SACRED DUTY_NOTES

AUTHOR
Ismat Chughtai (21 August 1915 – 24 October 1991) was an Indian Urdu novelist, short story
writer, liberal humanist and filmmaker. She began to write in the 1930s. She wrote extensively
on themes like female sexuality and femininity, middle-class gentility and class conflict,
often from a Marxist perspective. For her literary realism, Chughtai became an important
author in 20th century Urdu literature of the twentieth century. She was awarded the Padma
Shri by the Government of India in 1976. Chughtai was a liberal Muslim whose daughter,
nephew, and niece were married to Hindus. In her own words, Chughtai came from a family of
‘Hindus, Muslims and Christians who all live peacefully’. She said she read not only the Qur’an,
but also the Gita and the Bible with openness.

Chughtai's short stories reflected the cultural legacy of the region in which she lived. This was
well demonstrated in her story ‘Sacred Duty’, where she dealt with social pressures in India,
alluding to specific national, religious and cultural traditions. Many of her writings, including
Angarey and Lihaaf, were banned in South Asia because their reformist and feminist content
offended conservatives (for example, her view that the niqab, the veil worn by women in
Muslim societies, should be discouraged for Muslim women because it is oppressive and feudal).
POINT-WISE SUMMARY
This short story is a literary reflection about religious tension in India and imposition of
social expectation upon the next generation, and individual concerns changing from
generation to generation.
1. Siddiqui Sahib and his wife Begum have arranged the marriage of their daughter
Samina.
2. Suddenly, Siddiqui receives a letter from her, in which she informs that she has just
eloped and married Tushar Trivedi, a Hindu boy.
3. The immediate reactions of the family are thoughts of murder and revenge, coming from
religious bias.
4. Then pictures of Samina ‘converting’ to Hinduism are published in a newspaper,
showing her participating in a Hindu ceremony arranged by Tushar’s father, Sethji.
5. After this, Siddiqui Sahib is shattered by the news and he begins thinking to himself that,
India was, after all, ‘a nation of Hindus’. Then he thinks about how different things would
have been if he had accepted ‘fine positions’ in Pakistan. For him it is not only a matter
of religion, but also the thought of social status and more financial gain.
6. Their neighbour, Jawwad Sahib, helps Siddiqui to think up a plan: to re-convert Samina
to Islam, taking her back to the religion of the family.
7. Forcing someone to re-convert is indeed a sign of religious hostility. However, Siddiqui
Sahib thought that he was a ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ gentleman who allowed girls to
study and marry ‘whomever they pleased’, someone whose family ‘had never been
involved in a dispute over religious convictions’, and someone who ‘had nothing against
Hindus’. Siddiqui Sahib didn’t ‘bother who was Christian and who was Hindu’ at get-
togethers, he believed Bhagwan and Allah were names to refer ‘to the same power’, and
he even ‘quoted extensively’ from the Gita, and the Bible, thinking that ‘all these faiths
were sacred.’
8. So why does he use coercion to try to re-convert Samina to the Islam and Tushar along
with her? Because Siddiqui thinks: ‘I’ve inherited my religion.’ For him, this statement
implies the importance of Islam not so much because of the features of the religion itself,
but because it was inherited as a family’s traditional faith.
 9. As a result, he wanted to force Samina and Tushar to convert to Islam, to submit not to
the will of God, but to the will of the family. Siddiqui has been publicly embarrassed by
Samina’s photos in the newspaper, and someone (i. e. Samina & Tushar) has to ‘pay a
debt’ to their ‘family and friends.’
10. Samina states that her re-conversion was a ‘farce,’ yet Siddiqui insists because it is
symbolic for him: for the pride of the family. Sethji had ‘made a fool of [Siddiqui] for all
the world to see,’ and Siddiqui ‘couldn’t ignore that.’
11. Chughtai shows to the reader some sources of social tension and imposition: they don’t
come out of true religious feelings, but from other factors like (i) social rivalry between
families and their traditions (i. e. the Siddiqui Sahib vs. Sethji), (ii) social rivalry between
cultures (Pakistan vs. India), and (iii) mostly from parents unwilling to let children take
their own decisions. These social rivalries disguise themselves under the facade of
religion, but they aren't really about religion.
12. Even in that toxic environment, Samina and Tushar crack jokes and tease each other.
This shows that they are not bothered about their religious differences. They simply
craved love and acceptance which they did not get from either set of parents. Both of
them also agreed to change their religion so as to be accepted by the other’s parents.
13. They made unparalleled efforts to make their parents happy but could not succeed and
at last they gave up and escaped without informing their parents.
14. The entire story deals with independence from the family. Samina and Tushar love their
families, but they don’t want them to impose decisions upon them anymore.
15. Tushar admits that ‘from the very beginning, [he] has done whatever Mataji and Papaji
have told [him] to do,’ but now he and Samina want independence: they are choosing a
different belief in God, a different language (English), a different place to live in.
16. Both sets of parents pay the price of being insanely fixated on their religion, by losing
their children, maybe permanently.
17. Samina and Tushar conclude that it is necessary to abandon impositions, arranged
marriages or forced conversions. Marriages and conversions must be chosen
consciously and wilfully. God surely wants that each one of us should decide which road
to take, without our family’s imposition, without a culture's imposition, or without the
prohibition of a culture. Everyone should apply this ‘sacred duty’ of respecting each
other’s free will.

ANALYSIS
CULTURAL CONTEXT
India’s partition (1947) left a lot of ethnic and nationalist tensions, especially between
Pakistanis and Indians. Today, India is known as a country that has been under a lot of religious
bigotry, religious tensions and religious violence, notoriously between Hinduism and Islam.
Major Indian religious groups have caused a lot of conflicts against religious minorities
throughout the years. Social hostilities and persecution, either physical or ideological, have
been ever-present ever since. In Ismat’s own words, ‘in India there has always been disunity
and rivalry’. The story is set in a scenario derived from all the former events.

THEMES:

Generation Gap: Each generation treats their lives differently. Siddiqui Sahib and Sethji both
treat their children’s lives as their property. Their children have their own opinions and want to
lead their own lives. They want to marry the persons of their choice, but their parents do not
want them to do so. Each generation also has a different opinion about religion and social
expectations.
Patriarchy: The men in this story, in the older generation have more opinion. The women in
their families have no say. This is the same for both Siddiqui Sahib and Sethji, so this is not
a religious matter, but a social and generational one. This changes with Samina and Tushar
who give the same importance to each other’s opinions.

Religious Differences: The author uses two families from different backgrounds to
demonstrate religious differences prevailing at that time. The two families are Sethji Trivedi’s
family, an orthodox Hindu family who resides in Allahabad and the other is Siddiqui Sahib’s
family, a respected Delhi-based Muslim family. The protagonists of the story are Samina and
Tushar, who are childhood friends and visit each other’s home frequently. Being friends, they
never bothered much about religious differences. Both sets of parents consider themselves
progressive and liberal, but demonstrate finally that they are basically hypocrites.

Society vs Individual: We see how older generations impose their family culture, using
religion as an excuse, on their next generation who are forced to accept that. They are
considered as people with no thought and no ideas. They are expected to do what they are told
without employing their own intelligence. They are treated as ‘monkeys’, as Tushar says.

Violence: When Siddiqui Sahib and Begum got to know about the elopement, their first
thoughts were violent. They thought of guns, knives, sharpened screwdrivers, even their own
hands to kill their daughter. However, there is no physical violence in the story. From violence
the story turns towards revenge, which is mental violence. The way both Siddiqui Sahib and
Sethji tried to manipulate Samina and Tushar was mentally violent

Hypocrisy & Ego: Both Siddiqui Sahib and Sethji were extra sensitive about their religion when
it came to their children’s marriage. Siddiqui Sahib thinks of himself as progressive and
unbiased, but the moment Samina elopes with a Hindu boy, his hypocrisy becomes clear. It is
exactly the same for Sethji. Just as Sethji made Samina convert to Hinduism, and splashed the
photos all over the newspapers, Siddiqui Sahib also made Tushar convert to Islam, and
made sure that the photos would be in the newspapers the next day. This was done not for the
sake of either of their children, but to upstage one another. It was all due to their ego.

Literary Device

Irony: The title ‘Sacred Duty’ implies that what a person is obliged to do after taking birth in
a particular religion, is supposed to be their sacred duty. Ironically, this means that the
person is restricted to take almost every decision, being confined in that particular religion.
Sacred duty according to society and according to individual opinion is totally different.