1. PROSE IN PAKISTANI
LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
MR.MUHAMMAD ANEES SATTAR

2. • In her book Sind’s Contribution to English (1975), Amina Khamisani has included the names of all
those who have used the English language to write on such diverse subjects as economics, history and
Islam. I have not followed this approach not only because it would make this chapter very long and
tedious but also because I feel that one should include only prose with some of the distinctive
qualities of literature in this history of literary writing in the English language. In other words belles
lettres, creative writing in prose which does not fall into the realm of the short story or the novel
proper can legitimately be included in prose. Biographies are rather difficult to classify. Some
biographies, like Feroze Khan Noon’s From Memory (1966) and Shaista IkramulJah’s From Purdah to
Parliament (1963), do have literary qualities which can hardly be ignored in any historical account of
the development of prose in India and then in Pakistan. For instance, both Noon and Mrs. Ikramullah
have written simple, unpretentious English and their style is refreshingly different from trie rhetorical
style of most nineteenth century and early twentieth century Indian writers.

3. • But, apart from this brief notice, I shall not concern myself with biography as such. I have, however,
given a list of biographies and memoirs published in Pakistan or written by Pakistanis in the
bibliography. Most of these accounts have been written by politicians, generals and other eminent
men. Writers have hardly ever published biographies in English so we lack such candid accounts of the
development of the writer and the creative artist as we find elsewhere. As we find, for instance, in
Joyce’s fictionalised accounts of his torturous quest for finding artistic integrity: A Portrait of the
Artist as A Young Man and even Ulysses. And, coming to more explicit accounts, J.R. Ackerley’s
relentlessly honest account of his homosexuality in My Father and Myself (968) and Christopher
Isherwood’s slightly fictionalised treatment of the same theme in Christopher and His Kind (1977).
Coming to Third World literature in English one finds biographical accounts by: Mugo Gatheru, Child
of Two Worlds (1963), Zulfikar Ghose, Confessions of A Native-A lien; Shiva Naipaul, Beyond the
Dragon’s Mouth (1984) and Finding the Centre (1984); V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival (1987) and
Adewale Maja-Pearce, In My Father’s Country (1987).

4. • All of these accounts are distinguished by their desire to be true, to delve deep into the personality. And in some the
desire has produced masterpieces of not only biography or selfanalysis but literature in the broadest sense of the
word: that is to say, a record of that creative writing which is of human significance and which gratifies our
imagination and the intellect simultaneously. This kind of writing has not yet been produced by Pakistani writers with
the exception of Ghose’s book, which has been dealt with in detail, and some other essays. Excluding biographies
and prose works which fall into ; some other discipline, we are left with prose essays, usually ; written by journalists,
and other casual writings. This too ^ presents the problem of choice for there is a proliferation of > such works.
Fortunately the job has been made easier by ’ Maya Jamil’s article entitled ’Prose of Humour’
• 1 In this ar- ticle Maya Jamil has traced out the history of humorous l prose from the time of the brothers Mohammad
and ’ Shaukat Ali’s famous paper Comrade which began publication from Delhi in 1911. The Comrade was a political
paper, its raison d’etre being anti-British politics. Thus one finds much ridicule of the I.C.S. Commissioner whom
Forster called a minor deity, in a s series of humorous articles entitled Phantom Figures. The use of wit and irony in
order to criticize the government or the social system became the single dominant tradition of journalistic writing and
literary prose in Pakistan. Maya Jamil has made the point that most of our good writers - P Anwar Mooraj, Omar
Kureishi, M.R. Kayani and, above all,

5. • Khalid Hasan -- have been using laughter as ’a safety valve’ in order to
retain their sanity.2 This is, of course, one of the oldest traditions of the
prose essay going back to the eighteenth century: to Sir Roger de Coverley
and Swift. However, one of the first good writers of prose in undivided India,
at least among the Indian Muslims, was not a humorist. He was a liberal-
nationalist and his work is worthy of mention because there are very few
instances of such unprejudiced writing in the subcontinent. His name was
Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and his writings have been dealt with already in the
chapters on fiction. Here we are concerned with his travelogue Outside India
(1938) in which he describes his impressions of the world which he toured
as the special correspondent of The Bombay Chronicle.

6. • Abbas’s style, like that of Mrs. Ikramullah, is unpretentious and direct. He avoids
rhetorical flourishes as well as cliches. His ideas are those of a liberal humanist, and, what
is even more remarkable, of a genuinely just and reasonable person. For instance he
opposes Japanese glamourization of the army as well as Hitler’s jingoism. He condemns
colonial oppression but, and this is remarkable, is one of the few Muslims to have
condemned the oppression of the Jews by the Nazis. Abbas is against British imperialism
even to the point of being prejudiced and he attacks capitalism, especially American
capitalism. His work is worth reading not only because of his direct style but also because
it is one of the best sources for understanding the development of Muslim liberalism in
pre-partition India. For it is liberalism of some kind which informs the journalistic prose
pieces of most Pakistani writers of English prose.

7. • Among the first of these writers is Omar Kureishi, the man who is famous as a cricket
commentator. Kureishi lives in Karachi and still writes occasionally for the Karachi
newspapers The Dawn and The Star. His first published book containing his prose pieces
is entitled Black Moods. This deals with the life of Karachi during the fifties (it was
published in 1955). His second book entitled Out to Lunch covers the years between 1956
and 1958. Omar Kureishi’s talents as a commentator were recognised by many people
and Khalid Hasan’s article ’Give Me Omar Kureishi Any Time’ bears witness to that. His
prose, on the other hand, has never had much critical attention. It does, however, deserve
such attention. In the preface to Black Moods Omar Kureishi says: By tackling certain very
real problems (albeit with satire and a little facetiousness) I have tried to suggest in this
book that this feeling and sense of cornmunity is lacking in Pakistan (p. iv).

8. • He seems to suggest that The indifference of the public to social problems’ (p. v) is the main source of
underdevelopment in Pakistan. There is, of course, the other point of view that governments deliberately cultivate
such an attitude so that the class they support remains in power. However, the literary quality of the writings is not
affected by this political stance. The book is ’an attempted documentary on frustration’ according to its author and
this frustration has been expressed with the humour which comes of complete command over the language. Omar
Kureishi uses ironical devices and sustains the flippancy of expression he begins with throughout his best essays. In
his essay entitled ’Common Man’, for instance, the humour is sustained. He tells us that he goes out to look for the
mythical common man in whose interest all the politicians and officials claim to be labouring. Such a man, he
reasons, would have received the blessings of ’science, technology and natural resources’ (BM, 8). The field was
thereby considerably narrowed. That is to say I ruled out my Chaprasi (peon), one Ruknuddin by name, who certainly
did not fit into this category (p. 8). He goes on to exclude rickshaw drivers and petty shop keepers. Finally ’Karachi’s
most distinguished black-mar203 keter’ (p. 9) turns out to he the man he is looking for. He is the one, it turns out,
who has received all the benefits said to have been given to the common man.
• In some pieces like ’Rain’ and ’For the People’ the irony is not sustained. The writer starts lamenting about the
problems in a direct and emotional manner. It should be added, however, that this failing is rare. On the whole Omar
Kureishi’s humour is delightful and his irony consistent.

9. • The other prose writer who is worthy of note is also from Karachi. His name is Anwar Mooraj and he is an executive in
a business firm nowadays (1988). His contributions to the English papers of Karachi were collected by him in a book
entitled Sand, Cacti and People (1960). Mooraj has complete command over the English language, a fact which
accounts for the kind of humour he creates. For it is a humour dependent not on the situation, not on events and
caricature, but the manipulation of words. He is also conversant with German and has the sophistication of wide
reading and travel as well as urbane bringing up. All this makes his prose rich in allusion and polished, even, at
times, factitiously urbane. At its best, however, it is genuinely witty. For instance the book’s foreword is called
’forewarned’ and Mooraj tells us: Sand, Cacti and People was born in the smoky atmosphere of the Karachi Press Club
whilst the author was discussing chess openings with almond-eyed players eating toffees and toffee-eyed players
eating almonds (p. 4). The author’s use of irony is faulty. Instead of keeping the surface meaning discrepant from the
real one throughout a piece, he starts condemning the social problems of Karachi in a straightforward manner.
However, the humorous turn of phrase is still there and one can read his work not only for its humour but also as an
example of good prose ~ some of the best written in Pakistani newspapers whose standards are far from satisfactory
even by the lax standards of journalism.

10. • Another writer of English prose from the province of Sindh is Haleem Abdul Aziz. He has published the following
books: Nothing in Particular (1967), Nothing in Earnest (1967), Solo (1968), O Bartender (1968), The Decayed (1968),
Pop Writings (1975) and several items on Sindhi literature in English. He now writes in Sindhi for the most part
though he has also written earlier in Urdu. Haleem’s style is a mixture of standard English and Pakistani slang. The
slang has been deliberately used for humorous effect at places. Why is it, O’ bartender, that only a female of the
species does the doing? Or do the dousing? (Pop Writings, 6). Most of his humour comes from witty references to sex.
Since the taboos on sex are officially so stringent in Pakistan, smutty allusions are a part of men’s conversation in the
country. They provoke much laughter and, since Haleem was obscure, could not be banned by the regime. In any case
it is only now (during Zia’s Martial Law), and then very rarely, that books are banned on grounds of being indecent in
Pakistan. So Haleem has passages such as this in Pop Writings: Is there any difference between satisfying one person
and satisfying a thousand persons? Never mind the thousand, but why refuse me? That is why I prefer prostitutes to
chaste women. What are we to do with their chastity? Lick it in the heavens? And suppose licking is prohibited in the
heavens then? (p. 7). And: A lady with a principle is like a lady with a stick -- not a good sight, you will agree. Women
should have no principles (p. 44).

11. • Haleem did not become well known even in Pakistan. This was only because of bad luck because Justice Malik
Rustum Kayani, who also did not write better than Haleem, became famous. He gave speeches which were
enjoyed enormously by the upper middle class audiences of educated ! people. People laughed and applauded
the speaker throughout the speeches and a legend was created. These speeches have been reproduced in four
books: Not the Whole Truth (1962); Half Truths (1966); Some More Truth (1971); A Judge May Laugh (1961).
• M.R. Kayani first started becoming famous as a speaker when, as the president of the West Pakistan C.S.P.
Association, he started making speeches on the annual dinners of this body. These speeches, collected
together in Half Truths, are mostly about matters which Kayani took seriously: the salaries of the C.S.P. officers
who, in his view, deserved to be : made financially so secure that they should be above temptation. In 1958
General Mohammad Ayub Khan became the ; dictator of Pakistan. The judiciary was in danger of being !
relegated to an inferior position. Now Kayani started ’ speaking in favour of the independence of the judiciary.
He ’ also spoke about the sacrosanct nature of the rule of law ’
• though he was the Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court and Ayub Khan had abrogated the constitution. In a
prefatory article called ’Background’, the editor of Some More Truth has written in detail about Kayani’s views
about all the subjects mentioned above. Details of his relations with Ayub’s government have also been made
available. In view of this it would be merely repetitive to go into details about these things here. It should,
however, be mentioned in passing that Justice Kayani must have had great moral courage to have expressed
his dissident views in public. In the end Ayub Khan thought it best to appear to accommodate Kayani’s
criticism. In his foreword to Not the Whole Truth Ayub says:

12. • These are entertaining essays and make delightful reading. But, if, at places, they tell something more or less
-- than the ’whole truth and nothing but the truth’, the fault, as always, is not of the judge but indeed the
witness. But Ayub Khan does make it clear that he does not find himself in ’agreement with the views of Mr.
Justice Kayani’. As for the literary merit of these speeches, one would be forced to conclude that they are
neither as witty nor as hilarious as they must have sounded to their audience. Without the spell of an
accomplished speaker’s mannerisms and voice they lose their charm. Justice Kayani is at his best when he
directs his satire against himself: Gentlemen, it is nine years and a day since I joined this court as a judge. It
was the 1st of April, as Mr. President has pointed out, and considering that it was the 1st of April, I have not
at all done badly (Not the Whole Truth, 5)
• His humour, however, falls flat in print mostly because it is based on typical reactions to stereotyped
references such as the 1st of April. Another ingredient of his humour is the irreverent anecdote. These
anecdotes are neither very funnynor original in themselves. But they do give a certain verve and colour to the
narrative. Irony is used hut it is rarely used effectively nor is it sustained. As such Kayani will have to give
place to such masters of humour as Khalid Hasan. However, for his moral courage, his ability to laugh at
himself and his refusal to become pompous or arrogant, Justice Kayani must be remembered with affection
and respect. In Khalid Hasan we have the greatest writer of prose, especially of humorous prose, in Pakistan.
He has got four books to his credit: A Mug’s Came (1968), The Crocodiles are Here to Swim (1970), Scorecard
(1984), and Give Us Back Our Onions (1985). All of these contain essays which have appeared in the
newspapers. But, says Hasan, ’since newspapers are perishable and, quite rightly, used to wrap fish’ (Onions,
’Author’s Note’) he has published them as a book.

13. • Khalid Hasan’s style has some characteristics in common with Omar Kureishi’s and Mooraj’s: there is the use of
understatement, irony, and paradox in order to highlight the society’s pretensions. But in Hasan all these are carried to a
higher level of sophistication and is sustained in all the books except Scorecard which comprises biographical sketches of
some eminent, or at least memorable, Pakistanis. One reason why Khalid Hasan’s essays give so much pleasure is that he is so
confident in his use of English that he does not have to bother about being considered wrong. This allows him to expand, to
innovate, to play with words and to create a kind of Wodehousian language which can serve all the purposes of a master of
humour. Justice Kayani also played with words in his speeches but it was as follows: And in any case, if you don’t get damages,
the other man will, and it will give you practice in the difficult law of torts, which is tortuous in any case, torturous quite often,
and whether after negotiating these two difficult adjectives, you will succeed in proving that the defendant’s conduct was
tortuous, is a matter of your luck with the judge (JL, 73).
• Khalid Hasan, on the other hand, plays with them without resorting to easy puns and the unsophisticated man’s enjoyment of
shades of meaning which Kayani sometimes displays and which, no doubt, audiences enjoy. But Khalid, more original and
inventive, uses slang and typical pompously bureaucratic expressions like Wodehouse in order to make his writing come alive.
For example: I should never have stuck my tongue out at that cop on duty when he blew a whistle at me for no reason atalI(CS,
119).
• Khalid Hasan’s English expression is clear, unpretentious and humorous without being clownish or coarse. He is one of the few
writers who knows how to make creative use of English. He is also interested in the use of English in Pakistan as the following
articles ’The Queen’s English’, ’Whither English’ and ’The Queen’s English, Local Style’ suggest. In the first two irony has been
used to point out the defects of Pakistani English and the last mentioned suggests remedies. In ’The Queen’s English’, the
implied author translates the journalistic and bureaucratic cliches used in Pakistan to an Englishman.

14. • As we have seen before the nineteen sixties saw the rise of the already prestigious Civil Service of Pakistan, the C.S.P,
into a partner of the army in ruling Pakistan. It is not the one sided view of Justice Kayani but the essays of Khalid
Hasan which give one an idea of how this elite came to be regarded by the most intelligent members of the educated
class in Pakistan. The C.S.P. officers were generalists: that is to say, they could be asked to do different kinds of work
without being qualified to do so. In his ironical style Hasan comments: They have ungrudgingly worked as
administrators, economists, development planners, acting ViceChancellors, atomic scientists, bankers, broadcasting
experts, newspaper publishers, intelligence chiefs, family planners, even fire brigade chiefs. And what has this
ungrateful nation given them in return? (CS, 13-14).
• In Onions four brilliant articles make fun of the C.S.P. These are ’Let’s Legalise C.S.P’; ’Homage to C.S.P’; ’Playing
Hockey the C.S.P, Way’ and ’C.S.P, the Sphinx that Never turned to Ashes’. Without anger and invectives we are told
that senior civil service officers have been promoted till the service has become a burden on the exchequer; that even
after the changes Mr. Bhutto brought about - he changed the name of C.S.P to District Management Group - they are
elitist, snobbish and powerful; that they are anti-populist and even colonial in their attitude towards public service.
Here are some specimens of Khalid Hasan’s humorous satire concerning the C.S.P:

15. • In Onions and Scorecard Khalid Hasan has described aspects of intellectual life in Lahore. He has done this in his colourful and highly
interesting biographical notes on eminent people. His book Scorecard contains the biographical sketches of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Altaf Gauhar,
Noor Jahan and Saadat Hasan Manto among others. These sketches are free from the ordinary Pakistani faults of biography writing: that is,
they are neither falsely sentimental nor malicious. They are, in fact, written with a deep and sympathetic understanding of the complexity
of people’s characters and do not presume to pass conventional judgments. Thus though Saadat Hasan Manto is condemned for his
alcoholism by the press in Pakistan but Khalid does not do that at all. Similarly Altaf Gauhar, although it is made clear that he did hanker
after power, is understood rather than just reviled.
• In writing about such characters as Sardar Mohammad Sadiq and Chacha F.E. Chaudhry, Khalid Hasan has caught the essence of the
colourful life of journalists, men-abouttown and the coffee houses of Lahore. Sardar Sadiq was an institution by himself: ’Everyone knew
him and took his presence in Lahore for granted much as one takes for granted the General Post Office building or the Nila Gumbad’ (SC,
126). He spent his time on the Mall Road and talked to anyone he could find. Political jokes originated from these talks. Khalid Hasan
describes his alleged campaigning for Ayub Khan as follows:
• He would say: ”The Civil Service of Pakistan is on our side. The Police Service of Pakistan is on our side. The armed forces are on our side.
The patwaris are on our side. The 22 families are on our side. That leaves you with the people. You can have them. We have no need for
them at all. Thank you.” (SC, 134).

16. • Among the less interesting but mentionable prose works are Bilquis Sheikh’s / Dared to Call Him Father (1978) and Tahawar Ali Khan’s
Man-Eaters of Sunderbans (1961). The latter is in the tradition of Jim Corbett’s Maneaters of Kumaun (1944) and other tales of hunting
(shikar in Indian English). Tahawar Ali Khan tells us how he shot tigers in the jungles of the Sunderbans. The episodes themselves are
interesting but what makes the book worth reading is its clear and unostentatious prose. The author is not pretentious nor does he boast
of possessing superhuman courage and strength. In fact the author’s confession of human fear gives the book an air of verisimilitude and
makes it more enjoyable.
• The second book / Dared to Call Him Father is worth mentioning only because it is the only example of a Pakistani Muslim woman having
deliberately converted from Islam to Christianity. The narrator claims to belong to an aristocratic family of Pakistan who converts to
Christianity and finds real moral improvement as well as peace. The description of the hostile reaction of her family and friends in Pakistan
is full of pathos. However, the book has been written with Richard Schneider and we have no means of finding out whether the language is
Bilquis’s own. This makes it impossible to comment on the literary quality of the work. A number of essays, articles and columns keep
appearing in the daily papers, magazines and journals. Sometimes they are collected together to make a book. Columns by ’Onlooker’
(Hasan Abbasi), for instance, appeared under the title of Over a Cup of Tea (n.d). They are mainly political and are not distinguished for
their stylistic quality. The political ideas expressed are, for the most part, quite similar to other educated Pakistanis and not in any way as
original as those of such radical writers as Eric (later Ejaz) Cyprian who has not been dealt with in more detail because his reviews and
articles are not available in the form of a book.

17. • Other writers whose works have not been discussed because they are not available in the form of a
book are: Zeno (Safdar Mir); N.A. Bhatti who writes ’Grassroots’ in The Muslim; Ahmad Hasan who
writes ’From Islamabad With Love’ in The Muslim; Omar Kureishi and Imran Aslam who write in The
Star (Karachi); Pervez Kazi who writes ’Kehva Khana and other articles in The Frontier Post; and many
other occasional contributors to the papers. I have referred to those writers only whose prose is
humorous, unpretentious and lively. There are, of course, many excellent writers of academic prose,
research articles and papers whose prose is comparable to the best kind of writing in this genre. This,
however, I have not touched upon at all.
• In conclusion it may be said that though most Pakistanis write ungrammatical, pretentious, cliche-
ridden prose which is tedious to read there are exceptions too. The work of these exceptional
Pakistanis has been dealt with in this chapter but the chapter remains incomplete since not all of them
have published collections of their work. For a keen student of Pakistani literature, especially prose, in
English it would be necessary to read the daily papers, especially the weekend magazines, and the
eveninger The Star.