Power (Imperial) and who an Exile is.

The British sent the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar to Burma to spend the last years of his life in exile alongside his family. Displaced from the place he inhabited and ruled, Zafar reflected upon his exilic state in the following words:

“Kitna hai badnaseeb Zafar dafn ke liye/Do gaz zameen bhi na mili koo-e-yaar mien” (How unlucky is Zafar, to not even find two yards to be buried in the land of his beloved)”

Not that Shah Zafar was so mighty and strong that British acquired any new tangible power by banishing him. But perhaps by forcing him out of Delhi and relegating him to a four-room apartment in Rangoon, they dealt the final blow to the uncoordinated and meager resistive efforts of the few people for whom Zafar was the emblem of the last great non-English rule in India.

With exile to Zafar’s life and death to India’s uprising, the British finished the process they started in the country of affirming their imperial rule. By expelling the figurehead, the foreigners opened the exit gates for more Indians who had no place in the emerging order – the one which appeared to be like a weakly arranged marriage between an overly-anxious domestic woman and a cold, indifferent foreign babu.

The Exile is one without power – the power to reinforce and emphasize his being, the way it was before an external hand attempted to tamper with it, and the way he wants it to be, within the place he inhabits. There are some who are unwilling to surrender their “self” midst these foreign pressures; the figure of “Abba Jan” from Intizar Hussain’s Basti comes to mind. And then there are those who try to assimilate: Ibn-ul-waqt is one of such people.

Anyone who rediscovers himself in the wake of a new cultural force is not in a state of exile. He is “lost”, sure, in terms of having no definite identity. But isn't it wrong to say that he’s been detached from his home, just because he now, for instance, favors suits over shalwar kameez? What he’s also doing by extension of undergoing a change himself, is transforming what his home looks like. All the associations he has, the products he consumes, the places he frequents, they will all be tried and tested to see if they are in-sync with his new self; the one that has been modified to adjust to the dominant discourse. He is fitting in. 

Although Edward Said says that “Most people are principally aware of one culture, one setting, one home; exiles are aware of at least two...”, however, being aware of two cultures, settings and homes, (by having witnessed one back home and one in the exilic state) and being a product of two cultures, settings, and homes, (by having assimilated) are entirely different things.

The Exile, I believe, is one who does not give up on himself and hence is removed for his staunchness. Then for anyone who chooses to remain within the fold of the dominant discourse is not in exile but in a state of rediscovery which is self-imposed. The rest, which includes the home and everything that comes with it, is, as Edward Said remarks: “a mere commodity”, which is much easier to fashion.