Remembering against sentimentality: Partition’s literary shadows in the work of Najm Hosain Syed

Abstract

Although Punjabi is written in two different scripts in India and Pakistan, there are striking parallels between the literary work in Punjabi produced on both sides of the India and Pakistan border that divides Punjab. Modern Punjabi literary works on both sides of the border express a generally progressive ( pragatīvādī, taraqqi pasand) set of political and social commitments; this is in keeping with the broader history of modern vernacular literary production in South Asia (Gopal, 2005). This essay explores further dimensions of the parallel literary commitments on both sides of the border, read against the legacy of the Partition, though a close reading of the works of Najm Hosain Syed (b. 1936), a leading writer in the Punjabi language advocacy movement in Pakistan. This exploration seeks to analyze the ways the Partition is configured in Syed’s work, and how he works to bring the past into the present — and the present into the past — against a kind of sentimental nostalgia that disengages from the political present.