A contrapuntal archive

Contemporary Pakistani English fiction is beginning to make an immense critical and contrapuntal contribution to the reality of Pakistani life and how it is perceived by outsiders. An emerging brand of Pakistani literary writers is responding to disastrous cultural distortions and is developing a collective consciousness based on a meaningful and peaceful Pakistani identity. I view their writings as an attempt to re-establish an alternative cultural background to the country.
Pakistan’s socio-economic and political conditions do not give us the luxury of sculpting happy endings, and now — through skilfully developed novels with time-sensitive theoretical debates disseminating a radical restructuring of society — prominent Pakistani writers are showing how socio-cultural delicacy and discernment around national and international issues affect them. Their words tease out questions of political and cultural rootedness. The political chaos, and dependence upon misleading religious interpretations that distort culture, have been a core concern of these writers. Worsening ethnic and religious tensions, and issues of gender and sexuality, human rights, religious and gang violence, feminist activism and blasphemy laws are the sharp edges that grab the attention of readers looking to understand contemporary Pakistan. All these themes have created an excellent backdrop for Pakistani English-language literary fiction, and there is a surfeit of rich material to explore.
Talented writers are producing novels grounded in theoretical debates, attracting readers in general and research scholars in academia in particular. Research, in turn, has made their works more accessible. The debates discoursed in these texts are helping researchers understand the personal and emotional sensibilities of Pakistanis, as well as the cultural, historical and political factors that shape our society. A substantial percentage of fiction readers appear as politically mobilised as the texts they read. It is heartening to witness the growth of the small community reading this new-wave fiction.
Our writers have reintroduced socio-political debates into society. By exploring cultural issues involving religion and politics, these creative critical literary writings are playing a vital part in reforming how both Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis perceive, conceive and respond to the country’s cultural challenges.
In academia, our novels are recognised as the agency of socio-political history, with distinct literary forms. I admire this imaginative collection of Pakistani history for the contextualisation of critical debates, which television, radio and mainstream political narratives have thus far failed to offer. The Pakistani novel provides unique insight into modern Pakistan’s cultural history. The legacy of Anglophone Pakistani writing about war on Pakistani soil has given rise to experimental narratives that can be categorised into emerging genres such as satire (Mohammed Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangoes); comedy (Shazaf Fatima Haider’s How it Happened); crime (Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner); globalisation (Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia); war (KamilaShamsie’s Burnt Shadows); cli-fi (UzmaAslam Khan’s Trespassing) and the somewhat unexplored genres (Sami Shah’s Boy of Fire and Earth).
The rise in themes of globalisation since the 1990s has driven attention to pressing forces of diasporic, globalist and postcolonial theoretical deliberations throughout humanities. The embrace of this new dimension within the parameters of cultural discourse gives these works a rich interdisciplinary approach. According to MunazzaYaqoob, professor of English at the International Islamic University, Islamabad, in her article ‘Environmental Consciousness in Contemporary Pakistani Fiction in English’, a growing body of Pakistani writing set in metropolitan centres portrays and creates a narrative of a globalised Pakistan.
Similarly, the post-9/11 milieu has given readers a new perspective on negotiating terror narratives in the form of trauma writings (Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams, NadeemAslam’s The Blind Man’s Garden, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist); empathetic tribal writings (Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon, UzmaAslam Khan’s Thinner Than Skin); and understanding Islam (UzmaAslam Khan’s The Geometry of God, QaisraShahraz’s Typhoon). The diasporic and home contexts bring familiar tropes, including postmodern narratives of cityscapes, such as the New Weird (Bilal Tanweer’sThe Scatter Here is too Great) post-9/11 Pakistan and the world. These imagined narratives have brought real-world politics into our discussions as readers debate newer globalisations and the fluidity of borders and belongingness (KamilaShamsie’sKartography) or for defining and redefining home (H.M Naqvi’s Home Boy), which has become problematic.
Our writers have also brought focus on the marginalisation of individuals and societies at the hands of corporate powers. Through these works, we can study silences and discover invisible, censored and tabooed identities. The role of minorities (Bina Shah’s Slum Child, Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti) as a fundamental part of culture is a significant feature in some of the works. The recurrent academic debate around a distorted interpretation of culture invites unnecessary censorship in literature too, including the representation of non-Muslim minorities as depicted in these novels. These works are questioning the unseen and contesting the less remembered and un-recorded identities by bringing back communities that have almost ceased to exist within the political discourse.
As cultural commentators and social theorists, our writers portray ongoing processes in society; they construct narratives as the basis for strong comparative studies in order to develop contrapuntal models. These models themselves sketch an analysis between two literary cross-cultural narratives by locating an essential interconnection — the socio-political discourses of nation and the global socio-economic criticism that grows out of the cultural concerns of more local systems.
The discourse on terrorism rose to become an important feature of contemporary Pakistani fiction in English, but audiences now are seeking more diversity. The Pakistani economic depression following 9/11 and class narratives should be reflected in our fiction if political themes are to still be part of our narratives. Eliminating poverty needs to become one of the serious concerns in the writings, linking poverty and hunger to political and corporate economic interests and power dynamics within contemporary discourse. Such debates can be brought to life through literature and the inculcation of grass-root realities for more than half of Pakistan’s population. Many of the themes mentioned above do have their point of departure set in the economic concerns, and poverty appears as a sub-theme in all of these discussions, but we need to emerge from abstraction; in a developing country, poverty should not be a rare theme in literature.
According to John Marsh, professor of English at Penn State University in his article ‘The Literature of Poverty, The Poverty of Literature Classes’, globally prominent themes that rely on capitalistic interventions lose their attractiveness when economic consequences for third world countries and communities are discussed as part of the narrative. The shallowness and alienation of modern life, the mystery of poverty and resultant inequality do inspire our writers, but perhaps it should consume and inspire them more.
Pakistani writers have produced impressively humane works of storytelling. Invisible people are emerging as visible to an international audience as they are to our fellow citizens. The rhetoric of invisibility should be there in the narrative unveilings of Pakistani fiction. If our literature has a didactic part to play, it can offer readers the chance to imagine a scene and develop a constructive opposition. The forceful rejection of an economic system of exploitation should dominate. Some writers touch on the fears, hopes and complexities of poor individuals and communities, attack the insane division of rich and poor, but remain forgetful about capitalism, corporate power and greed. A few novels that stand out for their portrayal of poverty — Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, Slum Child, Trespassing and ShahbanoBilgrami’s Without Dreams — depict the dreadful toll of ethnic and social segregation: “If he doesn’t beg for his food, how will I feed him?’ … ‘Bhooka! Look at him. He’s starving. You can see his bones!’” (Without Dreams); “‘How about real miracles,’ asks Alice, ‘like the drains shall remain unclogged? Or the hungry shall be fed?’” (Our Lady of Alice Bhatti); “Can you believe it? While poor countries are punished for defending themselves, the strongest military power in the world comes up with excuses to keep building its weaponry.” (Trespassing).
While the cultural framing of our country seems to be conflicted, it would be refreshing if we moved on from terrorist narratives. I, along with many others, have become more demanding readers of other themes; Pakistan should not be “reducible to generals, jets and jihadis” as PriyamvardaGopal, professor of English at the University of Cambridge, wrote in her review in The Guardian titled ‘The Late Dictator’. I wish to see new novels stand out in their emphasis on romantic, local and indigenous aspects of the culture, and help us reshape Pakistani culture. How about rediscovering and reinventing romantic Pakistan (Aamer Hussein’s Another Gulmohar Tree)? Let us come out of underrepresentation and re-introduce our work with the rise of our own indigenous identity.
At the same time, I hope our novelists will build on and develop the rich political themes discussed earlier, and will continue to contribute to raising national and global consciousness and activism within the academy, in society at home and internationally. Let us combine these themes and present a nationally romantic identity in a global frame. Let us recognise the invisible — be it poor, non-Muslim, rural, differently-abled, in-between or even nonhuman — because literature is always dynamic, and introducing artistic experiments is an excellent way to enhance a culture.