“It is
therefore, a source of great virtue for the practiced mind to learn, bit by
bit, first to change about in visible and transitory things, so that afterwards
it may be able to leave them behind altogether. The person who finds his
homeland sweet is a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one
is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign
place. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong
person has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished
his”
–Hugo of St.
Victor’s Didascalicon
Borrowing
Hugo’s ideas of what it means to belong, and what strength becomes of an
individual when a certain kind of association with a land is persisted –I feel
like all of the Urdu literature we have read in this course somehow now aligns
itself to the exilic ideas of Hugo.
Starting from
the basic ideas of homelessness and dis/ (un)belonging, we can finally define
what exilic means and who an exilic figure is. Sogandhi in Manto’s Hatak was perhaps an exilic figure to
not only the offside of the brothel and her room but she was largely homeless
outside her general space that consists of technology and a different class of
people so that she eventually sees rejection. In Manto’s work, the prostitutes
like Sultana and Sogandhi become outsiders when the space or
location around them changes and an interaction with men, which otherwise
should be fitting to their lives and their profession, is disengaging. By the
latter I mean, the thorough assumed superiority men have adopted in this kind
of discourse. What then does it mean to be homeless and secular? If men form
the dominant national, and the superior ‘dominant’ national, does it leave women
to become secular and weak? Does it make all kinds of women secular? I believe
that this assumed power of the masculine in Urdu discourse, which of course is
a pick off the culture of the subcontinent and perhaps more precisely, the
Muslim man, secludes the woman enough to make her both a critic and a victim.
Also, not all kinds of women become secular to the males. In Manto’s stories,
the brothel men are embracing and effectuating some kind of peaceful, lucrative
and caring existence for the prostitutes such as Ram Lal and Madho. Similarly,
Veena Malik may be looked at from the same perspective. She is secular to
religious, dogmatic , state aligned pockets of people in Pakistan, which is
interestingly her won country. It is then difficult to separate religion and
national because then her arguments in her defense also
attack both. A religious man, a male TV anchor and a female artist were
only apparently propagating debate that a woman’s izzat and state identity are synonymous. The
ideas of synonymy of the woman with the state comes usually when the state
tries to adopt in some way a sort of protectionist, religious identity;
at times, using the woman as both a propagator or as a reformist icon. Refer
here to the music videos such as Jeevay
Jeevay Pakistan and Sohni Dharti that promote the state narrative as
well as pictures of small student girls in the national anthem video where the
educated young girl is a sign of a state that’s trying to progress. Notice
again, the Strings song ‘Main Tou Dekhoonga’ where the first entrant to their
musical classroom is a girl and all other girls who also later become part of
it are wearing their duppatas. This kind of portrayal of women across
literary texts and videos goes to show how then the secular figures are being
introduced into the national narrative to legitimize their narrative altogether
as one which is wholesome.
Furthermore,
the idea of izzat itself, originating from the sharif household, is problematic as then it
imposes it as a virtue of the woman only. This association is not entirely fair
to the freedom of women altogether and far worse, it relieves the masculine of
any responsibility as far as the promotion and definition of a certain
identity goes. Ranging from Sabira in Intezar Hussain’s Basti who was criticized for the choices she
made to the mother in Fehmida Riaz’s Godavari where a mere acceptance of her
husband’s attitude leaves her displaced in her house. From the characters of Amina and Dadi,
we debate if death is reserved for women only especially if it’s the byproduct
of action/inaction on a man’s part. Then the homeless, exilic figure of the
woman, as given by Garam Hawa,
is the old widow or an unmarried Muslim woman who are secular to the choices of
men.
However,
figures such as Abba Jee in Basti and Saleem
Mirza in Garam Hawa are largely homeless on the grounds
that they chose a severe affinity with the land that they lived in. This goes
back to the Hugo definition, where they then become perfect for considering
anything beyond their homeland, foreign. Abba
Jee found Roopnagar idyllic and was unable to both
understand and collaborate in Pakistan while Saleem
Mirza living India was
secular to the national itself. It’d be safe to say that Saleem Mirza was
largely secular in the Indian society; first, by default of being a Muslim, and
then by virtue of not making a decision to move to Pakistan. In their
perfection to not situate themselves mentally and physically to the place of
their living they are imperfect in the society. Consequently they become
secular. Intezar Hussain’s story Shehr
e Afsos, aptly explains this idea of the exclusionary nature of land that
even then nullifies our much believed version of ‘dharti’ and the
nurturing, embracing homeland. In its entirety then, the land not only
constitutes of the society but also makes up the culture which becomes the
national that excludes minorities like Saleem
Mirza, Abba Jee, Veena Malik, Sogandhi, Amina and Ma.
“Yeh sun kar hansi meri jati rahi aur main ney
afsos kia aur kaha: ‘Ay buzurg! Kia tu ney dekha key jo log apni zameen se
bichar jatey hain, phir koi zameen un ko qubool nahi karti?’
‘Main ney dekha aur yeh jana, key har zameen
zalim hai’
‘Woh jo janam deti hai who bhi?’
‘Haan! Jo zameen janam deti hai woh bhi aur jo
zameen dar ul amaan banti hai who bhi… aur har zameen zalim hai’ ”
