Exploring a road less travelled
Shahid Alam appreciates a posthumous scholarly work
Muslim India in Anglo-Indian Fiction
Benazir Durdana
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Benazir Durdana completed her doctoral dissertation, which forms the basis of the book under review, Muslim India in Anglo-Indian Fiction, in 1997. By that time Samuel P. Huntington had his article, "The Clash of Civilizations?" published in Foreign Affairs (Summer 1983), followed shortly by the book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). Nowhere, however, in her book, has Durdana even a passing reference to either of Huntington's works. Not that there was any reason for her to have cited him. Yet, her own words, as well as the general theme of the book indicate that she views the depiction of Muslim India in Anglo-Indian fiction from a clash of culture perspective. "I am of the opinion that focused critical attention is called for to examine the implications of the West's particular defamation of Islam," Durdana writes. "This cannot be explained as just one among many examples of colonial reductionism; it is the inevitable outcome of long-standing open, latent and anticipatory political rivalry between the two cultures, one which has contributed to the systematic evolvement of an Other in Western literature that is more "other" than all the other Others."
Sadly, Durdana passed away in 1998, while a teacher in the Department of English, University of Dhaka, before she could add to her Muslim India in Anglo-Indian Fiction, an important work that offers microcosmic explanations of misconceptions, misunderstandings and conflicts between the West and Islam beyond that of the patronising, misrepresenting, and trivializsng of the Muslim community in British India in Anglo-Indian fiction.
Chapter 1 ("Introduction") encapsulates the author's thoughts on this stated broad purpose of the study that she has undertaken: "…to focus on a special category of Western representation of Islam that in some fundamental way resists the essentializing (Edward) Said accepts for the larger purpose of introducing an innovative idea." In the context of her specific subject matter, her contention is that "Anglo-Indian fiction writers persistently allow their cultural prejudice against Muslims to invade their creative territory, setting aside impressions from actual, often extremely positive encounters with Indian Muslims." Durdana argues, with much conviction and a fair amount of historical evidence, that such prejudice has its roots in the early history of the Islamic world: "It started when contact was first made as early as the Middle Ages (which the West revealingly calls the Dark Ages) when the Islamic civilization reached its zenith and tried to expand into Europe. The bloody Crusades that followed mark the beginning of the adversarial relationship between these two cultures. Islam's political expansion into Europe also made it an economic rival…." Note the emphasis on a cultural divide existing between the two contesting sides (any nitpicking on the generic use of the terms "West" and "Islam" may be safely ignored when viewed in the context and time they were used), and on the use of the term "Islamic civilization" --- both shades of Huntington's thesis, though likely not borrowed from him.
However, probably the most significant factor influencing the evolving, and subsequently, burgeoning adversarial state between the two that the author has identified is that of economic rivalry. Politics (including in the form of belligerency) and economics are inextricably linked, and one or the other usually follows the other. Durdana's reference to Karl de Schweinitz's thesis is important on two counts: that the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 cut at the heart of European trade with Asia, a determinant that forced Europeans to seek alternative trade routes (like Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World in 1492, and Vasco da Gama's to India in 1497), which, in turn, provided a significant impetus to their colonial ventures.
While Durdana attempts to present a broader explanation for the West's jaundiced view of Islam and its adherents, the author is no Islamic ideologue presenting a completely one-sided view in its favour. For example, though such instances are admittedly rather rare, she writes: "…the Western and Islamic worlds are equally guilty of the drive for domination, the former hiding racial discrimination under the ideal of democracy and the latter veiling religious favouritism behind protestations of universal brotherhood." However, in the context of British India, she is firmly of the opinion that the Muslims were far more wronged against than they had themselves wronged. She presents a broader backdrop to this phenomenon thus: "In India, the British seemed far more aware of the difference of Islam from other Indian cultures and its proximity with the culture of the West; this again led to acute anxiety of fraternity. This anxiety expresses itself in contradictory images of the Indian Muslim in Anglo-Indian fiction: an outer person of active geniality and a hidden self of brooding malignancy."
That fiction is represented by the author's choice of three novels: Confessions of a Thug by Philip Meadows Taylor, and the more well-known Kim by Rudyard Kipling, and A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Her conclusion? "Anglo-Indian novels are bound by the range of interpretation available to the centrally-positioned, imperially-minded British community for whom they were written. But within those boundaries their interpretation stumbles across blank spaces, ambiguous textures and shifting patterns that reveal more about concerns of self-identity than an interest in representing another culture. The essentializing of contemporary Muslim culture, individual stereotypical characterization of Muslim men and women, employment of various distancing and denial strategies and the effects of polarization achieved through the reactionary response in Muslim discourse reflects an anxiety of self-projection, most apparent in Anglo-Indian fiction's representation of Islam." Even Forster, a writer way ahead of his times, who was predisposed "to a liking for the Islamic religion and culture", has not been able to rise above becoming "short-circuited in his fictional depiction of Muslim India." His otherwise colourful details depicting Muslim motivations and sentiments "only serve to hide a dark fear of the irrational, incomprehensible, religious zealot, that is part of the common racial heritage of all Anglo-Indian writers." A damning indictment, indeed, although one might carp at the sweeping remark of "common racial heritage"!
Durdana also discusses four Bengali novels written during the era of the raj by Bengali Muslim writers to demonstrate the contemporary life of Muslims as well as to highlight "specifically the directions taken by false assumptions, stylized patterns of thought and dubious inferences of the colonialists in British India…." The works selected, Meer Mosharraf Hussain's Udasi Pathiker Moner Kotha (1890), Najibur Rahman's Anwara (1914), Abdul Wadud's Nadibakkhey (1919), and Kazi Emdadul Haque's Abdullah (1933) --- all presented in plot summaries in appendices --- the author acknowledges, "are relatively immature works…. However, they serve well as representations of Muslim society in colonial India, and must suffice in the absence of better-hailed examples." The author offers, among others, an explanation for the vilification of Muslims that has had far greater political implications leading up to, and the realization of, the partition of India than the fact of having influenced Anglo-Saxon writers to have written with their brand of prejudice: "…the sudden growth of venomous nationalistic sentiment with which Hindus disavowed the right of Muslims to the Indian homeland. Curiously, this particular brand of nationalism welcomed the British as rulers and saviours, and produced sympathetic vibrations in the outlook of the new masters."
Muslim India in Anglo-Indian Fiction is a serious work. It is an important work in understanding the mindset of Anglo-Indian fiction writers, and, to a lesser extent, in finding some explanation for the multifarious confrontation between the West and Islamic fundamentalism/extremism in the post-Cold War international system.
Shahid Alam is Head, Department of Media and Communication, Independent University, Bangladesh.
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