COLONIAL LAHORE AND THE TRADITION OF NOVEL IN ENGLISH

COLONIAL LAHORE AND THE TRADITION OF NOVEL IN ENGLISH BY DR. SHAHID IMTIAZ Lahore has been the cradle of civilization and culture, a space where various communities and peoples have mingled together, a rendezvous of varied ways of life enriching its cultural, social, literary and religious life. The multifarious and diverse aspects of its culture and civilization get reflected in the architectural structures, folklore and literature. Lahore has always inspired the mystics, writers and the poets for their creative energy and ideas. The year of 1899 is significant because it was in this year that the historical city of Lahore was used as a locale for a colorful Lahori life, captured, and portrayed vividly in fiction in English for the first time. Dina Nath chose Lahore as a backdrop for his novel The Two Friends: A Descriptive Story of the Lahore Life (1899). This representation set the tradition of making Lahore as a locale in English fiction for the succeeding writers. Dina Nath highlights the peculiar character of Lahore resulting from the opposite, dissimilar and contradictory ideas, concepts and worlds, the world of the colonizer and the colonized. Their interaction had far-reaching and deeply profound influence and impact upon every aspect of the Lahori life. It gave birth to a new life style, which combined within it, both the eastern and the western ethos. In Nath Lahore is the locale where political, social, cultural, and religious differences and clashes amongst the major communities, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Sikhs were beginning to manifest themselves. After the annexation of the Punjab in 1849, the British had set up a new administrative structure at Lahore, making it the provincial headquarter of the province of the Punjab. Since there was dearth of discreet and competent officials to run the administration, they encouraged the people with administrative skill and knowledge to come to Lahore from across the Punjab and northern India and even from Bengal. Punjabi nobility, the Bengalis, and the literati hailing from the United Provinces were the most prominent communities in the 1880s. A social intercourse and cultural interaction amongst these peoples had added an element of newness to the Lahori life. Nath’s novel primarily focuses on the two Lahori characters, Rama and Nath and it is through them that we discover the true divisions of Lahori life of that time, with all its miscellaneous and diverse signs, symbols, and sounds of the city. Their regular meetings and long walks through the Lawrence Gardens, on the Mall Road to Gol Bagh, the Hide Park, of Lahore, provide us with the opportunity of knowing what Lahore was more than a century ago. Possessed with keen observation, wit and penetrating eye, they pass apt remarks and give every passerby a suitable verbal certificate , gossip over all those topics which enjoyed public attention, now thoughtful, the next moment hilarious, in short make merry in a tremendous way. The Gol Bagh, which is now called the Nasir Bagh where a literary club called Chopal, has recently been established for men of letters and creative writers to give vent to their literary ideas and thoughts, has been a place for the students and the scholars to sit and gossip over topics light and serious. This tradition dates back to the time when the British had set up educational institutions in Lahore after the annexation of the Punjab in 1849. The main characters of Nath’s novel shuttle between the colonial Lahore and the old Lahore. They are fascinated and awed by the former and dismayed by the latter part of the city. Dina Nath had a great fascination for the new city, colonial Lahore. In addition, like a renaissance man he was over-excited and spellbound to discover it and to portray it with unspeakable and inexplicable enthusiasm. It was during those days that a figure of an impressive student, confident and proud emerged. Charismatic and imperial, this figure commanded respect and reverence. People would lend him their ears and would sit spell bound and enthralled by the authoritative, eloquent, and persuasive voice whose resonance would leave an indelible impact upon the minds of the listeners. Immediately after its annexation, there came a team of dedicated and devoted Christian missionaries with a burning desire and simmering ambition to convert the Indians to Christianity. They set to their task by establishing educational institutions and churches in the nook and corner of the Punjab. Lahore being the provincial headquarter became their center of educational and religious activities. As the time rolled on, the missionary institutions began to churn out an exclusive class of students, endowed with the rare qualities of perception and analytical reasoning, which could be seen gathered in the gardens or roaming on the roads discussing a variety of topics ranging from politics to religion, also having delight in gossip and foul jokes. Nath’s characters Rama and Nath embody the culture of discussion and gossip. It was not only the Gol Bagh but also various road side hotels which were fast becoming students’ rendezvous where students of Lahore in groups big and small would hover like fairies in celestial regions. Small roadside hotels serving tea and snacks sprang up at the Mall Road near Anarkali where students would sit and gossip over all kinds of topics. This was the beginning of a vibrant culture of literary discussion and a wide range of social, political, and religious issues. The intellectuals and men of letters of Lahore made various teahouses and road side hotels their habitats where they spent their evenings over a hot cup of tea and heated literary and cultural discussions would start. As a result coffee house literature came into existence. The emergence of coffee house culture and the thronging habitués was a distinctive feature of Lahore, which in fact had surpassed the other centers of culture and civilization of the Sub-continent such as Delhi, Aligarh, and Lucknow. In many ways, Lahore in the 1920s was even ahead of Paris of the 1930s in the field of literary and cultural activity. If Paris could boast of having Jean Paul Sartre, Simone Beauvoir, Charles Dullin, Andre Breton and many other French and Continental intellectuals, Lahore could also claim to have such literary giants as Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Noon Meem Rashid, Hafeez Jullunderi ,Akhtar Shirani, M.D. Taseer, Sufi Tabassum and many others. Many teahouses and coffee shops emerged at the Mall Road near Anarkali. However, for the westernized elite class there was cosmopolitan clubs and Gymkhana where the members discussed danced and drank. Mention may be made of some of the teahouses frequently visited by the intellectuals of Lahore. The Arab Hotel, Nagina Bakery, Muhkam Din’s teashop, India Teahouse and India coffee house were some of the literary dens for men of letters poets and painters. In addition to that, there were some baithaks inside the walled city, which were the gathering places of the musicians, singers, poets, and writers of great merits. Lahore in the 1920s, even earlier, emerged as the most highly cultured city of north India. From the 1920s onwards, perhaps even earlier, Lahore was the most highly cultured and sophisticated city. It was the home of a large number of Urdu literary journals, English newspapers, Civil and Military Gazette, the workplace of renowned novelist, journalist and poet, Rudyard Kipling. Kipling called it his mistress and true love.” The Mayo School of Arts and The Young men Christian Association were the centers of literary and cultural activities. Educational institutional like Government College, Forman Christian College, Islamia College, Dyal Singh College and Oriental College were churning out students to enrich the literary and cultural milieu of Lahore. The Two Friends, undoubtedly, highlights the inclusive and thorough picture of Lahore’s quasi-religious and social institutions of civil society in the late nineteenth and early 20th century. It was the impact of colonial rule and the influence of western education that there emerged a new educated middle class comprising of professionals, lawyers, traders, merchants, teachers, and doctors with new sensibility and the desire for adjustment with the new colonial milieu. 4