E.M Forster was a 27 year old Cambridge graduate when he was hired as the Latin tutor for a 17 year old Indian Muslim lad whose father had been a judge and whose grandfather had founded Aligarh Muslim University. The boy was a bit bumptious and preferred tickling his tutor to studying. It would be a feather in his cap to convert an Englishman to the true faith but to dominate, or merely patronize, an older man was an acceptable consolation prize. This involved saying this like-"My dear Forster, all Englishmen are Christians. It is very sad. The English are a tragic race. I feel deeply sorry for them. I would like to help them, but they are too numerous; there is nothing to be done.' The obvious riposte would be to say that Indians talk nonsense. This makes it easy for foreigners to rule them though they are too numerous to count. Incidentally, how much sand do you actually have in your vagina? Would it be enough to tempt T.E Lawrence to pitch his tent there? If not, perhaps you might try talking in a less effeminate manner.
It appears that Ross Masood believed his own father, who suffered alcoholism and mental illness, may have been homosexual. His own family blamed an English friend of his for leading him into wicked ways. Indeed, he had named his son 'Ross' after this friend.
Ross Masood explained his rebuffing of Forster as involving his horror at 'de minoritate patris sui’- the 'minorism' (homosexuality) of his father. Whatever the truth of the matter, the British government was concerned that Ross be a worthy heir to his grandfather. For some reason they did not spell out, they didn't want Ross to go to Cambridge, as his father had done, but to go to Oxford instead. Sadly, though serving briefly and brilliantly as Vice Chancellor of Aligarh, factionalism in the College forced Ross out. He formed a close friendship with Iqbal but died young. As for his friendship with Forster, alas!, it was counterproductive to the great cause to which he and his grandfather had dedicated themselves to.
Masood's good turn to his former tutor was to encourage him to write a novel set in India. Sadly, that novel showed the Indian Muslim in a very poor light. Forster did for them the complete reverse of what T.E Lawrence did for the Arab Muslim. The Indian Muslim was lazy, bigoted, and lived in a fantasy world. More even then the English, they were an alien element in India. Political power must pass to the Hindus. The Arab Muslim had his faults. But they were the faults of a virile, if somewhat mercenary, tribe. David Lean would make a great film on Lawrence and his Arab friends. Lean's 'Passage' is beautiful to look at. But, as Ghalib had said, he depicts an Eden with no Adam in it. There are some old women and there are some men who are old women or who are on their way to becoming old women. There are no battles. There is merely a Court case which is badly conducted. In 'Lawrence', Alec Guinness portrays the dignity and diplomatic skills of the subtle Arab Sheikh. In 'Passage' he hams it up as Peter Sellers. The lowest blow is that Aziz is played by a Bengali Hindu. During Forster's own life-time, Zia Zia Mohyeddin had taken that part in the stage and the BBC versions of the novel.
I don't know if the young Ross Masood could be said to have led on the older man. What is certain is that Hell hath no fury like a homosexual scorned. Also, don't tell an Englishman he has an Oriental sensibility. Call him the Queen of Sheba and leave it at that. Otherwise he will create a fiction in which you transfer the love you denied him to his own, very ancient, mother.
Early on in Forster's novel, Aziz gives the following definition of an Oriental. He had just met an elderly widow who listened sympathetically as he poured out his tale of woe to her. He exclaims
“You understand me, you know what others feel. Oh, if others resembled you!”
Rather surprised, she replied: “I don’t think I understand people very well. I only know whether I like or dislike them.”
“Then you are an Oriental.”
The widow is English. It appears some English people are 'oriental' because they like some people and dislike others as if by instinct. However, in the Holy Quran, Muslims are warned against friendship (which is not the same as liking) even with other 'people of the Book'. 5:51 'Oh, believers, do not take the Jews or Christians as friends. They are but one another’s friends. If any one of you take them for his friends, he surely is one of them. Allah will not guide the evildoers.'
Interestingly, by the end of the Book, Mrs. Moore, the elderly widow, seems to have lost her Christian faith. It is suggested that, if, in limbo, her spiritual difficulties are dispelled, it is through some Hindu theistic ritual performed by the eccentric Prof. Godbole. Forster, it seems, had the certainty of being in the right which the Edwardians had inherited from the Victorians. There is a story about the Indian philosopher Surendra Nath Dasgupta who 'read a paper on the epistemology of Vedanta to a session of the Aristotelian Society in London, Moore’s only comment was: ‘I have nothing to offer myself. But I am sure that whatever Dasgupta says is absolutely false.’ The audience of British philosophers in attendance roared with laughter at the devastating ‘argument’ Moore had levelled against this Indian philosophical system.' Prior to the Great War, it was possible to believe that God was an Englishman and though the English could offer no explanation as to why this was so, they could be sure that anything foreigners thought or believed was absolutely false.
Forster appears to have been influenced by Lowes Dickinson's jaundiced view of India- the Chinese were good chaps, the Japanese were a fine people, but the Indians were utterly shite- and he does sometimes use the term 'Oriental' in the racialist manner of the period. This is a typical expression of it.
Like most Orientals, Aziz overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy, and not seeing that it is tainted with the sense of possession.
The British in India were very hospitable to each other. Indeed, as Forster would show, in a crisis, hospitality triumphed over notions of hierarchy. But such hospitality never involved 'intimacy'. Forster was a classicist. He knew the ancient Greek code of Xenia. There were mutual obligations between Host and Guest. But baring your soul was neither required nor greatly desired. Still, it might happen after strong drink was taken. In that case, the polite thing was to pretend to have forgotten the entire matter.
What Forster is actually commenting on is the desire of those lower down in the social hierarchy to play host to those of a superior station. There is an obvious materialist motive to such tuft-hunting hospitality. Aziz desires 'nadims' (boon companions) but munadamah has nothing to do with hospitality. If you are wealthy, people will come to you for food and shelter while creating bonds of munadamah among themselves. If the rich turn niggardly, they may have to resort to the Tavern or the Tea Shop.
I suppose, even today, an African or European visiting India may be annexed by a noveau riche family. They will be paraded around to show their neighbours that the family is connected to Yurop Amrika, Afrika, Jaapaan. But we find this type of one-upmanship involving hospitality to the alien more acutely in Benson's Mapp & Lucia stories where a dark skinned Indian Yogi is briefly lionized. Sadly, the fellow turns out to be a low caste curry-cook. He flees when he hears the wife of a former Governor of Madras is due to visit.
Aziz was educated in India, but his friend Habibullah is a Cambridge man, just like Forster. Yet, after Adela recants her testimony, he remains unsympathetic to her. Let us see what Forster has to say about a Cantabrian Oriental- like his friend Ross Massood.
Miss Quested had not appealed to Hamidullah.
Nobody liked her. Yet, she is the purest acolyte, in Forster's fiction, of what Keynes called G.E Moore's religion which had so influenced Russell, Forster and the Bloomsbury set. It was not, to my mind, an attractive creed because it 'closely followed the English puritan tradition of being chiefly concerned with the salvation of our own souls.... There was not a very intimate connection between "being good" and "doing good" ... But religions proper, as distinct from modern "social service" pseudo-religions, have always been of that character; and perhaps it was a sufficient offset that our religion was altogether unworldly -- with wealth, power, popularity or success it had no concern whatever, they were thoroughly despised.'
It is easy to despise what you have a sufficiency of. Adela, like Forster himself, had just enough money not to be obliged to take uncongenial work.
If she had shown emotion in court, broke down, beat her breast, and invoked the name of God, she would have summoned forth his imagination and generosity—he had plenty of both. But while relieving the Oriental mind, she had chilled it, with the result that he could scarcely believe she was sincere, and indeed from his standpoint she was not.
For Fielding, she is sincere. For the 'Oriental', Hamidullah, she is not. Why? It turns out, in Forster's muddled mind, this had something to do with the Islamic rejection of Incarnation.
For her behaviour rested on cold justice and honesty; she had felt, while she recanted, no passion of love for those whom she had wronged. Truth is not truth in that exacting land unless there go with it kindness and more kindness and kindness again, unless the Word that was with God also is God.
So, a Christian country can be content with 'cold justice and honesty'. Muslims however don't have an incarnate Lord and Pantocrator and thus must have truth sugar coated in kindness and then dipped in the honey of yet more kindness before being covered in the chocolate of a kindliness specially imported from Belgium.
But Islam has a Khalilullah (Abraham as the friend of God) just as much as it has a Hamidullah (Praise- God Barebone).
And the girl’s sacrifice—so creditable according to Western notions—was rightly rejected, because, though it came from her heart, it did not include her heart. A few garlands from students was all that India ever gave her in return.
Her fiancee's Native Christian servant did try to blackmail her by alleging she had an affair with Fielding. She didn't pay him off but he managed to blackguard her to her fellow passengers and thus ruin her voyage home. Still, Adela is the one character in the novel who succeeds in getting the fuck out of India. As Mahatma Gandhi was telling the Viceroy at that time, nothing good comes of the mixing of the Europeans and the Asiatics. They merely take on each others' worst qualities. But this was also B.V. Keskar's point about the manner in which Muslim musicians had destroyed the pure, spiritual, Hindu, Shastric, music. Taking over A.I.R, he would ensure that Godbole's successors would learn to sing Tukaram's hymns in a purer style. What had previously been muddled would now be magisterial. As for the English Courts and Colleges and Hospitals and Houses of Parliament, the Hindus would quietly take them over and impose Sanskrit names on everything. The English language too would be Indianized. As Forster would complain, it had become unintelligible to the Englishman.
Returning to the question of who is Forster's Oriental, we find it is, it can only be, Mrs. Moore. Aziz is a Muslim and Islam is an international religion- albeit one which, like the Brits, might have to pack its bags and clear out of India. Habibullah is a Cambridge educated barrister. Indeed, like Forster, he may have been an Apostle. He will end up a High Court Judge and write concurring or dissenting judgments alongside Brother Judges named Burton or Turton. Mrs. Moore is oriental. She dies in that Red and incarnadine Sea which the Jews crossed dry-shod with Moses.
Released from prison, Aziz says of her-
“I have seen her but three times, but I know she is an Oriental.”
“You are so fantastic. . . . Miss Quested, you won’t treat her generously; while over Mrs. Moore there is this elaborate chivalry. Miss Quested anyhow behaved decently this morning, whereas the old lady never did anything for you at all, and it’s pure conjecture that she would have come forward in your favour, it only rests on servants’ gossip. Your emotions never seem in proportion to their objects, Aziz.”
If emotions are kept in proportion to their objects then Benthamite Utilitarianism is a good enough theory. Even if 'higher' emotions represent Moore's 'intrinsic values' and are 'non-natural' (i.e. not reducible to objects), still, because proportionality is maintained, there is 'correlation' (or what we now call Granger Causality) such that, for all practical purposes, Utilitarianism of a sufficiently perspicacious type is a true theory.
“Is emotion a sack of potatoes, so much the pound, to be measured out? Am I a machine?
Aziz is expressing the disquiet felt by Moore & Russell at Victorian Utilitarianism. Were they able to overcome it? Keynes came to the view that, though Moore's religion, as a private matter, had inoculated the Apostles against Marxism, it failed as a public philosophy.
One reason for this is because emotions can be 'non-rival' and 'non-excludable'- just like public goods. This takes us into the theory of externalities and preference revelation etc. Keynes's own contribution to Economics to point out there was a 'fallacy of composition'. Normally, it is good to save money. But if everybody saves money, there will be too little spending. Incomes will fall. Everybody is worse off.
Aziz says 'I shall be told I can use up my emotions by using them, next.”
Having an emotion is 'economic' in the sense that there is an opportunity cost. But you can broaden or restrict the scope of your emotion 'for no extra charge'.
“I should have thought you could. It sounds common sense. You can’t eat your cake and have it, even in the world of the spirit.”
But that which is spiritual, or- indeed- epistemic may be non-rival and non-excludable. If Russell learns Einstein's theory, it does not stop anyone, or everyone, from learning it. Economic theory suggests that 'public goods' will be undersupplied by the market. This is a matter for public policy. There is a collective action problem or opportunity. Could Moore's Religion help? No. It was useless. In the Thirties, some who adhered to Forster's philosophy of 'only connect' also decided, as he had counselled, to betray their country rather than betray their friends- except, there were no friends. There was only the KGB and, behind it, the Gulag.
“If you are right, there is no point in any friendship;
i.e. the Sufi conception of God as the friend, or the practices of the 'Society of Friends' (Quakers), are egregious.
it all comes down to give and take, or give and return, which is disgusting, and we had better all leap over this parapet and kill ourselves.
God forbids suicide.
Is anything wrong with you this evening that you grow so materialistic?”
Something was wrong. Mrs. Moore was dead.
“Your unfairness is worse than my materialism.”
Injustice is indeed worse than acquisitiveness.
“I see. Anything further to complain of?”
Complaint- 'shikva'- is a sign of intimacy. You complain if your wife ceases to complain about you. She says 'shut up!' and puts the baby in your lap and goes for her bath. Baby bites your nose. You are happy. There is a new tyrant (zalim) in your life of whom you can complain when he is asleep and thus deaf to entreaty.
He was good-tempered and affectionate but a little formidable. Imprisonment had made channels for his character, which would never fluctuate as widely now as in the past.
Would that were true. Forster is in love with Aziz and will make him caper about in antic fashion till the end of the book. I suppose, Forster had heard G.E Moore singing Ich grolle nicht. Sir Syed Ross Masood, even when transformed into the lower middle class Dr. Aziz, remains the zalim whose heart is harder than a diamond. Ghalib could have taken up the conceit from Heine. What makes them different is the passion and seriousness Schumann brings to the lyric. Otherwise, as both Ghalib & Heine well knew, there are few maiden hearts upon which a 20 carat diamond ring can't inscribe a pledge of troth.
“Because it is far better you put all your difficulties before me, if we are to be friends for ever. You do not like Mrs. Moore, and are annoyed because I do;
You are jelly. That means you love me. But we can all love each other. Did you know 'raqib' which means 'rival', when applied to God, actually means 'protector'? The existence of the rival spurs us on. Otherwise, we would grow complacent and take love for granted.
however, you will like her in time.”
This is the pure Aligarh creed explained to me by a young Banker in 1982. Two people become friends. Then each seeks one more friend. Now there are four friends. Soon there will eight and then 16 and, by and by, the whole world will be connected through friendship.
When a person, really dead, is supposed to be alive, an unhealthiness infects the conversation.
Save when we hear 'Christ is risen!; and reply 'He is risen indeed!'
Fielding could not stand the tension any longer and blurted out: “I’m sorry to say Mrs. Moore’s dead.”
Two months later Godbole would see her. Perhaps she is in limbo or what the Muslims call 'barzakh' and the Hindus 'antarabhava'. Godbole believes he is the instrument by which her Spiritual difficulties are dispelled.
But Hamidullah, who had been listening to all their talk, and did not want the festive evening spoilt, cried from the adjoining bed: “Aziz, he is trying to pull your leg; don’t believe him, the villain.”
“I do not believe him,” said Aziz; he was inured to practical jokes, even of this type.
Fielding said no more. Facts are facts, and everyone would learn of Mrs. Moore’s death in the morning. But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality. An experience of his own confirmed this. Many years ago he had lost a great friend, a woman, who believed in the Christian heaven, and assured him that after the changes and chances of this mortal life they would meet in it again. Fielding was a blank, frank atheist, but he respected every opinion his friend held: to do this is essential in friendship. And it seemed to him for a time that the dead awaited him, and when the illusion faded it left behind it an emptiness that was almost guilt: “This really is the end,” he thought, “and I gave her the final blow.” He had tried to kill Mrs. Moore this evening, on the roof of the Nawab Bahadur’s house;
Why? Aziz and the Indians seemed to be attributing Adela's recantation to Mrs. Moore's spiritual influence. But, that is the picture Forster himself conveys to his readers. Adela has an echo ringing in her ears. When she says 'maybe Aziz didn't do it' it eases. Mrs. Moore seems to understand the nature of the echo. She flatly declares that Aziz didn't do it. Her son bundles her out of the country lest she be called as a witness. The Superintendent of Police (who ought not to be prosecuting the case because a senior barrister was appearing for the Defence) made the mistake of mentioning Mrs. Moore. This meant the Defence could demand her appearance. The crowd takes up the demand 'Esmiss Esmoore!' Hearing this chant enables Adela to see more clearly, with her mind's eye, what actually happened. She recants and the echo disappears.
Forster's character, Fielding, can't know what the author has told the reader. It appears he thinks that 'killing Mrs. Moore' will cause Aziz to think less of her and more of Adela. He will see that it was Adela who had restored his freedom. The problem here is that she- by virtue of belonging to the Occidental community- was the one who had put him in jail. This was a case where the Orientals had to stick together just as the Occidentals stuck together. Mrs. Moore, in this case, is Oriental. What of Fielding? He too affirmed Aziz's innocence and had to resign from the Club. Had the trial had a different outcome, his career in India would have been over. Instead, because Aziz was exonerated, his stock had risen. Yet, because he remains in India (as, sadly, Mrs. Moore's other two children now seem destined to do) his fate is to become more and more Occidental. Why? Godbole's school is a sham. The Indians are hopeless. The White Man must keep carrying his burden even if, ultimately, it crushes him.
but she still eluded him, and the atmosphere remained tranquil. Presently the moon rose—the exhausted crescent that precedes the sun—and shortly after men and oxen
and Civil Servants and School Masters
began their interminable labour, and the gracious interlude, which he had tried to curtail, came to its natural conclusion.
The natural conclusion of the 'Sahib's' life was to return to a penurious retirement in England where the butcher and the baker would show him scant respect.
Forster, thankfully, wasn't a Sahib. But, like Moore, he seems to have believed that what one knew must always accord with one's belief. Perhaps there really is an 'Oriental' type of mind capable of affirming 'Moorean sentences'.
Aziz did not believe his own suspicions—better if he had, for then he would have denounced and cleared the situation up.
Forster had shown White officials operating on the basis of suspicions which they did not themselves believe. Why? Their behaviour was strategic. Having a suspicion and it being common knowledge you have that suspicion alters outcomes. This was certainly the case for the Boarding School Master. Kipling and others have suggested that suspicion of 'beastliness' could itself create that which it sought to detect and curb. Boys who would not have thought of buggering each other might take up that hobby if the beaks keep banging on about it.
Suspicion and belief could in his mind exist side by side.
As could morality and spirituality and a sense of humour. Fielding, however, tells Aziz that he himself is absolutely devoid of morals. Such statements provoke suspicion. Indeed, the beak who pretends to be friendly with the boys, may well be spying on them.
They sprang from different sources, and need never intermingle.
This is always the case. Suspicion is aroused where things appear different from what they ought to be. We start considering why this is the case and formulate hypothesis. The one in which we place most credence is our belief. But beliefs can be strategic or imperative.
Suspicion in the Oriental is a sort of malignant tumour, a mental malady,
This is paranoia. It can afflict a person of any background.
that makes him self-conscious and unfriendly suddenly; he trusts and mistrusts at the same time in a way the Westerner cannot comprehend.
Westerners, like Easterners, understand paranoia well enough. I suppose an alterity can become the object of intense suspicion even in the absence of any mental illness. What is more typical of paranoia, as Freud observed, is to believe one you love is trying to kill you. Perhaps, this is because that person has been replaced by a machine. I suppose the Moorean religion was a defence against our own ipseity being replaced by a machine such that we do an injury to our friends.
Apart from Mrs. Moore, there is one other 'Oriental' in the novel. It is her younger son- who seems a bit of a moon-calf. Aziz has been unkind to him. Abruptly, he says-
“Don’t you think me unkind any more?”
“No.”
“How can you tell, you strange fellow?”
“Not difficult, the one thing I always know.”
“Can you always tell whether a stranger is your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Then you are an Oriental.”
Some cats know whom they can trust to look after them. But not all such cats are Persian or Siamese.
He unclasped as he spoke, with a little shudder. Those words—he had said them to Mrs. Moore in the mosque in the beginning of the cycle, from which, after so much suffering, he had got free. Never be friends with the English! Mosque, caves, mosque, caves. And here he was starting again. He handed the magic ointment to him.
He had promised to return it to its owner but ends up giving it away.
“Take this, think of me when you use it. I shall never want it back. I must give you one little present, and it is all I have got;
it wasn't his
you are Mrs. Moore’s son.”
“I am that,” he murmured to himself; and a part of Aziz’ mind that had been hidden seemed to move and force its way to the top.
“But you are Heaslop’s brother also, and alas, the two nations cannot be friends.”
Heaslop may have ended up a Judge. Some such were asked to stay on after Independence. Why? They were trusted not to be partial to those of their own caste or creed. But this was only because no such people were left in India.
“I know. Not yet.”
“Did your mother speak to you about me?”
“Yes.” And with a swerve of voice and body that Aziz did not follow he added, “In her letters, in her letters. She loved you.”
“Yes, your mother was my best friend in all the world.” He was silent, puzzled by his own great gratitude. What did this eternal goodness of Mrs. Moore amount to? To nothing, if brought to the test of thought. She had not borne witness in his favour, nor visited him in the prison, yet she had stolen to the depths of his heart, and he always adored her. “This is our monsoon, the best weather,” he said, while the lights of the procession waved as though embroidered on an agitated curtain. “How I wish she could have seen them, our rains. Now is the time when all things are happy, young and old. They are happy out there with their savage noise, though we cannot follow them; the tanks are all full so they dance, and this is India.
It is a season. All countries are India in that respect. What makes it unique is Hinduism.
Fielding says to Aziz-
“I can’t explain, because it isn’t in words at all, but why do my wife and her brother like Hinduism, though they take no interest in its forms? They won’t talk to me about this. They know I think a certain side of their lives is a mistake, and are shy. That’s why I wish you would talk to them, for at all events you’re Oriental.”
Forster took passage to India thrice but Hindu India eluded him on the first two occasions. The third time was in 1945. He attended a PEN conference in Jaipur and rubbed shoulders with Nehru and Sarojini Naidu and Radhakrishnan- all of whom were Brahmin. Churchill had warned against Brahmin hegemony in 1931. The thing had never been elusive. It was just something better left unpursued unless, obviously, you happened to be George Harrison and Ravi Shankar was happy to teach you to play the sitar.
After the trial, Fielding says he hopes Aziz will write poetry of a new type
“I was a child when you knew me first. Everyone was my friend then. The Friend: a Persian expression for God. But I do not want to be a religious poet either.”“I hoped you would be.”
“Why, when you yourself are an atheist?”
“There is something in religion that may not be true, but has not yet been sung.”
“Explain in detail.”
“Something that the Hindus have perhaps found.”
“Let them sing it.”
“Hindus are unable to sing.”
His thin voice rose, and gave out one sound after another. At times there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western melody.
Western music is harmonic though it permits the illusion of melody. Indian music is melodic though it can be harmonized easily enough. What Western ears may find baffling is 'pitch'.
But the ear, baffled repeatedly, soon lost any clue, and wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none intelligible. It was the song of an unknown bird.
Not really. Outside the Western musical canon, pitch ratios aren't restricted to a major and a minor scale. The bird is familiar enough. It has merely been excluded from the regimented choir.
Only the servants
the natives
understood it. They began to whisper to one another. The man who was gathering water chestnut came naked out of the tank, his lips parted with delight, disclosing his scarlet tongue. The sounds continued and ceased after a few moments as casually as they had begun—apparently half through a bar, and upon the subdominant.
In other words, the raag ends on madhyama svara. But which one is it? Kalyan?
Godbole explains his song-
“I will explain in detail. It was a religious song. I placed myself in the position of a milkmaiden. I say to Shri Krishna, ‘Come! come to me only.’ The god refuses to come. I grow humble and say: ‘Do not come to me only. Multiply yourself into a hundred Krishnas, and let one go to each of my hundred companions, but one, O Lord of the Universe, come to me.’ He refuses to come. This is repeated several times. The song is composed in a raga appropriate to the present hour, which is the evening.”
“But He comes in some other song, I hope?” said Mrs. Moore gently.
“Oh no, he refuses to come,” repeated Godbole, perhaps not understanding her question. “I say to Him, Come, come, come, come, come, come. He neglects to come.”
Both Godbole and Aziz fall ill after this soiree. When his friends come to visit him, Aziz provides them with the Islamic equivalent of the Hindu chant.
He held up his hand, palm outward, his eyes began to glow, his heart to fill with tenderness. Issuing still farther from his quilt, he recited a poem by Ghalib.
Who said Hind is an Eden with no Adam in it.
It had no connection with anything that had gone before, but it came from his heart and spoke to theirs. They were overwhelmed by its pathos; pathos, they agreed, is the highest quality in art; a poem should touch the hearer with a sense of his own weakness, and should institute some comparison between mankind and flowers.
There are none such in Ghalib.
The squalid bedroom grew quiet; the silly intrigues, the gossip, the shallow discontent were stilled, while words accepted as immortal filled the indifferent air. Not as a call to battle, but as a calm assurance came the feeling that India was one; Moslem; always had been; an assurance that lasted until they looked out of the door. Whatever Ghalib had felt, he had anyhow lived in India, and this consolidated it for them: he had gone with his own tulips and roses,
Ghalib says only a few manifested as tulips and roses. What other faces there may have been remain the close secret of the dust.
but tulips and roses do not go.
Yes, they do. They are seasonal and, in any case, weeds and deserts encroach
And the sister kingdoms of the north—
the West
Arabia, Persia, Ferghana, Turkestan—stretched out their hands as he sang, sadly, because all beauty is sad, and greeted ridiculous Chandrapore, where every street and house was divided against itself, and told her that she was a continent and a unity.
Ghalib was a pensioner of the British. The Mutiny had been disastrous for him.
The poem had done no “good” to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved.
Mohammad Ali Jauhar, the younger of the Ali brothers of Khilafat fame, would quote Browning- still very fashionable at Oxford in the 1890s- at even greater length. I suppose, had he buttonholed Forster, he'd given him an earful of Browning's 'Fears & Scruples' about the unseen friend whose letters are so beautiful but who might be- what? - not 'busied with our betters' but, more humiliatingly, just God. The Orient is merely where dawn strikes the horizon. When beheld, it is a reminder, that elsewhere there is darkness. Forster's book came out four or five years after Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes; "The Going-Under of the Evening Lands". Meanwhile Ind's night was 'aabastan'- pregnant- with what Faiz would call the 'Night gnawed' Dawn- of a parturition that was Partition or as the Mahatma said, more of a vivisection than a Caesarean birth. With that, England could be done with Orientalism though no doubt, it needed wogs- more particularly those with Medical degrees- for its National Health Service. Nothing wrong with that at all.
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