Announcements
Monday, July 25, 2022, 4:00 pm, room 010.00.01
At a time when communal antagonism was at its peak (1920s) in colonial India, Premchand was perceptive enough to understand that the cause for religious intolerance was rooted in mutual ignorance of communities about each other’s faith. To alleviate this, he decided to write a play about Karbala, a 7th Century event in Islamic history, in which the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussain withstood the brute forces of the debauch ruler Yazid and sacrificed his life along with that of his companions and family members in the battlefield of Karbala, in modern day Iraq. In an unprecedented leap of faith, Premchand’s play draws the Dutt brothers, descendants of Ashwatthama, spending their exile years in Arabia, to the battlefield of Karbala. Inspired by the uprightness of the Imam and bound by their moral duty to justice, the seven brothers join forces with the Imam and sacrifice their lives for him, singing praises of their motherland Bharatvarsha. Premchand, thus, transformed this central event of Islamic history into a nationalist narrative. My talk reflects on Premchand’s play Karbala as an expression of his unique transoceanic imagining of nation, which transcended territorial boundaries and fell in line with Gandhian principles of communal harmony and co-existence of religions.
Nishat Zaidi is Professor and former Head, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, India
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