Ways of Being Desi

Title: Ways of Being Desi

Author: Ziauddin Sardar

Publisher: Viking Penguin, 2018 (First)

ISBN: 9780670091522

Pages: 229

The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 split a society, culture and history into two that immediately began a wargame to subdue the other. There is no love lost between them as we see in the four military encounters the two brothers managed to stage in the first 50 years of their separated existence. It is the deterrent of a well-stocked nuclear arsenal on both sides that keep them at bay. The international border between the two countries is tightly sealed and heavily guarded. Therefore, the home communities of Indians and Pakistanis do not have a chance to interact with each other. Every time India opened its doors for ‘people-to-people contacts’, terrorists infiltrated and unleashed horrible acts of terror in which innocent people were mowed down like grass with deadly assault rifles. There are no direct flights between the two countries. You have to either fly to Dubai or Colombo to get a connection to Karachi or Lahore. But the Indian expatriate community in Britain lives cheek by jowl with similar Pakistani members. Intellectuals among both communities often reminisce nostalgically about a shared past that would never return. Ziauddin Sardar is a Pakistani writer, journalist and cultural critic who migrated to Britain in childhood. He has authored many books and some of them are reviewed earlier in this blog. In this book, Sardar lets his imagination hover over the cultural aspects of the India-Pakistan divide and what the two cultures have in common. This is a befitting attempt to gauge the strength of the current that united them through the media of cinema, drama and Urdu poetry. Being a serious critic of all three, he lays threadbare before us the incursion of modernity into them and how it transforms whatever it touches into forms totally unrecognizable to aficionados.

Sardar notes the disconnected self of Pakistani society from its own societal roots in the pre-Islamic past which lends it the nature of a vagabond. It deliberately devolved itself from the composite Indian legacy and took the path to an Islamic future. Pakistan was the first country in the world to have born on the basis of religion alone. The author notes that it found Wahhabism as a perfect fit for Pakistan’s truncated self, since it also is an ahistorical ideology that abhors history. Wahhabism suited a state built on falsification and distortion of history (p.35). A cursory glance at the history textbooks reveals its painful worthlessness. The message it imparts to the students is to follow the dictates of the regime in power, support military rule and to glorify wars and hate India – all in the name of religion. Sardar alleges that though the country was born in the name of Islam, it is slowly being destroyed in the name of Islam. At any given time, half the population cannot wait to leave Pakistan and migrate to America. The remaining half relies on American aid without which the country would collapse.

Britain has a sizeable Pakistani diaspora that comes with its own problems. This community has neither been able to integrate itself into the British society nor even to respect its mores. The ‘grooming’ scandals involving clever planning by Pakistani boys to lure unsuspecting British girls into forced sex are disturbing to any civilized society. Terrorism has its vast resources always ready in this overseas community. The Pakistanis are at the forefront of any terrorist attack on European soil, because of their better English language skills and adaptability as compared to people from the Middle East. Most Pakistanis, as the author says, wants to migrate from the home country, but once they reach greener pastures, want to recreate the hell they experienced back home. The vilest religious bigotry and intolerance is replicated in their adopted land, even at the cost of the hapless citizens who gave them their much needed asylum! A clear case to demonstrate this argument is given in this book, played out by the author himself. Ian Botham, the famous English cricketer of the 1980s, once remarked after an exasperating cricketing tour of Pakistan that the country was the best place to send your mother-in-law on an all-expenses-paid trip. This seemingly innocuous piece of verbal humour sent Sardar into a fury. What did he do to avenge Botham? If it had happened today, Botham would probably have found gunmen at his doorsteps. But this was the 1980s and Sardar, already a successful writer, went on a trip to Scunthorpe, Botham’s hometown, to find as many faults as possible with the place. What follows is a shockingly spiteful description of his experience, casting aspersions even on the moral rectitude of its inhabitants. It is high time that Europe should sit up and think seriously about letting in thousands more of such scumbags from Pakistan. What is amazing for the readers is the vital importance such people give to outward forms of religion even though they are well educated.

The book includes a tiring discussion on Indian cinema and a scurrilous comparison to Pakistani plays. The readers are treated to a long and unnecessary review of old Bollywood movies such as Mughal-e-Azam, Kaagaz ke Phool, Pyassa, Devadas and Ganga-Jumna. What we really see in this is the impotent whining of an aged uncle raging about modernity overtaking tradition. Sardar is even angry about the picturisation of two unimportant Muslim characters in a bad light in the movie Sholay – so much for our enlightened moderates! He is vehemently opposed to the impact Amitabh Bachchan had made in Indian cinema and even stoops to the level of character assassination of the Indian superhero by venting his ire on Bachchan’s mannerisms! For Sardar, Dilip Kumar is the one and only actor worthy of comment ever acted in Indian cinema, along with a grudging admiration of Guru Dutt as well. This is not astonishing considering the author’s prejudices when he explains that Dilip Kumar is the screen name of Yusuf Khan whose original native place was Peshawar in Pakistan. A similar review of Pakistani televised plays follows and comes to the conclusion that those are far artistically superior to Indian cinema. However, Sardar does not pause to examine why nobody in Pakistan bothers to watch these horrible ‘pieces of art’ even in their homes, but instead opt for smuggled Bollywood movies.

The book is written in a casual, reminiscent manner and heavy research has not gone into it. An interesting anecdote of an uncle who was a master of mysticism is also given. The narrative mentions Nur Jahan as the mother of Emperor Shah Jahan (p.56) as part of his argument on the harmonious nature of Mughal royalty. This surprising slip is unusual for the author. The error is especially interesting when it is remembered that the tussle for power after Jahangir’s death was directly fought between the camps of Prince Khurram (later known as Shah Jahan) and his stepmother, Queen Nur Jahan in which the former won, thereby keeping his life and eyesight intact while the queen faded into obscurity.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star