature. In the early and peaceful part of his reign, a large number of Urdu poets assembled in Delhi and founded the Delhi School of Literature. 14 8Similarly, Akbar Shah (1806-1837) and Babadur Shah Zafar (1837-1854) were both Urdu poets. In 1739, Nadir Shah sacked Delhi which was a heavy blow to the reign of Mohamad Shah. Soon after, Ahmad Shah Abdali began his repeated invasions of India between 1748 and 1761.These incursions as well as the growing power of the Marathas and their frequent raids on Northern India disturbed the tranquility of the country.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the civilized courtier was expected to have some knowledge of music and dance and music, write poetry and to be generally a man of some wit. Several members of the nobility indulged in libertine pursuits and kept numerous concubines. The status of women of the traditional upper middle class deteriorated and women faced the uncultured and uncouth behavior of their attendants. In this respect, the most infamous king was Muhammad Shah Rangeela whose darbar was literally run by his concubines and it was said that the fate of Indians was in their hands. Although such debauchery had replaced the glory and solemn cultural heights experienced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, cultural activity still went on even in times of the decline of Muslim rule. Th ere are examples of some later Mughals patronizing the masters of various art forms. In the reign of Jahandar Shah, the granddaughter of Tan Sen named Lal Kanoor was awarded the title of ―Imtiaz Mehal‖ and also honored with a royal dress and two million rupees per annum and royal coins were minted in her name. But generally, the literature of that period reflected this

147 Jean Law (a French adventurer) quoted by Oxford History of India, p.42.

148 Abru (d. 1750), Mazhar {l698—l781), Naji (d. 1754) and Yakrang were all the representatives of the Delhi School of Urdu Literature.Farooq. K.A. : IndianLiterature, Ed. by Dr. Nagendra, p.576. 64 time of decadence and a number of prose and poetry writers used derogatory words in their works to describe women, among them Insha-ullah Khan Insha, 149 Mushafi, Sadat Yar Khan Rangin and Mirza Shouq.

The encouragement and personal interest of the rulers and nobles in art and literature was described by Muzzafar Alam in these words about the rulers of Avadh:

The Avadh regime (1722-1857) had encountered phases of brilliant triumphs as well as days of doom and dismal failure. The founders of the dynasty built and cemented the base of their power by bringing the turbulent countryside under control through a ser ies of armed confrontations and tactful alliances. Later, their successors, who saw themselves as the ‗Emperors of the Age‘, asserted the cultural superiority of their capital. In these years, they maneuvered the local elite and the rising pressure of the British to maintain and consolidate their power with reference to the Mughals. In matters of culture, their achievements remain unmatched since they generously patronized almost all forms of art and architecture - dance, music, painting,

poetry, and also religious scholarship. 150

In Avadh, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was known as a skillful poet and musician who had turned his harem into a Pari khana or palace of fairies. He had relationships with courtesans according to the contractual form permitted to some sections of Muslims. 151

In the early eighteenth century, Wali Daccani happened to Urdu poetry, an event that was of historical importance and set the future course of Urdu

149 William Irwine, The History of Later Mughal, (Lahore: Universal press, 1958), p.78.

150 MuzzafarAlam ,The Awadh Regime Alam, (Delhi: Oxford University press, 1986), p.175.

151 Veena Talwar Oldenberg, The Making of colonial Lukhnow 1856-1877, (New Delhi: 1989), Pp.134-135. 65 language and literature. 152 Wali came from the Deccan to Delhi where he is said to have encouraged the development of a taste for composing lyrical poetry. Although his own language still shows some Deccani features, he provided a stimulus to the growth of the ghazal in Delhi which earned him a place among the pioneers of Urdu poetry. This first flowering of Urdu literature in its homeland in Delhi coincided with a period of political turmoil. 153It was a turning point in the lives of th e people of Delhi who were amazed at the synthesis of the two literary traditions of Deccani Urdu and Persian. The prosperity of Urdu language in the south where the rulers had moved centuries ago came as a surprise because distance had kept it 154 insulated from others.

After Dehli‘s decline as the cultural center, a number of authors and poets migrated to Lucknow and Rampur to earn their living, places that were considerably affluent and where the literary ethos had a distinctly Persian cultural influence. 155 The rulers of this region were given to great indulgences and were quite oblivious to the welfare of their subjects. Even so, literary production thrived in the close encounter between the court and the courtesans and poetry in particular was greatly affected. The ghazal became the forte of Lucknow poets who moved away from the tradition of addressing a universally popular male or at best a figure without gender as the object of their love and the female beloved w as the clear subject of their

152 Wali, born and brought up in the literary traditions of Deccan and Gujaràt, visited Delhi in 1112/1700; 10 and there he is said by MIr to have met the saintly Shah Sa‘du‘l-lahGuishan (d. 1141/1728) who reportedly advised him: ―so many of the Persian themes are calling for attention; why don‘t you make use of them; who is going to ask for an explanation!‖

th th 153 Arnold Methew, The masterpieces of Urdu Ghazals from 17 to 20 century, 1992, 22)

154 Iqtadar Hassan, Later Mughals and the History of Urdu Literature, (Lahore: Feroz Sons, 1995), Pp.93-95.

155 The founder of Avadh Saadat Khan Burkhan Malik belonged to iran, the majority of the people belonged to Shia sect which also reflected in the Marsia of Dabeer and Anees. The Persian culture also reflected in the construction, dress, customs and traditions of the people of Lukhnow. Even the lifestyle of common people was also very luxurious. 66 verse. This was a landmark in Urdu poetry and prose as it imparted a greater degree of genuineness and sincerity to the expression. 156

Since the beloved was a courtesan, poets gave free expression to desire in describing her charms, including her physical attractiveness which was unheard of earlier. Unlike a respectable female sweetheart in whose love the poet had to drown and pine and be prepared to die, appreciation of the love of a courtesan could be more sensual and uninhibited. The new Urdu ghazal and masnavi of that time alluded to the erotic desire and its fulfillment, their enthusiasm sometimes bordering on the risqué and the vulgar, but it must be remembered that this expression was true to the moral decadence of the rulers of the time. In prose, t here were a number of authors who wrote about the lives of courtesans, their problems, their rejection by society and their culture. Mirza Hadi Ruswa‘s novel Umrao Jan Ada can be cited as the finest example of such writing. These women were also the main subject a peculiar type of erotic poetry called Rekhti in which the male poet wrote from the female standpoint of courtesans and gave expression to their suppressed thoughts. These were times when the kotha or salon of these courtesans were considered an institution of learning and the Ashrafia had a tradition of sending young men to learn etiquette and manners under the sophisticated and well read courtesans who often wrote poetry too. It is understandable that most formal schools completely ignored this po etry in their teaching of Urdu or its history. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the British Raj was at the height of its powers. 157 The British occupied a larger territory with the

156 Dr. Abu lais Siddiqui spend fifty years in research to write his PhD thesis. He described the 200 years history of poetry of Lukhnow and analyzed the socio-economic conditions of the Muslims with the reference of the political changes. His research work was published as a book titled Lukhnow ka Dabistan e Shairee, from Karachi publisher Ghazanfer Academy Pakistan in 1987. It has 988 pages.

157 (Baylay, Townsmen and Bazarrs , 1992)Almost everywhere westernization was skin-deep, and these new institutions were dominated by a few great families of the dominant commercial castes whose origins can be traced back to the eighteenth century. The transition is particularly clear in Agra. Here in the i86os and 187os, there existed a Merchants‘ Association with formal rules and recorded membership which bridged the gap 67

Annexation of Punjab in 1849and then Avadh in 1856, 158 the last major Muslim state in northern India which abolished the cultural supremacy of Luknow in 159 due course of time.

While Urdu literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth century reflects the political and social turmoil in history, there were other new trends and movements in Urdu literature, for instance, translations and the use of simpler forms of expression in literature. But primarily it was the rivalry between the two schools of Delhi and Lucknow that represented the Ashrafia from two different regions competing for supremacy. The traditional rivalry between Dabistan-e-Delhi 160and Dabistan-e-Luknow 161 continued in the period of Burhanul Mulk, the founder of the state of Awadh 162 and

between the informal trade council of the past and the Chamber of Commerce which came into existence at the beginning of this century. P.452

158 Ibid. p. 7 In 1764 at the battle of Buxar, the Company defeated the Nawab of Awadh and secured from him the payment of a massive annual tribute (more than Rs. 50 lakhs) and the revenues of the province of Benares whose rulers now became vassals of the British. Hereafter the Company, which had by now consolidated its power in Bengal, was increasingly active on the north Indian scene. In 1774, the British intervened with the Nawab‘s forces in the conquest of Rohilkhand whose warrior rulers were expelled or reduced to pensioners, with the exception of Rampur.‘ Warren Hastings suppressed a revolt by‘ the ruler of Benares, Cheyt Singh, who was expelled and replaced by a new raja more or less directly under the control of the British Resident. Changes to the judicial and fiscal administration of Benares territories culminated in the introduction there after 1793 of a Permanent Settlement of land-revenue similar to that in Bengal under the direction of Jonathan Duncan, one of the most famous of eighteenth-century British civil officers.

159 As a result of social and political chaos and unrest a large number of Urdu poets left Delhi to seek asylum in the courts of Nawabs and Maharajas in the different parts of the country such as Lucknow, Hyderabad, and Azimabad (Patna). Lucknow was nearer to Delhi, naturally, Sauda, Mir, Mir Hassan, Soz and many others migrated there. At that time Asaf-ud- dalah was the Nawab of Oudh. He was very much generous to the poets of Delhi and provided all sorts of facilities and extended his patronage to them. 160 Delhi school of authors and poets who preferred their writing style and language according to the culture of Delhi during the era of Later Mughal (1707-1857). Molana Altaf Hussain Hali was the first person who used the term of dabistan in Urdu language by the reflection of the school of thought in English language. Dr Noor ul Hassan, Delhi ka Dabistan e Shairee, (Lahore: book talk, 2006), for further detail see introduction and sixth chapter of the book. 161 Abu Lais Siddiqi, Lukhnow ka Dabistan-e- Shairee, (Karachi: Ghazanfar Acedemy, 1987) The authors and poets who belonged to Lucknow and considered themselves better and the primary representatives of the Urdu language 68 reached its climax in the second decade of the ninetieth century when Luknawi literary laureates refused to accept the supremacy of Delhi school.

163 Men of letters also needed to secure their patronage by the Ashrafia of the region for social recognition and financial well being and the rivalry between the two schools and vehement supporters and detractors for this reason.

A tough competition and rivalry ensued between men of letters which opened up new avenues for the writer of Urdu literature to explore the social milieu in their characters and reflect on the changing norms in colonial India. Several Urdu prose writers took up the contradiction between earlier cultural traditions and norms and those brought in by the coloni zers by creating characters caught between the old and the new. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Rajab Ali Baig Saroor 164 of Lucknow published Fasana- i- Ajaib (A Wondrous Tale) 165in response to Bagh-o-Bahar (Spring in the Garden) of Mir Aman 166 of Delhi, whereas Daya Shanker Nasim of Lucknow

162 Firoze Mookerjee, The World of Sarshar, The Avadh dynasty was founded by Sa‘adat Khan, Burhan-ulMulk who had come to India from Persia and was appointed Governor of Avadh in 1720. Most of his energies were employed in building up his strength in his own province, he ambitions in imperial politics as well. He was one of the important leaders on the Indian side in 1739 when the Persian king Nadir Shah invaded the country, and his quarrels his rivals contributed materially to the crushing defeat which Nadir inflicted and to his own subsequent death a few weeks later. Pp.8-9.

163 (Siddiqui 1987,24)

164 Mirza Rajab Ali Beg Surur (1786- 1849) : Fasaana-e-Ajaayab (published 1824) most famous book; his other books are SaroorSultani(1847), ShararIshq (1856), Shagoofa-e-muhabbat, Gulzaar-e-suroor, Shabistaane- saroor, and Insha-e-saroor.

„ 165 The Lucknow school‘s answer to Bagh-o-Bahar' came in the shape of `Fasana-i-Ajaaib‘, a dastan written in a tortuously ornate language laden with metaphors and poetical expressions. At times, its prose so much rhymes that `Fasan-i-Ajaaib‘ sounds like poetry. Though first published in 1843, `Fasana-i-Ajaaib' was written by Rajab Ali Baig Surur in 1824 the mind and rivalry of both school of thoughts also invited the wrath of the Lucknow school of Urdu literature that thought `Bagh-o-Bahar‘ was nothing but a deviation from standard Urdu idiom and Mir Amman, being a `Dilliwala‘, was simply not up to the task of writing standard Urdu 166 His real name was Meer Aman, he belong to Delhi. He joined Fort William College in 1802. variously also known as Mir Amman of Delhi, Mir Amman of Dilhi, Mir Amman Dihlavi, and Meer Ummun.Mir Amman was best known for his translation of Amir Khusro's classic epic "Qissa Chahar Dervish" (The Tale of the Four Dervishes) and Akhlaq e Muhsani with the name of Gun khubi from Persian into Urdu. His translation is considered classic literature itself for its use of contemporary Urdu, and was performed on the request of John Borthwick Gilchrist. 69 wrote Gulzar-e-Nasim (Nasim‘s Rose Garden) in response to Sehar-e-Bayan (Spellbinding Discourse) produced by Meer Hassan of Delhi. 16 7 Similarly, Muhammad Jamiludin, the Luknavi author, who published Arsi Mushaf (the Marriage Mirror) in response to Nazir Ahmed of Delhi‘s Mirat-al- Arus (the Bridal Image), and severely criticized Delhi school for confining its attention to the social lives of the bourgeoisie as compared to his own 168 attention to the cultivated nobles of Nawabi Lucknow.

In many ways, the presence of the British brought greater gender segregation and conservatism to the Muslim family where the conditions of women deteriorated. The Muslim Ashraf considered the zanana as the only place where modernity could not be allowed to make inroads, the private realm of the home with its women was where modernity could be resisted and indigenous cultural values protected. Traditional ulema were the opponents of modernity and churned out literature in which they criticized western influence on women, particularly targeting education for women. The conservative Muslim Ashraf were careful not to let their women mingle with the British in any possible way since considered it has dishonourable for any liaison to take place between them. For this reason, women from respectable Muslim families were not educated outside the house or allowed to indulge in reading or writing literature as this was considered behavior associated with prostitutes. Even modernist reformers like Syed Ahmed Khan opposed the education of women on these grounds. For this reason, it was women who were professional prostitutes who became the most educated among Muslim women.

167 Dr. Abu Lais Siddiqi, Lukhnow ka Dabistan e Shaeree. pp.119-120 Meer Hassan was the prominent poet of Dabistan e Delhi, he had fame due to his MasanaviSeherul Bayan, which was had prominent place in Urdu literature, beside this he also wrote a number of masnavi. He served in the court of the Asif-ud-Dullah.

168 Azra Asghar Ali, The Emergence of Feminism Among Indian Muslim Women 1920 - 1947 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.13. 70

Such conservatism plunged the development of the Urdu literary tradition into darkness and decadence. It also drove in a wedge in the family between western educated men and their uneducated, incompatible wives. Devoid of education, Muslim women failed to keep up with the demands of changing times. Their husbands too disliked them and their social status was reduced considerably because they knew only about home cho res without any cultural awareness or social graces. Muslim men got bored of their married 169 life and sought pleasure in the kotha(brothel) of tawaif (prostitutes).

But in the families of the Ashrafia, the modern Muslim man needed a marriage partner who was presentable to colonial society and a companion. This drove a wedge between the reformists and the modernists, while reformists espoused an enlightened domestic woman, modernists favoured women performing an active role in society and in the evolution of national awareness. They also encouraged women to participate in political activity, consequently this opened up new debates regarding the relations between men and women.

Some prose writers of the time supported colonial modernity while most others criticized it and tried to find solutions in their religious or traditional education. Whether Hindu or Muslim, the modernists were colonial collaborators as people who basically identified with the value system of rulers. These people had internalized the Orientalist argument that Indian traditions had fallen into decay and stagnation, and argued that they could perhaps regain vitality through western education and reform. Their

169 Barbara D. Metcalf, Readings and Writings about Women, Islamic Contestations. Essay on Muslim in India and Pakistan, (London: Oxford University, 2003), p.113. This hypocritical attitude towards women became a problem for females. Men with this attitude would frequent, respect and be impressed by the prostitutes due to their education, their knowledge of literature and accomplishments, but on the other hand they closed the doors of education to their own women so that they would remain backward and they would have a low opinion of them because they lacked finer qualities. If any woman showed an interest in education, she was subjected to distain and displeasure. She would be branded as a fitna by society. Those men also lost interest in their families, deprived their children and wives of their rights. A number of families were broken up. The rate of divorce also increased quite considerably. 71 agenda was to form a bond between them and the British, a project they would soon realize was not amenable to the rulers who merely wished to enlist a ruling class of the indigenous elite to serve their interests.

The subject of Muslim women was central to the Ashraf culture as it was generally assumed that the position of women provided an excellent indicator of the health and progress of Muslim society in India under the changing circumstances. Defenders of the community‘s interest, however, approached the question of reforms affecting Muslim women in a variety of ways, the reformist and modernist approaches being more important. The reformist approach was epitomized by Ashraf Ali Thanavi‘s book of advice for women, his Behishti Zewar (heavenly ornament), 170 which outlined the importance of adaab (manners) as prescribed in religion. The first modernist approach was represented by Nazir Ahmed (1836-1912) and Altaf Hussain Hali (1837-1914) in their didactic works Mirat-al-Arus and Majalis-un-Nisa respectively which emphasized the importance of modern education for women similar to the one received by well-to-do men.

170 Molana Ashraf Ali Thanawi, Behashiti Zewar, (Lahore: Madina Manzal, 1950) 72 Chapter – 2

The epistemic conquest of India: nineteenth century British constitutional and educational reform

The conquest of India by the British, as of other parts of the colonized world, was achieved not merely through gunpowder and bayonet but with the cultural and civilisational tool of European modernism. This was the period of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian society was fast undergoing changes in behavioural norms and philosophies, primarily due to the rise of rationality in the Age of European Enlighten ment and decline in the ruling power of the Church. The British brought these changing influences to India in the eighteenth century and employed these ideals in its cultural hegeomony over the region by gradually getting involved in codifying vernacular languages and intervening in India‘s literary culture. This was a contrarian claim, no doubt, with an imperialist invader trying to coach the subjects in the ideals of European humanism but it gradually took root and developed an imaginary among the local r uling classes that remains hard to dislodge to this day.

This fascination with the `Jewel in the Crown‘ which was India was tempered by Rudyard Kipling purported `White man‘s burden‘, and many colonial rulers and reformers couched their militarist intent a nd pecuniary interests as the desire to `civilize the wogs‘. It was important to portray India as this land of fantastical religions and superstition where despotic rulers held down the poor and the illiterate, a land where reprehensible customs like sati and the caste system prevailed. The case made against the subjugation of women in India was another favourite discourse of the British colonial against the barbarian Indian man, while in England universal adult 73 franchise remained contested for women and labour laws were weak and not protective of the poor.

Although this may not necessarily be seen teleologically as a reading of their intention, it is clear that post 1857, British policy changed and educational and constitutional reform included the use of the literature to convince the local of his inferiority and inability to gove rn. Educational reforms included the greater role of the English language in institutions of learning and in the Indian Civil Service examination which was how natives could get into the ruling classes, but more than that the argument was for the introduction of English literature in Indian school curriculum. As early as 1825, it was being argued by the colonials that by giving young Indians a taste for the arts and literature of England, ―we might insensibly wean their affections from the Persian muse. Tea ch them to despise the barbarous splendor of their ancient princes, and, totally supplanting the tastes which flourished under Mogul reign, make them look to this country with that veneration, which the youthful student feels for the classical soil of 171 Greece‖.

The task of English literature was then the reshaping of the Indian imaginary, a different concept of valour and a re-education of aesthetic taste to make it modern, European, disdainful of local cultural practices.

Perhaps far more insidious were the inroads the British made into vernacular languages, codifying their grammar and syntax and their influence over literary production in Urdu literature, the most developed common language of the people of India at the time.

171 Quoted in G Vishwanathan, Masks of Conquest, Literary Study and British Rule in India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1989. p. 6 74

Translating India: British Orientalism and respect for the vernacular

As early as 1813 in which British Parliament endorse d the Charter Act for a twenty-year extension to the East India Company, the British assumed the responsibility toward native education in India while no such commitment officially existed between the English state and its own people. This was primarily to counter the depredations of Company rule but also to consolidate power in the colony. The early phase of British rule was marked by much respect for vernacular languages and literatures, the Orientalist phase, ushered in by Governor General Warren Hastings from 1774-1785. While it had the effect of strengthening existing institutions, the aim was to educate British administrators to better understand the people they ruled. Its inadvertent benefit was to introduce the West to the vast literary resources of eastern cultures, a service Hastings thought made to larger humanity.

...every accumulation of knowledge, and especially such as is obtained by the social communication with people over whom we exercise dominion founded on the right of conquest, is useful to the state:it is the 172 gain of humanity.

It was such Orientalist rationalization of power and the right to conquest that Edward Said took on and critiqued in his famous book of the name and how such naked aggression is masked as egalitarianism, for t he own good of the natives and part of the European humanist project. 173

The first Orientalist institution of learning was Fort Saint College (1717) established in Madras to give English officers and employees of the Company with a working knowledge of Urdu which had acquired the position

172 173Edward Said, Orientalism, Western Conceptions of the East (Delhi: Penguin Book, 1978), See introduction. 75

174 of a common medium of expression in large parts of British ruled India. The college continued to function until 1854 when it was handed over to the Madras Literary Society. 175 At around the same time in Bengal, in 1784, The Royal Asiatic Society was formed to study languages. Sir William Jones (1746-1794) undertook the study of oriental languages and the extraordinary series of oriental texts in Urdu, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Bengali, and othe r Indian languages and their translations. The Society's library, archives and museum retain a rich collection to this day. 176 After consolidating power in Bengal, the British were now looking towards the rest of India and needed to understand the local people and their languages. 177 In Calcutta, another important colonial outpost, Fort William College was established in 1800 under Governor General Lord Wellesley under Doctor John Gilchrist as head of the institution. Gilchrist imported a distinguished ba nd of native scholars from northern India to write textbooks for British officers, and a department was established for the improvement of oriental languages. 178 The Fort William College was founded by the East India Company for the instruction

174 Fort St. George (or historically, White Town) is the name of the first English or British fortress in India, founded in 1639 at the coastal city of Madras Eastern banks of the River Hooghly, modern city of Chennai. The construction of the fort provided the impetus for further settlements and trading activity. It was named after King William of III of England. 175 The Madras Literary Society (MLS) was founded in 1812. At the time, the Madras, Bombay and Calcutta Presidencies were directly controlled by the London office of the East India Company. The Society functioned as a cleaning house and a repository for the literary, exploratory and scientific discoveries and experiences of the Civil, Military and Judicial officers of the Madras Presidency. It complemented the Company‘s School of Language and Oriental Studies at Fort St. George. As quoted in Javed Ali Khan, Early Urdu Historiography (Patna: Khuda Bux Oriental Public Library, 2005) p129. 176 P.G. Robb, The Government of India and Reforms. Policies towards Politics and the Constitution 1916 1921, (London: Oxford University Press, 1976.), p.95. 177 - For detail see, Ian. St.jonh, The Making of the Raj: India Under the East India Company(ABC,Clio: 2012)

178 - see, Richard Colley Wellesley, Letters of the Marquis Wellesley Respecting the College of Fort William, (Hatcherd:1812), Thomad roebuck, The annals of the college of Fort William,(Philip, Pereira:1819), www.googlebook.com 76 of its employees in Indian languages 179 and an attempt was made to translate vernacular literature popular among the Ashrafia because their main agenda was to replace Persian at the lower level of administration into Urdu. 180

Before the establishment of the Fort William College, there was no mentionable Urdu prose writing. As Ram Babu writes:

Before the foundation of this famous College, there were works in Urdu prose which were either religious in character or fairy tales and romances and were mostly translations, cured, imperfect and unfinished, from the original Persian. No attempt was made to polish 181 the style or to improve the syntax.

Among the translators of Fort William College, the famous men of letters were Mirza Ali Lutf, best known for his biographical anthology named Gulshan-i- Hind, a translation from Persian into Urdu. The book may be read as a history of early nineteenth century poets and society. The language of the book betrays the influence of Deccani over Urdu literature. 182 Another translator, Syed Haidar Bakhsh Haidari, belonged to Delhi and worked mostly on historical texts. He translated Araish-i- Mehfil, Tota Kahani (1801) Gulzar-i-Danih, Gul- iMagfirit and Tarikh-e-Nadri from Persian into Urdu. Tarikh-e-Nadri written by Mirza Muhammad Mahdi highlighted the history of Nadir Shah. 183 Mirza Aman of Delhi wrote Bagh-o-Bahar as a translation of Chahar Darvesh, in 1806 he translated Hussain Kashifi‘s Akhlaq i Muhsini, to which he gave the name of Ganj Khubi. Mir Aman‘s writing style in prose may be said to

179 - Khawaja Muhammad Zakriya, Tareek-e-Adbiat, Muslamanan-e-Pakistan-o-Hind (1857-1914) vol.1V, (Lahore: Punjab University, 2010), T. Grahame Bailey, A History of Urdu Literature, (London, 1932) 80. 180 -Farina Mir, The social space of the language: vernacular culture in British colonial Punjab(California: 2010)p. 63. 181 Ibid,22.

182 - For details see (Bailey, 1932, 80)

183 , Khawaja Muhammad Zakriya, Tareek-e-Adbiat, Muslamanan-e-Pakistan-o-Hind (1857-1914) vol.1II, (Lahore: Punjab University, 2010), 77 correspond to Mir Taqi Mir. 184In 1802, Bahadur Ali Husnaini translated Seher ul Bayan, into Urdu with the name of Nasr-i Benazir. Sher Ali Afsoos of Delhi is best known for his Araish-i Mehfil, based on Khulasat- ut Tawarikh. He also translated the Gulistan-e-Sadi into Urdu with the name of Bagh-i- Urdu. Other famous translators include Nihal Chand Lahori, Lallu Lal, Kazim Ali, Ikram Ali and Hafiz ud Din Ahmed who also contributed in the Fort William College and thereby to the history of the developme nt of Urdu literature.

But after Hastings, this interest in the vernacular and respect for literary productions of the past changed and Wellesley‘s successor, Lord Cornwallis, held open contempt for anything Indian. In his administration, Indians were barred from entering public service and the role of master and minion more clearly established. Governor- General Lord Wellesley, who served in India from 1812-1823, had a host of politically astute officers under him who believed Orientalism needed to be nurt ured to cultivate the indigenous elite or Ashrafia that was to be co-opted into western values and ways of living but this perception was changing.

The institutions studying Oriental languages and literatures were open to all classes of native society although meant specifically for the training of British administrators. The language and literatures were pruned of their ―excessive‖ content with a view to reforming local tastes for public responsibility and honour that would justify and facilitate foreign occupation.

By 1824, there were rumblings of discontent with the Orientalist project of promoting vernacular languages and literature that were considered to be of no utility to the government. It was the eloquent and vitriolic James Mill who mounted this attack on the British government in India, questioning their logic and adding that while supporting the study of Sanskrit and Arabic

184 - (Bailey, 1932, 80) 78 languages may be essential, what was the purpose of encouraging literature that was frivolous and mischievous at best, at worst a waste of precious colonial resources for investment in local education. James Mill‘s ferocious attack on Indian traditions in his book The History of British India (1817) was part of a general change in British attitudes and policies geared towards modernizing India. Although ideals like reforming freedom of the press and public opinion applied only to the European residents in colonial cities, and the introduction of western education was geared primarily to assist the administration, the Committee of General Instruction responded to Mill‘s challenge. With Orientalists like Horace Wilson, Holt Mackenzie and Henry Prinsep on board, they argued that India was not ready for introduction to the English language or literature since the natives had a large and well respected repertoire in Sanskrit and in Arabic languages.

By the 1920s, the Orientalist fervor was dying down and it was reflected in the cynical Macaulay‘s Minute on Education in 1835. 185 where vernacular literature was denigrated and caustic criticism was hurled at the Viceroy for bowing to Orientalist pressure in not insisting upon European supremacy in literature and the sciences. The task of educational reform, according to Macaulay was to create ―a class of persons Indian in blood and 186 colour, but the English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect ‖.

This was also the year when the most liberal Governor -General of India, William Bentinck, came into power. On Macaulay‘s advice, he promulgated the English Education Act in 1835 which made English the medium of instruction and withdrew funding from Orientalist institutions. In an even more revolutionary act, Lord Bentinck found a new function and

185Lord Macualey‘s Minutes on Education written in 1835 for Lord William Bentinck to declared the medium of English language compulsory for the indigenous, this policy remained the essential part of the British raj. For detail see Baron Babington Macualay, G. Cumberlege (edit),Lord Macaulay's legislative minutes, (Oxford University Press, 1946) 186 Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.) p.35. 79 purpose for the teaching of English Literature as the repository of moral and religious values, the first experiment in India of colonizing the imagination of people before you rule over them. Thus it was that the English educated elite or Ashrafia in India grew up better acquainted with the cobbled streets of England and with a Dickensian view on poverty rather than knowing any part of their own vast homeland.

Institutionalising Urdu poetry and prose

In the period when the British Governor-Generals were under the influence of Orientalism and into classical Indian literature but even late in their thought when English language took over as the dominant mode of communication of the elite, patronage of Urdu literature remained. As Molvi Abdul Haq writes, ―There was a need to establish outstanding institutions for the education of children of the Ashrafia because they avoid sending them to schools run on charity‖.187 The medium of instruction in such institutions was Urdu even for 188 subjects like mathematics, physics, chemistry and geography.

One of the first institutions established under Orientalist influence that later became the passageway for western modernism was Delhi College founded in 1825 at the behest of Sir Charles Metcalfe with M. Felix Boutras as its first Principal.189 The primary aim of the institution was to impart western science and philosophy in Urdu and its most important achievement was The Delhi Vernacular Translation Society College that helped translate numerous books in English into Urdu from disciplines in the physical sciences and

187 Quoted by Abida Begum, Urdu Nasr Ka Irtaka 1800-1857 ( The Evolution of Urdu prose1800-1857) ,(Delhi: Maktaba Jamia, 1988), p.191.

188 But while it was in Bengal that it made most headway, comparable trends are also to be seen long before the middle of the century in .the Urdu-speaking area. Of these the most noteworthy was that which led to the establishment in 1827 of the Delhi College. There through the medium of Urdu, the modern sciences and arts were, taught alongside the traditional subjects of oriental learning, and the College quickly became thriving intellectual centre. Quoted by Muhsan-ul-Mulk in the introduction to Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh, Aligarh,1898 ,p.2.

189 Sisir Kumar Das , A History of Indian literature: 1800-1910 Western impact: Indian response (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1991) ,p.484. 80 mathematics to constitutional law, philosophy, history and economics. Delhi College published several important journals like Fawāid-un-Nāzirīn, a fortnightly journal edited by Master Ram Chandar. Some of the luminaries of Urdu literature like Nazir Ahmed, Piyare Lal Ashob, Hussain Azad, Altaf Hussain Hali and Molvi Zaka Ullah were contemporaries at the college. Zaka Ullah (1910) wrote many books of science and mathematics but his main contribution is to the history of medieval India published in ten volumes. Nazir Ahmad (1912) was the first Urdu novelist whose method was social realism where he addressed contemporary issues of negotiating modern western values with traditional Indian ones in the contemporary Indian 190 family. His works were considered edifying for the Muslim Ashrafia.

In 1865, Dr Leitner, a committed Orientalist who later spearheaded the Government College in Lahore and setup the Anjuman-i- Ishaat-i- Mutalib-i- Mufida (Society for the diffusion of useful knowledge) with Muhammad Hussain Azad (1830-1910) in Lahore. 191 Leitner was a scholar of Arabic and Urdu and took out a number of literary journals among them Indian Public Opinion that was later renamed The Civil and Military Gazette with Rudyard Kipling as one of its first editors. Leitner also wrote voluminously on education in the Punjab where he finally retired. In 1882 his book History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab was published that was controversial in its times and remains a classic to this day.

The Anjuman set up a Madressah in a path shala where Hindi and Sanskrit were taught to which Arabic and Persian were added in the curriculum. The school later developed into the well known Oriental College in Lahore. The aim of the Anjuman was to patronize vernacular languages and to impart useful knowledge as its name suggests. It was formed by employees in service of the British government with thirty five original members. In his History of Urdu Literaturein Twenth Century, Mohammed Sadiq hails two institutions as the precursors of western ideas of modernity in northern India – Delhi College and the Anjuman- i Punjab. 192 The Anjuman had its own journal too and several other publications to its name

190 Ibid,p.,484. 191 In 1864–65 Dr. G. W. Leitner, Principal of Government College in Lahore, who worked all his life for the promotion of the development of Western learning in Indian languages, took tuition of Urdu from Muhammad Hussain Azad (1830-1910)

192 - Dr Muhammad Sadiq, History of Urdu Literature in Twentieth Century, (Delhi: oxford university press, 1964) p.315. 81 but its other functions included setting up the Oriental College and equipping it as it was upgraded from being a school to a college. The Oriental college attracted the best minds among the Ashrafia, including Dr Muhammed Iqbal who spent four years there. The Anjuman also introduced book depots and moving libraries to foster the reading. Leitner was instrumental in arguing for a university for the Punjab and the University College was set up somewhat reluctantly by the British Government of India in 1869 and later upgraded by Lord Ripon to a full fledged University of the Punjab in 1882.

The Anjuman also played a pivotal role in developing Urdu poetry and prose in a particular direction. It instituted the public Mushaira where many battles ensued between old world poets and new ones led by Muhammad Hussain Azad. Educated at Delhi College, Azad had fled the city after his father, the eminent journalist, Baqir Ali who pioneered Urdu journalism in his Delhi Urdu Akhbar in 1836 was murdered ruthlessly by the British for siding with the mutineers of 1857. The press they owned was closed down and the house and all other property was confiscated. Azad spent six or seven years in penury tutoring children in Urdu till he had the good fortune of tutoring Leitner. He was immediately taken into the fold of the Anjuman where he worked very hard at editing journals and also put together his Qisas-e Hind, stories for children from the vernacular that were used as a textbook for school going children. According to his biographer, Sadiq, Azad‘s writing was imbued with ―a 193 growing interest in vernacular literature impregnated with the spirit of the West‖.

What gained Azad most notoriety was his public lecture in 1874 when he reviewed Urdu poetry in the light of English poetry, condemning the former for being moribund and arcane and in need of finding new pathways of expression. The younger generation decried this pulling down of Urdu poetry and criticized Azad‘s uncritical acceptance of western paternalism.194 Azad wrote several papers and two large volumes on the role of Urdu poetry ‗Aab-e Hayat‘ his oeuvre, in two volumes that deals with the development of Urdu language

193 Muhammad Sadiq, Muhammad Husain Azad: His Life and Works (Lahore: West-Pakistan Publishing Co., 1974),p. 24.

194 For details consult Muhammad Hussain Azad vol I and ii (Karachi: Anjuman e taraqqi e Urdu, 1965) Muhammad Sadiq Abe Hayat ki Himayat main aur Dosr e Mazameen(Lahore: Majilis e Taraqqi e Adab, 1973) 82 and Urdu poetry and his later Sukhandan-e Fars ,also in two volumes, dealing with the development of Persian language and poetry and its effects on Urdu poetry.

The tradition of Mushaira set up and encouraged by Major Holroyd in Lahore and the Anjuman-e Punjab did not go very far after 1875 but after only nine such sessions, the group fell apart in bitter acrimony due perhaps to personal competitiveness of poets but also since so many of them disapproved of Azad as an organizer and questioned his poetic merit.195Sadiq‘s take on this is that academic poetry cannot travel very far or hold its ground while Leitner thought dictation of poetic inspiration was necessary to draw Urdu poetry out of its sentimentalism and obsession with love. The modern commentator, Farrukhi, disagrees from this idea of the Mushaira tradition failing and believes quite the contrary that the Department of Public Instruction achieved its purpose and changed the tenor of Urdu poetry.196 The Persian influence was gone and replaced by the influence of the English literary tradition.

C.M. Naim puts the issue in perspective when he says,

The decline of ―Oriental‖ learning, the increasing awareness on the part of literate people of the range of scientific knowledge available in English, and the need to provide school texts in regional ve rnaculars, led a number of individuals and associations to produce translations as well as original works in Urdu in the realm of what was seen as ilm (knowledge; science), as opposed to shairee and dastan (poetry and tales). It is interesting to note that just when the teachers and students of the famous Delhi College for the instruction of the natives were engaged in translating into Urdu books on analytical geometry, optics, and Galvanism, Goldsmith‘s History of England, selections from Plutarch‘s Lives, and Abercrombie‘s Mental Philosophy, the traditional munshis at the equally famous College of Fort William for the instruction of British

195Tahir Kamran,Urdu Migrant literati and Lahore‟s Culture, (Cambridge: Center for South Asian Study,2013),p.187. 196As quoted in (Tahir Kamran, 2013) p.180. 83

officers were busy putting into simple Urdu the Gulistãn of Saadi, the Tale of the Four Dervishes, the Tale of Amir Hamza, Singhasan Battisi, the Shakuntala of Kalidasa, and a selection of stories from the Arabian 197 Nights...

Negotiating modernity: Muslim institutions of learning

The educational institution that was seminal to modernizing the Muslim Ashrafia was founded by the minor aristocrat and government official, Syed Ahmed Khan in 1875. It first took the name of The Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO College) and had an even stranger motto that governed its activities. In a curious twist to Macauley‘s Minute on Education, Syed Ahmed proclaimed the motto of the College to be: "to form a class of persons, Muhammadan in religion, Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, and in intellect.198 This later became the Aligarh Muslim University in 1920, with the aim of promoting higher education in the Urdu medium while English was taught as a 199 second language.

Syed Ahmed supported the British politically to gain their trust which had been badly shaken after 1857 and to take the place of trusted allies of the British as Hindus rose in power and nationalist self assertiveness. A number of smaller educational institutions grew under the shadow of the college at Aligarh and Syed Ahmed was hailed as a renaissance man for the Muslims of nineteenth century India.200 To be sure, he had a fair number of detractors who saw in him a political opportunist and an unprincipled modernist who cared not for

197 www.urdustudies.com/AsaduddinPersianate. C.M. Naim, "Prize-Winning Adab: A Study of Five Urdu Books Written in Response to the Allahabad Government Gazette Notification,‖ in Moral Conductand Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, ed. Barbara Metcalfe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p.291. 198 Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, As quoted in David Lelyveld, Aligarh‟s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,1996), p.260. The statement is a rephrasing of the famous statement contained in Macaulay‘s Minute on Education, 1835.

199 Ibid

200 Lini S. May, The evolution of Indo-Muslim Thought after 1857, (Lahore: Ashraf press , 1975), p.120. 84 nurturing what was best in Muslim civilization and its knowledge systems. These detractors were far less in power and proximity to the British and were largely silenced.

Aligarh remained a conflicted movement, and it took three generations before the benefits of a modern education increased the social standing of the Ashrafia and brought them into the fold of the professional and ruling classes.201Muhammad Sadiq‘s saw other aspects to the college in Aligarh and wrote about how it had revived the prestige of the Asrafia in colonial India.

The obscurantism of the ulema and the unconcealed hostility of the British to their Muslim subjects and their patronage of Hindus, reduced the Muslims to the verge of extreme ignorance and destitution. By the beginning of the present century, the Hindus had outstripped the Muslims so completely that there was no possibility of the latter ever overtaking the former. As we have seen, the man who saved the Muslims in India from complete ruin was Sayyid Ahmad Khan. His mission was twofold; to co-operate with the British and to recommend British civilization to his co- religionists. Thanks to his efforts, Western culture ceased to be taboo for the Muslims and they made some real headway in education. As regards the British, they were made to realize that they needed an ally in the country to nullify or retard the nationalist activities of the Hindus; and they were eager to take the Muslims under

their wing and protect their rights, provided they kept out of politics. 202

The objective of the Aligarh Movement was to modernise Indian Muslims to enable them to take full part in national affairs. It aimed at the maximum assimilation of western values and civilization without an overt break with religious tradition but this was a difficult position for anyone to maintain. Syed Ahmed Khan‘s agenda of social reform included a rationalist interpretation of religion and he wrote an interpretation of the Quran, pruning its

201 Firoze Mookerjee, Lukhnow and Word of Sarshar (Karachi: Saad Publications, 1992), p.26. 202 - (Sadiq, 1984, 34) 85 miraculous content to read into it metaphors and symbols. But this was so controversial that 203 even the college he had founded could not make it a part of the curriculum.

He conceived the idea of a special journal Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq 204 to disseminate his ethical ideals. Since he knew he was addressing an audience largely orthodox in religious outlook, he broa dened his approach by setting down as a basic principle of Quranic exegesis that if a passage could be given a naturalistic explanation it should be accepted. Even heaven and hell could be interpreted as allegories and metaphors and men and women were equal in the eyes of God even if different in earthly responsibilities. The Aligarh Institute Gazette exhorted Muslims to "distinguish laws and social 205 customs and institutions from religion in its strict sense ‖.

The institution was initially conceived to attract Muslim Ashrafia whose fears regarding the contamination with English language and mores needed to be allayed. Aligarh College was committed to the promotion of the sciences in the vernacular but soon that too was forgotten and made way for instruction in English. The Scientific Society established in 1864 moved from Ghaizaiabad to Aligarh where it published a journal devoted to the sciences, held seminars and symposia with a view to encourage rationalist and methodical thinking on educational and cultural problems. Syed Ahmed made a case for science education in the Urdu medium of instruction but soon the medium of instruction ceased to figure as an issue and a rational education was stressed upon. According to the Syed Ahmed, a major obstacle to the advancement in knowledge was the style of expression in Urdu where it was virtually impossible to write without exaggeration, to separate metaphor from reality. The remedy for this lay in English education. He wrote: "As long as our community does not, by means of English education, become familiar with the exactness of thought and unlearn

203 Ibid.,

204 This journal was started in 1870 which set a new pattern of independent and critical thinking in social, moral and religious spheres.

205 www.urdustudies.com/AsaduddinPersianate 86 the looseness of expression, our language cannot be the means of high mental and moral 206 training.‖

The best years of the College and the modernist movement it had spawned were the late 1870s. Towards the close of the century, while Aligarh continued to be a flourishing educational centre, it was not known for producing men of letters. The passing away of its founder in 1898 may well be taken as symbolic of its gradual depletion when Altaf Hussain Hali and Nazir Ahmad, both famous writers, had practically written themselves out before the end of the century. Hali had yet to write the biographyof his hero, the well-known Hayate- Javed, in 1901. There were several younger writers at the beginning of the twentieth century but they came after the harvest. The most notable among young writers were Shibli Naumani 207 (1857-1914) and Abdul Haim Sharrar (1860-1926).

Along with Aligarh, Osmania University established in Hyderabad Deccan gradually assumed the distinction of being the first of its kind where graduate and postgraduate education in all disciplines was through the Urdu medium. It was also known as a centre for the best translations of textbooks. 208 The Darul Tarjumah or Translation Bureau, was set up to translate and compile text books in Urdu in all subjects for graduate and postgraduate classes. Scholars and literati of eminence like Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa, Nazim Taba Tabai, and Josh Malihabadi served this institution and translated valuable treatises dealing with various subjects such as medicine, psychology, law, history and geography, physical and 209 the social sciences. For the detractors from European modernism the survival strategy was one of withdrawing from the political contest and cultivating traditional knowledge systems that largely, though not exclusively, concentrated on religion. One such Muslim centre was the

206 Syed Ahmad Khan‘s testimony to the Education Commission, in Aligarh Institute Gazette, Supplement, 5August 1882, as quoted in Lelyveld, Pp.206-7.

207 ( Banerjee1922, 515)

208 Founded in 1918 by the Seventh Nizam of Hyderabad state, Nawab Mir Osman Ali Khan, higher learning in India, the third oldest in southern India and the first to be established in the erstwhile princely State of Hyderabad.

209 (Lini 1975,136) 87 theological seminary at Deoband, UP, established in 1869. The other well-known centres were the Nadvat-ul-Uloom in Lucknow, established in 1894.210 Farangi Mahal fell into the Deoband method and influenced the development of Muslim religious thought in the subcontinent between the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. It was established in the Mughal period and it was the place where a French adventurer had built a mansion known as Farangi Mahal. 211 Due to this institution, Lucknow became a center of learning and scholarship and the rendezvous for seekers of traditional knowledge. This influx of scholars increased to such an extent that Mulla Nizam-ud-Din‘s curriculum, which was called Silsilae- Nizamia, was for a long time the course of instruction in use not only in India but in all of Asia. In addition to instruction in secular subjects, one may imagine that the course contained sacred tuition. It is easy to understand why in those days many students from a great number 212 of places and coming from great distances used to gather in Lucknow.

Francis Robinson argues that being a center of learning Farangi Mahal was an authentic institution and held attraction for the men of learning; he writes that Mulla Qutb-al- Din and his descendants won their reputation for scholarship.213 Teaching was their first priority and they made Farangi Mahal a center of learning that attracted students from all over the Muslim world. There was also accommodation in Tila Mosque, which had seven

210 M. Asaduddin, the west in the Nineteenth-Century, Imagination: some Reflections on the transition from a persianate knowledge system to template of Urdu and English, www.urdustudies.com/AsaduddinPersianate.1/18/07

211 R Upadhyay, Islamic Institution In India -Protracted Movement for Separate Muslim Identity,(New Delhi: Oxford University Press,2003), p.54.

212 Lini S. May, The Evolution of Indo-Muslim Thought after 1857, (Lahore: Ashraf press , 1975) ,p.98.

213 - Francis Christopher Rowland Robinson (born on 23 November 1944) is a British academic who received a CBE in 2006 for his services to higher education and his research into the history of Islam. Robinson's research interests have focused on the Muslim world, with particular emphasis the Muslims of South Asia, Muslim responses to modernity, learned and holy families, and religious and political change. He has written several books on the Islamic World, including Atlas of the Islamic World Since 1500 (1982), Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (2000), The Ulama of Farang I Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (2001), The Mughal Emperors (2007), and Islam, South Asia, and the West (2007). 88 hundreds rooms for the students who came from outside of Lucknow. Farangi Mahal was 214 patronized by the royal treasury.

In Lahore, the Anjuman-i-Himayat Islam was set up in 1885 and its branches grew throughout the land. Its objectives were clear: to give modern education to Muslim boys and girls according to the teachings of Islam. Much emphasis was placed on the education of young girls.215 Its curriculum stated the objectives as: To propagate Islam, reply intelligently - either in writing or verbally - to charges made against this faith, give appropriate Islamic training to boys and girls, provide the poor and orphaned children with education.216 They established Muhammadan Vernacular and Anglo-Vernacular Schools for the education of

Muslim Youth. 217

In 1894, Maulana Shibli Naumani (1857-1914) started an Oriental college in Lucknow by the name of Nadvat-ul Uloom . Naumani was one of the most striking personalities of his age, a versatile genius with a remarkable career as a historian, journalist, and educationist, poet, literary critic, social reformer, publicist, teacher, preacher, philosopher, and theologian. He distinguished himself in history research, and education. He 218 was born in 1857 AD at Bindaul, a village in the district of Azamgarh, United Provinces. The medium of instruction in Nadvat-ul Uloom was Urdu and English was taught as a compulsory subject. Unlike Syed Ahmed‘s Aligarh College, Naumani‘s institution did not only stress upon acquiring English language and scientific information but worked to strengthen the classical curriculum. There was great emphasis laid on teacher training 219 methods for better instruction of students.

214 See Francis Robinson, The Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia,(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2001)

215 ( May 1975, 121)

216 J.N Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India(London : Macmillan and Co , Ltd, 1929), Pp.347-9.

217 Ibid

218 (Ram Babu Saksena, 318)

219 ( May 1975, 132) 89

Nadvat-ul Uloom tried to steer a middle path between the religious fundamentalism of Deobandi schools and Aligarh's imitative modernism for which it received some state patronage as well support form the Muslim aristocracy. However, it could not sustain the criticism of its opponents that it was an extension of the Aligarh College and, eventually, its middle path was grabbed by orthodox Islam which found complete succumbing to the Shariah as the only answer to the multifarious problems of modernity. One can very well judge the middle path of this seminary with the following quotation of Shibli Naumani displayed in the main hall of its library: "Europe has no past. Hence it gropes aimlessly in the darkness of the future. But Islam's past is so splendid that progress for the Muslims lies in retreat into the past until they return to the blissful age of the Companion (of Prophet), nay of the Prophet himself‖.

Earlier, as a student in Aligarh, Shibli Naumani had helped found the Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu (Hind) in 1903 at Aligarh. It was dedicated to promoting Urdu language and literature under the able guardianship of its secretary ―Bābā-e-Urdu‖, Dr. Abdul Haq (1870 1961).220 The Anjuman had its headquarters in Aurangabad that were later shifted to Delhi, where a massive campaign was launched of publishing edited texts of rare Urdu manuscripts to illuminate the early period of Urdu literary history. Hamāri Zabān was its journal which has been a regular weekly publication of the Anjuman to this day.

In 1913, Shibli Naumani established another research centre in Azamgarh, called Dārul Musanefin with a view to fostering a synthesis of the best in the oriental and occidental cultures. This was a writer‘s residency where scholars could find accommodation and dedicate themselves to writing treatises on history, scholasticism and literature. 221 Distinguished scholars like Abdul Salam Nadvi, Sulaiman Nadvi, Sabah-ud-Din Abdur

220 -Moulvi Abdul Haq, awarded the title Baba-e-Urdu was the moving spirit behind the Osmania University Hyderabad, Deccan, where all subjects were taught in Urdu. The textbooks and reference material to be used here were translated and compiled under his supervision: Later on, he served as the chairman of the Department of Urdu. After his retirement in 1930, he compiled and edited a comprehensive and authoritative English Urdu dictionary.

221 M.S. Agwani, Islamic Fundamentalism in India, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992),P. 3. 90

Rahman and others were the product of Darul Musanefin. Its monthly Journal Muarif 222 (Knowledge) is still published.

Syed Ahmed Khan as a pioneer of new Urdu prose

It is said that Syed Ahmed Khan was deeply influenced by the simple, conversational style of Ghalib. His popularized such unadorned Urdu prose which was not in keeping with tradition, laying the foundation for another kind of prose writing. His writings on various subjects and his numerous articles in Tehezeebu Akhlaq are credible performances deserving high praise in which he not only reflected upon the circumstances of colonial India but also 223 shed light on the role and response of the Ashrafia to British reforms.

As a veteran of the war of 1857, his writings may be considered the first source for information on the transitional phase of nineteenth century British India. His works came to represent the interests of an Urdu- speaking elite as well as the former Mughal service gentry, who were interested in securing a better position for themselves after the shift in power relations. In his writings, Syed Ahmed observes the resistance to change among the Muslims and a conservative attitude towards the modern way of life. His three works on Indian history The History of the Mutiny in Bijnore (1858) Asbab-i- Baghawat-i- Hind (1858) and the Loyal Mohammaedan of India (1860) reflected the defects of the British administration and the response of the Muslim Ashrafia. In his book Tehqeeq-e-Nisara (1859) he tried to create good will among the Muslim and British. In Guzarish-e-der bab-e-taleem ahl-e-Hind he gave recommendations for the early education of the indigenous population to British.

Through his writings, he highlighted the various cultural and social differences in how the colonizer viewed locals and how Muslims looked back at the British. Syed Ahmed lived in England from 1869 to 1870, where he was impressed by the writing style of Spectator and The Guardian. He tried to initiate this style later in publishing the journal Tehzeeb-ul-Akhlaq which was popular among the Muslims and was published for twelve

222 Ibid, P.34.

223 Muhammad Ameen Zubairee, Tazkira Sir Syed (Lahore: United Publishers, 1961), 23. 91 years. The objective of this journal was to introduce them to western values and to question some of their own old traditions. Syed Ahmed also wrote about modernising Islam for which he was criticised by a group of ulema.224 His travelogue Safarnama-i-Musasiran-i Landon (1869-1870) translated and edited by Mushir ul Hassan as A voyage into Modernism, is an 225 eloquent expression of his dream to make Muslims modern.

In his important Asbab-e Baghawat-e Hind, Syed Ahmed explained the reasons for the tragedy of 1857-58 after which Muslims assumed enemy status. Syed Ahmed thought there was resentment in the population due the increased activity of Christian missionaries who were given a free hand by the royal government. He recommended the appointment of Indians to the Governor General's Legislative Council so that the chasm between the government and the governed could be bridged. In his writing, he also says how, after 1857, he became convinced that although the British Raj maintained peace between Hindus and Muslims, the two religious communities could not blend into one nation. He observed that the two communities had now become independent and started eyeing each other with suspicion as they both aspired to political power. 226 Through his writings, Syed Ahmed tried to construct the idea of Muslims as a separate nation with a history, language, and cultural tradition all their own and pointed to the prejudices of the British aristocratic class against 227 the Muslim Ashrafia.

Syed Ahmed‘s Aligarh movement had convinced Muslims to take up the English language since this was official language of the government and new developments in science and technology that promised great rewards.228 As Mushirul Hassan writes:

224 Khawaja Muhammad Zakriya, Tareek-e-Adbiat, Muslamanan-e-Pakistan-o-Hind (1857-1914) vol.1V, (Lahore: Punjab University, 2010), 59.

225 - Mushirul Hassan and Nishat Zaidi, (edit), A Voyage to Modernism, (Delhi: 2011), Pp 3-4.

226 (Hafeez Malik, 1968, 223)

227(Muhammad Ameen Zubairy, 1969, 269).

228 Hafeez Malik, Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan‟s Doctrines of Muslim Nationalism and National Progress, Modern Asian Studies, Vol.2, No.3 , (Cambridege: Cambrige university press, 1968) 92

His attitude and way of life appealed irresistibly to the intellectual elite. Whether the elites belonged to significant or marginal constituencies, they formed the audience for his writings in large parts of north India. They looked towards an idyllic future and stood for

the better aspects of modern society.‖ 229

Among those influenced by his thoughts were Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Viqar-ul-Mulk, Charagh Ali, Zaka Ullah, Altaf Hussain Hali, Shibli and Nazir Ahmad, all men of letters and distinguished writers. The nationalist poems and critique of Haali, the historical works of Shibli and Zaka Ullah, and the writings of Charagh Ali and Mohsin-ul-Mulk, the stories and lectures of Nazir Ahmad laced with his quaint humor, caused regeneration in Urdu prose writing. The delightful prose of Muhammad Hussain Azad thrilled the heart of many and is a much valued legacy to Urdu literature. 230

This literature had the effect of gradually forming the sense of a Muslim intelligentsia nurtured not only on classical Perisan and Arabic literary sources but one that had absorbed western rationalism. Writings from this time emphasized the differences between religions in cultural perspectives but did not construct the Hindu as a political opponent.

In many ways, this was the most important phase in nineteenth century Urdu prose in which the impact of colonial rule and that of English reforms can be traced. English novels were translated into Urdu and the reflection of western classics is evident in Altaf Hussain Hali, Muhammad Hussain Azad, Shibli Naumani, Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Zaka Ullah Khan, Nazeer Ahmed and Rattan Nath Sarshar .

The contact and the effects of English literature widened the scope of Urdu literature, which was highlighted by Ram Babu Saxsena in these words: Contact with English literature melted the frost that had gathered on Urdu poetry in the court of Oudh and Delhi. It widened the scope and breathed a new spirit of freedom and enterprise. It fostered the rise of prose and the growth of criticism and drama. It brought a

229 - Mushirul Hassan and Nishat Zaidi, (edit), A Voyage to Modernism, (Delhi: 2011) Pp.3-4.

230 see Syed Abdullah, Sir Syed aur unke namwar rufka ki Urdu nasr ka fikri aur fini jaiza, (Islamabad: Maktadra Quomi zuban,1998), p.9. 93

vast and valuable stock of new imagery, new properties, new scenery and scenery...it enriched the vocabulary of the Urdu language and made it more copious and capable of greater and subtler shades of meaning. It freed it from the limitations of traditions which were tying the hand of the artist, binding his heart with chains, making his sentiments and

thought stereotyped, narrowing his horizon and cramping his freedom and genius. 231

While Aligarh continued to flourish as an educational centre, its effects on the production of Urdu literature gradually declined. The literature inspired by the Aligarh movement falls well within the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the death of its founder in 1898 may well be taken as symbolic of the gradual depletion of the movement.

There was considerable expansion of western education in the second half of the nineteenth century. Two new universities were established: the Punjab University in Lahore (1882) and the Allahabad University (1887). There was a steady increase in the number of colleges affiliated to the universities and in the number of students taking collegiate courses. Meanwhile, progress in female education was slow. Ancient and medieval ideas on religion and society were gradually modified as a result of the influence of western philosophy, literature and science which were taught in English schools and colleges.

As a result of these changes, the western educated class of Indians came forward to compete with their colonial master in every field as writ e by J.N Farquhar observes:

The new educational policy of the Government created during these years the modern educated class of India. These are men who think and speak in English habitually, who are proud of their citizenship in the British Empire, who are devoted to English literature, and whose intellectual life has been almost entirely formed by the thought of the West. Large

231 Ram Babu Saksena, A history of Urdu Literature (Lahore: Sind Sagar Academy, 1975),p.206. 94

numbers of them enter government services, while the rest practice law, 232 medicine or teaching, or take to journalism or business.

As for the acceptance of the British Raj and new reforms by the people, Bipen Chandra notes ―With the passage of time people become interested in the British reforms‖.233 His point of view about the impact of colonialism in India is that:

The winds of change would certainly have reached our Indian shores, because India had never followed a closed-door policy. Information of the new thinking taking place in the West was already reaching India in the 18th century but it might have been a slow process spread over a long period of time. Along with British rule also came a link with the West and modern ideas which were first developed in western Europe made their doorway into India. Even if the British had never come to India, this country would not have remained cut from all the change that were taken th th 234 place in the west in the 18 and 19 centuries.

The influence of Urdu periodicals, 1837- 1857 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number of new directives were issued by the royal authority concerning the conduct of newspapers through the Governor General‘s advisory council. Issued on 22 May 1801, newspaper owners and editors were warned to get their newspapers content approved by the Chief Secretary or Secretary Public Department prior to publication in the newspapers.235 According to Dr Tahir Masood, from 1844 onward the punlications in the vernacular picked up, reaching their peak between the years 1851-

232These observations of Farquhar were made while delivering a series of lectures in 1912, practically after a century of the event of manipulating and introducing English system of Education in India. He talked of English educated Indians around 1850.

233 (Chandra 1989, 27) 234 ibid, p.24

235 Hammad Attique Siddiqui, Hindūstāni Akhbār Nawīsī (Karachi: Indus Publications, 1980), p.98 95

1856. National newspapers were brought out from 29 cities of India, the main centres being Delhi, Agra, Madras, Lahore, Luknow, Banaras and Bombay.236 Jām-i Jahān Numa, the first Urdu newspaper of India made history in 1822-23 but it did not continue as an Urdu paper for long and was converted into Persian. 237 The only vernacular paper considered of merit was the Lahore based Urdu bi-weekly Kohinoor established in 1850 by Munshi Harsukh Rai with the aid of the Punjab board of administration.238 The first Urdu newspapers of Delhi were Fawaid- ul-Nazarin and Kiran-us-Sadai, founded by Rama Chandra in 1852. 239

The war of 1857 had impacted Urdu journalism in terms of number of publications, volume of circulation and content. While some new Urdu papers appeared during this period, a much larger number ceased publication. The number of publications dropped from 35 in 1853 to 12 in 1858. In the north-west provinces, most Urdu papers had ceased publication after the outbreak of the war and the terror that was let lose in the year following. After 1857, major papers like the Oudh Akhbar published from Lucknow was most popular and lasted the longest, it was soon converted into a daily. The founder, Munshi Nawal Kishore, shot into prominence with the editor being Ratan Nath Sarshar. Other important publications were Syed Ahmed‘s Scientific Gazette and Tehzeb-ul- Akhlaq from Aligarh; the Oudh Punch from Lucknow; the Akmalul Akhbar from Delhi; the Punjab Akhbar from Lahore; Shamsul Akhbar from Madras; Kashful Akhbar from Bombay; Qasim-ul-Akhbar from Bangalore and Asiful Akhbar from Hyderabad.

236 Dr. Masood Tahir, Urdu Sahafat Unisiveen Sadi Main (nineteenth century Urdu journalism),(Karachi: Fazal sons,2003)Pp.19-20.

237 - A.F Salah ud din , social ideas and social change in Bengal 1818-1835, (JL Brill : Neitherlad) 76. The first newspaper of Urdu language was Jam-i-Jahan-Numa,237 founded by Harihar Dutta in 1822 in Calcutta . He was the son of Tara Chand Dutta, eminent Bengali journalist and one of the founders of Bengali weekly Sambad Koumudi. Editor of this three page weekly paper was Sadasukhlal . After English and Bengali, it was the third language newspaper in India. It continued to be published till 1888

238 - Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and community in South Asian Islam since 1850,51 (Routledge: 2002), p.53.

239 Rangaswami Parthasarathy, Journalism in India: from the earliest times to the present day,(Sterling Publishers, 1989 ) 96

In 1877, Maulvi Nasir Ali, one of the founders of Anjuman Islamia – the Islamic intellectual and political movement – founded three newspapers: Nusrat-ul-Akhbar, Nusratul- Islam and Mihir-e-Darakhshan. All three focused on current civil and political affairs and were valuable aids in Muslim empowerment. In 1877, Awadh Punch, the first humour magazine in Urdu was started by Sajjid Hussain.240 The first women‘s journal in Urdu was Akhbar-un-Nisa. Darul Sultanat, one of the most important newspapers of the time, was published in 1881 by Shaikh Ahsanullah Sandagiri Dehlawi from Calcutta, Mathura Prasad 241 Savmar was its editor.

By the mid- nineteenth century, the case of Urdu periodical literature was different as early phase as Asaduddin writes "It is only the latter half of the nineteenth century that periodical literature in Urdu became a significant presence and Urdu prose developed its texture through the writings published in magazines and newspaper".242 Many of the writers in these periodicals, while being firmly grounded in their own languages and intellectual traditions, could also access western education because of their knowledge of English language. "As the intellectual-cultural-literary encounter between the East and West... these periodicals became a vibrant and contested site for negotiating the terms colonial modernity. Many future writers of Urdu honed their arts through writing in these journals and newspapers which occupied the greater part of the discursive space at that time". .243

240 The Avadh Panch started in 1877 broght men like Akbar Allahabadi (1846-1921) to notoriety and did much to imbue wit and humour into Urdu journalism. But it also did considerable damage to the standard of decency in the vernacular press. As many as forty different papers were started to reproduce and market the entertaining style of Avadh Punch.

241 Dr. Mrinal Chatterjee, History of Urdu Journalism in India, www.mediahive.co.in/feature, 3-11-2011

242 Muhammad Assudin, the first Urdu Novel: claimer and disclaimer,

243 - Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and community in South Asian Islam since 1850,51 (Routledge: 2002), p.53. 97

Francis Robinson considers this large number of Urdu journals as a sign of Muslim revival because their content was largely popular Islam.244 Ayesha Jalal, too, sees them as being instrumental in gradually furthering communalism by consolidating Muslim identity and Urdu thereby assuming a form of cultural identity associated with Muslims. She writes: ―Colonial policy together with the perception of the ‗majority‘ community advanced in the public arena through newsprint as well as religious and literary publications, bundled Muslims into an undifferentiated and essentialsed category defined by the criterion of religion alone.‖245 Except this identity, like all identities, was about political expediency and there there was no agreement in the Urdu press in the late nineteenth century among Muslims about who could represent, far less arrive at, the consensus of the community. 246

An aplogetic modernity

It may seem that Muslim negotiations with colonial modernity were neither oppositional nor reactive. In fact, it was a negotiation with a new form of authority - one not based on bloodline or landownership or religious scholarship. In many ways, there was no engagement with this colonial authority even when some of its leaders wrote in English, like for instance Syed Ahmed Khan in his Life of Mohammed and Subjects Subsidiary Thereto written in 1870. Aligarh and Syed Ahmed ―seem to have obtained copyright over the very idea of Islam‘s modernity in south Asia‖, according to some historians,247 and yet this meant neither social nor religious reform. It was more an accommodation and loyalism still does not explain how this uneasy partnership was fostered between as culturally different peoples as Muslims of India and British rulers.

For one, it is important to understand that just as colonial modernity did not come ready and packaged as an export item of Europe but developed its contours in India over

244 - Francis Robinson, p.242

245 -(Ayesha ,2002,58)

246 -(Ayesha ,2002,58)

247 Faisal Devji, Apologetic Modernity, in An Intellectual History for India ( Dehi: Cambridge University Press) p..67. 98 time, the concept of what it meant to be Muslim in India – the first a religious and the second a nationalist category – needs to be understood as evolving over time. Being Muslim never meant any one thing to the peoples of India who were as diverse as Muslims in Calcutta and in Lucknow or Delhi who competed in the cultural supremacy of their regions. Islam was not seen any one central cultural or civilisational concept and the ummah was always considered free to maintain its parochial loyalties.

Islam too, was not a singular idea but was split into theological categories of obedience (islam), faith (iman), religion (din), sect (firqa) and mystical order (tariqa). As such, Islam was not a category of identification before the colonial encounter even under Muslim rule. Islam in India was the other face of colonial modernity since they had come 248 into existence because of each other.

Aligarh Muslim University was therefore neither a place of confrontation with colonial powers nor even a dialogue or dialectica l exchange with them. It was more an ―ethical‖ movement as Syed Ahmed liked to call it, Tahzib-ul Akhlaq as their journal was called. Aligarh was formed by led by a group of people who were professional, salaried Ashrafia who had furnished administrators to precolonial states and would now do so for the colonial. What it sought was an improvement of ethical standards consonant with British cultural value system and literary production. It was a theoretical engagement with the modern and not a political one with an occupying foreign force but this was where the Muslims as a national identity emerged, represented as it was by an elite group that much later led to the political movement for a separate homeland.

248 Ibid 99 Chapter- 3

Conflicted modernity: Debate over the First Indian Novel in Urdu

The birth of the novel in India, an essentially European genre, has been commented on by many people. In ‗First Novel in Urdu: Contesting Claims and Disclaimers‘, M. Asaduddin writes about how the preconditions for modern prose arose in Europe at the end of feudalism, the spread of education that meant an increase in the reading public, the invention of the printing press that made books available and gave rise to literary periodicals and a desire for social reform. Unlike in Europe, there was no rise in individualism in north India, feudalism was not dead, and there was no parallel rise of the middle classes. 249 But the Orientalist project of translating Indian classics had infused energy in local literature and Fort William College and later Delhi College played a major role in the development of new literature in Urdu, as did the rise in periodicals in Urdu that published both literary and non literary prose.

But what was the first novel in Urdu? As the Indian writer struggled to align his sensibilities to western values the novel developed slowly with a commitment to realism, individualism and with greater moral complexity. The Indian novel had an ―ideological am bience‖ and a social function was assigned to literature. Fiction with a realist bent was encouraged in colonial India but the first novels still carried the taste of the Persian and Arabic dastaan in its fantastical heroes who conquered all, surpassed all adversity and the form of the story remained episodic, full of celebratory feats instead of a coherent development of plot and deepening of character. Fasana-e

249 Meenakshi Mukherjee, (Ed), Early Novels in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press) p.117 100

Azad (1877-78) by Ratan Nath Sarshar is considered by many critics to be one of the first such attempts at novel writing.

The other protagonist in the story of the Urdu novel is uncontestably Nazir Ahmed who moved away from the romantic hero towards more reformist fiction. Nazir Ahmed initially wrote to educate and entertain young women like his daughters in Mirat;ul Aroos and Taubat-un Nasooh (both 1874)where the virtues of hard work and frugality were stressed as opposed to languor and wastefulness. He did not set out to write fiction - not a novelist but a moralist - but Nazir Ahmed evolved a strong sense of narration and dialogue that was simple and realist which attracted many readers despite their didactic content. Nazir Ahmed‘s contemporaries in prose fiction, Hali and Syed Ahmed, did not come half as close in their command over form and content. It took Mirza Hadi Ruswa and his Umrao Jan Ada (1899) for the Urdu novel to move forward from historical romance and didactic reformist prose to the psychological, confessional novel that yet portrayed its time. In the story of a courtesan in Lucknow, Ruswa speaks of cultural Lucknow, the lives of independent, educated women and the moral complexities of being a courtesan.

According to Asaduddin, the Urdu novel did not go very far after Ruswa because the genre demands that the writer employ western values of logic and coherence but more than that, the novel is a place of great emotional risks and that was, perhaps, not on the agenda in the m id nineteenth century Urdu prose. Ralph links the development of novel writing with the rise of bourgeois culture.

We can even say that not only is the novel the most typical creation of the bourgeois literature, it is also its great creation. It is a new form. It did not exist, except in very rudimentary form, before modern civilization which began with the Renaissance and 101

like every new art it has served its purpose of extending and deepening human 250 consciousness.

Regarding the modern Urdu novel in nineteenth century India, such a reading may be equally applicable. The concern with conflating Mu slim identity with western modernity as reflected in the education institutions, newspapers, periodicals and the prose and poetry of the time that were all elitist discourses, serving the Muslim upper and middle classes. Syed Ahmed believed in the superiority of the Ashrafia and the people he influenced - historians, novelists, poets and theologians all belonged to that class - represented the interests of the lapsed aristocracy and the salaried class. It was thus the elite who found access to education and to western modernity that did not touch the Ajlaf or working class Muslim. 251 And yet, it may well be argued, modernism in poetry and prose was not entirely derivative of English literature and capitalist realism.

It is not as if modernity came to Urdu literature all in one go or in any linear fashion introduced by English influence. Literary output at the time had been showing signs of moving away from its amatory fixation with a beloved and poets at least had started expressing social issues. If we take Ghalib as the first of the modernists in poetry influenced by the Orientalist project, Mir Taqi Mir (1722-1810) before him and Akbar Allahabadi (1846 1921) after him were both anti colonial in sentiment and vastly popular. Hakim Momin Khan Momin (1805-1851) was another poet of high merit who

250Pox, Ralph, the Novel and the People,(Moscow: Foreigri Language Publishing Howe 1960),p.80.

251 Ayesha Jalal, Exploding Communalism: ‗The Politics of Muslim identity in South Asia‘ in Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India (Delhi; Oxford University Press, 1988-89).p.5 102 was acknowledged by Ghalib as an influence on his work, a man at odds with the British rulers of the time because he was of independent means and did not need to rely on state patronage. Although of very different temperaments, Mir, Momin, Allahabadi were committed to steering away from sentimentality in idiom and engaged with a social commentary on their times. Akbar Allahabadi was as popular among Hindus as he was among Muslims, a brilliant and satirical poet who made short shrift of Syed Ahmed and his associates for their shallow imitation of western culture.

It is important to remember this period as one of great dismay and disappointment experienced by the Muslim elite at the fading away of Mughal power. The writers and poets who rose to eminence at the time, even if they had served Mughal royalty - like Ghalib who had tutored Bahadur Shah Zafar - comprised the lapsed elite, north Indian, a minority that represented its own interests. The Muslim elite took its time adjusting to the changed reality of the end of Muslim rule in India, learning to negotiate with the new British rulers while being deeply committed to their cultural anchor. Literature from the period- poetry, novels, travel writing, history - even theological writing reflected this new accommo dation.

The story of Urdu: early theological and historical writing

In the fourteenth and fifteenth century, Urdu was used mostly by theological and mystical scholars who wrote in the vernacular to impart their teaching. This was mostly colloquial Deccani Urdu also used in north India, and it became the accepted language of the Muslim community.252 Among the first such written texts was Hazrat Khwaja Banda Nawaz Gesudaraz (d.1422) who is considered to be the first prose writer of Deccani Urdu in his mystical works Merajul Ashiqin and Tilawatul Wajud. Another theological writer of the period is Shah Miran (d.1582), the author of Kalimat ul Haqaiq. Mualivi Ismail (1796-1831)

252 -Thomas Albert Sebeok, Charles A. Ferguson, current trends in Linguistics, Linguistic in South Asia, vol.3, (mouton, 1966) ,p.283. 103 was a religious reformer who wrote Taqviyat ul Iman about how to vitalize Islamic learning.253 Shah Rafi ud Din (1749-1818) and Shah Abdul Qadir (1753-1815) were the sons of Shah Waliullah who had translated the Quran into Persian. His sons translated the Quran into Urdu which was considered a great achievement at the time because it made the holy book comprehensible to local Indians. Gulam Imam Shahid was another theological writer who wrote in verse. His Insha-e-Bahar-e-Bekhzaban (1866) is a collection of inspirational poetry related to Prophet Muhammed as is his Mujmua Milad-e-Sharif.

In the eighteenth century, it was the complexity of thinking and remarkable prose of Vajhi is stands out, the author of Sab Ras, which was written as an allegory.254 The poet Rafi Sauda (1713-1780) was famous as a poet but he also translated Mir‘s romance Shu‟la Ishaq, into Urdu which is now extant, but a few lines of the Urdu preface to his own poems may still be read. This early phase of Urdu prose writing was heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic and Urdu was not as developed. Since the printing press had not been invented, the production and circulation of these books was limited and their main purpose was religious reform.

The mid nineteenth century many more theological writers addressed the history of Islam, its laws and ethics. Molivi Charagh Ali (1844-1895), was one such outstanding man who wrote Tahqeeq-e-Jihad and Azam-ul-Kalam fi Irteqa ul Islam that proposed political, legal and social reforms in Muslim laws.255 He was a great admirer of Syed Ahmed and

253 -(Bailey, 1932, 83)

254 Mulla Wajhi was a great literary figure of the 17th century. His "masnavi" and prose compositions are rated among the best of their kind. For details see (Ralph, 1960)

255 Commenting on Maulavi Chiragh Ali's famous English work entitled Jihad, S. M. Ikram writes in his book about the history of Islam in India as follows: "In the book Jihad, Maulavi Chiragh Ali has proved that all the wars of the Holy Prophet were defensive, and jihad is only permitted in self-defense. Today many Muslims do not agree with this view. However, when expressing opinion on this book, we must firstly bear in mind the solid, scholarly and religious arguments upon which he based his claim, and secondly we must survey the circumstances of the times when this book was written. ... Thousands of Muslims were losing their lives due to being under the influence of the commonly-prevalent concept of jihad. As a result, on the one hand many sincere men were following a path which was entirely to their loss, and on the other hand the [British] government was becoming aliented with the Muslims. Those who disagree with his views should remember that 104 criticized the Shariah to bring it more in line with western rationalism. He was considered an authority in English, Arabic, Persian and Roman languages and his books promoted Muslim modernism.256 He joined the Aligarh Movement in 1864 and wrote voluminously against Christian missionaries and their criticism of Islam. 257 Dr. Sadiq considers him one of the most important writers who gave major impetus to the reform movement initiated by Syed Ahmed by endorsing his religious position. He was a bold thinker but his literary importance is negligible. He is probably the heaviest and the most wooden of a school of writers who are conspicuously lacking in charm and freshness of style.258 His contemporary, Moulvi Zaka ullah (1882-1910) was a historian who wrote copiously on the history of Muslims but was also famed as a translator. A student of Delhi College, he was part of the modernist movement as religious revivalism. He wrote 143 books of which 129 books were published while fourteen remained unpublished in his lifetime. A committed modernist, he translated books on science from English into Urdu, and numerous textbooks on subjects like history, economics, ethics, and literature. His Tareekh-e-Hindustan (History of India) in ten bulky volumes; Muhmat-e- Azeem (the great wars). Ain-i-Qaisiri, Farhang-e-Farang ki Tareekh (A History of European Civilization) were hugely popular at the time. Saksena appreciates his services as prose writer in these words: ―Zaka Ullah was never brilliant and never boasted of being a genius. His style is pedestrian. It was, however, admirably suited for the translations of mathematical and scientific subjects. He wrote in sober, dignified prose which is lucid, simple and free from ornamentation.‖259 As a writer his proverbial facility has gone against according to Islamic teachings the mutual differences of the Ulama, based on sincerely-held views, are a source of mercy."

256 Waheed -ur-Rahman, A.N.M., The Religious Thought of Moulvi Chiragh Ali (New York: Institution of Islamic Studies, 1988), p.77.

257 Syed Abdullah, Sir Syed Aur Unke Namwar Rufka Ki Urdu Nasr Ka Fikri Aur Fini Jaiza, (Islamabad: Maktadra Quomi zuban,1998),p.88.

258 (Muhammad Sadiq, Muhammad Husain Azad: His Life and Works (Lahore: West-Pakistan Publishing Co., 1974), p.372.

259 Ibid, P.297 105 him. He never developed a feeling for style, and his voluminous histories ceased to attract notice once the medium of instruction was changed to English. 260

Another important historian of the times, Molana Shibli Numani, is not easily classified as a liberal minded modernist. Born in 1857, he was considered the finest biographer of religious Islamic icons and a representative of the Muslim Ashrafia of India. A versatile writer, he made significant contribution to Islamic history, theology, law and literary criticism. Shibli was deeply committed to modernity and rationalism but with an equally strong commitment to the cultural capital of Islam. Initially, he was aligned with Syed Ahmed but parted company eventually when Syed Ahmed dissuaded Muslims from participating in politics. He not only wrote extensively and critically but also set up institutions of learning and writers residencies patronized by the local Ashrafia and the royal treasury. He was a man of an independent mind who was criticized at both ends – by conservative Muslims for being an Aligharian and by modernists for being too steeped in the religious and historical traditions. He wrote simply and elegantly and in the institutions he set up, high standards of pedagogy were maintained and knowledge of English language was insisted upon even as the medium of instruction remained Urdu.

In his historical writing, Al Mamun (1889), Sirat-ul-Naiman (1893), Al Faruq (1898), Safarnama (book of travels), (1894) Al Ghazali (1901), Sawanah-e-Rumi (Life of Rumi) (1904), Ilm-ul-Kalam, Al-kalam and Muwazana Anees-o-Dabir ( Evaluating Anees and Dabir) (1906), Shibli is at his best in tracing the influence of history and political institutions of Persia on the spirit of Persian literature. It is comparable only to the majestic Sukhandan-e Faras by Muhammad Husain Azad, a work of intense scholarship which illustrates the influence of the natural surroundings of Persia and its everyday life on the language and idiom of the country.261 Critics differ over the literary merit of his theological writing which

260 (Muhammad Sadiq, 1974,372)

261 (Ram Babu Saksena, 1975,226) 106 may be called Islamic rationalist in its insistence on pragmatics. According to Muhammed 262 Sadiq, it is not his strongest work, well argued or even quite original.

By this time, English novels had started being translated into Urdu263 and their effect is easily traceable in the prose writing of Altaf Hussain Hali, Muhammad Hussain Azad, Shibli Numani, Syed Ahmed Khan, Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Zakaullah Khan, Nazir Ahmed and Ratan Nath Sarshar. The contact and the effects of English literature widened the scope of Urdu literature, which was commented upon by Ram Babu Saxsena:

Contact with English literature melted the frost that had gathered on Urdu poetry in the court of Oudh and Delhi. It widened the scope and breathed a new spirit of freedom and enterprise. It fostered the rise of prose and the growth of criticism and drama. It brought a vast and valuable stock of new imagery, new properties, new scenery and scenery...it enriched the vocabulary of the Urdu language and made it more copious and capable of greater and subtler shades of meaning. It freed it from the limitations of traditions which were tying the hand of the artist, binding his heart with chains, making his sentiments and thought stereotyped, narrowing his horizon and cramping

his freedom and genius. 264

Urdu prose authors followed the British literary writing style in different genres of prose and poetry. Books on criticism, history, travel and science began to be written that broadened the scope of what could be written and published in Urdu. Fiction was deeply affected and new methods were experimented with, particularly in novel writing. A

262 ( Muhmmad Sadiq, 1974, 371) 263 English novels had become fairly popular in India both in original and in translations. Bunyan‘s Pilgrim‟s Progress, Johnson‘s Reseals, Maria Edge worth‘s Simple Susan, Defoes‘s Robinson Crusoe, had already been translated into Urdu and were read with keen interest. See Mirza Hamid Baig, Maghrib se Nasri Tarajim (Islamabad: Murtaqta qaumi Zuban, 1988)

264 Ram Babu Saksena, A History of Urdu Literature (Lahore: Sind Sagar Academy, 1975), P.206. 107 number of new fiction writers emerged who attempted to graft the English literary tradition to the one in Urdu. 265 Nazir Ahmed, Ratan Nath Sarshar and Mirza Hadi Ruswa enriched Urdu novel as independent innovators. They were all learned men and well acquainted with the English novel. Sarshar confessed in the foreword to his novel Fasana-i-Azad that he had adopted the techniques 266 of English novel.

It must be mentioned there were other, lesser novelists at the time, equally modern, but of not such resolution in their work or in their thinking. Also from Lucknow, like Ruswa, was Abdul Halim Sharar(1860-1926). A journalist and historical novelist, he wrote the greater part of his romances after the close of the century but their spirit is that of the preceding age. The motive of his fiction is not so much the romantic love of the past, as it was his romantic liaison with Walter Scott‘s works who he took for a model. A bold critic of religious orthodoxy that made Muslims hold back from education and keep their women under veils, Sharar wrote in defense of education and greater liberty for women and tried to remove the bias against modern education and the learning of the English language. He wrote in a unique style, his characters drawn from Indian society with the backdrop being Central Asia.

Stories like Malak ul Aziz Varginia, Hasan Anjilina (1889), Qais-o-Lubna (1891), Ayam-e- Arab (1899), Firdoos-e-Bareein (1900) are historical novels where he explored the glorious history of the Muslims with the aim of reviving the spirits of Indian Muslims after 1857. After 1900, his writing changed and became concerned with dealt primarily with problems pertaining to women. In the novel Tahira, he tells a story of an educated woman who speaks Arabic and Persian and has also learnt English from a British lady. Unfortunately, her fiancée is an orthodox man and refuses to marry her because the Ulema he consulted over his marriage criticize his modern fiance. He leaves for Egypt and while there

265 Ralph Russell, The Pursuit of Urdu Literature: A Select History (London: Zed Books Ltd.1992), p. 77.

266 Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel De Cervantes in 1605 and 1615. It was cited as the best literary work ever written. 108 he understands that people have so many ways of organizing their lives and that there is no religious injunction against marrying a modern, educated woman or indeed even a Christian by faith. He repents and laments over his folly which was due to the closed minds of the ulema we look toward for guidance in religious matters.

In the preface to his novel Badar-un Nisa, Sharar critics the institution of purdah. Women are not a commodity to be locked up in houses in the way diamonds and precious stones are wrapped and put away in boxes. Women are much more valuable compared to them." He wrote about women in the house in his novel Meena Bazar: ―The homemakers, women who remain in purdah, are unaware of what goes on in the world and lead secluded life of prisoners. They need to step out of the house to meet others and gain knowledge of how the world goes round."

In all, he wrote about twenty-eight novels, the best known among them being Firdoos-e- Bareen, Flora Florind, Malak-ul-Aziz Yarjinia, Mansoor Mohana, Fatah-e- Andulus and Ayam-e- Arab.

The prose of poets: Ghalib and Hali and their influence over Urdu novel

Contrary to popular opinion, Mirza Assudullah Khan Ghalib was not only the best poet of his generation but also the man who set Urdu prose in a new direction. Although not schooled in western modernity and any of its institutions, the simplicity, directness, wit and social commentary of his work contributed greatly to new trends in Urdu prose. A man from the landed and military elite who had fallen on bad times, Ghalib was patronised by the last Mughal court in Delhi as a poet and then later by the British who conferred almost as much respect on him, summoning him to England to receive his titles and honoured with robes and garlands. He was honoured by both courts with an annual stipend.

Ghalib wrote no prose but it is his letters to friends and contemporaries that have gone down in history as an example of early modernism and intimate social commentary. An eye witness to the war of 1857-58, he wrote in his Persian diary on events unfolding between 11 May to 31 July 1858: ―Here in this city with my wife and sons, I drown in a sea of blood. 109

I haven't stepped over my threshold, neither have I been caught, thrown out, imprisoned, or 267 killed.‖

His letters from the time spawned a new writing style and were collected and published in two volumes known as Urdu-i-Mualla (The Royal Urdu) and Oodh-i-Hind (Indian Amber).268 Written in a simple and descriptive style, courteous but laced with sharp 269 wit, they are considered models of elegant prosody while being most entertaining reading. He writes in an intimate tone of voice with absolutely no formality or artificiality about it, breaking with convention in a natural voice.270 These letters are autobiographical in nature, an index to his personality, his opinions and views on life and literature and his relations with friends and contemporaries, but they also reflect his times, the mid-nineteenth century, and men and manners of that age.271 They are social history too of circumstances during the war or the mutiny as the British called it, the conduct of the British army with the royal family and the depressed conditions of the Ashrafia and the disillusionment of ordinary Muslim after the 272 war.

Mirza Ghalib‘s letters are an authentic account of the war, written with comparatively greater freedom and boldness and reflecting on the plight of Delhi during the war of 1857. He also documents the misery of the Ashrafia due to the shift in political power, including his own changing status because of his intimacy with the last Mughal king and connection

267 A. Sean Pue, In the Mirror of Ghalib :Post-colonial reflections on Indo-Muslim Selfhood, Sage, Indian Economic Social History Review, 2011.

268 Ood-i-Hindi: (The Indian Amber) and Urdu-i-Mulla (The Royal Urdu) published in 1869 are in Urdu and contain letters written by Ghalib in his characteristic style. For further details see Mirza Asad ul Allah Khan Ghalib, Oudh-e-Hindi (Lahore: Majlis-e-taraqi Adab, 1967).

269 Khaliq Anjum discovered 886 letters of Mirza Assud ul Allah Khan Ghalib, in which five letters were written to unknown person. Khaliq Anjum, Ghalib ke Khatoot, vols.i,ii, iii, iv (New Delhi: Ghalib institute, 1993,),p.1408. 270 Ibid,

271 See Mushi Abdur Rehman Amratsari , Raquat-e-Ghalib (letters of Ghalib),( Lahore: Katston Press, 1909).

272 See Russell, Ralph. The Seeing Eye: Selections from the Urdu and Persian Ghazals of Ghalib (Islamabad: Alhamra, 2003) 110 with the court.273 His pension was stopped by the British after 1857 for three years because they were not sure of his loyalties and he e was officially summoned for interrogation a number of times in this period even although he took no direct part in the war.

In a letter to Yusuf Mirza, Ghalib describes his hardship:

Only my Lord and Master knows what is really happening to me. People go mad from great sorrow...Would it be surprising if I should lose my mind from this onslaught of grief? What grief haven't I suffered: death, separation, loss of income, loss of honour? Other than the tragic events at the Red Fort, I know so many of my Delhi friends who have been killed: Muzaffar ud-Daula, Mir Nasar-ud-Din, my nephew Mirza Ashur Beg, his twenty-one-year old son, Ahmad Mirza, Mustafa Khan ibn-e-Azam udDaula, his two sons, Irtiza Khan and Murtiza Khan; Qazi Faiz Ullah. I feel as if they were members of my own family! And how can I forget Hakim Razi ud-Din Khan and Mir 274 Ahmad Hussain Maikash? Allah! How can I ever bring them back!

But three years later, in 1860, when he was reinstated, he started writing again, including the qasida or eulogy addressed to the British, including one for Queen Victoria. This was the tradition of courtly poets and Ghalib gradually accepted the superiority of the European race so given to order and to rationality, to individual freedom, respecting the equality of women, and to creating beauty in their living quarters. Ghalib had a number of British friends who were also tutored by him in Urdu poetry. He was so enamoured of their ways that he even advised Syed Ahmed Khan to stop looking back at the glorious Muslim past and look ahead 275 instead in accommodation with British rule.

After Ghalib it was Hali, his admirer, who became the poetic voice of Muslim Ashrafia. Born in 1837 AD at Panipat, he came of a noble stock but was no longer affluent. His early education was in Arabic and Persian and memorising the Quran. The influence of

273 http://www.jstor.org , G. C. Narang, Ghalib And The Rebellion Of 1857 Translated from the Urdu by Leslie Abel Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University ), p.46. 274 http://www.jstor.org , (G. C. Narang, 45)

275 Ibid 111

Syed Ahmed‘s ideas and the poetry of Ghalib and Shaifta formed his bent of mind but he was also well read in English translations of literature. Hali continued his education even after his marriage and served in different ranks under British administrators. Deeply influenced by Syed Ahmed and by European ideals of gender equity, he wrote works of fiction, poetry and in periodicals in favour of women‘s dignity and the right to be considered an equal part of society. He advocated the need for women‘s education going so far as to claim that the decline in Muslim morals was due largely to the ignorance and superstitious behaviour of women who needed to be better educated to become part of social life. Hali was also deeply critical of the men of upper and middle class Muslim families for continuing to veil women and thus confining them to their quarters. He held that this not only kept their minds from 276 developing but made them miserable and submissive.

Hali wrote Ghalib‘s biography Yadgar-i-Ghalib on the life of his mentor and a critical study of Ghalib‘s poetry (1896) and later a muqaddama or dialectical defense of Ghalib‘s poetry. The Muqadama spread over two hundred pages and was an evolutionary step towards literary criticism in Urdu poetry. Hali gave his ideas on poetic content and on formalism, on avoiding artifice and hyperbole, and poetic flourishes that were as self indulgent as they were in poor taste. Hali was prolific and he chose the simplicity of a reformist and a publicist. He also wrote Hayat-i-Javed on Syed Ahmed Khan (1901), who was a great influence on him. He wrote the epic poem, his mussadas, Mad-o-Jazar-e Islam (1879) at Syed Ahmed‘s behest and it served to promote Syed‘s message to Muslim Ashrafia of north India much better than his oratory and periodical writing.

His only novel, Majlis-un Nisa (1874) was a bold and forward-looking attempt in the reformist mode. Written in two volumes and nine chapters, it is well written in the dialogic form. Dedicated to the theme of women‘s education, Hali suggested the reason for the decline and fall from grace of the Muslims in India was majorly because of ignorance and holding women back. For it is the women of each family who prepare the minds of the children, the next generation, and set the entire atmosphere of the governance of the home. The first volume deals with the training and education of Zubaida Begum and the second

276 Molana Altaf Hussain Hali, Mukalat-e-Hali, (Agra:Azizi press, 1924), P.275. 112 volume is about her married life of how she trained and educated her son Syed Abbas.

A woman should be able to recognize the rights and duties of both young and old. She should be able to raise her children properly, be an understanding companion to her husband, and be capable of bringing order into a disorderly household. She should bring honour to her parents' name in the home into which she marries. She should become dearer to her in-laws than their own children. The husband should be the master and she the mistress of the household. She should be the source of the light of knowledge within the walls of the house. Books should be her closest companions; 277 paper, pen and ink her dearest friends.

The book was awarded a prize by Colonel Holroyd, Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab, and prescribed as a textbook in girls‘ schools in the Punjab and the United Provinces for decades.

Atuji: Oh misery! What has happened to the daughters of respectable households? Why have they given up learning to read and write? How come ignorance is spreading like an epidemic in so many homes? Mahmudi Begam, let us consider seriously why is it that in our country, Hindu and Muslim households that consider themselves respectable have always, from times immemorial, educated their sons, whether they educated their daughters or not? They may have been poor or rich, but they did their best to insure that their sons had a modicum of education. But now! I don't know what this world is coming to! These days, I notice that out of hundreds of children only a few are qualified for anything, and the rest are stupid as stupid can be! It may be true that now there are more children going to government schools, but even there, they 278 don't learn much of anything.

Hali was strongly critical of the Ashrafia who educated only the sons of the family because they looked upon sons as an investment in their own future, as someone they could rely on in

277 Altaf Hussain Hali, Majalis-un-Nisa(Assembly of Women)(Lahore:Maktaba Alia, 1980)

278 ( Hali, 1980, 67) 113 old age. But when the daughters remain illiterate, no one can prosper and every home is governed in ignorance. Hali also wrote against the evils of child marriage or early marriages for women.

After she married and fell into the clutches of strangers, she had more troubles than she had at home. Spending even an hour in this new home was unbearable, leaving aside the fact that she had to spend her whole life there! No matter how greatly her mother-in-law had been looking forward to her arrival so that her son could start a family, nor how impatient her sisters-in-law had been to see her face, once she has arrives, all that changed. Nor was her husband all that pleased with her. For one thing, a young lad of fourteen or fifteen could hardly be very enthusiastic about marriage. For another, he saw that his mother and sisters were displeased with his wife. Thirdly, he did not find anything special about her who would make him drop other things and be devoted to her. In short, no one cared much for this poor stranger. As for her own children, how could they be expected to show respect to a mother whose status in 279 their father's house was so utterly low!

He also mentions the superstitions and old traditions which are also fatal for society and family, which is also a big cause for the destruction of the society and create financial problems in the poor families. In addition to these superstitions, there is no end to the customs they observe for festivals, weddings, and funerals. These customs are injurious both to the faith and to their worldly prosperity, as they waste a large amount of money to gain the honour of the people. This novel is translated by Gail Minault into English who has appreciated the style and writing technique of the book, especially the dialogue form in which it is written as a conversation between upper class women and middle class women. The novel also documents the language and idiom used at the time and serves a historical purpose while making it quite interesting . The novel delves deeper into why women had such low status in society exposing the misogyny that is never talked about openly. Across the classes, but particularly among the elite, a girl is considered an unwanted child from the moment she is

279 Ibid, 114 born while birth of a son in conservative societies brings honour even to the mother and is supposed to bring wealth and strength to the extended family. Education was thus only the right of a male child and it was useless to spend money on a female child who could be trained in house chores and prepared for producing offspring. She was a liability on the household anyway, someone who was meant to leave the parental home with a dowry instead of bringing anything to it. Hali argued against this attitude, urging the elite to educate their daughters so other classes of Muslims could emulate them. Women needed to be educated like they were in Europe, Hali thought, so they become part of society and not just service homes.

It must be recalled how women were considered the last outpost to be guarded in colonial India against the onset of modernity and to prevent any interaction with White men. In late colonial rule, the British had largely withdrawn direct contact and India was ruled by proxy through the ‗Brown Sahibs‘ Macaulay had helped create. There was no ostensible threat to the women of the elite from the limited British presence that was not encountered in the streets and yet they remained invisible and silent.

Debate over the First Indian Novel: Nazir Ahmed, Sarshar and Ruswa

In Urdu literary history, there is much discussion of the temperamental difference between Lakhnaviyat or the Lucknow school of thought and its hypothesized opposite, Dihlaviyyat or the Delhi school of thought. Even among those committed to modernism in the nineteenth century, writers and critics from Delhi were divided from those of Lucknow. The Delhi school may be considered more reformist in the Protestant sense of emphasizing diligence and idealism while the Lucknow school, since the city had been patronized by the nawabs, had a far more sensual, some say, decadent sensibility. Abdul Lais Siddiqui describes Lakhnaviyat as: ―What is meant by Lakhnavyat in poetry and literature is that special quality which early poets of Lucknow adopted and established, and whose special characteristics distinguish it from traditional poetry.‖280 115

Among novelists, Nazir Ahmed represented the Delhi school who wrote copiously in didactic terms on the ills besetting Muslims post 1857 and the loss of their prestige. His negotiation with the modern values being propagated at the time was not a simple assimilation of western values and he finds much to criticize in the way the Ashrafia was blindly adopting western values to gain social ascendency. Through his nov els and short stories he tried to bring conflicting ideals and values in dialogue with each other but like a true reformist did not leave it up to the reader to make up his own mind.

In the Lucknow school of thought the subject of the authors was court and culture since the city had held out against British rule far longer than Delhi under its decadent nawabs. The nawabs had maintained luxurious courtly lives, wealth abounded but was wasted on entertaining the local rulers with dance and music and nights sp ent with courtesans learned in the arts and in the techniques of fleshly pleasure. The Ashrafia was highly morally and corrupt, not given to earning a living or even to promoting the arts. There was no planning for the future, either by the decadent nawabs or the Ashrafia that serviced him. The family institution too was in tatters. This was the thematic in the novels of Ratan Nath Sarshar, the most prominent writer of the times from Lucknow and a contemporary of Nazir Ahmed. Both novelists wrote a critique of their times, addressing decline of values in the Muslim Ashrafia, both modernist in their choice of subject, writing style, yet their negotiation with modernism was quite different.

Nazir Ahmed was born in 1836 in Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh into an impoverished aristocratic family. His father tutored him at home till he could attend Delhi College. Nazir Ahmed later continued his higher education at the same college and married the granddaughter of his supervisor. He learnt English and translated the Indian Penal Code into Urdu and served in the

280(Siddiqui,1955: 39). 116

Indian Civil Service as deputy inspector of schools in Allahabad (hence the pen name) and later as tax collector and in other posts. He started writing for his daughter Sakinah who, he felt, had nothing decent to read in Urdu. Later, this book was published as Mirat-ul Aroos and became hugely popular.

While Nazir Ahmed is indisputably the foremost Urdu novelist of the Delhi school, his close intellectual association with Syed Ahmed and the Delhi College of which he was a part, endorse his modernist credentials. Although later, by, Nazir Ahmed opposed Syed Ahmed‘s injunction for Muslims to stay away from Indian politics and fortify themselves with modern science and an access to European education. 281 For Nazir Ahmed, this negotiation was to be far more complex and not as academic or self serving. He was no communalist and saw Muslims as a cultural identity not an ethnic one, different from Hindus. Nazir Ahmed was a strong proponent of unity between Hindus and Muslims and believed that it was the western history being taught in Indian schools that was creating this feeling of difference between peoples and forging identities on them that were neither real nor benign. He took up his plea to the education department for a revision of texts of history to emphasize communal harmony.

At any rate, Urdu had not yet been confined to the limits of a communalist, Muslim language, and was widely used by writers from other faiths. Several Urdu newspapers and periodicals of the time were founded and run by Hindus. The editor Fawaid- e-Nazirin was Ram Chandra, Kohi-i- Noor was published under the supervision of Munshi Harsukh Rai, the editor of Akhbar e Aam was Mukand Lal, and the Avadh Akhbar rose to its height under the editorial supervision of Ratan Nath Sarshar. It is estimated that that about two-thirds of the writers in Urdu at the time were Muslim and about one-third non-Muslim. Muslims have had a large relationship with Urdu by no means an exclusive one.

281 Mujeeb Ashraf, Muslim Attitudes towards British rule and Western Culture in India (Delhi: Idarah-I Adabiyat-e Delhi) 1941. p 117

As Aijaz Ahmed argues, Urdu had not become a communalist preserve of the Muslims of India.

It is the favourite theme of the modern communalist that Urdu is the language of Muslims and that the Hindus who speak it and write in it have simply imbibed something called `Muslim culture‘. The matter is more complex. The point is to stress here is that the Hindus who have been the part of Urdu writing community have certainly not been passive recipients of anyone else‘s culture; they have created a culture of their own by shaping and modifying the culture of the literary community as a whole ...... if the literary community in modern Urdu is in very large sections still not a communalized Muslim community, one of the sizable reasons is the centeral position which persons and clusters of Hindu origin have played in the very formation of this literary 282 sensibility.

Ratan Nath Dar, pen name, `Sarshar‘, was born a Kashmiri pundit of noble stock whose family had fallen on bad times and moved to Lucknow where he was born in 1845. Educated at Canning College established by the British in 1864, he left without completing his degree but with a good understanding of English literature. He worked as a journalist, writing for the Avadh Punch till he was spotted by the biggest publisher of the time, Naval Kishore in 1878 who asked him to become editor of Avadh Akhbar. Sarshar worked as a journalist and able editor of Avadh Akhbar and began his writing career by serializing his novel Fasana-e Azad in the periodical, a massive tome later published in four volumes. Modeled on Cervantes Don Quixote, in Fasana a lapsed noble Azad and his hapless and humourous attendant Khoji go travelling.The Fasana is written in a highly entertaining vivid, racy and colloquial language of Lucknow the tale is told in keeping with the dastaan

282 - Aijaz Ahmed, Lineages of the Present: ideology and politics in contemporary South Asia, (Verso,2002) p.123. 118 tradition, embellished with poetry where the author sees fit. 283 Being a journalist, he was a man of the world and followed international p olitics and their effects on colonial India. For instance, the Fasana is written about an Indian character who goes to fight in the Turkish war because his beloved Husn Ara wishes to marry a man of valour. This was one contentious issue for the Muslims who considered the Caliphate was located in Turkey but the writer approached it in great humour and as a romantic tale. 284 Sarshar was acknowledged by none less than the British Director Public Instruction for his excellent translations. He was also a poet o f small merit.

In his later years, Ratan Nath Sarshar moved to Hyderabad which was a centre of the arts and for new writing in Urdu where he worked on a literary journal in Urdu. He died an early death due to his drinking habit.

Over the years, critics and historians of Urdu literature of the period have disputed over who takes precedence as a novelist representing the mid nineteenth century. This may be a futile debate since each writer brought his sensibility and skill to the medium and rules for such a j udgment of who was better would need to be defined normatively.

One group of critics considers Rattan Nath Sarshar as the better novelist while calling Nazir Ahmed a fiction writer. While one author, Abdul Lateef, argues in his book The Influence of English Literature on Urdu Literature, that Ratan Nath Sarshar is the first Urdu novelist, the author of Hiyat-ul-Nazeer, Syed Ghulam Mohyu-ud-Din and Ram Babu Saksena argue that Nazir Ahmed is the first Urdu novelist.

Supporters of Nazir Ahmed argue that his construction of the novel is coherent, the dialogue between characters believable and realist. His work may be called social realism

283 (Ram Babu Saksena, 1975, 4) 284 The Turko-Russian War (1877-78) was a conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern Orthodox coalition led by the Russian Empire and composed of several Balkan countries. Fought in the Balkans and in the Caucasus, it originated in emerging 19th-century Balkan nationalism. Additional factors included Russian hopes of recovering territorial losses suffered during the Crimean War, re- establishing itself in the Black Sea and supporting the political movement attempting to free Balkan nations from the Ottoman Empire. 119 because it deals with how people are affected by changing times in conflicting value systems, their emotional reactions documented sensitively by the writer. Meanwhile, Ratan Nath Sarshar did not write realistically and was too tied to the dastaan form of narrative. His characters in ...were not believable and the plot did not develop coherently. He seemed to take no responsibility for his characters and portrayed them in all their weakness and lack of vision while Nazir Ahmed guided his good and bad creatures and believed their nature could be changed although he deployed extremes to set up an example. Who was a better realist remains contested but Nazir Ahmed was a moralist and started writing fiction for the edification of his growing daughter and her friends, while Ratan Nath Sarshar‘s characters were immoral, sensual, moved by their circumstances. In Nazir Ahmed‘s Mirat-ul Aroos, Binat-ul Nash and Ayama, women reflect in dialogue with each other about the moral values of the Ashrafia and what is of worth in them. Ratan Nath Sarshar‘s characters moved across places and his style was not dialogic, rather, he portrayed the many public festivals of Lucknow through the eyes of the protagonist such as Muharram, Diwali, the salons of high society courtesans and activities at the chowk or city centre. A critic of the Luknow nawabs and the Ashrafia, for their decadent lifestyles, he betrayed no tendency to reform them. There were a host of characters in his novels, unlike Nazir Ahmed who created a dialectics between two characters, as a result, Ratan Nath Sarshar‘s writing is often considered over populated 285 and his narrative non linear.

Perhaps the entire debate over the first Indian novel‘ can be shelved since our concern here is not a matter of establishing precedence but a study of how the Ashrafia particularly the Muslim elite - negotiated with western notions of modernity. It is this refraction in Urdu literature produced in the years proceeding 1857 that is of concern here, a literature produced by the lapsed that was both depressed and demoralised. The argument may completely derail if neither Nazir Ahmed nor Ratan Nath are taken as literateurs of the first order, those following the dictates of artistic production in a true portrayal of human life in all its complexity with the ability to ask difficult questions and leave the answers for the reader to find. For literary merit alone, it may be a third contender, Mirza Hadi Ruswa whose work needs to be studied here.

285 Anees Nagi, Nazeer Ahmed ki Novel Nigari, (Lahore: Maktaba Jamaliat, 1961), p.28. 120 Ruswa as the true anti modern

The life history of Mirza Hadi, pen name ‗Ruswa‘, is quite similar to Nazir Ahmed and Ratan Nath Sarshar who was born into a renowned family of Lucknow that had come down in the world. Born in Lucknow in 1858, he faced much hardship in his early years but managed to complete his education. In Arabic and Persian grammar and composition, he was considered as authority. He worked in the Indian Civil Service in different posts but also as an educationalist. He wrote about the decadent Muslim elite in Lucknow and is best known for his novel Umrao Jan Ada (1900). His other works include Afsha-e-Raz, Zat-e- Shareef, Shareef Zada and Akhtari Begum. In all his work, Ruswa was concerned with the lives of the Ashrafia of Lucknow and how they lost themselves due to their own ignorance, indolence and avarice. He also chronicles the lives of people who served such nawabs, such as the courtesan and his feeling for the dignity of women ran much deeper than the desire to see them educated in the western idiom. Ralph Russell has written a comparison between the three outstanding novelists of this period: Ratan Nath Sarshar, Nazir Ahmed, and Ruswa:

If Sharar's work, as compared with Nazir Ahmad's and even with Sarshar's, represents in some measure a reversion to the dastan, his contemporary Mirza Muhammad Hadi Ruswa took the next major step forward, and that too a step of such significance that one can truly say of his greatest work Umrao Jan Ada (1899) that with it a real novel, in the internationally accepted modem sense of the term, at last makes it appearance in

Urdu literature. 286

In the preface to another book he sets out his views on the writing of fiction, criticizing in passing both Nazir Ahmad and Sarshar, although without actually naming either one.

What Ruswa achieved in Umrao Jan Ada, the name of a fictitious Lucknow courtesan, is a considerable sense of character, a skillfully told coherent tale, enlivened with dialogue full of subtlety, wit and humour. 287 The story is placed in the decades immediately after the war of 1857 when courtesans existed, as beautiful as they were erudite and sophisticated, providing the best company to wealthy nawabs who came as much for their learning as for

286 Russell, Ralph. The Pursuit of Urdu Literature: A Select History. (London: Zed Books Ltd)1992. p

287 Mirza Hadi Ruswa, Umra o Jan Ada,( Karachi: Maktaba Jamia, 1961) 121 their charms and where young men of the family were sent to acquire good manners. Umrao is a poet, as sensitive as she is lonely, a woman in service of the Ashrafia of Lucknow who owe her nothing, don‘t own her either, and her journey in self acceptance.

Umaro is a chronicle of the dying culture of the nawabs who openly consorted with courtesans but their sense of social status and maintaining false pretense kept them from formalizing the relationship even when it became serious and turned into a lifetime commitment. Ruswa portrayed the culture of the courtesans of Lucknow who entertained these ‗respectable‘ men whom they often fell in love with but could not communicate with and led entire lives without uttering a single endearment, serving the client without any expectation of good will. Ruswa also studies the men who visited these courtesans, alone and unhappy in their incompatible marriages, sexually dissatisfied with their conservative wives, irresponsible and often ruined by their favourite courtesan till they went bankrupt. It is in Umrao alone that Ruswa went past the didactic or suppressed it best and where moral injunctions come out they are quite understated.

In his other major work, Shareef zada (1900) Ruswa upends the concept of the Ashrafia or what it means to be Shareef or noble. Without being a socialist, he raises the issue of working for a living being more respectable for a man than living in luxury on someone else‘s amassed wealth, as the nawabs were proud to do. Laziness, weariness, idleness and lethargy were the feature of the nawabs of Lucknow during the nineteenth century, filled by useless pastimes like kite flying, pigeon flying, cock fights and playing cards or chess. Ruswa condemns the carelessness and luxurious lifestyle of such people: ―They indulged in worldly affairs and depend upon the property of their forefathers and has proud on their artificial and materialistic life, they are hollow men in reality and not serious about their future.‖ 288 They were fond of following fashion and spent hours bathing, anointing themselves and dressing up.

In Shareef zada, the protagonist Nawab Abid Hussain, has lost his wealth and social prestige but decides to work for a living unlike any nawab of that time. The dignity of labour is stressed in this novel and how nawabs thought themselves above everyone else who works

288Ibid, p.33. 122 for a living. This may have been a fictionalized autobiography of the author as some critics have remarked.289 A parallel theme that runs in this novel is how knowledge has lost all meaning for the colonized peoples who only see it as means to secure a job. Learning is not meant to improve the man and no respect is accorded to anyone for his moral values but only for appearances and the gains made in materialistic acquisition. 290 While most modernists had gone only so far as advocating the acquisition of western knowledge or women‘s education, Ruswa has the perspicacity to read disingenuous motives to such a pursuit.

In this story, the son of the protagonist represents the next generation, educated in Aligarh and superficially educated in following western mores, the son has no idea of his history or traditions and follows meaningless edicts like ‗live and let live‘. What he knows is etiquette and he asks his mother to create a better atmosphere for his children to grow up in where they don‘t have to listen to abusive language being used in front of them. The character of the wife is a gentle and honest woman who works equally hard alongside her husband to run an efficient household on a budget without complaint. Ruswa writes about how behind every honest man is an honest woman, a true shareefzada is not one who belongs to the Ashrafia but who keeps to high standards of morality and of learning. To this good couple Ruswa juxtaposes the bad one, hypocrites who observe religious rituals like the milaad but do not include spirituality as a guide to life. Wasteful slothful and given to false display, such characters are a comment on what Ruswa thought was wrong with religious people.

In his third novel Zat-e-Shareef , the subject is again a wastrel, a lapsed nawab of Lucknow. 291 The character of Chootay Nawab, or young nawab, is representative of that section of the Ashrafia that led an irresponsible life due to the abundance wealth of their forefathers. They maintained a luxurious lifestyle and spent to lavishly on illicit activities in

289 This novel is a fictionalised autobiography according to a number of critics. It was first published from Luknow in 1900. For details, see Mirza Hadi Ruwa, Shareef Zada (Lahore: Maktaba Alia) 1987.

290 ibid

291 This novel was completed in 1900 and was published in 1901 by Mataba-e-Sham, Lukhnow, It is the story of the one Nawab of Lukhnow who lost his family prestige and wealth due to the illicit lifestyle. 123 the company of dishonest companions who misguided them and cheated them out of house and health. Such members of the effete elite were often prey to superstitions and believed in all manner of supernatural activities due to their ignorance and the weakness of faith. The nawabs maintained a bevy of fake saints and pirs around them who pretended to be saintly and fooled the nawab into reading omens, predicting charms and involved him in all manner 292 of ridiculous magical procedures.

This is the story of families where no one had done a day‘s hard labour and who enjoyed the luxuries of life because their forefathers who had been awarded by the royal treasury. It was this nobility that was not ready to face changing times and a change in their own fortunes, to plan ahead and think about anything other than their immediate pleasure. Ruswa detailed the lives of the nawabs, young, foolish, given to pleasures they had not earned through their enterprise; not trained for the world or for the future and living in the moment that they enjoyed with their concubines, intoxicated or playing with pigeons and cocks and kites like imbeciles. They were certainly not in any position to anticipate how this power would be taken from them one day and what they could do to protect themselves. They had no commitment to learning that would help them make sense of their changing surroundings and all manner of selfish lackeys were around them to misinform them and deprive them of their wealth.

Ruswa is, perhaps, the greatest chronicler of Lucknow. He describes the changing times and how the streets of Lucknow had changed after the motor car and religion after the invention of the loudspeaker. He wrote about the ignorant nawab who was unaware of modern inventions and frightened and stupefied by his lackeys with a gramophone playing instead of living musicians and so on. Ruswa‘s Lucknow is a city full of contradictions, housing all manner of opposites. A people proud of their city and of their cultural traditions despite times of hardship but they were letdown by those with wealth and power who had neither learning nor perspicacity.

But while his other novels were more social commentary that portrayed the decadent and foolish lifestyle of the landed nawab and his beloved city of Lucknow, it did not surpass

292 In the novel the character of the Shah Sahib is the representation of these fraud personalities, who cheated simple people with their cleverness.. 124 his literary achievement in Umrao Jan Ada. Ruswa went further than any of his contemporaries in his radical and literary approach. He may be classed as modernist because his characters are lonely, trapped in existential angst and faced with what seem like choices and freedom. He is deeply committed to education but unlike the liberal Ashrafia who extolled the merits of a western education to find better jobs, Ruswa had a far deeper understanding of what it meant to be educated. He saw it not only as an instrument to gain access to power or patronage by the rulers but for itself, to better inform and refine the individual, valuing cultural and classical learning just as much as modern scientific education. He did however observe the falseness of acquiring an English education in India and aping western mannerism. Ruswa also has a modernist commitment to the dignity of labour, even menial manual labour, instead of living off inherited wealth and he valued the honest man and austere woman. His attitude to religion was also quite interesting as he notes all the pretense and pomp that accrues to religious rituals that are observed more for display than for self edification. He was sensitive to the many misuses of a religious sensibility if steeped in ignorance and superstition. In this, his modernism is more indigenous than western because Ruswa did not write about his world as set up in the binary between `tradition‘ and `modernity‘; there was classical learning and knowledge of cultural practices without which people lost their moorings; knowledges changed and were added on to and it was important to keep learning from life. But for Ruswa, modernism did not invent the lonely individual, nor did westernization invent honesty and hard work. In this, he was way ahead of his times in resolving the alleged contradiction between the old and the new.

In his seminal work Umrao, Ruswa has gone past the traditional romance and looks at a woman‘s life who stands at the margins of Ashrafia society as a courtesan who entertains them, educates them, and is yet no part of their respectable lives. She is, or has been, from the Ashrafia but can‘t look back because of where life has taken her, as ruined as the nawabs of Lucknow are soon going to be. She is a poet and an intellectual, a woman sexually independent, financially able to provide for herself, who accepts with pride where life has taken her and does not wish to change anything about herself or dream of being part of the Ashrafia in another life. As she lays dying, her parting words to her companions are: 125

I have some parting advice to those who follow my profession, and urge them to take heed of it. My poor, simple prostitutes! Never entertain the false hope that any man will ever truly love you. The lover who offers his body and soul to you will depart in a few days. He will never settle down with you, and you are not even worthy of that. Only the virtuous, those who commit to one man and never turn to another will have the pleasure of true love. You, women of the street, will never find such a blessing from God. What was to happen to me happened, I am resigned to this and have fulfilled all my wishes. I have no desire left; through desire is a curse that never leaves you till your dying day. I hope that you will profit from this account of my life. I end it with a verse and hope for your prayer:

My dying day draws near. Perhaps, O life

my soul has had its fill of thee. 293

In this work perhaps more than anywhere else, the modern novel comes into its own because the characters are not forced by the author to conform to his wishes, to neatly resolve themselves and satisfy the reader‘s needs, fall into expected patterns of behavior but the human soul is investigated for its many dark contradictions and deep lacerations. Umrao lives near the abyss and that is where the reader is left too, but other than seeing this novel as a social critique - a reformist measure once again - it may also be read as an allegory. Umrao is a metaphor for nineteenth century India - ravaged, in despair, broken by her love and abandoned by society, she is yet proud of her classical learning, of pouring her pain into artistic production, of reading from the book of life to stand at the margins but not disown herself. Umrao does not wish to go back to some safe and emotionally comfortable past nor does she use her acumen to become part of the changing times, she accepts herself and is finally content to be who she is. This is for Ruswa, and for Indian modernism, the best anti modern novel from the period. It is for this reason that it cannot be considered together with

293 Mirza Hadi Ruswa, Umrao Jan Ada (Trans.) David Mathews ,(Lahore: Sang-e-Meel publications, 1996), p. 190. 126

Nazir Ahmed and Sarshar who conceptualise their work in the duality between the traditional and the modern and accept western or colonial modernity as the only way forward. It is to them that we now turn for closer scrutiny. 127 Chapter -4

Imagining Muslims: class and gender in Nazir Ahmed’s novels

While it has been established in the previous chapter that Nazir Ahmed cannot be studied as the best or even the only novelist of his time- the matter of precedence not being of importance here – sense has to be made of his immense popularity to this day, particularly his Mirat-ul-Arus (The Bride‘s Mirror), and Taubat-un Nasuh (The Repentance of Nasuh). Critics have argued against his reformist fervour and the edifying and didactic nature of his writing, sometimes he is discredited for toeing the line set b y Syed Ahmed Khan in favour of colonial modernism and at other times for writing moralistic family drama.

Interestingly, Nazir Ahmed never called what he wrote ―novels" but only qissas as in the tradition of dastaan goi and qissa khwani. There is a general agreement between scholars that he did indeed follow traditional forms of storytelling but infused new content to them, so he didn‘ t work with imported new forms like the European novel but tried to experiment with indigenous narrative and expository forms. Where he was different was in his social realist method of writing straight, unadorned prose eschewing the fantastic tale interspersed with verse and tales of the supernatural that were part of the earlier forms of storytelling. According to Christina Osterheld, Professor at South Asia Institute at the University of Heidelberg, who makes a sympathetic study of his works, Nazir Ahmed used other indigenous narrative forms too like the oral tradition, letter writing like that of Ghalib, public oratory like the one taught in madressahs where he had received early education.294 He also took from English novels and from Persian and Arabic classics.

294 Christina Oesterheld, ‗Nazir Ahmed and the Early Urdu novel‘ in Annual of Urdu Studies 16, 2001. Pp 27 28. 128

But, as Oesterheld argues, he did not take as much from western models of literature as much as he was affected by the rationalism that dominated colonial modernity and its literary production, a philosophical shift as much as a literary one. Nazir Ahmed was a product of conflicting times as we have argued in the previous chapter, and his rationalism sat uncomfortably with his deep Islamic learning. He took issue with several of Syed Ahm ed‘s ideas including Syed‘s unequivocal advocacy of western values and education system for young men of the Ashrafia. Nazir Ahmed was a man schooled in orthodox Islam which he tried to interpret with the best liberal and humanistic ideals in mind. He was a man awarded by the British for his literary achievement and for his brilliant translation of the English Penal Code, but he was also their ardent opponent in the way he wished to distinguish Muslim morals from modern, western ones.

Some writers dispute whether Nazir Ahmed started writing for the education of his daughter as he liked to claim anecdotally or if it was to enter the competition announced by the Lieutenant -General of the North Western provinces in 1868. The condition were: `the book s hall subserve some useful purpose, either of instruction, entertainment, or mental discipline; that it shall be written in one or the other of the current dialects, Oordoo or Hini, and that there will be excellence in style and treatment.‘ The only other injunction was‘ Books suitable for the women of India will be especially acceptable and well rewarded‘. 295 In 1870, Mirat-ul-Arus won the prize and the government purchased 2000 copies and recommended it as part of school syllabi. He won it again in 1872 for Banat-un Nash, (Daughters of the Bier) the second part in the trilogy he began with Mirat-ul-Arus, and then again in 1874 for Taubat-un Nasuh which so delighted the Director Public Instruction at the time, Matthew Kempson, that he translated it into

295 C. M. Naim, `Prize -winning Adab: A study of five Urdu books written in response to the Allahbad Government Gazette Notification‘ in Moral Conduct and Authority : The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam. Ed Barbara D. Metcalf (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) pp. 292-293 129

296 English.

C. M. Naim gives reasons for the popularity of Nazir Ahmed:

These novels of Nazir Ahmad are just the right kind of success stories that the sharif Muslims of India needed to hear in the trying years after the failure of the Mutiny and the dissolution of all symbols of their temporal power. Separating the world of God from the world of Caesar - in effect though not, perhaps, in intention and suggestive of an Islamic version of the Protestant ethic of success, these novels are precisely the kind of adab that both the rulers and the ruled seem to 297 have desired at that particular time in history.

We may add here that Nazir Ahmed‘s continued popularity has a lot to do with how the Muslim upper middle classes wished to see themselves. In his time, class hierarchies could no longer be based on bloodline or descent and accumulated wealth had dwindled away. Former Muslim nobility had to carve out a new identity for itself based on education, skill, hard work and thrift; modern virtues like moving away from sentimentality and carnality and planning for the future. They were trying to move away from what was now seen as the decadent culture of the nawab replete with inebriation, music, poetry and courtesans to the more Protestant ethic of the modern British. The women of this class too had to be redefined and sharp lines drawn between women of different classes. Just as the nobility or upper classes are vilified, so is the lower class in Nazir Ahmed where we find all working class characters portrayed as unreliable sorts, to be tolerated but not consorted with. It is this new middle class that he wishes to create and represent in his works and women form the inner realm of Muslims, the private realm, from

296 Matthew Kempson, Trans. The Repentance of Nussoh (London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1884).

297 See, C.M Naim, pp. 290-314. 130 where such an imagined new class will emerge. Civilising the women of the Ashrafia

As the Mughals acceded power to the British, women became more and more invisible. Wives of nobles and kings had been public figures Like Noorjehan, wife of Jehangir, who literally ran his empire and was known as a patron of the arts, others like the Begums of Bhopal were literate and wrote treatises. But, as is common in periods of political turmoil, there was greater conservatism when the nobility collapsed. Women were now confined to their domestic quarters, not allowed to mingle with neighbouring Hindus and we find almost no mention of them in Nazir Ahmed`s novels.

A number of Indian feminist scholars have argued about woman‘s body being the map on which both tradition and modernity were inscribed. Even the putative British "civilising mission" of India was predicated largely on how Indian men treated Indian women, both Hindu and Muslim. So, concerning women there was a double `civilising mission‘, the first one of the British civilising Indian men and the second one of Indian men cilvilisng Indian women. 298 While the British held the Hindu custom of upper class Brahmins, sati, as a sign of depraved minds, they berated Muslims for their concept of veiling or purdah. New Ashrafia writers and thinkers, Muslims of every political persuasion, then engaged in the "correct" behaviour of women (towards men). Nazir Ahmed‘s concern with the uplift of women of the Ashrafia was part of that project. How it was different from the political project of the conservative Muslims of the time, in particular from Maulan Ashraf Ali Thanavi‘s Deoband school, is important to delineate.

While Nazir Ahmad's success and popularity was acknowledged both by the colonial administration and the reformist Aligarh School led by Syed Ahmad Khan, his book was received negatively by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanavi, the acclaimed writer of Bahisti Zewar, also a book to instruct

298 Margarit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Delhi (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013) pp 355-378. 131 middle class Muslim women. Thanavi advised his readers to stay away from both Mirat-ul-Arus and Banat-un Nash because, according to him, some sections in the content were not in accordance with Islamic teaching. 299 But, in mid nineteenth century India, both these books accompanied a young

Indian bride as part of her dowry. 300

This difference of opinion can also be traced in the objectives behind the formation of the school in Aligarh and in Deoband. According to Dr. Tahir Kamran, 301 during the second half of the nineteenth century, the movement of Islamic revivalism led to the realignment of ulema class interests with the fortunes of the Islamic community rather than the state. Qasim Nanutwi (1833-77) and Rashid Ahmed Gangohi (1829-1905) were its early patrons. Its establishment was a departure from the earlier systems of madressahs since much of the organizational form was adopted from British institutions and then modified to fit the needs of Deoband. The staff had specific assignments, which comprised teachers, administrators and councillors. Erudition in Arabic was a fundamental criterion for the selection of teachers, while Persian teachers too were on the faculty but Arabic teachers held precedence over them all both ―in pay and prestige‖. 302 The curriculum introduced at the Dar-ul-Alum in Deoband was similar to what was being taught at the other madaris in South Asia, known as Dars-i- Nizami. That curriculum was first introduced by Mullah Nizam -ud-din Sihalvi (d.1747), a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy from

299 Molana Ashraf Ali Thanavi, Bahisti Zewar, (Lahore: Ilmi Book Depot, 1988).p.389

300 One of his biographers, Ram writes: ‗Perhaps there was no gentle family in northern India where the women did not benefit from reading this book that he had written as dowry for his eldest daughter‘. See K.L Ram, Shamas ul Ulema Hafiz Dr.Nazeer Ahmed, L.LD, O.L, (Lahore: Roy Sahib Munshi Gulab Singh and sons, Educational Publishers, 1927)

301 Tahir Kamran, Evolution of Impact of Deobandi Islam in the Punjab, 32. http://www.gcu.edu.pk/FullTextJour/Hist/11/3/11.

302 Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 10. p. 95 See, Rashid Ahmed Jullundri, Bartanvi hind mein muslamanonka nizam-i-taleem (Lahore: Idara-i- Saqafat-i-Islamia,n.d.),141-184. 132

Lucknow. 303 The subjects included grammar, rhetoric, prose, logic, philosophy, Arabic literature, dialectical theology, life of the Prophet, medicine, mathematics, polemics, Islamic law and jurisprudence, the Hadith, and the Tafsir (exegesis of the Quran). 304 Interestingly, only eight of the twenty subjects on the curriculum could be termed religious. Dar -ul-Alum attracted mostly poor students as opposed to the Ashrafia who preferred to 305 send their sons to the Muhammadan Anglo Oriental College, in Aligarh. The two schools -Aligarh and Deoband - were not different institutions but different schools of thought, conflicting even, especially in how they visualised women‘s position in society and their role in religion. While scholars from Aligarh nodded towards women‘s emancipation from harmful old cultural and religious practices, scholars from Deoband stressed on the need for a limited social role for women, justifying fem ale subjugation through religious ideology. What is noteworthy here is that both groups had Ashrafia women on their agenda and both professed to the rationalist argument. They were also similar in advocating the secondary status of women as compared to men while also insisting that women and the home were the bearers of tradition. Mukherjee has argued with reference to nineteenth -century Indian novels, how women represented by men are a ‗a key dilemma of the period‘. While Aligarh came to represent a progressive stand which was complicit with the project of colonial modernity, Deoband represented an anti -colonial Islamic stand which rejected all change in harmful traditions as a western conspiracy. For the Muslim Ashrafia, the zenana or women‘s secluded quarters, was the only place where modernity could not be allowed to enter 306 and where Muslim culture was to be protected.

303Mumtaz Ahmad, Madrassa Education in Pakistan and Bangladesh, 102. http://www.gcu.edu.pk/FullTextJour/Hist/11/3/11 304 -ibid., p. 103 305Tahir Kamran, Evolution and Impact of Deobandi Islam in the Punjab, http://www.gcu.edu.pk/FullTextJour/Hist/11/3/11. Detailed description by Lini S. May, The Evolution of Indo- Muslim Thought after 1857,( Lahore: Ashraf Press, 1970) p. 121 306 L. Mukherjee, History of India, ( Calcutta: Mondal Brothers & Co, third edition). 45 133

But were they all that different in how they saw women? Ayesha Jalal comments on how, "Despite variations, protagonists of women‘s education made certain that their proposed reforms were strictly consistent with the emerging Ashraf code of morality. The redefinition of social space under conditions of colonial modernity saw indigenous patriarchy glorifying women as wives and, above all, as mothers." 307 She comments on how all these reformist measures had a class bias to them and "Muslim poets, newspapers, and novelists poured scorn upon the depravity of lower class women and their pernicious influence on their middle -to-upper class sisters." 308 What was so different then between how Syed Ahmed wished to "reform" women and how Ashraf Ali Thanavi envisaged the same project? How was Nazir Ahmed, a first generation Aligharian, writing about women any differently from conservative religionists? Ayesha Jalal c omments on how mid nineteenth century writing on women saw them as symbols of cultural identity. They were allowed to be "literate but domesticate, wise but chaste, intelligent but submissive." Novels like Mirat-ul- Arus or The Bride‘s Mirror by Nazir Ahmed, published in 1869, set the standard for the ideal Muslim woman in the character of Asghari. Observing purdah and educated in the zenana, she was the ashraf model of a modern educated woman. What has made her character memorable, quite as much as of Zubaida Khatun in Hali‘s acclaimed poem ‗Majli-un Nisa‘ (1874) is the almost insufferable capacity to be the perfect domesticated heavenly ornaments of 309 Thanawai‘s dreams."

Constructing Sharif women and Sharif men: The trilogy Mirat- ul-Arus, Banat-un Nash, and Taubat-un- Nasuh

307 Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (London: Routledge, 2002) p. 70

308 Ibid.

309 Ibid, p. 71 134

The first book, Mirat-ul-Arus, (The Bride‟s Mirror, 1869) is a tale of two sisters, created as opposites to serve the purpose of illustrating correct and incorrect behaviour for young married women. The book was hugely popular for its simple and accessible argumentation which was, by all standards, quite conservative. Nazir Ahmed writes like the paterfamilias he was in real life and a letter from the father named Durandesh (farsighted, wise), no less, is what the female protagonist has to guide her through the turmoil of conjugal life. In the elder daughter Akabri (or The Bigger One) the author puts in all the vices of a young woman of the middle class can have that may lead to the moral ruination of the family structure and indeed of coming generations. She is spirited, given to tantrums, to making friends in the neighbourhood, and wishes to separate from the extended family she marries into to set up her nuclear unit. Not being fond of cooking is cited as another, major shortcoming in her personality. All in all, she is a selfish monster in Nazir Ahmed‘s eyes. Meanwhile, the younger daughter, his favourite Asghari (or The Little One) is a model of virtue who listens to her father and remains a demure and modest caricature of his wishes. Asghari is educated in the terms that suited paternalism as a good wife who made no demands on her husband and a model mother who put her children before her own needs. As for the purported education Nazir Ahmed promoted for women, he explains in the preface to the book that girls must learn to read and write because they might need to write letters and keep household accounts. Uneducated women were superstitious, wasteful, and cavilling, unaware of Islamic teaching. According to him, education could be divided into two parts: one that related to worldly matters and for the satisfaction of the mind, and the other that related to religion and was meant for spiritual satisfa ction. He considered English education as the first kind of education that was 135 necessary for the progress in the public sphere. 310 He writes: "I do not deny that too much learning (ilm) is unnecessary for a woman, but how many women are there who acquire so much as is absolutely necessary?" 311 In the same paragraph, he stresses two other forms of learning that women must acquire: needlework and cooking. He emphasised that although women may never be able to read and write like men they needed literacy "sufficient to 312 meet their requirements".

As Ruby Lal argues, Nazir Ahmed is to be seen not as a radical "reformer" who wished to change the conditions of women since the translation is incorrect. The word he uses is “islah” or edification, remedying the conditions of the Ashrafia to recuperate lost respectability. She argues quite convincingly that Nazir Ahmed‘s concern was the Ashrafia and not all sections or classes of society as is evident in his portrayal, when there is any, of the working 313 class.

One of the faults in Akbari‘s character is that she mixes with women of the neighbourhood, not all of who are from the Ashrafia as a class. Her husband chides her for mixing with the wives of the greengrocer, the ti nker, the water carrier, in other words, the working classes. Meanwhile, the "educated" Asghari teaches young girls from her mohalla but only chooses to intermingle with those from Ashrafia backgrounds while politely turning down others. Another virtue of hers is to catch the old maidservant Mama Azmat from pilfering the kitchen kitty and taking it into her own hands. Nazir Ahmed makes it critically important for the new Ashrafia woman to set boundaries of class and in Mirat too, like in his other works, the working classes are portrayed as deceitful and villainous.

310 Gull-i-Hina, Representation of women in Urdu literature 1900-1936, (Germany: Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012) 46. 311 Mirat-ul-Arus, pp 35-36.

312 Ibid.

313 Ruby Lal, ‗Gender and Sharafat: re-reading Nazir Ahmed‘, in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Great Britain, Vol 18, Issue 1, 2008.p 17 136

The novel is also an excellent social commentary on the times and how what was once the nobility now lived on the bare mi nimum. In his elegant study of the period which is as literary as it is historical, David Lelyveld writes in Aligarh‘s First Generation about the Ashrafia household expenses using Mirat-ul-Arus as an illustration to point to the economic depredation of this class. He writes how Nazir‘s characters live comfortably on an income equal to about two per cent of that of the lowest -grade British civil servant though such an income was, at the same time, twenty or even forty times the wage of a labourer. Nazir Ahmad's account "recapitulates the early careers of Indians in government during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth 314 century". The women of the family are brought up to be modest and slightly educated housewives who know how to maintain peace in the frugally managed household. Lelyveld also points to the trend for married men to start living with his in-laws in financially strained times, a practice that Nazir Ahmed vehemently disapproves of in his novels. "Nazir Ahmed‘s aim was to point how the culture of the zananah part of the Ashrafia disclosed the various social and family aspects of the life of the people of Delhi. Bad management of the home due to the low income, the d isgraceful social trend of the male to be under obligation to his father in law; there is also advice to young women on how to guide and mature her husband career." 315 As for men‘s careers, the character Asghari weans away her husband Kamil from his old aristocratic habits and advises him to get a government job, the kacahri culture that Lelyveld describes so well. 316 This meant hanging around the courts and government offices to be noticed and taken in as an apprentice scribe to be later elevated as a clerk in some office.

314 http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00fwp/published/txt_Mirat-ul-Arus_1/4/11

315 Ibid. 35.

316 Ibid. p56 137

The second part of the trilogy, Banat-un Nash (Daughters of the Bier) is not as well written or engaging as Mirat, although it too was an award winning novel in its time. 317 Here Asghari is running a small girls‘ school in her home and Nazir Ahmed explicates not only what he thinks is ideal education for women but the ideal institution too. Instead of Akbari, he now poses Husn Ara, (translated to mean The Beautiful One) as a wealthy young woman gone wrong who is sent to Asghari for islah. As for the ideal curriculum for women, Nazir Ahmed writes that A sghari teaches reading, writing, and fancy needlework which is sold to pay the expenses of the school. We learn a lot about her teaching methods (including a recipe for zardah), and about the evils of other schools (they are boring, cruel, and exploitative). Asghari's girls dress dolls thus learning about fabrics, clothes, and festivals, and also have doll feasts that they prepare and consume, keeping careful accounts of the costs. In the girls' lessons, Queen Victoria and the Begum of Bhopal serve as inspi rations as do Englishwomen who send their children away for schooling, for their love is 'tempered with reason' and is not 'a mad fondness like that of mothers here' who spoil their children and let them run wild.

Husn Ara is a young woman from a distantly related aristocratic family of the neighbourhood, who is sent to Asghari for training. Among the Ashrafia it was considered reprehensible for women to step outside the house for learning so Husn Ara‘s mother first inquires into and establishes that Asghari‘s family is of noble birth and similar to theirs before sending her to the maktab.318 The importance of class affiliation, even if a family no longer commands wealth, is established here. Nazir Ahmed critiques the aristocracy for its unmindful ways, detailing what went wrong with Husn Ara and where. In her home, wealth was not accompanied by intelligence and the mother was

317 Iftekhar Alam Meharvi, Hayat-ul-Nazir, in 1873 Nazir Ahmed produced what he called the 'second part' of his tale, Banat un-Nash (The Daughters of the Bier, a name for the constellation Ursa Major), which won a prize of Rs. 500. p172.

318 ( Mehervi 1912, 177) 138 incapable of educating her daughter who grows up selfish, arrogant and unskilled in the crafts of womanhood. A bevy of handmaidens surround Husn Ara who she treats abusively. But gradually, she is won over by the strong character of Asghari and is transformed.

The 1870s was not the time for a radical rupture with the old and the ―New Woman‖ was not born yet, despite claims to the contrary, there was nothing substantively different about how women‘s lives were organised by the men around them. The women in Nazir Ahmed were not educated to become independent thinking women, gainfully employed, and there is an entire section in Banat on how it is respectable for Asghari to run a maktab at home because she refuses to take money for tuition. Instead, the stress on dress, comportment, politeness and thoughtfulness are paraded as the traits of a Sharif woman. What is interesting is that the first two parts of the trilogy are not religious in their admonitionand there is no concern with the peity of the two sisters posed as counterfoil to each other.

The third part of the trilogy, Taubat-un Nasuh (The Repentance of Nasuh, 1877) is different in this and brings in the religious moralist. This is perhaps one of the finest writing of Nazir Ahmed and the most controversial. While the author is just as paternalistic about the education of Sharif men and the novel is full of cardboard characters - for instance his two sons Alim and Saleem - it is Kalim and Nasuh that set up the true dialogue of this novel. One of the most interesting characters created by the author, the novel is more about Kalim, the son, than about Nasuh, the father. It is Kalim‘s islah that is at stake here - the eldest, retrograde son who grapples with what may be good about modernity. The theme is overtly religious with the father representing the old order and his son the new one. Modelled on Daniel Defoe‘s non - fiction The Family Instructor (1715) Nazir Ahmed makes its quintessentially Indian Muslim.

The story opens with a dangerous epidemic of cholera raging in Delhi. Among its countless victims is Nasuh who falls ill despite all the care 139 he takes to avoid the disease. While ill, he falls into deep slumber and dreams of meeting his father who recounts in vivid detail all that befell him after he departed from this earth, including the grilling he had to face for his sins. The father also tells him that he suffers in hell because of Nasuh who has neglected his religious rituals. Nasuh wakes up a born-again Muslim which is generally a recipe for creating a religious zealot. 319 He confides in his wife Fahmidah and enlists her support in reforming the family. The atmosphere of the house if transformed and the playful pastimes of the idle rich are replaced by prayers at regular hours and other religious chores. Nasuh not only performs his rituals more regularly but also acts more responsible towards his wife and children. He had an uneven temperament and was feared by everyone who knew him but after his illness, he turns into a calmer man. The younger children fall in line but it is the rebel elder son Kalim who makes the story interesting as father and son battle over ideas and ideals.

Kalim takes his father on and refuses to follow his new commandments. He tells him that parents‘ duty to educate children is over after the child is about the age of ten. He also tells his parents he cannot stand becoming a molvi now, and they should have brought him up in that way for him to accept it. He questions his father‘s new found religious zeal. Alim, his other son, argues too that since childhood he had read the Quran without understanding any part of it and only recently after chancing upon a book on ethics did he feel he underst ood what it means to be a good man. But Alim is on his way to becoming the ideal Sharif man; he thinks, reflects, worries over the right course to follow and also tries to put his learning to practice.

The denouement is quite telling in how what Nazir Ahmed thinks of good tastes in living and in reading. After arguing with his mother and walking out, Kalim heads for the two -room place he rents where his father

319 Nazir Ahmed, Taubat-un-Nasuh, (Lahore: Feroz Sons, 1988). 140 follows him. Nasuh enters the first room which is an ishrat khana, or salon to receive guests - handsomely furnished with a wooden takht covered with rugs and pillows, chairs of polished wood, a hookah and spittoon a nd framed pictures and verses. There are cards and dices, flowers in pots, jars of perfume and musical boxes all of which Nasuh finds most distasteful and extravagant although an average reader might identify this as austere, good taste. Nasuh goes to the next room, khilvat khaneh, or retiring room where he chances upon the bookshelf. Nasuh examines its contents carefully and is appalled to find books in Urdu and Persian, fiction and poetry dealing with romantic love. He also finds Kuliyat-e-Aatish, Diwan-e-Sharar, Diwan of Mir Dard and Diwan-e-Sa‟adi all of which incenses him greatly strengthening his resolve to set Kalim right. He sets fire to all the books and his sons, Alim and Salim, help him in this. This is perhaps the most disturbing part of the book where the author justifies imperious moralising and boorish violence.

This is a place for pause and Nasuh takes his time looking over the beautiful binding of the books, their fine calligraphy, the quality of paper, the beauty of language and the excellen ce of writing, they appear to him to be a treasure trove. But as far as their content is concerned, every book seems to him fit for burning. To his sons he describes these books as being more dangerous than snakes and the proceeds from their sale haraam (illegal), like stolen or looted goods. He declares that the devil has put his mark over Kalim and declares this little library the work of a savage. Interestingly, there are no English novels in this pyre, only classical Urdu and Persian poetry.

How are we to understand Nasuh‘s violence? Perhaps it is incorrect to read the author in this character but the chilling scene brings to mind the equally cold lines of Thomas Babington Macaulay when he criticised Indian historical and literary writing and wrote: "... never found one among them (speaking of the Orientalists, an opposing political faction) who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native 141 literature of India and Arabia." 320 Does Nazir Ahmed‘s Nasuh not reflect this disdain for literary production of the late Mughals in his book burning frenzy? Nazir Ahmed‘s friend and biographer, Farhatullah Baig, has described at length how they enjoyed reading Urdu poetry and what a harsh pedagogue his friend was, but we have to wait till his last novel Riway-e Sadiqa to hear 321 from the author on this.

Nasuh‘s intransigence and incapacity to accept different opinions is vindicated at the end of the novel while Kalim dies. The only fully developed character, Kalim not as wooden as the villains Nazir Ahmed generally constructs them but one with a conflicted pers onality, caught in the contradictions of changing times. He has a first -class mind and is a young man of wide reading, literary taste and a gifted poet. He is an independent thinker and yet he had allowed himself to become financially dependent on his father. We hear that he was frequently in need of money, that his friends were degenerate, idle, good -for-nothing fellows, and so forth. He stands in for the young men of liberal minded Ashrafia, the newly modern who now question tradition and even religion. T his Nazir Ahmed and his Nasuh will absolutely not allow and the character Kalim is killed off in the story, repentant on his death bed thus making the book more about Kalim‘s repentance than Nasuh‘s.

Shaista Suharwardi attempts to make sense of the book in her work, saying:

320 Lord Macualey’s Minutes on Education written in 1835 for lord William Bentinck to declare the medium of English language compulsory for Indians, this policy remained the essential part of late British rule. See Baron Babington Macualay, G. Cumberlege (edit), Lord Macaulay's legislative minutes, (Oxford University Press, 1946).

3 2 1 Farhatullah Baig, Nazeer Ahmed ki kahani kuch Unki kuch Apni Zabani (The story of Nazeer Ahmad in his Words and Mine), (tran.) Amina Zafar, ( Karachi: Oxfo rd University Press, 2008) 142

Just after the Mutiny, people were no longer opulent; familie s who up till now had been able to support themselves with income from their properties, began to look round for jobs for their sons. Certain degeneracy among the younger generation was apparent. Kalim, Mubtalã and even Asghari‘s husband, Kãmil, are typica l of those indolent, lazy and pleasure-loving but suave and polished young men. But life still had dignity and charm; people struggled to keep up appearances. There was still a great deal of old - world courtesy,

loyalty, and sense of honour and duty. 322

There is another villain in Taubat-un Nasuh, Nasuh‘s elder daughter Naima, who is less virulent an opponent of her father‘s ideas. Naima is open minded and free spirited like her brother Kalim, given to the latest fashion in dress and given a bit to vanity and display. She is a negligent mother and cannot get along with her in laws; Naima is not particularly religious but when chided about it by her mother she responds that they were brought up very differently and it is hard for her to change her ways. Being a girl from the Ashrafia, Naima‘s vices are not as extreme and they are confined to her ineptitude at domestic life. Through this character, Nazir Ahmed stresses yet again the place of a woman being her home and a good woman defined as a good daughter-in-law living in a large, extended family. According to Ruby Lal, Nazir Ahmed‘s mission was the edification of the younger generation according to older values and not some bold new direction he wished to give his children‘s lives. In her paper, she believe s Nazir Ahmed‘s mission is the retrieval of middle class respectability after all land, property and accumulated wealth of generations was lost.

322 Shaista Suharwardi, Critical survey of the development of the Urdu novel and short story.(London, Longman‘s Green, 1945), 33-34. Chapter 4. 143

―The class anxiety of ‗declining‘ Muslim gentry of nineteenth-century colonial India about which scholars have spoken becomes translated into an anxiety about gender and sharafat...though the Sharif woman appears to be the axis of reformist debates, the object of the reformers was not to transform her, but to preserve family, community and 323 culture through her‖. But whether Nasuh is a literary construct or a stand in for the authorial voice, Nazir Ahmed is clear on how and where and how much colonial modernity he wants for the coming gen eration. If modernity is defined not merely by rational thinking but experiential learning that does not seek guidance from transcendental text, then Nazir Ahmed is no modern. In the trilogy, the insistence is on younger people learning how to fit into new moulds with slight alterations to their comportment and a modicum of instrumental learning, while always remembering their ethical values lie in sacred text as the guide to their actions. It is in Ibn-ul-Waqt, a work that comes much later in his career, that Nazir Ahmed takes the argument forward and is much clearer in his vision for the future. Some critics have called it the fourth part of the trilogy begun with Mirat-ul-Arus, and it is for this reason that we turn next to Ibn-ul-Waqt to explore the author‘s vision.

Ibn-ul-Waqt : Knocking Syed Ahmed’s modern Muslim man

The novel, perhaps his most resolved one with fully developed psychological characters and a narrative technique that was not dependent on someone dying or being killed, has often been held up as a repartee to Syed Ahmed. Some say it is even modelled on the Aligarian patriarch who advocated the construction of the modern Muslim man and for a closer and friendly relationship with the British. This novel reflects the personal conflict and search for identity that it led to. It is most interesting also in Nazir Ahmed‘s typical writing style, he sets up a manazara or dialogue between people of oppositional points of view. This novel is an intimate

323 Ruby Lal, (2008, 27) 144 encounter between a young Indian Muslim with a British high official, the two mirroring each other‘s biases and prejudices and learning to change their opinion. This makes Ibn-ul Waqt closer to the European novel in its emphasis on psychological development of characters, where death is not the resolution of a character or the narrative device used by the author to end a story he cannot quite tell. It also moves away from Nasuh, for instance, in valorising experiential knowledge instead of transcendental on e. Generally, it is a negative image that comes to mind when the term Ibn- ul-Waqt is used, signifying a wicked opportunist without principles. The lead character is not portrayed in this way but developed with some empathy as a man forced by circumstance to change his personality to suit the times, a change that he is convinced is good for him and for those around him. Ibn -ul- Waqt is a "babu", the servile Asian caricature developed by Kipling that lives on and on, who assumes false humility with those super ior to him and takes on the airs of gentility with his inferiors. This was the new elite that was English literate and followed the mannerisms and outward lifestyle of foreigners to display their close association with the ruling classes. This class was an equivalent of the English "gentleman", a nineteenth century coinage that signified not a distinction of blood or heredity title but sophistication in manners brought on by education.

Ibn-ul-Waqt, literally "the man of the moment" was published in 1888 when Macaulay‘s Minute on Education had had the time to successfully create the Brown Sahib. Ibn-ul-Waqt is an educated young man who is not even particularly brown and his fair skin often misleads people into taking him for a foreigner which delights him no end.

He had his hair cut in English style; he baptised him, so to speak, in that, he made him take a bath; he made him wear an English -style suit with braces and a stiff collar and tie as demanded by the season, hour and occasion and thus made him a European to all appearances. Ibn-ul- Waqt saw his reflection in the mirror and found that he resembled an 145

324 Englishman.

In the novel, Ibn-ul-Waqt is a young man of Delhi whose family once served as courtiers in Mughal rule and was known for its learned scholars, hakim, religious clerics, teachers and mystics. Their livelihood was tied to Mughal rulers and even when the British arrived in India, Muslims shunned any contact with them. Nazir Ahmed presented the behaviour and family structure of the Ashrafia, especially when Ibn-ul-Waqt meets in his mother the sharp contrast in their thinking. His mother represents the old world with its superstitions, ignorance but also its straightforwardness. She regards the British as sorcerers and dangerous magicians, tricksters because they come to know of things in an instant even from a distance of thousands of miles. She thinks the East India Company is the daughter of the king who got India in her dowry, and yet, she is a woman who has her own knowledge system in tune with the time of the year, its changing seasons, her culinary, curative and creative skills adapted to looking after other people. Ibn-ul-Waqt finds much love in his heart for her and respects her old ways.

It is when he saves an English gentleman during the rioting and upheaval of 1857-1858 that his life undergoes complete change. The Englishman, Mr Noble, is injured and is taken into Ibn-ul-Waqt‘s household to be nursed. He learns to live and dress like a Hindustani which he enjoys, going out with his head covered like a Muslim. An honourable man, as his name signifies, Mr Noble does not forget Ibn-ul-Waqt once he is home and safe but starts counting on him as an ally of the British who has to be rewarded. In the novel he tells Ibn-ul-Waqt: ―There is a great difference between you and me. You took great pains in sheltering me without any personal interest. Well, let that pass for, as they say, friendship knows no debit or credit. Let us talk about something more important. I have seen 325 village Khairkapur which you have been granted.

324 Muhammad Zakir, (trans. and Ed.) Nazir Ahmed, Ibn-ul-Waqt ul Waqt (son of moment),( New Delhi: Orient Longman,2002), 73.

325Ibid , 41. 146

Here Nazir Ahmed has reworked a painful part of his own life story when, during the war of 1857, he went around looking for a safe place to hide his family and a means of saving his pro perty. K. L Ram gives a detailed account of the trial the author went through during 1857 -58 while fleeing for safety. In the mayhem, Nazir Ahmed saw an English woman lying abandoned and injured in the rioting, asking for help. He took her away and hid her.His biographer, Ram writes:

He saved the life of one British woman who was wounded and calling for help. He took her from a field and hid her in safe place and when she recovered and the situation in the city was relatively calm, he delivered her back int o the English camp. She was very happy with him due to his kindness and gave him a piece of paper in writing saying it would be helpful to him during the war. This turned out to be true. When the British army was planning to attack Delhi Fort, British sold iers forewarned Nazir Ahmed and gave him instructions to leave the 3 26 city immediately.

In the story, when the British army goes around ransacking the homes of Muslims, a huge signboard outside Ibn-ul-Waqt‘s house declares him to be a 327 collaborator, a ―well wisher‖, and is spared.

To Ibn-ul-Waqt‘s house they came, one after another, but on catching sight of the big poster and the army guard at the gate, they slinked away. Thus, not even a blade of straw was taken away from his house. They left everything as it was. Ibn-ul-Waqt was proud of what he had done but soon he came to know that he was not alone; his name was 125th in list of well-wishers of the British in Delhi alone. When his name was called, he was presented before the Commissioner who gave him a certificate under the seal of the Viceroy. It granted him land in Village Khairkapur (Khairkhwahpur), District Gurgaon, the confiscated

326 K.L Ram, Shamas ul Ulema Hafiz Dr.Nazeer Ahmed, L.LD, O.L, (Lahore: Roy Sahib Munshi Gulab Singh and sons, Educational Publishers,1927), 14.

327 Ibid. 32. 147

estate of Nadan Singh Jat, a rebel zamindar. Later, this land yielded him 3000 Rupees a year. As he received his reward, Noble Sahib made a felicitating gesture to him from behind the Commissioner.

The relationship between the British rulers in India and the local population - particularly with educated Indians - has been the subject of infinite number of works of fiction and of history. In t he dialogue Nazir Ahmed creates between the Indian Ibn-ul-Waqt and the English Mr Noble, it is clear how the two antagonists are reflecting and shaping each other‘s identities. Mr Noble says:

I have always said that the greatest weakness of the English administration is that there is no rapport between the ruler and the ruled. Although this estrangement between the two has not been the sole cause of the mutiny, it was certainly responsible for its escalation. As long as the people of India keep the English at a distance, there will be no satisfactory rule even for a moment. But both are to be blamed for this estrangement. The Englishmen in their arrogance do not care about the Indians and the Indians too keep aloof and avoid them because of their ignorance. How can there be any unity of thought between the two who have neither a common language nor religion nor the same customs or temperament? Both of them suffer. The obvious handicap for the Indians is that God has given Englishmen honours and wealth as they command the empire. And, now the Mutiny has clearly proved that they can well rule the empire, in the same way as they acquired it - by the sword. The more the Indians avoid them, the more they stand to deprive themselves of honour and wealth. Likewise, t he English too cannot save themselves from suffering damages....both Indians and English should come closer to each other. I think no act of God is devoid of wisdom. Perhaps, this mutiny took place so that both of them might realise their mistakes. The mem ory of the mutiny is still fresh. A few years hence its horrible events will be relegated to the realm of tales and myths. .... Perhaps, the scepticism of the Hindus will take a long time to go because they have only customs and rituals and no religion as such. But the Muslims are very proud of their 148

religion. As far as i know, most of their religious precepts are very good. Their affinity with the English ought to allow them to mingle more freely.‘ No doubt, it should have been so bu t as i understand it, the Muslims here are much more rigid than the Hindus. Are they rigid or it is that there has been no opportunity to develop an understanding because of mutual estrangement and that no attempt has been made in

this regard. Both these are responsible. 328

Mr Noble is critical of the attitude of the British government that does not make more effort to improve the lot of common people. There is resentment in the streets, he knows, but the Indians misjudged the power of the British army and brought on a bloody confrontation between the two in 1857 -58. ―No doubt the British government is ruling Hindustan but it‘s behaving like a lion in the jungle creating fear in the hearts of people to tame them, ‖ Noble says, going on to criticise the Governor General for not being wise and 329 perspicacious.

But the ignorant and superstitious mindset of the locals is not spared either. As soon as people come to know of the friendship between the two, Ibn-ul-Waqt is accused of having converted. There is talk in the neighbourhood mosque and chatter among the wives of neighbours. The family is no longer welcome in other people‘s homes. A neighbour asks Ibn ul- Waqt if he separated the dishes in which he served Noble. When an irate Ibn - ul-Waqt replies that since it was his house, his food and the dishes were his too, he did not feel the need to do any such thing.

The meal with Noble had been served at eleven in the morning, and people were already talking about it in the noon prayers in the local mosque. One of them says, `Well, what is this I hear? They say Ibn -ul-Waqt, the gentlemen, has become a Christian!‘ Someone from the audience replies, `No, that is not so! They say that the Englishman who was hidden in his

328 Muhammad Zakir and Mushirul Hassan, The Son of Moment, (trans.), (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2002), 51-52. (Ahmed, Ibn-ul-Waqt, 44-48).

329 ibid 149 house during the Mutiny has been given an important assignment in the city. They meet frequently and the Englishman ate with him today. To this someone else exclaims: `You surprise me! Don‘t you know, if you eat with a Christian you become one? Seventy generations of his will become Christians! Or do you think that one grows horns after changing one‘s fait h?‘ Someone else adds, `This is not the first time that he has eaten with an Englishman. During the Mutiny, the Englishman stayed with him at his house 330 and always ate with him‘.

Such doubts and ignorant remarks reach Ibn -ul-Waqt through his family members, particularly his aunt who takes him on, to which he responds:

My dear Aunt, you have read the Qur‘an in translation. Just read the first section of the chapter, `The Table‘, which says: The food of the People of the Book is lawful unto you and yours i s lawful unto them. Forget about my sharing a meal with an Englishman. Do you find anything irreligious about me? I say my namaz as usual. You may also remember that it was exactly in Ramadan, that Noble Sahib came to our house. I observed the fast the whole day and, by the grace of God, I did not miss it once, and took my meals with him at night. I also did not miss my regular recitation of the Qur‘an in the mornings. I do not know what else is required of a Muslim. What is religion? It is a relation between man and God. No one should meddle with the religious affairs of others. And then, may God forgive me for these words, who can stop me from becoming a Christian if I want to? I know I‘ll be materially well off. I‘ll come out of the category of the poor and be counted amongst the rich. I‘ll be no longer among the subjugated but sitting next to the rulers. I‘ll leave the foolish and join the wise. I‘ll cease to be among the disgraced and join those who are honoured. But of what worth is one‘s religion is if it is guided by the greed or fear of the world?

330 Ibid. 113-117.

This is an eloquent piece of oratory indeed, a skill Nazir Ahmed was known for and a skill he turned to when he moved away from writing to become part of the Aligarh Movement. We see an enlightened Muslim in Ibn-ul-Waqt not a narrow minded bigot or someone concerned with personal gain. But Ibn -ul- Waqt the character soon gets there, rejected by his own community, family, neighbourhood he seeks to become like the British, to fashion himself in the image of the Other.

When he is awarded the land and gains entry into the English classes, he tries to make himself over completely, adopting the lifestyle of a gentleman with modern notions. He not only takes to European dress but actually joins European society, shunning his forme r associates and relatives, thus alienating their sympathies. He becomes known for his English manners and lifestyle, but Nazir Ahmed brings in some humour when he describes how uncomfortable Ibn-ul-Waqt was in English shoes which he would remove instantly upon returning home.

What is even more interesting is how Ibn -ul-Waqt assumes British mannerism when people approach him for favours and jobs. Nazir Ahmed writes about how the rulers determine the values of the class that serves them.

... he was as cold, blunt and harsh as the Englishmen. He was congenial, entertaining, and cheerful and a pleasant companion only if you met him without any ulterior motives or self -interest. But the moment you asked for any personal favours, he would just flatly refuse, as if he intended to hit you on the head with a stone. Probably, people would not have been so displeased with him had he politely told them that the Englishmen did not entertain special pleading when it came to matters of litigation, or that he felt reluctant to make a direct recommendation, or promised them that he would try on their behalf. But his behaviour was not like this. He became so aggravated that it 151

was impossible to approach him. The moment anyone requested him for

a favour he got into a state of extreme irritation. 331

The troubled relationship with the English language that haunts our elite to this day was referred to even in the first of Indian no vels. Nazir Ahmed writes how while Ibn-ul-Waqt adopts the Anglican lifestyle, he cannot speak the language with any facility although he can follow a conversation in English. He had been a good student at college but English was not taught then although he worked hard to acquire the language later. 332 For Muslims in mid nineteenth century India, learning English language was the ultimate sin. This was an introduction into European manners, it was believed, a seduction of the mind to give up a moral life. What prompts Ibn-ul-Waqt is explained in his dialogue with Mr Noble.

The spreading of modern sciences through English is only one objective. Another objective is to spread English thoughts. to spread social sciences alone is of no consequence unless there i s freedom of thought, firm resolution, spirit of enterprise, great courage, generosity of heart and the sense of fellow-feeling, truthfulness in word and deed, that is all those things that make a complete gentleman, and that one cannot become without one‘s learning English, one who knows English, can easily to acquaint himself with the English thought though newspapers and books. The essence of reform so badly needed for the progress of india is that the Indians should be made Englishmen in their food, dress, language, habits, ways of living and thinking, in everything as far as possible. And, time is quietly striving for it. But it is slow and the results thereof are long in coming. Modern exigencies have already created such thought among thinking men. Ma y a reformer emerge soon

and make a conflagration of this spark! 333

Eventually, Ibn-ul-Waqt learns that by aping the English he cannot become English. Once Mr Noble leaves and Mr Sharpe takes over, Ibn -ul-

331 ibid 332 Depty Nazir Ahmed, Ibn-ul-Waqt, chapter eight.

333 ( Zakir, Son of Moment.,60) 152

Waqt is reduced to the status of a minor collaborator and looked down upon. This has been commented upon by Shaista Suharwardi:

The fact of having got an entrance into English society goes to his head. All his waking hours are spent in thinking how he can further ingratiate himself into the good graces of the English. He spends much beyond his means in giving lavish dinner and shikar parties to the English, and in maintaining a household on the English lines. While he has Noble‘s backing all goes well with him. But Noble has to leave suddenly on account of ill-health, and the man who comes in his place, Sharpe, is very anti-Indian, and determined from the first day to crush Ibn-ul-Waqt. He soon gets an opportunity, and Ibn-ul-Waqt finds himself in great difficulty. He had estranged all his own people, and now finds that his new friends are not to be relied upon. The bitter truth dawns on him that the prejudice has to be broken down on both the sides, that it is not only the Indians who are prejudiced against the English, but the English are just as much prejudiced against the Indians. And that an Indian, no matter how westernized he m ight be, can never hope to be accepted by the English as one of them and the majority of the Englishmen, far from desiring the Indians to be

westernized, frown upon it and regard it as presumptuous. 334

The character is caught in a bind where he cannot go forward and does not wish to go back. He wishes to associate more closely with the British because they seem more interesting, educated, advanced and because they are in power. He feels Muslims have closed minds and are committed to poverty and backwardness. And yet, neither the people he prefers not the one he disowns wish to own him. Ibn-ul-Waqt stands alone and does not know who he is. Then a cousin, Hujjat-ul Islam, visits him unannounced and gets him thinking - an educated civil servant at a high post - about how an English education need not create an Englishman. The cousin criticises him on how there is no room in his house for prayer, pictures on the walls, dogs outside

334 (Suharwardi, 1945, 47-48) 153 and the meal he serves is without care for haram and halal. But more than that, he convinces the protagonist that he will never be accepted in British society if he does not know who he is and respect his own culture and ways of living.

The cousin is an invitation back to conservatism which is also reflected in his mild criticism of the Hindus. Hindus have no living literature and sciences which is why it is not difficult for them to adopt the English language, he says. He mentions the pride of Muslim culture being their art, literature and sciences and the importance of Urdu language. ‗Muslim literature is a living one, not dead and buried in books as that of Sanskrit and Latin‘, he says.

There is a hint here of the later Nazir Ahmed as communalist, but in the novel the reader is grateful that for once in his fiction writing career, Nazir Ahmed does not drag the character and the reader along with him to a conclusion of his liking but leaves Ibn-ul-Waqt to make his way back to his old home, wearing his Indian clothes.

Fasana-i-Mubtila: The plight of the homosexual man

Fasana-i-Mubtila (The story of Mubtila, 1885) could have been a most exciting piece of fiction the way the author sets up a close liaison between a homosexual man, a courtesan, and a country wife. Instead, he falls back into playing out the tropes of the effete Ashrafia man, the indolent, unskilled, ill tempered Ashrafia woman, and the cunning courtesan where "mubtila" may be translated roughly as The Afflicted, as each character in the novel seems to be. The protagonist Mubtila takes two wives and the entire story revolves around this misfortune since it brings him only unrest and misery. This may be Nazir Ahmed‘s answer to how Muslims were reviled at the time as polygamists by both Hindus and the British and the author rises to the defence in proving that this may not really be the case. On the front page of the book, the author inscribes: "There is only one heart in the human chest. It cannot be devoted to two people". 154

Mubtila typifies the degenerate aesthete who retains the outward grace of his forefathers but lacks in character and has not found his place in the new order of things. The author is particularly vicious in delineating him as a degenerate and a "pervert", alluding perhaps to his latent homosexuality. Mubtila is good looking and vain, gentle and mild, an aesthete who loves poetry and likes to surround himself with beauty. In his youth, he was acknowledged as a good poet in Persian when he took the pen name ‗Mubtila‘ which became so popular that people forgot his real name. He is a bit lost, a weak character given to vanity and to indulging in sensuous pleasures instead of thinking of his future, a reflection of Muslim Ashrafia of north India at the time. His father decides to put constraints on his philandering nature by putting him in the bond of marriage and he is engaged to his father's niece in a small town. Mubtila goes through with his father‘s plans not very sure of what it all means but looking forward to the festivity with his friends. Once hooked, he finds himself not attracted to a simp le village girl who is ill acquainted with the style or fashion of the city. Meanwhile, Mubtila has far more sophisticated tastes. Nazir Ahmed writes: "He outclassed all brides in makeup and preparation and was busy grooming himself and admiring his own beauty, he never was bored". His male friends never stop admiring him and that fills his heart with joy. Here the author has boldly pointed to homosexuality among men that was common in Dehli at the time. It has been hinted at by other writers but Nazir Ahmed‘s bold realism puts it centre stage as a sign of excessive sensuality and decadence although he does not dwell on the sexual aspect. Mubtila starts falling apart once his sisters get married and move away, his parents die and he is left to his own device s, surrounded by selfish friends who make him waste his time and his father‘s money. This is the state in which his paternal uncle finds him when he returns from Haj. Mir Muttaqi, a not very well drawn character in the novel, tries to warn the young man and wean him off his bad habits but as soon as he leaves, Mubtila returns to his old ways. Mubtila is in love with a courtesan who he now marries and brings home to live with his first wife.

The women of the Ashrafia are portrayed in this novel in the typical binary of the good but careless housewife and the cunning courtesans. 155

Ghairat Begum, his wife, was a good looking young woman but because she lacked intelligence, her beauty did not shine through. She was also not good at housekeeping or at keeping her husband satisfied and he drifts away from her. Initially, he is not physically attracted to her but gradually it turns into active dislike and even hatred. Mubtila takes another wife, a courtesan Haryali who is an actress, an intelligent and witty woman of good taste as they were trained to be in Lucknow. She recognises Mubtila ‘s weakness in his vanity and praises him poetically. Haryali is not very attractive, nor is she good at singing or dancing but she is cheerful and humorous and is a proficient housekeeper.

Critics have called it a flaw in characterization the way Ghairat Begum suddenly rises from her indolence in the second half of the novel and how Haryali, the courtesan, has excellent housekeeping skills. Her decency, adaptability and good humour can be measured from how close her step children are to her and that despite provocation and hostility from the first wife, Haryali never loses her even temper. But Nazir Ahmed cannot take this very far, Haryali is no Umrao, nor is Nazir Ahmed a Ruswa, and he cannot be empathetic for very long. Haryali‘s good nature is a false fr ont and as soon as bad times arrive, she makes it clear to Mubtila: "Your expenses have increased so much, go and make your arrangements. I am not here to court trouble by spending on others." 335 Later, she is ready to leave the house over a minor disagreement. She threatens Mubtila with ruin: "If I leave, I will make you so hapless and pitiful... making me leave is going to cost you in a big way, it is not that simple...now you will see...you are of no value to me ... but go call your supporters and see if they can stop me from leaving." 336 In the last days, Mubtila is ill treated by both women of the house. Ghariat Begum is cruel towards him and does not attend to him but once he dies, she devotes her life to mourning for him. Meanwhile, Haryali takes of f with all his precious possessions. Here Nazir Ahmed falls into the same trap as in his earlier works where the story cannot be resolved till someone dies. It is not one of his best works although it holds much potential. It is also

335 Ibid., Chapter 23

336 ibid 156 unfortunate that the writer, an artist, cannot help the reader develop any empathy with the characters, particularly with a homosexual man, but then Nazir Ahmed wrote in the dastaan style where catharsis was not on the cards. It was always a moral tale.

Ayama: women without men

Ayama (1891) is another novel where the author is in dialogue with the colonial charges against native Indians of ill treating their women. He writes on the condition of widows, particularly among the Ashrafia, although this was a charge initially levelled against the Hindus for practising sati. Many writers from the subaltern school have risen to dismantle this notion as a construction of identities forced upon the Indian by the British and dismissed this it as political fiction. 337 Nazir Ahmed was an enlightened man in his personal life and had married the granddaughter of his teacher after having met her. He encouraged his son to plan his own marriage too but we did not know till Ayama that he also believed in such choice for his daughters. Marriage of choice was another contentious issue with the British who derided Indians- Hindu and Muslim- for marrying their children, particularly young women, without their consent. This, they held, proved European civilisation was far advanced because of the belief in individual freedom and the expression of choice.

In his answer to that charge, Nazir Ahmed creates the characters of Khwaja Azad a man with modern ideas about raising his daughter, Azadi Begum. Healthy and playful as a child, Azad i grows up into a loving and thoughtful young woman. The only child, she grows up witnessing the tussle between her liberal father and her conservative mother where she is influenced in turn by both. She admires her father‘s ways and tries to avoid many things her mother forces on her like getting her ears and nose pierced to wear jewellery, while her father supports her in all her bold ventures like taking part in a photograph exhibition. One day while going down the stairs, Azadi falls and is badly injured with her arm and hip bone displaced. Her father takes her to a lady doctor instead of hakim. In the hospital, while she

337 See Ashish Nandy( 1975), Lata Mani (1998), Tanika Sarkar (2001) among others. 157 is recuperating, she meets and Englishwoman and her maid and is greatly taken by their kindness and they start her thinking about other cultures and ways of living. Miss Mary keeps visiting her over months and they talk about English culture and history, particularly about how women in Europe are free to marry of their choice.

This affects Azadi‘s young mind and when the issue of her own marriage comes up she tells her parents she cannot marry a stranger. She wishes never to marry but cannot bring herself to say such brazen things to her elders. Azadi worries about her future as an unmarried woman and how that would leave her financially vulnerable. Then when that problem is resolved Azadi is too timid, a good child to her parents and cannot stand up to them. 338 She is engaged according to her mother‘s wishes to a religious scholar in her maternal relatives. It makes her miserable to think of the dull and harsh life she may have chosen for herself, influenced as she is by her father‘s opinion of them, but once she is engaged to Maulvi Mustajab, her views slowly change. She can see some good in him as a person who looks after others and as for his vocation Azadi knows that a scholar has to be respected, so she submits to her fate with patience and forbearance.

Once they are married, Mustajib wins her heart. He is unhappy with his family vocation and stops delivering sermons to engage in the editing and proof-reading of religious texts, the works of Sadiq Hassan at ―Matba‘y Mohammadi Bhopal‖.339 Impressed by his editing skills, the Nawab of Bhopal sends for him promising him employment with a reasonable remuneration. Mustajib accepts and sets off to find accommodation for Azadi and himself. In the month of Ramadan, when he was planning to be home with his wife, he succumbs to a sudden, deadly disease.

Azadi is devastated. Her mother tries to pacify her by taking her to listen to religious sermons of intelligent scholars while keeping a vigil over her during her period of mourning, the three months of iddat. Once that is over, Azadi tires of her mother‘s surveillance and when she is called by her

338 Nazir Ahmed, Ayama , (Lahore: Ilami Press, 2001), 27. 339Ibid., 97. 158 in-laws, she leaves to get away from her mother‘s ministrations. After a few days with her in-laws, instead of returning to her parents‘ she goes to visit the house where she had lived with her husband. Here Nazir Ahmed writes most eloquently on the human need for solitude without which sometimes even grieving is not possible. Azadi arrives at that house and feels a great sense of relief. She locks herself in a dark room and cries her heart out without anyone watching her. She cries for a long time and this lightens her heart. Then she wipes her tears and leaves, her need for the privacy of grief having spent itself.

Azadi is a young and attractive woman and other men soon start propositioning her. Khawaja Mushtaq, a neighbour, proposes to her, overwhelmed as he was by her beauty and intelligence. He waits for Azadi to get over her grieving but also starts losing patience with her. His maidservant, Chalawa, (literally meaning the cunning one), consoles him by telling him how blessed he is to find a woman so devoted to her dead husband and how capable that makes her of loving him.

Mushtaq‘s ardour increases and he tries to rush things along by sending Chalawa Begum to meet Azadi in the disguise of a Bhopali relative, pretending to being close to Maulvi Mustajab. Chalawa starts visiting frequently, filling Azadis‘s weakened mind with nonsense. She tells Azadi her husband had once been in love with her and had committed to marrying her. This depresses Azadi who had never thought of her husband with any doubt about his integrity. Her heart moves away from him and she reasons with herself: if second marriage was a sin, why would God allow it? She knows that physical desire is a reality and marrying again would be the only way of gratifying that desire. Nazir Ahmed writes how Muslim Ashrafia had come under the influence of Hindus, particularly high caste Brahmins, who considered a widow‘s second marriage sinful.

Chalawa‘s clever talk creates an empathetic corner in Azadi‘s hear t and she starts accepting love letters from Mushtaq. Chalawa makes her conscious of her beauty, and Azadi starts grooming herself and staring into the mirror for hours. There is a change in her style and demeanour, and 159 although she doesn‘t want to rush into anything, her loneliness now haunts her. When she orders a hand carriage to visit her mother, Chalawa cleverly diverts it to a deserted corner to arrange a rendezvous with Mushtaq. But this manipulative behaviour so annoys the high minded Azadi that she backs away from the maid and her master. Though her sexual longing is painful, Azadi conceals it under her natural shyness.

She wonders how other widowed women pass their lives and what they go through. To understand herself better, she starts meeting hundreds of women to share the depths of their misery and loneliness. Her search for understanding is still underway when she catches an infection that takes her life but before that, in her illness, she gathers women around her from near and far and speaks to them about the cruelty of society against widowed women.

She speaks of her sexual desires.

I have faced that time when days, weeks, months rather years would go by and I pined to listen to a male voice. When the n ight watchman called out loud or when vegetable vendors came early morning, I listened to them carefully; once I even went up to the front of the house

to hear a male‘s voice from up close but it grieved me a lot. 340

Here Nazir Ahmed is writing against th e unfair custom of confining widowed women and considering it immoral for them to marry again while there is no such injunction in the Muslim religion. He does mention though how Muslims in India have been influenced by and have absorbed what were Hindu practices. He kills off his heroine because again he cannot deal with her and the Ashrafia woman remains chaste and unhappy.

The last of his fictional works, Riway-e Sadiqa (The True Dream or Sadiqa‘s Dream, 1893) has been called a treatise by the aut hor, more openly a discussion on religion and its role in modern life. It is therefore thin on plot and characterisation and is more about ideas. Some critics have called it the natural resolution of the two earlier characters, Kalim in Taubat-un

340Ibid., 141. 160

Nasuh and Ibn-ul- Waqt in the eponymous novel because Sadiq, the hero of this novel, is an Aligharian, educated and employed unlike Kalim, and more grounded in his religious tradition than Ibn-ul-Waqt. Here, the author has also tried to resolve his troubled relationship with classical Urdu poetry as displayed in his earlier novels –in Nasuh‘s pyromania and in Mubtila too as one of the reasons cited for his ruin. Riway-e Sadiqa is interspersed with classical Persian and Urdu verse perhaps as an answer to his critics.

The novel, or risala, as the author called it, is primarily to further the discussion Nazir Ahmed had started in league with Syed Ahmed‘s thinking, about the separation between God and the King, between transcendental and earthly life, or more commonly, how to understand religion as personal faith or as a guide to social action. In the preface to the book the author writes:

As a preamble I would like to say that religion was created toge ther with man and together with religion was created discord, and this discord never let the world live in peace. These days, religious disputations are in full swing, and the unavoidable consequences are there for all to see. My purpose in writing this tr eatise is to stress that Muslims do not practice holy war (jihad) but rather (ijtehad) or independent judgement, so that they live in peace among themselves 341 and let others live in peace too.

To his credit, the author never stoops to deriding any other r eligion in any of his novels but keeps his lacerating critique reserved to Muslim maulvis and those who further Sufi sects and the Shia-Sunni schism. The book is full of harsh criticism of Delhi‘s maulvis for being bigoted and narrow minded, given to sowing seeds of discord between Mulsim and discouraging educational reform. Here Nazir Ahmed perhaps refers to the Deobandi School of Ashraf Thanavi that was against western education.

In the book, Sadiq is as rational and competitive as the Aligarh school wished to make its best students and he makes a successful career for himself and marries of his own choice. It is when his wife Sadiqa starts having

341 (Ahmed, Riway-e-Sadiqa,3-4) 161 premonitions and dreams that he consults a buzurg – an elderly man of learning – who guides him, this being the thinly veiled authorial voice on the social role of religion. There is much contradiction here as the buzurg advices him to separate the inner aspects of faith but also maintain comportment in dress, purdah, and the Muslim family lifestyle. When Sadiq wishes to ask him questions, the buzurg dismisses them as needless quibbling, and the most troubling question of all about human free will and predestination according to God‘s will is left pending too.

Sadiq is clearly the author‘s favourite character and Christina Oesterheld argues it is for personal reasons. Sadiq educates himself and is hard working which makes him rise in the world in terms of economic independence and social position. He is thereby justified in making his own choices in marriage and in the way he organises his life. She writes:

Nazir Ahmed‘s sharp criticism of idleness was not only in keeping with the spirit of the new times, but also perfectly understandable in the light of his own experience. From his boyhood on, he had to earn his living. Thus, apart from his conviction that only activity (in education, services, commerce and business etc) could save his community, there may also have been an element of personal contempt for the rich and idle in his repeated attacks on good for 342 nothing idlers.

Important to note in Riway-e Sadiqa is how the author wants his lead character to move away from the kacaeri culture in Delhi dependent on the government and into independent professions such as law and engineering. This idea was supported in real life too when Nazir Ahmed helped a number of small entrepreneurs set up businesses with his savings from the large earnings he made in Hyderabad at the Nizam‘s estates, a position Syed Ahmed was instrumental in procuring for him.

After this novel, Nazir Ahmed moved to theological writing and to public oration with Syed Ahmed perhaps because he was a socially

342 (Oesterheld, Early Urdu Novel,14) 162 committed man and the times were changing too fast to allow for the leisure of artistic creation.

Conclusion

In his career, Nazir Ahmed wrote seven novels and several treatises which may be studied together to fathom his view of the world. Stylistically, they do not show some sort of development and are more or less all written like the dastaan with a hero or heroine beset with difficulties and an antithetical character that moves the narrative along towards some resolution. But no one of his contemporaries was as thought provoking or as challenging.

What is amazing is that while there was so much writing concerning corrective behaviour for women in the 1860s, there was almost total silence by women about what they made of this. It would take a couple more d ecades for Nazir Ahmed‘s nephew Rashid ul Khairi (1868 -1936) to launch Ismat in 1908, where women voiced their opinion in literary works and carried out heated debates in the form of letters. But was the debate over the model woman about them or a mirror in which the Ashrafia man wished to see himself reflected? Nazir Ahmed‘s novels are the education of women into middle class norms as clearly demarcated from the upper and lower classes. Women who were not really educated like men or stepped into the social realm but companionate creatures willing to work hard in the house instead of employing a dozen servants as help, self disciplined, self controlled women who managed time and money thriftily. This middle class woman was no longer dominated by her mother-in-law but worked to please her husband. The woman-dominated household where women met each other in the streets, in the neighbourhood, planned shopping trips together, and met over religious festivities and wedding celebrations was all suddenly disallowed. The community of women was broken and turned into a community of class. In the excellent new study by Margrit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims in Nineteenth-Century Delhi, the discourse over identity is entwined: 163

Discussions on the behaviour required of women were never concerned exclusively, or even chiefly, with women; rather, they were central to the definition of an identity and the creation of a community which also included men. Indeed, it can be said that the men created their own identity through the rules they defined as binding for women. This 343 was particularly true of religious and middle -class identity.

When Nazir Ahmed was published his Mirat ul Arus became a hit not only within Delhi circles but was translated into several Indian languages and also into English. Within two years, the book had sold over 100, 000 copies and it has never gone out of print. As Pernau develops her argument, the British helped ratify and codify vernacular languages that led to the development of literatures, and Urdu came into its own as a common language of India. In times of print capitalism, such literatures circulated widely and became publicist, dealing with the way in which identities were changed and reformulated. In Nazir Ahmed‘s works, we see a Muslim middle class identity emerging that was not as much about religion as it was about class and gender.

343 Pernau (2013, 355-378). 164 CHAPTER – 5

Inventing individual freedom: Lucknow Ashrafia in the novels of Ratan Nath Sarshar

Ratan Nath Dhar, pen name Sarshar, is a bit of a mystery in the history of the Urdu novel since little scholarship has developed around his work as compared to Nazir Ahmed, his senior in years but a contemporary in terms of Urdu novel writing in mid nineteenth century India. From his uncertain date of birth to the dates his books were published and the locatio n of some of his manuscripts, much remains unknown and has been lost to time. Several of his books are out of print and remain inaccessible to readers and there is no clear understanding of when and why he took to the pen name "Sarshar", roughly translated as "inebriated". Both Sarshar and Nazir Ahmed were among the first few Indians affected by the Anglicist mission of the British, once the Orientalist phase was over and the British were now interested in promoting their own ways, the English language and English literature, instead of elaborate works of translation of vernacular classics. Both Nazir Ahmed and Sarshar had taken keenly from the English novel but both were not quite conversant in the language and their reading was limited to some classics.

It is interesting to note how the two writers constructed the rise of the Muslim middle class from the ashes of the fallen Muslim nobility in the days of decline of Mughal rule. Since Nazir Ahmed was born Muslim, his novels tend to be more conflicted about the new identities that Muslim Ashrafia were assuming, his imprecation was to balance the old with the new for which he never made a quite convincing case and, in his later novel and treatises, he fell back to valorising a religious identity for Muslims above a cultural one. Ratan Nath Sarshar, being a Kashmiri Brahmin,344suffered from no such inner conflict and no apologia is

344 There is very little material related to the life and literary achievements of Ratan Nath Sarshar. Besides the articles and books written by the author, the work of Chaksabat is considered authentic who wrote on Sarshar in 1904 to present in a seminar of Kashmir Darpan. The PhD thesis of Hussain Adeeb presented in Agra 165 intended when he depicts the Muslim social in his fiction. Muslims had not yet become ‗the Other‘ of India and when he wrote about them, Ratan Nath wrote about his city and the passing away of its decadent class of nobility. We will consider later some of his later writing about Hindu households but, given the author‘s personal predilection, they too were not addressed to a religious but to a cultural identity. While Nazir Ahmed battled with colonial modernity in his novels, Sarshar had no such compunction and openly welcomed the westernization of the Indian mind which became a little more nuanced and calibrated in his later novels and made a case for being modern but Indian.

The similarities between the two writers are also stylistic: like Nazir Ahmed, Sarshar wrote in the dastaan tradition with barely developed, heroic characters and not much attention to the coherence of the plot that was episode built upon episode of adventure. Where they were diametrically opposite was in the tone of voice they adopted: Nazir Ahmed assumed the persona of a high-minded patrician while Ratan Nath wrote satirical prose full of dastaan heroes, their bluff and bluster, following amatory misadventures, performing heroic deeds in wars at the behest of a beloved woman, restless and romantic but not exactly men of high character. The reason for the divergence is not so much in their religious identities but because they belonged to differently located literary traditions – Ratan Nath from Lucknow and Nazir Ahmed from Delhi. It is also about how different they were temperamentally as people and as writers.

Delhi was the imperial capital, open to outside influences, ruled directly by the British and thereby subject to their educational and legislative reform. Delhi was metropolitan, competitive, where the best life to aspire towards was that of a petty clerk in a court or government office, the kacheri culture that David Lelyveld details so well. Lucknow had been ruled by the Sh‘ite nawabs, was not orthodox Muslim and therefore inclusive of other religions and cultures, and almost a century of stability and economic well being had helped its arts and literature take off. The place where the thumri was invented and rekhti, the risqué genre in Urdu poetry took off, Avadhi Urdu can be a topic of an entire dissertation in itself. Lucknow then was renowned for its leisurely pace of life, its cuisine, mixed religious festivals, its cultivated courtesans and given to the sensual life, Lucknow was the place poets

University is another reliable source to make available the information about the various aspects of his writings.. The work of Prem Pal Ashak is informative and highlights various aspects of his personal life.. Naqd-e-Sarshar by Tabussam Kashmiri, Lucknow and the world of Sarshar by Firoze Mookerjee also shed light on the writing and work of Ratan Nath Sarshar. 166 fled to for refuge. Ratan Nath was a typical product of Lucknow, no paterfamilias was he writing for the edification of his children, but a handsome bachelor and a wit, a satirist and a keen observer of human folly who led a fairly independent and anarchic life that unfortunately led to his early death.

His biographers have called him a brilliant mind and his school friends remember him as a bit of a rake, not much given to following school discipline in dress or demeanour. While Ratan Nath was among the first students to enroll in English language and literature courses in Lucknow, he did not complete his degree and left the missionary college he was attending.345 He took up work as a journalist in the humourous Avad Punch that was known for its dissident voice and attracted the best writers and poets from all over northern India. He later moved to Avadh Akhbar where other than his bold editorials and much more, his novels were serialized. This also meant the Ratan Nath was not tied to British patronage and was independent in his thinking and in his writing. He moved around jobs, annoying almost all his employers including the nawab of Hyderabad for his independent ways and his unconventional lifestyle. In this, he may be closer to the way in which artists‘ turbulent lives are thematised in biographies but he was certainly no establishment man and wrote copiously but with great feeling and concern for the way their times were changing, and as an advocate of women‘ s education and emancipation that was way ahead of his time. It is interesting then how he wrote about the life of the decadent Muslim nobility in his four major literary works: Fasana-e Azad (in four volumes serialized in the periodical Awad Akhbar (1878 1879); Jam-e Sarshar (1887); Sair-e Kohsar (1890) and Karram Dham (1893). He also translated one of the biggest and finest European novelist Cervantes Don Quixote into Urdu and wrote several minor novels and short stories many of which are out of print and inaccessible.

As for his being of Hindu origin, it is not possible to establish how committed he was to it. What we know from his writing is that he wrote two minor novels Kamimi and Bichri Dulhan about Hindu households that were not hailed by the critics. We know from biographers‘ accounts that he attended some Congress meetings in his time and that the Bengali Brahmo Samaj movement of Ram Mohan Roy affected him greatly. Lucknow had a

345He was admitted into Canning College established on the model of Anglo-Arabic College. Shayam Mohan Lal Jigar Brailwi was his class-mate who wrote about him in his book Yaad-e- Raftaghan that Ratan Nath took interest in English Language till class nine but did not take any degree. He also mentioned the casual behavior of Sarshar about education in general. 167 history of nurturing Bengali dissidents, revolutionaries and reformers, and Ram Mohan Roy formed part of this political and intellectual intimacy. A modern reformer of Bengal in the early to mid nineteenth century, Roy spoke for harmony between religious communities and was against a number of harmful traditional practices. He was a Brahmin by birth and studied Arabic and Persian but later gained mastery over the English language and wrote in it. He applied western rationalism to Hinduism, condemning rituals like idol worship, pre- pubescent marriages, the ban on widows from remarrying and so on. Roy wrote a book in English in praise of monotheism and was generally in favour of uniting religious communities.346In 1830, Ram Mohan Roy founded the Brahmo Samaj and two years later he built a church in which men of all religious sects the Hindus, Muslims, Christians could worship one God. His creed was monotheism based on Vedanta.

We know from some of the early editorials Ratan Nath wrote in Avadh Akhbar that he respected the Vedas, perhaps not solely for religious reasons. In an editorial written on 13 September 1878, he begins by praising Rabia Basri, the Muslim mystic, and goes on to write that in history, when Hindus lived in accordance with the teachings of the Vedas, there was no child marriage, women chose their spouses, married a second time if it suited them and Indian epics "women were not considered inferior beings, nor were they confined to the house like birds in a cage." He goes on to add "their chaste behavior was their purdah". He thinks that it was after the Islamic conquest that women became "imprisoned" and gradually their condition deteriorated so much that they were considered "lacking in intelligence". The people of India had lived differently earlier on and had a duty to think how they could put an end to such absurd practices. "Because of the backwardness of one section of society, the whole country was plunged into the depths of degradation (concerning women)". 347 Ratan Nath was also influenced by the theosophist movement of the time which is mentioned in Fasana-e Azad.

It has to be remembered that this was still way too early for communalism to set in and the debate over identities being based on religion had not quite taken off, being Hindustani was primal and Urdu was not seen as a communal language of the Muslims, although there were stirrings in Benaras over changing the script. Urdu language and its

346 For further detail, Bruce Carlise Robertson, Raja Rammohan Roy: The Father of Modern India, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

347 Firoze Mookerjee, Lucknow and the world of Sarshar (Karachi: Saad Publications,1992).p.63 168

Persian script had long been associated with India‘s Muslim past and in 1837, it received a tremendous boost by being declared the official language. In U.P alone, of a total of 23 newspapers in 1863, 17 were in Urdu and only four were in Hindi language. In 1867, a campaign was launched from Benaras to replace Urdu and Persian script with Basha and Nagri script in government offices and courts. 348 This demand gained ground with the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and by1900, when Congress had taken over popular imagination, the demand for Hindi as official language was accepted and enforced in the U.P., home ground of Urdu language and literature. Tariq Rehman interlinks the Urdu -Hindi controversy with the battle over political identities that finally led to communal, separatist identities between Muslims and Hindus. 349

But Ratan Nath was way before that and in his period some of the best newspapers and periodicals were owned and edited by Hindu littérateurs and journalists. To give just one example of the Hindu patronage of Urdu language In Lucknow, it needs to be mentioned here that in Lucknow, between 1872- 1888, there were 19 journals and periodical edited by Hindu editors of a total number of 64 periodicals.350 Contrary to common misconception, Hindus evinced keen interest in the development and propagation of the Urdu language. Their contribution in the enrichment of the language cannot be minimized. 351

The historical and literary traditions of Lucknow In the history of Urdu literature, Lucknow and Urdu are mentioned together only after the appearance of the independent state of Avadh 352 and

348 In 1900, Anthony Macdonnel‘s ordered that for only those candidates to be given jobs who knew both Persian and Nagri scripts, thus replacing Urdu script. Abdu Hamid, Muslim Separatism in India ,43.

349 Tariq Rehman, Urdu as the Language of Education in British India, www.nihcr.edu.pk/

350 Several popular literary magazines were brought out by the Hindu literary figures like Noubat Roy Nazar , Daya Narain Nigam editor Adeeb and Zamana to name the few.

351 - Ratan Nath Sarshar, Munshi Premchand, Krishan Chander, Chakbast, Maharaja Sir Kishan, Prasad, Pandit Dya Shankar Nasim, are eminent Urdu writers. Ram Babu Saxena, wrote the first literary history of India.

352 Violette Graff, Lukhnow: Memories of a city (London: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 22. 169 the eastward migration of the Delhi poets. 353 The state of Avadh was the result of the disintegration of Mughal Empire which began in the 1730s after the death of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb when the provinces had become independent and were ruled by hereditary dynasties. In Avadh, the first dynasty of nobles was formed by Sa‘adat Khan who was of Persian descent and became Governor of Avadh. Promoting Shi‘a Islam and Persian culture in Avadh are counted as the salient feature of his reign that greatly influenced the literature produced there. 354 For a century and a little more most by the dynasty known for its opulent lifestyle in competition with the Mughal court, the region knew peace and prosperity which helped nourish its cultural and literary life and Urdu language and literature flourished in Lucknow, inviting all major poets to move from strife torn Delhi. Being unorthodox Muslim rulers of the Sh‘ia sect, they were probably instrumental in laying deep foundations for Hindu-Muslim harmony that were not shaken by the bloody communal riots of 1946-47 when India was bifurcated.

In 1764, it was emperor Shuja-ud Daula who formed a pact with the Mughal Emperor in Delhi and the dissident governor of Bengal, Mir Qasim, to resist British advances on the provinces. This brought him into direct collision with the colonizers who brought him to battle at Bhaksar in 1764, forced his hand and made Avadh a client state of the British, to be now ruled by powerless nawabs. His successor, Asaf-ud Daula had to succumb even further to British pressure when more and more administrative power was taken from him, to divert his attention from such calumny he turned to a lavish reconstruction of the city of Lucknow and to maintaining a court in memory of Mughal kings. In the words of poet Abdul Halim Sharar in his

353 C.M. Naim and Carala Petievich, Urdu in Lucknow/Lucknow in Urdu (edit.) Violette Graff, Lukhnow: Memories of A City (London, Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 165.

354 Abdul Halim Sharar, Mashriqi Tamadan ka Akhiri Namuna(The last phase of Oriental Culture), (Lukhnow: Edition, 1958) p.171. 170 famous account of Lucknow, 355 "The money which Shuja-ud-Daula had spent on his army and on military preparations, Asaf-ud-Daula spent to satisfy his sensual tastes, adorning his capital and enriching its citizens...His aim was to ensure that neither the Nizam of Hyderabad nor Tipu Sultan nor any other court should outshine his own in majesty and grandeur." 356 His prodigious expenditure made him a legendary figure in the history of Avadh. The popular saying "To whom God gives nothing, Asaf-ud-Daula gives" 357 has retained its currency well into the present century, and testifies to the impression he made on the people of his capital.

As a centre for Urdu literature, Lucknow was not content to maintain the standards set by Delhi and this was most evident in how the arts, particularly Urdu poetry, flourished in the new capital of Avadh. The Lucknow school was known for its sensuality while the Delhi school stood for formalism. It was in the works of Rangin (b. 1756) and Jan Sahib(b.1817) that Rekhti was born in Lucknow but travelled as a genre elsewhere in India, erotic love poetry written in the female voice with a distinct vocabulary. An entire pantheon of poets either lived in Lucknow or fled to it for safety when Delhi was attacked. The Lucknow court of the nawab demanded novelty and brilliance and this was provided by Insha Allah Khan Insha (1756 -1818). An

355 Violette Graff, Memories of A City. The details of the founding of Lucknow are uncertain. The earliest definite references to the city come from the medieval period, but local traditions trace its origins back to the hero of the Ramayan Rama built Lucknow for his brother, Lakshman, naming it Lakshmanpur after him (Sharar, 1975: 36). Thus the inhabitants of this city made the same etiological appeal for legitimating as many of the leading Rajput clans of Avadh, who claimed biological descent-and therefore political authority-from Raja Rama. See Rosie Llewellyn- Jones, A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the city of Lucknow in background trace the history. mentioned in Veena Talwar Oldenburg, The Making of Colonial Lucknow 1856-1877, (London: Oxford University Press, 2002)

356 Abdul Halim Sharar, Mashriqi Tamadan ka Akhiri Namuna( The last phase of Oreintal Culture) , (Lucknow: Edition, 1958), 35.

357 (Alam 1988:50 ) 171 equally extravagant figure who burst on to the scene at the beginning of the nineteenth century was Sheikh Imam Bakhsh Nasikh (d.1838), whose poetry epitomizes all that Lucknow stood for. Khawaja Haider Ali Atish (1785 1847) gave a sense of continuity to Urdu ghazal and made a significant contribution to the refinement of the language. 358 Nawab Mirza Shouq (1783 1871) promoted the genre of masnivi in Urdu poetry. Besides their romantic content these poems are notable for their linguistic simplicity, rhythmic flow, and a skillful use of everyday idioms, especially of the women and courtesans. These poems also depict the cultural and social life of Lucknow of the time of Wajid Ali Shah, the last ruler of Avadh. 359 Khawaja Mir Dard (1720-1785) is one of the three major poet of Delhi School, the other two being Mir Taqi Mir (1722-1808) and Mirza Muhammad Rafi Sauda (d.1781) two men who lay the foundations of the classical Urdu ghazal. Dard lived in 1783 when Delhi was ransacked by Ahmed Shah Abdali (1722- 1772) and Nadir Shah (1688-1740), and the people of Delhi were forced to migrate to safer places. Unlike Mir and Sauda, both of whom had moved to Lucknow, Dard chose to 360 remain in Delhi and sought solace in the tenets of the Sufi creed. Mir Taqi Mir served Nawab Asaf-ul-Daula, his poetry received due appreciation from the Nawab and the public mushaira although it betrayed Mir‘s love for Delhi. Both these centers of Muslim culture, Delhi and Lucknow, no longer existed after the arrival of the British, ―Both the remnants of the Mughal court in Delhi and briefly its rival, the courts of the navabviziers of Avadh in Lucknow, were vassals of the British colonial power which eventually 361 destroyed them both in the 1850s.‖

Of colonial accounts of the time, we have one from Colonel William Henry Sleeman who was appointed Resident of Lucknow (1849 -1956). He was initially sent there to survey the conditions of the province before the British plan to annex the territory. His letters and diaries are full of information regarding Avadh. Journey through the Kingdom of Oude was written in 1851 at the request of Lord Dalhousie and Sleeman confirms the inability of the nawab to govern Avadh. He gives the reason for this as being

358 - Amersh Datta, Encyclopedia of Indian Literature, ( Sahitya Akedemi 1887) 262.

359 K.C Kanda, Masterpieces of Urdu Nazm, (Sterling publishers, 1997)98.

th th 360 K.C. Kanda ,Masterpieces of Urdu Ghazal from the 17 to the 20 century, (Sterling publishers, 1992), 42.

361- Stefan Sperl & Christopher Shackle, Qasida Poetry in Islamic Asia & Africa: Classical Traditions &Modern Meaning (edit.) (New York: E.J.Brill,1995) 219. 172

Company rule that had destabilized the administrative powers of the nawab. Members of the aristocracy spoke with respect of the British government but also mourned the decay of ancient families . Nawab Wajid Ali Shah has been described in Sleeman‘s book as leading a leisurely life who lived in the society of "fiddlers, eunuchs and women". But Indian effeminacy was an old theme with the British and a means of degrading and profiling Indians who were public figures. The British administration was careful not to send ageing civil servants to India to keep up the image of a robust and virile conqueror. As Bernard Cohn writes, the British wanted to create an effeminate picture of the Indian male. "The growth of the idea of Indian effeminacy can be traced to the eighteenth century theories of climatic determinism, where heat and humidity subverted manliness, resolve and courage." 3 62 At any rate, Colonel Sleeman was correct in holding the nobility responsible for alienating the nawab from the people and said that all the money from public coffers was spent on processions, illuminations and festivities and this is what people understood about British government. Sleeman concludes his survey with the realization that "Lucknow is an overgrown city, surrounded by surrounded by an overgrown court which has exhausted all the resources of this fine country."

As for Lucknow‘s fate in 1857, ccording to British maintained archives, The Mutiny Records of Oudh and Lucknow, 1856-1857, 363 The Commander-in- Chief Sir Colin Campbell, known as Lord Clyde, joined the troops under command of Brigadier General Hope Grant and the British army succeeded to lay a siege over Lucknow as described by Edward H. Hilton.

The drama of Lucknow may properly be divided into four acts: the first of the defense of the city by Sir Henry Lawrence and Brigadier Inglis; the second of the succour of Lucknow by Henry Havelock and Sir James Outram, 25 September; third, the relief of Lucknow on the 22

362 Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, (Cambridge university press,1994), 105. Bernard S.Cohn, Colonialism and its Form of Knowledge, The British in India, (Princeton University Press,1996)

363 Edward H. Hilton, The Mutiny Records Oudh and Lucknow 1856-1857, first published (Lucknow: 1911) Reprint (Lahore: Oriental Publishers, 1975) . 173

November 1857, by Sir Colin Campbell, when the hard pressed garrison were carried out from overwhelming numbers of the enemy; and fourth, the siege of Lucknow by the British force under Sir Colin Campbell and 364 Sir James Outram.

During 1857-58, Lucknow held out for 18 months against the British and to this day foreign tourists are taken to sites of ―The Siege of Lucknow", as they call it, in the words of historian Jaques Pouchepadass, ―After the fall of Delhi, Lucknow became the rallying point of the rebel s, and remained the main focus of military operations until its recapture by the British in March 1858". 365 It had taken a long time for hostility to the British to build up which was sparked off by the incident in Meerut. The cities and the villages were united in this hostility because of harsh Company policies of taxation and the legal system that made everyone insecure. In this, the Hindu and Muslim peasantry were united and Avadh peasantry formed a large part of the resistance force often referred to as the Bengal Army.

Lucknow made several other contributions to Urdu literature before the turning point in 1857 after which writing changed quite fundamentally and reformist writing came to the fore. The reputation of Lucknow as a literary centre went back to Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza, perhaps the grandest tale of all, told orally with its origins somewhere in Persia, it was worked on and published from Lucknow. 366 Ameer Hamza depicts magical events, fairy tales and supernatural heroes. He lists the arms and tactics of warfare, details the way to spend a luxurious life, compiles lists of elaborate cuisine and is full of supernatural characters and their adventures that are highly entertaining but beyond rationality. Fasana-i-Ajaib is Lucknow presented by Rajab Ali Baig Suroor, a highly colorful account of how people lived, its

364 - ibid, 141.

365 Jaques Pouchepadass, Lucknow Besieged (1857): Feminine Records of the Event and the Victorian Mind on India, 92.

366 Emperor Akbar had ordered an illustrated volume to be prepared by his courtiers with Mughal miniature which took fourteen years to complete from 1562 to 1567 and is in several volumes. Another illustrated version was put together by Nawab Aman Ali Khan Lakhnavi in 1855 and printed in Calcutta. This was embellished by Abdullah Bilgrami and published from Naval Kishore Press, Lucknow in 1871. 174 culture, cuisine, and its festivities. 367 His emphasis was on presenting the material culture of the city, documenting its nawabi mansions and the luxurious lifestyle of the nawabs and the begums: He also wrote about the colourful bazaar and the diwali, holi, basant and muharram that communities spent together. Next, Mashraqi Tamadan ka Akhri Namouna is poet Abdul Halim Sharar‘s tribute to the city detailing its architectural splendor and its cultural life. 368 He detailed the people of Lucknow from various classes - their lifestyle, attitudes, rituals, dresses and habits – making it almost ethnographic. His prose is informative and his sources reliable but not as lively as literature. Another image of Lucknow that has gone down in history was documented by Mirza Hadi Ruswa‘s novels, particularly Umrao Jan Ada. 369 Ruswa was a contemporary of Nazir Ahmed and Ratan Nath who wrote in the rationalist tradition about the degenerate culture of the nawabs and the powerful courtesans who ruled their lives. He was critical of their careless, hypocritical ways of avoiding reality but since it is limited to nawabs and courtesans, Ruswa‘s pictography of Lucknow is incomplete. It took Ratan Nath to fill that gap with his voluminous Fasana-e-Azad where he presented the conflict between the old and the new world as a battle of ideas, ideals, beliefs, customs and traditions in mid nineteenth century Lucknow. Ratan Nath promoted the new order based on western, colonial modernism and criticized the old order for being steeped in superstition and stifled in convention. In Lucknow, he was the writer who heralded the change, the project of making Muslims modern.

367 - Rajab Ali Suroor, Fasan-e Ajaib, (edit.) Masood Hassan Rizvi, (Lucknow: 1957) Mirza Rajab Ali Beg Suroor (1786- 1849): Fasaana-e-Ajaayab (published 1824) most famous book; his other books are Saroor Sultani(1847), Sharar Ishq (1856), Shagoofa-e-Muhabbat, Gulzaar-e- Suroor, Shabistaan-e-Suroor, and Insha-e-Suroor.

368 Abdul Haleem Sharar, Mashraqi tamadan ka akhri namoona, (reprint.) Habeebullah Khan Ghazanfar, (Karachi: Ghzanfar Accedemy, 1995) Abdul Halim Sharar wrote a newspaper serial on Lucknow by the name of Mashraqi tamadan ka akhri namouna which ran for years and was very propular. It was later turned into Guzishta Luchnow, the book, translated as Lucknow: The Last Phase of an Oriental Culture, by E.S.Harcourt and Fakhir Hussain, published by Oxford University Press in 1994.

369 Mirza Hadi Ruswa, Umrao Jan Ada , (reprint.) (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel publications, 1996). It is translated in English by Khawant Singh and M.A Hussaini, Umrao Jan Ada : the courtesan of Lucknow, (Orient paperback, India, 1970) 175

Fasana-i-Azad: freedom as heroic exploits

Hastily written as a satirical newspaper column for Avadh Akhbar over two years, 1878- 1879, the Fasana is a four volume collection with altogether 3334 pages; the first volume comprising 672 pages; the second comprising 442 pages; the third comprising 1148 pages and the forth volume comprising 1072 pages. 370 Its sheer volume reminds one of the Dastaan Ameer Hamza as does the thin storyline based on a heroic figure and his exploits of an episodic nature. It was hugely popular in its time and was 371 serialized in a newspaper and later published by its owner, Naval Kishore. Most of the statements about the Fasana‟s date of publication are misleading, mainly because they refer to the first volume when Ratan Nath began writing humourous columns that were later collected and printed. He began writing in 1880 from December 1878 to December 1879 in Avadh

370Azeemul Shan Siddiqi, Urdu Novel- Aghaz o Irtaqa(1857-1914) (urdu novel: the beginning an evolution) ,( Delhi: Educational publishing House, 1968), 242.

371―Naval Kishore‘s press was not the first in Lucknow that had been set up as early as 1830 in the reign of Nasir-al-Din Haydar. It was the king‘s own press, the Matba-e-Sultani, and published a number of handsome books, including a major dictionary, Taj-u1-Lughat, and probably translations of scientific texts that a royal translation bureau was set up to do. Soon other presses followed and among them were Matba- e-Muhammadi and Matba-e-Mustafai. The production values at Lucknow presses were so good that Ghalib once raged at the presses in Delhi for what they produced in comparison. In 1849, for some reason that still remains a mystery - whether for its libelous publications, personal animosity, displeasing reportage, a royal order gave the publishers in Lucknow were given the choice of either publishing under the patronage of the royal press and with its supervisor‘s permission, or ceasing to publish altogether. Some closed their shops while others moved to Kanpur, to company territory; eventually they had to return and func tion as ordered, only to be devastated in 1857 by the ravages of the revolt. The vacuum thus created was successfully filled by Naval Kishore with the help of his English patrons. It must be noted that one of the consequences of the end of the Nawabi rule in 1856 was the immediate flowering of Urdu journalism in Lucknow. According to Nadir Ali Khan, there were seven notable newspapers (weeklies) in Lucknow that flourished in the period between the annexation of Avadh and the beginning of the Mutiny. 371 The first among them was Talim-e- Lucknow, edited and published by Mohammad Yaqub Ansari, who belonged to the Farangi Mahal family of scholars. In view of what the Nawabs had done to the press in Lucknow, it is ironic to note that the Talim was forthright in presenting the worrisome conditions of inflation, loss of property and lack of employment in Lucknow that followed the end of the Nawabi rule. It was equally bold in criticizing the Company rule for its reckless and unrestrained use of power. 371 176

Akhbar that later began a special supplement for the readers of his columns that were published as a book by Naval Kishore in 1880. 372 In the earlier version it was called Azad Farukh Nihad. 373 After some time, there were suggestions about changing the title and a request for ideas was published in the newspaper. Then, in 1880, one of his readers, Rana Daleep Singh, 374 suggested the title and after minor amendment Fasana-i-Azad was adopted.

Here the author makes a caricature of a lapsed nawab, Azad, and his poor sidekick, Khoji modeled on Cervantes Don Quixote but relocated in Lucknow. The idealistic but hapless don and his humourous and humble attendant in Cervantes are reversed in Fasana and it is Khoji who represents the values of the old world bound in omens and auspicious occasions but a man, nevertheless, with some old world values particularly that of devotion to his companion and master. Meanwhile, the new world and its val ues is represented by Azad - literally, the free man - as romantic as he is restless, handsome and fearless who travels long distances and meets many people along the way. Azad is the mouthpiece of the author who judges and condemns old ways of living that he encounters on the way and their walks through Lucknow. We do not see much nobility in Azad‘s character who is taken up with seducing any good looking woman he meets on his journey, has no scruples about ditching friends or even stealing as he does from the nawab. He leaves Khoji ill and in trouble a number of times and it is only

372 Ratan Nath conceived the idea of writing Fasana-i-Azad after the success of his articles in Avadh Akhbar were published under the heading under the heading Zarafat.. The files of Avadh Akhbar show that the Zarafat series was started on 13 August 1878 with a humorous sketch of a conversation between a schoolmaster and the father of a boy who had failed his examinations. It was followed on 17 August by a sketch of a Lucknow musha‘ira. (Neither of these pieces was subsequently included in Fasana-i-Azad.) On 23 August, the first of those articles appeared that now form the opening of the novel. A continuation of this appeared on 28 August. Seven more pieces appeared between 2 September and 23 September (both dates inclusive).

373Quoted by Azeemul Shan Siddqee, Urdu Novel- Aghaz o Irtaqa. He gives reference of the edition of Avadh Akhbar, 1881, Nawal Kishore Lucknow, 242.

374 Ibid, 243, the name was suggested in July 1883. 177

Husn Ara for whom he feels any emotional affinity. Azad‘s character is not at all the beacon of light for the new world that the author so wished to introduce to the reader, but that may be because that is the fate of heroes of dastaans, a writing style in which Ratan Nath‘s work was still mired.

The character Azad possibly represent for the author a hyperbolic and somewhat jocular representative of the rising middle classes looking for respectability without pedigree but based on action, education, and rationality. Azad is the Ashrafia man, free of the shackles of Victorian morality and from the tyranny of old conventions that bind people in unhappy relationships. He is not only free of the old order but also free, when we meet him, of the social mores of the family system. He even dresses differently, caring not the least for what people think of him in "khaki trousers, black jacket, yellow coat, loose fitting waistcoat, a beard thick enough for a rabbit to hide in striding briskly along in heavy boots."

375 Western clothes represented the new world to Ratan Nath and he adopted it personally as well as in his fiction, but it was not just dressing western that interested him because Ratan Nath also wore a fez to work - a signature of being Muslim- to flaunt his disdain for communal identities. 376 It was the author‘s disregard for public opinion and the excitement he probably felt in mixing up identities that he transferred this to his character Azad. The character, like his creator, celebrated all religious festivals with equa l mirth, whether it was diwali or eid, basant or muharram or holi.

Azad falls in love with a young woman from Lucknow, Husn Ara, as petulant and demanding as a princess in a dastaan who sends him off to fight in the Crimean War to prove he is a man of courage and integrity. Ralph Russell calls it not the Crimean war but the war against everything old; Azad fights for modernity which is his real mission, although Russell remarks that it is the worst, most crude understanding of western modernism that Ratan

375 Ratan Nath Sarshar, Fasana-e Azad, Vol. 1, 1.

376 According to Abdul Qadir in his biographical sketch, the fez was always worn without a tassle by the author, for reasons unknown. 178

Nath has picked on. 377 Azad eventually wins Husn Ara after many adventures with other women and they get married and so on, the important thing to note here is that the reformed adventurer then goes into establishing his own business and industry, something that the author felt strongly about, to break free of the ties of serving in the British government.

The plot is circuitous, even meaningless, but Ratan Nath insisted on calling it ―a novel‖ when it is more like the homegrown medieval romance in the tradition of Rajab Ali Suroor‘s Fasana-e Ajaib. The writing was immediately popular when it appeared for its racy colloquial dialect, the freshness of dialogue, the bold subjects that were addressed and for the wide vision the author brings to life in Lucknow. Critics have often co mmented on Ratan Nath‘s language being influenced by the women of his Muslim neighbourhood, for being begmati language free of Persian and Arabic influence because Muslim women were not educated formally. That may well be true, although in the Fasana he still had the propensity of mixing genres and falling back to versifying and to long passages of stylistic word jugglery, oratory, even theatre-influenced dialogue. Ratan Nath cannot be appreciated solely for his attempted naturalism but also for his bold treatment of subjects and characters.

Women and other subalterns in the Fasana

Husn Ara in Fasana is the female character the author tries to construct as representative of the rising Ashrafia class in Lucknow. She is a model dastaan heroine - beautiful, arrogant, aristocratic - she sets conditions for her heart being won. She meets Azad accidentally when she is out boating with her sister and he fits her description of the ideal man except he is not from the Ashrafia. To create such an identity for him, Husn Ara tells him to take measures to gain social capital through recognition of his valour and, of course, through wealth. To achieve these ends she sets him impossible tasks like the heroine of a dastaan is meant to. To become socially acceptable she sets him these tasks:

377 (Russell, 1970,111-112) 179 One, he must arrange a literary gathering on the fifteenth day of every month to make his presence known across town; two, he must take a splendid palace or house on rent but decorate it so that people think he has good taste as well as wealth; three, he must associate with noble, rich and scholarly people and must not be found in the company of poor and disreputable people. Four, he must offer Friday prayers a t a mosque because being cut off from religion was not well regarded in society whatever one‘s personal inclination may be. Five, he must arrange a conveyance for himself and be seen out in the mornings and evenings. Six, he must meet his mother occasionally. As for fame, she sets him the task of going off to fight in a distant but honourable war to gain fame for his valour and come home decorated.

Here Husn Ara sounds mean, vain and very ordinary, quite unromantic too like a prospective housewife, but that is how the author draws an Ashrafia woman. She is sometimes the chaste and demure woman who does embroidery at home in purdah, sometimes a woman who goes out riding horses and boating with her sister, openly talks and flirts with her suitors and sets challenges to her prospective husband that may kill him. Despite several offers of marriage, she remains steadfast to Azad over all the time it takes for the two protagonists to be reunited. Azad keeps his word to her too despite much philandering and even get ting married to a Polish princess along the way. When he returns to India a decorated war hero after his foreign exploits, Husn Ara is so modern she even thinks of letting him go to marry someone else he loves like the Russian Clarissa or the Polish prince ss. Husn Ara is not an emotional beloved and this may be true of women from the aristocracy now as it was then.

The other, very unconvincingly drawn side to Husn Ara is that of the social reformer. Educated at home in the Persian and Arabic classics and in household skills like embroidery and culinary crafts, she wishes to see her sisters go further into the world in pursuit of education and wants to open an institution to educate Muslim and Hindu women in modern ways. She delivers a lecture in its favour, saying it was a religious obligation to educate women because women did not have inferior minds in any way determined by

biology, and a modern education did not make women unchaste. She challenges the popular opinion that if a woman learns to read and write, she will read love stories and write secret love letters to men thus losing her place in the Ashrafia. Husn Ara comments on how dangerous oral communication can be while a letter can still be intercepted. Husn Ara and her sisters are shown reading Nazir Ahmed‘s Mirat-ul Arus and Banat-un Nash they know Persian literature and play intellectual board games like chess.

Regarding marriage, Husn Ara has modern views that would offend Muslim Ashrafia sensibilities even today. She wishes to meet her future husband and get to know him. She fears marrying a stranger, not knowing whether he was kind hearted, polite, educated in the ways of the new world or if he were a profligate, an alcoholic, or engaged in wasteful hobbies like the Ashrafia men were infamous for. She is looking for companionate marriage with a partner who is educated, refined, well spoken, and deep thinking. Husn Ara is a bold woman who goes about in pub lic with a male chaperon, she meets prospective suitors exchanging witticism and sarcastic remarks with them. She and her sister even spend a fortnight in a bungalow by the river with Azad. While the Fasana was serialised in a newspaper, several readers would write in and complain about Husn Ara being inexplicable to them, even offensive.

Firoz Mookerjee has an interesting thesis that Husn Ara is poorly characterized because Ratan Nath had no experience of Ashrafia women, despite claims to his life in a Mus lim neighbourhood. Mookerjee thinks Husn Ara is possibly modeled on a courtesan that the author may actually have met for her petulance and her pecuniary interests certainly belie her Ashrafia status. She quotes in detail from the Fasana on how she makes a paan for Azad and puts it in his mouth, while he puts one in hers. Her mannerism is also that of a courtesan. We must also remember that Ratan Nath was not writing in high seriousness or even close to literary realism but as a spoof, a humourous caricatur e that must be understood as part of his bizarre wit. He was imagining something that did not exist – the modern Muslim woman – and it would take almost three decades after his death to 181 realize this ideal. The problem with Husn Ara is that she was conceived hurriedly by the author who admired aristocratic women but never rewrote his humourous columns even when they were put together as a four -volume novel.

It is not for misogyny that the author writes this way. He knows women can be different like some minor characters in the epic are. For one, Husn Ara‘s sister, Sihpahr Ara, who is not as hard or calculating and even requests her sister not to send Azad off to a faraway war that may kill him. She loves him like a sister and does not care for his social standing and also has more faith in him than the heroine who is ready to believe the worst about Azad. Sipahr Ara‘s love for Humayun Far has charming innocence and spontaneity. Even better, less demure than the sister character is Alah Rakhi, a young woman of Ashrafia background that Azad pursues among the dozens of women that he pursues in the Fasana. She falls for his charms even though she is married to a very old man. Alah Rakhi runs away from her husband and starts working at an inn, runs away from there too to hide in a garden where she is harangued by rich nawabs and their friends till she takes off for the jungle and turns jogan or fakir. Alah Rakhi meets her old husband again in the jungle who gives her all his possessions and dies there. With his wealth she is restored to the Ashrafia class and marries a rich nawab, refusing to ever see the unfaithful Azad again. She is the bolder and more challenging character in the novel who gets o ver her travails and returns to the fold of the Ashrafia on her own terms.

In real life, Ratan Nath‘s views regarding the social position of women were quite radical and he openly opposed purdah in all its forms – in the seclusion of women‘s quarters, the covering of the head in public, segregation in public spaces and so on. He thinks it is tyrannical of men to behave in this manner besides being quite ineffectual. ―This purdah is a hoax...you stupid fellow, do you think a burqa guarantees chastity or tha t the veil teaches modesty?‖ The character Azad says rudely to Khoji, his travelling companion. 37 8 In this, he goes much further than Nazir Ahmed‘s

378 Vol I, p 182

Ashrafia heroines who remain paragons of virtue and being modern for them does not mean stepping out of the house with their face uncovered.

When criticized by his readers for such lose characterization of a woman from the Muslim Ashrafia, Ratan Nath understood he was far from realism and responded to clear his name of a possible bias.

My real desire in this tale is not to speak of any particular community or particular incident, but in a general way to caricature undesirable conventions and harmful ideas so that men who can discern the truth may give thought to these matters and come on to the right path...it is possible that two beautiful, moon-browed sisters may exist 379 somewhere...

In another minor character, Humayun Far, we get the picture of a young nawab of Lucknow‘s Ashrafia who lives in the traditional manner but has accepted new ideas and wishes to change his behaviour. He is shown eagerly rushing off to hear lectures on the evils of superstition and similar themes, and when Hussn Ara falls seriously ill, he insists on calling a doctor trained in western medicine instead of the traditional hakim. His friends and associates are sensible and self-respecting men, very different from the cheats and flatterers who attended upon the nawabs in general, and we never see any indication in his conduct of the decadence and sensuality so widely prevalent in Lucknow aristocracy. Unlike Azad, he is not an ardent advertisement of the new light but practices it himself and is a man faithful in his f eelings unlike the male lead.

Ratan Nath may not be remembered for his unsavoury hero and heroine in Fasana-e Azad but he has certainly been immortalized in the character of Khoji, drawn to represent the dying old world, convention -bound Lucknow. But, like the independent man he was, the author lets this character develop and change from someone reviled and debased, poor and old and a bit deceitful to someone who must also be listened to for his love of the old order and the virtues of its culture. Khoji is an old man, almost seventy years

379 Ibid, 183 of age, whom Azad encounters at the service of the nawab. He is emaciated and ill with opium intake and lives by his wits as a sort of court jester of the nawab. When they decide to take off together on their journeys, it is in their conversations that we learn of Azad‘s modernist ways of thinking in how he talks down to Khoji. The author, it must be remembered, for all his advocacy of education for women and modern ways of thinking, was talking to a class about class behaviour. He did not wish for education for the poor and wrote about it in his editorials how it had to be limited to the ―people of good families‖. His female heroines were not working class either and Azad turns down Alah Rakhi because he thought she was from a lowly background.

Azad subjects Khoji to ridicule and even to slaps and mild forms of physical punishment throughout the epic journey they make together. He speaks to him insultingly while explaining modern values to him. While on their way to Turkey, Khoji falls ill in Alexandria and Azad wastes no time over him but deserts him there and carries on. When Khoji joins him and lies to the foreigners that he is Azad‘s father to get some attentio n from them, Azad comes down thick on him with insults and imprecations. Loyalty is, as it were, a trait required of the poor and lowly, while rich adventurers like Azad had no need of cultivating it. Khoji looks after Azad with great felicity and genuine concern but once back in India, Khoji falls ill with the opium a woman gives him, robbing him of all he had won in his travels. Azad deserts him again this time, good and proper.

It is in Khoji, the most empathetically drawn character, that the author addresses the ancien regime of Lucknow with all of its vices and some of its virtues. Academic and critic Wazir Agha does not approve of the character or the way Azad has drawn him. For one, to draw him as a counterfoil, an emaciated, old dwarf which is a physical defect, to the glorious looking, prince-like Azad is a fault. Then, for the author to make constant reference to Khoji‘s physical attributes to make him a butt of jokes is, according to Wazir Agha, heavy handed and slapstick in poor taste. The major f ault in Khoji that makes him non-modern is, according to Wazir Agha, because Khoji‘s knowledge is not experiential but based on old conventions, traditions, ways of thinking and being. Khoji tries to walk the straight path with his eyes and 184 ears firmly shut, he does not understand his times nor try to adapt to them. He learns nothing from experience but hurtles from experience to experience, a sure sign of a man from the old times. He falls in love with women who are repulsed by him but he goes over this painful experience again and again. He thinks no one understands him but one day they will. He is weak and ill tempered without the innocence that would make any of his misadventures amusing, thinks Wazir Agha. Khoji represents the old world that the author so 380 reviles.

Other writers like Firoze Mookerjee disagree with such a harsh dismissal of the character. She thinks Khoji is shrewd and plays the fool to feed the egos of spoilt nawabs and the new breed of Ashrafia. He can correct misquotes of poetry that the nawabs make but is roundly thrashed for such boldness, so he holds back. He plays the buffoon to make people laugh and forget their sorrow for a while and in this he is kind and gracious; he shows great courage in times of trouble, always standing by his master, always laughing at himself while drowning or being run over. He is capable of loving with integrity and shows devotion, something the hero is completely bereft of. To Ratan Nath‘s readers, he was the best l oved in the Fasana, the most real man as a man of feeling. Mookerjee writes:

The most typical Lakhnavi quality of all (in Khoji) is perhaps that which is called the untranslatable name of Vaz'adari – a quality in which trueness to tradition and trueness to one‘s sense of honour are blended into a single whole. The vaz'adar man is he for whom it is simply not possible to do what is ‗not done‘, whether it is in trivial matters or in matters of the most serious import. Vaz'adari is the supreme value of the upholders of the old light, and it ensures indiscriminately the preservation of everything bad and everything good in the old society; for in the eyes of the vaz'adar man to re-

380 Dr Wazir Agha, Ratan Nath Sarshar in Tareekh-e Adabiat, Musalmanan e Pakistan o Hind, Vol 4 1857 1914. (Lahore: Punjab University, 2010) Pp 168-170. 185

examine traditional modes of conduct in the light of reason is not 381 merely unnecessary but unseemly.

Jam-i-Sarshar: inebriated nawabs of a dark freedom

No longer in publication, Jam-e-Sarshar (The cup that cheers) also has uncertain dates of publication. It was serialized around in Avadh Akhbar where it was so popular that a separate supplement was made of it which wa s later revised to make the novel. 382 We do not know much about the original but 500 pages survived that were published as a book in 1887. 383 Jam e Sarshar was a novel about nawabs brought to ruin by alcohol and their love of women.

The central character, Nawab Amin-ud-Din Haider, is a young man educated in the Persian and Arabic classics, is already a poet at seventeen years of age, knows aristocratic sport like hunting but is not educated in the modern way or trained to do anything useful. His life begin s as a good natured young man, a bit vain about his looks and his poetic ability, but obedient to his father who is a strict patrician and controls his every move. The one fault in his character is that his father protects him too much, not allowing him to go out into the world and meet with different kinds of people. His poor health too keeps him indoors in the women‘s quarters, the zenana, and the young nawab never develops in self confidence with any sense of worth. His father marries him off early like it was the custom and

381 Mookerjee, p132

382 Long before Fasana -i- Azad was finished, Sarshar had begun work on another book, to which he at first gave the title Fasana-i- Jadid( A Modern Tale).. It was printed serially in the 1880s then in 1887 it appeared as book. For Further detail see Pandat Ratan Nath Sarshar, Jam-e-Sarshar, (Lukhnow: Munshi Naval Kishore,1914)

383 Khawaja Muhammad Zakraya (edit),Tareekh e Adabiyat, Muslman e Pakistan o Hind(History of literature,Muslim of Indo-Pakistan) Urdu Adab vol. iv 1914-1857, (Lahore: Punjab University), 160. 186 he loves his young and pretty wife from the nobility who is a very sensible young woman capable of loving and guiding him. 384

Nawab Amin Haider grows into a man with a weak mind, unable to discern between friend and foe. He is easily frightened and just as easily persuaded into wrongdoing. But his ruination is as much his weak character as it is his love of wine that he is introduced to by courtiers and friends. 385 The author introduces the prime actor, the young nawab, in these words:

The noble Nawab was eighteen or nineteen years old. He was a very rich heir to the wealth of generations, and o wner of jewels worth thousands with the longings of youth and the background of a noble family. He was not well-educated, but he was very intelligent and were he to have a good education he might have been the pride of his peers. Until he was fifteen or sixteen, his father had never allowed him to mingle in bad company but various ailments had made him a very weak boy and he had grown used to spending all his time in the women ‘s quarter of the house. When his courtiers and companions saw that the field was clear they formed the plan of bringing the young nobleman into line, so that his way of life would exemplify the rubai 386: ―the morning passes in drinking and the evening in pleasure. God knows 387 how it will all end, but we enjoy life.

Addiction to alcohol was a problem Ratan Nath fought with all his life and eventually succumbed to, but in the hands of nawabs, drink had the power to destroy many lives and affect generations of people since the nawabs had a social and political role to play. It is believed by some literary historians that the author was inspired by an article about the harmful effects of drinking

384(Sarshar, Jam-i- Sarshar, 16-17)

385Azeemul Shan Siddiqi, Urdu Novel ka Aghaz o Irtaqa(1857-1914), 253. The real aim is to write this novel is to point out the ills of bad company and drinking. He wrote this novel for the reforms of the society.

386-ibid

387 http://www.panunkashmir.org/5/7/10 l8 187 and its effects on European society, published in the journal of the 388 theosophical society.

In the older nawab we catch a glimpse of what the old order may have been like, the culture that is dying, for the older nawab is a man committed to some values, cultured and conscious of his social responsibility. He kept a check on fawning courtiers and was accustomed to t he ways of the world in the way we see him interacting with the British authorities. He is also an affectionate father, despite his apparent firmness and we see him rush to his son‘s aid even when he has been foolish and irresponsible. He is capable of maintaining his composure even when faced with his son‘s involvement in illegality and responds to it sensibly. When the son is involved in the purchase of a stolen horse he rushes to his side, forgetting the ill will between them. Ratan Nath writes: ―he gave not a thought to the old unpleasantness between them.... God will provide. There is nothing to get upset about. It‘s alright. I‘ll do something about it at once.‖ 389 He talks with the District Commissioner with dignity and tact which also shows he could employ his old and fading authority.

It is when the old nawab dies that Amin loses his bearings. He is surrounded by all manner of opportunists who prey on his youth, gullibility, and the fact that he is so under educated in th e ways of the world. They flatter, cheat and exploit him, making him spend his money unwisely and misusing his authority. They also rake up false legal cases so he is kept harassed and under pressure. The courtiers introduce the young nawab to women of easy virtue and he develops such an appetite for them that it becomes a sort of disease with him. He takes a dancing girl as a concubine, makes advances on a servant girl, Zahuran, in the zenana till she thinks he loves her and she succumbs to him, pursues entertainers and also steals the women of his friends, particularly a young British woman who accompanies a Hindu moneylender.

388 Ratan Nath Sarshar, Jam-e-Sarshar, (Lucknow:Munshi Naval Kishore, 1914), 3. 389Ibid.,293. 188

The young nawab is painted quite in black and it is not easy to empathize with the character. He is weak and petty, vain and selfish, and does not care about anyone. He does not visit his father on his deathbed but only feels relief that now he will now be able to do as he likes. He cares not for his loyal and beautiful wife, nor even for any of his mistresses. When finally he dies after murdering one of his mistresses, the reader feels no pity for him. Perhaps Ratan Nath realized how weak this made the story, so he creates another nawab, an inebriated one again, who is slightly more entertaining. Seth Gujar Mal is described as a handsome young man and the owner of landed property. He is also a shrewd moneylender and is committed to making money. Like most men of his class, he has received little or no education, but he consorted with the aristocracy ever since he was a boy an d speaks Urdu so well that no one can imagine he never learned Persian. He has an aristocrat‘s bearing and never allowed anyone to humiliate him. He is a more gracious, courteous man involved in funding charitable acts in the city, especially educational activity, patronizing schools teaching Sanskrit. His fault too is an addiction to alcohol that ruins his health, and consorting with women entertainers who rob him blind and betray him at every turn. His faults are the faults of the aristocracy but he is otherwise a man of integrity, faithful to his friends. Seth Gujar Mal too dies of alcoholism.

The British as negotiators of Indian identity

Althought Fasana-e Azad and Jam-e Sarshar were written around the same time, in his second book Ratan Nath seems to be coming of age as a writer. Weak as his protagonist is, there is other characterization that makes the reader sit up and listen to what he has to say and how artfully he says it. There are a number of British characters in the novel, each delineated and nuanced and not of one cloth as evil or good. Ratan Nath, the person, has moved away from a naïve adulation of everything British although he still extols the virtues of a western education and the modern European ways that are based on rationality and not on superstition.

There is the English mistress shared between two nawabs who is as mean spirited as anyone of her class and profession. She is faithful to no one 189 and always looks for the money she may amass with any suitor. Then there is an English couple that the young nawab, Amin Haider, encounters on the streets as their carriages cross each other. The captain and his wife sidle up to them when he and his friends go out in their fine carriage one evening. The party is drunk and merry and loud and the Englishman finds it most offensive and abuses the coachman and his rich employer. The writer details the insults they throw at the nawab‘s party, using abusive language and telling them they deserve to be coachmen and not owners of such a fine carriage. The nawab‘s coachman drives away in fright and runs into someone which leads to a long drawn out legal case. The racial arrogance of the British is replayed slowly here, their hauteur on the streets, how they envied the local rich and tried to demean and abuse them calling them uncivilized and incapable and unworthy of their riches. To balance this sour encounter, Ratan Nath immediately shows and English professor passing by who condemns such racist behavior and murmurs to himself that it is such people of poor class that give the English rulers a bad name. He pays th e poor man the British carriage had hit and tries to compensate for their brutality. The other noble but misguided British character is the judge in a court of law before whom the nawab‘s coachman has to present himself. This is a repeated motif in Ratan N ath who had strong views on the matter, despite his valorization of everything British. In the Fasana too he details the absolutely incoherent and terror inducing encounter a British court of law was for the local Indian. In Jam-e Saashar he creates a hilarious scene in the way the coachman and the judge fail to make any sense of each other because of having no language in common and because they don‘t understand each other‘s cultures.

Here Ratan Nath has taken a turn and tells the reader that it is not to the decadent nawab‘s that the people can turn to any longer to look for leadership, nor to the arrogant British who rule them now. His message is becoming more radical in asking people to look to each other, the educated new class of the Ashrafia, the professional middle class not the landed elite, who have taken from European education and can use it to stand up to the British in defense of their homeland. 190

The Ashrafia woman and her ‘Other’

As for the women in the novel, we have the same Ashrafia woman as in the earlier novel - beautiful, young, intelligent. Ratan Nath seems a bit like his character Azad who has an insatiable appetite for beautiful women, but always women of class. In this novel, the wife of the young nawab is another such woman, the paragon of virtue and loyalty, her most outstanding quality is her dignity which she never loses in the worst of circumstances, particularly as her young husband starts abusing their marriage. She sees him for the weak character he is but loves him nevertheless and forgives him his follies, even his other mistresses. She lives by the old standards taught to women of the Ashrafia who prided themselves on their restraint, loyalty, courage and dignity. The nawab‘s young wife has the ability to see and understand how their lives are unraveling and tries to help him get away from bad company. She dislikes her husband‘s drinking habits and condemns how this always ends in a brawl. Other women in the young nawab‘s life like the servant girl Zahuran and the English mistress Lily dislike the wife and are disrespectful and abusive towards her. Yet these women of the old Ashrafia brought up in the cage of the house were trained to wait it out to the bitter end. The rich nawabs they were married to were on the brink of ruin, much of it they brought on themselves by following women of low class. 390

It is easy to see here the sympathies of the author with this moribund class of women, so romantically portrayed, but even in his disdain for low class women like Zahuran, the servant girl who is responsible for his death in a roundabout way, Ratan Nath somehow says more than he meant to and the novel is not merely didactic. Zahuran is a woman of much heart and when hurt by the one she loves she expresses herself like a modern woman would, in anger, pride and in walking away from security and comfort.

In Jam- e Sarshar we see the same mastery over language and the construction of absolutely entertaining dialogue. The plot here is a little more coherent than Fasana- e Azad but the characterization is still poor at least of the lead, Nawab Amin, who never comes alive for the reader. It is a

390Ibid., 472. 191 dark novel, not a satire like his earlier epic, and the author and his fictional characters seem to be growing up alongside each other. They are developing in complexity and the humour is less heavy handed but, more than that, the author is finally liberating his characters who are now gaining in confidence and return the gaze of whoever lords over them. Women like Alah Rakhi in the earlier works and Zahuran in this novel refuse the indiscriminate adva nces of the dastaan like heroes, whether hyperbolic like Azad or tragic ones like Amin Haider. 391 Zahuran, for instance, when she finds out that the young nawab has taken another mistress leaves him but says before going: ―I‘m not your wife to be afraid of you. I won‘t put up with it. I won‘t have you walk all over me and not raise a cry. I‘m no nobleman‘s daughter. What have I to 392 fear? I‘m only a seamstress‘s daughter, aren‘t I? ‖

Meanwhile, the men in these two pieces of fiction are learning to return the gaze of the colonial, learning to talk back to him to deny him the power of defining them and laying claims over civilizational superiority. In the third novel we see this vision sharpen even further. The sense of identity was definitely being redefined by a new class of the Ashrafia and the literature they produced extolling rationality. Identity now was going to be not bloodline or even caste or religion but an unsentimental western (read modern) education that would open the world of reason.

Sair-e-Kohsar: returning the colonial gaze

The third long novel Sair-e-Kohsar (A holiday in the mountains,1890) was also produced as a serial in Avadh Akhbar and later published as a novel comprising about 2000 pages. 393 Yet another story of a decadent young nawab of Lucknow torn between his high class wife and his low life mistress, this is mercifully not all there is to it. This is also the first time that Ratan Nath brings into sharper focus the Indian encounter with the British.

391Ibid, 6-10.

392 Ibid. p.476

393 Khawaja Muhammad Zakraya ,Tareekh-e- Adabiyat, Muslman e Pakistan o Hind(edit.), p.160 192

Nawab Askari is not the stereotype of a degenerate nawab who has to die a tragic death but is painted far more sympathetically as a young man willing to educate himself in the ways of the modern world. A man generous to a fault, he is kind to people who he knows conspire against him. His weakness is beautiful and young women and this is justified in this novel because his wife is older to him and cannot bear him a child. But he is kind to her too and very respectful, although she makes fun of his naughty school boy recalcitrance.

One day, Askari is out in the heat of summer and observes the foreigners making for the hill resorts. He learns that they leave for cooler climes for health reasons so he decides to try it out too that summer in Nainital and throws a party before leaving inviting the elite, including some British officers. Askari befriends a young officer Frazer and invites him to come join him in the hills where he will be renting. The journey is delayed for a domestic emergency and Frazer arrives in the h ills without his host being there. Apparently, this negligence so annoys him that he forms a low opinion of all Indians and decides never to trust them again. For Nawab Askari, Nainital is a life changing experience because he comes in contact with different kinds of people and realizes that his conspiring courtiers, soused in alcohol with their only concern in the world being their next concubine, are not all there is to think about. 394 Askari is exposed to modern ideas changing Indian society and under their influence he starts changing his own habits and ideas. Here the author describes the condition of the Lucknow upper classes at the time, disengaged and unemployed in any kind of work, intoxicated from morning till night in alcohol, opium and marijuana, they were equally drunk on superstition where Hindu customs combine with Muslim ones to make life unbearably full of omens and warnings that have to be warded off by engaging in meaningless rituals all parts of the day.

394 Ratan Nath Sarshar, Sair-i-Kohsar (A Visit to Mountains) iv Edition ( Lukhnow: Munshi Naval Kishor, 1934), 314-316. 193

Meanwhile, the social chaos was increasing, the roads were unsafe for travel which impeded merchants from developing their business. The law and order within cities had collapsed too where there was no direct British rule, like in Lucknow and it was difficult to feel safe even in one‘s own city infested now by robbers and murderers. The local police and other law enforcing agencies worked with landlords and thugs to plunde r the citizens. Everywhere, there were false values of religion being promoted and public piety had become a way of throwing a cover over their greed and lust.

We observe in this novel how Ratan Nath has started dealing with thornier issues of identity. He is an ardent supporter of the rationality the Europeans have introduced to Indian society, something he wholeheartedly endorses, and yet he longer drools over their women or goes into ecstasy describing an English breakfast with tea like he did in earlier works like the Fasana. In fact, he sends up meaningless debates in Indian circles over eating with a fork and spoon and if it is religiously sanctioned or whether eating with one‘s bare hands is better or if eating in a restaurant was allowed. There are larger issues to be addressed here, the author thinks, and one could learn healthier eating habits from the British, for instance, not eating so may spices and oils. He extols western dress for men as being far more comfortable and practical, recommending t hat it was time people moved away from blindly following conventions and started looking towards what works best. He sees no good in the old nawabi culture where working for a living is looked down upon, a life built on pleasure seeking and meaningless entertainment, surrounding by courtier‘s intrigues.

The British had restored some law and order to the cities, tried to make the highways safe for travel and commerce, were committed to justice at least in theory by establishing courts of law, and they encouraged far greater freedom of speech than the nawabs ever did. The author through his protagonist strikes a delicate balance between valuing modernity an d learning new ways but not thereby becoming enamoured of British rulers. In this, Ratan Nath was very close in spirit to Syed Ahmed Khan whom he openly and vociferously supported in his newspaper columns, considering him a messiah for the Muslim middle cl asses. 194

In the novel, Sair –e Kohsar, he sets up this conflicted relationship between the locals and the foreigners in Nainital where odd people are thrown together. Frazer, the British officer, is still in Nainital and very annoyed with the errant nawab who is taken to represent all Indians. This sole incident has brought out all racism in Frazer who expresses his suspic ion of Indians and their integrity. Since he was abandoned at the railway station and had to make his way to Nainital by himself where finding accommodation had not been easy, he thinks Indians cannot keep promises and are quite irresponsible, incapable really of ever being able to rule themselves. He goes to validate colonial rule as something the infantile Indians need, the British playing their children-minders. In dialogue with another countryman, he expresses his disdain and utter hopelessness concerning Indians because educating them in the English way makes them insolent and insubordinate. He thinks Indians need to be schooled just enough to make them good clerks in the administration but they should not be taught history and politics because this would lead them to asking for more rights thus endangering British rule. ―They say that Queen Victoria‘s proclamation [of 1858] had emboldened them even more, so that at the slightest incident they would raise an outcry and demand to know why discrimination between Englishmen and Indians was still being practiced.‖ 395

The rejoinder to such opinions is set up not through another British character but a Bengali lawyer, educated and English speaking but self respecting and nationalistic. Frazer is sitting in a r estaurant when the Bengali lawyer comes in to eat. Frazer immediately protests strongly, demanding that the manager turn him out. When the Bengali lawyer turns to him calmly and asks why he dislikes Indians so much, Frazer replies that he used to have Indian friends but after his bitter experience with Askari he has decided they cannot be trusted. The Bengali replies that he should mix with Indians who are better educated and have received western education, to which Frazer responds that, to his mind, weste rn education only makes Indians worse because then they start demanding local self -government and

395 (Mukherjee 2004, 204) 195 shouting slogans against the Ilbert Bill. Frazer blames Gladstone and the Liberals for creating this situation because earlier no one in the British parliament ever even mentioned India, but now Bright and others had raised an outcry about it. When the lawyer adds, ―And now, Mr. Ghosh is standing for parliament‖, this really incenses Frazer who retorts that this is a pipe dream that will never come true. The lawyer, finally roused to a challenge, responds sarcastically that if an English Queen can aspire to the throne of the Mughal kings of India, then Indians can certainly aspire to become members of the British parliament. Frazer is livid and the conversation ends here. Earlier, when Frazer criticized the Indian way of life, referring to its stifling customs and irrational traditions, the Bengali defends them by pointing to how things are changing. Frazer calls them impractical an d the lawyer refers to how the Indians have gone so far as to accept British dress codes at which Frazer laughs and says, English dress cannot endow a man with English qualities. The Bengali says that he hopes they do not because the qualities were lacking in places, their political policies were not in favour of the locals and it is now up to enlightened Indians to speak out and to challenge this. Indians can now only rely on their fellow compatriots to make the political situation equitable and not rely o n the good will and good sense of the British.

This is as close as the author gets to delineating the confrontation of cultures and politics, pointing to an Indian identity in the making that had not then been fractured by religious difference. The author shows greater maturity not only in his writing but in his thinking which is becoming decidedly nationalist in league with the times he lived in. One of the characters in Sair- e Kohsar laments: ―This is the same Hindustan, once famed for its knowledge and culture at par with other great civilizations such as Egypt, Rome and China, but how the times have changed. 396 What comes to mind is Khoji again from the Fasana who cries during a mercenary battle he takes part in with Azad saying how he wished he had fou ght for Avadh with such ardour (and saved it from succumbing to the British in 1858).

396 (Sarshar, Sair-i Kohsar, 91) 196

Kurrum Dhum: the heroic woman and marriage of choice

Yet another Muslim nawab social, the title of the story is onomatopoeic, the sound of the beating of a drum, and the scene opens rather dramatically with the drummer announcing the hanging of some criminal. This has no connection to the story and works as a symbol of the old order ringing out and the new order ringing in. Kurram Dhum is just 88- pages long and was published in 1893 as one of the last fictional writings of Ratan Nath still available. 397 Noshaba is the lovely daughter of Nawab Mirza, the new generation of women that are educated and know their minds. She meets and falls in love with Nawab Bahadur, a doctor by profession, who is enlightened and who likes her. Noshaba wishes to marry him even against the wishes of her father who has already chosen for her but the father would rather she married within the family, even though her cousin Buland Iqbal is not liked by the family for his discourteous manners and for his gambling habit. Noshaba protests against this decision but the family is old fashioned and will not listen so she arranges a secret marriage of her own choice, planning to elope with her beloved and writes her father a long letter explaining her decision. But of course there is a villain to the piece, her cousin Buland Iqbal who wishes to marry her only to get his hands on the father‘s p roperty, employs women servants in the zenana to spy on Noshaba‘s activities and exposes her plans to her father.

The affectionate but conservative father and the spoilt nephew Buland Iqbal both represent the dying order of nawabs. Once again, Ratan Nath presents the national drama being played out within a nawab‘s mansion. It was a favourite with writers to analyse the collapse of the nawabi way of life to the evil wiles of the servants, particularly the servant class who were free women and not bound to purdah so they could step out and keep in touch with the world. The young servant girls were accused of luring the young nawabs into folly, of seducing them to gain control over the household and make a place for themselves as an alternate to the chaste and often boring

397 Karrum Dhum was published by Asmah ul Mutabah Press in Lukhnow in 1893. 197 wife. Older servants were accused of playing politics in the family and taking sides to manouvre things to their advantage. Ratan Nath had use d this idea in earlier novels in the character of Zahuran in particular and subscribed to the evil servant girl theory, although the nawabs of the time certainly did not need much encouragement to express their roving carnal desires.

In the character of Noshaba, the author introduces in the new world women of the Ashrafia who are not as helpless because they are armed with education and can decide for themselves who they wish to marry. Although Noshaba loves and respects her father she writes him that she c annot agree with his poor choice of marriage partner for her. His choice for her was an evil and corrupt man while the man she liked was educated and trustworthy, also from a ―respectable‖ family. She tells him she is making an emotional decision but she did love Nawab Bahdur for his qualities and in the letter she tries to justify her conscious choice of life partner.

My dear father,

Please accept my salaam.

It is my ill fate that a person whom my dear father considers an ill mannered criminal was the one he wants to make his son-in-law and thus ruin the rest of my life. How you planned to marry me to someone who has spent his life in gambling is beyond me. What is the difference between him and the worst low life character you can think of? Do criminals have horns for us to tell them apart from others? But you know him, a man given to speaking loudly and abusively, always rearing for a fight, he is into every kind of intoxicant you can think of, from imported alcohol to local hashish and marijuana and ganja. Is he worthy of being considered respectable, a part of the Ashrafia? He has no concern with learning, can‘t even spell right. What was the point of spending so much on my education if you wished me to marry such a man? It would have been better for you to kill me. This chotay mirza of yours is going to gamble my life away. I hate his very name. What were you thinking of, my dear father?

You educated me and it has opened my eyes and helped me understand good from bad. I cannot accept this decision of yours as it goes against reason. You can, if you like, invite ten elders of the family to intervene and judge whether my choice is better than yours. Well 198 versed in the Persian and Arabic classics, he is a man who speaks English is good looking and good natured. We have not found anyone who speaks ill of him. Besides, he is landed and quite wealthy. To call the man I have chosen for my life partner incapable is like spitting on the moon. Compare this intoxicated pigeon flyer gambling his life away to the prince I have chosen. Tonight we wed, my prince and I, according to Shar‘iah and in the presence of all close relatives. The tehsildar and the kotwal have been asked to maintain peace. Tomorrow all the guests and I leave in boats for his house.

I hope you forgive me and can be happy that I went to a good place. Pray that I live a happy and comfortable, respectable life and I pray that if any other girl of the family has a fate similar to mine due to the ignorance of her father or her ill fate, she will find elders who she can consult to avoid such a disaster. 398

Ratan Nath creates the life of the zenana quite evocatively, where the bored women invented all manner of pastimes because they lived in seclusion. The begums and young girls enjoyed great luxuries in how they pruned and groomed themselves for hours on end, their absorption with clothes and the obsession with gold jewelry, constantly attended to by servants and unskilled in any household chore or creative expression. In one passage, he describes the mansion by the river and how Noshaba sits out languorously in the breeze of an early summer afternoon, attended to by two maids who slowly pass her things as she relays her demands to them. Ratan Nath writes quite openly in all his fiction about how the women of the Ashrafia were carnal creatures too, not engaged in illicit relations like the nawab, but ever ready and eager to please him. They entertained themselves by going out sometimes to the gardens or to the riverside in great palanquins that were covered to maintain purdah. Sometimes, they also went to theatre, surrounded by maidservants that were often their rivals in the nawab‘s affections. The women of the nobles were totally dependent on these servants for any contact with the outside world, so they were enlisted in delivering letters to paramours, in arranging lover‘s trysts, and even to keep the women informed of what the men in their family were up to.

398 Rattan Nath Sarshar, Karram Dhum, (Lucknow: Asmah ul Mutabah Press,1893) 86-87. 199

The author also describes the opulent dinners and the rich and varied cuisine that often made people ill from eating too much. Especially at wedding ceremonies, illness was to be expected after consuming the food and the nawab, Noshaba‘s father, falls ill after one such event and suffers from a stroke that paralyses him. The doctors suggest more food, of course, and pigeon‘s blood as a cure but while the hapless family looks on and wonders what to do, the evil cousin Buland Iqbal takes over and moves into t he nawab‘s mansion, ostensibly on the pretext of looking after their affairs but with plans to kill the nawab and forcibly marry Noshaba. He gives orders for the zenana to maintain a more stringent regime and employs maidservants to ensure no one goes out or enters the house. The women are literally held prisoner and continuously threatened by Buland Iqbal who is mostly drunk and very angry. One of the old maidservants Sataran is wise and approaches him, taking him into confidence and assuring him of her su pport. She is allowed to step out and she hurries to inform Noshaba‘s elder, married sisters of this state of siege and how Noshaba‘s hand is being forced by Buland Iqbal after she was found out and dealt with harshly by their father. Because Ratan Nath wants a happy ending, the sisters are reasonable and rush to help the family, they threaten Buland Iqbal and turn him out to plan a secret wedding ceremony for their sister to the man she loves because the father will not allow it. The date is set and all goes well, the day of the wedding arrives and guests start arriving from the back door and are being entertained royally and the two lovers are finally wed.

Perhaps Ratan Nath was in too much of a hurry to liberate the Muslim Ashrafia woman because this wonderful tale is still far from realism. He was writing in 1893 but marriage of choice is still frowned upon especially among the upper and middle classes of Indian (and Pakistani) Muslims although this has remained an important cornerstone of colonial modern ity. No matter how educated a girl may be it is still not considered in good form for women of ―respectable‖ families (read Ashrafia) to go around arranging their own marriage and then for the fictional female lead in this story to receive the support of her sisters is even more incredulous since large, wealthy families are always steeped in conflict and the fear of disinheritance.

The characterization of the female lead in this story, just like Husn Ara in the Fasana, is really quite incredulous. We know the author was an ardent proponent of women coming out of purdah and educating themselves to take charge of their lives, but companionate marriage is still not co nsidered an emotional requirement of institutional marriage among Muslims. Noshaba‘s boldness seems to be modeled again on the courtesans Ratan Nath knew so well, the only women who had lived for centuries in sexual and financial independence.

In some ways, Ratan Nath‘s writing got better with time, the dastaan genre, poetry, oratory being left behind for naturalistic dialogue which was his forte and for his vivid and celebratory description of Lucknow of the nineteenth century. The writer is not always bou nd to linear progression, and each one his mammoth works has its own strengths and weaknesses. If the Fasana was a too much a picaresque medieval romance, Jam-e Sarshar was darker, moving towards the psychological novel with the author‘s personal life being incorporated in it, his issue with alcohol, Sair-e Kohsar was his coming of age as India grew emboldened and the swadeshi or nationalist struggles to oust the British started gaining ground. In all of his work, the concern with human freedom is seen as the cornerstone of modernity and progress, particularly the emancipation of women from old traditions that kept them housebound, undereducated, and unfit partners of the men who were getting into English education and professional careers.

In the Fasana, this freedom was rambunctious, where the male lead felt free to proposition any woman he met along the way. He travelled and he loved and he found his freedom also in the way he returned from his exploits to set up industry thereby giving up the typical midd le class dependence of educated men seeking a clerical job in government. The female lead, if you can call her that, was as typical of upper class women today as they were then. Husn Ara is beautiful and proud, petulant, demanding, and socially ambitious, setting her suitor tasks to perform before she will marry him and consent to give up on personal freedom. The truly independent woman in the Fasana is perhaps Alah Rakhi who suffers deeply before retrieving her freedom. In Jam-e Sarshar we find a negative articulation of freedom, the 201 young nawab who cannot manage his life once his father passes away. His freedom is inebriation and the freedom, if we wish to call it that, of taking his own life, just as death is Zahuran‘s freedom who runs away from him, from all comfort and security to a become a prostitute and meets her end in ignominy. But by the third novel, the author has moved away from the obsession with individuated freedom and is looking at a broader, more political canvas where Indians are regaining their dignity and learning to deal with colonial modernity on their own terms, the individual is now modern but Indian.

As for women‘s emancipation, a subject so close to Ratan Nath‘s heart, he had considerable difficulty in imaging a modern Muslim woman and his characterization remains closely modeled on the only independent women across the centuries, the courtesans who once held sway over the monarchs and the nobility of India. Women of independent means, who educate d themselves and were known for their refined taste, women who ran nawab‘s estates and even bore them sons that were considered heirs; the courtesan is a figure of historical importance that remains unexplored except in fiction. Sometimes these women expressed themselves in poetry but now we are in the territory of Ruswa‘s Umrao Jan, a Lucknow compatriot of Ratan Nath, and one of the finest Urdu novelists of that period.

As for considering Ratn Nath a didactic writer, there was nothing exceptional in this since all poets and writers of the period engaged with their times in the articulation of a new identity. After 1857, this need had become pressing and in Ratan Nath the sheer volume of his works is an expression of how polemical Indian identity had become. While Lucknow had always been in the forefront of opposition to any imperial power, be it Mughal or British, in 1857, Avadh‘s Ashrafia had been divided in their support of the British. The aristocracy and nobility there as elsewhere had been ambivalent in its support to the resistance fighters because they believed, like Syed Ahmed in Delhi, that the superior military strength of the British could not be resisted and that it was best to learn from them what they had to teach while staying as close as possible to one‘s own cultural and 202 religious traditions, particularly in how it culture could be preserved in the private realm of the home and the women of the family.

There were Muslim critics of Syed Ahmed‘s ―apologetic modernity", poets and propagandists like Akbar Allahbadi (1846 -1921) who wrote in the Avadh Punch on how small was his vision of India and how subservient his sense of modernity. In Ratan Nath we find an admirer of Syed Ahmed‘s concern for Muslims to acquire modern education, 399 but we see how Ratan Nath was gradually becoming more of an Indian nationalist and moving away from uncritical admiration of the Europeans. In at least two of his large works, Jam-e Sarshar and Sair-e Kohsar he picked on the British legal system in particular as a means of keeping the Indian subject harassed and undermined. He mocked the way in which the British were trying to create Indian identities through their legal, constitutional and administrative systems. Increasingly, the author expressed a guarded disaffection with the rulers and their degrees of racism towards the local Indian.

Times were changing very fast and by 1861 constitutional reforms in India had begun with the Indian Councils Acts of 1861. Most of the Bills were passed without discussion and often at a single sitting. In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act known as the ―Black Act" was passed to curtail the freedom of Indian (non-English) press at a single sitting. It was one of the most discreditable measures passed by Viceroy Lord L ytton (1876-80). In 1883, the Ilbert Bill was moved by Viceroy Lord Ripon in the Imperial Legislative Council which authorized Indian judges to hear cases against British offenders in criminal cases. This so incensed the Europeans that the Bill had to be withdrawn and the rift between the natives and Europeans widened immensely. The examination for recruitment to the civil service was held in England which prevented Indians from competing for it. In addition, the government decreased the age limit to twenty-one instead of nineteen which caused distress to the educated elite in India. Syed Ahmed Khan and Surrendranath Banerjee campaigned against the downward revision of the age limit; Syed Ahmed took the lead from the platform of Aligarh in 1877 and in

399 - Sir Syed Ahmed was also gave tribute to Awadh Akhbar to support the Tehzeeb ul Ahklaq. Muhammad Ismail Panipati, Muqualat e Sir Syed, (Lahore: Majlis Taraqi e Adab1966) 130. 203

1884, both meetings when Banerjee was also present. In 18 84, Banerjee delivered a hard hitting speech demanding that the Civil Service Examination be held in India as well. 400 Gradually, this protest gained momentum and assumed the form of anti-government agitation. Syed Ahmed Khan disassociated himself from it and suggested that the the Civil Service Examination was held in India and England simultaneously. 401

400 Tufail Ahmed Monglori, Musalmaanon ka Roshan Mustaqbil,(Lahore, Taraqui Urdu Adab, 1980) 299.

401 - ibid 204

Conclusion

This study has problematized the definition of Muslim Ashrafia within the context of sub-continent. Many authors have tried to locate the position of Ashrafia and nobility during Mughal and colonial period‘ but the role of nobility is discussed by scholars from time to time is dispirited and lack a generalized theoretical understanding. Only Pernau‘s research is valuable in this regard as she aptly locates Ashrafia of Delhi during nineteenth-century, but only highlighting the characters used in Deputy Nazir Ahmed‘s novels. The present study is very valuable and systematic in a sense as it tries to establish the historicity of Muslim Ashrafia by nineteenth-century prose authors within the context of Delhi and Lucknow schools of thought. The extensive use of prose as a documentary source coupled with contemporaneous historical writings has been justly used in this research to establish an authentic narrative on the topic hence the whole concept of Muslim Ashrafia in the sub- continent has been revised and this research also supplements the already existing literature on Indian history.

This study has explored the mechanism through which Muslims in general and Ashrafia in particular tried to express themselves. Muslims were posed with a big challenge in the post-1857 era when they were re-imagining themselves. Muslim Ashrafia‟s predicament increased manifold once the Mughal court was disbanded and along with it the aristocracy and nobility were dissolved. In order to trace the intellectual history of the Muslim middle classes in mid- nineteenth-century India it becomes imperative to examine the literary texts. The prose of Nazir Ahmed and Ratan Nath Sarshar, have been used in this research to explore how did they help to articulate the emerging identity of this new class. This study through literary history approach traced out the modern political values for the representation of Azad Khayal Ashrafia. After 1857, the Muslim point of view got an apologetic representation through Sir Syed Ahmed khan as he tried to redefine the Muslim‘s position in the new socio-political milieu. The tragedy of 1857 has not been documented adequately from the Indian perspective and even Syed Ahmed‘s pamphlet Asbab -e Baghawat-e Hind is written more by a way of an apology and sent to English public servants by a loyalist. Deputy Nazir Ahmed as an insider to the Muslim culture and Ratan Nath as an 205 outsider, both reformers looked at the intricate details of Ashrafia. The findings of many other educators and reformers of that time like Altaf Hussaian Hali, Mirza Hadi Ruswa, Zaka Ullah, Muhammed Hussain Azad, and Shibli Naumani are also extremely valuable who contributed towards the formation of a "modern" identity for the Muslims of India. They had tried to accommodate the conflict between the older generation and the new youth, and also delineated the new contours of Ashrafia identity in the context of both Azad khayali and traditional perspective.

This study makes an original contribution in redefining the concept of class that is markedly different from that of the caste. Moreover, the concept of class as dealt in the present study is divergent from the concept of class fixed strictly in economic categories of European capitalist theory or even of critical Marxism. It gives precedence to a community based on shared values of "respectability" that theoretically anyone could gain access to, it is a class not based on bloodline or inherited land but on modern education and the work ethics. At the end of the nineteenth-century and beginning of the twentieth century, the categories of landowning `ashraf‟ and the educated professionals, the `ajlaf‟, were changed. These changes occurred due to the Industrial Revolution (1820-1840) that witnessed the emergence of a middle class that dominated over the landed nobility and gentry. This study demonstrates that the Muslims in order to regain their former position of influence sought to join the ‗service gentry class‘. This is also evident by the main theme of Nazir Ahmed‘s Mirat-ul Arus , which explicates thrift in a class struggling with respectability. The family in the novel can muster support from many quarters to marry off the daughter into a wealthy house. People cannot be assigned class according to their occupation or even income group since they may have other means - social capital - to sustain themselves; for instance, the ability to go into debt, or elicit patronage, sell the wives‘ gold or pawn it, or to appeal to relatives for assistance. In this way my study reinforces David Lelyveld‘s opinion about the rise of Muslims in Delhi from the ashes of the nobility in his book Aligarh‟s First Generation, Muslim Solidarity in British India.

He describes how the Muslim Ashrafia made its way back into government service in small clerical jobs, the kacheri culture, as he calls it. More than the economic gain from such employment, there could have been non-economic motivation to come closer to wielders of power and may try to become one of them, to be better aware of laws and litigations, tax procedures; "a positive excitement at the intellectual complexities of government and law", 206

402 the possibility of travel and transfer to far off areas and ―a contact with the wider world‖. He brings greater complexity to the study of class by looking at records maintained by the Education Department in the year 1871-1873, when Muslim students from Agra, Bareilley and Benaras were asked to apply for hardship allowance. Of 821 students, 259 had parents or guardians in government service; 85 were in private employment, 49 were professionals, 149 agriculturalists, 120 tradesmen, 56 priests, and a smaller number registered as those of independent means, pensioners, soldiers, merchants and artisans.403 My study reinforces this by demonstrating the restricted and limited status of the Ashraf.

The exposure of Muslim Ashrafia towards English assimilatory practice in form of education was very restricted and limited, but their women folk were living in quarantine condition. So far the new education on the western or modern pattern as opposed to a classical education in Persian and Arabic did not include women and the working classes. Women positions also vary within the classes. Muslim middle class particularly defined its boundaries very firmly against the lower classes as we observe in the didactic fiction of the time, and as for the education of women was concerned, they were to be lower in the hierarchy than the Brown Sahib, armed with the Protestant work ethic and extolling frugality, guiding the husband‘s career and bringing up children who were as reasonable as they were ambitious, the Ashrafia woman was still an essentialized trope relegated to a particular role within the home and family. The new middle class men talked a lot about this ideal woman and wrote imaginary accounts as we have examined in Nazir Ahmed and Ratan Nath, but the real woman of this period had been silenced and it would take some decades for her to step out of the house in pursuit of education and a professional career. The community of women had been broken. This study reinforces Pernau‘s point of view as she writes that women were confined in the home as opposed to earlier nineteenth-century when there was interaction in the neighbourhood and over conjoint rooftops of the houses, women went out to shrines and melas and milad or Muharram and participated in other religious festivals with women of the Hindu community. Within the house too, age and experience defined the status of a woman, and the number of sons a woman had which generally meant large Muslim households were run by the mother-in-law and not the husband. The new delineation of the middle class denied women all access to the outside world and denied them agency within the house which was now commandeered by the husband and not the mother-in-law,

402 (Lelyveld 1978) P. 62 403 Ibid. p. 91 207 the "new patriarchy‘ as against the "old patriarchy" that Pernau writes about quite 404 convincingly.

This study explores the women that Nazir Ahmed creates in his fiction, through the characters of Akbari and her binary opposite in the shape of Asghari; woman emerged as good or bad according to the new definition of the Ashrafia woman in Mirat and Banat-un Nash. Then again, the wife and the city courtesan opposition in Mubtila , his portraiture is always played out in binaries and extremes. Perhaps Ayama is as close as he gets to articulating a modern Muslim woman, one who is well read, independent of mind and character, a woman who has discovered both solitude and loneliness; but she has to die because Nazir Ahmed doesn‘t know what to make of her, how to let her live a life that he does not control. Nazir Ahmed‘s women are as hard working, self denying and chaste as only a man who controls them can imagine them, one who wishes to relegate women to the domain of the private to bear the entire burden of carrying on with culture and tradition while the Muslim man steps out into the domain of the public by getting an education and a job in government that would help him travel and meet other people. We have argued earlier how Nazir Ahmed represented the reformers of the time like Syed Ahmed who did not believe in educating women well but just enough to help the man of the house.

For Syed Ahmed Khan who spearheaded Muslim revivalism, gender was a particularly troublesome concept where he fell back squarely into "pre-modern" categories. When Syed Ahmed spoke of imparting education, he meant it for the men of the Ashrafia. In his treatise addressed to the British he writes of the reasons behind the rebellion of 1857 and lists the British insistence on educating women as one of them because that would mean women come out of purdah. He writes:

There was at the same time a great deal of talk in Hindustan about female education. Men believed it to be the wish of government that girls should attend and be taught at these schools, and leave off the habit of sitting veiled. Anything more obnoxious than this to the feelings of the Hindustanis cannot be conceived. In some districts the practice was actually introduced. The pargunnah visitors and deputy inspectors hoped, by enforcing the attendance of girls, to gain credit with their superior. In every way, therefore, right or wrong, they tried to carry out their object. Here, then, was

404 Pernau, pp.355-378

another cause of discount among the people, through which they became confirmed in

error. 405

In another article published in Madras Times in 1868 he said if education were popularized among the women of India, family life would fall apart. He expressed the same feelings in the procession held in Lahore in 1889 in which he said he did not approve of the curriculum selected for women in schools and colleges. He wished women to read what their grandmothers read because they were not meant to work outside the house or become 406 members of Parliament. The representation of women in nineteenth-century Urdu prose is also very much fixed in the class. The gender hence sketched in these novels essentialized the women of Ashrafia. The working class women is squarely excluded in Nazir Ahmed‘s Mirat-ul Arus and Banat-un Nash where he expresses great disdain for the working classes in the character of the cook, Mama Azmat, and in all the neighborhood women that Asghari refuses to teach because they do not come from Sharif households. In Mubtila, too, the villain character is the second wife, the former courtesan, who the nawab marries and the writer declares that it is her ―terclass characteristics‖ that make her so vile and given to betrayal. In Ayama the maid who carries messages back and forth between a prospective couple is a cunning woman who overplays her independence to move around freely as women from the lower classes. In Ratan Nath, too, the servant class is singled out as villainous, the reason for the downfall of lascivious nawabs. In the characters of Khoji, Alah Rakhi and other minor characters in Fasane- e Azad we see the reviled subaltern, the poor man and woman who are crude and don‘t know how to keep their place in society. In Jam-e Sarshar it is Zahuran, the servant girl, who leads the young nawab to ruin. But Ratan Nath was less didactic perhaps and more given to humour so his characters get away from him and behave like humans full of contradictions. Khoji was hugely popular in his times when Ratan Nath wrote his novel as a newspaper supplement and it is not the bizarre hero Azad who elicits such empathy. While historians of South Asia have long looked at the colonial encounter that transformed both the British and Indians forever, giving rise to new identities that were based on religion, caste, gender and class, and the gradual rise of communal identities, what is far less clearly documented is the Muslim interface with colonial modernity in its cultural prescriptions. The narrative of the new nation state dominates all such scholarship, tracing its

405 Shan Mohammed (Ed) Writings and speeches of Syed Ahmed Khan (Bombay: Nachiketa Publications Limited) dart.columbia.edu/library/DART-0045/DART-0045.pdf 406 Bashir Ahmed Dar, Religious Thought of Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan,(Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture,1971) 209 steps backwards tendentiously to justify the inevitability of difference, where `the Other‘ of Muslim historians is the Hindu and not the British. More radical scholars like some of those from the subaltern school, stop at critiquing these identities and ascribing them to the evil intent of the conquistador. The question of modernity and the formation of new identities gathers force only after 1857 once the British were over their celebratory Orientalist phase and wished now to impose their own cultural identity on the people of India.

To be sure, writing from this time by Indian men of letters is deeply conflicted and full of contradictions because it deals with turbulent times. What was causing this turbulence was the cultural contradictions between Indian cultures, both Muslim and Hindu, and the British because cultures are repositories of value systems built over the years. A. Yusuf Ali writes, this conflict was not to be seen racially since India had always absorbed influences from many sources and added to its repertoire of culture. The conflict was based upon the imperious conduct of the rulers, the distance between them and the people they professed to rule, in their extortionist laws and legislations and in the institutions they dismembered and the new values they wished to enforce.407 Syed Ahmed in his pamphlet on the causes of the rebellion writes: `There is only one cause why this idea of rebellion is born in the minds of men. That is, the occurrences of such events as are repugnant to the nature and disposition, the wishes and ideas, 408 the habits and customs, and the life and manners of those who rebel.‘

For the Indian, Europeans had many things to offer in terms of better organisation of society such as better maintenance of law and order through fire arms and trained men, the use of the telegraph and telephone, the railway and the steamship connecting peoples of disparate lands within and outside of India that in some ways, created the Idea of one place and peoples called India. The impact of the printing press cannot be undermined either that went together with the public school education system introduced here after replacing skill based gharana and karkhana systems of education. It is beyond the scope of this study to examine the British public education system and the new curriculum and methods of instruction, but this was facilitated by the printing press or ―print capitalism‖ as Benedict 409 Anderson writes.

407 Yusuf Ali, A Cultural History of India(Bombay:Taraporevala Sons, 1940).p 177-193 408 Ibid, P.379 409 See, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities 210

Print capitalism meant books were published in large numbers and disseminated to wider audiences. 410 This facilitated access, no doubt, and increased the reading public but it was also used as a technology of control to further propaganda and conferred authority on it as a printed text. A large number of books were printed in Indian languages and in English at the time which had a far reaching impact on the ways of thinking of local peoples. This gave a fillip to literature in local languages, particularly Urdu, and boosted journalism but, simultaneously, it left a large audience at the mercy of propagandist writing. We see how Nazir Ahmed ‘s Mirat-ul Arus was celebrated by the British and immediately translated into English; the administration purchasing 2000 copies offhand. Within a year of publication, we are told the novel had achieved circulation figures of one hundred thousand. The steady growth of journalism in the vernacular languages and also in English stimulated curiosity and hastened the modernisation of India. The printing press was not only used for education and social reform, it was a prime mover in the political education of the people of India.

Urdu had by now emerged as the cultural symbol of India, particularly of Muslims in the nineteenth-century, with the hub being Delhi and Lucknow, two very schools of thought as we have tried to delineate. 411 Urdu writing from the period is largely reformist, pointing to social and political reasons for the decay of societies, particularly addressing the Ashrafia. Already in the eighteenth century we see great Urdu poets like Mir Taqi Mir and Mirza Rafi - ud-Din Sauda writing in bitter awareness of the collapse of the old world and lamenting the degeneration of the Muslim ruling elite. Print capitalism also meant the introduction and wide scale circulation of English

410 See Francis Robinson, , Islam and Muslim History in South Asia , (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)

411 Syed Ahmad Khan and his followers used Urdu as their chief medium of expression. The dissemination of the language was further encouraged by the development of Urdu printing, usually by lithographic reproduction of calligraphic originals rather than by typesetting. By being the vehicle of the final phase of Mughal culture, through its widespread encouragement by the British, Urdu became for some time the language of pan-Indian debate. 211 literature, an influence that has been traced in both writers under 412 consideration by literary critics.

More than these material advances, the people of India hailed the modern ideas and institutions of the West with which British rule was making them familiar.413 Not only had the anarchy and social strife of the last Mughal era been brought to an end but it had brought safety and security to the people that were required to revive literature and the arts. India under the Europeans had become unified not only in a geographical sense but also in a political sense and had been put on the same path which had led the western nation to progress and overall advancement.

European society was undergoing great change too but the industrial revolution stood behind the imperial conquest of the world and provided a better living standard to people in Britain. This made people confident enough in their worldly affairs to move away from religion and superstition to the extent of removing it from the public domain and to achieve that nebulous ideal of separating God and king. Reason of the common kind ruled everyday life, peppered, of course, by racism and class and gender bias in the homeland of the rulers of India. People who were impressed by the British rulers, the advocates of the ‗new light‘ like Syed Ahmed Khan and a host of others, justified colonial rule and considered it a blessing, laying stress on all the benefits which in their view British rule had brought to India. It is this Enlightenment thought and its emphasis on a rational ordering of the universe instead of a transcendental one that so appealed to India‘s reformers and fiction writers.

Language as identity is also one of the main themes which is analysed in this study. People like Syed Ahmed were quite clear in their minds that British rule could no longer be opposed because of their military strength and how they ruled three-fourth of the world, but Muslims could learn from them just as the Hindus and other religious communities were doing. And yet, Syed Ahmed also knew the dangers of knowledge and how it brought aspirations to power. In his Muqa‟lat he writes how the Bengalis educated themselves in English and in their initial fervor disparaged everything in their own culture. Once they were confident enough, they also rose to challenge British rule

412Khawaja Muhammad Zakraya (edit), Tareekh e Adabiyat, Muslman e Pakistan o Hind (History of literature, Muslim of Indo-Pakistan) Urdu Adab vol. iv 1914-1857, (Lahore: Punjab University).Sabahuddin Abdul Rehman, Bazm-i-Mamlukiyah (Urdu),1951; reprint, Lahore: Printline Publishers, 2001), 138-158.

413 Firoze Mookerjee, Lukhnow and World of Sarshar (Karachi: Saad Publications, 1992), 26. 212 as we see reflected in the fictional debate in Ratan Nath‘s Sair-e Kohsar when a Bengali lawyer debates with the English character Frazer. Syed Ahmed cautions Muslim students not to go that way.

...If all Muslims became as educated as the people of Bengal are, they may also abuse education in the same manner. Although we are wholeheartedly in favour of education for Muslims yet, if the consequences are the same as they were in other peoples, then we lament the idea of acquiring education. We do not expect such behavior from our Muslim students since they get education with guidance. They will never stand against their government, rather, they will try to understand `the policy of government, to understand its problems and how to tackle them for the welfare and prosperity of the public. If we are more able, loyal and trustworthy to our government, then we will be able to lead a more luxurious life. We expect to foster this attitude in our Muslim students.

Syed Ahmed was a pragmatist and knew that the time for kacheri culture was all but over by the 1860s as Hindus were rallying to remove Urdu as official language and English had already become the official language of the courts. He wanted the Muslims of north India to overcome their bias against learning English language because that was the only way back for them into the Ashrafia class. And yet, as Tariq Rehman argues in his paper, `Language, Modernity and Identity‘, language does not only reflect reality but also constructs it. Language not only conveys ideas in a linear and transparent manner but reinforces some ideas while attenuating others to create a social reality that did not previously exist. He writes, `...being a colonial product, (it) has an effect of creating identities with reference to western categories. While this has great success in the political field it has had less success with older pre modern identities that lurk just beneath the surface even if the vocabulary for 414 them has changed.‘

English language education was not going to come without western cultural values being imported along with it and this was the idea that troubled reformists like Syed Ahmed. This concern later became a point of discord between Nazir Ahmed and his mentor. Dr Qamar Raees writes: ―Deputy Nazir Ahmed was totally oblivious of new scientific discoveries and the changes they brought in. He was against the imperial designs of the

414 Tariq Rehman, Language Policy, Identity and Religion: aspects of the civilization of the Muslims of Pakistan and North India. (Islamabad: Quaid-e Azam University: 2010) pp107-109. 213

British government and would bend over backwards but not yield to their civilizational values and norms. He thought the salvation of Muslims lay in stubbornly sticking to their conservative ways so his ideas conflicted with Syed Ahmed's concept of compromise for the sake of advancement.415 Another literary critic, Syed Abdullah, belives Nazir Ahmed had written Ibn-ul-Waqt in concealed rivalry with Syed Ahmed, especially after the latter found great public acclaim. 416 According to Ahsan Farooqi, "Deputy Nazir Ahmed describes western ways of living and subscribes to the view that it was against Islam"417. Syed Latif concurs with Syed Abdullah, but only to a certain extent and contends that Ibn-ul-Waqt was 418 against Syed Ahmed‘s educational plans and mocked at the western lifestyle and practices. We see that in real life the two men maintained cordial relations until the very end of their lives and public careers. Nazir Ahmed was invited each year to the annual meeting of the Educational Conference on Syed Ahmed‘s invitation. As long as Syed Ahmed lived, he made sure that Nazir Ahmed was always invited to these meetings.

This study demonstrates that neither Nazir Ahmed nor Ratan Nath Sarshar were "modern" novelists, if we take the European model of modernism as an example. Although the novel began as a European invention, in India it incorporated theatre dialogue, classical poetry, religious oratory, the art of letter writing and took heavily from the dastaan tradition of medieval romance and the epic hero. How such fiction may be called a novel has been debated in the case study of these two writers, but broadly, these stories moved to naturalism in the sense that there were no kings, queens and princesses, and although the hero undertook long journeys to win the hand of his beloved, he was not accosted by djins and fairies but only by difficult rulers and beautiful women. Not only was the language naturalistic but both fiction writers addressed the troubling issue of new identities being formed post-1857 as a response to colonial modernity. This was social realism for the first time in Urdu literature which was given to romance or to religious writings. Their fiction was in no way personal and the novel had not yet become psychological and confessional like in Europe under the influence of Freud and the psychoanalysts. Both these novelists have been studied here

415 Qamar Raes, Prem Chand ki Novel Nigari (The novels of Premchand), (Delhi: Maktaba -i- Dilhi, 1962), p.121.

416 See Syed Abdullah, Sir Syed aur Uske Rufka (Sir Syed and his companions), (Lahore: Ilmi Book Depot, 1960)

417 Ahsan Farooqi, Urdu Novel ki Tanqeedi Tareekh ( A critical history of the Urdu novel), Lukhnow: 43.

418 Syed Lateef Hussain Adeeb, Ratan Nath Ki Novel Nighari (The novels of Ratan Nath), ( Karachi: Anjaman e Tarakee Urdu, 1961), 101. 2 1 4 because they are considered in their divergent ways as didactic, writing for the purpose of social edification but it serves no purpose to try to classify them by a lack in comparison with the journey of the modern European novel.

Ratan Nath Sarshar and Nazir Ahmed were not from the European modernist movement if we are referring here to modernism as a movement in European history that affected the literature and arts. These two Indians were "modernizers" in the limited sense of breaking from earlier methods of writing and for advocating a particular interaction with western rationality. In his later writing, Nazir Ahmed circled back to some form of the "Islamic modern" as is illustrated by Riway-e Sadiqa , advocating change from within religious identity and a limited interaction with the public sphere. Ratan Nath, a little later than him in time, moved in his later work towards the construction of modern but Indian nationalist identity. We hear the rumblings of the individual being conceived in their later writings and the invention of loneliness, in that way Kurrum Dhum's Noshaba is close to Ayma's Azadi Begum, the modern as the solitary individual.

While much has been written about Nazir Ahmed‘s negotiation with modernity in Ibn-ul Waqt, his most polemical work or in Taubat-un Nasuh, his most heavy handed third part to the Mirat trilogy, little scholarship surrounds Ratan Nath‘s take on colonial modernity. His picaresque novels of great length are nowhere as heavy handed as Nazir Ahmed‘s. His Fasana published in tomes of over 3000 pages is almost absurdist in the many amorous and military adventures of the hero who then returns home to marry the woman who had sent him on this quest for fame and glory; he proceeds to set up industry and later sends his two sons to England for the best education they can possibly have. His Husn Ara is modeled partly on a petulant princess and partly a harlot in some of her mannerism but she is a demanding woman who wants her sisters to be better educated in modern ways than she is and starts a school for Hindu and Muslim women. All of Ratan Nath‘s women, from the nawab‘s chaste wives and unmarried women to the devilish servant girls, are overdeveloped characters with willful personalities. The Ashrafia women are as sensual as they are sensible and Ratan Nath never lets an opportunity go by to dream up their love lives in great detail. All his characters are bawdy and hilarious, set as they are against Lucknow‘s pluralistic and celebratory culture, none of them are realistic in the strict sense. It is perhaps in his last short story Kurrum Dhum that Ratan Nath truly oversteps the boundaries of the believable in creating Noshaba and her marriage of choice. The letter she writes her father to explain her 215 reasons for going against his wishes is a classic piece of fiction yet to be replicated in the reality of a modern Muslim woman.

Whether the Muslim woman ever became modern in the manner in which Ratan Nath Sarshar had imagined her may be the topic of some other study. It is also beyond the scope of this study to look at the literature produced in this period in the oral tradition for and by other classes of people, those excluded by the Ashrafia, but it remains an interesting comparative study in creating a more grounded understanding of the alternative to colonial modernity. What was the concept of the individual in oral mystical poetry, for instance, or that of freedom and responsibility? What were the means of dissemination of works outside of print capitalism and were they outside the national narrative?

The end of the study is the beginning of the communal narrative. The national narrative was being constructed by political writing in the period i n which these two Urdu novelists wrote by reformers who tried to construct a Muslim identity as one community based on a history full of heroes and victories; assuming their take on Islam was one and their class interests united. Writers like Shibli Naumani and Abdul Halim Sharar critiqued colonial historiography for its distortions. 419 Another man who challenged the legitimacy of British rule was Muhammad Ali Johar (1878 -1930) who made a mark as a journalist. His services are remembered as the editor of Comrade and Hamdard, the two leading papers, one in English and the other in Urdu, which made a significant contribution to Indian politics. Johar articulated in powerful prose the hopes, fear and inspirations of the Indian Muslims with remarkable insight. In 1921, he led the first Indian revolt against the Briti sh and for the first time India witnessed a mass movement which shook the 420 country and nearly paralysed British rule.

The interface between colonial modernity and the Muslims of India have been called ―apologetic modernity‖ by Faisal Devji in which there was

419 Ansa Altaf Fatima, Urdu main Sawaneh Nigari ka irtaqa(evolution of biography writing in Urdu), (Karach: Urdu Acedemy Sindh 1961), 90-104. The works of Altaf Hussain Hali are worth mentioning here: Haya e Sadi, Yadgare Ghalib, Hayat Javaid and Musadas e Hali were addressed to the Ashrafia.

420 Dr. Afzal Iqbal, The Muslim Luminaries, Leaders of Religious, Intellectual and Political Revival in South Asia, (Islamabad: National Hijra Council, 1988), 174-177. 216 little intellectual interaction between the British and Indian Muslims. But we see that Syed Ahmed‘s Asbab-e Baghawat-e Hind was addressed to the British civil servant and administrator. The next most eloquent defense of moderni ty within Islam came from Dr Muhammed Iqbal (1877 -1938), educated in both western and eastern philosophy, who rejected the binary of colonial modernity versus indigenous traditionalism. Iqbal , like Syed Ahmed before him, was knighted by Queen Victoria for his services but maintained his independence of mind.421 In his writings, Iqbal was at pains to prove that modernity was a concept intrinsic to Islam and not an idea newly introduced by the European Enlightenment. He believed Islam was a cultural movement that saw the worth of individuals not based on bloodline but on character, denouncing hereditary kingship and priesthood. It was a dynamic movement that took from other cultures what was of worth and was not fixed in its ideas; moreover, Islam was not nationalist but a spiritual democracy of the Ummah, making Mulsims not a nation but ―a spiritual community‖. 422 `Islam constructed nationality out of a purely abstract idea, i.e. religion. For a Muslim, Islam was itself nationalism as well as patriotism‘. 423

As for the individual, in another lecture he spoke of how Islam believed in the unique individual which made it impossible for one man to bear the burden of another; Islam was committed to the equality of women and men before God and Indians did not need to be taught that lesson. `Islam recognizes a very important factor in human psychology: the rise and fall of the power to act freely and is anxious to retain the power to act freely as a constant and undiminished factor in the life of the ego.‘ 424

In `The Spirit of Muslim Culture‘, he stresses this appeal to inductive reasoning and experiential knowledge in Islam and the constant reference to history and to nature in the Koran was proof of its this -worldliness. There was a sharp difference between the prophet and the mystic because the

421 Ibid. 185-197.

422 Dr Muhammed Iqbal, See `The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam‘ in Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, (Lahore: Muhammad Ashraf, 1968).

423 Ibid, 424 Iqbal, 1968: p 47`The human ego, his freedom and immortality‘ 217 prophet came as an educator of men‘s behavior in this world, to redirect and refashion collective life, so his was a social function not a transcendental one alone. In Islam, writes Iqbal, prophecy reaches its perfection in discovering the need for its own abolition and for man to come into his 425 own.

Despite his knighthood, Iqbal wrote openly in criticism of European Enlightenment thought and the arrogance of imperial rule:

The idealism of Europe never became a living factor in her life and the result is a perverted ego seeking itself through mutually intolerant democracies whose sole function is the exploitation of the poor in the interests of the rich. Believe me, Europe today is the greatest

hindrance in the way of man‘s ethical advancement. 426

While Iqbal tried to work on the concept of the Ummah as opposed to a nationalist consciousness for Indian Muslims, events in history were inexorably moving towards the debacle of communalism that was to split India from within and lead to unprecedented bloodshed and violence that Indian Muslims will perhaps never heal from.

425 Ibid. p 426 Ibid. p 75 218

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