What history does Basti represent?

Hamari tareekh kahan sey shuru hoti hai? Yeh musalmanon ki tareekh hai, ya is sar zameen ki tareekh hai?

Intezar Hussain, KLF’14

Intezar Hussain’s concept of the Basti is a continuous one. It is not limited to the idyllic Roopnagar or the newness of Shamnagar and Lahore; instead the community and settlement flow across geography and memory. At first, the ’47 partition description is shown as the time of welcome; it can be compared to the Hijrah, almost as if there were associations between Muhajir and Ansar over houses and new space that Pakistan was, to ease the difficulties of migration. Zakir’s first night in the new Pakistan, depicts the crisis of this migration and at the same time, makes the whole idea of Pakistan a personal one.

“He had thought Abba Jan was asleep, but he was awake."What's the matter, can't you sleep? You were awake all last night. Go to sleep."  "I can't get to sleep."  "Yes, it's a new place, and the first night," Abba Jan said hesitantly. He fell silent, then said, "It's happened to me like this before too, that I went to some new place and the first night I couldn't sleep at all."  Zakir covered his face with the sheet; his eyes had again filled with tears. 

That night with its sleeplessness glowed more and more brightly in his imagination. That day, with its night, was within his grasp. So that was my first day in this land. The whole day I walked on a fresh earth under a fresh sky, suffused with happiness. Then night came, and my sleepless eyes were wet with tears.”

This contrast between ‘Din’ and ‘raat’ is interesting because it eases the process of partition into this categorized, routine behaviour. One which Zakir slowly immersed in to, and critiqued for its short –lived newness. He said, “That day seemed very pure to him, with its night, with the tears of its night. I had forgotten that day. He was surprised -- such a luminous day! After that, the days gradually grew soiled and dirty. Perhaps it's always like this. The days go on passing, and the purity of the first day is gradually lost as the days revolve. How quickly the purity of our days was lost, how quickly the coolness fled from our nights! But still that one day, my first day in this land, should always shine in my memory. But with this thought some neighboring days were illumined too, and gathered around that one day. A constellation of illumined days came together. When Pakistan was still all new, when the sky of Pakistan was fresh like the sky of Rupnagar, and the earth was not yet soiled” Words like ‘pakeeza’ and ‘maila’ are strange vocabulary to allow for the changes in the Basti. Eventually settlement in the new Pakistan is itself a frustrating process for an individual like Zakir and because Abba Jan agreed to have gone through the same phase once, it only re-iterates the larger idea of historical circularity in the narrative. What is interesting then is what the idea of community represents. Does Basti represent the cause, the ideology of Pakistan that later fails all? Do the events of ’71 as described in the novel, in their utter hopelessness, sterility and confusion make Basti a historical, nostalgic yearning? Or does a Basti struggle across memory to show eventual societal corrosion, the failure of the individual, and on the most significant level – eventually the failure of the Muslims.  Intizar Hussain’s basti is one where Zakir walks down the same streets plastered with ‘Ishtihaar’ and ‘naarey’. He does not recognize people’s faces , and notices their walk and his own for its absurdity and unnaturalness. All this stems from either the historic failure of a ‘Muslim homeland’ that the ‘47 partition hoped to achieve, and it represents the geographic decay of the place that is no longer embracing, but entering into a war zone. Basti, the concept is fluid, and moves from the idyllic Roopnagar to a disturbed and chaotic settlement. “Those were good days, good and sincere. I ought to remember those days, or in fact I ought to write them down, for fear I should forget them again. And the days afterward? Them too, so I can know how the goodness and sincerity gradually died out from the days, how the days came to be filled with misfortune and the nights with ill-omen.” Basti is the individual's history: It's Zakir's, Abba Jaan, and all others' place in a certain region. It is a larger historical pointer to the absence of a community in a modern day settlement, and the failure of a Muslim state.