From Motherhood to Nationhood: A
Historicist Re-reading of Anisul Hoque’s Maa
Dr. Md. Shamim
Mondol,
Associate Professor,
Department of English,
Green University of Bangladesh.
&
Dr. Elham Hossain,
Associate Professor,
Department of English,
Green University of Bangladesh.
Abstract: This paper studies Anisul Hoque’s Maa to trace the rout to the evolution of a mother who
transcends subjective boundary and emerges as an incarnation of nationhood to
sustain the spirit of the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971 and enlivens the
emancipatory prospects even after her death. As a narrative to rewrite a nation’s history with newer perspectives,
the author chooses a female protagonist in the background of the Liberation
War, and with an ethnographic approach,
collects data to conform to historical realities and develop the fiction to
craft a mother-figure who with her self-determinism, sacrifice, nurturing
agency and resistance distinguishes herself. Safia Begum, as an individual, transcends and
merges with the synchronous and diachronous national discourses aligning her
own self with collective motherhood.
With insights from nationalist
literature, identity, spatial theory and risk space, this
paper seeks to demonstrate how Hoque projects a character which turns into a
representative motherhood metaphorically aligning with the gradual formation
process of the nationhood based on the Liberation War of Bangladesh.
Keywords:
Nationhood, Motherhood, Historicity,
Determinism, Narrative
Research
Questions
The
paper is around the character of a mother and her sustaining image as a
collective subjectivity, and so concentrates on the following questions:
a.
What
does it mean to be suppressed in adversity for a female figure within a
patriarchal power-structure?
b.
How
does Anisul Hoque map the alleged complicity between self-determinism and
nationhood, mythopoetically projected through the gradual development of the
character of Safia Begum?
Research
Objectives
The
researchers aim to explore the dimensions of a mother who from being a
subjective self emerges as an objective self, representing collective
motherhood which unequivocally works as a potent drive behind the birth and
consistent formation of a political desirability and leads a nation to freedom
from a “liminal, barely human existence” (Gandhi 111). Borrowing the framework
from postcolonial theories of nation and narration, this paper will demonstrate
how the author addresses the web of nationhood through the synchronous and
diachronous development of the character of Safia Begum.
Literature
Review
On
the Liberation War of Bangladesh, innumerable literary works, painting, songs
and art work have been created, but amongst all, to Ramendu Majumdar, one of
the leading intellectuals of the country, “only two books have become classic, Ekattorer Dinguli by Jahanara Imam and Maa by Anisul Hoque”. Martyr-mother
Jahanara Imam incorporates her experiences pertinent to the Liberation War of
Bangladesh in 1971. This autobiography is dedicated to the narrative of her son
Shafi Imam Rumi’s fight against Pakistani army in Dhaka and other regions. It
also reflects on Sharif Imam, her husband’s death during the Liberation War. On
the other, Anisul Hoque depicts the struggle of Safia Begum whose son Azad, a
guerrilla fighter of the Liberation War disappeared from the custody of the
Pakistani army, and she lives on his recollection and in course of the
narrative of the novel, her struggle for survival turns metaphorical with the
vicissitudes in the journey of nationhood of Bangladesh.
Basha and Kumar investigate the culture
of resistance among the people of Bangladesh and find a long history of this
culture in Hoque who “explores the culture of resistance in many contexts and
actions” (267). In Freedom’s Mother(English translation of Maa), they find the reflection of
the continuation of the resistance through the freedom fighters along with Azad
and Safia Begum who were instrumental in sustaining the spirit of the Bengalis.
Khan reads the novel as a treatment of the tragedy of the Liberation War of
Bangladesh as well as the story of Safia Begum’s uncompromising personality. To
her, Hoque has been poetic in his rendition with a circular structure of the
novel beginning and ending with the funeral of Safia Begum and stresses the
historical accuracy. The novel, thus, according to her, “is a history of the
human cost of war seen through the eyes of a mother” (8). Das finds Hoque’s
attempt one among others to reconstruct the narratives on the seminal epic war
of Bangladesh after long silence regarding the trauma of the war, and the
author “has chanced upon the haunting tale” of a mother and develops the
narrative on the brutality of the Pakistani army during the war (10).
Chakravorty considers the novel as “sensitively crafted” and weaved “in and out
of a patchwork of memories” of the freedom fighters and a mother who have gone
through trials and tribulations (18). To her, “A long way from the rich man’s
wife in a mansion where swans glided among fountains, Safia merges here with
the thousands of mothers denied the pitying kindness of closure - in Kashmir
and the Northeast, perhaps, in Sri Lanka and the Middle East, in villages and
towns and islands, unknown and unsung in history” (18).To Nahid Khan, it is “a
literary reconstruction of history” with real names and facts about people,
place and period. He finds in this narrative a tribute to all the sacrificing
mothers by telling “a story of love, courage, sacrifice, resentment,
commitment, sadness, tears and triumph”. Parvin locates the novel in the
patriarchal structure where the women’s roles are mostly undermined, but this
text represents the “moral and ideological support” the freedom fighters got
from the women as well as the “war mothers’ anxiety, dilemma” and sacrifice
(113). The novel is studied by Basha and Prem Raj as an attempt to construct
identity through “resistance, regeneration or reconstruction of traditional
forms of life” (95). In the novel, the mother manifests her self-respect and
heroic nature that “paved the way for bringing new consciousness among the
people of Bangladesh” ushering the democratic sense (98). Das makes an
extensive study on the fictions written about the Liberation War and traces the
silences of war narratives, limits of nationalist creative works, testimony to
the war crimes through ‘Birangona’ narratives and the existence of the muted.
In her study, she stresses how the nationalist fictions sensitize us, and
Hoque’s novel “casts the suffering mother of a guerrilla and a martyr as a part
of nationalistic lore” and “articulate[s] the narratives and tongues buried at
the sites of national mythmaking” (192). The narrative falls short as a novel
to Aiyar, and the author has sketched the characters and the storyline ensuring
“a touching authenticity to the dialogues and the characters”. To him, it “is
the story of the mothers, sisters and wives who saw their lives being taken
from them even as they suppressed their personal fears of the worst in the
larger cause of the motherland”.
The researchers pay their attention on
Hoque’s sincere attempt to capture the seminal War of the Liberation of 1971,
and the portrayal of the mother’s determination and sacrifices during her
lifetime against the backdrop of the patriarchal structure. There is hardly any
focus on the nationalist aspect of the character of Safia Begum who has emerged
as a mother analogous with the motherland itself. This study concentrates on
the course of action a mother who symbolizes the gradual emergence of the
Bangladesh as a nation-state.
Hoque’s
Archaeology of the Nationalist Project
Parallelism
between fact and fiction runs through the narrative of the novel. Though Anisul
Hoque incorporates historical documents into the narrative of this novel, and
though, for this reason, many call it a docu-fiction, Hoque’s delicate power of
intertextualizing fact with fiction, the novel transcends its narrow status of
being a historical text. As a part of the project of re-creating an ordinary
female figure out of oblivion, Hoque has adopted an archaeological approach,
conducted in-depth interviews of those who had close relation with Safia Begum
and Azad and made case study and FGD as well as carried out archival research
for crafting the character of the protagonist. Along with the individual spaces
of Safia Begum, Hoque has set the narrative to cover wider angles encompassing
the major historical juncture of Bangladesh, including the Mass Movement of
1969, the election of 1970 and specially the epic War of Independence in 1971.
Thus, the narrative has come to connect individual with the national merging
the micro with macro which in turn has transformed the narrative into an
all-covering melting pot to contain the whole of Bangladesh as much as
possible, and the mother Safia Begum and the country have become
interchangeable or mutually complementary. Her stance on the face of the
critical juncture regarding her son Azad’s custody in Ramana Thana constantly
and potently questions the dominant system of thought and ethics, and this
integrity regarding her characteristic strictness is essential for gaining
freedom. In this connection, Salman Rushdie’s view, in this connection, appears
very relevant:
Liberty relies
on the constant interrogation of any critical system’s first principles. When
one is not allowed to question the first principles of the dominant system of
thought, and when the penalties for doing so are dire, one finds oneself
trapped in a tyranny. (234)
Safia
Begum’s stance interprets a tremendous interrogation of the oppressive colonial
hegemony which leads her son Azad to be trapped in tyranny and oppression. But
her indomitable subjectivity echoes the self of the country which is badly in
need of freedom and posing all possible sorts of resistance against political
enslavement.
Merging
Individual and National Life
Safia
Begum’s consistent process of becoming the dignified mother of martyred Azad is
not a neat homogeneous construction as she recklessly wrestles in the space
between feudalism and capitalism. The rigor that she carries with her emanates
from feudal disposition and on the other hand, her location in the society as a
wife of Yunus Chowdhury and a woman with a capitalist paternal background, she
belongs to the bourgeoisie of the capitalist economic framework. The process of
her being a metaphor of the struggle of the people of Bangladesh for liberty in
1971 aptly interprets the typical ambivalence and anxiety emerging out of the
existential crisis of the nation. After the disappearance of Azad from the
custody of the Pakistani police, Safia Begum avowedly deserts all sorts of
comfort of her life. She sleeps on the floor and eats no rice, only ruti
(bread) and on the other hand, she possesses a huge mass of gold she preserved
for Azad’s prospective wife and the real estate that she owns is quite
dichotomous. Feudal practice of life on the one hand, and on the other, her
bourgeois background creates an ambivalence which is a typical characteristic
of a state. Even today after 53 years of liberty Bangladesh is ambivalent
regarding a distinct course of nature or identity in terms of its political and
economic realities.
Even
her alienation from the society interprets the bureaucratic decorum of
re-creating self-voice or self-conversation and in such state an individual
does not abandon his/her desire to be segregated from the community. In this
connection, Stephen Greenblatt sounds very relevant when he proclaims:
It was true that
I could hear only my own voice, but my own voice was the voice of the dead, for
the dead had contrived to leave textual traces of themselves, and those traces
make themselves heard in the voices of the living. Many of the traces have
little resonance, though everyone, even the most trivial or tedious, contains
some fragment of lost life; others seem uncannily full of the will to be
heard. (496)
Safia
Begum’s one of the ultimate desires that she opens up to Zayed, her sister’s
son, that she should have an epitaph with the inscription ‘Shaheed Azader
Maa” (Mother of martyred Azad) interprets her “will to be heard” (14). This
determined position consciously chosen is not confined only to her motherly
attachment to the son; it rather unveils her attitude to the martyred whom she
values more than any other identity can confer. This positionality proves the
invaluable prowess and price of those who sacrifice lives for the country, and
the mother is generous in acknowledging their worth in relation to the
liberation which promises a society without discrimination and so “the coolie
leader Rashid and the Editor of Weekly
Bichitra Shahadat Choudhury share the same cigarette” (16). This
heterogeneity of a people contests the problematizing concept of the nation
especially which emerged after the Second World War. Even the concept of the
membership of an individual provokes insoluble ambiguity because, “[A] single
individual in the developed world is likely to be a member (willingly or unwillingly)
of one state, but membership of nation, people or culture may in each case be
contested or multiple” (Hawthorn 229). The contrapuntal juxtaposition of the
characters of Chowdhury and Safia Begum can be interpreted as the problematic
development of the concept of the nation-state. Yunus Chowdhury and Safia Begum
are the members of the same state but they do not belong to the same nation
because nationhood is basically mental, not geographical.
Ironically several nations may exist in
a single state because nationhood splits up in consequence of the ambivalence
emanating out of a divide mind. Yunus Cwoudhury’s attachment with the then
Pakistani elites defines his Pakistani nationhood, even after the birth of
Bangladesh which Safia Begum wholly aligns with her own entity. Thus, the
gradual process of transformation of her personal life is metaphorically
concomitant with the Liberation War of Bangladesh, and she holds on to her
position securing dignity kicking away lavishness of wealth and insurance of security.
The rigorous personal battle protesting against the second marriage of her
millionaire husband continues till the end equating her struggle with the
nation in the fight for real emancipation. Safia Begum’s protest explicates her
desire to develop her own self of subjectivity. Her protest itself is a
language, and it is undeniable that language is needed for the construction of
selfhood or subjectivity and when this selfhood apprehends a probable threat to
its existence, it uses language to reclaim its desired object, that is, self
which “... is not a single, consistent entity, but a divided or multiple ‘self’
located within and constructed by its many different discourses” (Barker 99).
‘Self’ appears when the individual is deprived out of the absolute possession
of his or her desired object by a figure of authority. In this connection,
Yunus Chowdhury’s second marriage manifests the masculine authority which poses
a threat to the ‘self’ of Safia Begum as an independent entity and hence, her
protest and her ultimate decision of leaving her husband and never seeing his
face in her lifetime explicates her desire for the construction of her own
individual subjectivity. Metaphorically her stance interprets that of the then
East Pakistan which vehemently opposing the oppressive hegemony of silencing
struggles and at the end succeeds in constructing its own self as an
independent nation.
Furthermore,
the passivity of the position of Yunus Chowdhury, Safia Begum’s husband during
and after the Liberation War explicates both the colonial and postcolonial
situations of the ‘mimic men’ who live the life of “a kind of non-existence, a
living void” (Nesbitt 98). His inertia regarding Azad’s predicament in the
captivity of the Pakistani Army and even his passivity after the disappearance
of Azad interpret his existential void inevitably created by the subjugation to
his colonial masters.
The
way Chowdhury serves the oppressive power-structure transforms him into a
non-existence in postcolonial situations. Chowdhury lets the government of
Pakistan use his Custom Ford Car for
Prince Philip, a distinguished guest of the state (25). He also accompanies
Prince Philip in his hunting expedition. These incidents demonstrate his
affinity with the power-structure. Hence, after the independence in a newly
emerged nation he only re-attires himself with his old identity and this
disposition conspicuously emanates out of his inertia. Paradigm shift of the
colonial power into postcolonial conditions challenges the consistency of
identity, resulting in dislocation and disconnectedness and dissuades the
indigenous voice-formation-process. Chowdhury also represents the hybrid
postcolonial people whose “lives are distinguished by cultural clash,
linguistic collision, and transnational movement” (Huddart 14). Even the
alienation of Safia Begum, marked by silence and segregation from her usual
community representing Jahanara Imam refers to the postcolonial cultural clash
and linguistic collision, some of the chronic realities of Bangladesh which
still appears to be on the developing process. This fluidity of the national
identity of Bangladesh can be interpreted through the characters of both
Chowdhury and Safia Begum.
Circular
Structure and the Recurrent Value of the Narrative
The
novel moves in a circle by opening and ending in the same funeral ceremony
giving a perpetual standing of the mother's struggle all over the country. The
freedom fighters like Nasir Uddin Yusuf Bacchu, Shahadat Chowdhury, Fateh
Chowdhury, Habibul Alam, Raisul Islam Asad, Abul Barak Alvi, Shahidullah Khan
Badal, Samad, Mahbub, Linu Billah, Hubert Rogareo and some others otherwise scattered come to a
ground on the occasion of the funeral and that may be the flickers for a new
beginning of fight for real freedom. Again, Jahanara Imam’s position on the
occasion is also significant. Even nature becomes one with all and the author’s
employment of pathetic fallacy, that exposure of human emotions through the
elements of nature adds a new significance to the funeral scene. The
congregation of all these freedom fighters suggests how silence itself may turn
into a tremendous voice, essential for fulfilling the objective of the
Liberation War of Bangladesh. Though Safia Begum, after the disappearance of
Azad from the custody of the Pakistani Army leads a life unheard and almost
unseen, becomes tremendously powerful through her death in uniting the brave sons
of the nation, whose integrity can lead the country to its desired objective,
that is, justice, emancipation and democracy. Hence, the circular narrative
technique aptly explicates the temporality of the nation’s being and becoming
by bringing about a convergent between the diachronic and the synchronic
contexts of the text.
Perspective
The story is principally captured
through the eyes of the freedom fighters carrying nostalgia, laments and the
inquisitive mind of the author which unsettle their mind and keep the narrative
open. So, the novel inevitably goes through the entanglement of historicity and
simultaneously textuality of history has also added a new dimension to the
text. The way the plot of the novel frequently sways between fact and fiction is
tremendously engaging for the readers. A discursive synthesis between fact and
fiction constructs the novel as a historisist text. True, history is an
institution which should be available to the community which inherits it.
Negotiation between fact and fiction creates each other’s meanings and thus,
there is no such thing as a private history. Anisul Hoque, like an
archaeologist, seeks to account for the discursive formation of the spatiality
and temporality of history and in his search Safia Begum instrumentally plays
the role of a catalyst.
Being
Through Denial
Safia
Begum has her own form of protest within her periphery of not compromising with
her position within the patriarchal society and power structure. Till the last
day of her life, she sustains her denial not to yield to the imposition on the
supposedly inferior section. It is customary to engrave the husband’s name on
the grave wall. As one fighter against patriarchal imposition and erasure of
the women’s rights, Safia Begum gives clear instructions to have only one
identity on the grave wall, ‘The Mother of Shaheed Azad’, a conscious gesture
to challenge the one-sidedly imposed practice even when she is no more on
earth. Her denial starts with asserting her determined position of not sharing the
domestic space with any interference from anyone, and thus she comes out to
oppose the commonly practiced form of polygamy among the Muslims specially the
wealthy who would often marry someone much younger of their age, and
marginalise the female figure who has been a dominantly helping and nurturing
agent in the career of the patriarch. While Choudhury in Kanpur Engineering
College was pursuing his studies, “Safia Begum provided him the financial
assistance” and she “also provided him with capital to start his business” in
newly created Pakistan (19). Her expectation is in exchange for her
contribution made in the formation period of Mr. Choudhury, which may aptly be
concomitant with Bangabandhu’s demand in London on 10th January 1972
from the British to contribute to the construction of the newly independent
country in exchange for our contribution in their formation period. Safia thus
represents those females who voice themselves instead of keeping mute in times
of adversaries positioning herself as a pioneer rebel at that juncture.
Abnegation
and Emergence
By
distancing herself from all the privileges, she emerges as a figure who can
sacrifice everything for her cause of not budging an inch from her deserved
position which she has crafted for years by standing by her man and relishing
on her gain. This saintly dimension has been stressed by one coincidence. She
dies on the same day exactly after 14 years on 30th August, 1984 after Azad was
picked up by the Pakistan army on 30th August 1971, and "Azad never came
back again" (11). By emphasizing this coincidence, the author has placed
her in the tradition of the saints and great people many of whom are also said
to have repeated the similar type of incidents, and this further stresses her
position in conforming to her ideal of not relenting to any fear or pressure
and adopting the opposite life of a pauper leaving behind that of pelf.
Struggle
through Burning the Boat
The
patriarch husband keeps no openness for Safia Begum in realizing her position,
and in retort and protest, she too beyond the domineering husband's farthest
imagination sets closure to any negotiation in diminishing her position. Thus,
she in her attempt to equate herself as the worthy mother of the freedom
fighter-in-the-making determines her way not to compromise even at the cost of
everything that is supposed to be counted in the life- husband, house, wealth
and security, “One day she came out of Eskaton house with one dress on”. This
willpower not to be subservient to the dominant can be analogous to Pakistani
rulers to the Bangladeshi people who despite their vulnerability and manifest
incapability deny to welcome or accept the impositions and exploitations by the
rulers, and has advanced on the risk space and proved it a productive and
progressive ground to gain emancipation. Safia Begum is thus a figure to
signify the nation itself which despite its constraints deny to dissolve into
the oppressive structures the newly created state of Pakistan has given birth
as it is often said, “Pakistan was created to ensure the interest of the Muslim
clerks and the rising rich” (19) among whom Yusuf Choudhury was in the
forefront.
Guide
and Guardian in Times of Need
As
a guide and guardian, Safia Begum grows to be a solver of higher calibre and
can clear the mist in no time. Azad knows his position to his mother as she has
no attachment or infatuation, and at the cost of everything material and
mundane, she takes to austere life and brings up her only surviving child
worthily with a strong sense of sacrifice for greater cause. Choosing between a
secured life by being neutral and absent in the war days in the Liberation War
days, and engaging himself in the riskier actions to liberate the country, he
faces a dilemma, and hesitates to ask for the mother’s permission to tread the
toughest but sacred path. He manages to tell his mother of his wish to join the
war and later on, serves the crack platoon as a guerilla member. With every
predicament to face death consequences ahead, she takes time to think over the
choices and her position, and comes out with a clear direction and desire,
“Have I brought you up only for me? This country is also your mother. Go ahead
and come back after liberating the country.” The woman who in no time denies
the coexistence of a co-wife comes to place herself as a coordinate to the
country itself elevating her position to the national level and equating
herself to the motherland unconditionally sacrificing for greater causes. This
position has been a long nurtured one as in the previous years of
self-abnegation; she has always wanted to bring Azad up as a good human being
in the broader sense, a good human who can sacrifice himself for greater cause.
When Azad stops school, she sends her back for education as she articulates the
mission of her life, “Why am I alive? To bring you up as a good human being.”
As a country always prepares her sons and daughters for constructive purpose of
standing for the greater cause, Safia Begum too comes out to embrace that image
and expand it to the necessities. The
mother’s guardianship expands itself to be a guardian angel and a fortress for
the freedom fighters who need a safe ground for hiding themselves and their
weapons. When Azad informs her of some of his friends who want to stay in her
house in Mogbazar, she takes time to think over the proposal, broods over the
brutality of the Pakistani Army she has come to know and the freedom fighters
counter attacks, other mothers who have allowed their sons to join the war, she
consents, “Bring your friends” (174) and assures them all of her open door in
times of need. Consequently, “their house in Mogbazar becomes a small
cantonment. Huge amount of ammunition and weapons would come to the house”
(175). This position has been strengthened by her religious attachment
manifested through her allegiance to the Peer Saheb of Jurain who says, “As
oppression on the women has started, the Pakistani Army will not succeed. Allah
will not tolerate this oppression” (174). This religious sentiment and
attachment attest her to the religious attachment of the common people and this
very nature of the people has also been reflected in the historical 7th
March Speech by Bangabandhu which he concludes by saying, “Blood we have
sacrificed, we will sacrifice more. We won’t stop until we come out victorious”
(Translation is ours).
Expanding
Motherhood through Transcendence
The
mother sustains her image by transcending the boundaries traditionally set to
contain the likes of her. While she confines herself in the exercise of
motherhood around the only son, she cultivates the capability to expand her
motherly position to accommodate more sons and daughters without
discrimination. The mother position is thus consolidated in the wider national
perspectives, and she can decide on crucial issues from that elevated position.
Azad has been caught and kept in on the bare floor of Ramna thana, and is
tortured and tantalized to let him free if he passes information about the
whereabouts of his co-fighters and their strategies. A young man brought up in
elite association with hardly any physical toil or assault endures all tortures
without relenting to the demand of the invading enemy as he informs his mother,
“Ma, if I tell them everyone’s name, I will be released” (267). The mother,
however, remains a hope to the oppressive agents for enacting the desire of
eliciting information about the freedom fighters, and so she is brought to him
if she coaxes the son to do damage to the fighting associates to save his own
life. Contrary to the expectation of the torturers, the mother fails their
motive, thwarts their mission and emerges as a strategic partner in the riskier
position to strengthen the morale and advance the nationalist cause by
individually sacrificing in the lived space. The freedom’s mother stresses the
ultimate necessity in the historical juncture, “Babare (my son), whenever they
beat you, keep yourself strong. Put up with the torture. Even by accident,
don’t tell them anyone’s name” (267). This characteristic integrity outdoes the
discursive onslaught of the coercion on the part of the power-structure and
insists a comprehensive dismantling of the oppressive hierarchies. At this
point Safia Begum transcends from an individual to a collective voice
containing multitudes; from an individual self to the collective self who, on
the face of apprehension of turning into a non-being, like Walt Whitmanian
‘self’ seems to proclaim, “I am large, I contain multitudes” (351). Fourteen
years’ journey of Safia Begum from the Liberation War till her death is an
evolutionary process of her transformation from and individual to a collective
self, an institution shared by multitudes of voices contributing to the formation
of the Bangladeshi nationhood.
Finally,
such transcendence ascribes to Safia Begum’s femaleness “an equal share in the
making of anti-colonial subjectivity” (Gandhi 100). Her rigorous stance
regarding her position against her husband and Her son Azad’s martyrdom links
her with “the histories and struggles of third world women against racism,
sexism, colonialism, imperialism, and monopoly capital” (Katrak 41). Her
location in a divergent society marked by colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy
and neo-colonial realities portrays her as a resistance against the
mystification and manipulation of the history of the evolution of the
nationhood of Bangladesh.
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