1. Assignment: comparison of south Asian poets
Aga shahid Ali
Kamala das
Raza Ali Hassan
Taslima nasrin
Submitted by: madiha habib
Submitted to: madam asma mansoor
Course title: south Asian literature

2. OUTLINE:
 Introduction
 Background and analysis of Aga Shahid Ali’s poetry
 Background and analysis of Kamala Das’s poetry
 History and analysis of Raza Ali Hassan’s poem
 Historical background and analysis of Taslima Nasrin’s poetry
 Comparison of the above four poets both thematically and
stylistically
 Conclusion.

3. South Asian Literature is very broad genre due to diversity of its culture. It is diverse on the
basis of variation across ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic lines. All of them are inter-
related. Hyphenated and hybrid identity is specific theme dealt in South Asian Literature.
Conflict of identity is the theme of many of the writers. They highlight the socio-cultural
patterns of the region which are essentially localized issues. There is sense of belonging and un-
belonging and the writers translate words in order to create a distance between them and the
audience of other cultures. They use English as a medium to represent their culture and
traditions.
Comparison of Aga Shahid Ali, Kamala Das, Raza Ali Hassan
and Taslima Nasrin:
AGA Shahid Ali:
Aga Shahid Ali had a firm commitment to literary aesthetics and he is often recognized by his
form. He has a hyphenated identity as a Kashmiri-(Indian)-American. He was born in a rich,
educated, liberal Kashmiri family. Although he was a Shia Muslim but he got his early education
from a Catholic convent school. He had a cosmopolitan upbringing. He showed his belief in
Christianity and Hinduism and his family was satisfied about this. Shahid’s identity is created by
the interweaving of many historical strands, and that multiple personalities are reflected in his
writing. Shahid introduced himself as a Muslim to his American students. He completed his
doctoral research on T.S Eliot and his interest in Eliot contributed a lot to his writing. Shahid is
interested in poetry’s form, literary allusion and literary antecedents. There is an
autobiographical aspect to many of his poems in his collection “A Country Without a Post
Office” and several of the poems are entirely imagery inventions. He reflected political
dimensions and agonizing representations of the darkness of Kashmir in 1990s. Before 1990s
Kashmir was very peaceful. It was considered piece of heaven. The riots started in Kashmir
after the division of Sub-Continent. . There have been terrible Indian government reprisals,
including rapes, curfews, torture, imprisonment, and murder, and the collection portrays many
of these atrocities. The local Kashmiri government was also very corrupt. Kashmir was
witnessing interreligious and interethnic hatred. People were mercilessly and ruthlessly killed.
Kashmiri people fought with their poverty. There was bleakness all around. Houses were burnt
and people were forced to migrate. Their identity was crushed and their land was snatched.
There had been so much suffering that many people beginning to give up their hope. This is the
historical backdrop on which Shahid’s collection “The Country Without a Post Office” is based.
Aga Shahid Ali has very realistically presented the utter tyranny and demoralization and atrophy
of Kashmir in many of his poems like “The Country without Post Office….”, “I See Kashmir from
New Delhi at Midnight”.

4. Aga Shahid Ali is a poet of loss and pain. His themes revolve around identity crisis, lamentation,
nationalism, destruction, displacement etc. We find these themes in many of his poems.
“The Country without a Post Office” is notable for its recurring themes. Events are described
from different points of view in order to shed light on the Kashmir situation. For example, the
death of the young Kashmiri Rizwan at the hands of the Indian security forces is related from
the perspectives of family members, friends, and mysteriously intangible narrators. Certain
images are repeated several times in the text. There are repeated evocations of a return to
Kashmir as a paradise lost. Before the violence, Kashmir was almost as an earthly heaven. The
Mughal Emperor, Jahangir commented about Kashmir: ‘If on earth there is a garden of bliss, it is
this, it is this, it is this’. Concern that Shahid exhibits is to bring an international dimension to
the Kashmir situation. Here we can see his nationalistic spirit. We find the same themes in
poem “I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight”.
Theme of lamentation, destruction and displacement is also found in Aga Shahid’s “Zainab’s
Lament in Damascus” where he discussed the extreme cruelty faced by the family of Prophet
(PBUH). The situation of Kashmir has the same association with the event of Karbala.
Aga Shahid’s style is very significant. He borrowed many techniques from modern western
tradition. He employed many stylistic devices. There is a comparison of Eastern and Western
poetry. He focused on the aesthetic experience which is the characteristic of Russian formalists.
The epigraphs in his poems connect the Kashmir conflict with earlier anti-colonial struggles.
‘letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.’
He has incorporated technique of ecological mimeticism by conveying association of local
culture.
‘where minaret has been entombed’
‘On the edge of cantonment, where Gupkar Road ends.’
‘His blood sheer rubies
on Himlayan snow?’
‘I’ve tied a knot
with green thread at Shah Hamdan’
Traditional images are used in the local context.

5. ‘In autumn when the wind blows sheer ice, the chinar leaves fall in clusters’
Polar binaries are there which are inverted. Dark is preferred over light, ash over snow, black
over white, insanity over sanity.
The tone is conversational and no rhyming scheme is followed. Symbolism is employed.
‘Rizwan’ is the symbol of freedom, ‘ash’ is symbol of revival, and ‘darkness’ is symbol of pain
and loss.
We find references to Greek mythology and Biblical myths.
‘Empty? Because so many fled, run away
and became refugees there in the plains
where they must now will a final dewfall
to turn the mountains to glass’
This is the idea of mass movement out of migration borrowed from Biblical exodus.
The technique of transferred epithet is used by Aga Shahid Ali.
‘and snow begins to fall
on us, like ash.’
This is reference to Greek mythology in which Phoenix grows out of ash which shows revival.
‘only silence can now trace my letters
to him. Or in a dead office the dark panes’
‘the city from where no news can come
is now so visible in its curfewed night
that the worst is precise:’

6. Technique Of refrain is found in the following lines
‘In this dark rain, be faithful, Phantom heart,
this is your pain. Feel it. You must feel it.
I’m inside the fire. I have found the dark.
This is your pain. You must feel it. Feel it,’
We also find paradox of fire and dark in the above lines.
Aga Shahid Ali has entered in the surrealistic world in the following lines
‘Nothing will remain, everything’s finished,
I see his voice again: ‘This is a shrine
of words. You’ll find your letters to me. And mine
to you.’
We also find surrealism in his representation in which Kashmir is a nightmarish world where
people and cities are burnt alive. This idea is borrowed from T.S Eliot and surrealistic poetry of
French writer Baudillaire who talked about lost cities and people.
‘The mad guide. The lost speak like this. They haunt
a country when it is ash.’
Aga Shahid also employed technique of Defamiliarization introduced by Russian formalists.
‘fire runs in waves’.
Aga Shahid Ali has used power of his words to articulate sense of loss and pain experienced by
the people and in this purpose he has translated silence into reality. He has revived the modern
themes. He has expressed those voices like Tennyson that have become still. Although he was
a diasporic writer but he has exactly painted the xerox of reality.
Kamala das:
Kamala das was an Indian writer. She was born in the area of Kerala. She was married at the age
of 15. Her husband encouraged her to write, he never prevented her from writing. She was
breaking the norms of the writing by acquiring knowledge. She was able to transgress the
boundaries which were being imposed on Indian woman at that time. The women were being

7. exploited and kamala das wanted to find the ways through which the woman should find her
voice, she wanted the woman to be liberated. Kamala das chose the figure of woman for her
poetry so that the voice could be given to her. She consistently refused to accept the silence of
women. She wrote very explicitly about what she desired. Double pressure was being imposed
on her when she wrote about her desires. Her own language was tabooed. She had to cross the
linguistic boundaries. She was articulating in the language of masters. She was highlighting her
own issues in a foreign language. She was known as a prominent Indian poet, memoirist and
short-story writer and her work was known for her daring subject which she chose for her
poetry. She discussed the women’s sexual lives very openly. Her open and honest treatment of
female sexuality infused her writing with power. She was known for her many short stories and
poetry written in English language. She wrote about love, its betrayal and the consequent
anguish. She wrote on diverse range of topics. After being asked by her lover Sadiq Ali, she
embraces Islam in 1999. She had sexual relationship with Sadiq Ali who was an Islamic scholar
and much younger than her.
In her poem “the maggots”, she highlighted that women’s sufferings are very old. In this poem
she framed the pain of lost love with ancient Hindu myths. She believed that feeling of longing
and loss is not confined to a private misery. Radha being a goddess, still had to suffer and was
an entity. Radha was not allowed to love Krishna because it was against societal rules. Radha’s
silence was given voice by kamala das. The element of womanhood was there in her poetry.
Kamala das was of the view that woman should take the pen in order to highlight her
experience. She has to defy the males of her own society. .kamala Das ventured into areas
unclaimed by society. She transcended the role of a poet and embraced the role of a very
honest and straight forward woman.
She talked about marginalized people. In her poem “the dance of eunuchs”, she talked about
the sufferings of the eunuchs. The eunuchs have been engaged to guard the higher authority.
They have been pushed to the periphery. They have been exploited. They are free only to ask
for alms or charity. Kamala das showed her concern with the fact that how the eunuchs, the
marginalized beings should make themselves heard. She talked about the identity crises. The
sense of identities of eunuchs is not definitive. They themselves are suffering from eternal
drought while praying for rain. So Kamala Das talked about the exploitation of eunuchs in a
society.
In the poem “The Old Playhouse”, she talked about the plight of the women. She was of the
view that woman had to modify her nature. The man is seeing the woman as the opposite
reflection of himself. The woman is like the play hose and man shut down the light of that
playhouse. We find the element of feminism in this poem.

8. She used several techniques in her poetry. The one technique is of “binary opposition”.
“…there were green Tattoos on their cheeks, jasmine in their hair, some
Were dark and some were fair. “
In the following lines, she expressed the sense of lack of un-fulfillment.
“They sang of
Lovers dying and or children left unborn….”
In the poem “The Old Playhouse” she compared the woman with a dwarf.
“….Cowering
beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and
became a dwarf.”
In a poem “the maggots” she compared the woman with a corpse in the following lines.
“What Is?
Is to the corpse if the maggots nip?”
We can find the alliteration in the following lines of “the dance of the Eunuchs”
“Richly clashing and anklet jingling, jingling
Jingling….”
Raza Ali Hassan:
Raza Ali Hassan is a Muslim American poet. His poetry collections are “Grieving Shias” and “67
mogul miniatures”. He has borrowed ideas from Allama Iqbal. He uses violent imagery that is
mixed with sheer poetic artistry in his writing. He always wanted to portray a full and realistic
picture of the world.
In his collection of “mogul miniatures” he gave a very ritualistic imagery of religious events. His
poetry deals with the theme of the martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussain (RA). Our prophet’s
family had suffered a lot. Imam Hussain had given his life so that the war would end. Raza has
highlighted the sufferings experienced by family of Prophet (PBUH) in Karbala. He has revived
the tradition of Imam Hussain. It was predicted that Imam Hussain would be suffering a lot.
They sacrificed so that the Muslim would be united. Raza has given a very clear imagery of the
sufferings of prophet’s family. He has shown the sense of guilt in the last line.
“Even our beloved prophet’s family
Could not be spared the blade”

9. Very ritual imagery has been presented in the following lines.
“I kept my ear faithfully pinned to the ground
And heard a grand funeral theme- …”
We find the alliteration in the following lines.
‘.. the thump thump
Of chest beating and calling out to the murdered grandson,’
He grafted the word ‘bulbul’ from Urdu language.
‘while alone bulbul shrieked in my other ear.’
We also find binaries (black/white) in the following lines
‘The soundless, grainy black-and-white skirmish’
We find theme of lamentation in Raza Ali’s poetry. He portrayed the utter tyranny inflicted
upon the people at Karbala during Muharram.
Taslima Nasrin:
Taslima Nasrin is a Bangladeshi author and former physician who have been living in exile since
1994. She is a secular humanist and works for freedom of thought, equality for women and
human rights. She was born in a Muslim family. She graduated from University of Dhaka with an
MBBS degree. She showed a propensity for poetry when she was in college by writing as well as
editing a poetry journal. After graduation, she practiced gynecology. During her practice she
routinely examined young girls who had been raped and giving birth to illegitimate children.
She heard women in the delivery room cry out in despair if their baby was a girl. During that
time Islam was portrayed very negatively by the religious representatives. Women rights were
violated in the name of religion. In the typical patriarchal setup, there was complete dominance
of men over women. Women were not allowed to speak for their rights. They were being
treated like slaves and considered objects of pleasure. Men celebrated their victory on the
bodies of women. Women were bitterly humiliated. Women were suffering extreme agony.
Taslima Nasrin is a freedom lover. She wanted to become an independent lady from the
beginning and wants all women to be bold. She was not ready to accept the male dominance
over her that is why she was divorced thrice. She could not make her marriage life successful
because her every husband wanted her to follow him blindly. She herself experienced sexual

10. abuse during her adolescence. Under such conditions she became nihilistic. She became atheist
over time. She was disillusioned from religion and started writing against Islam and religion. She
was being threatened by fundamentalist Muslim groups and she was forced to flee from
Bangladesh. She spent next ten years in Bangladesh in exile. Her identity was snatched. Her
passport was confiscated, her books were banned. She was granted citizenship by Swedish
government.
Early in her literary career, Taslima wrote mainly poetry, and published many collections of
poetry between 1982 and 1993, often with female oppression as a theme, and often containing
very graphic language. We find unendurable loneliness, uncertainty and deathly silence in her
poetry.
Autobiographical elements are present in her poetry. Her collection of poems "Banished within
and without” was a big success. She succeeded in attracting a wider readership. Her works are
translated in more than twenty languages. Her writing is characterized by two connected
elements: her struggle with the Islam of her native culture, and her feminist philosophy. She
cites Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir as influences. Her later poetry also evidences a
connection to Bangladesh and India. Nasrin’s writings express her thoughts on religion,
feminism, and sexuality.
Character
You're a girl
and you'd better not forget
that when you cross the threshold of your house
men will look askance at you.
When you keep on walking down the lane
men will follow you and whistle.
When you cross the lane and step onto the main road
men will revile you, call you a loose woman.
If you've no character
you'll turn back,
and if you have
you'll keep on going
as you're going now

11. In this poem Taslima Nasrin has highlighted the character of a woman, she reminds the woman
of all the restrictions that have been imposed on her by the society particularly the patriarchal
society. A woman should not forget about her limits and boundaries that have been set around
her. When the woman come out of her home, the men of the society see her with a sideways
glance. The men will keep creating disturbance for the woman so that she could be weak and
could not come out of her home. They harass the woman and feel pleasure. The men use
abusive language behind the woman’s back. Women are objects of pleasure for men. They
don’t consider her a human being rather an object of pleasure and sight. Strong woman won’t
turn back ever. They would keep moving forward. As they are growing, they are getting aware
of the harsh realities of society. The woman is always being suppressed by the man. They are
not free entities.
The diction in this poem is very straightforward and simple. The tone of poet is conversational,
there is no rhyming no any stylistic technique is employed.
“Happy Marriage”
My life,
like a sandbar, has been taken over by a monster of a man.
He wants my body under his control
so that if he wishes he can spit in my face,
slap me on the cheek
and pinch my rear.
So that if he wishes he can rob me of my clothes
and take the naked beauty in his grip.
So that if he wishes he can pull out my eyes,
so that if he wishes he can chain my feet,
if he wishes, he can, with no qualms whatsoever,
use a whip on me,
if he wishes he can chop off my hands, my fingers.
If he wishes he can sprinkle salt in the open wound,
he can throw ground-up black pepper in my eyes.
So that if he wishes he can slash my thigh with a dagger,
so that if he wishes he can string me up and hang me.
He wanted my heart under his control
so that I would love him:
in my lonely house at night,
sleepless, full of anxiety,
clutching at the window grille,

12. I would wait for him and sob,
My tears rolling down, I would bake homemade bread;
so that I would drink, as if they were ambrosia,
the filthy liquids of his polygynous body.
So that, loving him, I would melt like wax,
not turning my eyes toward any other man,
I would give proof of my chastity all my life.
So that, loving him
on some moonlit night I would commit suicide
in a fit of ecstasy
In her poem “Happy Marriage” and “Border”, Nasrin talks of male domination over women. A
woman speaks of how her husband has taken control of her entire life, desiring to hold
absolute power over her body. She describes her husband who physically, emotionally and
sexually abuses her. He wanted her to love him, and when she didn’t he became frustrated. She
illustrates a vivid picture of a woman mad with love, and committing suicide as a testament to
her ecstasy at his hands. Nasrin created overly romantic image. She is sarcastic and cynical
about husband’s wishes.
In this poem Taslima Nasrin has used some symbols. She compared husband with ‘monster’
which is symbol of violence and cruelty.
‘My life,
like a sandbar, has been taken over by a monster of a man.’
‘Suicide’ in the following lines is the symbol of escape from reality which is husband’s
oppressive control.
‘on some moonlit night I would commit suicide
in a fit of ecstasy’
We also find binaries here like suicide/ecstasy. These binaries are inverted. Suicide is preferred
over life.
Technique of refrain is employed by the poet. ‘if he wishes’ is repeated several times in the
text.
‘if he wishes, he can, with no qualms whatsoever,
use a whip on me,
if he wishes he can chop off my hands, my fingers.
If he wishes he can sprinkle salt in the open wound’

13. Can't I Have A Homeland To Call My Own?
Am I so dangerous a criminal, so vicious an enemy of humanity,
Such a traitor to my country that I can't have a homeland to call my own?
So that my land will snatch away from the rest of my life my homeland?
Blindly from the northern to the southern hemisphere,
Through mountains and oceans and rows and rows of trees,
Blindly in the heavens, in the moon, in the mists and in sunshine,
Blindly groping through grass and creepers and shrubs, earth and mankind, I have gone
Searching for my homeland.
Once I had exhausted the world, I touched the shores
Of my homeland to exhaust my span of life,
Only to have the sense of security of an utterly exhausted thirsty soul
Brutally uprooted, and you throw away the little water cupped in my hand,
And sentence me to death, what name can I have for you, land?
You stand on my chest like an enormous mountain,
You stamp on my throat with your legs in boots,
You have gouged out my eyes,
You have drawn my tongue out and snapped it into pieces,
You have lashed and bloodied my body, broken both my legs,
You have pulverized my toes, prized open my skull to squash my brain,
You have arrested me, so that I die,
Yet I call you my homeland, call you with infinite love.
I've uttered a few home truths, hence I am a traitor to my homeland.
I'm a traitor because you've chosen to walk shoulder to shoulder with liars in procession.
You've warned me with raised fingers to give a damn to humanity,
And whatever else I may have or not, I can't have a homeland to call my own.
My land, you dug into my heart and hacked out of my life my own homeland.
This poem was written while Taslima was forced to live in confinement in an undisclosed
location in Delhi. We find theme of belonging and un-belonging to her homeland. Her identity is
suspended. She is facing identity crisis. Her love for her country is deepened in her soul and
every part of her body. She wanted to return to her land but her land does not support her. She
is lamenting that she is treated like a criminal for no reason.
There are binaries in poem. Heaven/mist, moon/sun
‘Blindly in the heavens, in the moon, in the mists and in sunshine,’
In the following lines ‘broken legs’ symbolizes that all the paths are being blocked, all the ways
are cut off.

14. ‘You have lashed and bloodied my body, broken both my legs,’
‘thirsty soul’ symbolizes the pain and suffering of poet.
‘Only to have the sense of security of an utterly exhausted thirsty soul’
We also find a simile ‘like an enormous mountain’ in the poem.
‘You stand on my chest like an enormous mountain;
you stamp on my throat with your legs in boots’
Taslima Nasrin talked about the treatment of women in her writing. She wrote for the equality
for women. She believed that woman should have equal space in the society. She was against
the woman harassment. She also showed a strong love for her nation. Pain, lamentation and
feminism are the common themes of her poetry. She is very conversational in tone. She
explained everything explicitly. She did not employ much stylistic techniques. There are no
references to Biblical and Greek myths.
From the above analysis we come across many similarities and differences in themes and style
of the poets Aga Shahid Ali, Kamala Das, Raza Ali Hassan and Taslima Nasrin. Theme of pain,
migration, identity crisis, lamentation, suffering, and sense of belonging are common in their
poems which are the general themes of South Asian Literature. We find theme of feminism and
sexuality in the poetry of Kamala Das and Taslima Nasrin and these themes are not present in
the poetry of Aga Shahid Ali and Raza Ali Hassan. All of them used English as a medium but the
background of poetry was their own local culture, traditions, society and religion. They did not
go out of it. Their poetry is easy to comprehend for the masses of South Asia. Aga Shahid Ali
showed his sense of belonging to Kashmir in his poems “The Country Without a Post Office” and
“I See Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight”. In the same way Taslima Nasrin has showed her
belonging to Bangladesh in poem “Can’t I Have A Homeland to Call My Own?”. Both Aga Shahid
and Raza Ali talked about the event of Karbala and martyrdom of Hazrat Imam Hussain (RA) in
poems “Zainab’s Lament in Damascus” and “From 67 mogul miniatures”. Taslima Nasrin and
Kamala Das depicted the themes of violation of women rights, dominance of male over female
and the construction of female identity by patriarchal social setup in their poems “The
Maggots”, “The Old Playhouse” and “Character”, “Married Life”. All of them are poets of Pain
and loss. All of them portrayed sheer pain, bleakness and suffering of their people in one way
or other.
Talking about style we can say that Aga Shahid’s poetry is highly symbolic and the readers need
to read between the lines to understand the idea conveyed by him. There is no such ambiguity
in poetry of Taslima Nasrin and Kamala Das. Their poetry is easy and comprehendible in a single

15. glance. The readers do not need to go in the depth in order to understand the main idea of
their writing. We find many techniques employed by Aga Shahid like ecological mimeticism,
Defamiliarization, juxtaposition, paradox, transferred epithet, symbolism ,references to Biblical
and Greek myths, Refrain and so on to beautify his poetry, but the poetry of Taslima Nasrin and
Kamala Das incorporated very few techniques like symbolism , refrain, binaries. There is a
reference to Hindu mythology in poem “The Magotts” of Kamala Das but there is no such
reference in poems of Taslima Nasrin. Her tone is conversational and straight forward. She
presented everything explicitly and there is no ambiguity for the readers to understand her
themes.
Conclusion:
South Asian writes are famous for introducing modern themes. Their themes and ideas overlap
greatly. They portrayed their culture, the common problems of the people of their circle and
religion through their poetry.th one thing which we found common in these south Asian poets
is that they all are having the hyphenated identity. They themselves have suffered a lot
therefore we find nearly the same themes in their writing. All of them have talked about the
problems coped by their very own people. These poets have shared the same concern. From
the analysis of the above four poets we can say that the South Asian writers are very much
concerned about the issues of their people. They give voice to the still sounds of the masses
through their writings. They brought their culture and traditions to the global front.