BackBurning bright
A banned book is brought back to life in English translation
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In 1932, shortly after its publication, Angarey was booked under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code—the blasphemy law that was used against Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History—and all copies of the book, barring five, were burnt.
Those that survived were in private possession for many years, their owners reluctant to make their identities public for fear of igniting fresh trouble, until a microfilm of the volume was discovered in the British Museum in London in 1987. Thanks to the enterprise of Qamar Rais, who headed the Urdu department of Delhi University at the time, it was brought back to India, where it was edited by Urdu scholar Khalid Alvi and republished with an introduction in 1995. Translated into English for the first time by Vibha S. Chauhan, along with Alvi, Angarey not only remains a historically significant text but also a landmark in Urdu modernist writing.
The nine stories and one play that comprise it are influenced by the spirit of the times in which they were written. If one detects the whiff of Saadat Hasan Manto’s earthy prose, one also recognizes the stream of consciousness mode of James Joyce, and the Cubist narratives of Wyndham Lewis. With their sexually candid themes, strong disapproval of religion, undercurrent of violence, and politically left-liberal slant, the stories still have the power to ruffle a few feathers.
Also read | Book Review | A Rebel And Her Cause
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