The problem

MORE than any other North Indian city, Lucknow in popular imagination and in cinematic and literary texts, has been identified as a city of languorous grace, of adab and tehzeeb. Chosen as the capital by the Shia Nawabs of Faizabad in the sunset years of the Mughal Raj, in less than a century the seat of Awadh power gained fame as the Venice of the Orient, a city whose buildings and palaces, art and craft, cuisine, courtly manners, even the conversational style and language, set it apart, marking a standard for all to admire and emulate.

Even the unseating of the last Nawab, Wajid Ali Shah, by the East India Company in the 1850s, or the sacking of the city by English troops following the failed ‘revolt’ of 1857, despite wreaking widespread destruction failed to destroy the unique culture of Lucknow. Sustained in part by the taluqdars of Awadh as also the memories of past glory, Lucknow retained its pride of place as a unique amalgam of Ganga-Jamuna culture. To the fabled Imambaras and Qaisarbagh and the vitality of the Chowk, the British added Hazratganj, a superior version of the Civil Lines that they had contributed to many other cities.

Despite being a centre of erstwhile Muslim nobility and an important seat of emerging Muslim League politics in the 1930s and ’40s, Lucknow never quite became a breeding ground for religious obscurantism. In part this may have to do with the Shia influence, a sect whose rituals and practices the majority Hindu populace seemed more comfortable with. It is often remarked that the Urdu of Lucknow is ‘softer’ than that of Aligarh, arguably an influence of the religious poetry credited to the many Sufi saints of the region as also the marsiyas sung during Muharram. Not only were the Imambaras open to all, people of diverse faiths and persuasions participated in the Muharram processions. What also helped was the regard and fondness with which the citizenry remembered not only Wajid Ali but Begum Hazrat Mahal and her role in the 1857 uprising.

Equally important was the role of the Congress and the Left in promoting their version of a syncretic culture, helped in no small measure by Muslim comrades articulating a worldview distinct from their co-religionists from Aligarh, the other great centre of Muslim learning. Not to be underestimated was the role of educational centres like Lucknow University and the King George Medical College, for long crucial sites for intellectual discourse.

If 1857 had dealt one blow to the city, the Partition of 1947 was another, as many among the erstwhile Muslim elite chose Pakistan over secular India. In many ways the city found it difficult to recover from the loss of a crucial section of its elite and leadership, leaving the large mass of its Muslim populace rudderless. And as Lucknow became the seat of political and administrative power of modern India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, attracting new resources and people wedded to new cultural and social norms, the Muslims of the city became further ghettoized. The Lucknow of the nawabs and taluqdars now survived only as memory.

The change, however, was gradual. For the first two decades of post-independence India, Lucknow was still a city of charm. Probably, the politics of the Nehru years was not as all-consuming. The university boasted of great dons like D.P. Mukherjee and Radhakamal Mukherjee, the left-wing economist, V.B. Singh and the brilliant but eccentric sociologist, A.K. Saran, to name just a few. The medical college was counted as amongst the best in the country. And the science labs like the Central Drug Research Institute attracted brilliant researchers. Playing a crucial role were the mushairas and qawwali sessions, as also a theatrical tradition strongly influenced by the cultural activism of the IPTA (Indian People’s Theatre Association).

The cuisine continued to be delectable and visitors, in particular those favouring animal protein, invariably made a beeline to the famed tunda and galauti kebabs of the Chowk. An evening stroll at Hazratganj was a must, as was buying chikan kurtas. And if the Muslim socials of Bombay cinema are any indication, Lucknow was still steeped in the culture of the old. Even its courtesans were seen as a class apart from their less fortunate sisters elsewhere – repositories of ghazal gayaki and kathak.

In fact, so hegemonic is this representation that even the creative output of litterateures like Rangheya Raghav, Amritlal Nagar or Shivani have failed to de-centre the imagery of Lucknow as a centre of Muslim culture, this despite Hindus forming the vast majority of the populace. Though not quite the huzun that Orhan Pamuk claims Istanbul is suffused with, representations of Lucknow continue to be marked by both nostalgia and a sense of loss. Little surprise, more recent renditions foreground not just the lack of soul but the emergence of a public culture with few saving graces.

Like the region of which it is a part, the city of Lucknow has witnessed tumultuous, some would say calamitous, changes in the last few decades. As politics transformed from the less fiercely contested days of Congress dominance and new social groups staked their claims on state power and resources, the city too lost its cohesiveness. For a start, Lucknow was never an industrial city. Attracting resources primarily as a seat of political power, it drew in the new entrepreneurs – the contractors, middlemen and builders seeking their cut of public resources. Fractious politics consumed all – the institutions, public spaces and buildings, and public culture. If the Lucknow of yesteryears was epitomized by films like Umrao Jaan and Pakeezah, its present is captured in gritty films like Seher, a story of mafia and politics and the losing battle to contain growing criminality. And little epitomizes this shift better than the many stories about the goings-on in Darul Shafa, the MLAs hostel, or the proceedings in the state assembly, not to forget the need for permanent presence of armed police pickets on the university campus.

Like all such representations, the Lucknow of old and of contemporary times, is part myth – the city invariably being far more complex than the fictionalized accounts might suggest. Unfortunately, we have far too few social histories or accounts of everyday life in this large urban centre to easily challenge dominant myths. A city, after all, is more than the lifestyle of its elite. And while it is rarely easy to admire the new makers of the city’s destiny, both the emerging subaltern politicians and the realty giants like the Sahara group, their impact on the making of the new city needs documentation and analysis. No matter how glorious the past may appear, it is to the future that we must turn, even if it today appears garish.

Much will depend upon how the new ruling party, the BSP, and the new Chief Minister, Mayawati, shape politics in the state and thereby mould the city. What the residents of Lucknow look forward to, other than the sprucing up of the Ambedkar Park and the addition of new statues of Dalit icons, is an improvement in law and order. Maybe then the city will recover its lost elan and strolling down Hazratganj will once again become a pleasure.

This issue of Seminar seeks to provide some vignettes of a remarkable city and its struggle to reinvent itself.