Beyond national(ist) binaries: The case of Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know

ABSTRACT

This article reads Zia Haider Rahman’s debut novel In the Light of What We Know (2014), focusing on its interventionist trajectory with regards to Bangladeshi and Pakistani national discourse. It analyses the representational subversions this intervention entails and the factors that enable them. Rahman is a member of the Bangladeshi diaspora in Britain, and this physical distance from the home country is one factor that shapes his critical reading of the dominant rhetoric of both nationalisms. The fact that he is a second- rather than first-generation immigrant also contributes to his relationship with the mainstream Bangladeshi and Pakistani national discourse. The article argues that by intervening in the officially sanctioned national narratives of Bangladesh and Pakistan, Rahman initiates a healthy new trend in Bangladeshi diasporic literature – one which helps to build a bridge of empathy between the two nations locked in an endless cycle of antagonism and misunderstanding.

KEYWORDS:

• Nation
• diaspora
• discourse
• intervention
• Zia Haider Rahman
• reconciliation

Acknowledgements

An embryonic version of this article was presented at the “Multilingualism and the Bangladeshi Culture” session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention 2022 held online on January 6, 2022.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Not all scholars see diaspora as progressive (see Carter 2005) and it would be naive to see all diasporas in that light.

2. In Amitav Ghosh’s (1988) second novel, The Shadow Lines, an ancestral house is so partitioned (due to a family feud between two brothers) that a commode gets bisected in the process.

3. In writing this paragraph, I have extensively borrowed from secondary sources which include Guru Saday Batabyal (2021), Sanjay K. Bhardwaj (2010), and Willem V. Schendel (2009).

4. From Bhabha’s perspective, both nation and diaspora are spaces where identity is a performance, not a given.

5. Diaspora has been variously defined by scholars. The concept has evolved from William Safran’s (1991) focus on geographically dispersed communities such as the Jews to the broader definitions of James Clifford (1994) (“the term diaspora is a signifier” [308]), Arjun Appadurai (1996), Bhabha (1990, 1994), and Stuart Hall (1990).

6. The work of Rohinton Mistry (b. 1952) is another good example.

7. Most postcolonial nationalisms, including Indian nationalism, are haunted by the ghosts of old patriarchy; hence women’s marginal or “fragmentary” status in the scheme of things set up by the national elite.

8. Not all diasporic discourse is interventionist (see, for example, Anam 2007).

9. Mr Pirzada was also working on his research project in Lahiri’s (1999) short story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” (23–42).

10. The Swadeshi movement was an early-20th-century anti-British movement in India, geared to boycotting European/British goods.

11. Tagore (1861–1941) was born and died during the British rule of India.

12. Zafar is perhaps drawing a parallel here with the Punjab, the land of five rivers.

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Notes on contributors

Md Rezaul Haque

Md Rezaul Haque teaches in the English Department at St John’s University, New York. He received his PhD from Flinders University, Australia, and completed an Endeavour Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in 2016. He co-edited The Shadow of the Precursor (2012) and guest-edited with Gillian Dooley a special issue of Gitanjali & Beyond on Tagore’s Ghare Baire (2020). He has published internationally on Indian English fiction, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Hasan Azizul Huq, and Bengali diasporic writers. He is also a poet and Translations Editor for Transnational Literature (Australia–UK). His first book of Bangla poetry Jalo Jane Kolahal was published in 2020, and the second, Tumi Sab Thik Kore Nio, in 2022.