Daily Times

The turn of socio-political events has unleashed waves of socio-cultural innovations impacting the social setup. Literature, a powerful torch bearer of such events, functions as the preserver of history and lets its readers enjoy the moment with its power of storytelling.

Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi is one such masterpiece standing at the moment when the history of Indo Pak subcontinent was being re-written, and Dili was becoming Delhi gradually. Ahmed Ali was a professor of English and portrayed life around him in Urdu as a part of India’s Progressive Writer’s movement. He came up with his writing in English in the 1940s but told the story of British intervention in the Indo-Pak subcontinent in its early stages. With this narrative of Ahmed, he became the first literary voice of Indian Muslims who were rebooting their lives after getting expelled from the corridors of powers under the dominant and powerful British presence in their hitherto free and independent city.

Throughout the history of Delhi, it was destroyed, occupied, and experienced new sociocultural change. Still, this time it was a dominance that would haul the long-established Indian Muslim culture out of power echelons and out of their minds. History of Delhi witnesses the precise moment when this transformation process had initiated. So Mughal Delhi felt the thrust of its socio-cultural twilight under rapidly spreading British power. This twilight in Delhi was not just that of Muslim power but also their cultural life. The Muslim way of life had been expelled out of the palaces and existed in the alleys of Delhi and its households only. Mir Nihal’s household, still an exhibition of the Mughal Muslim way of life, also felt the cultural intervention entering his home as his son Asghar gradually adopted British life practices with his education, job, and dress. His women were still bearers of Muslim Mughal culture in the matters of socio-cultural events like marriage and death ceremonies. Life in the streets of Delhi was still more or less a Muslim Mughal style of life with its calls of prayers, flying of pigeons, kite flying, gatherings and meetings at night, qawwali functions, and marketing.

Twilight in Delhi does not just talk about the dry fall of Mughal culture and history; it speaks about love and romance from the first chapter to the last and counts the love between Mir Nihal and Babban Jan Asghar and Mushtri Bai, Asghar and Bilqees and Asghar and Zohra. There are elaborate scenes of imaginative and real-life romance and love. Some love stories culminate in marriage and some in death, yet some marriages happen without love. Asghar’s marriage with Bilqees is a love story, Mahru’s is marriage without love, and Mir Nihal’s love for Baban Jan is without marriage. After the death of his first wife, Asghar again falls in love with Zohra, the younger sister of his dead wife. Although Zohra was involved with Asghar for some time because of the young daughter of Asghar but her family would not consent to give their second daughter to a household where the first was not that cordially welcomed. So, Asghar is left alone with his daughter only after Zohra is married to another family.

Twilight of Delhi is reflected in the stories of multiple characters, which can be called respective twilights. For example, Asghar’s love life shines bright for a short time but very soon, it falls to twilight when his wife dies, and he hankers after Zohra’s love, but this twilight soon gives way to darkness when Zohra is married to someone else. The same is the case with Mir Nihal’s love for Babban Jan, who shines for some time, but the cycle of nature proves cruel for her, and she dies unattended and alone. This loss remained a source of longstanding pain for mir Nihal. Similarly, Asghar’s sister Begum Waheed could enjoy marriage bliss for a few years, and her husband died at the young age of 19, but she decided not to marry again and live as a widow all her life.

On the socio-political level, the twilight of Mughal Muslim rule and culture meant the dawn of British government and civilization in Delhi and its dominance all around India as a part of the civilizing and colonizing strategy of the British empire. The Indians could witness the scenes of the British presence in the form of their soldiers, guns, and the official jobs. The Indian Muslims saw the coronation of the British King in India instead of many a coronation of their Indian kings. So, if, on the one hand, the city of Delhi appeared as a British socio-political set up in the power places of the town, on the other hand, it still appeared Mughal in its socio-cultural location, though under the threat of British dominance of hegemonising culture.

The novel reminds us of the established literary traditions of India, especially concerning poetry, both mundane and divine. The novel’s story is studded with various poetic instances, sometimes translated and sometimes transliterated. The writer has successfully incorporated them within the story’s structure. These appear to be part of the story, translating and enhancing its meaning and lending a loud and bright colour to Indian poetic traditions in Urdu. The novel is history blended into a story and must be part of fiction reading by the Pakistanis especially.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson University, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee