Criticism in the New Century:

Ismat Chughtai’s “Lihaaf” and its

Discontents, A Case Study
 Literary criticism in the 20th century
• (Russian) Formalism
• New Criticism
• Psychoanalysis
• Modernism
• Existentialism
• Structuralism
• Poststructuralism
• Feminism
• New Historicism
• Postmodernism
• New Formalism?

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The function of criticism

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The world as we see it

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 Ismat Chughtai (1915—1991)

• Born in Badayun, U.P.

• Studied at AMU
• Took a B.Ed. thereafter
• Progressive Writers
Movement
• Wrote among other
works, Terhi Lakeer, and
the story of Garam
Hawa (1973), dir. MS
Sathyu

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Chughtai’s narrative style has often been described as one appealing to the senses,
owing to the frequent use of words denoting the auditory and the tactile. Her narrative
pace, according to Krishan Chander, “… remind one of a horse race. That is, speed,
movement, briskness ... and acceleration. It is not only that the stories seem to be on
the run but the sentences, images, metaphors, the sounds and the sensibilities of the
characters and their feelings—all seem to be moving along in a cluster with the force of a
storm” (qtd in Manto).

The Movement in its heyday. From Left to Right: Sultana Jafri, Ismat Chughtai, Vishwamitra Adil,
Ali Sardar Jafri, Krishan Chander, Mahendranath, Mumtaz Hussain, Rajinder Singh Bedi. Front:
Sahir Ludhianvi, Habib Tanvir. 6
 “Lihaaf” (“The Quilt,” 1942)
•First published in Adab-i-Latif

• Story told from the perspective of a small girl, about 10-12 years old

• Set largely in an upper middle-class Muslim household, it tells the story of Begum
Jan, whose life after marriage to a much older and rich Nawab, makes her the object of
envy. But her marriage is a sham since the Nawab has time only for young boys whose
education he sponsors. As Begum Jan withers away in loneliness, she is afflicted with
mysterious physical ailments (“a perpetual itch”) that seem to be cured only by the aid
of her masseuse, Rabbu.

• The child narrator’s view-point of the growing intimacy between Begum Jan and
Rabbu coalesces with her lack of comprehension of precisely what happens in the
night under the “lihaaf” – where it seems to her alarmed mind that moving elephants
throw frantic shadows on the wall.

• When Rabbu is absent for a few days, a listless and predatory Begum Jan turns to the
child narrator in a way that defies the understanding of the child but certainly
traumatizes her enough to make her run from the Begum’s presence.

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 Frames of telling
•The story is poised between two voices: the child narrator’s and the adult narrator’s
that opens the story, frames the introduction to the child narrator, and completes the
telling of the child’s brush with the over-amorous Begum Jan. How are we to read this
play of voice?

• First person adult • Embedded first person

• Reliable, omniscient, child
credible • Unreliable,
• Recourse to memory impressionistic
• Explanatory, analytical • Descriptive
• Circumlocution/euphe • Mystified, inability to
mism decode

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 Adult narrator’s voice
-
(Chughtai 81)

In the depth of winter whenever I snuggle into my quilt, my shadow on the wall seems
to sway like an elephant. My mind begins a mad race into the dark crevasses of the
past; memories come flooding in. (Naqvi 5)

- ,
- -

It was a special oil massage that brought about the change in Begum Jan. Excuse me, but
you will not find the recipe for this oil in the most exclusive or expensive magazine!
(Naqvi 6)

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 Child narrator’s voice
- !

When I saw Begum Jan, she was in her early forties. She sat reclining on the couch, a figure
of dignity and grandeur. Rabbu sat against her back, massaging her waist. A purple shawl
was thrown over her legs. I wanted to sit by her side for hours, adoring her like a humble
devotee. Her complexion was fair, without a trace of ruddiness. Her black hair was always
drenched in oil. (Naqvi 6-7)

HINDI

She was as black as Begum Jan was white, like burnt iron ore! Her face was lightly
marked with small pox, her body solidly packed, small, dexterous hands, a tight little
paunch and full lips, slightly swollen, which were always moist. A strange and
bothersome odour emanated from her body. (Naqvi 7-8)
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 A matter of time/ a play of voice
By a strategic use of tense – the Simple Past and the Simple Present – the narrative
field expands and contracts between the past and the present. The past is, of
course, the child’s purview recalled only through memory via the adult’s present.
The mediational quality that bridges two chronotopes is a significant literary device
employed by Chughtai.

e.g., the two chronotopes are constantly referred to in the telling:

1. “I have already said I was very young at that time and quite enamoured of Begum
Jan.” (Naqvi 8)

2. “To this day, whenever I think of what she looked like at that moment, I get
nervous.” (Naqvi 10)

3. What I saw when the quilt was lifted, I will never tell anyone, not even if they give
me a lakh of rupees.” (Naqvi 12)

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 Translational difficulties – in print and other
1. The frame becomes de- media
emphasized in many
translations and
adaptations:

e.g., in Rohan Sonawane’s

2009 short film adaptation
of the story, also titled
Lihaaf, he completely does
away with the adult
narrator, telling the entire
story only from the
perspective of the child
narrator. This ends up
converting the story into a
moral parable centred on
the narrativization of a rite
of passage.

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• 2. English translations also elide over important moments of disjuncture
in the telling between the voice of the adult and that of the child:
• HINDI

• But each time I reached “Yalamu Mabain” I got stuck. This was strange. I
knew the entire Ayat!” (Naqvi 8)

• But each time I reached “Yalamu Mabain...,” I forgot the lines though I
knew the entire Ayat by heart. (Asaduddin 17)

• But every time I came to the line Ya’lamu Mabain, I couldn’t go any
further, though I did know the prayer by heart. (Dulai and Coppola 4)

• I started repeating the ‘Ayat-ul-Kursi’ hurriedly but got stuck in the middle
although I knew it by heart quite well. (Sirajuddin 202)

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 Established lines of reading “Lihaaf”
• As a feminist tale: of a woman who finds her
own way of acknowledging and satisfying her
own sexual desire
• As a queer tale: of a relationship between two
women, forged in trying circumstances
• As a rite-of-passage tale: of a child’s entry into
adolescence and the passing of innocence

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 Problems with these lines of thought
• The transformation of Begum Jan from an object (as one of the Nawab’s
“possessions”) to an agent must also factor in her further transformation into a
sexual predator who turns to the child narrator, without the latter’s consent, when
her usual companion is absent.

• The relationship between Begum Jan and Rabbo is premised upon the former’s
domination and the latter’s subservience. It is an economic transaction, whose
particular quality is underscored by the constant commodification of Rabbu as
merely “a pair of roving hands” (Naqvi 8). This is not a relationship of mutuality or
reciprocity, since Begum Jan is not in love with Rabbu but merely employs her for
physical gratification.

• The ending of the story complicates the Bildungsroman-like reading of the short
story: the adult narrator, whose analytical eye frames the metaphorical way of
telling of the child narrator, returns in the final line of the story to the elephant
metaphor with which the story had begun – emphasizing her inability to work past
her own childhood fears and anxieties.

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 New ways of reading the story
• New formalism emphasizes, among other
things, a return to analyzing the
transformation of history into literature: e.g.,
the solitary reference to hygiene class by the
child narrator opens up the story to a whole
new way of understanding the role and
function of colonial education in the
formation of the modern national female
Muslim subject.
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Hygiene classes and subject formation
in colonial India
• In an important moment
of physical intimacy that
is to devolve quickly into
one of predatory
molestation, Begum Jan,
playing with the child
narrator, asks how many
ribs the latter has. And
the child narrator says, “I
thought of my school
hygiene. Very confused
thinking.” (Naqvi 10)

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• In her study, Cultural Politics of Hygiene in India, 1890-
1940, Srirupa Prasad makes the important point that
an understanding of the genealogy of hygiene in the
context of colonial India activates “the crossroads of
colonial governance, anti-colonial struggles, cultural
nationalism, and early 20th century feminism” (3).

• … the literary transformation that Chughtai effects of a

formative historical moment in colonial Time, when
she pits the modernization narrative against its
discontents in the domestic space.

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 The zenana as a patriarchal space
• Traditional scholarship often examines the zenana as the space for
the expression of female sexuality and subjecthood, howsoever,
circumscribed by the boundaries of patriarchal law. Feminist
readings of “Lihaaf” focus esp. on Begum Jan’s “entrapment” within
the “confines” of the zenana as the allegorical subjugation of her
personality. In such readings, Begum Jan’s transformation into an
active agent of sexual desire also transforms the physical space of
the zenana.

• However, in light of Begum Jan’s further transformation into a

sexual predator, is it possible to push the logic of feminist
emancipation further? Indeed, the zenana becomes an allegorical
space not for the articulation of female sexuality but an ideological
theatre in which Begum Jan enacts one exploitative relationship
after another.

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 Ismat on Freud and the incompatibilities
between different systems of knowledge
• “…
,
-
-
… ‘ ’
, ”

• “I could not bring complete faith to it. There is some fraud in Freud.
My mind always has a nagging doubt. No matter how great an
intellectual it is, I am never fond of giving blind trust. I don’t know
what sort of habit it is that first I always search for loopholes in
their work. Before compatibility we should always take stock of all
the incompatibilities…may be the first word my mouth ever uttered
was ‘why’, although this ‘why’ has landed me in a lot of trouble.”

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 To sum up…
• We need to find, in literary analysis, especially across languages, ways to honour
and emphasize the manner in which words construct and shape reality.

• Traditional literary approaches to the literary text tend towards extremes: while
old school formalism divorced the text from all context, many poststructuralist
movements (like New Historicism and Postmodernism) saw only context in a
text.

• Identity politics also allow us to read literature in exciting ways but can foreclose
conversations about the ways in which literary texts challenge, subvert, and
resist co-option into predetermined political/ideological paradigms.

• It is, therefore, our need in the 21st century to evolve a critical methodology and
pedagogy for the study of literature that revives the multiple efflorescent
functions of criticism.

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