A Letter from India by Intezar Hussain (Summary & Analysis)

 

A Letter from India

by Intezar Hussain

(Summary & Analysis) 

“A Letter From India” is a story in the form of a letter written by on old uncle called Qurban Ali to his nephew called Kamran. Qurban Ali chooses to stay back in India, even though the fever of migration had sent millions of Muslims from India to the newly-created country called Pakistan. The letter is written, significantly, on the 28th day of the holy month of Ramazan, 1394 hijri, that is, October 15, 1974.

Qurban Ali writes to Kamran that all his efforts to send him letters in the past have failed as none of those whom he gave the letters to forward to Pakistan, confirmed whether they really forwarded the letters to the given destinations. He tells him how Imran Miyan, quite unexpectedly, appeared at his doorstep one night and how he had failed to recognize him initially, because he had changed so much. He is unhappy at this change in Imran and comments surely it was not for this that he had left India. Soon after he realizes that instead of making complaints, he should, like a man of good faith, better be thankful to God for sending him back even though only for three days. Imran Miyan hardly talked or laughed as he seemed to be lost in thoughts. He expresses his desire to visit the grave of Miyanjani. He is advised by Qurban Ali to visit the graveyard in the night to avoid the risk of being recognized in the daytime. He laughs bitterly saying that he had passed through the village before reaching him and even the soil did not recognize him. Imran visits the graveyard with Qurban Ali and is overtaken by emotions. He is shown how things have changed beyond recognition in the last twenty seven years; even the harsinghar tree had withered away and other trees had died down even though the garden was still there. Ironically enough, Qurban Ali says that the garden should now be taken as an extension of the graveyard. After spending the night beside Miyanjani"s grave with Qurban Ali, Imran Miyan leaves next morning. On being asked why he wants to leave once he has returned, Imran Miyan says he wants to do so because no one recognizes him here any longer. He is already a stranger and has lost his right to the land. Although he is advised that his safety lies in not being recognized but this logic does not convince him. He, thus, leaves even though he does not have a clear destination before him. As Qurban Ali is much too anxious and worried about his being found out and about his safety, he ties an amulet around his arm and bids him farewell with a heavy heart. Qurban Ali never receives any message from him even though he had implored that Imran Miyan should send him a word after crossing the border.

Qurban Ali is concerned about what is happening in Pakistan. He narrates what he had heard about the rising prices, the popularity of the socialists, and the declaration that Mirzais were actually not Muslims. He tells how he was himself living among the infidels and how happy he was to hear from one Sheikh Sahib that Imran was doing well in life. He tells about the crumbling haveli, the court cases regarding it, and is worried about what would happen to it after he is no more. He speaks about his deep rooted despair and laments that his son, called Akhtar, has now taken the pseudonym of "Premi". He works in the radio station and pitiably enough, Khalida, his younger brother"s daughter, is married to a Hindu who is a lawyer by profession. She wears a saree and puts a bindi on her forehead. Qurban Ali is also worried about the news that his sister in Pakistan does not wear a veil, moves in her son"s car, and shamelessly bargains in the shops. It is equally disturbing that her daughter is married to a man of her own choice who happens to be a Wahabi. Qurban Ali considers himself to be an unfortunate witness to all these sad developments. He laments that the members of his family are now scattered all over and his world has really disintegrated. He envies his elder brother who had migrated to Dhaka instead of Pakistan and is no longer alive to witness all this.

Qurban Ali feels duty-bound to narrate his woe of suffering to Kamran as he is the eldest member of the family after him. He does this because he wants the familial history and memory to be preserved. Torn between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, he feels that his family and its history are lost for good. Even though he relates his lineage to Hazrat Imam Musa Karzan, he laments that his faith has been corrupted as he lives among infidels.

While relating his lineage, Qurban Ali also recounts how in the past the history of his family had been passed from father to the son, generation after generation. Speaking of his genealogy, he refers to his roots in Isphahan. He says that his ancestor, Meer Mansur Mohammad who lies buried in Akbarabad, was an ocean of learning and was greatly revered as a pillar of his faith. He tells that his descendants later settled in Shahjahanabad. In his letter, Qurban Ali recounts that Partition did not result in hijrat or in uprooting people only at this point of time; people had experienced this trauma in the past as well (during the reign of Shahjahan)and its specter kept haunting them all along the course of history (1857). Interestingly, the letter writer relates the story of an ancestor who, while migrating, had been attacked by the dacoits and he had lost all his papers relating to the family history. It was only his good luck that a page that contained the family tree was saved from this attack which led to the retrieval of his individual and familial history.

Qurban Ali"s letter is a bag full of familial events and characters, and stories of loss and suffering. He even recounts those who took to devious ways, watched bioscope, madly loved films and film actors, and lost their lives in pursuing those wild dreams. He recounts the names and numbers of those who lost their lives in the riots of 1947. He also maintains a record of those who are alive and are pursuing their professions and living a life which is not of quite acceptable standards, both religiously and culturally.

As Qurban Ali is overtaken by a sense of futility and loss, he asks his nephew, Kamran, to maintain a record of his family members, whether they are alive or dead, and also to keep a track of their movement. He is convinced that his family history has already been lost yet he tries and persuades Kamran to try and preserve it. He persuades Kamran to come to India and also bring his wife and children with him. He says that this letter could go on and on but he could not continue endlessly like that. He closes his letter as the time to say prayers has come and that he has to put all the legal documents regarding the haveli in order for the four hundred twenty-seventh hearing in the court of law the next morning.

Analysis

Epistolary form: "A Letter from India" is a story in the epistolary form about the travails of migration from India to Pakistan in the wake of India’s Partition and the subsequent happenings following the historic migration. The letter is written in 1974, that is, 27 years after the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. As such, the time involved in the story spans twenty-seven consequential years in the history of the subcontinent during which Muslims migrated from India to Pakistan, Pakistan got divided to create a new country called Bangladesh, and many people sought their careers elsewhere. In this manner, "A Letter from India", being a letter that it is, is also a narrative, a story, and a chronicle of changing times, places, and people.

The epistolary form of the story makes way for free association of ideas that the central character exhibits during the course of his letter writing. It is not a linear narrative with time and space put in a sequence or order, but creatively mixed and merged. This contributes to the general tone and tenor of the story which is essentially sad.

Central Character

Qurban Ali, the letter writer, is a God-fearing, tradition-loving old man. He has passed through the travails of history and is clearly a victim of anxiety although he dons a posture of self-confidence and righteousness. It is a kind of subterfuge for him; he does not accept defeat nor does he give up his effort to connect and communicate with his own people on the other side of the border even though he miserably fails in doing so. His world is torn apart and he is located between the two poles of illusion and reality. He is a helpless witness to the terrible history of the subcontinent that has erased his familial line but it has not resulted in the erasure of memory that keeps and sustains him through all this terrible tug of times—past and present, and dynamics of places—here and there. On the other hand, he innocently mourns the death of a solemn communal and familial tradition at the hands of new threats resulting in the exploration of greener pastures in alien lands, deplorable marriages beyond one’s own faith, and impossible conditions of life. The new generation is an inheritor of loss—of line and lineage, family and faith, bands and bonds. Sharply in contrast to this generation, Qurban Ali is a symbolic configuration, a lone figure who ventures to keep the boundaries from vanishing away, the new generation from going astray, and the conditions around from slipping out of reach and repair. As Qurban Ali faces the stark realities of life and seems to have been defeated in the process of living this life of loss and longing, he wishes for the impossible.

The story is one of hankering to retrieve the past and relate with a world and a set of people removed far away from him and his world. In this manner, it may be asserted that "A Letter from India" is not merely about past and things past but also about present and future. Although Qurban Ali lives too much in the past, he is not entirely devoid of what happens in the present and how the future has already shaped or is in the process of shaping up. He is a victim of anxiety and of pre-conceived notions of life that he may hardly ever revise. He is, thus, a receptacle of happenings, a spectator, who moves between his dreams and despairs in his own way. As such, it is not only nostalgia that determines the tone and tenor of the story; it is also a deep-seated desire for union with the separated ones that reflects well in the story. Qurban Ali’s despair is, therefore, not of a misanthrope but of one who explores possibilities and looks forward with certain hope. His nostalgia is of a kind that relates past with the present, and the present with the future. In this manner, he constructs his individual history as he assembles the communal history.

Major Themes:

"A Letter from India" casts a wide net in terms of time and space. On the surface, it appears to be a story of the travails of Partition but, broadly speaking, it spans times much beyond 1947 and places farther away from the Indian subcontinent. His characters move from India to Pakistan, then from Pakistan to many other alien destinations where they see a future of prosperity and powerful positions. From this perspective, it is a story about the erasure of boundaries, about shrinking of space, as also about new communal and extra-communal equations, and the new world order marked by mobility, upward movement, and the fast-expanding liberal culture.

One of the significant issues, the story raises, concerns the inability of the central figure called Qurban Ali to reach out. Pathetically enough, the two countries are drawn apart and their people cannot establish any contact. Like a stock character, Qurban Ali suffers this pang and reflects upon the consequences. The unexpected arrival of Imran Miyan in the night, his very brief stay, his silence, and his leaving without a destination in view, is a stark commentary on the relationship that the two peoples and their nations share. Qurban Ali’s musings on the soaring prices in Pakistan, Pakistanis turning to socialism, their vast appetite for material possessions, his sister shopping freely in the marketplace, youngsters running after films and actors, Mirza is being declared as non-Muslims, and many such acts may be read as very important sub-themes of the story. While he laments on all these happenings in Pakistan, he also mourns how his son, Akhtar, has taken a pseudonym of "Premi", and his daughter is married to a Hindu and has now taken to wearing saris and sporting a bindi on her forehead. As Qurban Ali freely moves in time and space, he is reminded of many odds in the name of socio-cultural transformation that he is unable to reconcile with. The two very important acts of his entrusting Kamran with the responsibility of preserving the familial history and his own effort to save the ancestral property are symbolic enough of how deeply committed he is to his world view. His narrative is, therefore, extremely complex in its makeup and implications.

The phenomenon of migration unfolds many facets in the story. It is not the question of one migration from India to Pakistan, but of multiple migrations to various destinations. Although it is not an aimless wandering from one land to another yet it foregrounds the problems related to one"s living in various states of exile, immigration, homelessness, dislocation, and diaspora. The story also raises the important questions of how and why a race makes its choice of location and belonging. Interestingly, it also turns out to be a tale of an ethnic minority that seeks its identity from place to place and from time to time. The problem of identity thus forms one of the essential points of reference in the story. Qurban Ali is in the quest of his own identity as also of all those with whom he associates on familial and communal levels.

“A Letter from India” is also a typical text that foregrounds some of the major references with which we read postcolonial literature(s). It takes up issues of history, memory, and identity—individual/racial/communal— that ultimately create the myth of a people. While it emphasizes personal truths and testimonies, it also explores the contexts of its imagery and symbol. The symbols of the "graveyard" and the "garden", as one being the extension of the other in the story, may be read in this context. The disappearance of the old trees and the change of scenario in the graveyard serve as terrible metaphors of loss. The story has many stark images that underline the essential thrust of the story. Imran’s going back after a very brief stay of three days in India in a state of uncertainty and despair is yet another metaphoric retreat into nowhere, yet another migration to an unknown land. The story has alternating moods of anguish, changing situations, and elusive characters to underline the pathetic plot of the people involved. In one subplot continues another and many of them, taken together, compose a story which does not end but continues indefinitely.