History’s Angel: A fine novel about what it means to be an Indian Muslim today

The protagonist of 'History's Angel' loves teaching history so much that every now and then, he takes his pupils out, ‘shows them a relic or two'. (Image by Yogendra Singh via Pexels)

‘A storm is blowing from Paradise’ wrote the Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin in 1940. ‘It has got caught in his wings with such violence the angel can no longer close them.’ The words, apropos a figure in a 1920 monoprint by Paul Klee that was in Benjamin’s possession, belong to his essay, On the Concept of History. With the benefit of hindsight, they were uncannily well-timed. The world did not know it then, but Benjamin seems to have felt it that humanity was on the verge of an event which would set a new standard of horror: the Holocaust. The angel that Benjamin saw in Klee’s drawing was none other than History itself.

Bloomsbury India; 288 pages; Rs 699

Acclaimed novelist and short story writer Anjum Hasan’s sixth and latest work, History’s Angel, has a cover illustration that represents a Paradise of sorts: a bucolic scene with flowers, a tree and beneath it a man reclining with a book. But the man isn’t reading. Instead, he’s looking back. Meanwhile, a swarm of insects, locusts perhaps, builds up in the background. Set in 2019, just before the politics surrounding the CAA- NRC issue burst upon the national consciousness, the novel has Delhi as its backdrop. Not New Delhi so much as Purani Dilli, which is home to its protagonist, Alif Mohammad, a 40-plus schoolteacher. An ordinary man who likes to ‘be anonymous and, so, himself. Walking, he is just a clean-shaven man with grey at the temples, in new leather shoes and a slightly worn backpack: a middleclass nobody.’ In the events of this unexceptional man’s life, spread over a few weeks, is packed a larger slice of many flavours.

An artist’s eye

‘Drawing is taking a line for a walk,’ wrote Paul Klee. Hasan’s particular talent lies in taking someone as bland as a self-effacing, unambitious, absentminded pedant – who falls into historical ruminations at the drop of a hat – and presenting him, magnificently, as an anachronism. In an age where a Muslim is seen either as an unlucky victim or as a live threat, someone who is content merely to teach the history of India to school children appears a nonconformist, a brave one.

History is the subject that Alif has taught for over 20 years at the same institution, a small private school. However, its new, overzealous principal, Mrs Rawat, has an issue with his way teaching it. The trouble is that he is not just a teacher who follows the dictates of a syllabus but an aficionado who persists in proclaiming his passion despite the feeling that ‘His own voice seems to be dying on him.’ Such is his zest for teaching history that every now and then, he takes his pupils out, ‘shows them a relic or two, anything they can size up and freely touch, anything to prove that history is not a gag he springs on them every day with the connivance of their unenticing school books.’ One such expedition turns into a disaster when a recalcitrant pupil Ankit, who mistook Humayun’s Tomb for Hanuman’s Temple, shows his disgust by asking Alif, ‘Are you a dirty Musalla?’ The teacher’s spontaneous reaction is to twist the boy’s ear. In the Rawat regime, it is enough to jeopardize his job.

Past vs Present

Alongside deft characterization, for which Hasan has a most impressive skill, is her sympathetic understanding not just of the workings of people who lead solitary lives while pursuing their bliss, but of the tumultuous circle of human relationships around them. While the novel’s focus remains on Alif’s inner life and his nostalgic fascination for the conquerors, empire-builders, poets, sufi saints, philosophers, as well as the architectural and cultural remnants of a bygone age, he is circled, indeed threatened, by the present one. There is a growing stridency caused by any number of issues that have now become commonplace: urban poverty, religiosity, communal tension, intolerance, discrimination. All of these are what Alif’s immediate family have to contend with.

Speaking to its time

While Alif, on the verge of losing his job, remains sanguine, everyone around him is wrestling with real-time issues and events. As his friend and drinking buddy Ganesh says, ‘The world changes, you try to change with it. Do you know what the half-life of a skill is today? Max five years.’ Thus, Alif’s wife Tahira, who works as a store manager, aims to complete her MBA in the hope that it will get her a better job, a better house; his teenage son Salim wants to drop out of school and grow rich quickly; his parents’ servant Ahmad feels that ‘Allah has been sending me the signs and I know it is time, it is very much time, for me to go on the umrah.’ And on the television there is ‘a studio debate in which people are getting increasingly red-faced through their make-up,’ over  What does it mean to be a Muslim in contemporary India? It is a question that secretly bothers Alif’s father Mahtab, a retired police sub-inspector and his cousin Farouk, a comparatively successful man who is in the business of selling shoes and, indeed, sells Alif a pair. It is also a question that hits Tahira in the face when she is insulted by a flat owner who, ostensibly, wants to rent his luxury apartment. Finally, Alif too cannot avoid it when the principal Rawat, declares, ‘This man is bringing too much Muslim history into this school.’

A surfeit of history? Yes. A broad cast of characters? Yes. A range of sensitive issues? Yes. But Hasan manages to hold it all together, making History’s Angel an altogether absorbing read. Finally, it is her trademark storytelling style – unhurried, elegant, intelligent and ever so rich in irony – that triumphs and makes this one a keeper.