Nazia Hasan - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Conference Presentations by Nazia Hasan
Imagine a world without love stories? I often wonder whether we really need these romances? What ... more Imagine a world without love stories? I often wonder whether we really need these romances? What purpose do they serve? It's not merely a tale-telling that Laylah Majnun or Romeo Juliet are such house hold names, are prescribed in curriculums of schools to universities, and everybody knows them, even a love deprived child. We sway and dance to the tunes of Anarkali in spite of so many honour killings of love couples happening every now and then around us, although many things have changed over the years-love survives with its shortened and clipped spelling even today in the high tech era. Nal Daman is one of those greatest of love stories which has survived the test of time not only as an old-wives' tale but also as a literary and cultural icon. We come across the characters of Nal and Daman/ Damayanti in varied languages and dialects, the closest being Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, Assamese, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and believed in as a religious ritual of narration by Jains also. It is a mean excision of imagination if our children are being fed upon commercialized fairy tales only, now-a-days, like cutting the sky off as a patch and hiding the rest in anonymity. And life does not end with 'living happily ever after' as well! The Mughal emperor, Akbar, up to his grandiose yet humane repute, knew it very well. His ferman to the royal poet Sheikh Abul Faiz ibn Mubarak is well recorded in history: Sheikh Faizi, the Malik-ush-Shu'ra also known as Fayyazi (Ain-e-Akbari,618) knew the significance of this opportunity. He knew this is the moment of his calling – the day he was born for and the task he was meant to do. No witches of Macbeth came to stir his soul towards ambition but he carried a fount of aspiration deep within him as is revealed by his prodigious plan of penning five long masnavis/epics by the titles of Akbar Nama, Markaze-Adwar, Sulaiman wa Bilqis, the Haft Kishwar and Masnavi-e-Nal-Daman. The world would have definitely been a bit different for it went short of breaths to Faizi and caused a premature demise in 1004 H., just after completing the story of our concern today. Nal Daman was originally a story of true love, sacrifice and fidelity in the Sanskrit Mahabharata. Faizi living in Hindostan but with a heart already enriched with the revelation of the Chishti Sufi Khwaja Farid-ud-Din Ganj-i-Shakkar nurtured a dream of going beyond the borders, reaching the cultural hubs of Iran and Persia. He intended it to be a literary monument of human bonds, aesthetic beauty, poetic grandeur and the charm of pleasing monarchs for years to come, in its Persian garbs. In Ain-e-Akbari, Abul Fazal notes other translators' dismay with the task of translating Sanskrit texts as difficult, one fringing compulsion and an unwillingness to soil hands in a totally different religious matter 1. Faizi's work became a well-celebrated Masnavi for its artfully narrated tales, with a beautiful amalgamation of Indo-Persian motifs but more importantly for the way he added new dimensions of kingship, politics, religion, socialism and Sufi ideology brewing around him. For contemporary readers, it turns out as a fascinating manifestation of freedom as a writer in the well-woven disguise of translation. He utilized the opportunity
A close analysis of my Experiments with Truth , in Urdu translation, with an unavoidable feminist... more A close analysis of my Experiments with Truth , in Urdu translation, with an unavoidable feminist perspective.
How Do novels of Dickens sound in Urdu? An interesting analysis
Faiz has been a heart throb of all people with a conscience post 1947.
It shouldn't be surprising for anybody today if one says that " There cannot be an educated peopl... more It shouldn't be surprising for anybody today if one says that " There cannot be an educated people without educated women. If general education had to be limited to men or to women, that opportunity should be given to women, for then it would most surely be passed on to the next generation ". A.S. Neill, the philosopher believed that the aim of education should be to make people happier, more secure, less neurotic and less prejudiced (Standish, 2006). Thus if a society is made up of both men and women, in that case women have been missing always, from schools, from archery classes, from grammar schools and science laboratories. That's why we don't have any renowned sister of Shakespeare or Einstein or in the present scenario, any female Adam Smith or Milton Friedman. Of course, because the majority of women in their times were kept away from all sources of knowledge and education. Jane Roland Martin rightly summarises that on analysis, all intellectual disciplines have been biased to a specific gender. " Although women had reared and taught their young throughout history, they were excluded from the standard texts and anthologies of the field both as the subjects and as the objects of educational thought " (Curren, 2006). All histories too thus have been dominated by the hegemony of masculine ideology. Empowerment is a socio-political concept that goes beyond "formal political participation" and "consciousness raising." A full definition of empowerment must include cognitive, psychological, political, and economic components, and education serves as the single route to achieve all. The complex inter-linkages between social and personal factors, one reinforcing the other cannot be tackled without the active participation of women in a self-driven and self-motivated strategy for a basic change in the mind-sets of the individual and people in society. Going beyond the passive state of women to one where they become active agents in their own transformation is the essence of empowerment.
New writings hold new truths and new hopes, as well. Arundhati Roy proves that once more. The God... more New writings hold new truths and new hopes, as well. Arundhati Roy proves that once more. The God of Small things to The Ministry of Utmost Happiness weave an India and the world from North to South, from little joys to big agonies, small acts to huge rewards, grand shows to petty hearts…She once again speaks of the subalterns, the subjugated, the dismissed and the obliterated, the blinds and the hide-outs how the fists of resistance do not come down, the wish for rights, the dreams for dignity do not dim even as they bleed and endure like trees would treat witherings and autumns. Her works speak of high born 'laltains', the low born 'mombatties', the nowhere persons called eunuchs, orphans and the disowned; while worrying over drying river beds, dying birds and poachings rampant: she at least, wakes one up to the world! That's the new writing which gives space to the unsaid and sheds light on the unrevealed. The history house doors are opened, the worm cans of Kasmir Military camps and Militant hide outs which indulge in something similar, the difference being the intention only which is a hair line one. We hear Dickens to Spivak in these new inscriptions. If Aftab is Anjum, then Anjum is the people called India, people called the world who are divided over caste, class, colour and deformity which no person inflicts on oneself. He/ she is the man/woman who is oppressed and yet builds up a world out of ruins. Her living in the graveyard, sleeping and waking up on graves of her blood relations is the metonymy for Kashmir-the burning paradise where people do not die; they are either killed or shoveled up to darkness and anonymity,while the living also die a hundred deaths every now and then. Solace is the new holy grail!
Books by Nazia Hasan
A book on major novels of Amitav Ghosh. It reads the novels from a post colonial and new historic... more A book on major novels of Amitav Ghosh. It reads the novels from a post colonial and new historical perspectives.
Papers by Nazia Hasan
Why did Virginia Woolf advise all women to kill 'the angel of the house'?
The wives as immigrants, their experience.
New York Times writer Natalie Angrier summed up marriage being, " pretty good for the goose much ... more New York Times writer Natalie Angrier summed up marriage being, " pretty good for the goose much of the time, but golden for the gander, practically all of the time ". We are the first generation who are living not only on Oxygen, water and food, rather we are breathing media every second of our life for it envelops us from all sides, whether you want it or not. It is the parallel atmosphere once again with multiple layers, and we inhale and exhale it. We are soaking it, absorbing it, rejecting it, all the time; as it doctors our thoughts and dreams; " engineering " and " extracting consent " (Chomsky:29-43). As we sit with the virtual reality literally in our hand just a click away, the pervasive avalanche of media keeps pouring us with messages, movements, ideals, reshaping our life towards acquiring more and more commodities or living like the rich and happy people we watch or read about, with desires jumping from a bigger house, a splashier car to a more plush office or cell phone which can show you fairer and younger, a compatible and adoring spouse with perfectly scheduled children or 'values like harmony' and nationalism. It will not be an overstatement that millions of us who watch media working on us uncritically, we 'spend our entire days trying to fit into a perfect little bubble' as shown to us. We love life but we 'hate our lives' if anything is missing in chiseling that particular picture we want to fit in. Arundhati Roy puts it aptly that media is capable of causing 'a war of dreams' (TGOST:53) if we surrender to it. In short, media spreads over and around our being like a gigantic cultural apparatus, we try to find comfort by conforming to its commandments and dictates.
The ecological concern for environment could not be expressed in a more poetic way than here, as ... more The ecological concern for environment could not be expressed in a more poetic way than here, as shown in works of Amitav Ghosh
The present paper tries to trace out some of the postmodern traits in this immensely allegorical,... more The present paper tries to trace out some of the postmodern traits in this immensely allegorical, funny and technically innovative novel of Salman Rushdie entitled Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990). Rushdie wrote this novel with the intention of contributing to the oeuvre of children's literature. But as children enjoy this novel for its amazing and baffling story telling style, adult and mature readers find it attacking upon the omnipresent 'Ocean of Notions' which he presents as a character, besides other interesting names like the Shah of Blah, moon of Kahani, Controller Walrus, cult leader Khattamshud, General Kitab, Prince Bolo, Land of Gup and Land of Chup and many others. All the names themselves hide and reveal so many ideas and perceptions. The present novel is usually read as a criticism of Enlightenment theory but at the same time, Rushdie is cautions of erecting simplified dichotomies. Because, for the most part, humankind as a race and as individuals finds itself immersed in the ambiguous grey zone of judgement in which right and wrong, good and bad, civilization and barbarism cease to exist in a tidy binary opposition. Distinctions among them are rather blurred and confused, as God Himself is Bezabaan (tongueless), according to Rushdie. Rushdie lets Haroun adopt a postmodern spirit of skepticism and critique but with a political motive. He is accompanied by Iff and Butt, with additional power of seeing beyond the restrictions of perceived reality. He literally shifts the world on its axis by clashing the past, the present and the future. He acknowledges that we exist simultaneously in all three temporal modes and must therefore, acknowledge the authority, claims and limitations of each. Thus, as no rules can claim to be holy in the present 'postmodern' times, we can always move towards a new beginning and a deeper, more progressive understanding of our reality.
Drafts by Nazia Hasan
everyone writes about young people or very old, experienced ones. Do we see any mother as the sub... more everyone writes about young people or very old, experienced ones. Do we see any mother as the subject of a story? A creative writing piece.
Imagine a world without love stories? I often wonder whether we really need these romances? What ... more Imagine a world without love stories? I often wonder whether we really need these romances? What purpose do they serve? It's not merely a tale-telling that Laylah Majnun or Romeo Juliet are such house hold names, are prescribed in curriculums of schools to universities, and everybody knows them, even a love deprived child. We sway and dance to the tunes of Anarkali in spite of so many honour killings of love couples happening every now and then around us, although many things have changed over the years-love survives with its shortened and clipped spelling even today in the high tech era. Nal Daman is one of those greatest of love stories which has survived the test of time not only as an old-wives' tale but also as a literary and cultural icon. We come across the characters of Nal and Daman/ Damayanti in varied languages and dialects, the closest being Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, Assamese, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and believed in as a religious ritual of narration by Jains also. It is a mean excision of imagination if our children are being fed upon commercialized fairy tales only, now-a-days, like cutting the sky off as a patch and hiding the rest in anonymity. And life does not end with 'living happily ever after' as well! The Mughal emperor, Akbar, up to his grandiose yet humane repute, knew it very well. His ferman to the royal poet Sheikh Abul Faiz ibn Mubarak is well recorded in history: Sheikh Faizi, the Malik-ush-Shu'ra also known as Fayyazi (Ain-e-Akbari,618) knew the significance of this opportunity. He knew this is the moment of his calling – the day he was born for and the task he was meant to do. No witches of Macbeth came to stir his soul towards ambition but he carried a fount of aspiration deep within him as is revealed by his prodigious plan of penning five long masnavis/epics by the titles of Akbar Nama, Markaze-Adwar, Sulaiman wa Bilqis, the Haft Kishwar and Masnavi-e-Nal-Daman. The world would have definitely been a bit different for it went short of breaths to Faizi and caused a premature demise in 1004 H., just after completing the story of our concern today. Nal Daman was originally a story of true love, sacrifice and fidelity in the Sanskrit Mahabharata. Faizi living in Hindostan but with a heart already enriched with the revelation of the Chishti Sufi Khwaja Farid-ud-Din Ganj-i-Shakkar nurtured a dream of going beyond the borders, reaching the cultural hubs of Iran and Persia. He intended it to be a literary monument of human bonds, aesthetic beauty, poetic grandeur and the charm of pleasing monarchs for years to come, in its Persian garbs. In Ain-e-Akbari, Abul Fazal notes other translators' dismay with the task of translating Sanskrit texts as difficult, one fringing compulsion and an unwillingness to soil hands in a totally different religious matter 1. Faizi's work became a well-celebrated Masnavi for its artfully narrated tales, with a beautiful amalgamation of Indo-Persian motifs but more importantly for the way he added new dimensions of kingship, politics, religion, socialism and Sufi ideology brewing around him. For contemporary readers, it turns out as a fascinating manifestation of freedom as a writer in the well-woven disguise of translation. He utilized the opportunity
A close analysis of my Experiments with Truth , in Urdu translation, with an unavoidable feminist... more A close analysis of my Experiments with Truth , in Urdu translation, with an unavoidable feminist perspective.
How Do novels of Dickens sound in Urdu? An interesting analysis
Faiz has been a heart throb of all people with a conscience post 1947.
It shouldn't be surprising for anybody today if one says that " There cannot be an educated peopl... more It shouldn't be surprising for anybody today if one says that " There cannot be an educated people without educated women. If general education had to be limited to men or to women, that opportunity should be given to women, for then it would most surely be passed on to the next generation ". A.S. Neill, the philosopher believed that the aim of education should be to make people happier, more secure, less neurotic and less prejudiced (Standish, 2006). Thus if a society is made up of both men and women, in that case women have been missing always, from schools, from archery classes, from grammar schools and science laboratories. That's why we don't have any renowned sister of Shakespeare or Einstein or in the present scenario, any female Adam Smith or Milton Friedman. Of course, because the majority of women in their times were kept away from all sources of knowledge and education. Jane Roland Martin rightly summarises that on analysis, all intellectual disciplines have been biased to a specific gender. " Although women had reared and taught their young throughout history, they were excluded from the standard texts and anthologies of the field both as the subjects and as the objects of educational thought " (Curren, 2006). All histories too thus have been dominated by the hegemony of masculine ideology. Empowerment is a socio-political concept that goes beyond "formal political participation" and "consciousness raising." A full definition of empowerment must include cognitive, psychological, political, and economic components, and education serves as the single route to achieve all. The complex inter-linkages between social and personal factors, one reinforcing the other cannot be tackled without the active participation of women in a self-driven and self-motivated strategy for a basic change in the mind-sets of the individual and people in society. Going beyond the passive state of women to one where they become active agents in their own transformation is the essence of empowerment.
New writings hold new truths and new hopes, as well. Arundhati Roy proves that once more. The God... more New writings hold new truths and new hopes, as well. Arundhati Roy proves that once more. The God of Small things to The Ministry of Utmost Happiness weave an India and the world from North to South, from little joys to big agonies, small acts to huge rewards, grand shows to petty hearts…She once again speaks of the subalterns, the subjugated, the dismissed and the obliterated, the blinds and the hide-outs how the fists of resistance do not come down, the wish for rights, the dreams for dignity do not dim even as they bleed and endure like trees would treat witherings and autumns. Her works speak of high born 'laltains', the low born 'mombatties', the nowhere persons called eunuchs, orphans and the disowned; while worrying over drying river beds, dying birds and poachings rampant: she at least, wakes one up to the world! That's the new writing which gives space to the unsaid and sheds light on the unrevealed. The history house doors are opened, the worm cans of Kasmir Military camps and Militant hide outs which indulge in something similar, the difference being the intention only which is a hair line one. We hear Dickens to Spivak in these new inscriptions. If Aftab is Anjum, then Anjum is the people called India, people called the world who are divided over caste, class, colour and deformity which no person inflicts on oneself. He/ she is the man/woman who is oppressed and yet builds up a world out of ruins. Her living in the graveyard, sleeping and waking up on graves of her blood relations is the metonymy for Kashmir-the burning paradise where people do not die; they are either killed or shoveled up to darkness and anonymity,while the living also die a hundred deaths every now and then. Solace is the new holy grail!
A book on major novels of Amitav Ghosh. It reads the novels from a post colonial and new historic... more A book on major novels of Amitav Ghosh. It reads the novels from a post colonial and new historical perspectives.
Why did Virginia Woolf advise all women to kill 'the angel of the house'?
The wives as immigrants, their experience.
New York Times writer Natalie Angrier summed up marriage being, " pretty good for the goose much ... more New York Times writer Natalie Angrier summed up marriage being, " pretty good for the goose much of the time, but golden for the gander, practically all of the time ". We are the first generation who are living not only on Oxygen, water and food, rather we are breathing media every second of our life for it envelops us from all sides, whether you want it or not. It is the parallel atmosphere once again with multiple layers, and we inhale and exhale it. We are soaking it, absorbing it, rejecting it, all the time; as it doctors our thoughts and dreams; " engineering " and " extracting consent " (Chomsky:29-43). As we sit with the virtual reality literally in our hand just a click away, the pervasive avalanche of media keeps pouring us with messages, movements, ideals, reshaping our life towards acquiring more and more commodities or living like the rich and happy people we watch or read about, with desires jumping from a bigger house, a splashier car to a more plush office or cell phone which can show you fairer and younger, a compatible and adoring spouse with perfectly scheduled children or 'values like harmony' and nationalism. It will not be an overstatement that millions of us who watch media working on us uncritically, we 'spend our entire days trying to fit into a perfect little bubble' as shown to us. We love life but we 'hate our lives' if anything is missing in chiseling that particular picture we want to fit in. Arundhati Roy puts it aptly that media is capable of causing 'a war of dreams' (TGOST:53) if we surrender to it. In short, media spreads over and around our being like a gigantic cultural apparatus, we try to find comfort by conforming to its commandments and dictates.
The ecological concern for environment could not be expressed in a more poetic way than here, as ... more The ecological concern for environment could not be expressed in a more poetic way than here, as shown in works of Amitav Ghosh
The present paper tries to trace out some of the postmodern traits in this immensely allegorical,... more The present paper tries to trace out some of the postmodern traits in this immensely allegorical, funny and technically innovative novel of Salman Rushdie entitled Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990). Rushdie wrote this novel with the intention of contributing to the oeuvre of children's literature. But as children enjoy this novel for its amazing and baffling story telling style, adult and mature readers find it attacking upon the omnipresent 'Ocean of Notions' which he presents as a character, besides other interesting names like the Shah of Blah, moon of Kahani, Controller Walrus, cult leader Khattamshud, General Kitab, Prince Bolo, Land of Gup and Land of Chup and many others. All the names themselves hide and reveal so many ideas and perceptions. The present novel is usually read as a criticism of Enlightenment theory but at the same time, Rushdie is cautions of erecting simplified dichotomies. Because, for the most part, humankind as a race and as individuals finds itself immersed in the ambiguous grey zone of judgement in which right and wrong, good and bad, civilization and barbarism cease to exist in a tidy binary opposition. Distinctions among them are rather blurred and confused, as God Himself is Bezabaan (tongueless), according to Rushdie. Rushdie lets Haroun adopt a postmodern spirit of skepticism and critique but with a political motive. He is accompanied by Iff and Butt, with additional power of seeing beyond the restrictions of perceived reality. He literally shifts the world on its axis by clashing the past, the present and the future. He acknowledges that we exist simultaneously in all three temporal modes and must therefore, acknowledge the authority, claims and limitations of each. Thus, as no rules can claim to be holy in the present 'postmodern' times, we can always move towards a new beginning and a deeper, more progressive understanding of our reality.
everyone writes about young people or very old, experienced ones. Do we see any mother as the sub... more everyone writes about young people or very old, experienced ones. Do we see any mother as the subject of a story? A creative writing piece.