A Short Introduction to Pakistani Literature in English:

There is a purist view of art according to which it would be futile to categorize  literature at all. According
to this view the best art, and literature is a form of it, transcend national boundariesboth geographical and
ideological. As such it would be paradoxical to speak ok say, American and Russian literature; either it
is literature, an art form of the purest kind, or it is not. And from this point of view, with which Henry
James would have agreed but many others would not, it appears chauvinistic to set out to
study Pakistan literature in English. This is what Zulfikar Ghose, an expatriate writer of Pakistani origin
must have had in his mind when to my question who in his opinion were the best writers
from India and Pakistan he replied:

I do not know enough of their work to have an opinion I must repeat that I despise labels categories are
for clerks in bureaucracies and have nothing to do with art the worst category invented for writers is the
nationalistic one as thought some sort of literary Olympic games were in progress A writer is interested in
the best literature wherever it comes from and a writer who makes a special place in his reading for the
works of his countryman and women has to be one who is more interested in a who’s who type of gossip
than he is in his art:
Ghose’s acerbity of tone and the assertion that literature must not be given critical attention for non-
literary reasons is of course justified this has been done too often as we shall see in the following survey of
trends in the criticism of Third World literature in English. The problem of evolution has assumed
political rather than aesthetic forms in Third World literatures to a degree quite unprecedented in
modern English literatures. The critical debate in the new literatures in English is, in the last analysis,
connected with colonialism. It was colonialism, which created cultural arrogance among European critics
and a corresponding sense of inferiority among the colonized. Now, in a reversal of this pattern, the
Europeans tend to be patronizing and the Third World critics chauvinistic and ethnocentric. The first
issue, which rises in this connection, is whether these new literatures are indeed so different
from Englishliterature as understood traditionally, as to call for different criteria of evaluation:
The problems referred to are aspects of a general problem of evaluation. Is this new body of writing to be
judged as an extension of literature in English, and by the international standards associated with it, or
does it, of cultural and linguistic and possibly other reasons, require some quite different critical basis?
Readers of Transition will recall that the correspondence columns for a long time carried an argument
about the ‘impudent’ assumption b non-Africans that they could criticize African authors.
But even if the literatures are distinctive wholes, and certainly their themes and sensibility does support
this view, it does not follow that non-literary criteria should be used to evaluate them.
Modern African literature came to be given critical attention in the west in the 1950s. a number of reviews
were written by anthropologists whose interest was anthropologists rather than artistic. One critical term
that was often used was ‘simplicity’. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) was said to be simple and
the emphasis was on the informative, as opposed to the artistic, value of the novel. Keith Waterhouse,
while referring to Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (1960) said in the New Statesmen:
We want a lucid, uncluttered account of the way life is changing in these territories. We want sound
competent craftsmen to put up the framework later when the chronicles of change are more or less
complete some very fortunate writers indeed will be able to fill the framework in wallowing in the new
luxuries of characterization motivation depth psychology and all     of it.
This evolutionary view of creativity is based on the assumption that the African is less sophisticated in his
response to reality than his western counterpane. Others argue that discrepant criteria should be used for
evaluating western and African literatures because the African sensibility cannot be expressed in western
literary forms. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that there are no universals, no possibility of
transcendence of ethnocentric ways of apprehension and, by Implication, no such thing as a classic – a
work of art which will appeal to people who do not belong to the culture in which it was first produced this
is an extreme interpretation of this culture-bound hypothesis. Here is one of the most balanced
statements of this doctrine:
It is unrewarding, therefore, for the non-African reader and critic to look at any of the three major genres
in contemporary African writing the novel, poetry, and drama solely from the perspective of western
literary criteria and terminology. This is too much like trying to force a glove with three fingers onto a
hand with five. Instead we must look at African writing not only for whatever similarities with western
literary forms may be, but also once we have fully identified these for what is different. And therefore,
African 
This is only a roundabout way of saying that there can be different evaluative criteria for different kinds of
literatures written in English: an assertion which can and has led to critical anarchy in the past and which
must not be accepted without reservations. And one of thesereservations in the political one; to be precise,
the nationalistic one.
Nationalism, again a consequence of colonization, has been a major force to reckon with in the  Third
World. In African countries too the slogan that literature should serve the cause of nationalism has had its
heyday. In the first Congress of Negro Writers in 1956, for example, a delegate exhorted African artists to
‘try to look at art through political’. The Second Congress in 1959 held in Rome also emphasized the
political basis of art. In the last few years the artists themselves have been less willing to tolerate these
prescriptive formulas and, as a consequence, the formulas have lost their force. African critics are
however, nationalistic and even question the right of non-Africans to criticize African literature. This is
merely a political conflict, that between the colonizer and the colonized, which has taken a literary form
and is expressed in the idiom of aesthetics rather than politics.
In the West Indies, the Guyanese magazine Kyh-over-al (1945-1961) tried to ‘stimulate a West Indian
theory and practice of literary and cultural criticism‘. Another such magazine, TheBeacon (1831-1933),
from Trinidad, insisted that West Indian writing ‘should utilise West Indian settings, speech, characters,
situations and conflicts’. In other words, that it would not be imitative as it had been in the past. This was
all a part of an effort to create authentic West Indian literature. But once such a literature was produced,
the critical response to it was in many ways similar to that towards African literature. Very often certain
themes, prominent because of historical experiences, are accepted as a criterion of value. Braithwaite, a
famous West Indian writer, makes the fragmentation of West Indian culture and identity his major
theme. And then this theme, or an extension of it, become a critical standard:
Indeed this notion of estrangement from one’s community and landscape become in Braithwaite’s various
critical articles or surveys of West Indian writing the main criterion for judging
individual Caribbean writers.
Once again one notices the tendency to judge literature in terms of ideas and themes related in some way
or the other to the experience of colonization.
And this tendency is also noticeable in the criticism of Indian literature in English by Indians. I will pay
more attention to it because the cultural situation and the political forces influencing Indian critics are
very similar to those which influence Pakistani cities. Thus, in order to understand what literary criteria
should be used to evaluate Pakistani literature in English, it would be most relevant to understand what
criteria have actually been used by Indian critics to evaluate Indian literature.
Indian literature in English, like the other new literatures of the Third World, began as a consequence of
the confrontation of India with the West. However, it was not a literature of protest but that of imitation
in the beginning. Henry Derozio (1809-1831), Kashiprosad Ghose (1809-1873), Michael Madhusudan
Dutt (1827-1873) and Bankim  Chandra Chatterjee (1838-1894) were some of the pioneers of Indian
creative writing in English’. Butt this writing was more derivative rather than creative. Ghose and Dutt,
one of Tom Moore, the other of the lesser, romantic Byron, and Aurobindo Ghose (1867-1924) wrote a
delicate kind of Victorian lyric in Love Songs and Elegies (1898’. Even Sarojini Naidu, famous though she
was, wrote merely meretricious pseudo-romantic verse in the style of the nineties.
At first, barring encomiastic reviews, there was almost no Indian criticism of this literature. Bhupa Singh,
the chronicler of Anglo-Indian fiction, did, however add a brief appendix to his book about some Indian
writers of fiction. Singh’s book was published in 1934 and he has not mentioned any writer who gained
fame later. Criticism egan in earnest in the 1950s and K.R. Srinivasa Iyenga’s book study of Indian writing
in English (1959) by an Indian critic. Narasimhaiah’s The Swan and the Eagle (1968), R.S. Singh’s Indian
Novel in English (1977) and Uma Parameswaran’s A study of Representative Indo-English Novelists
(1976), to mention only three studies, came later. There are also a large number of researches articles,
some sub-standard and others good, which are produced in Indian or by Indians writing in Western
journals. In other words a lot is being written about Indian writing in English at present.
The most important and balanced account of this criticism and its concerns has been given by Feroza F.
Jussawalla in her book entitled Family quarrels (1985). She tells us that critics have been concerned more
with the nationalistic theme and variants of it than with other factors. It was nationalism which led to the
major debate in Indian criticism it should, be produced in English at all. The other main concern is with
Indianness, the success a writer achieves in creating literature with a genuinely Indian quality. The
manipulation of long age to express Indianness and the endorsement of nationalism implicit in such a
demand are also derived from nationalism.
The choice of the English language, as I mentioned above, has been one of the major problem of Indian
criticism. There are many levels and aspects of this problem. At the most polemical level Indian critics
object to the use of the English language because, as Feroze Jussawalla reproducing the argument of .P.
Mehta puts it:
Indians write in English to impress the British, to gain a wider readership international and national;
Indians want the world to see that nationalist India is different; they distrust the vernaculars because the
are not universal language, and because of their Western education and Western models; they write at the
inspiration of Western writers.              
At a more sophisticated level, Indian critics have invoked the extreme version of the Sapir-Whorf
hypotheses in their discussion of the possibility of using English to convey Indian reality. The extreme
version is an interpretation of the hypotheses put forward by the American linguists Edward Sapir (1884-
1939) and Benjamin lee Whorf (1897-1941). According to this:
There are no restrictions on the amount and type of variation to be expected between languages, including
their semantic structures, and that the determining effect of language on though is total.
It was claimed on the basis of this hypothesis that Indian cultural experience, and by analogy any culture
bound experience, can only be communicated in the language in which it is experience by a person who
speaks that language as a mother tongue. In the 1960 the Whorfian issue became important when a
special issue of Indian writing Today referred to it in the editorial. The crux of the issue was whether
Indianness could be expressed in a foreign English; Mulk Raj  Anand’s use of indigenous expressions; and
Raja Rao’s syntactic deviations have all been attacked or praised by the critics more of success on
communicating indianness, a nationalistic c0ncern, than for artistic validity.
The writers themselves, o at least the best ones, were more concerned about art than politics. R.K.
Narayan had the following to say about their use of English:
We are still experimentalists. I may straightaway explain what we do not attempt to do. We are not
attempting to write Anglo-saxon English. The English language, through sheer resilience and mobility, is
now undergoing a process of indianisation in the same manner as it adopted the U.S. citizenship over a
century age, with the difference that if is the major language there but here one of the fifteen.
But language remained a major issue such as it is not in African or Caribbean literature.
Another major issue, also connected with nationalism, is that of alienation and expatriation. Indian critics
have felt that expatriate (or western) writers, Kamala Markandaya and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala for instance,
are not capable of representing Indian reality authentically. Uma Parameswaran assert that writers who
are ‘not as rooted in Hindu culture as the native-talents or early writers lack as Indian sensibility’ and
their portrayal of Indian reality is not competent.” According to this ethnocentric criterion Jhabvalaabd
Markandaya’s understanding of India reality erroneous or at least flawed, indeed this is exactly what P.
Balaswamy argues in his criticism of Markandays’s A Handful of Rice (1966). And Jhabvala, inspite of her
brilliant portrayal of Indian life, has largely been found fault with because she is unflattering to Indian
and British alike. J.S. Lall in a review of Jhabvala’s novel Heat and dust (1975) said:
Mrs. Jhabvala’s marriage to an Indian is not an automatic key to an understanding of India. This is only
partly a book about India. It hardly matters; clearly it is written for markets that pay.
This is not true for, though marrying an Indian does no make one a novelist, talent does. And Mrs.
Jhabvala has the rare talent for portraying society realistically. Her novel The Nature of passion (1956),
for instance, is one of those rare works of fiction which contain deep insights into the minds of Indians of
different classes and backgrounds. Its theme is that the nature of passion In India is compromise and it is
truthful yet sympathetic towards Indian ways of feeling and thinking. The critics, it appears, are ready to
praise only those who are Indian nationalists, who are close sympathetic to Indian traditions and not
those who are objective, detached or fault-finding. To quote Jussawalla:
Traditionally, once a Brahmin crossed the seas, he lost his position of status. Contemporary criticism
merely invokes a similar authoritarianism. The concerns with the effort categorize writers as native sons
and expatriates is a function of a narrow brahmanical point of view.
Probably the most chauvinistic secriterion invoked for the evaluation of literature is a writer, attitude
towards the Indian leader Gandhi. The cult of Gandhi clouded literary judgment so much that even R.K.
Narayan was criticized for his controversial treatment of Gandhi in waiting for the Mahatma (1955). It is,
indeed, ‘ironic that it is in the treatment of Gandhism that critics have been most partisan in their value
judgments about literature’.
The state of criticism in Third Worlds literature in English in general and that of Indian literature in
particular has been dealt with at such length to point out that the nationalistic pitfall in particular and
non-literary criteria in general must be avoided in the criticism of any literature. They have been avoided,
or are at least less in evidence, in Pakistani literature but only because there is very little Pakistani
criticism of this new literature in existence. Almost the only area in which work does exist is in
bibliography. Since 1965 the Journal of Commonwealth Literature has been publishing a brief note
followed by a bibliography of Pakistani writing in English and other languages. This bibliographical note
was written by Syed Ali Ashraf in the beginning. Then Maya Jamil and later Alamgir Hashmi started
writing it. Unfortunately the note is hardly analytical nor is it meant to be. What is worse is that it is also
incomplete since many publications in English are obscure and it is almost impossible for anyone to keep
track of all that is being printed in the country. Book reviews are mostly indiscriminating and full of
clichés and praise. Hashmi’s own book reviews, especially those which are published in foreign journals,
are free of these faults. However, as a critic even Hashmi is impressionistic rather than analytical and
Pakistani criticism still at a very unsophisticated level.
As yet no Pakistani university offers a course in either Pakistani or even in African, west Indian and
Indian literature in English. However, recently the University of Peshawar in its journal entitled The
journal of the English Literary Club has been publishing the works of Pakistani writers and even critical
articles and reviews of these works. Earlier, the University of Karachi used to publish Venture which
published some excellent articles on Pakistani Quarterly, the weekend magazines of  the English Dailies
and institutional magazines too have been publishing short stories and poems but very little criticism. The
Nation (Lahore) has, however Published several articles on Pakistani literature in English and the Muslim
and the Frontier post publish short stories. The Star and eveningwear from Karachi, publisher humorous
pieces and Dawn group of newspapers too publish reviews and occasional poems. Perhaps the only
journal in Pakistan which has been a serious forum for debate about literary matters and as published
some of the most talented young poets of Pakistan is The Ravi, the magazine of the prestigious
Government College Lahore It was in The Ravi that the debate whether Pakistani writers should use
English for creative work was carried on. And it was in the pages of this magazine that many poets whose
works will be dealt with in detail in the chapter on poetry first achieved publication.
The Government College also publisher another journal entitled Explorations. This is the product of the
Department of Ravi, University research journals hardly contain articles on Pakistani literature in English
and there is no equivalent of the prestigious Indian academic journals such as the journal of Indian
Writing in English.
Because of this lack of criticism the history of Pakistani literature in English has yet not been written
though such histories exist for other Third World literatures in English. This book is being written to fill
this gap. This book is historical as well as critical. It is this latter aspect of it which is a source of its
strength as well as weakness: strength because criticism is always required to crate the criteria for
evaluating creative writing; weakness because this criticism is a product of my personal judgment which
could well be prejudiced, mistaken or erroneous. The mistake, however, will not proceed from chauvinism
at least. I have, therefore, tried not to use non-literary criteria to evaluate literature, whether a writer is, in
any sense of the word, nationalistic, Islamic or traditionalist is of no relevance to the judgment of his
work. Pakistani literature is being studied not for nationalistic reasons but simply because it too is one of
the new literatures of the Third World written in the English language. The definition of Pakistani
therefore, is loose rather than strict; cultural rather than political. I have for instance, included several
works of e   expatriate writers like Zulfikar Ghose, Hanif Kureishi and Tariq Mehmood though some of
them do not even call themselves Pakistani but are of Pakistani origin and their works are relevant to
Pakistani literature.
Some writers who have written prolifically have been given no attention whereas others who have
produced only one slim volume of verse or a collection of short stories have been commented upon. This
has been done for one of the following two reason: either the writer has not collected his separate writings
in a single collection or, and here my personal judgment come in, I have not considered the work worthy
of critical attention at all. In the latter case the work has been mentioned in the bibliography and may be
read and given a different interpretation y some other critic. If a work does exit in the form of a book and
had not been mentioned in the bibliography it has not been read by me and I would be most grateful if
someone makes it available. However, I venture to ass that such works will be very few indeed because I
have made every effort to read every important literary work written by Pakistanis. I have confined myself
to that part of the country which used to be called West Pakistan till the separation of  Bangladesh in 1971.
Logically the creative works of East Pakistan till 1971 should have been dealt with but, unfortunately, they
could not be procured inspite of my best efforts. It was because of this limitation that I decided to limit
myself to that part of the country which is called Pakistan now.
This is a history and the arrangement is chronological. I have started with pre-partition fiction and then
proceeded to deal with the fiction of the fifties and so on till the late eighties poetry, drama and prose have
been given separate chapters. Great literary figures too have been given separate chapters. The conclusion
sums up the themes of Pakistani literature in English and attempts to compare this literature with
other Third World literatures.

It is hoped that this book will generate interest in Pakistani literature and its criticism. It may also help
the common reader as well as the specialist of Commonwealth of Third Worldliterature in English
language. This knowledge is useful not only for understanding the phenomenon of the rise of new
literatures in English but also for understanding the nature of creativity itself. And that is a question
which finally transcends all labels and all questions.