Birds Of America: Willing - Opening

WILLING

How can I live my life without committing an
act with a giant scissors?
-- JORCE CAROL OATES
"An Interior Monologue"

In her last picture, the camera had lingered at the hip, the naked
hip, and even though it wasn't her hip, she acquired a reputation for being willing.

This book is for my sister and for my parents

and for Benjamin

... it is not news that we live in a world

Where beauty is unexplainable

And suddenly ruined

And has its own routines. We are often far

From home in a dark town, and our griefs

Are difficult to translate into a language

Understood by others.

CHARLIE SMITH

"The Meaning Of Birds"

Is it o-ka-lee

Or con-ka-ree, is it really jug jug,

Is it cuckoo for that matter? --

Much less whether a bird's call

Means anything in

Particular, or at all.

AMY CLAMPITT

"Syrinx"

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 89

The construction of British hegemony depended upon the failure of its universalist drive in accommodating native differences. It is this aspect of the hegemony that the Muslim elite in the post-rebellion world attempted to highlight. In this process, then, the elite trade-off the popular interest in order to obtain material advantages from the British. This aspect of the Anglo-Muslim relationship is important for my inquiry. The Muslim elite, as I have suggested earlier, having witnessed the post-rebellion deteriorating conditions of Muslims, must therefore, attempt to negotiate a new contract with the British. This new contract must ensure special political and economic advantages for the Muslims in exchange for their loyalty to their British rulers. This loyalty, of course, must be won by the British through a system of rewards, which makes it imperative on the part of the British to create a hegemonic relationship with the Muslims. Hence, they must write the rebellion out of the immediate history and replace it with a promise of loyalty. Their approach to the British power is, therefore, not a capitulation but a complex web of the politics of survival. The Muslim elite must, therefore, write the rebellion out of their history, or at least push it to the edge, and foreground their loyalty in order for Muslims to be included in the British system of power.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 87

This particularity of the novel must be kept in mind: it is a novel written by a Muslim author with Muslim characters, one of whom decides to become a reformer, for the conditions of the Muslims, we are told, are much worse than their Hindu counterparts. We mus tread this particularity of the novel as an example of Muslim exceptionalism within the realm of British Indian politics. It is also important to note that the text does not generate this exceptionalism. The public imperative within the novel -- the Muslim conditions and Inb-ul-Waqt's need for legitimation -- inscribe this need to help the fellow Muslims in the novel.

Another important aspect of the novel is its comparative value with one of its Bengali Hindu counterparts: Bankimchandra Chatterji's Anadamath. Published in 1882, the reason the latter seems so nationalist a work is because it matches our critical expectations of an anticolonial novel: the novel focuses on the Sanyasi rebellion that followed the famine of 1770 and describes the early nationalism of Bengali Hindus within a Muslim Bengal including the defeat of the East India Company troops. Bankim's novel, however, despite the contrary assertions of Julius Lipner, the translator, successfully introduces the idea of a militant Bengali Hindu subject in conflict with its Muslim counterparts.

Nazeer Ahmed's project, however, is much different: he and his contemporary Muslim elite are attempting to create a space for the Muslims within the British system. His work, therefore, must posit itself in the language of loyalty to the British and in opposition to the Hindus but not necessarily in terms of war, for the project is, precisely, to transform the war-like Muslims into loyal subjects of the Crown. It is this project that in itself should be read as a particular form of Muslim nationalistic literature.