A rare kind of literary talent
I have always been fascinated by writer Abul Mansur Ahmad's boldness and his political consciousness. Perhaps no other writer of his age was able to blend the two with such finesse. Some of his contemporaries were also known for their candour and frankness; some were quite politically conscious, too. What makes Abul Mansur Ahmad different is that his work was uniformly shaped by a constant awareness of the political reality. He never lost sight of it—partly because he was involved with politics himself.
His identity as a politician, however, makes up only a part of what he was. It was not his dominant identity. He was, we can say, primarily a writer who also happened to be a journalist. A writer who also happened to be an advocate and politician. That singular identity, in a way, outweighed—and outlived—the rest of his identities.
Abul Mansur Ahmad's enduring popularity is a testament to his success as a politically conscious writer. In that he was driven and almost visceral. His candour was but a reflection of the force with which the Muslim middle class was evolving. Take Kazi Nazrul Islam's Mrityukhudha (Hunger for Death) (1930), which is a story of life but also of death that casts a long, frequent shadow over it. Abul Mansur Ahmad, a friend of Nazrul's, also dealt with death in his novel Jiban Khudha (Hunger for Life) (1955) but his portrayal of life as an unstoppable force of nature is unmistakable. Halim, the novel's protagonist, emerging out of a feudal system, counters the challenges of an increasingly capitalistic environment. There's a force at work in this journey, a force that can be noticed in all the works of Abul Mansur Ahmad.
This force, or intensity, however, was not present at all stages of the evolution of the Muslim middle class. Not everyone was Halim. The history of the lower-middle class was quite different. Even the class that Abul Mansur belonged to also suffered from a lower-middle-class complex at times. He was clearly a representative of his class, not of other classes, so if in some cases he seemed to be lacking clarity, he amply made up for it with the fullness of his representation in other cases.
There was a certain forceful quality to whatever he wrote—political commentary, satire, or fiction. His satirical works Food Conference (1944) and Aina (Mirror) (1936–1937) garnered instant fame after they were published. His was a kind of satire that was direct and unpretentious, and came with disturbing images. It lacked subtlety though. There was, in fact, no need for subtlety since he wanted to expose a society that was immune to hushed criticism and mild satire. He needed to be blatant to get his message across.
Today, one notices an abject lack of quality satire although there is ample material for that. The writers, in their defence, may say that although the society has many anomalies, they are too gross to be made fun of. It's a difficult task, true, but Abul Mansur Ahmad is proof that it is possible. He had courage and a voice louder than the combined voices of anomalies—one that could rebuke and ridicule at the same time.
This forceful nature is also evident in his autobiographies. He wrote two: Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchash Bachhar (50 Years of Politics As I Saw It) (1969) and Atma Katha (Autobiography) (1978). The first one is a history of politics and the second one, a history of the individual. What's common in the two books is the writer's forcefulness, his self-confidence. He didn't hide behind the garb of anonymity by introducing himself in some ambiguous terms like Nirad Chaudhuri did while presenting himself as a representative of his class (The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian)—but didn't want to make a point of highlighting himself either, like Kamruddin Ahmad did in his autobiography (A Diplomat's Life). That doesn't mean that there is no class representation in these books. If you take "I" away from Amar Dekha Rajnitir Panchash Bachhar, it may very well cease to exist, whereas his own personal story, which isn't there in the first book, was narrated in the second one.
His friend Abul Kalam Shamsuddin wrote an autobiography titled Atit Diner Smriti (Memories of the Past). The title of Syed Murtaza Ali's autobiography is Amader Kaler Katha (The Story of Our Times). Ibrahim Khan wrote Batayan (Window), while Mohammad Waliullah wrote Yuga-Bichitra. Now compare these with the autobiographies of Abul Mansur Ahmad who, while talking about himself, doesn't appear to be impersonal or vague in the least. He spoke with refreshing candour. And through his story came the story of the section of his class to which he belonged. Even when he wrote a commentary about politics, or literature, he was absolutely sure of what he wanted to say, expressing it with the same degree of openness.
Of course, some of his views attracted controversy. Particularly, if I am to make my position clear, Abul Mansur Ahmad and I don't have similar views about language and culture, and often I found his views to be contradictory to mine. Many people also have the same opinion. But Abul Mansur was relentless, giving his opinions no matter what people thought about them. He generously mixed tatsama words with pure Bangla and even foreign words, which suggests he didn't have any "self-consciousness." If what the critics of the middle class say about self-consciousness being an "incurable disease" for this class is right, Abul Mansur was not one to suffer from it.
But it will be wrong to view Abul Mansur Ahmad in isolation from his background in politics. As a politician, he was pro-people. Politics was not a profession for him; it was a vocation. He never used it as a means of getting power or any undue advantage, unlike so many politicians of his time as well as ours.
There was a profound, unpremeditated awareness in him of the fact that politics, of the kind that he believed in, was the panacea for all that is wrong. Which is why, he can't seem to forget it even when writing a novel, and it is because of the same reason that we see his character Halim, much like his creator, strive to serve the interests of the common folk, the peasants. Sometimes, however, Abul Mansur Ahmad failed to place people's interests above his, but it should be noted that maudlin sentimentality about people's interests had never been one of his strongest suits. The life that he lived shamed politicians for whom politics was a business, and the work he left behind serves as a fitting response to those who think literature shouldn't be political.
It is this combination of boldness and political consciousness that makes him a rarity in our literature.
The article was translated from Bangla to English by Badiuzzaman Bay, a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.
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