An Urdu novel shows us a mirror – we punish the innocence out of our children

The novel, through a moving depiction of childhood miseries in a sleepy town, makes it clear that disproportionate and arbitrary punishment betray a hostility towards those with different religious beliefs and allows the powerful to retain dominance. It is a heartwrenching narrative of the terrible effects of discrimination and injustice, under the guise of justice.

Khan discusses how the justice system reflects the views of the powerful and draws from religious beliefs, sectarian laws, social convictions, cultural practices and moral values. The self-interest of the powerful is accepted without question. Even as certain religious, political and ideological leanings are criticised by writers and poets, the prosecution system escapes unscathed.

Franz Kafka’s Before the Law and The Trial narrate how the judicial system lacks a sense of proportion between crime and punishment. Trivial crimes fetch stringent punishment, and the media and people gradually become arbiters of justice in society. Allah Mian Ka Karkhana, which has gone into three print editions, is perhaps the first Urdu novel that zeroes in on all possible emotional overtones of gradually coming to conform to such a capricious system. Jibran’s story is a nuanced tale of a human predicament. Jibran and his younger sister Nusrat seek to comprehend how opposing elements shape our universe and why one thing is pitted against the other in divine creation. Jibran asks: “Allah Miyan ne murghi banai thi to billi kyun banai?” (Why did God create a cat after a hen?) Similarly, why is punishment not in proportion to the crime?

When Jibran purchases sugar, the shopkeeper gives it in a paper bag that carries a risque picture of a young girl. Jibran, having no means of entertainment, preserves the paper bag. When he feels down, he looks at it. He has lost his parents and lives in his uncle’s house in a rickety room. While he is looking at the picture, his aunt barges into the room. She is infuriated and throws him out of the house. Jibran seeks pardon but in vain.

Does this “moral folly” call for such drastic action?

Mohsin Khan’s new novel upends the thematic platitude of Urdu fiction and introduces an alternative discourse about a system that takes a heavy toll on us, while we remain oblivious to its sinister design.

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The writer is a bilingual critic and teaches mass communication at AMU