Overview:

Twilight in Delhi was set around 1911 to 1919, giving a descriptive image of India’s changing
social, political and cultural climate and recounting the state of Muslims in India. Twilight in
Delhi concerns an upper-class Muslim merchant Mir Nihal and his family.
Through the story of Mir Nihal , Ahmed Ali is able to portray the state of Muslims in India
after the mutiny of 1857, the condition of India after colonization and the family traditions.
The novel deals with the topic of imperialism, estrangement, sentimentality and progression
of time. The novel also portrays the conflict of two societies among customs and innovation,
the novel is set in a period when western methods of living were entering in Indian homes
and psyches. Mir Nihal, the believer and follower of the old traditions is tormented at this
hybrid culture.

Public space and private space:

A public space is a social space that is generally open and accessible to people, where as
private space is the region surrounding a person which he/she regards as psychologically
theirs. It’s a imagined space where he/she makes their own imagined realm or comfort
zone.

Anti-colonial nationalism:

According to Benedict Anderson; Nation is an imagined political community born from the
demise of feudalism and rise of capitalism, it is imagined because people of small possible
groups within a nation cannot see or meet each other, it is only through their imagination
that the produce and circulate social, cultural, religious and historical narratives.

Within the nation there is native intelligentsia, which played an important role in forging the
ideas of anti-colonial nationalism because they happen to be bilingual, they could develop a
link between the natives and their masters. In the words of Ania Loomba; anti-colonial
nationalism became a derivative discourse. Which is made and shaped by the European
political and intellectual history, and that is dependent upon the colonizer’s gift of language
and ideas.

Partha Chattterjee criticizes the idea, that the anti-colonial nationalism is a derivative
discourse, even our imagination has been colonized by insisting that nationalism in the rest
of the world has to derive its strength from the colonizer’s idea of imagined nation. If our
imagination is set and provided by the colonizers then what is left to imagine, it will forever
remain colonized.

Chatterjee further argues that the anti-colonial nationalism creates its own sovereign space
by dividing the world into material and spiritual domains. The material domain is outside,
that is economy, science and technology and West has superiority in this domain. The other
is inner domain which bears the marks of cultural identity.
K. Alam calls it private domain or private space because the word spiritual has religious
connotations. The anti-colonial nationalism takes birth in private space by observing cultural
practices that are nonwestern. The colonial state is kept out of inner domain here
nationalism flourishes with more powerful, creative and historically significant projects that
are nonwestern.

Private Space as a site of Anti-colonial Nationalism

Ahmed Ali in Twilight in Delhi (1940) deals with the theme of disappearing of one’s identity
in the face of dominant colonial cultural practices. The protagonist of the novel, Mir Nihal, is
a member of the decadent Muslim nobility. He takes great pride in his Muslim identity and
is deeply worried that his culture is facing a threat of extinction at the hands of the
colonizer. In the absence of political power, cultural erosion, he withdraws from the public
sphere to private sphere of life, the private space becomes an alternative to the public. In
other words, private space serves as a protective enclosure to fight back the feelings of
political and cultural disempowerment in the public domain.

Private space or what Chatterjee calls spiritual domain is compose of tales of glorious past,
language, family and socio religious cultural practices that a native re/constructs to
empower himself psychologically and politically. Thus private space becomes a primary site
of resistance against the colonizer.

Delhi, the colonized city in the text, is the architectural space that symbolizes the great
tradition of Muslim rule in the subcontinent. It also creates an important space in the
memory of the author, serving as an alternative to colonial atrocities against the Muslim
population in India. Whenever he sees any damage done to the present city, the past
reconstructed through the memory comes to rescue him. In other words, the glory of the
past saves him from psychological destruction caused by the present state of degradation
and helplessness.

Delhi forges a link of the past with the present. Throughout the text, the colonized Delhi is
compared with the mythological Delhi, frozen in historical epochs of time, and nothing can
destroy its imagined purity or beauty. According to Paul Ricouer, this type of imagining has
strategic significance in the lives of the marginalized communities. He terms the mythical
past as cosmic time which remains unaffected in the imagination of the people.
Furthermore, it also helps these people to create a sense of belonging to each other by
comparing their past glory with the present state of political disempowerment.

As a linguistic, symbolic and historic reality, Delhi represents the Indian political and cultural
glory in the past. The city has witnessed innumerable changes in its architectural and
historical landscape.

The other instance in the novel of private spaces is where he can assert his superiority
include religious practices, family traditions, his hobbies and especially the home with
himself as patriarchal head.
Mir Nihal tries hard to preserve the imagined purity of private space by resisting the process
of cultural assimilation. He does not like his younger son to wear “Farangi boots.” Here the
son’s body becomes a site on which Mir Nihal can assert his political power.

Mir Nihal hates colonial mimicry. He seems to be forgetting that a dominant civilization
always causes cultural erosion by bringing changes in dress code, architecture, language and
other cultural symbols inherited by natives. Mir Nihal makes desperate attempts to protect
imagined purity of his private space from colonial intrusion.
If the British cannot be pushed out of the public domain, at least, they can be kept away
from the private.

The text also deals with the theme of knowledge production during colonial times. Mir Nihal
is skeptical of Syed Ahmed’s project of educating Indian Muslims by making them learn the
English language and other modern subjects. Mir Nihal is an orthodox Muslim and is worried
that the radical interpretation of religion by Syed Ahmed would cause a serious threat to his
version of Islam and Muslim nationalism.

The small cabin for pigeons is another private space Mir Nihal has created to escape. There
is a smile of satisfaction and victory when he sees his pigeons flying at the highest point in
the sky. Also he is very protective about them. Pigeon flying competitions are regularly held
in old Delhi where Mir Nihal and his friends feel a strange sense of freedom and
accomplishment which they cannot achieve in public sphere.

The carnage that took place around the Jamia Masjid Delhi makes the saddest part of the
Muslim political life during the war of Independence in 1857. Thousands of Muslims were
brutally killed and maimed. The remembrance of this incident becomes another spot in Mir
Nihal’s memory to feed his anti-imperialist feelings. He expresses his solidarity with the
heroes who fought to defend the mosque.

This sadness is further intensified when he sees the descendents of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the
dethroned king, suffering from extreme poverty and starvation. Some of them had turned to
beggars for daily bread and many princesses had married barbers and cooks. Such a
catastrophic political change is unacceptable to Mir Nihal but he is helpless.

Mir Nihal becomes indifferent, the authority he used to exercise in the private domain of his
life is waning. Firstly, Asghar defies him by marrying a girl of his choice, and then by wearing
English dress. Mimicking the colonizer’s manners and dress is an intrusion into the private
sphere. Mir Nihal has been resisting it for a long time. But as he gets older, he feels that he
has lost power to assert his authority in family affairs.

The construction of New Delhi is the fiercest blow to Mir Nihal’s imagination. The private
space, the sacred site of anti-colonial nationalism, is faced with the threat of colonial
encroachment. He cannot do anything to stop it.

The dismantling of the city is symbolic of erasing all the cultural and architectural symbols
that serve as the source of pride for the Muslim civilization. The city and Urdu language
make up the social text of Muslim identity; and, both are threatened by the colonial cultural
intrusion.

The post mutiny period observed a strategic marginalization of the Muslim population in the
public domain. The members of the family of the deposed King, Bahadar Shah, were turned
to beggars. Gul Bano, the grand-daughter of Bahadur Shah Zafar, now roams in the street of
Delhi in search of food and shelter. Mir Nihal and Gul Bano share many similarities. Both of
them are proud of their glorious past and take refuge in the private space of memory.

The novel ends with Mir Nihal, physically paralyzed, witnessing these changes, disabled to
pose any strong political resistance to the colonizer. The private space of family, language,
culture and the city is the only site where Mir Nihal could posit resistance against the
imperial oppression. The colonizer must be kept out of this private space.