Introducing Bangladeshi Writing in English: Emergence to the Present

Abstract

In postcolonial literary criticism, Bangladeshi writing in English has not received the
scholarly attention or the recognition it deserves. However, there is an irony here because
colonial Bengal was perhaps the first among the British colonies to embrace English
education and its people had early working experiences with the British. Moreover, this
literary tradition claims some of the earliest writers of literature written in English outside
the British and American canons. In the present time, it has gained renewed vibrancy as
writers both in Bangladesh and in the diaspora, especially in the UK, have produced
English works both in the original and in translation. Considering the rich background,
sophistication and huge potential of Bangladeshi writing in English, in this article we will
provide a historical overview and the varying strands of this literary tradition. As editors
of this special journal issue, we will also attempt a general outline of the articles included
in it and consider the main themes they explicate.

Full text

ASIATIC, VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1, JUNE 2018
Asiatic, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2018
1
Introducing Bangladeshi Writing in English:
Emergence to the Present
Mohammad A. Quayum and Md. Mahmudul Hasan
1
International Islamic University Malaysia
Abstract
In postcolonial literary criticism, Bangladeshi writing in English has not received the
scholarly attention or the recognition it deserves. However, there is an irony here because
colonial Bengal was perhaps the first among the British colonies to embrace English
education and its people had early working experiences with the British. Moreover, this
literary tradition claims some of the earliest writers of literature written in English outside
the British and American canons. In the present time, it has gained renewed vibrancy as
writers both in Bangladesh and in the diaspora, especially in the UK, have produced
English works both in the original and in translation. Considering the rich background,
sophistication and huge potential of Bangladeshi writing in English, in this article we will
provide a historical overview and the varying strands of this literary tradition. As editors
of this special journal issue, we will also attempt a general outline of the articles included
in it and consider the main themes they explicate.
Keywords
Bangladeshi writing in English, Bengal, British India, South Asia, postcolonialism,
diaspora
Among the people of what is now Bangladesh, the urge to express themselves
creatively in English goes back to the days of their first encounter with the British
on South Asian soil. However, since historically the Bangladeshis have had to
grapple successively with different concepts of national identity, the distinctive
literary tradition of Bangladeshi writing in English has not yet received the full
critical attention it deserves. It has lagged behind its Indian, Pakistani and Sri
Lankan counterparts in the region, which have thus far claimed precedence in
literary history books and attracted considerable critical discussion.
Even though Bangladesh is perhaps among the least developed in English
literary writing in the subcontinent and Bangladeshi literature in English is less
well known compared to, say, Pakistani literature in English, it should not be
forgotten that from 1947 to 1971, Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and Pakistan
(then West Pakistan) constituted a single country, known uniformly as Pakistan.
Consequently, the literary contribution of East Pakistani writers in English during
1
Mohammad A. Quayum and Md. Mahmudul Hasan are co-editors of this special issue. Both are
currently teaching in the Department of English language and Literature, International Islamic
University Malaysia.

Mohammad A. Quayum and Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Asiatic, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2018
2
that 24-year period has become part of the generic rubric of Pakistani writing in
English. As Sirajuddin states, “Pakistani literature in English began to draw
serious attention in the 1960s. S. Sajjad Husain, Syed Ali Ashraf and Maya Jamil
contributed articles to journals and collections on topics in Pakistani literature”
(301). Even though Syed Sajjad Husain (1920-95) and Syed Ali Ashraf (1925-98)
became Bangladeshi citizens after the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in
December 1971, their work in the Pakistan period was appropriated or
categorised under Pakistan’s literary culture. What is more, Husain commenced
his writing career in English with the The Statesman, The Daily Star of India and the
weekly The Comrade in the early 1940s, certainly before British India won its
independence and the dominions of India and Pakistan were created in 1947.
Thus, though Bangladeshi writing in English appears relatively puny on the
surface, this literary tradition includes writers such as Sajjad Husain who wrote
under three flags: British India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
It is significant to note that, compared to other regions of the South Asian
subcontinent, the Bangladeshi English literary tradition has arguably the most
prolific and distinguished historical origins. Once considered the jewel in the
crown of British India, the Bengal region was more exposed to English education
during the colonial period than the other provinces. The first institution of its
kind, the Hindu College in Calcutta was established in 1817 by the joint initiative
of the British colonists and the native gentry, led by Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1774-
1833), an iconic Renaissance figure who was keen to spread English education
among the local people.
2
If we take this historic context into account, then
Bangladeshi writing in English can be traced back to the East India Company
period, to a time before Thomas Macaulay wrote his now infamous Minutes on
Indian Education in February 1935 or Bentinck’s English Education Act took
effect in March of the same year, and can therefore be regarded as one of the
oldest and most prestigious English-language literary traditions outside the
English-speaking world.
English-language writers of pre-1947 Bengal have claimed arguably some of
the earliest and finest South Asian literary works, dating back to Sheikh Deen
Muhammad’s
3
The Travels of Dean Mahomet (1794) and Kylas Chunder Dutt’s A
Journal of Forty-Eight Hours of the Year 1945 (1835). However, because of mapping
and remapping of the borders, critics often consider the 1971 spatial (not
temporal) boundary of Bangladesh as the site of Bangladeshi writing in English.
Some of the precursors of this literary tradition include such distinguished figures
as Madhusudan Dutt (1824-73), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-94), Toru
2
The primary purpose behind establishing this institution was to give a liberal education “to the
children of the members of the Hindu Community”; however, it also enrolled “non-Hindu students
like Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Brahmo Samajists” (Patil).
3
Commonly spelt Sake Dean Mahomet.

Introducing Bangladeshi Writing in English: Emergence to the Present
Asiatic, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2018
3
Dutt (1856-77), Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Rokeya
Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), Humayun Kabir (1906-69), Syed Sajjad Husain
and Syed Ali Ashraf. The last two in this list wrote creative and critical pieces in
both pre- and post-1971 Bangladesh. Hossain’s (fondly known as Rokeya among
her readers and followers) feminist utopian novella Sultana’s Dream (1905) is
“arguably the first significant piece of literature in English written by a Muslim
author, followed by Ahmed Ali’s Twilight in Delhi” (Hasan 180), and probably the
first feminist utopian fiction in South Asian literature.
Bangladeshi English-language writers in the post-1971 era can be divided
into two generational categories. The older generation includes, among others,
Razia Khan Amin (1936-2011), Kaiser Haq (1951-) and Feroz Ahmed-ud-din
(1950-). The list of the emerging, younger generation of writers is too large to
enumerate here, but some of the more prominent ones, especially from the
diaspora, will be mentioned later in this discussion.
Perhaps the main reason why the English writing tradition was slow to find
a footing in independent Bangladesh and writings in the early years were rather
sparse is because Bangladesh was, after all, created out of a language movement
and formed exclusively on language identity. The language movement, which
commenced in 1952 after Bengali was left out “as the one of the divided country’s
official languages” (Shook), eventually led to the “country’s movement for
independence, culminating in 1971’s Liberation War that resulted in the massive
murder of ordinary Bangladeshi – at that time East Pakistani – civilians by the
Pakistani army” (Shook). Because of this hideous atrocity by the Pakistani forces,
which by some estimates claimed as many as 269,000 Bengali lives (“269,000
People Died”), it was obviously difficult for the aspiring writers in the English
language to shake off the nationalist sentiment and start writing in English in the
immediate years after independence (Shikhandin).
Moreover, Bengali was instituted as the sole medium of education at both
primary and secondary levels in the newly independent country. However, as time
passed, the memory of the war began to recede in the national psyche, and
concomitantly the need to re-accommodate English – now the dominant
language of business and technology – became more acute. Henceforth, English
language education and with it, creative writing in English started gaining ground
and soon wrested prominence again. English-medium schools began to
proliferate in Dhaka and other major cities in the country in the early 1990s, while
the number of English-language dailies that published original English works in
weekly instalments and/or in literary and Eid specials also began to multiply. The
launching of the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts in Dhaka in 2011 has also
contributed significantly to the present advancement of English literary scene in
Bangladesh. Among these factors, however, the contribution of English-medium
schools is perhaps the most outstanding. One example may illustrate this point.

Mohammad A. Quayum and Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Asiatic, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2018
4
Manal Mohamed (1986-) published her first writing in English, “Life in
Bosnia,” in The Bangladesh Observer in 1994 when she was only eight years old and
a grade-2 student in an English-medium school in Dhaka. Subsequently, her
fiction and non-fiction works appeared in almost all major Bangladeshi English
dailies and she won various writing competitions conducted by these same
publications. The pinnacle of her literary career to date occurred in 2009 when
her short story “Sotto Voce” was published in Routledge’s Wasafiri. Her “A
Recluse in Rain” is included in Niaz Zaman’s New Age Short Stories (2006) and has
received an award. Like Manal Mohamed, many other English-medium school
students have written English pieces and the trend is increasing.
4
Also significant is the influence of English dailies. The Daily Star’s Saturday
literary supplements, as well as The New Age’s and other English newspapers’
occasional literary specials attract an increasing number of writers and readers in
English. The Daily Star and The New Age have produced collections of short
stories, The Daily Star Book of Bangladeshi Writing (2006) and New Age Short Stories
(2006) respectively, which are important contributions to this vibrant and
burgeoning literary tradition. The Hay festival in Dhaka attracts crowds of
prominent and promising literati, although the most enthusiastic participants are
local (that is, Dhaka-based) Bangladeshi English-language writers.
Linguistically, Bangladeshi writers in English can be characterised into three
groups: 1) those who produce original works in English, 2) those who self-
translate their English writings into Bengali and 3) those who self-translate their
Bengali works into English. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Humayun Kabir self-
translated Sultana’s Dream (1905) and Men and Rivers (1945) respectively into
Bengali. Syed Manzoorul Islam’s The Merman’s Prayer and Other Stories (2013), co-
incidentally published by The Daily Star publishing group, is a collection of his
short stories which he translated from Bengali into English; meanwhile Galpa:
Short Stories by Women from Bangladesh (2005), edited by Niaz Zaman and Firdous
Azim, and New Age Short Stories contain both original and translated pieces.
Creative writing in English among the Bangladeshi diaspora is worthy of
serious critical and analytical consideration. Some of the most prominent
Bangladeshi diasporic writers are Nirad Chandra Chaudhuri (1897-1999), Adib
Khan (1949-), Syed Manzurul Islam (1953-), Muhammad Abdul Bari (1953-),
Dilruba Z. Ara (1957-), Mahmud Rahman (1964-), Husna Parvin Ahmad (1964-
), Monica Ali (1967-), Neamat Imam (1971-), Sanchita Islam (1973-), Rekha
Waheed (1975-), Tahmina Anam (1975-), Kia Abdullah (1982-), and many more.
Ali’s debut novel Brick Lane has received more critical attention to date than any
4
Of course, it goes without saying that majority of the native Bangladeshi writers in English,
including Serajul Islam Chowdhury (1936-), Niaz Zaman and Kaiser Haq, were brought up in
English-medium schools and were exposed to the language early in life.

Introducing Bangladeshi Writing in English: Emergence to the Present
Asiatic, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2018
5
other work by a Bangladeshi diasporic writer.
5
It “is regarded as very successful
in drawing very lively portraits of first- and second-generation Bangladeshi
immigrants” in London (Töngür 561). However, Australian writer Germaine
Greer questions Ali’s portrayal of Bangladeshi society, stating, “Ali is on the near
side of British culture [and]… her point of view is, whether she allows herself to
impersonate a village Bangladeshi woman or not, British.”
The list of Bangladeshi writers in English we have mentioned above, and
including those covered in the various articles in this special issue, is far from
complete but should nevertheless intrigue and enable interested researchers to
delve further into the tradition. The number of writers within this rapidly
developing literary body are many, and the themes they address are likewise too
varied and numerous to detail in the scope of this article, or to address as a
comprehensive whole in this special journal issue. The issues that the contributors
discuss in their articles here are by no means exhaustive or fully representative of
the tradition, but mainly represent their research interests instead. Our selection
and inclusion of articles in this issue were dependent on the number of
submissions and on their quality and breadth of coverage. We are fully aware that
there are many other important Bangladeshi writers who have written works of
excellence and contributed immensely to the development of Bangladeshi writing
in English, whose writings reflect Bangladeshi society and its people both in
Bangladesh and in the diaspora, but whose works have not been featured in this
issue. Again, this lapse is not by choice but rather determined by the spread and
quality of the submissions we received in response to our call for papers.
Of the fifty or so articles we received in response to our call, only eight have
been selected for the issue after a rigorous vetting process. They have been
arranged chronologically according to the seniority of writers within the two
literary forms addressed in this issue – prose fiction and poetry; within the
“fiction” category, first the novel and then the short story are covered. This is
followed by two interviews, the first with Niaz Zaman, a first-generation writer
of the post-independence period, based in her native country, and the second
with Sanchita Islam, a British-born Bangladeshi writer and artist whose name has
already been mentioned above in the list of Bangladeshi diasporic writers. These
interviews are most intriguing and engaging and provide extensive discussion on
the life and literary/creative oeuvres of the two writers.
The first article of the issue, “Images of Bangladesh in Niaz Zaman’s
Novels” by Sabiha Huq examines Zaman’s realism in her portrayal of Bangladeshi
women and their struggles at different historical junctures. Detailing the everyday
experiences of ordinary women as described in Zaman’s three novels, Huq sheds
light upon “an essentially Bangladeshi reality” and women’s “glorious and
5
Characteristically too, in this special issue of Asiatic, of the eight articles published on Bangladeshi
writing in English, two are on Monica Ali’s Brick Lane.

Mohammad A. Quayum and Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Asiatic, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2018
6
extraordinary journeys.” The article argues that women’s resilience, strength and
resourcefulness are better manifested during challenging times when they have to
cope with tragedies of epic proportion on their own without the presence of or
support from men.
The next article, by Farhanaz Rabbani and Tazin Aziz Chaudhury, “The
Silent Soldiers: A Postcolonial Feminist Study of Selina Hossain’s River of My Blood
and Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns,” embarks on a comparative
discussion between vernacular Bangladeshi novelist Selina Hossain’s 1976 novel
Hangor Nodi Grenade – which was translated into English as River of My Blood (2016)
– and Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns
(2007). A thread of commonality that runs through the two novels is the
condition of women in the largely patriarchal societies of Hossain’s Bangladesh
and Hosseini’s Afghanistan. Women’s experiences, portrayed in the contexts of
the Bangladesh War of Liberation in 1971 and of a politically volatile Afghanistan
following the incursions first by Russia and then the US, provide the discussion
in the article with a sense of what feminists from the 1970s encapsulated in their
slogan “the personal is the political.”
In the third article, “The Blame Game: War and Violence in Dilruba Z. Ara’s
Blame,” Sanjib Kr Biswas and Priyanka Tripathi deal with the 1971 event as
portrayed by the Swedish-Bangladeshi writer, Dilruba Z. Ara in her 2015 novel,
Blame. The article touches on gender-based violence against women and
investigates women’s self-esteem during the war and its aftermath. Using the
context of Ara’s novel, a Bildungsroman about self-development and coming of
age, the authors situate women in the midst of a culture of blaming that
reproaches women for unconventional behaviour and “unwomanly courage.”
The next two articles, by Md. Mahmudul Hasan and Wigati Dyah Prasasti
respectively, focus on Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003). Md. Mahmudul Hasan’s
“Transplanted Gender Norms and Their Limits in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane”
explains diasporic anxiety of severance from the cultural values of one’s country
of origin. A sense of displacement and identitarian fear of being lost to
metropolitan cultural influences compel the Bangladeshi diasporic community in
Britain to transplant Bangladeshi gender norms into their new lives and cultural
surrounds. Mainly drawing upon Ali’s depiction of the character of Nazneen,
Hasan argues that such measures are inept and inefficacious in the context of the
contemporary world of virtual communication, which renders the private life of
domesticity porous and vulnerable to outside influences. However, in “Unchaste
Desires: Gender- and Identity-Related Disquiet in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane,”
Prasasti highlights Chanu’s gendered conditioning of the protagonist Nazneen in
the novel. With Chanu’s approval, Nazneen starts working from home in
compliance with patriarchal norms. However, it leads to her intimate familiarity
and subsequent extramarital affairs with Karim, who regularly visits her as the
middle man between her and the garment factory for which she works.

Introducing Bangladeshi Writing in English: Emergence to the Present
Asiatic, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2018
7
Eventually, Nazneen embraces metropolitan culture and refuses to follow Chanu
in a reverse migration back to Bangladesh, instead seeking putative liberation in
the Western lifestyle.
A feminist empiricist and historicist perspective is present in Farzana
Akhter’s “Negotiating the Politics of Power: Tahmima Anam’s The Good Muslim
and Women’s Role in War and Nation-building.” Using Anam’s novel, the article
discusses women’s participation in the 1971 war on multiple fronts and how, in
the subsequent grand narrative that followed, women faced a masculinist erasure
that denied them their rightful place in history. The article argues that in the
hysteria of eulogising male heroism, women’s contributions are often forgotten
in the nationalist jubilation as well as its lexicon. This article has a certain affinity
with the one by Sanjib Kr Biswas and Priyanka Tripathi, as both Ara’s and Anam’s
novels centre on the Liberation War of Bangladesh, and the effect it had on
women in general and the birangonas in particular.
Drawing on three short stories from Niaz Zaman’s edited anthology, The
Escape and Other Stories of 1947 (2000), Rifat Mahbub and Anika Saba (“Homed,
Unhomed and Rehomed in Partition Stories of East Bengal/East Pakistan”) take
readers back to the beginnings of independence for British India and the
subsequent partition of the region into India and Pakistan in 1947. Predicating
upon Ananya Jahanara Kabir’s concepts of “postmemory” and “post-amnesia,”
the article dilates on the violence and cross-border mass migration in the
aftermath of the partition, and how these experiences shaped “the
intergenerational identities of Bangladeshis.”
Tahmina Ahmed in “Kaiser Haq: Emerging Transnational Poet of
Bangladesh” celebrates arguably the foremost Bangladeshi poet in English,
whose work has been received favourably in both Bangladesh and beyond. In an
era of globalisation and transnational exchanges through migration as well as
information technology, a poet of literary merit can easily transcend national and
geographical boundaries, which Ahmed seeks to demonstrate by way of
evaluating some of Haq’s poems and translated works.
Women’s experiences and feminist issues involving the political events of
1947 and 1971 and diasporic life dominate in the articles in this special issue of
Asiatic on Bangladeshi writing in English. As mentioned earlier, the literary forms
covered in the issue are fiction and poetry. Some of the important themes that
have not been touched on and which future research projects may wish to
consider are the issue of class, the rural-urban divide, tradition and modernity,
gender and work in Bangladesh, women in the garment industry, internal
migration, and religion and culture. Literary forms that have not been investigated
in the issue but merit research attention are autobiography, drama, memoir and
non-fiction.

Mohammad A. Quayum and Md. Mahmudul Hasan
Asiatic, Vol. 12, No. 1, June 2018
8
One final point that needs to be made is that almost all the articles in the
issue, including the two interviews, focus on women writers. This does not
necessarily indicate that more Bangladeshi women than men are writing in the
English language, nor that their work is necessarily superior to that of their male
counterparts, but perhaps it does suggest that more research is being carried out
on the works of women writers compared to those of men. We are disappointed
that we could not include articles on such major male writers as Nirad Chaudhuri
and Adib Khan, or even such important female writers as Rokeya Sakhawat
Hossain and Razia Khan Amin. Notwithstanding such limitations, we believe that
this effort is timely and marks the beginning of more research to come on the
tradition of Bangladeshi writing in English, which it certainly deserves as the
tradition has been growing steadily and in strides during the last twenty-odd years.
Works Cited
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20 June 2008. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-
world/269000-people-died-in-Bangladesh-war-says-new-study/articleshow/
3147513.cms. 28 June 2018.
Greer, Germaine. “Reality Bites.” The Guardian, 24 Jul 2006.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/jul/24/culture.books. 29 June
2018.
Hasan, Md Mahmudul. “Marginalisation of Muslim Writers in South Asian
Literature: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s English Works.” South Asia
Research 32.3 (2012): 179-97.
Patil, Swawpnil. “The Hindu College (Calcutta).” Sulekha.
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June 2018.
Shikhandin. “Writing Matters: In Conversation with Dr. Mohammad A.
Quayum.” Kitaab, 1 March 2018. https://kitaab.org/2018/03/01/writing-
matters-in-conversation-with-dr-mohammad-a-quayum/. 28 June 2018.
Shook, David. “English-Language Literature Finds Its Place in
Bangladesh.” huffingtonpost.com/david-shook/englishlanguage-
literatur_b_2163510.html. 25 June 2016.
Sirajuddin, S.S. “Criticism (Pakistan).” Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in
English. Eds. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly. London: Routledge, 2005.
301.
Töngür, A. Nejat. “Rebellion: Second Generation Bangladeshi Immigrants in
Brick Lane by Monica Ali.” Journal of International Social Research 6.26 (2013):
561-67.