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Asif Iqbal, "Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature: Cultural Imaginings of a Postcolonial Nation" (Routledge, 2025)
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome back to the New Books and In youn Religions podcast, a podcast channel here on the New Books Network. I'm Dr. Raj Balkaran. More importantly, I have the pleasure of welcoming to the podcast today Dr. Asif, who is the author of a brand new Routledge research on Asian literature publication, Bangladeshian, Anglophone and Vernacular Cultural Imaginings of a Post Colonial Nation. Asif, welcome to the podcast.
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Hi. Thank you for inviting me. Raksha.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
So tell us the backstory. How did you get interested in this topic? How did this book begin?
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Great. So in terms of where this book is coming from, I'd go back to the years, almost like a decade or so ago when I was a student at the University of Dhaka. And you can feel, I mean, the political energy and the political, not only the political energy, but also the kind of almost like the conflicting nationalisms that kind of permeate not only the national discourse, but the political life at the university. And I guess that's what I would like to see this book to be emerging from. But however, from a scholarly standpoint, I mean, that was kind of a general where I'm coming from. But from a scholarly standpoint, I guess the book is emerging from the conversations on the war, the 1971 war that I'm talking about between either you can see a war between India and Pakistan, but also involving the Mukti Bahini or the liberation fighters. And the kind of scholarship that was emerging around 2010, 2010 to 2015. I can think of Sharmila Bose's Dead Reckoning and the books that followed and the kind of controversy that. And the controversy as well as curiosity that were there in terms of these scholarships that were emerging. So when I started my graduates sort of study in English, you know, my Ph.D. in English at Michigan State University, I realized that there's no such book on literature as such, as far as understanding the liberation war is concerned. But what I did in the process of engaging in this, not only in this book, but the kind of dissertation that I did is I brought back the questions of the Partition and the nine and, and the Pakistan, East Pakistan era, which is from the 1947-19, roughly 1970 and 1971 is the year when like the two Pakistan separated right into this project. And eventually this project could become a book because Routledge, the Asian Studies series, saw the potential of this becoming a book. So that's where eventually this book kind of came about. The thing about this book is it is looking at works of fiction, both English and in translation, to kind of study these three distinct, what I call the historical junctures and also the fact that literatures allow you to see certain aspects of these conflicts and convergences that I have been talking about that do not necessarily translate into the world of politics, sometimes the world of geopolitics, whatever you want to call it. So that's where the book is coming from.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
Okay, great. Thank you for laying out those very many themes. Let's parse them out. So the first question I have, I think that the listeners might be interested in clarifying is what you're looking at. What is your data? Whereby do you constitute your argument? Let's start there.
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Sure. My primary data in terms of what I look at are novels, both Anglophone novels from the subcontinent, encapsulating Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi novels, mostly very recent 20th century and 21st century novels, but also Bengali novels that are somewhat neglected in world literary studies, especially Bengali novels from Bangladesh. So if these novels I read in each of the chapters, I have six chapters in the book. So in each of the chapters I bring into conversation two novel. Two. Two novels for each of the chapters. So I have kind of 12 novels that I'm studying here. But in the process of studying these novels I, I also engage with other forms of, I would say Media and historical documents, for example, films, but also like, you know, oral narratives, for example, especially narratives around the war. Some of them are oral and some, you know, some are available like in digital format. So these are all my primary data around which I kind of bring in this argument that understanding Bangladesh requires us to kind of look into the complexities that emerged from these different historical notes. So that's how this data is kind of informing this idea that Bangladesh is not, is not a monolithic concept, but is. It's very much ingrained within the history, to the 20th century history of the Indian subcontinent, but also the histories of kind of the local histories that the book is investigating in detail.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
Okay, let's tease this out a little bit at a high level. So you have the textual worlds, the worlds within these Anglophone pieces of literature that you're studying, and then you have the world beyond the text. You're studying these through three historical junctures. So then how do they construe? Are you looking to the world within the text as evincing something about the world beyond the text or vice versa? Or just say a bit more about that so it's clear. So it's clear the extent to which your argument is about the literature or about the world beyond the literature or how they construe.
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Sure. What I do in each of these chapters by engaging these works of fiction is I look at distinct historical real life events. For example, the first chapter is dealing with the 1940s urban partition as a concept. But then if we look at East Bengal, the question of partition is complex. One is partition is. Is in process. But then there are other questions that are around. For example, the questions of land and labor, the question of agrarian struggle, but also this question of how Muslim nationalists would convince a large part of rural, agrarian Bengali Muslims into this Pakistan project. So what I. What the novels that I engage with, which is Akhtar Uzaman Elias's Khwabnama and Shahid Shaddulakasa Shamshapta, both the novels are now available in translation, is to go into these novels and how they are kind of engaging with these real life events. And so in a sense there is this conversation between reality politics, you know, life walls and so on and so forth, but also the fictionalization of those real life events in this. So I gave this as an example of how this book proceeds. And each of these chapters in the book are doing the same thing. And again, the second chapter is dealing with minoritization of the Hindus in East Pakistan, East Bengal. The third chapter is dealing with the 1960s, where we see politics being very explosive. The fourth chapter is kind of dealing with gendered violence. The fifth chapter is dealing with, like, the Indian conceptualization or perceptions around the war. And the last chapter is dealing with this conflict that kind of brings the distinct Bangladeshi and Pakistani narratives around the world on the table.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
Yeah. So thank you for also touching on the chapters and some of the content. We'll circle back in a moment to the main argument. What I think is certainly worth noting and underlining, even before we get to the findings, is this intriguing stance that looks at the interplay between literature and ideology. And rather than. I think it's fascinating. Right. We're looking at imagine the story worlds. We're looking at narrative story worlds to. To illumine the worlds behind the text. And often it might be the other way around. I mean, I'm not at all critiqued. My role on this podcast is not to critique. I'm not doing so at all. What I'm saying is the very stance is intriguing that we are looking to imagine works of literature and we are sort of cracking the coconut and deriving sort of historical reality imprinted within the text. And I think that very method is intriguing. It's novel. It's. You know, I'm not sure if it's. If you'd consider typical or atypical in your particular niche, but I find it quite fascinating as a method.
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Awesome. I can talk a little bit about the method, which I am calling cultural imaginaries, which is the concept around which these texts are talking to one another. Again, I kind of talked about the chapters and how each of the chapters are engaging with, like, two novels each. But then there is this broader story being told. Like I said, I mean, the Bangladesh story is such that it cannot be encapsulated or it cannot be contained very easily. There is this fluidity to this concept. And therefore what the method is doing is that it is showing that all these literary figures, whether it is the Bengali writers writing in the vernacular or it is the Anglophone writers, people like Salman Rushdie, Rohinton, mystery, but also like emerging Bangladeshi writers like Zia Had Raman, they are all looking at this fluidity from different perspectives. So in a sense, while, like I said, like, the chapter one deals with the Partition and chapter six deals with the Bangladeshi and Pakistani reactions, sort of the aftermath of the war, there are connections to all of these chapters. So what cultural imaginaries as a method is doing is it is bringing all these stories, letting these stories Talk to each other, maybe in conflict with each other as well as they kind of try to tell the Bangladesh story. Because as Nayanika Mukherjee in her book has said, that Bangladesh story is like. The word that she uses is a Bengali word, Malay, tihash, means so many different histories. So history is basically jostle. So in that sense, these writers are letting these histories kind of talk to each other, jostle, put them into conflict with one another at times as well. So that we can kind of try to figure out what this Bangladesh thing is all about. Because eventually it is not about the nation as such, but it is also about the Indian subcontinent and it's kind of its place in the world.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
So narrative, not quite sort of historical archive, but narrative as an archive of the imaginaire, of the cultural movement, of the experience of certain minority or subaltern groups. Yeah, I find that really fascinating. And then I start thinking about what elements of that apply or don't apply to sort of classical texts that are obviously works of extraordinary, for example, the epics, works of creative genius, but also very much palpably encoding cultural imaginaries that can be excavated. So that's sort of a teeny bit of a nerdy aside to sort of where my mind goes. But anyways, now that we've sort of ironed out, you know, what you're looking at and how you're looking at the approach you mentioned in passing the various themes in the chapters, perhaps we can alight on what. What would you view as the prime intervention of the book? What do you hope the book accomplishes, sort of for
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
this field, the books? The way I see the book's prime intervention to be is to sort of bring alive the entity, East Pakistan. So what in the process, what I do in terms of my field, which is literary studies, you know, in post colonial literary studies, people have not actually looked into this idea or this phenomenon or this entity, East Pakistan, in much detail, as this book does. But what it does in the process is, you know, looking at East Pakistan from a literary angle in particular is it allows me to kind of be in conversation with scholars from other disciplines, whether it be political science, history, general studies, so on and so forth. So in the process, it kind of lets sort of literary studies, allows literary studies to know more about East Pakistan as an entity and how that helps us understand These junctures between 1947, partition, around which the scholarship is plenty. But then the perspectives are mostly Indian and Pakistani perspectives. So you get a different perspective to what happens in this part, the Eastern Wing of Pakistan or in East Bengal, as the book does. So it also kind of brings East Pakistan to life and allows us to see the entity beyond. Like, you know, like I said in political science, they probably would be more interested in looking at, you know, the conflict between the East Pakistan politicians, Bengali nationalism and the West Pakistan establishment. But the book delves deeper beyond that kind of general understanding of, you know, a conflict and looks at, like, how people's lives are formed around different kind of ideas and concepts and even cultural sort of notions. For example, in chapter, Chapter two, I have a character named Shanto from Dilruba Zedara's novel Blame, where, you know, he is from the Hindu minority. But then he, you know, through the process of this, you know, political kind of awakening, Shanto rediscovers his cultural significance in East Pakistan and kind of sort of realigns his minority status to kind of Bengali nationalism's ability to then voice shunt this concern into a broader political project. So in a sense, it kind of goes beyond those, you know, those broader political kind of understanding of East Pakistan's kind of dismemberment and looks at people's lives. And so that, I would say, is what, you know, all of these chapters are attempting to do what.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
And it may be impossible to choose, but what. What might be your favorite or some of your favorite, or pieces of literature or pieces that you find the most remarkable insofar as being compelling towards your artists?
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Sure. I guess in terms of the works of fiction that I've engaged in or engaged with in this book, I'd say like in the two novels in the first chapter, Kwabna and Shangsheptov, both are very interesting because these are vernacular novels in translation and not very well known to the readers of world literature. But then they're doing so much at the same time. They're bringing in this broader saga onto the table. But then there is also Jihadar Rahman's novel In the Light of what We Know, and Salman Ruzda's Midnight Children, because my engagement with Midnight Children was fascinating, because Midnight Children can be or has generally been seen as a story of Indian kind of emergence into nationhood, India's kind of maturity into kind of this nation that is, you know, that is not only an economic power but also cultural power in the subcontinent. But what Midnight's Children does is it's in. Through its engagement with the Bangladesh war, it has allowed me to kind of look into the Indian problems that the novel deals with. But how that then situates the war and the Bangladesh problem within that story of the Indian national allegory, shall we say. So you know, all these works, I mean, the, the. I've worked for a very sustained period of time on all these literary works that I engage with in this book, so. But then I mentioned a few of these texts. But, you know, all in all, all these texts I felt were letting me to kind of explore a very compelling story of Bangladesh's emergence.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
You look at both English works as well as, sorry, you read Bengali novels in tandem. Can you perhaps generalize on what I mean? Do you see sort of, are there certain things you might see in one and not the other vice versa, or is it just a question of language medium and language meaning alone?
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Look, that's a very important question in terms of what differences that are sort of around in terms of what an English novel is doing and what a Bengali novel is doing. So in terms of the English novels, while they're very interesting, they are not actually addressing some of the very nuanced local events that the Bengali novels are or the Bengali texts are bringing on the table. For example, I talked about the agrarian movement. So in the first chapter I discuss in detail the present movement called the Tvaga movement that Ilyasis Quabnama discusses in detail. So in an English novel, for example, those very particular local events, do they have immense historical significance, are not addressed because the English novels have to travel like, you know, in the process of their traveling to the metropolitan readership. They highlight certain stories that are not necessarily relevant to the Bengali novels, for example, so that I see to be very interesting. And so putting them in conversation with one another help me to kind of bring all the stories that I feel help me to tell the story that I'm trying to tell onto the table.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
So it seems to be the case that Bangladesh is very much at the center of much that the field cares about, whether it's partition, language, secularism, liberation. It seems to be a significant nexus. So then why would you say it's been somewhat invisible in post colonial literary studies? Clearly, one of the key aims, if not the primary aim of your book, is visibility, is drawing attention to something that that has been hitherto relatively unnoticed in scholarship. So to what would you attribute that oversight?
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
So the reason I am saying that the story of Bangladesh is invisible in postcolonial literary studies is simply because in terms of the complexities that it offers, perhaps to better understand not only contemporary South Asia, but the South Asian history in the 20th century and 21st century is the fractures and the kind of convergences that the Bangladesh event brings onto the table. I mean, take for example, the Bengali Muslim support for Pakistan. This is something that, you know, in Partition scholarship in general has not been seen in its complexity in terms of why that happened, why did they support the Pakistan movement, but also how did they kind of sort of, you know, you know, created a new form of nationalism that was not necessarily built around Muslim nationalism, that was the premise around which East Bengal became part of Pakistan. So that complexity is something that I bring in, which I think literary studies have, you know, post colonial literary studies have not studied in much more detail. So this is just one example. But again, the war itself, the 1971 war, has so many different narratives around it. From the Indian perspective, it is India's sort of triumph over its arch enemy, Pakistan. For Pakistan, it's a loss, but then it's a betrayal of the Bengalis, right, Because they do not see it as like the Bengalis do. Like it's a triumphant story for the Bengalis. So all these different stories, when they are put together as this book does, that brings additional complexity in terms of how literature has generally understood an event such as these, like the Bangladesh war. I mean, I gave the example of Salman Ruthi's Midnight Children. In Midnight Children, the war is invoked, but it's still marginal in comparison to the broader Indian story that kind of is pushed till the Emergency, 1975 Emergency in India. So again, so in a sense, the story allows postcolonial literary studies to see the many complexities that the Indian subcontinent kind of has to offer to the field, to the discipline.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
Thank you. I just want to bring one of these core ideas into maybe a bit more sharper focus. So you mentioned the 1971 war that you study in your book. What can a novel tell us about that the actual historical archive cannot?
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
So in terms of novels engaging with an event such as the 1971 war, what I see it to sort of it offering, as opposed to a historical archive, is the complexity that it brings in to any particular event that it is covering. It could, for example, like the. The very story of Bengali nationalism, for example. So within the sort of, you know, in a historical archive, I mean, the historian has to either sort of contend with one version of the story or the other, because there are, like I said, competing stories around an event such as Bengali nationalism's contribution to the liberation war. I mean, how that kind of precipitated the crisis and how that kind of, you know, has a role to play in the outcome of the War as well. So what lit pretext does is that it allows us to see the. The different sides of a single story. I will give the example of chapter four, where I engage this novel called Talash the Surge, by a Bengali feminist writer, Shaheen Akhtar. So the novel is dealing with gendered violence in the war. And like I said, like, you know, gender studies scholars have discussed this in detail. So while the novel is engaging with this spec. With the specter of gendered violence, it is also critiquing Bengali nationalism as much as it can or it could because it is showing that while Bengali nationalism has been very significant in the outcome of the war, it had its kind of, you know, it's, it's dark elements, so to speak. Because what if we, if we, if we talk about the contemporary kind of, if we, you know, we bring us to. Doesn't see that the inheritors of Bengali nationalism had a sort of a political fall in Bangladesh in 2024. So what does that, what does the novel suggest is that while nationalism played a big role in the outcome, in the sense of how East Pakistan's dismemberment has had to play a big role in it, it kind of suppressed other stories, for example, the leftist struggle and past participation in the agitation. So literature allows those stories to be, as opposed to, say, like I said, in a historical archive. One might be tempted to tell one version of the story more prominently, but then there are other versions that literary texts did allow me to kind of engage with. But having said that, I mean, then I have to bring that literature in conversation with historical texts, with, with scholarships and history so that I can, I can build a narrative, I can kind of create, I can, I can sort of evaluate the two in tandem.
- [29:48]
Dr. Raj Balkaran
What do you hope that the future of this would be? Or maybe more concretely, what next? What's the next project?
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
So for me, like what I. The book allowed me to kind of broadly look into this, not only to this kind of literary kind of text that are, you know, that tells a very, very complex story, but it also allowed me to kind of think through other events that I needed to look into. For example, right now I have started to work on the 19th century, because what I see 19th century has to offer is that the story of 19th century Bengal has largely been told from the lens of the Bengal Renaissance. But then the story gets very complex as we move to the 20th century, because I, you know, I talked about the Bengali Muslim support for the Pakistan movement and so on and so forth. But then late into the 19th century we see the emergence of the, a gradual emergence of the Bengali Muslim middle class literature around it in particular. And so that's where I am putting my effort into, to kind of study that, you know, you know, I'd say like a couple of decades into the 1918 80s to you know, early 20th century to look into how what happened in the 20th century that the story that this book is telling, some of its mysteries might be, you know, might, might become much more clearer to us if we look back into the 19th century where there are identity being, identities being formed beyond the Bengal Renaissance, what they had to bring in on the table in terms of this larger question of Bengal's partition and its aftermath.
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Dr. Raj Balkaran
Is there anything else about the book in particular, the project in general that you'd like to touch on before we close?
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Yeah, sure. I mean I would love to talk about. I, I think in terms of what I, I in terms of doing this book or writing this book, what I haven't been able to perhaps address, for example, while I, I kind of mentioned that the literatures are telling a particular story around the, you know, this, this many stories that are available and one has to kind of contend with a certain, you know, you know, certain stories that make made this book happen to kind of bring alive the historical junctures. But you know, one could have, I could have kind of engaged with the filmic narratives which would perhaps give us a much more detail into the kind of the violence that occurred in 1971. Because while I have two complete chapters, chapter five and chapter chapter six dealing with, you know, dealing with this conflict in 1971, I believe the story is so vast that I could have engaged other texts as well. For example life writing as well, like people, people's memoirs. I mean that could have given a kind of a different sense to what liberation war meant to many different people. So that is something that I, I thought that you know, this like beyond the book as well.
- [33:37]
Dr. Raj Balkaran
Great. Well, thank you very much for being on the podcast today.
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Dr. Asif Iqbal
Awesome. Thank you.
- [33:41]
Dr. Raj Balkaran
For those listening, we've been speaking with Dr. Asif Iqbal on but Bangladesh and anglophone and vernacular literature. Until next time, keep well, keep listening, keep reading and keep contemplating the ways in which works of imagination might actually illumine the real world. Bye for now.
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