Attia hosain biography of martin

Image Source- Huffington Post Being receptive to the social changes that her home town Lucknow was a hub of while she grew up, she incorporated them in her writings, which are a blend of tradition and modernity. Radical Sensibility Hosain had liberal views and was influenced by the left-wing and the nationalist movement of the s. Attia Hosain with Mulk Raj Anand.

She moved to England in with her husband and two children to avoid moving to the newly-created Pakistan. Her work at BBC included topics such as art, music, drama, and religion. She also gave lectures on the convergence of Indian and western cultures. When India was partitioned into India and Pakistan, the division of the country and the separation of two religious communities caused Attia great pain.

Despite her cosmopolitanism, her creative directions as writer, broadcaster with the BBC and actress were enriched by her own identity and diverse cultural strands. InPhoenix Fled, her first collection of short stories, which are set just before the partition, was published. Many of her stories have now been included in other anthologies.

Attia Hosian was reborn as a writer enjoying a considerable reputation. All the thoughts breathed out and shaping themselves visibly after being inside the cells of the brain, and then released. If you hold your breath and do not breathe out, you will suffocate. The result of this clashing and merging of different cultures was that I, like many others, lived in many worlds of thoughts and many centuries at the same time, shifting from one to the other with bewildering rapidity in a matter of moments", Writing in a foreign tongue by Attia Hosain.

She struggled for harmony between the languages, cultures and beliefs that surrounded her and drew strength from socialism, humanism and enlightened Islam, although she accepted no philosophy without rigorous analysis. A collection of short stories. Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain Goodreads Attia Hosain was born into a feudal family in Lucknow, north India in and grew up knowing many of the major political and literary figures of the Independence came to India and Pakistan inshe was among the most privileged and perceptive observers of the partition of the sub-continent.

Attia Hosain: an exquisite writer who deftly analysed female Hosain has deemed it fit to provide a list at the beginning of the novel. This is a coming of age story. Laila, who is a naive girl of fifteen at the start of the novel, is a weather-beaten widow in her mid-thirties at the end, mature beyond her years. Attia hosain biography channel Attia Hosain was a prominent Indian novelist, journalist, broadcaster and short-story writer who wrote in English.

Do you understand what you are saying? You don't know what you are tapping into, what emotions? Q: But you thought they were sincere in their intent? AH: Some of them. People like Mahmudabad certainly, absolutely, he really felt that there is a prejudice but all this prejudice did not matter when everybody could be going towards a common purpose.

But when you say that I am going to count heads, and whoever gets the most votes is going to attia hosain biography of martin over me - then that was the whole basis of the Muslim League's success. That is finally when I would say anything, let us say I can't remember all my conversations I wish I had immediately recorded them as they were.

I used to ask him these questions and he said to me once, when I said, Please Mr. Jinnah, please tell me something, why is it that you don't accept the Cabinet Mission Plan [which sought to prevent the partition of India in ]? For example? And then he said to me, you know that you have got to understand young woman, what about the center if it has great power?

I mean the answer was always logical in terms of a political point of view. To me there was no logic in any point of view that was not human because I felt it is not true that anybody will feel that it is a nation only because it is my religion because there will be lakhs [hundreds of thousands] left behind [in India]. And what is their position, how do you mean 'sacrificed', to whom, and why?

Later on after it had happened [August 15, ] a very dear friend of mine was the Chief Secretary in U. I had to give orders to shoot if there is a riot. I am a Hindu. Where are all those leaders of the Muslims? Why are they sitting across the border [in Pakistan] when this is happening? And I have to shoot Hindus. Why Pakistan? Let us say there were a lot of problems at that time in the creation of Pakistan.

But today what seems to be happening in India, this right-wing Hindu push, does that in any way justify Pakistan retrospectively or not? Because it is because there was that [a separate Pakistan] they can turn on us and say, you have got your homeland, go to it. You made it and who are you here now? Why, you as a minority. The worst of them can say: why are you as a minority trying to get any special privileges.

They talk of the vote bank. Ultimately, let us face it in the West. You are seeing it now in the new imperialism that it is that, that matters who has the power in their hands?

Attia hosain biography of martin

Why are people fighting for religion? I mean, I believe in the sincerity of the Quaid [Mohammed Ali Jinnah], right, because I thought he was an honest and sincere man. But I believed he was blinkered. I, who really respected him and was fond of him, and because he was kind to me. I think he didn't know history enough. What was happening in the Muslim world any way?

What had happened that could not teach us a lesson? That is what I feel, that the people who pushed it were not believers in religion anyway, and to say it was not founded on attia hosain biography of martin, is not true, because the cry was 'slam in danger. Because the economic position could not be improved by going somewhere else. The people, who left by the way and took their wealth with them, were people already rich in India, the Ismailis and the trading people.

Q: Well, what I mean by middle class, lets say a Punjabi, lower middle class family like my father's family. They would be educated. They would try and enter the Magistrate [courts] or Civil Service, whatever, and they would see 70 - 80 per cent of the employees were Hindus and they would feel that they could never move up. AH: They could if they thought to move up as some did.

People did. But if you leave the people behind, by what right do you then claim that all Muslims are your friends in India? In the sense that every time any thing happened or went wrong, they would raise a clamor in Pakistan. I said that to Arshad [when he was Foreign Minister. Arshad what rights have you? You are passing a death sentence on them, are you going there to help them?

Who are they to you now? But I would like to know whom the homeland was being made for? For the people who were already there, the Punjabi Muslims, the Pathans, Sindhi or who? Q: The traditional attia hosain biography of martin in Pakistan is that the real people who fought the hardest for Pakistan were from U. AH: Okay, so they were.

Q: So they are the people who actually wanted this homeland whereas the Punjabis and Sindhis and Pathans say - AH: Well of course they did. That proves my point that they wanted what they could not have, they thought right. So don't talk about it as Islam and the Islamic State. Their religion is in danger? But if you talk of people a middle class, leaving them, being like as D.

Lawrence said, how beastly the bourgeois is? And leaving everybody behind. You know during my left wing days I was ashamed of being born into a Taluqdari family and for eight hundred years having been something a part of the world in that Barabanki area [U. I am not ashamed now because looking back on it, I think we were not as evil as the people who followed, who were grabbing in the whole world.

For me it has been that I feel that the real power behind all these foundations of nations or countries has been,political aims. We are watching it now. It is happening. It is happening today in the Middle East. There will be a new middle area of Iraq carved out for the same purpose. I am not prepared to believe that Pakistan was given away by the British in a generous way accepting that there will be a just division.

This wasn't a just war we had just witnessed. Just now what happened to the Indian sub-continent? Weakened, with one part of it opened to one side, one great power, and one part will, therefore, open to the other great power. So for me, politically, there can be no sense in this. Yes, of course after the Muslims had to suffer more in India.

It is a bigger Muslim population than in Pakistan. So what is the justification, for whom, for the benefit of few from the middle class to get rich? Q: In all honesty, the population of Pakistan and Bangladesh put together is bigger than the number of Muslims left in India. AH: The Bangladeshis, why did they have to fight [to separate from Pakistan in ]?

Now, if it had been Islam and if it had been purely economic benefits, why would they have to fight? Because they were used by an Imperial West Pakistan. Q: But, you know it is interesting talking to Bengali, Bangladeshis whom I interview today - still they are very proud of their involvement in Pakistan ineven though they didn't like being a part of Pakistan.

AH: Well, what else are they going to be? Having done what they did, and then why they have that battle? Why did they have the fight [civil war of ]? Q: Because we dealt with them terribly. It was justified. AH: So, wait a minute. So how did that [partition in ] help them? Q: I think they felt that they were really caught in a Hindu economic stranglehold.

AH:Well, of course, but the stranglehold was not lifted by a partition. In fact, the stranglehold became worse. East Bengal and West Bengal complemented each other. Raw material, one side somebody developing an industry, the other side. They are the poorest nation now. Q: Right. AH: All accounts and history have proved that 'yes,' there is a logic in history that the fight for unity should have won against all odds, not the fight for disunity.

That is what I am trying to say, that the same sacrifices, the same thing. My friend [U. Chief Secretary] then said to me 'Where are all great leaders? Where they have gone? When I have to do the shooting on my own, co-religionists? He [Jinnah] said to me, "Oh but partition had to come because, you see, look, there would have been tremendous rioting.

But you have had wars between sovereign countries [India and Pakistan inand ]. Is that better or worse than rioting? No, there was no great, unified structure in that subcontinent before the British made it happen. But once it was there, had there not been this fissiparous [secessionist] movement and the same strength, as I said, put into peace, we wouldn't have had these tragedies of today.

All right, I will forget all that happened, politically, economically, and the middle class has become [richer]. Yes, my own relatives are very rich in Pakistan. Most of those of us who were great feudals, what have you now? Finished, because it is a world for business. Certainly in Pakistan there were no land reforms like they were in India, which ruined our [the feudal] lot.

But think about the alternatives. We are now seeing in actual fact history repeating itself on a huge terrible scale in the Middle East. What the search for power, the search for economics can do when human beings are forgotten, when it's abstractions, when we talk of statistics, when we talked of and never think that there is a living creature at the other end.

You see, I am sure there must have been many many, like I was then, believing in a new world and that new world could not think of a world that could only be based on hate and violence. After all think of the great Muslims That then did emerge from that time. I mean, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai [relative of her father's family and Congress Party leader] was a remarkable man.

An absolutely remarkable man who lived with nothing, gave everything he had away, saved so many lives during that time. Q: Why did so many of these U. Muslims from your class and background go to Pakistan? AH: Because of getting a better life, that is what I am trying to say. It is a search for a better life. Say that to me and I will say 'yes'.

But don't talk about Islam and religion. He had a play on here at one of the theatres here, the Greenwich Theatre, and it didn't come into the Westend because you know there is a shortage of money and certain people won't back certain intellectual kind of plays. This was one of Christopher Isherwood's books made into a play. It had every success critically but didn't come in.

He wanted to work here, he who was the first Indian-born to be in the BBC, the youngest after leaving Cambridge in the Slate [School of Art], didn't get work here. It is not easy for anybody still with the name that he has now - Hussein and - let us face it, color. When he started, and when my daughter tried to make something here, there weren't all these million Asians here.

We were a rare breed, sort of weirdoes. He made a name for himself and David Lean said that he has to be twice as good as us to be where Waris is [son Waris Hussein, is now a film maker in the US; daughter Shama Habibullah, also a film maker, chose to live and work in India]. So he had to go to America, to work and he has gone and when he was going he was down-hearted because he wanted to do something here and he said it is like prostituting oneself to earn a living.

Well I am not saying those people [who went to Pakistan] were prostituting themselves; but they really believed they were going to a homeland. They really believed it. But alas it was not our homeland like Israelis because already over there [in Pakistan] were entrenched interests. So let us face the politics and economics of history. AH: Of course not.

I chose to break my life apart. My whole private life going to pieces by staying here when my husband went as Textile Commissioner to Pakistan [in Ali Bahadur Habibullah was seconded to Pakistan by the Govt of India to help with reparations and reorganisation but did not opt for Pakistan]. I wouldn't do it again. I have learnt since.

I attia hosain biography of martin think of my material prospects, and I would think of security and emotional security because once one is in exile, one is emotionally in exile. As I said, the Quaid [Jinnah] could be nice to me and could understand me. To the last day before I left for England, shortly before that when we were lunching with him, I was sitting near him.

He used to be nice to me and it was these great chauvinist, nationalist Pakistanis who didn't want me around at one time. Well, I loved Pakistan as a country, why shouldn't I have? Shakespeare sounded better when he was spoken correctly, with the 'Sheen - Kaf' [high-brow Urdu] correct. I had to leave that work, because in the Pakistan High Commission there was an interval when amongst my friends, nobody was the High Commissioner and they said that I was amongst those who was talking against Pakistan and I went and my pride was so hurt that we would sit in the canteen and discuss it.

But when the head of that service, who is a retired chap from the British Imperial Police in Pakistan, in the Punjab, said to me, why are you now not prepared to work on our terms which were weekly sort of things when I had contracts for three months, I said I refuse to. He said members of our Parliament come and broadcast, I said I don't. But I want to tell you that why would I sit and talk against Pakistan?

Because I have my own closest relations there. I go there. I have friends there. I can not talk against it. It hurt so much because I had no other job. I was not qualified, I just happened to be a naturally good broadcaster. He was Foreign Minister and somebody else came here to see me and said how you are getting on and I said I getting on where?

Your High Commission [interfered], I said. High Commission, what for [he asked]? Then they [the BBC] asked me to go back and afterwards this very same man [from the High Commission] said to me, oh I didn't know you knew the President so well. I said did that make a difference to you? Did I have to tell you who I was? Now I'll tell you that there were people sitting with me working in that room and if they had come in Lucknow to my servants' door, I would have said kick them out.

But that is not what I worked for, I loved what I was doing. Q: So tell me how you landed up in Britain? AH: How? I just told you that I made an idealistic, stupid gesture that I will not go there [to Pakistan] in when my husband was in the Indian High Commission. When this division came - he was not Pakistani because we had British passports - but he accepted the job of Textile Commissioner and went to Pakistan.

Sonny and I went to a reception and the women who were with me all this time in the Indian High Commission turned their backs on me. Suddenly, this happens overnight, talking, but I said if I go with you I will never be able to say those things. I can't, I will sit here dumb, I would not be able to say that. I can't abuse the country I love [India].

I was born there and brought up there. So, neutral thinking then, when this country [England] also was different from what it is today, when there were not the same material values, when I thought that certain fundamental human values are still in this country which were not in their imperial outposts but here. Well, I said my children are being educated here, I will stay here.

So he [Sonny] could not, poor chap send me money. He could only send it for their education. And I accepted that. I am not saying I was doing a great sacrificial act. It did me a damn lot of good. I couldn't boil an egg. I couldn't put the kettle to boil. I can now do everything, and I can be a very good charwoman or anything you want me to be. I even wrote.

Like I had not written before because I had to, it had to come out. So I am grateful for that. I love my friends, I love my people. I say don't talk to me now of the whys and where fors of it. Now I am an old woman who merely believes in human dignity, which is being rapidly destroyed. I was also, as I say, by now suffering deeply from this homesickness.