Taslima’s Lies, Ismat’s Truth

Ballukhan,

I dont see any point in insulting the author of this piece either.

Balance gone awry- More thoughts on Farzana`s Posturing!
#14 by Saminasha on November 22, 2003 6:47am PT

I agree to the bit about collective discourse but people like Farzana want that specific discourses should be be the DOMINANT one in a community of readers
( that is why she uses the terms like ``TRULY`` and ``ISLAMIC``). She wants the readers to endorse the milder discourse of Ismat compared to the more radical one of Taslima
It is not all this bit*hing by Farzana that concerns me- it is the POLITCAL stance which is plain and simple intellectual power brokering through LAmpooning Taslima`s discourse (which is far more radical and offensive to the dominent ``Islamist`` discourses in the sub-continent) by posturing it as contrary to the feminist discourse of Ismat- when infact the two make equally important contribution to the COLLECTIVE DISCOURSE.(As rightly pointed by Saminasha)

Readers would like to read about how Taslima initiates an epistemic violence and foregrounds emancipatory possibilities for Bangladeshi women.
http://www.genders.org/g30/g30_khatun.html

In the end, I must admit that Taslima`s narrative may look CRUDE and OFFENSIVE and UN-FEMININE to the social birds (like Farzana) who preen their feathers, do a little pirouette, fly and fall free into the arms of the bombia bombastic elites- but who cares about Farzana- not me!!!

to : #22 by Fosa on November 22, 2003 9:08am PT

my id is saminshah.
madam saminasha is other person.

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Harimau,

My question about Bangla only refers to a fairly recent period in which Islamicist nationalists successfully pushed English usage out of Bangladeshi university systems, thus isolating students and workers from being able to communicate, transact and practice with the rest of the world.

after reading this article i get impresion that some one`s soul burnig with jealiousy.you ppl smell it?

Ref Fosa #9

[Even before 71 B DEsh formation English Education among Rural Mainy Bengali mUSLIm WAS less Compared to HINDU BENGALI who were (for reasons wel documentee elsewhere )were more `educated modernised well off and with British coperation ranBRITISH viceroy in CALCUTTA bureaucracy to RULE MOST of NORTH INDIA !

There is more English education among HINDU bengali than Bengali Muslimfromthe BEGINNING !]

I think you need to cool down. The question is how many icepacks will you need for all your heads.

About 4 months back I posted an extract that showed that education (perhaps not ENGLISH education) as measured by school enrollment and employment with the British government after 1857 did NOT prove any discrimination against Muslims.

So it would be wonderful if you do not project your personal observations in rural Bengal on the entire Muslim population. Just like Jinnah in his Savile Row suit wasn`t representative of the hardworking farmer of the Ganges delta.

Warmest regards.

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Ballukhan,

I dont see the purpose of championing one writer and downgrading another esp. in the contexts of female authorship on the subcontinent, rather than accepting that a range of works and writers can exist and contribute to a collective discourse. I also think that for many women writers, the act of writing can be fraught with risk and disapproval- do male writers have the same kinds of taboos and stigmas to face if they write anything that is not considered ``seemingly``?

I like some of Nasrin`s poems-but I see them as I would Claude McKay`s work; it serves a particularly rhetorical purpose. Whether we agree with her or not, her text will also be used as a historical document of a specific narrative at a point of time on the subcontinent.

Farzana,

Nice pungent piece!

But, Ismat aapa hardly deserves being mentioned in the same breath as Taslima. Lajja was unreadable...

But, I do feel that there is one thing you might have missed. Ismat Chugtai wrote at a time when her slightest act of independence seemed to rock first her family, then her immediate world, and then the Urdu speaking world. She too, in many ways, has benefitted from the fact that her persona and her life was inextricably linked with her works. If she was a man with the same amount of radicalism, she might not have had the same reputation. She became an icon as much for her radicalism as for her works.

In fact there are several men/women of substance and knowledge who say the first lady of Urdu is rightfully Quratulain Haider rather than Chugtai. This is not to take credit away from Chugtai for the defiant ``feminist`` she was.

Against that, Taslima`s is more of a storm in a tea cup. She is merely somebody who did things that seem big in her mind, and when publicly uttered, there is still a huge crowd willing to denounce her. From all accounts she is milking her fairly regular urban life, treating it with sentimentalism and a very timid and finally shallow amorality, and living off the reactiveness, and hence the controversy, of a staid society which still cannot hold back their over-the-top reactions.

In fact hers is not half a great social expose as as Tehmine Durrani??? who wrote ``My Feaudal Lord.``

But drama of real life, finally makes for good literary material only in the hands of somebody gifted. Otherwise, everybody has her/his story to tell. But, its the treatment that decides literary merit. I think you just gifted Taslima one more page on her vanity search on the google!

Harish

On Defining a TRULY contemporary Muslim woman

Balance gone awry

Ismat Chugtai`s aesthetic works in her fiction. In non-fiction, she comes across as contradictory and unthinking, says ASHLEY TELLIS.

THIS is a deeply disappointing book. There are several reasons for this. There is Tahira Naqvi who is an abominable translator (the book is rife with bad translations, clumsy formulations and wrong English), there is Alpana Khare`s unimaginative cover and there is Tahira Naqvi again, this time with a banal and insufferable introduction to this selection of Chughtai`s prose writings, trotting out all the usual cliches about Chughtai.

But the most disappointing thing about My Friend, My Enemy is Ismat Chughtai herself. She proves herself a rambling, anecdotal, frequently tiresome prose writer and certainly no literary critic (to her credit, she admits this); even her reminiscences and portraits lack any organising principles or emotive coherence. The ``Essays`` section begins with a round-up of all the writing on Partition which is seriously damaged by her pedestrian notion of Progressive realism. She listlessly catalogues novels and what they are about, faulting them for lack of verisimilitude. She forwards an essentialist and offensive notion of motherhood (that she surely should have examined) making unbelievable statements like ``she`s [the figure of Mother India] still a woman and a woman can never tolerate a mockery of the mother-child relationship nor deliberately attack it``. She offers a vulgarised reading of Manto, accusing him of shock tactics, even when she spent half her energies otherwise defending him, if badly, against that charge.

Then there is a confused and contradictory defence of the erotic in contemporary writing. On the one hand, Chugtai somewhat bafflingly says that people are poor in India and should read more erotic literature; that most of them are illiterate does not cross her mind. On the other, she reprimands people for seeing biology text books as ``titillation only (sic)`` and not illustrative of ``medical principles``. Again, she defends the erotic under all circumstances as being educative and liberatory, yet complains that when the really important bits are elsewhere in her writing, people only read the erotic sections.

``Heroine`` continues this unreconstructed rambling. It surveys the ways women are portrayed in writing, especially by men and examines types like the respectable housewife, the tawaif and the working woman. However, though the plea at the end of the piece is to recognise women as just women, the types are not examined enough, the defence of the tawaif ranges from the weak to the problematic (they need reform, she says) and compulsory heterosexuality remains unexamined throughout. The essentialism of being seen just as women (are females always women?) appears to be questioned in ``Aurat``, yet Chughtai retains the traditional notion that women have an intrinsic feminity they should employ only outside the work space - even as she criticises Russian women for defeminising themselves in the workplace.

The contradictions and lack of reflection in Chugtai`s hastily dashed musings can get exasperating. It is unimaginable that such a fine writer of fiction can be so unthinking in her non-fiction. This becomes glaringly apparent in her piece on the ``Lihaaf`` in the next section. It comes as a staggering shock that Chughtai did not stand by the radical sexual aesthetic of what is perhaps her finest story, that she was ashamed of it, regretted writing it, and went through the trial for it in such a lacklustre fashion. One can only share with Manto his wrath at her cowardice and lack of principles as a writer and defender of the erotic.

The last section is a set of portraits. The one on Manto shows that she cared for him less than she cared for judging him and leaves us with a deep sense of pain at his fate and her growing indifference to it. ``Chirag Roshan Hai``, her famous portrait of Krishen Chander is a moving account of the enigmatic writer, but content with the enigmatic resonance of anecdote, Chughtai does not build on her insights. There is a small and powerful vignette of filmstar singer Suraiya which is evocative of the film industry in its early days. Her portrait of Meeraji, however, is surprisingly misogynist and homophobic. Meeraji took on the name because of his love for one Meera Sen. Chughtai accuses her (Sen) of turning him to ``pulp`` and then wonders, ``How can any intelligent woman associate herself with such a weakling, who is proud to play the role of a wife?`` This, from a so-called feminist writer, leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Ismat Chughtai comes across as an individualist and a spirited writer who did not think deeply of art even as she drank deeply of life. Stick to her fiction. Her ingenuous aesthetic works there, representing the complex nature of the realities she sees with the right balance of verisimilitude and individual spirit. In non-fiction, this balance goes awry and the result is nothing short of embarrassing.

My Friend, My Enemy, Ismat Chugtai, translated by Tahira Naqvi, Kali for Women.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/06/17/stories/1317017p.htm

#1 by Saminasha on November 21, 2003 4:48pm PT
Saminaha! I can hear you trying to speak out. Can it be a bit more louder and explicit please!!!
Comparison of narratives which have been DE-Contextualized is a well known strategy of criticism- I would like some more reaction on what Farzana is trying to do - Lampooning Taslima by using terms like ``TRULY``, ``CONTEMPORARY`` and ( on the top of it) ``ISLAMIC`` ( as far as I can understand Taslima is an Atheist)- BTW As she aged, Chugtai`s feminism under went various twists and turns from the youthful revolutionary Ismat to the mellowed, bombay socialite.

Anyway, this is what bombastic journalism is about- trivializing issues , stereo-typing persons, lampooning, and ofcourse-- plain and simple Bit*hing.

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