History and its Discontents

Anjum Hasan's novel History's Angel tells a story that is deeply relevant for our times

- Suresh Menon

HISTORY’S ANGEL
By Anjum Hasan
BLOOMSBURY INDIA

A lif is one of the most important characters in contemporary literature. His mind is a screen on which history plays out and the future makes suggestions, his thoughts providing the commentary. History’s Angel is much like him— intelligent, subtle, reflective, gentle, sensitive.

Alif teaches history in a school, focusing not on dates and rulers but on continuities and inevitabilities. He takes students out to Delhi’s monuments and we soon glimpse trouble. At Humayun’s tomb, a student insults the teacher and also insists on mixing up the Mughal emperor with Hanuman.

Alif is Arabic for ‘kind, compassionate’; yet, it is the one moment of madness when he twists the ear of that student, Ankit (meaning ‘naughty’), which leads to his downward spiral. History, which was a refuge from reality, suddenly becomes reality itself. This ordinary man’s refusal to part with common sense either in school or at home makes him extraordinary in his milieu. Where his wife is ambitious, his son wants to drop out of school to make money, his cousin is raking it in, and his principal at school is motivated by her limited version of history, Alif's acceptance of the contradictions around him makes him stand out.

History's Angel-the title is a nod to Walter Benjamin's essay on the concept of history-is a story of choices and of the tension between action and thought working independently of each other.