While India is dragging the peace process hammered out in 2004 between Pakistan President Pervez Muharraf and Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee outcomes a Urdu novel Farzand aur Firdausia, crying out aloud to quicken the process.
Abdus Samad Chaudhry, a British writer of Pakistan origin, the author of this novel, also keeps company in pleading with the liberal elements found on both sides of the border to advance the peace process and build greater trust between the common people of the two countries.
The book also in agreement with the point of view that both countries should review their history text books in a way to excise offensive contents that generate hatred.
'Farzand aur Firdausia' has a mixture of the dark sides of things. In the postscript the author has offered a prescription for removing contagion feelings between the peoples of the two countries.
The novel contains a background of the subcontinent's history, though it starts when a theme is set in 1947, as well as with historical days preceding the Independence [of Pakistan and India]. In Samad's view, independence should have brought peace and tranquillity to the subcontinent, but he sees that hope evaporating in the tenuous relationship pursued by these two neighbours.
The story begins in Lahore. Passing through the labyrinthine lanes of the famous Badshahi mosque of the city, the narrator finds an old beggar, suffering from fever and other ailments, but his manner suggests a glorious past.
The magnetic power of the beggar's face prevails on the narrator [of the story] to nurse him through the disease in his own house. The beggar begins to live there with him, until one night the narrator wants to know who Farzand really was. His story is the stuff of this narrative, in 664 pages.
The story is adumbrated with history of the climatic events of the different ways adopted by Hindu and Muslim communities to regain freedom from the British colonial rulers.
According to the novelist, the two communities had lived in peace with each other, and this is exemplified with the character of Farzand who comes under the influence of a benefactor Sat Pal Sahib, a Hindu merchant who does some dubious kind of business, but has an office as front to deal with cotton and garments, about which Farzand has little inkling, and takes no interest in the shady business.
Sat Pal recruits Farzand. The latter due to his diligence and good nature, soon climbs in Pal's favour that trusts him and soon adopts Farzand as a son, and often guides the employee through the vicissitudes of life and love experiences. Fazand had a childhood fascination with Firdausia, a character whose love for Farzand is the centrepiece of this narrative.
One night when Firdausia was residing in the ancestral hoe of Farzand, her parents were out of the house and she was alone in the house, she is raped by Fazal, once a servant of Farzand, but in revenge for his love for Najma, Baba Fazloo's daughter.
Baba Fazloo, too, is a servant in Farzand's former estate in Frazandpur in Eastern Punjab. We come across another rape episode of Farzand's daughter, Nusrat, committed by Sikhs in the aftermath of the division of the province. Najma was married to Fazal, a village lad, who proved to be a bad character, sold his wife for only Rs 2,000, in those days a fabulous sum.
Later, Farzand, learning of Najma's misfortune, rescued her from this ignominy and through the good offices of Pal Sahib, had she admitted in a TB hospital. These characters, Ahmad Ali, Bhagwan Das, Him Singh, Fazal, Fazloo, Salim, B, Raju, and a number of minor characters which quicken the pace of the story dwelling on the freedom struggle and the consequence it had for the hero and heroine of this novel. All these characters have individual roles but contribute to the strand of events.
Shortly before Independence, the peace prevailing between the Hindu and Muslim communities broke down. Pal's kind attitude towards Farzand was cause of immense hatred for the Hindu workers of Pal's establishment and one night they stabbed him and pinned the murder on Muslim Farzand.
Farzand landed in jail and was sentenced to death for committing the heinous crime, of which Farzand was completely innocent. That left Firdausia alone, and though she tried her best to get Farzand's sentence reprieved but she did not succeed. She was advised by friends to migrate to Pakistan because she could no longer survive in Delhi in the anti-Muslim animosity of Hindu community. Firdausia then lands in Karachi and lives there in the protection of a Parsi gentleman.
In the meantime, a Christian Police Superintendent at New Delhi discovers a secret document that carried a written revelation that Hindu employees did not like Pal Sahib for standing with Farzand and planed the murder of Pal Sahib and how it should be pined on Muslim Farzand.
After his release from jail, Farzand starts out for Lahore in search of Firdausia and is finally reunited with her. Thus, the novel treats a number of characters belonging to different religious groups, and portrays them in kind manner, but shows that the urge for freedom drives one community to hate another with a will to decimate each other. It is in this context that the 1946 and 1947 riots of Bihar, Kolkata and Noakhali are treated.
Mention has also been made in the novel of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi to show that Hindus and Sikhs had gone hopping mad for Mahatma Gandhi's efforts to end bloodshed of Muslims during August 1947 riots in New Delhi. From now onwards the author espouses Muslim League's two-nation theory and therefore throws away his sympathy for the Hindu community. He also has woven in the novel passages of Indian history of those times, and as a Muslim, he justifies the logic behind the creation of Pakistan.
In the post script the author, a British national of Pakistan origin, born in the Indian Punjab, visited in 2005 his ancestral home in the Indian Punjab, after 60 years, and received a fantastic reception in his native village.
A number of the villagers took charge of his travels and also accompanied him on a tour of the Golden Temple, at Amritsar. The author also describes the friendly gestures of petty officials in India.
The author says he was able to complete the novel in many years, and he has now dedicated it to the people of the Punjab, living in two different countries. 'These people suffered, and families found themselves spread over countries that used to be one and there were territorial conflicts during the division of India, in two separate dominions.'
Apart from leaving a subtle message the author hides wishes to play the role of a sort of Pakistani (or Indian) William Dalrymple, and tries to achieve the same effect by narrating customs and habits, common jealousies as also the urge of common people to build a peaceful community in the Punjab.
In this way, Samad Chaudhry brings to bear a new perspective of division of India. In the trend of long novels of Qurratul Ain Hyder, he continues the tradition of writing on aspects of Indian Muslim civilisations.
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