Mohammed Hanif is Unafraid

In South Asian literature of the last decade or so, some of the most memorable novels have come from a background that reflects a struggle with failing economies ravaged by wars, rebellions or misrule. Maybe the looming notion of a decline and fall of political dynasties spur writers on to look at these phenomena, sometimes objectively as reporters then standing away and looking at it as novelists. Two novels need to be mentioned in this context. Sri Lankan expat writer V.V. Ganeshananthan’s Brotherless Night, a searing heart-breaking novel from inside the LTTE-led civil war and Bangladesh Bengali writer Leesa Gazi’s Hell Fire, the story of two sisters shut inside their house for 40 years by their mother. 

And now taking potshots at the military mullah enterprise in Pakistan comes journalist-turned-novelist  Mohammed Hanif’s (who debuted with the best selling Case of Exploding Mangoes) biting satire Rebel English Academy as well as Pulitzer-winner Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This is Where  the Serpent Lives, both released the last week on February here. In both novels, the former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto forms the backdrop, in one as a live orator in the other as a hanged ruler for whom funeral prayers have already been held. 

'Rebel English Academy,' Mohammed Hanif, Grove Press, 2026.

Hanif needs no introduction to Indian readers of English novels. He has traipsed along the dangerous path, curving close to lambasting the military, poking fun at dynasties and political monarchs and now in this novel, taking potshots at Pakistan’s powerful mullahs and the army once again. Any Pakistani establishment tottering or clinging on, is an easy target for Hanif, something which few Indian writers have had the guts to do in recent times. He guffaws at everything and takes the reader along on this ride in this novel which is quintessentially Pakistani and South Asian as well. While Hanif trawls the underbelly of Pakistani low life, Mueenuddin casts a laser beam on the high life of feudal Pakistan. With these two, we get yet another picture of Pakistan society, its politics, and its hidden and fake lives.

Rebel English Academy is, well, an English academy where Baghi teaches easy, half-baked English to those who want to pass exams and get a job. Some of its graduates are prominent players in this novel. The Academy itself is set in a mosque complex which is a metaphor for Pakistan itself, where the mullah, an intelligence officer, a woman lawyer, a Bhutto sympathiser and, of course, Baghi  form a motley Pakistani mix, so to say, and  move from one disaster to another. The plot and narrative is often contrived and unconvincing, but the novel has to be read as if you are viewing a picture book of 1980s Pakistan. The thrust of the novel is the search for Bhutto sympathisers who might revolt. Captain Gul, the intelligence officer, is all set to nip such rebellions in the bud, apart from living up to his nickname ‘Piston.’

As if all this was not enough there is also an Iron Syrup shop whose product we guess is in demand as an aphrodisiac. A major turn in the novel happens when the Iron Syrup shop is burned down along with its main occupant though his second wife, a former athlete, escapes, finds refuge in the English Academy and becomes the main suspect of the fire and killing.  Throughout the novel, sex of different varieties form a running thread. There is filth all around, likening the novel to a trip down a dark alley at night. Such novels are in a way a welcome relief from the detoxed NRI love stories set in Ivy League colleges and middle class living room shenanigans which form a good part of Indian English novel writing sometimes.

The main thread is the Bhutto hanging and its aftermath after a new Islamic republic all set to take shape under a military dictator. There are some tectonic movements here and there. In one place, it says: “Gul has told Baghi to stop telling people that the slogan Bhutto Lives was first uttered in this mosque , and it was a prayer anyway, a metaphor, not a call to arms , not an invitation to douse yourself in petrol and then wait for someone to save you. The military regime wasn’t so bad – after all, it was bringing in Islamic punishments and all this country needed was a few public hangings and lashings.”

Hanif’s locale is ‘Ok Town’ – a mix of Islamabad and Lahore, a mini-Pakistan. There, his characters play out threats and killings and abductions, and of course, English learning, all familiar territory for us Indians. 

Critics have found fault with Hanif’s language which is sometimes basic. But when your locale is the underbelly and the characters live on the border between insanity, poverty, and an emerging Islamic theocracy, then language has to locate itself in the starting point. It cannot float above its characters. Hanif is often hilarious and unabashedly vulgar especially when he is taking potshots: “Sir your friend talks a lot about  Allah but when you  are away he tries to give sermons with his hands.”  But the book is mostly street and the language emanates from there. 

It is surprising that Hanif whom this reviewer has met a couple of times in India, has evolved into a thuggish sort of writer daring everyone, not sparing the mullah, the military and other holy cows of Pakistan. He hasn’t sobered down from his early novels, as one would expect, and in many ways it is a relief that one of South Asia’s leading English novelists has kept the faith, so to say. 

Binoo K. John is a senior journalist and author. His History of News Photography in India is forthcoming.

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