Sadat Hasan Manto & Ayesha Jalal

Ayesha Jalal

Wednesday November 6, I attended Ayesha Jalal's reading from her latest book on Sadat Hasan Manto The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life andWork Across the Indo-Pakistan Divide, organized by Committee of Progressive Pakistani-Canadians in collaboration with Halqa Arbab-e-Zauq Toronto, Progressive Writers Association Canada & South Asian Peoples’ Forum.

Jalal lived up to her reputation of being one of the liveliest scholars and a public intellectual on all subjects South Asia, and especially the Partition. Manto is the voice of the subcontinent’s Partition. His stark and brutal portrayal of the mindless carnage that swept the region during that era is unparalleled.

I’m no expert on Manto. I’ve read him only in translation, and only in anthologies on Partition literature. I’ve cherished the little I have read. Manto has attained unbelievable fame posthumously, and every little detail of his life has been written and commented upon especially during his centenary year in 2012. Jalal’s biography has been acknowledged as one of the finest tributes to a writer who continues to fascinate people across the world.

Jalal holds a special place for anyone with rudimentary familiarity of the subcontinent’s history and historiography. Her epochal work on Mohammed Ali Jinnah (The Sole Spokesman) has altered perceptions about arguably one of the most tragic figures of Indian history; the biography makes one question deep-seated prejudices about his role in Partition.

The unbeatable combination of Jalal, Manto and Bombay turned the evening memorable. At the reading, Jalal's selections of passages from her book that pertained to Manto's life in Bombay were heartwarming. Jalal's captures the angst and the sense of loss Manto experienced (forever) after leaving Bombay.

She narrated an anecdote about the paranoia that had gripped him during those dark days. Once Manto accompanied Ashok Kumar in a car and passed through a Muslim mohalla in Bombay. The car had to navigate its way through a baraat (wedding procession), and Manto, wearing khadi, and only vaguely familiar with his religion, was afraid that the members of the procession would recognize Ashok Kumar and lynch them both, mistaking him also for a Hindu. Ashok Kumar remained unperturbed and told Manto to relax. The crowd did recognize the matinee idol and instead of lynching him, actually guided him out of the mohalla. After they passed the procession, Ashok Kumar gently said, “They don’t bother artists.”

Jalal narrated many other incidents from Manto’s life in Bombay – his friendship with Shyam, Ismat Chugtai; his work as a script writer; his success, his anxiety. During the Q&A that followed, I asked her about the influence Bombay had on Manto. Jalal’s answer captured the quintessence of Bombay: “He couldn’t forget Bombay. It lived within him. Lahore couldn’t give him what Bombay did.” One of Manto’s finest stories set in Bombay during the Partition riots is of a young, voluptuous Jewish woman’s (Mozel) sacrifice to save a Sikh Tirlochen and his love Kirpal Kaur.

Munir Pervaiz’s introduction of Jalal touched upon some unknown facets of both Jalal and Manto. 

India’s obsession with Jinnah

India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has expelled Jaswant Singh, its veteran leader and India’s former minister for external affairs. Singh played a key role in shaping India's relations with the United States in the 1990s.

The party is upset with Singh because he wrote a scholarly treatise on Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Jinnah is a taboo subject for the BJP and also for the Indian establishment.

LK Advani had to relinquish the part chief's post after he said what everyone knows to be true – Jinnah was at one time a secular politician and a champion of Hindu-Muslim unity in India.

Jaswant Singh’s point of view that the Congress leaders, especially Nehru and Patel, were as responsible for the vivisection of the Indian subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan as Jinnah, has unleashed a storm within his party and the Congress.

Singh’s views don’t constitute a new interpretation of history. Eminent historians of Pakistani origins – notably Ayesha Jalal (The Sole Spokesman) and Akbar S. Ahmed (Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic identity: The Search for Saladin) – have consistently maintained that had the Congress leaders been more accommodative of Jinnah’s justifiable demands, the history of the subcontinent would’ve been different.

Pakistan may have largely forgotten Jinnah and his secular legacy rather expeditiously after his demise, but he remains a potent force in India. Indians cannot forget Jinnah. More than six decades after the Partition and the creation of Pakistan, Jinnah continues to divide Indians.

Jaswant Singh isn’t the first and definitely not the last to write about Jinnah. In the last six decades, tomes have been written about Pakistan’s creator in India. Most of them have been polemical (and very readable) opinions that hold Jinnah responsible for the Partition – for instance, Arun Shourie’s famous three-part series for The Illustrated Weekly of India, and Rafiq Zakaria’s The Man Who Divided India.

Some (as polemical) argue the other view. HM Seervai's Partition of India – Legend and Reality is a brilliant example. Seervai argues as a solicitor and tries to prove that the Congress was responsbile for the Partition.

I still remember Rajdeep Sardesai’s anguished review of Seervai’s book in the Sunday Times of India. The main argument of Singh’s book cannot be too different from Seervai’s book that was written about two decades ago.

I must confess, I haven’t read Singh’s book (an unfortunate aspect of immigration is not be able to access books published in India). But if it has riled Narendra Modi enough to ban it in Gujarat, it has to be good.

Also, the hysteria in India over Jinnah reveals a mentality that shuns historical inquiry and a preference for blind prejudice.

Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah, incidentally, is a brief, readable (non-partisan, non-polemical) biography of the creator of Pakistan.

Image: http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/election2009/candidate/jaswantsingh-28493131240988271.jpg

Jesus, Jinnah and Atal Behari

I bet the headline is interesting.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Atal Behari Vajpayee share their date of birth with Jesus Christ. Isn't that an amazing coincidence?

I want to talk of three books that reveal their (Jinnah's and Vajpayee's) moderate style of politics and personality.

Ayesha Jalal's The Sole Spokesman Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan is, in my view, the best book on the politics of Jinnah, and Stanley Wolpert's Jinnah of Pakistan is probably the best biography of the creator of Pakistan.

I read both the books nearly a decade ago. They were published in the mid-1980s; Jalal’s book by Cambridge and Wolpert’s by Oxford.

Jalal writes objectively but polemically -- almost as a lawyer. If one has grown up on healthy dose of Indian nationalism, Jalal’s Jinnah is bound to make one uncomfortable most of the time, and really seethe with anger some times.

Wolpert’s book has his trademark style. Wolpert is one of the most readable historians on South Asian history of the British era. The depth and range of his work is awe inspiring. Wolpert is clearly an old school historian and takes it upon himself to make the subject of his book likeable without losing objectivity. Jinnah benefits from Wolpert’s affable style.

One of his lesser known, but a substantially more important book is Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India. It is an engaging discussion on the two directions in the development of Indian nationhood exemplified by Tilak's orthodoxy and Gokhale's liberalism. 

Earlier this year I read Lal Krishna Advani’s My Country My Life. Most of Advani's biography, especially the last chapters, make for laborious reading, but what lifts the book are the passages on Vajpayee. It is Vajpayee’s portrayal and the deference with which Advani treats his senior colleague that takes the book on an altogether different level.

Advani writes: “If I have to single out one person who has been an integral part of my political life almost from its inception till now, one who has remained my close ally in the party for well over fifty years, and whose leadership I have always unhesitatingly accepted, it would be Atal Bihari Vajpayee…”

Just as both Jalal’s and Wolpert’s books reveal the true, tolerant personality of the creator off Pakistan; Advani’s book also shows the expansive and inclusive style of Vajpayee’s politics.

Jinnah in his times and Vajpayee in our time are moderate leaders trapped in an intolerant ideology that the Muslim League and the RSS represent. These ideologies cage the free-spirited leadership style within narrow confines of hidebound belief systems.

Incidentally, Jinnah’s date of birth coincides with Jesus Christ. He died on 9/11 (September 11, 1948). How's that for significance?