PAKISTANI ENGLISH GENRE

Introduction

Pakistani literature, that is, the literature of Pakistan, as a distinct literature gradually came into being
after Pakistan gained its nationhood as a sovereign state in 1947, while remaining largely in the shadow
of Indian English Literature. The common and shared tradition of Urdu literature and English literature
of India was inherited by the new state. Over a period of time, a body of literature unique to Pakistan
has emerged in nearly all major Pakistani languages, including Urdu, English, Punjabi, Balochi, Pushto
and Sindhi.

The nature of Pakistani literature soon after independence aroused controversy among writers due to its
being centered heavily on the negative events related to the India-Pakistan partition. According to Gilani
Kamran (GC University), Pakistani literature was expected to take a new direction along with the new
state of Pakistan at this point, but did not immediately meet this expectation.

Saadat Hassan Manto (1912-1955), a prominent writer of short stories of the South Asia, produced great
literature out of the events relating to the India-Pakistan independence. The literature, which came out
of the period that followed, is considered to have been progressive in its tone and spirit. According to
several critics, it had not only evolved its own identity, but also had played a significant role in
documenting the hardships and hopes of Pakistan in the latter part of the 20th century.

Pakistani Genres

Most Pakistanis adore poetry and commonly memorize long poems. A mushaira (poetry reading) in
Pakistan can attract hundreds of listeners. Among classical poets in the Urdu language, Mirza Ghalib is
perhaps the most widely admired. Ghalib, who wrote in the 19th century, is known for his lyrical and
spiritual ghazals. Ghazals are the most popular form of poetry in the Urdu and Persian languages.

The official national poet of Pakistan is Allama (“the Wise”) Muhammad Iqbal. He earned the title of
poet-philosopher of Pakistan not only because he was an exceptionally talented poet, but also because
he was active in the politics of his time. In 1930, he called for the creation of a separate Muslim state in
northwestern British India. He wrote poetry in Urdu and Persian and gave university lectures in English.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz is perhaps the most adored modern poet in Pakistan. Faiz began writing poetry in the
1950s after a distinguished journalism career. His ghazals are primarily concerned with class struggle,
rather than the conventional themes of love and beauty. A progressive writer, Faiz was also a political
dissident, and military governments banned his poetry from television and radio. Ahmad Fraz, Muneer
Niazi, and Parveen Shakir are some of the other popular Urdu-language poets of Pakistan.

Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai, a Sufi mystic who in the first half of the 18th century wrote about love and
Sindhi life, is the most revered poet of the Sindhi language. His poetry is widely recited by illiterate and
educated Sindhis alike. Khushal Khan Khattak is the most famous poet of the Pashto language. In the
17th century, he wrote poetry describing the beauty of women and nature, using military metaphors.
The most well known poet of the Punjabi language is Bulleh Shah, of the 17th century, whose poetry
challenged the religious orthodoxy. In recent years, short stories and travelogues have gained literary
prominence, in addition to poetry.

The Independence

India gained independence from Britain in 1947, a year that marks a watershed in the course of modern
Indian literature. Independence forced writers to grapple with the ideals and realities of being part of a
new nation. On one hand, there was euphoria at the new freedom. On the other hand, as part of
independence, the Indian subcontinent was divided into two separate nations, India and Pakistan—India
dominated by Hindus and Pakistan by Muslims. (In 1971 part of Pakistan became the independent
nation Bangladesh.) During the decades leading up to independence, Hindus and Muslims had become
increasingly divided within India. The partition of the newly independent country into two nations was
accompanied and followed by severe violence. Especially hard hit were the new border areas: the
divided territories of Punjab in the northwest and Bengal in the northeast, and the disputed area of
Kashmir at the India-Pakistan border.

Partition caused millions of people to be uprooted from their home territories or to suffer division
within their families. Much Indian and Pakistani fiction after 1947 explores, in one way or another, the
effects of partition on Indian culture. Another ongoing concern is the rapid rate of change that India,
Pakistan, and Bangladesh are experiencing in an era of increased globalization and of the migration of
people from the Indian subcontinent to other parts of the world, especially Western countries. A
significant development in Indian literature in the mid- and late 20th century was the rise of female
writers and feminist writing.

Partition and change

Partition has been a literary subject in many of the Indian languages, as well as in English. Khushwant
Singh’s English novel Train to Pakistan (1956) is one of the earliest novels to evoke the horrors of the
violence that accompanied partition. Saadat Hasan Manto is an author who lived first in India and then
in Pakistan. In his eloquent Urdu short stories, Manto bears witness to the personal trauma as well as
the societal and national tragedies brought about by partition. In his most famous story, “Toba Tek
Singh,” (translated in Kingdom’s End and Other Stories, 1987), Manto depicts the dislocation of
populations at partition as an absurd event seen from the perspective of the inmates of a lunatic
asylum. Pakistani writer Bapsi Sidhwa’s gripping English novel Ice-Candy-Man (1988; later published as
Cracking India, 1991) portrays the events of 1947 through the eyes of a little girl. Indian writer Bhisham
Sahni’s Hindi novel Tamas (1974; Kites Will Fly, 1981) is another chronicle of partition.

After 1947, the realist and progressive trends in Indian fiction, represented by earlier writers such as
Premchand and Mulk Raj Anand, continued in the fiction of writers from every region of India. Notable
works include U. R. Ananta Murthy’s novel in Kannada Samskara (A Rite for a Dead Man, 1965), a work
about the decaying Brahman community in a village in the state of Karnātaka; Hindi writer Shrilal
Shukla’s Raga Darabari (The Melody Darbari, 1968), a novel about rural life in north India; Chemmeen
(Shrimp, 1962), Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s celebrated Malayalam novel of the fishing community in the
state of Kerala; and Vyankatesh Madgulkar’s Bangarwadi (1955, The Village Had No Walls, 1958), a
Marathi novel about shepherds in the state of Mahārāshtra.
An important development concerning literature with a social conscience is the movement of Dalit
(Oppressed) writing. In Dalit writing, men and women of marginalized and low-caste communities write
poetry and fiction about their own lives and communities. Poisoned Bread (1992), edited by Arjun
Dangle, is an important anthology of Dalit writing. The volume includes works by Namdeo Dhasal and
other major Dalit writers.

In the 1960s and 1970s experimental and avant-garde trends in Indian writing were seen in both poetry
and drama. Well-known plays include Girish Karnad’s Tughlaq (1964), a modern political satire based on
the life of a sultan of medieval Delhi; Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar’s Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe
(Silence! The Court Is in Session, 1978); and Badal Sircar’s Bengali drama Evam Indrajit (1962; And
Indrajit, 1979).

After independence, female writers have become more prominent in India. In exquisitely crafted,
passionate short stories in Urdu, Ismat Chughtai depicts the injustices of women’s lives in Indian society,
especially in Muslim circles in India. Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi has won great acclaim for her short
stories, in which she draws upon her experience working with marginalized groups in eastern India. For
her achievements, Devi was awarded the Indian government’s highest literary award. Creating an array
of memorable characters in powerful novels and short stories such as “Stana-dayini” (“Wet Nurse,”
1976), Devi exposes the exploitation of women and of the lower classes, and the double exploitation of
women of the lower classes.

History of short story in Pakistan

On the eve of Independence in 1947, Pakistan inherited the common and shared tradition of Urdu
literature that belonged to the literary culture of the Indian sub-continent. The state of literature soon
after independence had aroused a great controversy among the writers. Literature was expected to
have a new direction, though it was rather early to relate literature to any undefined expectation.
Saadat Hassan Manto (1912-1955) turned the painful, partition-related events into great literature. The
fiction and poetry of the period that followed was largely progressive in its tone and spirit. It has not
only evolved its own identity, but has also become the socio-cultural document of an era of hope and
hardships.

At the time of partition in 1947, Pakistan shared the literary culture of the Indian sub-continent, which
had a history, and a long line of distinguished literary reputation. Iqbal and the Progressive Writers
appeared in its immediate perspective, and this phenomenon of writing related Pakistan to its literary
past. But unfortunately, fratricidal riots on the eve of independence gave birth to a widely different and
ominous situation where the decline and fall of human nature made many values and things
questionable, and a literature based on communal tension, on mass massacres, arson, and on the
refugee camps, emerged under the stress of a large scale migration of people from one dominion to the
other. It was a highly distressing state of affairs, and along with it, a new brand of fiction appeared,
which is generally known as the Tales of the Riots, and describes the holocaust of the Partition. As a
matter of fact, Pakistan had come into being in the travail of this sad experience.

The Era of Short Story

The writers who wrote the stories about the riots were rather too close to the areas of the woeful
incidents, and had mostly observed the happenings as eyewitnesses. M Aslam (Raks-e-Iblis: The Devil’s
Dance) and Rasheed Akhtar Nadvi (The Fifteenth of August) and Qudratullah Shahab (Ya Khuda: Oh God)
represent the pathos of human suffering in their tales. They give the scenes of ruthless killings, and the
life in refugee camps where men, women and children are exposed to uncertainties and hardships of
every kind. Of the writers of his time, only Saadat Hassan Manto (1912-1955) could have a detached
view of the genocide on both sides of the border. He was able to turn pain-giving events into great
literature. He remained impartial, took no sides, and wrote with detachment and passion about the
atrocities committed in a state of utter madness. As a matter of fact, the crisis of human nature and the
decline in moral conduct and behaviour during those early years of independence form the structure of
Saadat Hassan Manto’s stories about the Partition. Saadat Hassan Manto: turned the pain of the
Partition into great literature. The foremost among the short story writers of the subcontinent.

The first ten years after Independence were a period of hectic human activity and of movement of
people in Pakistan. The refugees from East Punjab and immigrants from various provinces of the
subcontinent were faced with the problems of rehabilitation and of adjustment with a new environment
in Pakistan. There was also the problem of settlement, which gave rise to psychological and sociological
questions, attitudes and complexes, and shaped an amorphous human situation in the country. Realism
was the most effective instrument to capture the new mode of life. Hameed Akhtar’s short stories (La-
makaan), Qurratulain Haider’s Housing Society, Ibraheem Jalees’ social reportage (Chor Bazaar, The
Underworld) and Shaukat Siddiqui’s Khuda ki basti (The Blessed Dwelling Place) provide an insight into
the making of a new social reality in the country. What was however interesting was the quality of
character-study, which the larger issues and problems had added to simple characterization. The fiction
of the period describes the inner contradictions of men and women, and the polarization among people
when their interests clash with one another. The short story of this period can be treated as a micro-
cosmic image of how the new nation-state of Pakistan was formed and consolidated in the strain and
stress of unwieldy circumstances. Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi’s short stories portray the effect of the social
change on the population in small towns and villages. The fiction of the period was largely progressive in
its tone and spirit, and though the Progressive Writers’ Association had ceased to function by 1951, the
habit of writing in its tradition had continued during the period.

Intizar Husain’s Chand Grehan (The Lunar Eclipse) was published in 1953, and was followed by another
short story Dinn (The Day) published in 1956. He wrote short stories in a widely different framework –
the experience of migration to Pakistan. He expounded the concept of Hijrat, and looked upon the
experience of migration within an extended perspective of individual and collective memories. The old
home in Agra and Oudh is remembered not in a fit of nostalgia but as an invigorating source of
inspiration in the new environment where the immigrant intends to build his new home. Nevertheless,
Intizar Husain’s fictional imagination gradually portrays the effect of social factors on the moral life of
men in a sequence of short stories and witnesses the decline of human nature in the surroundings of
material temptation. His short stories titled Akhri Aadmi (The Last Man), and Zard Kutta (The
Discoloured Dog) published in 1967; give an anxious and sorrowful commentary on the material
condition of man in the formative years of the new country. Intizar Husain’s Aagay Samundar hai
(Beytond lies the Sea) published in 1995 portrayed the situation of the Urdu speaking people in an
environment which was given to violence, insecurity, and lack of hope. Intizar Husain has evoked the
Urdu speaking people’s memory-based past, and has impelled them to face the biggest question of their
existence: “Where to be?”
Mumtaz Mufti (d.1996) is remembered for his short stories based on psychological realism. But it is, in
fact, his image of the Muslim girl, which makes his fiction relevant to the view of life in Pakistan. The
womenfolk in his fictional world do not grow old; they remain and stay as girls in their impressionistic
age group. His short stories begin with the purdah-observing young girl who is educated on conventional
lines, and is modest and shy. She is perceived along the traditional Asghari model, and when in love,
hardly expresses it in so many words. In Mumtaz Mufti’s panoramic world, this young Muslim purdah-
clad girl gradually changes, not only educationally and socially, but also within the family. Her behaviour
also undergoes transformation, and in contrasts to the earlier Aapa or the elder sister image, the
reserved, suffering and non-communicative girl, she becomes frank, open, assertive and self-confident.
Modern education. too, shapes and forms her, and she participates in conversation on philosophy,
aesthetics and on the more controversial issues of the male-dominated society and male chauvinism.
The girls in Mumtaz Mufti’s last stories are emancipated non-purdah girls, and they appear to
imperceptibly pass into allegorical figures. In this role, they become visionaries and crave for the truth to
seek fulfillment in their partially dissatisfied existence.

In 1988, Mahmud Wajid’s collection of short stories, Mausam ka Masiha (The Redeemer of Weather)
described the plight of the Biharis in an indifferent and insensitive world.

Athar Tahir’s collection of short stories in English was published in 1990. Rukhsana Ahmed’s collection of
short stories appeared in 1992. Her short story The Nightmare describes the nostalgia and anguish of a
Pakistani young woman in Britain where she has faced acute problems of adapting to an alien culture. It
is a pathetic tale of dislocation, and projects the problem of exposure to foreign cultures in the life of
Pakistani women.

Poetry in Pakistani Literature

Noon Meem Rashed (1975), and Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1984) had already made a name in modern poetry in
the War years (1939 – 1945). Rashed’s Mavra (Beyond) was published in 1940, while Faiz’s Naqsh
Faryadi (Complaining Sketch) came out in 1941. These collections were slim volumes of poetry. The
maturer poetry of both Rashed and Faiz was published after 1947. Faiz’s Zindan Nama (The Prison
Poems 1956) and Sar-e-Wadi-I-Sina (In the Sinai Valley 1971) give a wide spectrum of his creative talent.
He employed erotic ghazal phraseology for the interpretation of socio-political reality. He believed that
human suffering made life ugly. His cult of the Beautiful was social and human, and he admired those
who struggled for a better future for common man. His poetry gave solace and hope to men in the
developing societies of the post-colonial Afro-Asian world. Faiz Ahmed Faiz is considered among the
giants of socio-political poetry

Rashed’s La Mussavi Insan (x = Man) published in 1969, and Guman ka Mumkin (Speculations) published
after his death in 1976, give him a very significant place in modern Urdu literature. His poetry is
metaphysical, both in its content and treatment. He has portrayed the intellectual situation of educated
Muslim generations of the early decades of this century, who had been confronted with the worldview
where the traditional theological map appeared to have become outdated, and in its place, a lonely
world looked them in the face. Rashed’s poetry employs emotion matured by thoughtful contemplation,
and claims a close reading for rendering a rewarding meaning. His poems Israfeel ki Maut (death of
Israfeel), and Safar Nama (A Travelogue) are lovely pieces of great poetry. Rashed’s poetic world is
inhabited by crowds of bewildered men, by Adam, Angels, and by an archetypal figure – Hassan the pot-
maker, and even by God. In a wider sense, Rashed has, through his poetry, addressed the educated
generations of his culture at one of the most critical moments of their history.

Wazir Agha’s poems made nature a subject of discovery, and portrayed what is pleasant and good-
looking in its various forms. He added man’s sub-conscious self to the view of the human being and
described his deeper spiritual anguish in a changing world. He believed in the sanctity of the Soul and
portrayed it in metaphors that give finite descriptions to the amorphous phenomena. His poems also
reveal a rational treatment, where the mind of the man of science appears to be entering the world of
poetry in an unpoetical age.

Nevertheless, the cry of the dislocated man was heard in Munir Niazi’s poetry. His weird imagery of
ghosts and witches externalised the state of extreme dread, which generally haunts man when he enters
a new environment with the details of massacres, arson and the genocidal scenes in his childhood
imagination.

The traditional ghazal poetry found its most powerful voice in Nasir Kazmi (d.1972). (Ghazal is traditional
poetry in Muslim culture based on mystical love phraseology). He wrote ghazals in a new strain of
feelings, and made ghazal a vehicle of sorrowful experience. His ghazal is memory-based and its pathos
emerges from recollections of past associations. His poetry had great appeal in the early years of
Independence – it consoled and healed the bruised sentiments of the people who had undergone un
told hardships in moving out of their original homesteads to come to Pakistan. Nasir Kazmi’s ghazal is
significant in the sense that it adds the anguish of abandoned homes to the tears and sighs of ghazal
poetry.

In poetry, the note of political protest was represented by Habib Jalib (1995) , and Ahmed Faraz.
Fehmida Riaz wrote her poems to project the feminist view of reality in the male dominated social
order. In the tradition of ghazal poetry, Parveen Shakir’s verses made a popular appeal for a fresh view
of life and nature. Her ghazal poetry enriched the tradition with new metaphors and images.

An anthology of poetry in English language, named First Voices, was published in 1965. It introduced
Ahmed Ali, Zulfikar Ghose, Shahid Hosain, Riaz Qadir, Taufiq Rafat and Shahid Suhrawardy. This
anthology was edited by Shahid Hosain and published by Oxford University Press, Karachi. Taufiq Rafat’s
Arrival of the Monsoon was published in 1980. InamulHaq’s Recollections appeared in 1984, Daud
Kamal’s A Remote Beginning in 1985, Athat Tahir’s Just Beyond the Physical in 1991, Yousuf Abbasi’s The
Bleeding Roses came in 1981. Alamgir Hashmi’s Sun, Moon and Other Poems was published in 1992. It
was followed by Ejaz Rahim’s The Imprisoned Air in 1993. Adrian Akbar Husain, Salman Tariq Kureshi,
Nadir Husain, Waqas Ahmed, Jocelyn Ortt-Saeed, Hina Faisal Imam, Ikram Azam and Sikandar Hayat
have also published their collections of poems.

The state of literature soon after independence had aroused a great controversy among the writers.
Literature was expected to have a new direction, though it was rather early to relate literature to any
undefined expectation. The short story on communal riots had fairly confused the spectrum. The writers
who had migrated to Pakistan had their own views on literature. Nevertheless, in 1951, Mohammed
Hasan Askari (1978) made a statement that literature in Pakistan had come to a dead end, and there
was inertia in literary activity. According to him the way out of this inertia lay in the discovery of national
spirit for the inspiration of literature. In 1960, Askari’s Sitara Ya Badban (The Star or the Sail) was
published which attempted to resolve the controversy. There was no sense, he said, in being blown by
the wind of popular ideas. Only the Pole Star guided the ships on the heavy seas. Askari’s view was a
calculated commentary on the western influence as an informing principle of literary activity. But the
image of the Pole Star, though good and practicable for old navigation, could not define the nature of
literary activity in Pakistan. He, however, suggested a creative back view of old literary tradition, but
could not find a literary model produced in contemporary creative practice. In 1979, his book Jadidiyat
(Modernism), which was published after his death, openly denounced the influence of modern West,
particularly the western Reformation countries, and accused them of having alienated the spirit of man
in the present time. Askari warned the writers in Pakistan to keep away from the Renaissance influences
of the modern western world. He had, while denouncing the west, categorically looked for some ideal
unification of the spirit and the body in creative writing. Nevertheless, his denouncement of the western
learning had a following among writers.

The issue, which had been overlooked by Askari, was formulated by Jilani Kamran in his book Nai Nazm
ke Taqaze (Principles of New Poetry) published in 1964. He pointed out that the real issue was that of
literary identity, which could impart a distinctive coloration to literature produced in Pakistan. He
offered the solution in the formulation of the question: Who am I? – Which was supposed to provide
cultural identity to one’s writing. Jilani Kamran introduced Sufism as the framework of poetic writing,
and recommended the use of the Sufic Pronouns (I and Thou) as measures of emancipation from the
morbid and unproductive social environment. His first collection of poems Astanze (The Stanzas, 1959)
experimented within the stipulated requirements and his later work Bagh-e- Duniya, (The World
Garden) published in 1987, elaborated his thesis by creating a literary model on the synthesis of Muslim
ethos and Western learning. Bagh-e-Duniya was inspired by the idea of Muslim cultural renaissance. It is
a long poem, with the archetypal figures of the Murshid-e-Qum (The Wise Man of Qum), the Children of
Iblis, Sheikh-e-Jehan, Zinda Rud (Iqbal’s poetic name), Alberuni and Ibn-e-Arabi. This poem by Jilani
Kamran offers a hopeful view of reality and constructs the vision of a future in modern poetic idiom.

The novel in Pakistan

The novel in Pakistan emerged with Qurratulain Heider’s Aag ka Darya (The River of Fire, 1957). It has
been generally held that the novel is about the problem of self-identity, yet it moves in a wider orbit and
traverses the curvature between self-identity and the collective identity of the people who were placed
in a critical situation on the eve of Independence in 1947. Leslie Fleming has regarded this novel as A
Tale of Three Cities, where the whole phenomenon of Independence has been witnessed as a feature
film’s scenario. Thematically, the novel intends to discover some equation between geography and
history, though in a much wider sense the human existence is not more than mutability and
transmigration of human forms. The novel had indeed opened a new mode of perception, and had given
a meaningful matter and theme to fiction writing in Pakistan.

Abdullah Husain’s Udas Naslain (A Tale of Sad Generations, 1963) is the tragic story of three successive
generations living in British occupied India between 1913 and 1947. It begins with the 1857 War of
Independence where an ordinary employee of the East India Company is richly rewarded for saving the
life of Colonel Johnson, the Commanding Officer, from rival Indian soldiers. The offspring of this richly
rewarded person, Nawab Roshan Ali Khan, arrive in Pakistan in 1947 without any material possessions.
The happenings between 1857 through the First World War, and Jallianwala Bagh (1919) and World War
II and the migration to a new country, convert the household into a history of sad generations. The
large-scale social and political change, a sort of revolution, had shattered what seemed what seemed to
have been sacred in their memories and estimation. In a sense, this novel narrates a family story where
a household, built on sheer chance in 1857, becomes a part of upper middle class, possesses no higher
view of life to guide the conduct of its members, and is pushed by circumstances towards 1947, and to
Pakistan. In this perspective, Aag ka darya and Udas Naslain portray those big issues, which appeared to
have a direct bearing on the realities taking shape in Pakistan.

Tariq Mahmud’s Allah Megh De (Send Clouds, Oh God), Altaf Fatima’s Chalta Musafir (The Ever
Traveller), and Salma Awan’s Tanha (The Lonely Person) make East Pakistan the theme of their fictional
imagination. Though these novels were written and published after 1971, they provide a deep insight
into the life in East Pakistan, and more importantly, present in earnestness, the writers’ affectionate
treatment of the people of what was once a part of Pakistan. .Altaf Fatima’s permanent wayfarer is the
Mohajir (Immigrant) who had migrated from Bihar in India to East Pakistan in 1947, and even from
there, he had been constrained to make another migration to Pakistan after 1971. Masud Mufti’s
Chehray (Faces) published in 1972, gives an account of the last days of undivided Pakistan.

Prose fiction had, indeed, become the leading mode of writing in Urdu literature after Independence. It
portrayed what could not be told in poetry, though it had been poetry that was the effective form of
expression in Urdu literature before 1947. However, in 1974, Intizar Husain’s A Letter from India, gave
the tale of a people’s trauma after the unfortunate events of 1971. In 1979, his novel Basti (The Dwelling
Place) portrayed the state of agitational politics during the last years of Ayub Khan Regime (1967-1969).
In this context, Intizar Husain’s Basti is perhaps the last fictional writing on the theme. Intizar Hussain is
among the great living novelists of Pakistan. Thus, when two other novels, Anwar Sajjad’s The Garden of
Delights (1980) and Anis Nagi’s Behind the Wall (1981) appeared, they took a new direction and also
worked on a different theme. In The Garden of Delights, the protagonist is faced with a callous human
situation where he is gradually deprived of every initiative. In the end, he joins a group of wandering
dervishes and participates in the Sufic dance, which gives him a new understanding and restores his
confidence that had been almost shattered by the pattern of living he had followed all his life. Anwar
Sajjad’s novel is an oblique criticism on the nature of life in non-democratic arbitrary rule. It is also a
kind of protest-writing in fictional form. Anis Nagi’s novel describes an unequal and unbalanced
equation between man and his situation. His hero is condemned to live in the underworld where crime
and hypocrisy haunt him, and he is driven to commit suicide. He throws himself from the bridge into the
river, but is saved by the patrolling boat of the local garrison. Anis Nagi has used the absurd as the
principle of framing the protagonist in an indifferent world. Bano Qudsia’s Raja Giddh (The King Vulture)
published in 1984 follows the same scheme of writing, where her hero loses his identity while vacillating
between his rural background and immediate urban environment. These novels portrayed the working
of the dynamics of a developing society where man is crushed under the pressure of inhuman social
mechanism.

Jameela Hashmi’s novel Dasht-e-Soos (The Soos Wilderness) published in 1984 was in the tradition of
historical fiction. It portrayed the mystic life of Mansur Hallaj who was sentenced to death in AD 922 for
his Sufic utterance of Ana-al-Haq. Jameela Hashmi revived the historical novel writing which had
discontinued after Nasim Hijazi’s Akhari Chattan (The Last Rock) published in 1951. Nasim Hijazi’s novel
narrated the story of the fall of Khawarazm in Central Asia before the ruthless attacks of Changez Khan
in 1220.
Ashfaq Ahmed’s Gadaria (The Shepherd) published in 1954, was a fictional comment on the social and
political conditions of the time. In 1960s he wrote series of radio-features, and created his famous
character Talqeen Shah who behaved as a moral mentor in the social environment given to hypocrisy
though he himself is inclined to hypocritical conduct. Ashfaq Ahmed emphasised the use of moral norm
in fictional work and created characters to illustrate the graph of human nature in a changing society. In
1984-1986, his serials of television plays Tota Kahani (The Parrot Story) and Aur Dramay (More Dramas)
gave a variegated account of men and women placed in dubious moral situations. Ashfaq Ahmed
denounced modern western education and recommended return to cultural roots. He generally
introduced wise old men in his plays and short stories to provide folk-wisdom for the guidance of
common people. He used his writings purposefully and attempted to make the good prevail in an erring
human environment.

The post-Independence years can also be regarded as an era of women writers. After Independence, the
rise in literacy among women had been the major motivation behind the feminine interest in literary
activity. In short story, Mumtaz Shirin, Saira Hashmi, Nishat Fatima, Anwar Ghalib, Farkhanda Lodhi,
Zahida Hina and Neelam Bashir have made valuable contributions and have extended the range of
female fiction writing. Zahida Hina’s Raah mein Ajal hai (Death is in the Way, 1993) is transcultural in its
theme, perception and treatment. Her short stories have a wide spectrum and combine romance with
realism in their fictional structure. Anwar Ghalib’s Naddi (The Stream, 1982) and Abu Zamaan (The
Father Time, 1992) have philosophic themes. The conflict between Body and Soul forms the matter and
subject of Naddi, and the sharp antagonism between various psychological attitudes appears in Abu
Zamaan.

With the migration of Pakistani families to the countries in the west and to the Gulf States, the overseas
writings have formed a distinctive category of literature. Sabiha Shah has portrayed the life of Pakistani
engineers and technical workers in the Gulf States in her collection of short stories Sheeshay ka Saiban
(The Glass Tent, 1990). Iftikhar Nasim has described the peculiar experiences of Pakistanis and Asians in
Chicago and Los Angeles in his book Ek thi Larki ( There was a Girl, 1995). Tassadaq Sohail’s Tanhai ka
Safar (The Lonesome Journey, 1997) has described life in London. Muniruddin Ahmed has, in his books,
Zard Sitara (The Yellow Star, 1988) and Shaja-e-Mamnooa (The Forbidden Tree, 1990) portrayed life in
Germany. While interpreting the German way of life sympathetically he has abridged the cultural gap
between Pakistani immigrants and their host country. In the United States, Farhat Parveen, who is a
medical doctor, has given a vivid account of Pakistani and Asian immigrants in her collection of stories
Munjamid (The Frozen Ones, 1997). She has particularly focused on the challenges faced by Pakistani
families in making adjustments in a new and unfamiliar environment.

The writings in the English language, which had appeared as a literary trend in the early years of
Independence, have gradually formed a tradition and a large number of writers of the younger
generation have taken to writing in the English language.

Bapsi Sidhwa’s novels The Crow-Eaters (1978), Ice Candy Man (1988) and The American Brat (1993)
describe the life of Parsi families in Pakistan in a transcultural setting. In her novel, The American Brat, a
young Pakistani girl is exposed to various hazards in New York, and even the life of the Blacks adds fear
to strangeness in her experiences of the big city. Adam Zameen Zad’s novel, The Thirteenth House,
published in 1987, gives a cross-section of Pakistani consciousness, which connects the past with the
present, and opens inroads into astrology and mysticism. It mixes desire with horror and attempts to
regain the imaginative grasp of a child’s perception through the unfolding of its story. Tariq Ali’s novel,
Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, published in 1993, is a historical narrative, which seeks to find
sources of strength in the civilization of Muslim Andalusia in the years just before the end of Muslim
supremacy in the Iberian Peninsula. It is structured as a family saga and the colorful ambience of the
medieval Muslim-European world is evoked to reconstruct a loving past.

Minorities and Pakistani English Literature

Meanwhile a new academic discourse revealed that some of the best English literature was coming from
minority and migrant groups in the West and Britain’s erstwhile colonies. In 1984, the British-born
playwright Hanif Kureishi, having won the 1981 George Devine Award, came to Pakistan for the first
time. Hanif had thought himself English, but England has perceived him as Pakistani — and his work
tried to bridge the two. He wrote a haunting memoir The Rainbow Sign (1986) about this and his
Pakistan trip, which was published with his Oscar-nominated screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette.

Sara Suleri’s creative memoir Meatless Days opened up a new dimension: there was never a work,
which occupied a space between fiction and non-fiction, with chapters divided according to metaphor. It
was loved for its beautiful tightly-knit prose. Over the next few years, the number of Pakistani English
language writers grew rapidly. Adam Zameenzad published four novels and won a first novel award, as
did Hanif Kureishi, while Nadeem Aslam won two. Tariq Ali embarked on a Communist trilogy, and an
Islam quintet; Bapsi Sidhwa received a prize in Germany, an award in the USA, and published her fourth
novel The American Brat (1993). Zulfikar Ghose, who had written around 10 accomplished novels,
brought out the intricate and complex The Triple Mirror of the Self about migration and a man’s quest
for identity, across four continents.