My idea of a perfect day is to lie in an armchair in the open sunshine reading a book. And this is exactly what I was doing that balmy April day in 1988 in Muzaffarabad. Our house was ideally located. Standing rather imposingly on a cliff, it was visible for miles from the valley of the river Jhelum below. And from the house one could see the buildings of the Legislative Assembly of Azad Kashmir. Behind the beautiful white buildings with a centerpiece of semi-classical architecture was the reddish line of the Jhelum flowing past. It ducked in and out of the curves, above which the straight walls of mountains rose to a road which took one’s breath away. And from my house I saw the toy-like vehicles negotiating those perilous curves above land-slides which seemed on the verge of tumbling down into the hurtling waves of the river. The lawn was filled with the fragrance of blossoms wafted down by the April breeze. The book I was reading was Jyotirindra Das Gupta’s Language, Conflict And National Development (1970)
‘It seems nobody has written on language and politics in Pakistan,’ I told my wife. Actually, I was only thinking aloud but one does not want to be taken as a lunatic every time one opens one’s mouth.
‘So, are you going to write another book,’ she said triumphantly like the thanedar who has finally caught the thief who stole the spoons.
‘Well, I just might. This chap Das Gupta did,’ I said tentatively.
She picked up Das Gupta’s tome gingerly and subjected it to close scrutiny. The scrutiny over, she left for the kitchen and sailed out with the cook in her train. Both of them carried what looked suspiciously like potato chips. Yes, they were chips all right.
‘Have some,’ said she, giving me a generous share.
‘It won’t put me off the book,’ I quipped as I gobbled them up.
‘Well, nothing will if you decide to be difficult,’ she laughed.
‘But remember this what’s-his-name,” she pointed at poor defenceless Das Gupta who lay supine on the chair.
‘Gupta is a famous scholar,’ I jumped to his defence.
“Precisely. So… he had research grants. He was at some American university.’
‘Berkeley,’ I told her, ‘or maybe Hawaii’.
‘Well, wherever he was he had books, research assistants and money. How will you get these things?’.
This was only too true, so I dug into the chips with more enthusiasm. It seemed there was no law against eating chips, though there were several unwritten ones against doing research for the pleasure of it.
But the desire did not die. It merely slept. In Rawalpindi I met my friend Col. Muhammad Hamid who, alas is no more in this world being a victim of Covid 19. I miss him very much and this conversation which I relate here has brought an avalanche of memories about him. He was, so to speak, the last man to be suspected of being a closet soldier, but he actually was in uniform and a lieutenant colonel to boot. Mercifully, he was only in the Army Education Corps and was himself a writer and, much to his credit, a very mild man who would not hurt a fly.
‘Berkeley,’ I told her, ‘or maybe Hawaii’.
‘Well, wherever he was he had books, research assistants and money. How will you get these things?’.
This was only too true, so I dug into the chips with more enthusiasm. It seemed there was no law against eating chips, though there were several unwritten ones against doing research for the pleasure of it
‘I am thinking of writing on language and politics,’ I confessed to him.
‘There is nothing in it’, he assured me.
Then, between sips of excellent tea, he told me that all language problems were created by Soviet agents who were in cahoots with Israeli and Indian agents.
‘But this is conspiracy theory pure and simple,’ I protested.
Colonel Hamid let out a pained giggle. My naivete had always exasperated and amused him.
‘It is just a game of the Russians,’ he said in a patient and reasonable voice again.
‘But that needs proof’, I said.
Hamid Sahib was really mortified. To talk about proof, as if his good friend so-and-so could not be trusted. This was excessive, but then friends are tiresome. However, he was much too polite to say harsh things about those who believed in the heresy of research methodology and I obstinately clung to the idea of collecting proof.
In 1991 I was given a short summer course on linguistics at the University of Cambridge. I was very happy that I would live in Cambridge once again as I used to during my research in the King’s College archives. My real aim was to bring back material to write my book on language politics in Pakistan. However, Macmillan publishers in London had accepted my Ph. D thesis for publication provided I updated it and made it conform to the format of a book rather than a thesis. Almost all of its chapters had already been published in scholarly journals so I was tempted to update it but I discovered I did not have time for two books and, what is more, I had lost interest in E.M. Forster. Hence, as it happened, I actually ended up doing more work on language politics than on Forster.
Anyway, I landed at Heathrow at night just like the first time I had arrived in Britain. And again, as on that occasion, I spent the night at the airport. In the morning, brimming with excitement despite not having slept a wink all night, I caught the coach for Cambridge. Entering Cambridge had all the heady intoxication of meeting a beloved. I hurried to Downing College where the porter showed me a suite of rooms which I loved – wood panelling, the air of having been in use for, an indescribable charm all its own coming down from centuries (sadly, however, it had been put in this shape only recently). Having had a shower and changed, I walked out on the streets of Cambridge enjoying the architectural splendour of the colleges. Then I came back to the college and enjoyed a wonderful lunch and, in the evening, a served dinner of several courses.
The course was very easy-going. There were lectures in the morning after a lavish breakfast. At midday there was a sumptuous lunch and then there was either an odd lecture or we were on our own. The evening dinner was taken seriously but if somebody missed it, nobody mentioned the truancy. I missed the morning lectures and the afternoon sessions sometimes because I spent time in the library photocopying material for both my books. The evening dinners I never missed since I enjoyed them very much. After them I had walks with the other participants – I do not remember any names now though my neighbour was from Estonia – and watched the T.V in the common room. Then I read and tried to sleep. We were exposed to distinguished academics and I had the pleasure of listening to Jean Aitchison – a very competent lecturer whom I admired very much. Others, who were no doubt distinguished as scholars, proved to be very inarticulate as lecturers. But the course did manage to introduce us to some of the best minds in linguistics in Britain at that time.
About my neighbour from Estonia I should like to say something more. His wife, a very no-nonsense kind of lady, kept him on a tight leash as he had acute diabetes. At one of the formal dinners she happened to look elsewhere and he immediately quaffed the white wine in a gulp and got another refill. This he sipped slowly rolling his eyes in appreciation till she turned to talk to her neighbour and then, again in a gulp, his glass was empty. And before she found out what had happened he was again quietly sipping his wine (‘first glass of course, darling’, as he assured her). Moreover, again when she was not looking, he conducted similar raids on bread and, when I assured him I did not eat bread, he even helped himself to mine. As for dessert, he had to be satisfied with just one helping but the port doing the rounds came in for more refills than was quite cosher. Even the coffee was not spared a liberal dose of sugar though he said loudly for the edification of his frowning lady who had seen his misbehaviour with the sugar, that Cambridge coffee was too bitter. He was also a wonderful conversationalist who could talk on any subject in the world. However, in the absence of his lady, his conversation wandered to the charms of such English rose buds as barmaids, waitresses and such female undergraduates whom he saw. Such discourses were balanced, as it were, by his running commentary on Cambridge colleges and British history about which he did know a lot. His wife was very courteous and sophisticated except when she had to rein in her effervescent husband. I enjoyed many conversations with both.
Towards the end of the course, Chandramohan came to visit me from Reading. He had developed diabetes and he almost fainted because I did not understand his condition and failed to provide him sugar at the proper time. He went back that very same evening and invited me to his house. His wife, Shanti, had gone back to Sri Lanka, her native country, and he was living a bachelor’s life. So, when the course came to an end, I caught the coach to Reading. Chandramohan was very hospitable but the cooking turned out to be something of an enigma and an impediment. What was planned to be chicken curry turned out to be chicken roast with charcoal and what we planned as a leafy vegetable dish was little else than some blackish ex-vegetable. However, the sandwiches Chandra made were exquisite – their model, he said, was Bhabiji’s (Hana’s) daily sandwich meal for both of us in Sheffield. Chandra now had his Ph. D and was looking for a job. I used to travel to London to read old documents on language policy in the India Office library in London. As it happens in archives, the material is difficult to find so I only managed to see only a little of it before I had to go back home since I had no more cash to continue my work.
I returned from Cambridge in late August and found, to my dismay, that Ahsan Ali Khan, known as a progressive poet of Urdu, was terminally ill with cancer. I had known him from childhood as an ‘uncle’ and his son, Tariq Ahsan, is my friend and the most gentle soul I have ever known. The only consolation was that Tariq Ahsan had come back from Canada to attend him. All those whom the Ahsans had known, and they were the most famous writers of Urdu literature as well as media persons (newspaper people we used to call them then) and bureaucrats came to see him. Among Tariq’s personal friends I and Shala Rafi attended regularly. Hana would also accompany me and Uncle Ahsan was really fond of Fahad whom he called my cheeta—the word Fahad means leopard in Arabic which is cheeta in Urdu—and greeted Tania also as guria (doll). But his strength kept failing though I donated blood as did Tariq Ahsan and some other people. Then, I think it was on the 11th of September, I got the news that he had passed away. I was asked to give him the mandatory bath after death, something which traumatizes me, but I could not refuse and did so. The sky was ablaze with red and the mourners stood mouthing unfeelingly the conventional clichés for death. As someone led us into the prayers after death, and the last rites were exactly as they would be for any conventional person, I felt so saddened. I felt as if progressive ideas had been buried and traditional, right wing ones, had asserted themselves.
In the days after Uncle Ahsan’s death, I met Tariq and Sherry, his little daughter, daily. I discussed with him what I was writing at that time. It was a chapter on British language policies and my basic thesis was that these policies were meant to consolidate the empire. While this was music to Tariq’s ears, he did not digest my praise of Western education and ideas such as democracy, female (partial) emancipation and science.
‘Yes, both the Orientalists and the Anglicists wanted to consolidate the empire’, I would argue ‘But contrary to what you might think, my own view is that Western education, which also meant modern science and modern medicine, was good for India’. Tariq probably did not agree but he kept quiet or murmured something about the violence inherent in science.
This kind of conversation would go on as I walked with him to his house and he walked back with me to mine. But the golden days of October never last forever. The shadow of the jet was over both of us. He had to return to Canada and I had to go to the University of Yemen. As I have described my stay in Yemen elsewhere it need not detain us here. As for research, all I did was to study seven books the photocopies of which I had taken with me and understand what language planning and linguistic politics meant.