N. M. Rashed. “Tamhīd.” Jāṛe kī chāndnī. By Ghulam Abbas. 1st ed. Karachi: Sajjād and Kāmrān, 1960. 7–16. Islamic Studies Library, McGill University, Montreal. DS432 P4 J3 1960. Full item here.
In 1960, when the writer Ghulam Abbas published his second book of stories, Jārē kī chāndnī, the collection featured a preface written by N. M. Rashed. Rashed’s preface to Ghulam Abbas’s work seems to have resisted scholarly compilation—it remains absent from the central collection of his prose, Shīmā Majīd's Maqālāt-i Rāshid. Given this absence, following a request on the Noon Meem Rashed Archive Facebook page, we have received permission to publish this preface alongside the documents in the Archive. In so doing, we hope to preserve the full variety of Rashed’s prose for posterity. This copy of Jāre kī chandnī, a first edition, comes from the Islamic Studies Library, McGill University. Rashed and Ghulam Abbas were friends and associates; Ghulam Abbas wrote about their relationship for the journal Nayā daur (issues 71-72). A summary of Rashed’s “Tamhīd” is below:
Rashed notes that it has been some years since Abbas’s story “Ānandī” was published. For Rashed, this story cemented Abbas’s rank amongst Urdu’s finest short story writers. Rashed explains the crucial concerns of Abbas’ work. He finds that at root it asks us whether there is any unity in good and evil, or if both values instead remain discrete and irreconcilable. He asks: “Does good always lead to good, or do some kind-hearted men, despite their intentions, not cause irreparable harm?” Abbas’s work is not only an allegory of Urdu’s cultural progress for Rashed, but he also finds in it the ridicule of “those pure-hearted individuals who, despite all experience, still believe that evil will disappear if they excise it from their bodies and surroundings.”
Rashed praises Abbas’s treatment of women in his work. He notes that Abbas does not fall into the tradition of intellectualizing and degrading women’s existence, as other writers and scholars have done in the past. Abbas does not include women in his stories so that he may write half-ethical, half-philosophical treatises on them, but rather makes their presence a window through which to examine the eternally self-deluded male, his mental contradictions, and psychological dualism. In addition to this, Rashed also notes that the men in Abbas’s stories are manifestly different from those typical in Urdu fiction. These men are not always slaves to their own desires, but rather become the protectors and well-wishers of Abbas’s women. Though Rashed acknowledges that these men may nurse their own dark thoughts, he finds it praiseworthy that they are able to contain these desires in order to help the women around them, even if they do so ostensibly only out of concern for religion or society.
Rashed deems Abbas a unique writer. He criticizes Manto, Muhammad Hasan Askari, and Aziz Ahmad in his comparison to Abbas. Rashed suggests that Ghulam Abbas is “the little man’s storyteller [dāstāngo],” a great writer that picks his characters from the most far-flung neighborhoods and from the most remote of villages. Abbas constructs an entire world around these individuals as he finds it inconceivable that a man could live independent of his surroundings. In examining the psychology of Abbas’s characters, Rashed notes that most of these individuals nurse titillating desires that remain hidden from view, desires that never emerge because of the bonds put in place by society and by other people. Rashed finds that these nascent desires nonetheless remain alive. They subconsciously inform each character’s actions. And since these characters mostly remain unconscious of their own thoughts, this means they are forever tied to the struggle between ethical action and fulfillment of immoral desire.
Rashed is insightful in recognizing this particular dualism (sanawiyyat) in Abbas’s work. He notes that many of Abbas’s characters have two faces: one that is superficial and which they keep for the world, and another that is a window to the heart, which consists of desire unfettered by the restrictions imposed by society. Rashed points out further that Abbas also constructs many parallel (mutawāzī) characters. He lists these characters and notes that they are not so parallel that they do not cross paths, nor are they exactly the same. Rather, their existence is such that if we were to place them on opposite pans of a scale, this scale would balance.
Rashed finds that Abbas is an artist of the calm, peaceful home. He notes that Abbas’s stories emerge naturally when this peace is upset, either by the death of a loved one, or as when beautiful children suddenly become stuck in “the whirlpools of life.” In Abbas, Rashed finds a writer that wishes all his characters well. Rashed notes that Abbas least of all wants the lives of “fallen” women disturbed further. In fact, Abbas lends a certain positivity to their present state. He sees these women freed of the chains that are everyday social expectations. As such he does not wish that any man should try save them by imposing these same restrictions on them once more, particularly as this same man is likely plagued by his own carnal desires.
Rashed notes that Jārē kī chāndnī is Ghulam Abbas’s second collection of short stories. He compares this collection to Abbas’s Ānandī. He singles out stories that he feels will be as everlasting as those from Ānandī. Rashed suggests that Ghulam Abbas’s work has not remained alive by virtue of its association with politics or sexual conflict, as has been the case with some writers. He instead locates this persistence in Abbas’s affection for life. Rashed finds this same affection diffused within Abbas’s work. He suggests that this love is precisely why Abbas declines to impress his own ego onto his stories, and why he refuses to simply strip life bare. Instead, Abbas makes life his confidante, as Rashed informs us. He whispers secrets into its ear and listens as it whispers back.
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