Old-school journalists and intellectuals shunned the use of the first-person in their analytical writings. In fact, one of the first lessons taught to cub reporters by their seniors and editors at news establishments with a long history such as Dawn was never to bring their own personal self into a story by using ‘I’ or ‘me’ in their copy. There was (and continues to be) a very well-considered argument about this stricture. As far as news organisations are concerned, the story is what is important, not the personality of the reporter. But there is also a philosophical reasoning behind the motives of the intellectual: when attempting to build an ‘objective’ analytical argument that is universal, the subjective ‘I’ often feels like an unwanted intrusion, which yanks the reader into an anecdotal and particular world that is the opposite of the grand universal narrative. The insertion of the subjective is often seen by many people as demeaning to the merit of an argument or, worse, as narcissism on the part of the writer.

But since ‘second-wave’ Western feminism of the 1960s and 1970s popularised the dictum ‘the personal is political’ (also the title of a 1969 essay by feminist Carol Hanisch), the connection between personal experience and the wider social and political structures and events and their analysis has been accepted. Employed in moderation and with a sensitive ear, it can enrich a text by illuminating the reader with easily accessible examples. And there is no doubt that it often makes for a more engaging and less dry read than simple theory. The personal essay is now a well-established literary form in the West.

What is then surprising, especially given Pakistani publishers’ propensity for publishing personal narratives of self-serving politicians or retired government servants, is why so few have even attempted sociological, literary and historical inquiry from a personal perspective. (Obviously, we’re not talking about memoirs here.) Perhaps social science writers have felt uncomfortable with the format, or perhaps they did not feel their own lives merited as much interest, even though this is usually the format of everyday conversations among friends and family — the free-flowing mixing of anecdotal observation and theory. Then again, given that most opinions published in book form seem unaffected by erudition or empirical evidence, this is just as well.

One must perhaps add a caveat here — the above observation relates mainly to English-language writing in Pakistan. Most Urdu-language writing in newspaper columns (and the books that flow out of them) very much mixes personal anecdotes with socio-political issues, usually (barring one or two notable exceptions) unfortunately to the detriment of the issues. Real and even made-up anecdotes and their attendant emotionalism often take the place of empirical evidence. Good writing of this sort requires a certain balance and is often a tightrope walk.

It is to the credit of Oxford University Press that they have chosen to publish bilingual poet Harris Khalique’s Crimson Papers: Reflections on Struggle, Suffering, and Creativity in Pakistan as part of their Platinum Series celebrating 70 years of Pakistan’s Independence. This slim book, which is basically four long essays reflecting on the nature of the Pakistani state and its identity, is remarkably pioneering both in format and scope and defies straightforward categorisation. Part political polemic, part historical inquiry, part sociological and literary observation and part a recounting of lived experience, it is perhaps the perfect stepping-off point for delving into the country’s unresolved questions in its 70th year of existence.

Divided into chapters titled ‘Blood’, ‘Sweat’, ‘Tears’ and ‘Ink’, the book freely mixes Khalique’s very personal experiences of youth — primarily spent in a literary and progressive family under the military rule of Gen Ziaul Haq — and as an older social activist with discussions about Pakistani history and society. The topics touched upon are broad and wide-ranging, from the impact of Partition to left-wing idealism and its failures, from the separation of East Pakistan to the contemporary English versus indigenous language divide, from how the state treats political dissent to the sexual content of Meeraji’s verse and Saadat Hasan Manto’s prose, from the multicultural tolerance of the Sufic past to the discriminatory treatment of Balochistan, among others.

Khalique’s is an associative mind and together with his breadth of multicultural knowledge and experiences, this can evoke both a sense of wonder in the reader as well as — sometimes one suspects — frustration. He can make connections between seemingly disparate elements with great ease but sometimes also jump too quickly from one topic to another. It’s almost as if the reader is privy to the multiple firing synapses inside the author’s brain, which in a sense is a good analogy for the information and emotional overload that Pakistan provides those actually concerned about it.

Barring ghettos with the elite circles of South Asian metropolises, there is no tolerance, let alone acceptance, for any differences across the societies in which we live in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It seems that people get tired of maligning, hurting, looting, and killing each other after some years. After catching their breath, they once again resort to the same methods of perpetrating violence and imposing their will over the other by coercion.— Excerpt from the book

What ties Khalique’s narrative, however, is his empathy for the unsung and underappreciated heroes of social change. “I have seen how closely individuals shape the struggle and how politics shapes individuals,” he declares early on in the book. A large part of the book is a paean to those people, such as architect Perween Rahman and trade unionist Manzoor Ahmed who died struggling for a more just society or those who simply embodied the principles of tolerance he feels have ebbed away from South Asia, such as his childhood Quran teacher Ustaniji. Ustaniji, he informs us, was deeply religious and had seen 36 members of her family massacred during the bloodshed of Partition, yet never once spoke ill of the Sikhs or Hindus as a community.

Taken collectively, these essays seem simultaneously to be an attempt to record a vanished ethos for posterity as well as one critical person’s response to various assertions he hears around him. For example, speaking of some well-known journalists, poets, scholars and trade unionists such as Professor Hasan Abid, Dr Mohammed Ali Siddiqui and Rafiq Jabir, Khalique laments “All have passed away, and with them the deep-rooted organised relationship between literati and labour in Pakistan virtually came to an end.” Talking about the current Western obsession with Islam, he writes “it is not Western civilisation which is under threat. It is Muslim civilisation overall and, in our case, South Asian pluralism which is in danger of extinction.”

There are also gems of ethnographic observation — such as the lower-caste school janitor Gurmukh who believed for a long time his name was Dhurmat because the school principal had introduced him to others as that (she had misheard his name) and whose marginalisation was so absolute that he simply thought his illiterate father had got his actual name incorrect. Or how young boys in school first discovered each other’s sects when they were asked, under the Zia regime, to choose between Sunni or Shia Islamiat books.

But why did Khalique feel the need to write these essays at all? Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in one of his poems had asserted the primacy of expression with the line “I utter therefore I am.” But Khalique is also cognizant of “a war waged against nuance, wit, complexity, subtlety, ambivalence, and the very possibility of creating art.” He feels the need to assert himself because “We are in a conflict with absolutism, which has gained a life of its own.”

Khalique’s love for his country (or should one say, milieu), warts and all, is also evident in the way he chooses to characterise it. At one time he obliquely likens it to the rusty, creaking lift in his apartment block — in need of maintenance and a machinery upgrade, but still the most convenient and thus not to be abandoned. At another time he draws similarities between Pakistan’s political narrative and the compartment of a train — squeezed for elbow-room and with shrinking space to stretch out one’s legs.

That act of writing these essays is perhaps Khalique’s attempts to push his elbows out, to expand that leg space.

The reviewer is Dawn’s Editor Magazines

Crimson Papers: Reflections on Struggle, Suffering, and Creativity in Pakistan
By Harris Khalique
OUP, Karachi
ISBN: 978-0199407323
148pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 23rd, 2017