Today is our topic of discussion Padma Meghna Jamuna .
Padma Meghna Jamuna
Abu Jafar Shamsuddin’s autobiographical novel Padma Meghna Jamuna, was his magnum opus, written in the 1960’s and published in 1974. Padma Meghna Jamuna spreads over a wide canvass and depicts the hopes and aspirations, the frustrations and contradictions of the rising Muslim middle class in Bengal. Abu Jafar Shamsuddin, at once a realist and a romantic, with the experience of his own life, has highlighted the transformations and developments taking place in the social and political spheres of the Muslim society in Bengal particularly in the 1930’s and in the 1940’s .
Abu Jafar Shamsuddin came in contact with modern liberal and humanist thought through the poems of Kazi Nazrul Islam and his acquaintances with poet Benazir Ahmed (1903-1983), poet Abdul Qadir (1906-1984), Ashraf Ali Khan (1901-1939) and his contemporary journalists like Abul Kalam Shamsuddin (1897-1978) and Abul Mansur Ahmad (1897- 1979).
They inspired him to read Darwin, Freud, Ibsen, Bernard Shaw and also Communist literature including works of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky. Plekhanov, Bukharin and others. Abu Jafar Shamsuddin came of a rural, conservative, lower-middle class Bengali Muslim family and of a semi-feudal background but his intellectual pursuits gradually transformed him into an emancipated and progressive-minded writer.
He became inclined to left-wing politics around the late 1930’s and it was during this time that he came close to political ideas of the revolutionary leader M. N. Roy. But a contradiction between his willingness to serve the cause of Islam and the Muslim community on the one hand, and the whole of India on the other, existed in him.
The story of Padma Meghna Jamuna starts in the year 1911 (1316 B. S.) and ends with the partition in 1947. The novel covers the whole span of years under my study and is written by an author who lived the period and shared the spirit of the age.
Analysis of Padma Meghna Jamuna would bring out the dominant political and social ideas, the conflicts and tensions in the Bengali Muslim society, particularly of the newly educated youth, the contradictions existing in them and the transformations taking place in the socio-economic and political spheres.
The novel is of 1155 pages and consists of five parts. The first part, Unmesh or ‘exposition’ unfolds the conservativeness of the Muslims in rural Bengal, their economic hardship, lack of education, their extravagance, idleness, lack of foresight, the practice of polygamy and ignorance about hygiene.
In this autobiographical novel, the central character is Mamun, who symbolises the author himself. Mamun observes the negative forces existing in the rural Muslims since the last quarter of the nineteenth century.
The novel starts with Idris Mia, a maulvi who in his fifties was thinking of getting married once again since his first wife failed to bear children. Feudalistic sentiment drove him to remarry in order to have a male heir. Although he belonged to a lower-middle class family he was now able to marry a widow of a comparatively upper class Choudhury family which once prided of its aristocracy. The author depicts the economic distress of the ashrafs or the upper class Muslims in Bengal. He writes,
“চৌধুরীর চৌধুরিত্ব আজ আর নেই। জমিদারি বহু আগেই কিছু সদর জানার পারে কিছু বিক্রিতে হাতছাড়া হয়েছে। আমার বলতে যা বুঝায় তেমন আমীর ছিলেন তারা। এই আমীরিতেই চৌধুরীরা মজলো। এখন সে শান-শওকতের নাম নিশানাও নেই— যৎসামান্য খাস খামার তুমি মাত্র । অতি কষ্টে সংসার চলে— পেট চলে তো আর বাঁচে না, আৰু বাঁচাতে গেলে পেট থাকে খালি ।…………
(There is no prestige of the Chowdhuries any longer. They have already lost their zamindaris due to rent defaults. They had been real aristocrats then………….. They lost their wealth due to extravagance. They have now lost all power and prestige. They have little land now and lead a miserable life due to financial hardship.)
Though possessing very little land, Idris Mia decides to sell some of it and gets married for the second time with the only intention of having an heir. Mamun was the eldest son of his second marriage. He is the central character of the novel. The author narrates and analyses events through the observations of Mamun
Padma Meghna Jamuna is also a historical novel. History serves the perspective of the novel.
Khilafat movement, extremist nationalist politics, rise of the Muslim League, the factions in the political parties, the popularity of Marxism among the extremists, the conservative reaction to left-wing politics, famine, communal riots, the conditions in Bengal during the Second World War, and the partition of India and of Bengal in 1947- all these constitute the source materials of the novel. The characters in the novel are symbolic ones of real life individuals.
The story of the novel proceeds with reflections of Mamun on events he sees and gets involved in. The novel does not have a tight-knit or a consistent plot or story. It is more a record of events, of feelings, of reactions and analysis of a Bengali Muslim youth on the contemporary events and some political and intellectual personalities. Mamun grows up to manhood amidst social tensions and political turmoils in Bengal in the three decades before the partition in 1947.
Padma Meghna Jamuna exposes the differences of opinion among the political leaders of the Congress, the left-wing Congress, the Muslim League, its right-wing, the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha, the extremist nationalists and the Krishak Proja Party, the Communists and the Radical Democrats.
Parallel to the political differences existed a social tension between the western-educated Muslim youths and the conservative bastion of the Muslim society in Bengal. One point which is highlighted in the novel is that a sense of futility and frustration among a section of the Muslim youth in Bengal existed because of the lack of any positive or practical programme for social and economic change.
As a result, these youths, disillusioned and disenchanted with either the communists or the Proja movement, joined the movement for Pakistan, even though at heart they could not accept partition of India or of Bengal. A didactic writer as he himself admitted, Abu Jafar Shamsuddin pointed out the negative aspects of the differences and conflicts. the confusion and self-contradictions existing in the political leaders and intellectuals of the time, which acted as hindrances to any constructive outcome.4
In the novel, Mamun got involved with the extremists when he was a teenaged boy and a student of class VIII. Ali Ahmed inspired him to join such a movement. Ali Ahmed in the novel was poet Benazir Ahmed in real life who was involved in extremist nationalist movement in the 1920’s and the 1930’s and formed his own party.
After the successful Bolshevik revolution in 1917 in Russia, the extremists in Bengal got inclined towards Marxism and some began to discuss about the strategy of their movement. Romesh. Ali Ahmed, Abinash talk political polemics. Their debates expose the differences of opinion prevalent in contemporary left-wing politics. One group believed that both socialist revolution and nationalist movement should run parallel in India.
Another group, who can be labelled as the so-called “evolutionist,” c.g. Abinash in the novel, believed that transformation in a society would take place in its natural course. He said that a few hundred years were nothing when thought of the evolutionary process, and so, the future generations would take the responsibility of a socialist revolution.
While Ali Ahmed, representing the third opinion, believed that in India what was practical was achieving independence first and then to fight for establishing socialism. Otherwise the situation would be like “placing the cart in front of the horse”.6 Abinash tried to establish that their programme was to seize political power, not to bring revolutionary changes in the society. On the other hand, Romesh and Samar supported that both socialist and nationalist movements should run parallel.
Ali Ahmed opposed such idea by saying that situations in India were not ripe yet so that two movements could go on simultaneously. Communal conflict, caste differences among Hindus, the varied interests of the bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, the workers and the peasants and such conflicting interests created obstacles to a dual movement.
Besides, a self- contradictory and self-conflicting state was also present in the Bengali mind which Romesh pointed out, lead to class conflict in such societies and a proletariat, i, e. the workers in strict Marxian term, would rise up against the capitalists in a highly industrialized society. Such a stage was still a distant phenomenon in India, Ali Ahmed observed.
Mamun, a schoolboy, Instened to the above discussions and felt a secret and romantic urge to serve his motherland. He got involved for a brief period in terrorist movement. Although the terrorist movement failed to attract Muslims because of the Hindu religious trappings associated with it, like the song “Bande Mataram” (Anandamath, 1882) and taking vows touching the Gita in front of the goddess Kali, some Muslim youths joined the movement. These Muslim youths formed terrorist parties of their own as Ali Ahmed did in the novel.
They worked in liaison with the Hindu terrorist parties but having their own parties meant that they did not have to follow those Hindu rituals while joining the party. With the failure of Surya Sen’s Chittagong armoury raid in 1930, the terrorists had a setback and with the resulting repression of the British with the onset of the war, the terrorist movement came to a halt.
Most of the extremists both inside and outside prison, got inclined to Communism in the late 1930’s though the party was banned in. India. They began to get indoctrinated from writings of Marx, Kautsky. Proudhon, Bukharin, Lenin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and M.N.Roy and they began to search the right way for a socialist revolution in India.
In the late 1920’s and the early 1930’s some intellectual youths and workers of the labour front of the Peasants’ Workers’ Party began to organize dockworkers, sailors, jute-mill labours, sweepers and cleaners to follow Lenin’s strategy to bypass the capitalist phase in India. They began to organize strikes by the dock labourers in the ports of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta But opposition came to this from one group of the left-wing elements who disagreed on the point of strikes and lockouts.
They believed in collective bargaining by the workers. By the mid-1930’s the Comintern had advised the Indian Communists to act within the Congress to extend communist influence among the working class and at the same time to play a vanguard role within the national movement.
The novel exposes the disagreements and conflicts in the left-wing leadership in Bengal on the question as to whether to work within the Congress or not. The Communists viewed the particular socio-economic and political problems in Bengal in the light of theories and interpretations of western Marxist theoreticians. The result, as Abu Jafar Shamsuddin commented in his novel that the Communist Party of India was “a bundle of contradiction.”
In the 1940’s M.N.Roy supported the demand for Pakistan on the ground of self-determination of any ethnic or religious community. This surprised the communists in India and although Roy was criticised of his decision to support the creation of Pakistan, both the Hindu and Muslim communists supported the movement around 1941-1942 in accordance to Roy’s views on self-determination which incidentally was also the view of Lenin.
(Lenin’s theses written between January and February 1916 “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”.) Roy’s support for the British war effort on the ground that Britain was fighting against fascism further surprised those who believed that pressure should be put on the British government while it was engaged in war and make its position difficult in India. The Indian National Congress refused to co-operate with the British Government in its war effort unless it agreed to grant independence first.
Roy opposed Gandhi’s “Quit India” movement, 1942- 1943. The differences between Gandhi and Roy triggered much theoretical discussions among the left-wing in Bengal. The Royists criticised the Congress of its strategies of passive resistance and non-co-operation and believed that Congress under Gandhi could never become revolutionary.
Besides, the peasants, workers and trade unions were still mostly under Congress leadership and were not yet conscious of class conflict. But by going against the mainstream of the nationalist movement Roy was alienated. The Communist Party of India had also supported the British in their war effort after Soviet Union got involved in the war. Congress followers criticised the Communists severely .
Rising communalism in the 1930’s and the 1940’s is also depicted in the novel. Frequent riots in Dhaka and Calcutta disenchanted many of the hope for communal harmony. The Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League came to believe that though Indians were alike in colour and lived in the same geographical territory they were different in culture, customs, religion and language and, therefore, they could never make one nation.
Even though the educated youths both Muslims and Hindus were acquainted with modern western liberal ideas, most of them were not free from medieval religious prejudices and superstitions.
Patriotism and nationalism in India were greatly influenced by religious sentiment of the people. In the years before partition communalism took a fierce shape. The novel ends with the depiction of the horror, deaths, sufferings and dislocations due to communal riots and partition.
A significant trend of thought among Bengali Muslims was the idea of Islamic Socialism enunciated in the early 1940’s by Abul Hashim (1905- 1974), leader of one faction of the Muslim League.
Abul Hashim believed that India was never one country and he demanded self-determination of Bengal from imperial India. He was non-communal and believed in joint electorate. Most of his followers were influenced by socialism. With his centre of activity in Calcutta he was able to make an impact although for a brief period, on a small section of Muslim youths with his idea of Islamic Socialism or “Rabbaniyat” as he termed it.
minds of the Muslim youth. Maulana Akbar Khan in the novel is the leader of the right-wing reactionary group. He is the epitome of the conservative section of the Muslim community in Bengal.
His character in the novel is portrayed on the real-life character of Maulana Muhammad Akram Khan, a Congressman in his early life, who later joined the Muslim League in the 1930’s. He edited and published the weekly Ahle-Sunnat as mentioned in the novel. In real life he wrote in the monthly Al-Eslam and in the weekly Ahle- Hadith which acted as mouthpiece for the orthodox sect of Ahle-Hadith. Maulana Akram Khan also brought out the Mohammadi which served to uphold the opinions and ideas of the conservative Muslims in Bengal.
He also opposed the movement led by Fazlul Huq’s Krishak Proja Party and the demands made by Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani (1880-1976) for the abolition of the zamindari in Bengal. Without analysis how far or to what extent the krishak Proja Party pgrogramme or Maulana Bhashani’s campaign were to introduce socialism, Maulana Akbar Khan in the novel. accuses Fazlul Huq and Bhashani that,
“দেশাটাকে কমিউনিষ্ট না করে ছাড়বেন না ওরা।”
(Their attempt is to make the country a Communist one.)
He used his paper, the Mohammadi for counter propaganda against them. In 1936, Maulana Akram Khan brought out another paper, the Daily Azad for the purpose of campaigning for the Muslim League on the eve of the election next year.
Padma Meghna Jamuna also exposes the political moves taken by Fazlul Huq (1873-1962). The peasants of Bengal had high hopes on him when he introduced the tenancy reform acts during his ministry in the years between 1937 and 1941 but the left-wing political leaders criticized him as a ‘betrayer’ when he joined the Muslim League in 1937. In page 1038 of the novel it is commented that,
” যুগসন্ধিক্ষণে তিনি জাতির সর্বনাশ করছেন। ………..
(He is ruining the country at this qitical stage…)
The left-wing of the Krishak Proja Party who even went as far as to demand for “land to the tillers of the soil were most critical of Fazlul Huq. H.S. Suhrawardy (1892-1963) was also not spared of criticisms.
His political role in the 1930’s was mostly misinterpreted. He worked among the trade unions, dockers and mill workers in Calcutta. The left-wing at the beginning thought that Suhrawardy was working for them and viewed his attempts half-hearted but Suhrawardy was never inclined to left-wing politics. He attempted to build Muslim League support among the workers. The Congress accused him of introducing communalism among the workers. In the 1940’s the political scene in Bengal was as factional as ever.
The Muslim League was divided into three groups. Maulana Akram Khan and Sir Nazimuddin (1894-1964) formed the right-wing of the party and acted as the Muslim counterpart to the Hindu Mahasabha. Suhrawardy worked for Muslim League but his base was among the trade unions and the third p I group was led by Abul Hashim who talked of Islamic socialism but both he and Suhrawardy demanded an independent United Bengal.
The Indian Naitonal Congress attempted to keep the workers and trade unions free from communist influence. The Royists had joined the movement for Pakistan. The right-wing of the Muslim League feared that a powerful communist enclave would be a threat to their existence in the newly created Pakistan, and therefore, they made strong anti-communist propaganda.
The younger generation of the Muslims were puzzled at these conflicts between leaders who, in fact, lacked any definite programme. They had joined the Pakistan movement because that was the only goal they had in front of them.
The rising Muslim middle class, dissatisfied with their own inferiority compared to the Hindu community on the one hand, and the rising Hindu communalism on the other, supported the Pakistan movement. Pakistan was for them a means to an end.
But they did not know what to do when Pakistan would come into being. They did not have any difinite economic or social programme. Mamun, who represents Abu Jafar Shamsuddin in the novel, was not happy about partition because of the negative aspect of it and that there was no constructive programme for Pakistan.
Padma Meghna Jamuna also depicts the progressive movement that took place in the Bengali Muslim society in the 1920’s and the 1930’s. A group of educated Muslim youths like Kazi Abdul Wadud (1894-1970), Abul Husain (1897-1938), Abdul Qadir (1906-1984) and others led the movement for the “emancipation of the intellect” in Dhaka in the 1920’s which stood against all sorts of religious orthodoxy, social conservativeness and communalism. They also supported female education and social equality.
Abu Jafar Shamsuddin made reflections in his novel on how the conservative section of the Bengali Muslim community reacted to this. He is critical of their aggressive attitude and of the physical assaults made on them and on the other Muslim youths who carried on this progressive trend.
In the third part “Mohanogor” (The City) Mamun comes to Calcutta where the newly educated youths, most of them coming from lower middle class families from the villages, form their own political and social views. Ali Ahmed, Abdul Rahman, Abdul Gafur, Mamun, Mansur are some of these youths whose ideas represent the confusion and contradictions of the time. They had read Akbar, Ram Mohan Roy, M.N. Roy, Gandhi, Darwin, Freud, D.H.Lawrence, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rousseau, Voltaire, Thomas More, Shakespeare, Bernard Shaw and Sartre besides others.
They regarded Thomas More’s idea of Utopia as useless and interpreted male and female relationship on the idea expressed in Shaw’s Man and Superman that women are boa constrictors’. In the novel we come across two Muslim girls, Mariam and Mumtaz who move freely in the society. They act as symbols of the liberated Muslim women in the late 1930’s and in the 1940’s.
These youths in the novel went on discussing endlessly on Darwins’ theory of evolution, the social evolutionary theory, Freud’s psychoanalysis. They were determined to reject the moral values and life style of their parents. They were determined to shock the conservative section of the community.
They disregarded current beliefs in religion or morality. They felt that their society needed changes, but they did not know how to bring those changes. They were not actually groping in the dark, they were not sure of the right means to bring changes in their society. Abu Jafar Shamsuddin highlighted this point in the novel.
These educated Muslim youths in the novel, coming of a rural background, faced tough competition with the already established Hindu youths who were comparatively highly educated and more advantageously placed in society. After the depression in the 1930’s, high price rise and acute unemployment further worsened communal relation. These youths were disillusioned and frustrated.
The contradictions present in the politicians of the time in Bengal and the religious resurgence of the 1930’s and the 1940’s left little scope for them to come out of their confusions and frustrations. By the 1940’s most of them got involved in communal politics, some turned to business during the war and even some dedicated communists, like Ali Ahmed in the novel, got involved in illegal trade during this time.
Most Muslim youths joined the Muslim League with the hope that a separate homeland for the Muslims would ensure their interests, Hindu-Muslim conflict took most aggressive shape and it seemed as though the dominant trend of the time was communalism. To Abu Jafar Shamsuddin communalism was a negative force, an outcome of the inconsistency and indecisiveness of the political leaders of the time in Bengal.
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