The colonial impact had been so traumatic for cultures, languages and arts of the peoples living in erstwhile colonies that studies and analyses are still being done to fully assess the consequences of that impact.

Actually, it is an ongoing intellectual exercise as consequences are being assessed not only of that initial relationship but also of the post-colonial phase. The unequal relationship or the relationship of the master and slave did not end with the physical secession of colonies by the erstwhile colonial powers. It has continued in many other forms because the powerhouse of intellect and sources of new discoveries still lie there.

Going back and visiting the consequences of that initial impact is important if one has to have some basic understanding of the trauma that still lingers on with varying degrees of intensities. There were generally three attitudes that resulted as a consequence of that colonial master-slave relationship: one was that of total rejection, the other of total acceptance, and the third of rejecting it on the surface but going along with it for the purposes of survival or expediency in a society that was changing very fast.

So many studies of these varying relationships have been conducted, including this one, and quite brilliantly too by pointing to the many warts and shortcoming that appear to us in more defined and concrete terms due to the advantage of hindsight than to those living then. Much water has flowed from under the bridge and the there is more strength to accept the shortcomings and weaknesses now than it was then.

There have been conquests and invasions before; so was there a difference between the impact of colonial rule and that of the Muslim invasions and domination in the centuries preceding that? If the British were outsiders, then the impact by its very nature was imposed, and therefore negative in its fallout. According to many, by the same parallel, everything that was Muslim too was thus tainted and looked at askance -- with the effort to purge it as well as there has been a constant effort with western influence in particular.

It has often been argued that the Muslims too were foreigners and that they too occupied the Indian territories by force. It was not that there was one invasion but a whole succession of invasions where the weaker rulers in the subcontinent, albeit Muslims, were also defeated by the oncoming invaders from the North West who happened to be also Muslims by religious conviction.

But Nasir Abbas Nayyar draws a line between the two, for the British were foreigners who occupied the land, ruled it for two centuries but then left like foreign occupiers do, while the Muslims who came here, albeit as conquerors and rulers, settled down and became part of the populace. The nature of their impact, therefore, was qualitatively different from that of the British. The merging or the mixing of the two very different worldviews did result in cross fertilization and flowering in a culture that was inclusive and accommodating.

It thus had many dimensions to it, all embedded in the wish of the people to develop a more wholesome society. It did not have the relationship of the ruler and the ruled but that of two communities occupying the same land, working out their spaces, striking common ground and developing syncretic linkages.

This book is a sequel to the author’s Mabaad uz Nauabadiaat -- Urdu Ke Tanazar Main that focused more on the literature written in the earlier phase of colonialism especially under the guardianship of the Anjuman-e-Punjab. But then he wanted an alternative discourse and included Urdu fiction as the area of interest. He found himself handicapped because there has been no proper tradition of neo-colonial studies or post-colonial studies here. Most are done by authors or researchers who have been educated in the West and have done their work in the Western languages and not in local ones like Urdu.

The alternative discourse, according to Nayyar, was only possible in one’s own language for the language casts a net which is far bigger and invisible; that he calls saqafati lashaoor (cultural unconscious), an interiority in each language which probably is non-transferable. Any alternative discourse in the language of the master is therefore self-defeating because the baggage of cultural unconscious embedded in the language cannot be shared, no matter what the content.

There were many terms being used like centre and the periphery, the text and the margins in the same context. And he goes on to assert that the content was not important or partially important because the cultural unconscious was what makes the qualitative difference. He therefore placed before the rest the writings of Intizar Hussain, Saadat Hasan Manto, Qurratulain Hyder and Meeraji as positing a more credible alternative discourse than those that propound to be so.

In the earlier phase, the relationship of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan with that of Shibli Naumani was one example of that duality in the overall outlook, the fallout of which were the debates and the breakaways that took place. Similarly, the difference between Akbar Allahabadi and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan too focused on the acceptance of values and academic pointers of the West compared to what was ours. The tussle or the difference dramatised the strategies that were adopted -- to cope with the change that was too damaging and self-destroying if left to itself.

After about half a century, the need for a revisit has assumed urgency because of the reassertion in militancy by many who were in the erstwhile colonies and those that shifted to the mother countries or were born there but still consider that difference as the basis of their rebellion, insurrection, unrest, or movement, call it what you may. This distinction is, therefore, still valid and has not been rendered obsolete by the shifting sands of time.