"To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul" - Simone Weil
Exile is commonly understood as the "terminal loss" of one's homeland or sense of belonging to a particular place (Said 173). The quote above, however, speaks to a different dimension of the exilic experience, rooting the concept of exile firmly in the spiritual realm. Exile is thus not merely a physical state of homelessness; it is just as much the severance of bonds with one's spiritual community. Spiritual community's are usually delineated from others through shared conceptions of the sacred and the profane - the privilege of sacredness is attached to one's own community and the degradation of the profane is reserved for the Other. Thus, the sacred-profane dichotomy is a crucial instrument in the production of exile as a discursive and a physical phenomenon.
There are a great many moments in Ibn - ul - Waqt where this dichotomy is deployed to reinforce the protagonist's status as an exile. The narrative voice - if read as a voice representative of the post-Mutiny Muslim sharif male - reinforces Ibn - ul -Waqt's exile at the discursive level. In a particularly long-winded comment (which constitutes the whole of Chapter 14), Ibn - ul - Waqt's changing religious orientation is condemned by the narrator. By allowing religion to be tempered by the intellect, worldly desire and other categories of the profane, Ibn - ul - Waqt's has evidently severed all ties to the spiritual community he was born into. This is why the narrator can declare so adamantly that Ibn - ul - Waqt's campaign for Muslim reform was flawed from the outset - because the way in which he conceived this project caused by encroachment of profane world-oriented rationality on his otherwise pure faith. This also explains the ease with which Ibn-ul-Waqt's intially lofty vision for Muslim reform devolves into a perverse and undignified obsession with emulating the most superficial aspects of the British-colonial lifestyle. The narrator's tone at this juncture is almost comic in its lack of surprise, as if he expected this to happen the very moment Ibn - ul - Waqt allowed his religious ideals to be molded by reason and worldly desire.
Thus, it is no surprise that Ibn - ul - Waqt is accused of abandoning Islam and Christianity by his fellow Muslims countless times during the text. For most of his ilk, his movement into the realm of the profane was complete the moment he broke bread with Noble Sahib.
Exile is commonly understood as the "terminal loss" of one's homeland or sense of belonging to a particular place (Said 173). The quote above, however, speaks to a different dimension of the exilic experience, rooting the concept of exile firmly in the spiritual realm. Exile is thus not merely a physical state of homelessness; it is just as much the severance of bonds with one's spiritual community. Spiritual community's are usually delineated from others through shared conceptions of the sacred and the profane - the privilege of sacredness is attached to one's own community and the degradation of the profane is reserved for the Other. Thus, the sacred-profane dichotomy is a crucial instrument in the production of exile as a discursive and a physical phenomenon.
There are a great many moments in Ibn - ul - Waqt where this dichotomy is deployed to reinforce the protagonist's status as an exile. The narrative voice - if read as a voice representative of the post-Mutiny Muslim sharif male - reinforces Ibn - ul -Waqt's exile at the discursive level. In a particularly long-winded comment (which constitutes the whole of Chapter 14), Ibn - ul - Waqt's changing religious orientation is condemned by the narrator. By allowing religion to be tempered by the intellect, worldly desire and other categories of the profane, Ibn - ul - Waqt's has evidently severed all ties to the spiritual community he was born into. This is why the narrator can declare so adamantly that Ibn - ul - Waqt's campaign for Muslim reform was flawed from the outset - because the way in which he conceived this project caused by encroachment of profane world-oriented rationality on his otherwise pure faith. This also explains the ease with which Ibn-ul-Waqt's intially lofty vision for Muslim reform devolves into a perverse and undignified obsession with emulating the most superficial aspects of the British-colonial lifestyle. The narrator's tone at this juncture is almost comic in its lack of surprise, as if he expected this to happen the very moment Ibn - ul - Waqt allowed his religious ideals to be molded by reason and worldly desire.
Thus, it is no surprise that Ibn - ul - Waqt is accused of abandoning Islam and Christianity by his fellow Muslims countless times during the text. For most of his ilk, his movement into the realm of the profane was complete the moment he broke bread with Noble Sahib.
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