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(Re)-Visiting

Literature (Critical Essays)


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© Copyright, 2017, Mohd Nageen Rather

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iii

(Re)-Visiting Literature

(Critical Essays)

Mohd Nageen Rather

EDUCREATION PUBLISHING (Since 2011)

www.educreation.in


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To my dear and dutiful teachers

And loving students


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CONTENT LIST

Sr. No. Content Page

− Preface vii

− Declaration ix

1. Marginalization and Victimization in Omair Ahmad‟s Jimmy the Terrorist:

An Appraisal

11

2 Patriotic and Altruistically

Revolutionary Hues in Ghulam

Ahmad Mahjoor‟s Poetry

19

3. Sheikh-ul-Aalam‟s Poetry in The Light of the Quran and the Hadees (Ahadith): A Brief Analysis

30

4. Vortex of Sufferings, Subjugation and Gender Proclivity: A Study of

Anita Nair‟s Novel Ladies Coupe

41

5. Novel- A Continuum Genre Encompassing a Wide Spectrum of Adaptations and Appropriations: A

Study

49

6. Two Literary Heralds Of Nature – William Wordsworth and Peerzada Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor: A

Comparative Analysis

58

7. Naturalism in Fiction - On the Go or On the Bubble- Concept, Origin and Popularity: An Introduction

74


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8. Crack down on Books- Censorship,

Burnings, Bans and Challenges of Literary Works: Some Glimpses

82

9. Survival In The Face Of Patriarchy: Failure And Moxie Of Nivara - A

Feministic Appraisal Of Samrudhi Dash‟s novel Beyond The Horizon

95


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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION ________________________________________________________________

Literature is a subject of profound interest where one can

devour both the intellectual as well as emotional nectar. It is perhaps the only area of study where one can be

ageless and can have the opportunity to enjoy the life filled with commonsense and wisdom. Whenever we read any piece of literature, it surely infuses our spirit with

glorious ideas. Practically we are really humanized if we happen to belong to this area, no matter in what capacity

and degree, we always remain intellectually rich. Whether we approach it scholarly or as a modest student we are bound to land in delight and the results are always

remarkable. I feel proud to be a humble student of Literature and the result of my modest efforts of working

on some literary topics and writers has finally come to you in the form of this book in your hands. There is no doubt that this book contains miscellaneous topics from

some popular genres like poetry and novel writing. The book attempts to offer a critical and evaluative material

on the poetic achievements of some national and foreign poets. It provides a comparative analysis of some famous poets.

There has been an inflow of novels in India by various

women writers who have attempted to highlight the problems faced by women in Indian society mostly through novels so that they can reach a larger audience.

The book has not failed to cover such women writers of India but rather provides analyses of some of the vibrant

voices from women novelist.

Muslim writers in India have been, since long,

enriching and contributing to the Indian English writings


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in various literary forms. They have produced some time

tested literary artifacts which deserve the attention of any literary scholar and student alike. This book contains a

paper on Omair Ahmad‟s popular novel which I believe will benefit both scholars and students of literature in

equal measure. Besides the book provides an insightful exploration in the poetic oeuvre of some Kashmiri poets who are very identical to some famous poets yet retain

their distinctiveness by writing in the language of their own.

It is hoped that this book will provide a mixed yet rich intellectual feast to the researchers and students of

literature and will be of good use to general readers as well.

I place on record my gratitude to Professor Syed Riyaz Rufai Chief Librarian and the whole library staff of

Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) Awantipora Pulwama for providing me the much needed books and other related material .

Meanwhile, I would like to thank my father Mr.

Gh.Quadir Rather whose guidance and timely assistance proved very useful to me whenever I found myself lacking.

My special thanks go to my better-half Saima

Shaheen without whose encouragement and unstinting support my efforts would not have bore fruit.

Finally I express my gratitude to Educreation Publishing who worked hard to publish this book on time.

Mohd Nageen Rather

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DECLARATION ________________________________________________________________

I hereby make this declaration that this book is comprised of research papers/ articles written by me and were

published in various national and international journals. I sought the necessary permission from all the Chief-

Editors of the journals, in which my papers were first published, for publishing these already separately published papers in a single book form like this.

Nonetheless, it seems good to me to mention the names of the journals along with the titles of my papers

published in them for the sake of acknowledgement. The exhaustive first publication details of my research papers are as under.

Marginalization and Victimization in Omair Ahmad‟s

Jimmy the Terrorist: An Appraisal first published in The Creative Launcher.Vol.II IssueIV. Oct. 2017

Patriotic and Altruistically Revolutionary Hues in Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor‟s Poetry first published in Star

Research Journal Vol.5 Issue8(2).Aug2017

Sheikh-ul-Aalam‟s Poetry in The Light of The Quran

and The Hadees (Ahadith): A Short Analysis first published in The Creative Launcher .Vol.II Issue III.

Aug. 2017

Vortex of Sufferings, Subjugation and Gender

Proclivity: A Study of Anita Nair‟s Novel Ladies Coupe first published in New Academia Vol.VI.IssueIV.Oct2017

Novel- A Continuum Genre Encompassing a Wide Spectrum of Adaptations and Appropriations: A Study first

published in International Journal of Arts Management and Humanities Vol.6(2) 2017

Two Literary Heralds Of Nature – William Wordsworth and Peerzada Ghulam Ahmad Mahjoor: A Comparative


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Analysis first published in Literary Herald Vol.3. Issue

2. Aug2017

Naturalism in Fiction - On the Go or On the Bubble- Concept, Origin and Popularity: An Introduction first published in Journal of Research and Development

Vol.7.Issue.4Aug 2017

Crack down on Books- Censorship, Burnings, Bans and Challenges of Literary Works: Some Glimpses first published in Research Guru Vol.II.Issue2 Sep.2017

Survival In The Face Of Patriarchy: Failure And Moxie

Of Nivara - A Feministic Appraisal Of Samrudhi Dash‟s Novel Beyond The Horizon first published in Pune Research VOl.3 Issue 5.Sep-Oct 2017

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Marginalization and Victimization in Omair Ahmad’s novel Jimmy the Terrorist: An Appraisal ________________________________________________________________

Persecution of Muslims in India is widespread and can be located within the daily micro aggressions that this

population faces as well as in more deliberate political ideologies. Muslims are targeted, rounded up, brutalized and killed. Vast numbers of Muslims are today faced with

the painful dilemmas in the wake of mounting Islamophobia and increasing anti-Muslim prejudice, on

the one hand, and radicalism and hatred in the name of Islam, on the other. Till about a couple of decades ago,

Indian fiction in English carefully avoided the more unpleasant socio-political realities of the day. Many writers have either given a cursory look at this issue or

the depiction of Muslim marginalization and victimization has been contracted to a single page in the literary

narratives. Omair Ahmad in his novel has portrayed the plight of the Muslim community in Indian society in a realistic way which make him stand out from the rest of

the Indian novelists writing in English.

INTRODUCTION

Omair Ahmad's Jimmy the Terrorist, was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize and is the winner of

Vodafone Crossword Book Award 2010. Omair Ahmad, who grew up in Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh before he

moved to Saudi Arabia, as he himself says that “The only uniqueness for me about the Indian experience is that it is mine.”(In interview with Sandhya Iyer:2010) He

provides Muslim narrative of the recent Indian history, pockmarked by grievances, riots and pogroms. The novel


http://www.thehindu.com/tag/469-447-428/fiction?utm=bodytag

http://www.thehindu.com/tag/469-447-428/fiction?utm=bodytag

Mohd Nageen Rather

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which takes the reader back to the „70s is set in

Moazzamabad, a decaying north Indian town, established centuries ago by a scion of the Mughal family. It tells the

story of Jimmy , originally named Jamaal, son of Rafiq Ansari of Rasoolpur Mohalla, a Muslim neighbourhood in a

Hindu town. His story goes back a long way to the time when Moazzamabad was named, after Aurangzeb‟s son. Rafiq, a Muslim man from a modest background, is

married into what was once the leading Muslim feudal family of this town. Part of the dowry he receives is a low-

paid job in a Muslim-run college. Constantly reminded of his lowly status by the men into whose family he is married, and unable to take their insults any longer, he

increasingly finds solace in religion. He begins to frequent the mosque, much to the chagrin of his wife‟s relatives,

who find this yet another reason to mock him. He sprouts a beard and begins to regularly pray, spending his time with the imam of the mosque and the rest of the

congregation. He advises patience in the face of growing anti-Muslim prejudice, but many younger members of the

mosque congregation are increasingly driven to despair as they see right-wing Hindu politicians, even in their own town that has had a history of communal camaraderie,

deliberately stoking violence against Muslims simply in order to grab power. His Muslim brothers advise him to

talk about:

[...The] grand tragedies, about oppression, zulm,

riots and murder. Grow your beard a little longer and miss no opportunity to raise your voice against

the sufferings of Muslims (p-108)

Undoubtedly, “Their shared perception of victimhood,

of their community and its religion and culture being under menacing threat from viscerally anti-Muslim right-

wing Hindu forces, is real and palpable.” (Yoginder Sikand: 2011).The novel portrays a change in the family‟s circumstances, from being privileged and protected, to

ending up being marginalised and struggling to find their place in the world. Though the novel is concerned with a

particular Muslim locality, it holds true, not just for the



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marginalized Muslims in U. P. or any other state, but any

minority community in India or in any other part of the world.

DISCUSSION

Since Jimmy The Terrorist, depicts the marginalisation of the Muslim community in India, their victimisation and all the issues that come with it, the book follows closely the

life of a few of its denizens, against the changing socio-political atmosphere in the country. It describes the life of

an ordinary Muslim youth, Rafiq who aspires to be a well-educated elite. The old Shabbir Manzil, which houses affluent Muslim families and is the intellectual hub for

poets, is where Rafiq aspires to be. He finally becomes privy to this much envied circle by way of his marriage to

Shiasta .The Rafiq-Shiasta union produces a son, Jamal aka Jimmy, and it is in his young life that the reader sees the undercurrents of religious intolerance taking its

ugliest turn.

The novel undoubtedly points at the vulnerable, fragile situation of Muslims in India. Rafiq has trouble getting a job, as employers are increasingly reluctant to

hire people with Muslim names and “the conversion of Jimmy into a terrorist is inextricably connected with the

sorry plight of his father, Rafiq,who, despite his intellectual superiority , could never excel in any examination or achieve general success in life, simply

because he belonged to minority group, and ascribed to a minority religion and culture”(B.Meenakashi:2016) as his

friend Ahmad Syed provides Rafiq the reason that “ They must have realised that you are a Muslim”(p-17) which proved to be true.

It is in this surcharged communal atmosphere of a

decaying north Indian town that Rafiq rears his son Jamal, nicknamed Jimmy, struggling to provide him with a decent education in a Christian school, which is the only

passport out of their miserable morass that those Muslims of the town who can afford it, possess. As a Muslim, and

also as the son of a man of modest means, Jimmy is a


Mohd Nageen Rather

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pathetic victim of double-discrimination. School life, for

him, is a daily torment. We are told in great detail of the teasing that young Jimmy suffered in the missionary

school he went to, on account of his relative poverty and his father's religiosity. Jamaal‟s classmate Saurav

Mukherjee in St. Jude's school promptly blames the lonely Muslim boy Jamaal for his missing pocket money. Shunned by his classmates, on account of being Muslim

and poor, he becomes a sullen recluse, although he is brilliant in his studies. Jimmy had already explained his

position so truthfully as :

I didn‟t steal his money, sir...I didn‟t know he had

hundred rupees, sir. I didn‟t take it. I‟ve never held a hundred rupee note in my life!(p.137)

But he is still wrongly accused of being a thief and shamed in front of the entire school. Saurav blamed “he

stole my money!”(p.137) and demanded to “Search him, his bag, his desk. I want him standing in his underpants so people can see what a thief he is”(p.138).Similarly,

accused of a major theft , Khalid is nabbed by the police, who, on discovering that he is a Muslim, subject him to

brutal torture. At the mere mention of being a Muslim one is bound to suffer in Indian society as Khalid himself tells to Inspector Rawat about his being innocent but wrongly

charged and forced to accept the crime which the former had not committed :

Why don‟t you just admit that you beat me because I‟m a Muslim?

Inspector Rawat pointed the shinny end of his baton

at him and said, „Why you lying thief...‟

„What thief? Khalid asked. „What proof do you have

except a confession that you beat out of me?‟(p.156).

Muslims are beaten like animals and treated with

utmost hatred. There are a numberless incidents where Muslims are targeted and brutalized without any

justification .In Indian society the marginalized Muslims face a tough life only because of their religion. They are , often forced to confess the guilts which they never



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commit. The following passage in which Khalid describes

how he was tortured, sends shivers down the spine:

And they started beating me, and abusing,me telling me that I was a bastard ,a thief, a motherfucking Muslim ,and on and on ,for hours.

When I passed out, they threw water on me, and then started beating me again .They tied me down

to a table and beat the soles of my feet. They wouldn‟t even let me go to the toilet, just made me piss on myself, and then continued to beat me

until I said I‟d say whatever they wanted me to say, do whatever they wanted me to do, just so

that they‟d stop. They made me write a confession.(p.158-159)

Following Khalid‟s arrest, the situation in Moazzamabad “ half-blighted place”(p-1) rapidly

deteriorates. Soon, the town is rocked with violence, triggered off by an ambitious politician who thrives on stirring up anti-Muslim hatred. The gentle imam of the

mosque which Rafiq frequents, sometimes along with Jimmy, is burnt to death, and the town is placed under

curfew. The Muslim ghetto bears the brunt of the curfew, being the target of police brutality and Hindu mobs, who work in tandem. And it is in this situation, finding himself

and his fellow Muslims completely beleaguered and driven to the wall, with no hope for any succour, that the docile

Jimmy is driven to become a terrorist. “A radical change comes over him: he starts carrying a knife, hidden in his

sleeve. The novel describes the build-up change by purposive historical contextualization in the segregation and marginalization to which the Muslims have been

consigned for years”(B.Meenakishi:2016) . Ahmad powerfully brings out what is now a pervasive

phenomenon: the frightening communalization and deep-seated anti-Muslim prejudice of large sections of the agencies of the state, including, and especially, the police,

resulting in extra-judicial arrests of Muslims on a vast scale across India, who continue to languish and tortured

in jail for years on end with little hope for justice. He also


Mohd Nageen Rather

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sensitively describes, in a manner that cannot leave any

reader unmoved, the painful anguish and sheer desperation of Muslims faced with menacing dangers to

their very existence and to their sense of self-respect, being treated less than criminals, even worse than

second-class citizens in the land of their birth.

The novel describes beautifully “the havoc that

politicized religion and narrow communalism continue to play in the lives of innocent millions not just in obscure Moazzamabad, and not just all over India, but all across

the globe as well.” (Yoginder Sikand:2011)The Hindu right-wing, fomented by politicians both local and

national, is a “maddened hundred-armed creature carrying axes, iron rods, tridents and kerosene cans”; torture a Muslim boy, burn to death the Maulana

Qayoom; mount a fearsome campaign of intimidation against the Muslim community. At the end when the

police picks on Jimmy outside the cinema and the corrupt Hindu inspector asks him to identify himself, he plunges

the knife in the latter‟s belly shouting defiantly, My name is Jimmy the terrorist.(p-193) is announced as:

In Moazzamabad ,UP,too large to be a town and too backward to be a city, a young man stabs a police inspector and is beaten to death ( Jimmy the

Terrorist-Jacket inner blurb)

Journalists from Delhi and Bombay descend on the town, “like kites upon a fresh kill.”(p-1) is the reflection of the hollowness of Indian society and exposes their

religious intolerance.

The novel evokes the year 1992, when a right wing Hindu fundamentalist rally attempted to tear down the Babri mosque which they claimed was the birthplace of

Hindu god and mythological character Rama. The rally progressively turned into an angry mob of over a hundred

thousand people, and the violence that erupted here echoed all over the country. Peter Van der Veer says that “For both Hindus and Muslims the issue has become

loaded, first of all mosque is a sacred place it can‟t simply be demolished or removed. The very idea that a



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mosque should make a room for a temple, in which

images are worshipped, sounds like an utter defeat of Islam and is therefore highly repugnant to Muslims.

Second there is the history according to which Babar was involved in the building of the mosque. This provides

even more reason for at least some Muslims to demand its preservation”(P. Van:1996).Therefore the retaliatory violence from the Muslim communities further

exacerbated the situation. Police and political parties took sides and the country plunged into lawlessness for a few

days. Curfews became the norm.

It seems that Omair's idea for the novel began with

one thought - what would be a Muslim youth's mind-set amidst events of religious intolerance and unrest? The story based in a small town in UP easily translates into

being a microcosm for Indian religious conflicts and further a microcosm for Muslim victimisation. It is Muslim

homes that were dynamited, Muslim businesses and livelihoods that were destroyed during the riots of the

1960s, and it was Muslims and the poor who, during the Emergency of 1975-77 became part of the target of a forced sterilization campaign. The plight and miserable

conditions of Muslims is described by Qamruddin as thus:

It is the poor that are being targeted, the poor and

the Muslims... we had a surplus of poor people and Muslims in India. This would take care of poverty

and Muslims in one go” (p-63)

Since Ahmad ends his novel by saying that “No one

asked who Jamaal had been, where he was born, or what he did, but Jimmy the terrorist was listed, his death

reported, and may be that is the important thing.”(p-194),he seem to suggest that Jimmy was forced to act the way he did. He is the product of the violence, and his

actions are the result of the victimization and marginalization which he himself was the victim of along

with his own religious community.


Mohd Nageen Rather

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CONCLUSION

The events in Jimmy the Terrorist depicts in detail the

problems faced by the Muslims in India .It does not conceal anything but rather masterfully shows what happens to Muslims in Northern India is happening all

over the country. The novel largely deal with the victimisation of Muslims by Hindus. The story is

applicable in any place where the communal interests of any privileged or powerful groups edge out the interests of others, pushing the latter to the margins of power or

influence. In this sense, Jimmy the Terrorist is a very human and very global story. Omair Ahmad has been

very realistic while presenting the sufferings of Muslims minutely, thus giving a voice to the unvoiced predicament of the marginalized Muslims.

References

1. Ahmad, Omair. Jimmy the Terrorist. Speaking Tiger ,

New Delhi,2015.Print

2. Sikand, Yoginder. Rev. Jimmy the Terrorist by Omair

Ahmad from www. New Age Islam.com Accessed.15 Oct 2017.

3. Harikrishnan, Charmy. „The Knife Hidden in the Sleeve.‟ Dec. 11 2010.

4. Bharat, Meenakshi. Troubled Testimonies: Terrorism

and the English novel in India. Routledge, 2016. Print

5. Mukherji, Sumana. Rev. Jimmy the Terrorist by Omair

Ahmad 3 April 2011 from htpp://www.thehindu.com Accessed.16 Oct 2017

6. Veer, Peter van der. “Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India”, Oxford University Press, Delhi,

1996. Prints

*****



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