Empowerment as an Instrument of Exile

Under Nobel Sahib’s tutelage, Ibn-ul-Waqt enjoys a taste of the imperial life in India, riding on horses and playing billiards while his servants cleaned his house. He revels in it, obsessing to the point that the very English, who encouraged this cultural acquirement at first, become vary of it – Waqt’s opulence and excess evoking the memory of that last Muslim Empire whose decadence was the reason of its very doom.

Ibn-ul-Waqt is brought down from his pedestal as well, when Nobel Sahib’s departure brings forth those concealed views that people had about Waqt’s pretentious lifestyle.

But this post isn’t about the demise that Ibn-ul-waqt brings upon himself but the brief moment of empowerment and increased self-worth that characterizes an exilic state for a hybrid Indian living under the British Raj.

I understand his empowerment as an instrument of exile – this new found strength not meant for a Muslim in the structure that the English have instated in India. This is the power to enforce yourself and your preferences, have economic success and hold positions of importance, and consequently have an elevated social status. Ibn-ul-Waqt obtains all of this but obsesses with it to the point that he begins to consider his imitation of English sensibilities equal to equality with the English. Thus, his attempts at reformation – which he believes is a template for other Muslims as well – try to break the glass ceiling and pose a non-military challenge to the British rule. For a person (who is essentially a subject) to consider himself equal to his ruler is to disturb a status quo and suggest a revolution which the ruler can’t allow.

When Waqt complains that British shouldn’t meddle with his choice of dress and lifestyle, Hujjat-ul-Islam comments on Waqt’s adoption of English lifestyle and responds: “If it is not claiming equality with the rulers, what else is it? What does equality between the ruler and the ruled reflect except the weakness of the Government?” (225)

The above remark from Islam is built towards the point that English rule is vital to India and to not acknowledge one’s subjugated place is to suggest a mutiny.

Waqt has clearly not accepted his subjugated place. And hence, there's a distance he has with his own people. Regardless, his ambitions can still not land him equal to the colonizers or even those who they rule back in their homeland. To this, Hujjat-ul-Islam says: “Know your limits, man…had you show the same ability as that of the English people, and proved yourself trustworthy of the Queen only then could you have made such tall claims. First deserve, then desire. Do you realize your worthlessness?”(226)

Thus, Waqt’s spiritual empowerment is threatening to British and uncustomary to the common masses. This puts him in a liminal place in which he belongs only to himself and no one else. His empowerment puts him in exile.