ABSTRACT
Akhtar Mohiuddin wrote in Kashmiri in which few produce literature today because of the contrary pulls of India and Pakistan; Urdu is the preferred language. His work is not readily available in English translation although his value as a writer is not doubted. The chapter looks at a novella Enmeshed Life ostensibly written around 1960 and some later stories. The novella deals with a three-way relationship, a young man of 25 Ramzan Raja whose departure from their village with an aged widow Moghl Hanzen creates a scandal although he merely shouldered his responsibilities towards her late scrounger husband. The third is a shady character named Malla Kubr with criminal antecedents, Ramzan Raja’s mentor. The novella is set before independence but there is an indication that the space that later became Pakistan is closer to the protagonist, and ‘India’ not mentioned. At the same time there is irony in the notion of a pan-Islamic brotherhood being invoked by a pimp in Rawalpindi to cheat someone and turn his beloved into a prostitute. But what strikes one is Kashmiris representing a non-ideal community that includes even criminals. The later stories are less rich in human detail and are more in the activist mode although the detail is authentic. The comparison between the works suggests a depletion of culture as Kashmiri’s attention among the educated began to shift towards resisting the Indian state instead of observing their own society.
