Attia hosain biography of christopher

In spite of being an aristocratic Muslim, her radical views enabled her to recognize the hypocrisies of her class — a theme that is predominant in her works. Attia Hosain was born into a wealthy landowning family in Lucknow in Educated at La Martiniere College and Isabella Thoburn College , Lucknow, she was the first woman from her aristocratic background to attain graduation.

Along with receiving a formal education, she was taught Urdu, Persian and Arabic at home. Being receptive to the social changes that her home town Lucknow was a hub of while she grew up, she incorporated them in her writings, which are a blend of tradition and modernity. Hosain had liberal views and was influenced by the left-wing and the nationalist movement of the s.

During her time in India, Hosain wrote for newspapers such as The Pioneer and The Statesman, based in Calcutta, and published her short stories in several periodicals. She moved to England in with her husband and two children to avoid moving to the newly-created Pakistan. Her work at BBC included topics such as art, music, drama, and religion.

She also gave lectures on the convergence of Indian and western cultures. As journalist [ edit ]. Organizations [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Retrieved 25 April The Guardian. The Independent , UK. In Davis, Ferdinand; Khan, Naseem eds. Voices of the Crossing. The impact of Britain on writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa. Serpents Tail.

All These Years: A Memoir. Seminar Publications. Phoenix Fled: And Other Stories. Penguin Books. ISBN Sunlight on a Broken Column. Archived from the original on 28 February I mean I witnessed the time when women went out into the streets who had never left their homes before because Gandhiji said so. The burning of clothes that were not woven or made in India, all the Swadeshi [indigenous] things to wear I went to school, this very sort of "God save the King" [institution], I used to go at that time with a sari on that was made of handspun cloth, with what was to become the national flag on the border, all along the border, just to defy everybody there.

I normally used to wear dresses but when I had to go to anything [school-related], I'd go and wear that. You see, there was a kind of movement within whole country, of all young people and everybody like that. Everybody I knew including my Muslim relations who were involved in any way politically. Two of those families became prominent in Pakistan later.

Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman's was one. His daughter is still in India but the point is every one of us was talking of nothing but independence. How and why and when was another matter. This is after all in the s and coming towards the s later, but in the s and it was inspiring. Even before that, before my father had died, I hadn't really known much about what he used to do or not in this field, I only knew of all these friends and these people who would come to visit us.

And Dr. Ansari who had taken a team of doctors to Turkey [during the Khilafat Movement, ], all that, was part of one's growing up. So obviously I had to have a political viewpoint. The influences were all left-wing. When I was about fifteen or so, I went to [Isobella Thoburn] college for girls and women, at that time run by Methodists, American Methodists because my mother would never have let me to go to the university where there were men.

We were not in pardha in the sense that we were wearing burqas when we went out but we had a confined kind of a life. People who came to visit us in the house were the sons of friends or relations but that was it because my very remarkable mother herself never went anywhere. She had given up everything in life after my father died.

But, I would say that [the left wing] influence then came in s from the West. Alas, I can't read anymore, I can't concentrate but [then] I would read any book that I could lay hands on, fortunately at the time in my father's library, at the school and later at the college. There was then none of this that goes on now, that, "do you teach them Shakespeare or not?

One did learn the classics and read the classics. I just loved literature. I had a wonderful teacher when I was at the school. So that apart from all the mathematics or anything, for me it was the books that mattered. And at the time in the s, as you know, from the West came the influence of the Marxist point of view amongst intellectuals.

So from here went people, who were like my own relatives. Closest to my father, were two people. One was Dr. Syeduzzafar from Rampur [a princely state in U. And the other was Kunwar Bahadur Shah who was like something out of "The Prince," you see, of the Mughals and the Nawabs, in beautiful jamdanis [thin leggings], a kind of 'angharkas.

My father died and he was a surrogate father. His son, who is alive, thank God to this day, is my brother now that I have lost my brothers because we had been brought up closer than blood brothers and sisters. Syeduzzafar Khan, a Saeed chacha [uncle] , was like a father to us when we were left [without a father]. My young brother [Air Commodore] Fuad [],, who became a legend in the Pakistan Air Force was born two months after my father died.

So we needed these fathers and uncles and people. My mother certainly needed that support. These people [like] Saeed Chacha's son Mahmood [Mahmuduzafar, married to Rashida Jan, members of the Communist Party of India] came back from school, from here [England], a Communist like they all were. Sajjad Zaheer [a founder of the Progressive Writer's Movement], all that left wing lot of young men influenced my life but more than anyone Mahmood did.

A man who was an idealist, an artist, a writer. He taught me how to read music and understand symphonies. I could play the piano - not too well but knew the theory of music - but not like that. He could read to me a bit of poetry and make it alive because I had never heard poetry in English, recited the way it should have been. At the same time he influenced me politically.

So that I believed in the ideal sense in a world that could be created. From every side the influences were there. I did not ever become myself a person joining them because I used to say to Mahmood, you are all dogmatic in many ways. I don't even like my dogmatic Moulvis, so how can I like you? Because in my family by the way it related from the - I don't know which side whether my mother's - but we had these relatives in Farangi Mahal [a school of influential Muslim religious teachers who supported a united India].

AH: They were the ones who influenced all thought and the Fatwas [religious edicts] and everything for the Sunnis. They were relatives and therefore as you can see the influences [on me] were like that, from all sides. But for me the main influence was that there has to be a world where they will not be injustice. That was when I was an idealist.

Q: Religion did not play a part in your political life? AH: No, I believed in my religion but so what? I believed in a religion that to me never said you kill anybody. Never did I believe that religion taught violence because I think I had a very wonderful mother who by the way had set up a madrassah [Muslim religious school]. The first of its kind, where my sister went to teach because when my father died, my sister was taken out of school poor thing.

I was young enough to stay on fortunately. She learned with the moulvi [Muslim prayer teacher], my sister did. But she used to go to the school where the girls were taught because my mother said if they are learning the Quran and namaaz [prayer] without understanding, that makes no sense. She had this little school where they were taught the translation [of the Quran] at the same time.

These girls [were] from not rich families because there was a Muslim Girls College already existing backed by the Taluqdars and Muslims. They used to study there. It has now become, I believe, a part of a university. My family was like that, and I was taught religion. I think I must have been eight when I fasted for the first time and nobody believed me but I followed all the elders.

To me religion was that, it was religion that was, well, drawing everybody together. It was never out of my mind that I was a Muslim. And now today when it is almost as if somebody is slapping you in the face and saying you are a Muslim. I am proud to say 'yes' I am. But please don't distort my religion - anyone, even the Muslims who now do distort it for their own purposes.

She was my aunt, 's mother, Isha'at [Habibullah's] mother, my mother's only sister. My father-in-law took her out of being in the house. My mother had to be, but my mother-in-law, because of her husband, had always been what was called then a progressive person, coming out and meeting people, the British and so on. My father-in-law lived a very British kind of a life.

You know like we used to laugh sometimes and say all these "Kala Sahibs" [Black Sahibs]. Very much so. I mean though in my house also, in my home we had these Western and Eastern parts of the house, the Habibullah Household was totally that in a way. My mother-in-law was drawn into public life. Then when the election time came in , she wanted to be in a Council, the Legislative Council in U.

P at the time. She was always inclined towards that because there wasn't the same stream of nationalist [Indian] thought in that part of the family. Q: Even though you are saying they may have been even more British in a way? AH: Yes, but they were more conformist. My father-in-law Shaikh Mohammd Habibullah [Taluqdar of Saidanpur and later Vice-Chancellor of Lucknow University] was not then in the same way as my father had been when he was growing up and influenced us.

I mean, I found a letter after my father had died in which he had written about the Jalianwala Bagh incident [in when hundreds of Indians were massacred by British troops in Amritsar, Punjab] to somebody and mentioned that he talked about it to Pandit Motilal Nehru. This is going to be a turning point in the relationship between the two races.

Well, my father-in-law whom I respect greatly, a man of great integrity, was not in that sense involved, [although] he was in the Legislative Council in U. When my mother-in-law decided to stand she was a follower of Jinnah, in the sense of the Muslim League. That ideology. She had in her a point of departure from this friendship between the two religions and so on, into being definitely a believer in the Muslim League but never of any violence with each other, but believing that the Muslims had to be like that [separate].

Then my brother-in-law, who was one of the most foremost barristers in Lucknow and later became a High Court judge before he died [joined the Muslim League]. He was brought up in this country. During the time of the First World War he had not been able to go backwards and forwards [between Britain and India] like people did when there were aeroplanes.

He grew up here [in England] and went back after he had been at school, at university, at the Middle Temple [Cambridge]. He said we are fighting for certain rights. We are fighting for certain principles but not as people to leave this country. Organising the Muslims in the same way my husband [later did]. He [Ali Bahadur Haibullah ] had gone from here and had been there just a few years.

Two years after he married me [] and he was a very young man. He had been brought up here [in England] completely. He had a very bad accident and he lost the use of half of his left hand in tiger shoot with Raja Sahib Mahmudabad. Now Raja Mahmudabad, the young man, was at that time, as you must have heard, [full of] zest in his support of the Muslim League.

In fact, had he not put all his money into it, there would have been no movement in U. People forget him and forget his role. This was a remarkable man. Now, as a very young man, he and my husband became close to each other like brothers because when he nearly died after this accident, as it had happened with Raja Sahib during the shoot, they got closer.

Raja Sahib was distantly related to me from my mother's side. But they became very close and they were like blood brothers. My husband joined him in the Muslim League but joined him completely and we would have these arguments because I was at that time involved with thinking about the Spanish Civil War, what was happening in Germany and seeing him in a uniform, upset me tremendously because he was in the Muslim [League] National Guard, was a part of that.

I said "how can you possibly? Q: What I am trying to ask is that, for those people who chose the Muslim League versus people like yourself who were Indian Nationalists, do you think it was a matter of choice? Simply human beings that wanted to chose a certain area to support, or was there a sense of genuine grievance? AH:Well in the sense that I do accept that they felt [grievances].

My husband, for example said, he was one of those three or four young men who in voted against the Pakistan Resolution [demanding a separate homeland for Muslims] because he believed, we must organise and [first] become strong within ourselves against any force that will try and make, as he used to say, the Muslims like they became in Spain " hewers of wood, drawers of water.

United Province [U. It can not be, it is not logical, and it is not historical. If, I as a Muslim am supposed to be part of a nation, I should be in Arabia. Why I am not there? Why do they [the Arabs] not consider us one of them, if only Islam matters? Other points of view, yes, that now you are going to a have a democratic process and what is going to happen is this that somebody [the Hindus] will outvote me by sheer numbers and that is what you people are frightened of.

Now, I am not a genius, of course we must be in a group, of course, I was influenced by the other Muslim thought, that was there. In those early provincial Cabinets before that were formed the Congress - remember there had been the split about saying that you should keep - they had come to some kind of pact, Mr. Jinnah and the Congress people and it was all broken because of Nehru's saying mass appeal, that sort of thing happened.

The mistakes that were made. But a person like me as I say, I am not perhaps a person you should take as an example of anything except someone who believed with all my heart that you can not, you can not, found a nation on religion. Also I said, what happens to everybody who is here [in India]? I asked that question to Mr. I had the audacity to ask him that.

As I say to you, he was kind to me, he used to listen to me, and I said what about the Muslims in the minority provinces? The majority provinces are fine wherever they are already, what about us in U. He said sacrifices have to be made for a bigger cause and I said sacrifices you know, sacrificing the likes of me, any number of people, why do politicians talk in terms of abstractions?

You see, I felt that. I said to my husband, you talk here, as you talk, you talk with every good intention, you have not lost any friends, we are still living our lives. I have heard when I sit amongst the people, I would go and sit with the servants to talk to them about it. I said, you see what that means? Do you understand what you are saying?

You don't know what you are tapping into, what emotions? Q: But you thought they were sincere in their intent? AH: Some of them. People like Mahmudabad certainly, absolutely, he really felt that there is a prejudice but all this prejudice did not matter when everybody could be going towards a common purpose. But when you say that I am going to count heads, and whoever gets the most votes is going to rule over me - then that was the whole basis of the Muslim League's success.

That is finally when I would say anything, let us say I can't remember all my conversations I wish I had immediately recorded them as they were. I used to ask him these questions and he said to me once, when I said, Please Mr. Jinnah, please tell me something, why is it that you don't accept the Cabinet Mission Plan [which sought to prevent the partition of India in ]?

For example? And then he said to me, you know that you have got to understand young woman, what about the center if it has great power? I mean the answer was always logical in terms of a political point of view. To me there was no logic in any point of view that was not human because I felt it is not true that anybody will feel that it is a nation only because it is my religion because there will be lakhs [hundreds of thousands] left behind [in India].

And what is their position, how do you mean 'sacrificed', to whom, and why? Later on after it had happened [August 15, ] a very dear friend of mine was the Chief Secretary in U. I had to give orders to shoot if there is a riot. I am a Hindu. Where are all those leaders of the Muslims? Why are they sitting across the border [in Pakistan] when this is happening?

And I have to shoot Hindus. Why Pakistan? Let us say there were a lot of problems at that time in the creation of Pakistan.

Attia hosain biography of christopher

But today what seems to be happening in India, this right-wing Hindu push, does that in any way justify Pakistan retrospectively or not? Because it is because there was that [a separate Pakistan] they can turn on us and say, you have got your homeland, go to it. You made it and who are you here now? Why, you as a minority. The worst of them can say: why are you as a minority trying to get any special privileges.

They talk of the vote bank. Ultimately, let us face it in the West. You are seeing it now in the new imperialism that it is that, that matters who has the power in their hands? Why are people fighting for religion? I mean, I believe in the sincerity of the Quaid [Mohammed Ali Jinnah], right, because I thought he was an honest and sincere man.

But I believed he was blinkered. I, who really respected him and was fond of him, and because he was kind to me. I think he didn't know history enough. What was happening in the Muslim world any way? What had happened that could not teach us a lesson? That is what I feel, that the people who pushed it were not believers in religion anyway, and to say it was not founded on religion, is not true, because the cry was 'slam in danger.

Because the economic position could not be improved by going somewhere else. The people, who left by the way and took their wealth with them, were people already rich in India, the Ismailis and the trading people. Q: Well, what I mean by middle class, lets say a Punjabi, lower middle class family like my father's family. They would be educated.

They would try and enter the Magistrate [courts] or Civil Service, whatever, and they would see 70 - 80 per cent of the employees were Hindus and they would feel that they could never move up. AH: They could if they thought to move up as some did. People did. But if you leave the people behind, by what right do you then claim that all Muslims are your friends in India?

In the sense that every time any thing happened or went wrong, they would raise a clamor in Pakistan. I said that to Arshad [when he was Foreign Minister. Arshad what rights have you? You are passing a death sentence on them, are you going there to help them? Who are they to you now? But I would like to know whom the homeland was being made for?

For the people who were already there, the Punjabi Muslims, the Pathans, Sindhi or who? Q: The traditional story in Pakistan is that the real people who fought the hardest for Pakistan were from U. AH: Okay, so they were. She continued to write and began work as a broadcaster, presenting a woman's programme for the Indian Section of the Eastern Service of the BBC from During her time at the BBC, she broadcast on a wide range of topics, from art to music to religion to cinema.

As well as reading scripts, she participated in discussion programmes and acted as a roving reporter for the Weekend Review. In she published her first work of fiction, a collection of short stories titled Phoenix Fled. This was followed in by her only novel, Sunlight on a Broken Column. Bharucha, Nilufer E. Making Britain Discover how South Asians shaped the nation, Search Search.