Three Ganga-Jamni novels and an archival collection of Punjabi verse
By Syed Afsar Sajid
1. ‘Ganga-Jamni Lucknow aur teen novel (‘Sham-e-Awadh’, ‘Char Deewari’,
‘Chandni Begum’)’ by Dr. Zafar Hussain Haral
2. ‘Untulay Moti’ – Kulliyat-e Nawab Ali Nawab Sial – Research/editing by
Dr. Zafar Hussain Haral
Dr. Zafar Hussain Haral is a research scholar and teacher of Urdu literature associated
with Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan. The afore-mentioned two books, authored
and edited by him respectively, have recently appeared on the literary scene with much
ado, amply testifying to his inherent abilities as a critic-cum-researcher.
‘Ganga Jamni Lucknow aur teen novel’
The contents of the book relate to its author’s PhD dissertation on the exploration of a
select work each viz. ‘Sham-e-Awadh’, ‘Char Deewari’, and Chandni Begum’, of three
important modern Urdu novelists namely Dr. Mohammad Ahsan Farooqui (1913-1978),
Shaukat Siddiqui (1923-2006), and Qurat-ul-Ain Haider (1927-2007), representing the
reflective base, as it were, of Lucknow’s Ganga-Jamni culture. ‘Ganga-Jamni’ primarily
refers to Ganga-Jamni ‘tehzeeb’, a term for the syncretic culture of northern India that
blends Hindu and Muslim traditions — originating from the region of the Ganges and
Yamuna rivers.
The book is divided into three parts captioned ‘Ganga-Jamni Lucknow’, ‘Novel’, and
‘Novel-nigar’. The first part preceded by a short introduction, is a scholarly elaboration of
the theoretical infrastructure of Lucknow’s Ganga-Jamni culture. Economic plenitude,
political governance, moral traditions, and pursuit of knowledge and art are stated to be
the four major components that tend to shape the dynamics of civilisation within a given
polity while the major constituents of culture are stated to be language, traditions and
customs, soico-moral inhibitions, and values. Thus civilisation and culture are mutually
integrable. The author views the whole scenario from a broad angle which embraces
anthropology, history, geography, ethics, culture and art.
Once he has probed the semantics of his argument, the author proceeds to examine,
though succinctly, the aforementioned three novels seriatim. As for ‘Sham-e-Awadh’, he
dwells on its external and internal formulations independently as also by citing
comparative critical evaluations from some authentic extraneous sources as in his
opinion a novel should be a narrative of the collective history of a society that it purports
to delineate. The author aptly scrutinises characters, situations, locales, conflicts, and
technical niceties in the novel besides assessing its comparative worth and over-all
generic impact on fictional contemporaneity.
‘Char Deewari’
It is Shaukat Siddiqui’s third novel (1990) adapted from his earlier novel ‘Koka Beli’
(1963). The novel portrays the political, social, and moral conditions in the Lucknow of
the British Raj after the deposition of Wajid Ali Shah (its last crown prince). Dr. Zafar
Hussain Haral gives a lucid overview of the novel by unfolding its recurring motif viz. the
decline of an age-long Muslim culture and its precedent causes.
‘Chandni Begum’
The last of the trio, famed fiction writer Qurat-ul-Ain Haider’s aforesaid novel, relates to
the post-Partition Lucknow where landownership had been legally abolished. The
storyline meanders across the Moghul, empirical, colonial, and post-colonial eras
encircling an engaging variegation of themes such as spiritual decay, loneliness, death,
philosophy, history, anthropology, aesthetics, culture, contemporaneity, lament of the
declining values, social tragedy of the Muslims of UP after the Independence of India,
humour and bitterness, spontaneity and geniality, a biographical slant, and socio-
political awareness.
Dr. Zafar Hussain Haral considers Ms. Haider’s modernistic technique of narration in the novel as magical realism, a literary genre that blends realistic storytelling with fantasy making the magical appear ordinary and it is set in a familiar, earthly ambience without explaining the supernatural. In the novel magical realism manifests itself through many characters and stories, folklore, myths, use of verse and poetic lines, and a peculiar dialect raised out of a mixture of English and Sanskrit languages.
Thus the referential value of the novel lies in the civilisation and culture of Lucknow which embodies the broader concepts of its (Lucknow’s) customs, traditions, mannerisms, and intellectual and artistic acquisitions.
‘Untulay Moti’
It is an archival study in (Lahndi) Punjabi, of the life and work of a senior contemporary
Nawab Ali Nawab Sial (1925-94) from Jhang. The title implies that the contents of the
book are like a treasure of unmeasured gems. Dr. Rubina Tareen of BZU, Multan and
Prof. So Yamane Yasir of Japan’s Osaka University have contributed concise but
meaningful forewords to the book appreciating its biographical and textual contexts.
Whereas the former proclaims that the folklore of a certain region is an index of its folk
wisdom, the latter emphasises the need for a fresh appraisal of the works (such as the
present one) written in regional languages, in the changing global scenario that might
cause a stir in the linguistic, cultural and literary domains.
The book is divided into five sections viz. ‘Aqeedat day Phul’, ‘Untulay Moti’, ‘Bhai
Chara’, ‘Aj Kal’, and ‘Pun Chaan’ in addition to the two forewords. It is a welcome
addition to the extant stock of the literature in regional languages in our part of the sub-
continent.
