Subcontinent Under Attack: Sajjad Zaheer’s Nīnd Nhī Âtī

The social and political developments of late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the Indian Subcontinent provided a background for the emergence of Progressive Writers Movement of India. The anthologies of the writers associated with this movement reacted to the two major intellectual positions that were prevalent in that period. I’ll refer Sajjad Zaheer’s Nīnd Nhī Âtī to elaborate my point.        

Nīnd or sleep has connotations of ecstasy and calmness, yet, here it stands in contrast to the political hurricane that came in wake of the British rule in India. So I see the title of this story, Nīnd Nhī Âtī, as a critique on the governing mechanism of British Rulers in India. This takes us to one of the two viewpoints that I have referred initially. It was believed in some scholarly circles of India that the capitalist democracy shall work as a premise of governance for the two countries, after their independence from the British Crown. This approach was never welcomed by the Progressive Writers because they blamed this system of governance for all the grievances of a common person in India. The starting lines of the story refers to this particular aspect when Akber says: Tārikī aūr tārikī… tārikī, tārikī  

The second discourse refers to the cultural and religious revivalism that was seen as a Messiah by a larger portion of the scholarly circle. For the ‘reformers’ like Jamaluddin Afghani or Akber Allahabadi, the disregard of traditional values led to the decline of Muslims in subcontinent. Again, Sajjad Zaheer criticized this approach as this was nothing less than an “escapist tradition’ (Munshi Prem Chānd).

Sajjad Zaheer stated at another instance that “these modes of thoughts emphasized that the lost golden era had to be somehow brought back to life. But when, in practice, there was the question of reconstructing this foreign world in the modern age, it was considered to seek education in British Schools and to acquire the ‘good qualities’ of British rulers”. The character of Akber presents the similar situation where his poetry is still revolving around the tradition and old values, ignoring the socio-political environment around him. This is how Akber is confronted:

Akber sahib, âp tu Mash’Allah shāʿir haiñ, ye gul-o bulbul kai āfsanai kab tak?

 At another instance in the story, Akber’s wife tells him off by saying: Sare Ghar kai kām mīray zim’ay haiñ, Mjhay kisi ki tarha shʿāir kehnai kī fursāt nahi.

 The central character of the story, in a way, represents the plight of a common man of India in the early 20^th century and the author has criticized the means responsible in this case.