Class and gender anxieties, not colonial experience, drove Nazir Ahmed’s novels

Evidence

His training in Arabic was rigorous and immaculate; his knowledge of Engli~h was patchy, since he had had no formal training in it. He was a prolific translator of everything: the Indian Penal Code, the Indian Law of Evidence, the Qur’an, books of astronomy. He is known above all as a novelist, however, and he had one overwhelming anxiety: that girls should get a modern education (in this he represented the emergent urban bourgeoisie) but that they should nevertheless remain good, traditional housewives (a sentiment that was quite widespread, across all social boundaries). It was this anxiety that governed most of his fiction. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 458

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘girls should be educated but remain traditional housewives’ anxiety echoes themes in the reader’s own frame on strategic/ironic identity, and connects to Gayatri Spivak’s earlier work on women and colonial discourse. — connects to: Class and gender pressures, not colonialism, shaped the formative Urdu novel; Class and social critique, not colonial experience, dominated pre-Partition Urdu fiction. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 464; Class origin and ideology jointly determine what a writer’s fiction excludes. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 239 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Class and social critique, not colonial experience, dominated pre-Partition Urdu fiction. #corroborates (0.85) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 464
• Class origin and ideology jointly determine what a writer’s fiction excludes. #expands (0.75) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 239