THE ‘SACRED HEART’ OF ALICE: A READING OF MOHAMMED HANIF’S OUR LADY OF ALICE BHATTI

Abstract

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti is the Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif’s second novel which was published in 2011. This novel again demonstrates the predilection of the author for satire in his critique of modern Pakistani society and manners. This paper looks at the manner in which Hanif uses the Catholic Alice Bhatti as a focalizer to critique the social, political and religious chaos he perceives as pervading Pakistan. Alice, who in many ways recalls Defoe’s Moll Flanders, is a junior nurse at the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments, a decaying hospital rampant with corruption. The fact that the protagonist of this novel belongs to a religious minority brings up the fault lines within Pakistan with great clarity. The hospital itself towers over the world of the novel, providing a context for most of the events in the novel and becomes a powerful image of the marginalization of religious minorities and religious intolerance in Pakistan, represented through attitudes towards Christians in the novel. In this scheme of things, Alice constantly attempts to de-link herself from reductive images in terms of religion, gender and caste as she continuously questions and challenges the dominant attitudes of not merely the majority Muslims but her Christians as well.