When Bangladesh-born Professor Mohammad A. Quayum first came to Malaysia to teach at the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia in 1996, he found that the institution of higher learning did not have an English Literature department.
When he asked his head of department why this was, that worthy replied that literature was frankly out of date. No need for a whole department; it was being offered as a minor in the education faculty. And that should suffice.
The professor was nonplussed. Where he came from, literature was the lifeblood of society. Little children read everything from the poets to the great writers. Nearly every child had grown up with the works of Rabindranath Tagore, for instance, the man whose poems were used for not one but two national anthems – India and Bangladesh’s.
There was no writer of a similar stature in Malaysia. And he was beginning to see why. “I told my head of department that he was wrong. Literature is very vital to any society. And I showed him a book that listed out the faculty in each department at Oxford University. I asked him to count the number of staff in computer science department. There were about 25. Then I asked him to count the number of staff in the English Literature department. There were about 100.
Obviously the UK is a very advanced society. So if literature was so outdated why were they placing such an emphasis on it? I told him that it showed that although they wanted to advance materially, they were not prepared to do so at the expense of their culture.”
In this simple, homespun way he convinced his head of department who took him to see the dean. “I repeated the same things to him, provided him with more information, and eventually convinced him of the importance of having an English Literature Department. When we started out, I had only six students majoring in literature. When I left UPM in 2003, there were 62. Now they’re even offering a master’s and PhD in English literature. And that is something I’m proud of.”
But it was not enough to have started a Literature Department. What the country needed to do was to produce writers of stature. And to help the public appreciate the writers who had been plugging away at the task for a while now, in the face of many obstacles and opposition.
In ‘Malaysian Literature in English: A Critical Reader’, Quayum and his co-writer Peter Wicks highlighted the major writers of this tradition: Lloyd Fernando, Lee Kok Liang, Ee Tiang Hong, Wong Phui Nam, K.S. Maniam, Shirley Lim and Kee Thuan Chye.
Quayum realized that they received next to no critical attention. And while the English departments in Malaysian universities may have set these texts for their courses, there was hardly any consideration of their work in peer-reviewed journals. In his book, ‘One Sky, Many Horizons’, a collection of essays on Malaysian literature in English published in 2007, he observes: “…there is a dearth of criticism for English language writers. There is no literary journal dedicated to writings in English. Their works are rarely reviewed in local newspapers and whatever attention they get is also questionable.”
The famous author, playwright and critic T.S. Eliot had pointed out in his seminal essay, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ that criticism is as inevitable as breathing. The task of the critic, then, is to ease, widen or deepen the readers’ response to literary works, functioning as an intermediary who helps to create the nexus between the reader and the writer.
But for this to happen, the critic has to both astute and independent. Not an easy combination, especially in a country like Malaysia which lacks writerly freedom and where, as Mokhtar Taib famously says, in reference to Malay literature, critics are often afraid of criticizing their friend’s work or the writing of national laureates because they fear losing friends or being excommunicated and marginalized by the powerful other.
“When I first came here, I realized that there was hardly any work being done on Malaysian literature in English. So I came up with an anthology of short stories for Malaysian and Singaporean writers because I was teaching at the Nanyang Polytechnic before I came here. Since then I’ve done quite a few anthologies and written books of critical essays on Malaysian and Singaporean writers.”
In most cultures, the writers shape society. In Malaysia, this has not been the case. Quayum, talking about the writers who use the English language as their medium, points out that they have come up against a whole host of barriers, not least of which is the absence of a local English language writing tradition. He points out in ‘One Sky’ that the absence of tradition makes the task of writers particularly difficult as they depend on tradition for their examples and inspiration. “As a first step towards establishing tradition, the writers will need to alter the language by giving it a more local flair and by infusing more ‘local blood’ into it. This will require considerable negotiation skills and creativity on the part of the writer.”
But although Quayum is firmly committed to the growth of a uniquely Malaysian literary tradition, his heart is now in translation, especially of Bengali literature, into English. And who better to translate than Rabindranath Tagore, the writer dearest to every Bengali heart? He recently published ‘Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories’, which contains some 19 short stories, in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of that great writer’s birth.
“I was 11 years old when my father gave me a collection of Tagore’s short stories and I’ve been reading him since then. Although outside the Indian subcontinent he is known as a poet, he was also the founder of the short story form in Bengali literature.”
How did he pick the stories? “Tagore wrote 95 short stories and I couldn’t translate all of them. So I settled for the very best, by reputation and appeal.”
He launched his book at a celebration to mark Tagore’s 150th birthday, organized by the Indian High Commission and the Indian Cultural Centre. Quayum said he would never, however, attempt to translate Tagore’s poetry. “It is very hard to translate poetry. In fact, as Robert Frost once pointed out, poetry is what gets lost in the translation.”
However, Tagore’s prose is very poetic, and Quayum has tried to make his translations as faithful to the original, as possible. “But there are times when you are trying to translate cultural conventions and that is difficult. You have to understand that Tagore was a Hindu writer and I’m a Muslim. So really, I had to do a lot of research of Hinduism to understand the cultural practices, mythologies, religious values and so on.”
Quayum started teaching Bengali literature at the State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University) in 2003. He is still teaching Bengali literature at the International Islamic University in Malaysia today.
“I’ve been living outside Bangladesh for 29 years now. Keeping away from the culture and the country while writing about it is not easy. You’re looking at it from a distance. In some ways it helps you gain perspective. In others, you are not able to keep up with the latest developments,” he says. But he grew up with the stories and the poems and so they are in his blood.
And to him the stories are more than just stories. They are radical and reformist, exploring the problems of the society at the time and provide gentle hints about the way Tagore thought it should be. The story ‘Kabuliwala’, for instance, is about a friendship that springs up between a Kabuliwala (an Afghan street vendor who sells dried fruit) and a little girl, Mini.
“In the early days of the 20th century, many Afghanis would come to Calcutta for business. One day, the protagonist who is an author and obviously a shadow of Tagore himself, is sitting with his daughter who sees the Kabuliwala passing their house and calls out to him to come in. There is a bonding between the little girl and the man. And he comes to visit her every day bringing her presents of fruits and nuts.
“One day, he is sent to jail for injuring a man who took some money from him and refused to acknowledge the debt. When he comes out of jail, the first thing he does is look for Mini, who by a strange coincidence, is getting married on that day. Mini’s father and the Kabuliwala realize that the latter should go back to Afghanistan and re-establish a relationship with his own daughter whom he hasn’t seen in his eight years in jail. In fact, they realize that he is so drawn to Mini because she reminds him of his own daughter.”
Quayum describes the story as an absolutely moving one which transcends many barriers: “Firstly, he’s trying to create an inter-religious relationship and show that fatherly love transcends all religious barriers. Secondly, Tagore was a Brahmin and in those days it was taboo for a Brahmin to have a Muslim in his house. And thirdly it spoke about father-daughter relationships in general. At the time, fathers did not love their daughters as much as they loved their sons. Tagore is showing that is OK to love your daughter, and Mini is an only child who spends all her time with her father rather than her mother.
This father-daughter bonding was a role model for people in Indian society.” In this way, each story is radical in its own way, questioning a woman’s lowly place in society, or the oppression of the lower castes and even, the holy of holies, nationalism itself.
Quayum pointed out that while people outside India knew Tagore as a poet because he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his most famous work, Gitanjali, he was actually a tremendous reformist. “India’s history is one of riots between the Hindus and the Muslims. Tagore was trying to build a bridge between the two.”
And while he was good friends with Gandhi and respected him, conferring on him the title “Mahatma”, the two actually did not see eye to eye in terms of politics. “Gandhi believed in the idea of the charka or spinning wheel, which is still in the middle of the Indian flag. To him that was the main symbol of Indian identity. He said Indians contributed cloth to modern civilization and going back to the spinning wheel was a way of reclaiming their national pride.
“Tagore said all this was nonsense; what the people needed were more schools. So he established a university of his own which has produced many great minds such as Amartya Sen, the leading economist and Nobel Prize winner and Indira Gandhi,” he says.
Basically, Tagore wanted India to move in a different direction. “He said if India gains independence from the British only a handful of middle class people would benefit. What it really needed was an internal freedom; freedom for the untouchables, freedom for the women. Tagore pointed out that unless Indians were prepared to reform their society, this political freedom brought about by the independence was not going to bring freedom for the masses.”
He believed that India could be a role model for the world. “He used to say that Europe was one people divided into many countries. India, on the other hand, was many people living in one country. So India stood for the future of the world and could serve as a role model on how to create a global society through the unity of various races and religions.”
Basically, Tagore was a man ahead of his time: “We talk about about globalization now; he was talking about it then, in the 1920s.”
Quayum disagreed with the popular perception of Tagore as a mystical writer which came about after his collection of mystical poems, the Gitanjali, achieved worldwide acclaim when he won the Nobel Prize. But how did a translation of his poems land up in the hands of the Swedish Academy in the first place?
“When he visited England in 1912, he became friends with poets W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound. He recited some verses from the Gitanjali to them (in Bengali) and the two were mesmerized by the music of the words, although they didn’t understand what he was saying.
“They asked him to translate it and Yeats was so enthralled with the result that he wrote an introduction to it and sent it off to the Swedish Academy. The Swedish Academy awarded Tagore the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, sparking outrage among Westerners who had never heard of the Indian writer and could not even pronounce his name. It was supposed to have gone to English novelist Thomas Hardy that year,” explains Quayum.
Ezra Pound once paid Tagore the greatest tribute, saying that although he had read many poets, Tagore was the greatest of them all. And he had come to this conclusion after carefully considering the matter for a month.
“The Gitanjali is a mystical book and it fits in with the popular Western perception of India as a place of mysticism. But Tagore is a greater writer when it comes to social and political issues. He gave lectures in America and Japan against nationalism. Nobody has highlighted those writings and I think it is important to do so,” he says.
Quayum has also published a second book on Tagore in conjunction with the anniversary. It is a collection of essays entitled ‘The Poet and His World: Critical Essays on Rabindranath Tagore’ and it discusses the various aspects of his life, writings and philosophy. The essays are written by various noted Tagore scholars and Quayum has included his own article about how Tagore perceived the Muslims.
“The Bangladesh national anthem is one of Tagore’s poems and the fanatics don’t like that. They always try to project him as someone who glorified Hinduism and oppressed the Muslims. I have responded by saying that he loved the Muslims as much as he loved the Hindus because Tagore was a lover of humanity. And because he was a humanistic writer and wanted to create a global society, religion was never a barrier for him.”
The professor grows especially passionate as he expounds on this theory: “The mark of greatness is the ability to rise above religious differences and see human beings as human beings. Our primary identity is that we belong to the human community. Of course we each have our culture, religious and gender identity but beyond that all, we belong to one human community.
“To understand this is important for the redemption of humanity. If we keep fighting along racial and religious lines, there will be no end to it. We’ve been fighting about religion for centuries now. What has happened? Who has won? There can’t be any winner when the environment continues to be violent. There can only be bloodshed. And hatred only begets more hatred. What we need is mutual respect. What we need is to be able to see that while you may be different, at the core, your essence is the same.”
The lecturer pauses, smiles and loses some of his gravity. He has said what he has to say. When he resumes, he is talking once again about creating a body of literature in Malaysia. “I keep saying if the IIU cannot produce a great writer in 20 years, we should close down our English department. There’s no point in having one if we cannot produce a few respectable writers.” Not that there haven’t been any. Quayum admits that the department has produced a few stars who are looked upon as its future.
“We have a very young lecturer who obtained a first class when she was studying here. She went on to do her master’s in Cambridge and now she is doing her doctorate in Germany. She is extremely bright and the future of this department. We have another lecturer who also got a first class and went on to do her master’s in the department. Now she is writing a lot of poetry. That is what we want.
“What’s the use of having people like us sitting around, teaching English literature? We are not looking to produce application writers or purveyors of entertainment fiction. We want to produce literary writers, poets, playwrights; people who have something to say, people who are willing to shape society. Otherwise we become irrelevant,” he points out. Quayum, who also lectures in Australia, says creative writing courses are very big there, but have yet to catch on in Malaysia.
“But really, I think if a society wants to grow culturally, it has to produce writers. If you argue a lack of creative and political freedom, my response would be that you have to push the parameters and that is the responsibility of the intellectuals in society. That is the responsibility of the writers.”
The professor himself continues to write. To date, he has published 21 books, not to mention numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals. “I teach for a living, and I love it, but that is not what sustains me. It’s my research, my writing, my translation, my publications. I became a professor 10 years ago, which means I have nothing left to strive for as far as my academic career is concerned. So people ask why I still write so prolifically.
“I tell them, I don’t do it for promotions and I’m not a point collector. I write because there is something inside urging me to do it. In fact, I can’t sleep unless I do. Whether its translation or critical writing, I have to write every day. It’s part of my system. Sometimes I don’t set pen to paper but I turn the words around in my head. And this is what feeds my soul. And this is what gives me spiritual and moral nourishment.”
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