JOHANNES Gutenburg’s letterpress printing machine in Germany in 1450 may not be an appropriate parallel to the famed collection of short stories titled Angaaray that hit the scene in India in 1932, but, come to think of it, the two have enough in common between them to assess their impact — or their intended impact — on two divergent societies in two far-apart time zones.

The 15th century printing press obviously had a more telling effect on a much larger scale over a much longer time period as it had a role in the Reformation in the 16th century which entailed religious, political, intellectual and cultural upheaval across Europe and shaped the contours that later defined the continent in the modern era.

This facilitated the birth of Enlightenment — the Age of Reason — that saw dramatic revolutions in science, philosophy, society and politics, starting roughly from the mid-17th century. The waves of Romanticism engulfed the world of letters a century later and it is here that one can pick up the Angaaray thread.

That being so, where is the parallel with Gutenburg, one may well ask. Well, both the machine and the collection of stories represent man’s discontent with the social environment. Beyond that, the machine triggered a chain of events that ended up changing the face of the world, while the short stories set in motion a movement that tried to be part of a larger force — Communism — that had the same intention but ended up destructing itself within less than a century.

Put another way, the machine had a force that went top-down and succeeded big time, while Angaaray tried it bottom-up and went down in a heap and was discarded to the dustbin of history.

Banned after its debut publication, the collection of 10 short stories gave a massive jolt to the socio-religious belief system of the time. More specifically, it picked on the Muslim community probably because all the writers — Sajjad Zaheer, Ahmed Ali, Rashid Jahan and Mahmud-uz-Zafar — came from similar backgrounds.

A resolution passed by the central standing committee of the All India Shia Conference in Feb­ruary, 1933, condemned “the heart-rending and filthy pamphlet called Angaaray … which had wounded the feelings of the entire Muslim community … which is extremely objectionable from the standpoints of both religion and morality.”

It called for the book to be proscribed and less than a month later it was banned by the government for it had “deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feeling” of a segment of “His Majesty’s subjects.”

As mentioned in the current re-publication, which is an English version of the stories translated by Snehal Shingavi, “all but five copies of the book were destroyed.”

Seen in the context of the prevailing lifestyle of the time — high on rituals and low on the essence of religion — the stories attempted a counter punch to the dominating forces. And it is only understandable that the counter force in any circumstances has to match the actual force.

After all, in getting rid of the Divine King, the West swung the pendulum so hard that it all but forced religion out of the socio-political system and left it for the individual to decide. Angaaray, even if unconsciously, took the same route.

In producing that shock value, the stories did cause a flutter as all the four writers were in their early to mid-20s and novices in terms of literary output. Today, with the exception of just an odd reference in a couple of stories from Sajjad Zaheer, the stories seem benign — even stale. Even those references had been omitted in subsequent publications till the censors came down hard on the whole thing, but the translated version has included the originals in the name of literary research.

In purely literary terms, the characters in the stories often seem to be voicing their sentiments in the words of the writers and not of their own. It is probably because the cause was more important to the writers than the story or its craft. It was a malaise that hampered the path of many a Progressive writer once the Progressive Writers’ Association was formed in 1936.

It is no wonder that Ahmed Ali, part of the Angaaray collective and the only one among the four writers who had a decent literary status in the post-Angaaray phase, distanced himself in haste over disagreement in the definition of the term ‘Progressive’.

Saadat Hasan Manto, who was one of the early names among the Progressives and took the shock therapy much farther, also left early because he didn’t want his characters to carry the unnecessary ideological baggage of their counterparts produced by the Progressives. Manto used his scalpel to lay bare the hypocrisy practised by man in the name of religion; not religion itself. From among the present collection, ‘A Summer’s Evening’ (Garmiyoon Ki Aik Raat) and ‘Dulari’ clearly influenced Manto more than the rest.

Interestingly, Rashid Jahan’s influence on Ismat Chughtai, another of the famed shock therapists, is on ample display in the collection. Remove the writer’s name and ‘In the Women’s Quarters’ (Parde Kay Peechay) and ‘Sights of Delhi’ (Dilli Ki Sair) become quintessential Ismat. The credit for sure goes to Rashid Jahan.

As for the quality of translation, Snehal Shingavi has done a decent job of it. “I have relied on a ‘hydraulic’ method to deal with the more shocking aspects of the prose,” he has explained. All it means is that in some instances, “the vulgarity was substituted with a more banal word so that a banal word later could be vulgarised.”

His argument, that preserving the shock of the original passage was more important than keeping intact the specific description, is perfectly legitimate.

The reviewer is a Dawn staffer

Angaaray

(SHORT STORIES)

Translated By Snehal Shingavi

Penguin Books, India

ISBN 9780670087174

167pp.