Ahmad Ali’s Progressive Fiction: Trajectories of Tradition and Modernity

Abstract

Ahmad Ali, a Pakistani-cum Indian novelist, with his Twilight in Delhi not only pioneers Pakistani novel in English but also sets the foundation of modern South Asian subversive novel in English. Considering Ahmad Ali’s realistic fictional depiction of the socio-political aspects of the Muslim society in British India during the first half of the twentieth century, this paper, through the use of close reading, aims to trace trajectories of traditions and modernity in Ali’s work to bring a more meaningful reality in an interesting and appealing way to the modern readers. Emphasizing on Ali’s realistic portrayal of the changing facets of the Muslim society and the eclectic socio-cultural ethos of the post 1857 India, the paper highlights how Ali’s work underpins nostalgic, non-communalist, ant-imperialist, and modernist trends prevailing in the Muslim society of the early twentieth century, establishing the blending of tradition and modernity and past and the future.