Last Sunday, a friend left a message for me on Facebook. “Professor Mushirul Hasan was injured in a road accident. He is critical.” I said a quick prayer for his life and health. As news came in, first of his surgery, then gradual recovery, I heaved a sigh of relief, for Hasan is easily among the foremost historians of his generation, and a man who has never been known to hold back his opinion. My mind went back to Mussourie a little over 10 years ago where noted publisher Pramod Kapoor had organised a writers’ retreat one invitingly chilly December. It was a truly stimulating gathering where I reaped the fruit of being the pygmy.
There was Saeed Naqvi, short neither of shama-parwana poetry or spirits. Every word he spoke was worthy of being stacked up in the memory bank. With Vinod Mehta, irascible wit and all, for company, the two brought many conversations alive. They talked of Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb and a world divided into “we” and “they”. Then there was Namita Gokhale, so ready with her smiles, so forthright with her opinions. As was Madhu Jain, not renowned to be apologetic about her views. Of course, I do remember the warm conversations and a tinge of plaint that covered the talk of Arpana Caur and Manju Kak. And then there was Prof. Hasan with wife Zoya.
While many at the retreat were guilty of being garrulous, Mushir Sahab was the one who held back his opinion. He usually spoke at the end, almost as if he soaked in the words of all others and then decided to say it all in his inimitable laconic way. His words were measured, his sentences brief, their impact profound and lasting. He spoke as he usually writes: lots of background, linking seemingly disparate elements, then coming up with a conclusion all his own. Usually, his thought process left most of us quite in awe and wide-eyed. Of course, one of the participants who dabbled in astrology left the professor embarrassed, and the rest of us amused, by his predictions, most of which stayed clear of printable variety.
That was a rare aside in otherwise cerebral few days. A little later, Namita put together little essays or postcards from some of the participants in the form of a book “Present Tense: Living on the Edge”. Mushir Sahab too agreed to contribute to the anthology. This time he wrote as he spoke at the gathering: precise, insightful, profound. In his contribution to the anthology, he analysed the changing social contours of Hyderabad, delving deep into statistics to convey to the reader the completed picture. Then he drew a parallel with Uttar Pradesh and many of its towns, why Hyderabad which lost much of its Muslim muscle at the time of Partition bounced back with abounding Muslims middle class, why many of the UP towns with a sizeable Muslim population continue to languish, why the Muslim community in North India is still relatively backward with their literacy rate still low, why those Muslims who went over to Karnataka or Bombay had to fight for space with the Muslim elite there. And finally, why Hyderabad Muslims have prospered as part of a larger society, economy and polity. “UP still does not have a substantial middle class; Hyderabad has. Hundreds of Muslims are in the software industry; some hold key positions in Oracle and Microsoft…Muslim lawyers are visible. So are Muslim teachers and journalists,” he wrote, at the same time, he pointed out the high dropout rate among the community students in U.P., how many parents thought it was inadvisable to continue girls’ education beyond middle school. It brought back to mind the case of well known Tamil writer Salma who was forced to drop out of school on reaching puberty, and later studied at home by borrowing books from a local library.
Yes, in a book with many illuminating pieces, notably by Namita herself, Mushir Sahab’s essay stays with me. As indeed does his painstaking scholarly work on Partition. In recent years, he has been so prolific, yet remains so erudite. Every other month, we have had a book by him, or a compilation of historic documents where he has tried to make sense out of endless oddities.
I write this before the Friday prayers. I am sure one collective prayer will go up for the complete recovery of the widely respected author-historian. There are not too many of ilk around.
The author is a seasoned literary critic
