Dying Banyan, A - Manzar Ahtesham

Manzar Ahtesham’s original Urdu work “ Sukha Bargad” has been called a

modern classic and has been ably translated into English under the

title “ A Dying Banyan”. Set in the late seventies and early eighties

when Islamic tendencies are on their rise in Pakistan and Zulfiquar Ali

Bhutto has been hanged while in India, Mrs. Gandhi has lost the

elections and the Janata Party has come into power bringing in its wake

the erstwhile Jan Sanghis¬.

The book tries to follow the life of Suhail, the son of a middle class

and secular minded lawyer and his devout tradition minded wife as

observed by Rashida, Suhail’s sister. Along the way, through Suhail’s

experiences, it tries to trace the search for identity for a Muslim in

post partition India. Suhail and his family live in Bhopal, a city that

has always been Muslim in character and ruled by a Nawab; but in

independent India, its character slowly changes as it is rechristened

as the capital of the modern state of Madhya Pradesh.

Slowly as the

Muslim identity erodes and many of the Muslims of means emigrate to

Pakistan, questions arise in the minds of those who stay back- or

circumstances force them to ask questions. The book touches upon the

wars of the 1965 and 1971 and the peculiar tests the Muslims were put

to.

Every one – the Hindus and the Muslims listened clandestinely to Radio

Pakistan; but if the Hindus listened in, they were merely listening in

to discover what the “other side” was saying; but if the Muslims did

so, they were traitors who tuned into the “enemy” for the news. And yet

with so many blood relatives in Pakistan, the Indian Muslims had valid

reasons to listen to Radio Pakistan, not because they were traitors but

because they had legitimate concerns about the welfare of their

families.

Sukha Bargad also traces the silent beginnings of communalism

in post British India and the some what clumsy attempts of Muslims to

adapt and adjust. Some like Suhail’s lawyer father held on to their

secular ideals; but they had passed their prime and they were left

undisturbed but Suhail, his son attempted to follow in his footsteps;

he very quickly found that the going was not too easy and that under

the veneer of secularism, distinctions flourished and barriers

continued to be erected. Muslims react in different ways; some migrate

out – that is what seems best for a time till Zia ul Huq comes to power

in Pakistan, hangs Bhutto and starts promoting a distinctly unpalatable

style of Islam; a few retreat deeper into their obscurantist tradition

and ghetto culture and a few like the politician Rajab Ali are rank

opportunists – courting the Jana Sangh one day and giving clarion calls

about Islam being in danger the next day.

The ultimate message of the book is perhaps captured best by the

relentless downslide of Suhail’s life – unable to make peace with

traditionalists, distrusted by the liberal as well as the communal

Hindu, he finds succor only in drink and decay even as his sister,

Rashida, the narrator looks on helplessly. The ultimate message of the

book in the translator –Kuldip Singh’s words is to peep into the heart

of minorities, wherever they may be and empathize with their

alienation, fears and insecurities – and society’s fundamental

questioning of any one who is different- in look, in though and in

belief and the unending agni pariksha that they have to go through – in

every generation.

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