Spiritual vacuum made Qurratulain opt for India?

Akhtar Balouch

Updated At : 06:05 AM Oct 05, 2015 IST

Qurratulain Hyder was dismissive of fluff passing off as literature.

The famous author of ‘Aag ka Darya’ had penned the novel in Pakistan, but eventually returned to India. Qurratulain Hyder is amongst the canonical writers of Urdu fiction in South Asia, and is credited for introducing a unique narrative technique into the vernacular novel and short story.

She departed this world in August 2007, but continues to live on in her fluid writings since then.

After the partition, Qurratulain had migrated to Pakistan and lived here for a few years before deciding to return to India; eventually, she took up Indian citizenship.

It was in Pakistan that she penned Aag ka Darya (River of Fire). With the critics, it is a long-running debate on whether it is a novel or a book documenting the history of pre-partition India.

The story spans over centuries, and the protagonist Gautam Nilambar apparently personifies the cultural and social changes taking place in the subcontinent.

Those who have read the novel would vouchsafe that Qurratulain Hyder writes more like a historian than a novelist when she unearths the history of several centuries. She treats the ending of the novel with unparalleled dexterity.

Akhtar Zaman Khan in Chand Tabsiray (A Few Commentaries), says, “I am unable to comprehend the decision to write Aag ka Darya while living in Pakistan. Right from the beginning to the end, the novel portrays Muslims as weak in their character and ideology. It is next to impossible to know what Qurratulain wants to say.”

‘But what lies behind this sinister campaign?’

Qurratulain herself records the Pakistani response in her autobiography Kar-e-Jahan Daraz Hai (The Affairs of the World Go On).

“On a Sunday, in both Jang and Morning News a man, completely unknown to me, had published a long piece of trash about Aag ka Darya. The simultaneous publication in both Urdu and English languages was a matter of concern. I read both the articles.

“The next day, the remainder of the article appeared in Jang. It created ripples in the country. In response to a legal notice by the writers’ guild, the writer published a few letters in Jang to claim that the guild was being controlled by a few authors as their personal property. But later the very man prepared a statement of apology and published it in Jang.

“That episode finally came to an end, but gradually, a myth surfaced. In one of the chapters I had written only two words, ‘Hindustan 1947’. It implied that this terse expression had deeper meanings. But one of the self-righteous commentators wrote, ‘The Martial Law administration has censored out a complete chapter about partition, leaving only one sentence intact.’

“As a corollary of general indifference for allusions and symbols, journals offered bizarre interpretations, claiming that she believed in reincarnation, that she was a Buddhist or a Hindu, or even a Zionist. Another tale said she was persecuted so much after the publication of her work that she had to flee to India. It is still believed in India that the novel is banned in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, Qurratulain Hyder’s decision to settle in India has just one explanation: Aag ka Darya caused it. But she remained tight-lipped and nothing ever came out of her pen either. She has left not a single public comment, spoken or written, about her return to India.

According to writer Shahab, with the declaration of the Martial Law, it was then and there that Qurratulain subconscious decided to quit Pakistan.

Years ago, researcher and writer Hamza Farooqi told me that Qurratulain had rebutted Shahab’s claims and said she had never made such a statement.

Akhtar Zaman Khan, who says that he failed to understand why Qurratulain had written such a long novel, attempts to link elements in her novel to the author’s decision to settle back in India. This is what he has to say: “I believe although the novel’s protagonist migrates to Pakistan, he leaves his heart in India. Here he finds himself insecure. It is the Pakistan of 1957. Migrants do not feel themselves at home. They are living in this region but their minds go to their ancestral homes.

“Qurratulain Hyder excellently paints this spiritual vacuum. It appears that the same spiritual vacuum took her to India. Her [character] Kamaal Raza returns back after visiting India, but she was left there like her heroine Champa Ahmed.”

Renowned literary critic and writer Asif Farrukhi was very close to Qurratulain Hyder. I met him to know the circumstances around her return to India.

“It is a well-guarded secret,” he told me, “Nonetheless, whenever and wherever I met her, she talked very affectionately about Pakistan.”

Dr Farrukhi revealed that Qurratulain's work is still being censored in Pakistan. He had published her essay “Sarod-e-Shabana” on Faiz sahab’s poetry in India. Soon after, the same essay was included in the official literary journal Maheno. Renowned writer and columnist Intizar Hussain later informed Dr Farrukhi that major chunks from the essay had been edited out.

This is what Dr Farrukhi told me, but the main question lingered on: Why did Qurratulain Hyder go back to India?

A senior writer told me that it was not only about Aag ka Darya. He said Qurratulain was pretty and unmarried; she worked at the Writers’ Guild and other offices. In all those places, some officials expressed a desire to marry her and she would not accept.

Marriage was a thorny issue because both her parents belonged to different sects of Islam, and any discussion about her marriage would involve the question about the faith of the would-be groom. Similarly, she skirted all questions about her decision to go back to India.

Apparently, it was the uproar over Aag ka Darya that forced Hyder to quit Pakistan, but she had also found herself in a patriarchal society, which has set a single gender role for women, regardless of their natural talent.

Excerpted from The Dawn. Translated by Arif Anjum from Urdu

Spiritual vacuum made Qurratulain opt for India?

Akhtar Balouch

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