The Secular Position

“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’ ”