A review of three books, one on the 1965 Pak-India War and two novels, one in Urdu and the other in English
From Kutch to Tashkent – The Indo-Pakistan War of 1965
‘At the same time, in his own judgement, the writer tends to circumvent the ‘myth’ that India started the war and opines that ‘President Ayub’s newfound confidence after the Kutch Agreement, convinced him to launch an offensive on Kashmir in August 1965’. Thus the author seeks to balance ‘historical details with scholarly analysis to show the deluded aspirations of Ayub’s government and the adverse effects the war had on both India and Pakistan’.’
Author: Farooq Bajwa
Publishers: Ilqa Publications,
12-K, Main Boulevard, Gulberg 2, Lahore
Pages: 415; Price: Rs.995/-
Khoj
‘Notwithstanding the ethereal ambience of the novel, its plot is quite well-knit procreating a story of archetypal love – unique but self-consuming. In this perspective thus, Sassi turns out to be a symbol of unrequited love, love which is an ‘ideal’, a thirst, an urge, an affliction, and a gyratory voyage into the realm of the mystique.’
Author: Najmuddin Ahmad
Publishers Ilqa Publications,
12-K, Main Boulevard, Gulberg 2, Lahore
Pages: 254; Price: Rs.550/-
Hurriya
‘The sub-title of the novel viz., the ‘Spiritual triumph of the soul over despair’ is suggestive of its tone and tenor, to a certain extent. Its theme as implied in the introductory is Time which is termed as ‘airborne’ for its swiftness; but then Time is ambivalent too; it is cruel in its indiscrimination and benevolent in its dispensation.’
Author: Tabassum Maqbool
Publishers: Emel Publications.
Pages: 117
A book on war and two novels, one in Urdu and the other in English, form the subject of this review. The book on war and the Urdu novel Khoj have been published by Readings which is an up and coming publishing house in Lahore, committed to bringing out a wide range of books for the benefit of the academia and the reading public alike.
From Kutch to Tashkent – The Indo-Pakistan War of 1965
This book purports to examine at considerable length ‘the politics, diplomacy and military manoeuvres’ of the (1965 Indo-Pak) war relying on British and American declassified documents and memoirs besides some unpublished interviews, and also provide a detailed overview of the conflict so as to make sense of ‘the morass of diplomacy and the confusion of war’.
The author happens to be a legal expert and also a specialist in international relations, having lectured on history and politics at different universities across the globe. Apart from Bibliography and Index, t
The writer gives a panoptic account of the background of the conflict between the two countries, its subsequent conflagration into a near full scale war that ended as abruptly as it had started, in a no-loss no-gain position, followed by the Tashkent Declaration. He also throws light on ‘the decision-making of the political-military leadership of both countries and how they performed regionally and internationally’.
At the same time, in his own judgement, the writer tends to circumvent the ‘myth’ that India started the war and opines that ‘President Ayub’s newfound confidence after the Kutch Agreement, convinced him to launch an offensive on Kashmir in August 1965’. Thus he (the author) seeks to balance ‘historical details with scholarly analysis to show the deluded aspirations of Ayub’s government and the adverse effects the war had on both India and Pakistan’.
The book should be a good read for a thoughtful student of history as also for one who is keenly observant of the south-eastern world (politico-economic) scenario to enable them to formulate an independent opinion about the whole issue.
Khoj
Najmuddin Ahmad is a talented Urdu fiction writer with an English literary background. Khoj is his maiden fictive creation. The protagonist in the narrative symbolically represents a non-mythical character Shahzad assuming the mythical persona of Punnu, the devout lover of Sassi, wandering in the wilderness of the heaths and deserts of his native land in a desperate quest of his object of adoration (Sassi).
For Shahzad, a denizen of the Rohi, Sassi is an obsession that impinges on the occult. The parable has so intensely captivated his imagination that he has subsumed his earthly persona into her hallucinatory ‘being’. Her mesmeric ‘glimpse’ metamorphoses him into an irretrievable dysphoric whose malady terminates only when he meets his tragic end in the manner of his prototype Punnu.
Notwithstanding the ethereal ambience of the novel, its plot is quite well-knit procreating a story of archetypal love – unique but self-consuming. In this perspective thus, Sassi turns out to be a symbol of unrequited love, love which is an ‘ideal’, a thirst, an urge, an affliction, and a gyratory voyage into the realm of the mystique.
Hurriya
It is a recently published English novel authored by a young literary (female) scholar. Narrated in a monotone, it has a tenuous plot with a few characters, Hurriya being the centerpiece of the composition.
The sub-title of the novel viz., the ‘Spiritual triumph of the soul over despair’ is suggestive of its tone and tenor, to a certain extent. Its theme as implied in the introductory is Time which is termed as ‘airborne’ for its swiftness; but then Time is ambivalent too; it is cruel in its indiscrimination and benevolent in its dispensation.
The ‘monologue’ of Hurriya continues uninterrupted in the narrative until the end. She is portrayed as a mature but self-possessed woman enmeshed by a chain of grim situations trying her patience and perseverance. In an anti-feministic environment, she is destined to lose her idol Atif. The parallel stories of Huma and Soha, her kins, tend to reinforce its (the book’s) leitmotif.
The author seems to have a penchant for poetry; lines of unrhymed verse have been inserted into the text of the novel with a view to embellishing the diction besides enriching its thematic elan. Hurriya’s forced celibacy speaks volumes for the helplessness of the distaff side in a male-dominated society such as ours.
The book is neatly written in a racy style. The sentimental journey of its ‘shero’ (after a hero) into the maze of an existentialistic dilemma does not end abruptly, rather it takes its own time and course. The underlying message is that stagnation and bitterness in life need to be foiled by the forces of optimism and determination.
It would be pertinent here to recall noted scholar and researcher Dr. Mazhar Hayat’s considered view of the novel as ‘a story of society that cherishes traditions’ vis-à-vis the ‘feminist dialecticism characterized by Hurriya’s struggle to cope with the opposite forces within herself’, forecasting ‘new horizons for alternative feminism’.