Instruments of exile

Ibn ul-Vaqt is the story of a man who tries to assimilate into British customs and manners. He learns their language, their diction, their mannerisms and even their diet. This novel shows how imperialism leads to an exilic existence by somebody who becomes displaced from his home/belonging/origin, to a place that will not completely accept him and therefore allow him to identify with the colonizer. What follows is Ibn ul-Vaqt's consequent actions that take him farther and farther away from his own existence, that is both temporal and spatial, in terms of the novel's history and socio-cultural context.

Some of the ways by which this exilic existence precipitates because of imperialism, or the instruments by which this occurs is the transformation of the domestic or private sphere when Hujjat-ul-Islam visits Ibn ul-Vaqt's home (page 172-175, english translation). In the original urdu novel, the way that Ibn ul-Vaqt addresses his house staff, the name of the dishes, are very 'British'. The most striking remark is when Ibn ul-Vaqt says that fermentation of wine in the making of rice pudding should not be, logically, objectionable for a muslim to which Hujjat-ul-Islam replies, '…why should i forego my excellent pure food?' These competing conceptions of what is right, wrong, pure, pernicious, is simply a reaction to different relationships with imperialism.