The Burning Embers of Petrofiction: Ilyas Ahmed Gaddi’s FIRE AREA
Jharia coalfield, Jharkhand. Photo By Rahuldcosta - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47537417
As long the coal remains a major player in the neo-liberal globalized world, the metaphorical and literal fires from Ilyas Ahmed Gaddi’s 1994 novel will keep burning.
In the coalfields of the Chhota Nagpur Plateau, the history of exploitative mining practices has often served as a surrogate for deeper complications in India’s hinterlands, of human corruption, of the region’s hard living conditions. A “resource curse” has ravaged the mineral-rich regions of Jharkhand. A place of pristine natural beauty, the state was named by Bengali mystic Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, literally meaning the ‘Land of Bushes, Shrubs, and Trees’. While the region has captured the cinematic, journalistic, and academic attention for a variety of reasons, the novelistic imagination—of the human experiences surrounding the mining of coal—has remained mostly untouched.
Indian author Amitav Ghosh highlighted the lack of literary work about ‘oil encounters’ in a 1992 essay “Petrofiction: The oil encounter and the novel”, a review of Abdulrahman Munif’s 1984 novel Cities of Salt. Ghosh wrote, “The truth is that we do not yet possess the form that can give the Oil Encounter a literary expression.”
Ghosh’s monumental prose piece brought the cultural legacy of fossil fuels to the forefront. Genres like climate fiction entered the global consciousness, alongside the disruption to the literary arts caused by the entry of the Anthropocene—a geological epoch defined by human impact.
However, few critical analyses of literary works focus on the relationship between coal mining and fiction in Indian subcontinent. This is in part due to the apathetic response to the nexus between state and capital in mining regions of India.
The 1994 novel Fire Area by Ilyas Ahmed Gaddi fills this void of fictional narratives about coal mining in Jharkhand, which is one of India’s poorest states. The Jharia-born writer was the brother of Ghayas Ahmed Gaddi, another famous Urdu writer known for his story “Parinda Pakadne Wali Gadi”. Ilyas Ahmed Gaddi offers a unique insider perspective to the lives of coal miners due to his lifelong close proximity to region’s exploitative history, including the time he spent working as a bus conductor, and later as a small businessman.
The eponymous “fire” of the novel’s title refers to the subterranean fires that burn in the coalfields, but it is also a metaphorical fire that burns within a man’s soul, recurringly evoked throughout the narrative to symbolize rage, regret, and revolution.
Reading an English translation of this Urdu classic definitely curbs its essence. However, if the reader is accustomed to the local parlance, they will be able to read between the translated lines. This novel, therefore, brings to light the discussion surrounding the art of translation alongside the marginalization of Urdu literature from mainstream discourse.
With the recent Booker prize win by Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, the value of translation work has suddenly seen an upsurge in the minds of many contemporary readers. Reading through a monolingual lens might impede the overall understanding, as the novel succeeds in bringing a multi-lingual cadence to the narration. One of the most ingenious parts of this novel’s social realism is the authenticity of the narrative voice—hidden behind a rather unjust translation.
However, the translator Jai Ratan needs to be commended for the sheer output of translation work that he produced during his lifetime. His work has made Gaddi accessible to non-Urdu speaking reader interested in the novelistic imagination from the coal capitals of India. At a time, when Hindutva violence is attacking even the use of Urdu in ad campaigns, it is relief that works like Fire Area—which received the Sahitya Academy award in 1996—have survived, most notably because of the excellent archival work being done by organizations like Rekhta.
Gaddi’s novel, divided into three parts, begins with the arrival of the protagonist, Sahdev, to the coal fields as a loader. The story follows his daily journey into the dusty, hot, and damp world of working in underground tunnels, and life in the dhoras where the workers retire to when the shift ends. Gaddi introduces a host of interesting characters like Kala Chand, Jwala Misr, and Hazri Babu to depict how a coterie of mining sardars, union babus and sahebs create a world of disillusionment for Sahdev. The corruption of the powers-that-be lining their pockets with riches at the expense of workers’ lives is represented through the art of sand-stowing, a method of using sand in order to stop spontaneous combustion in the mines. The eponymous “fire” of the novel’s title refers to the subterranean fires that burn in the coalfields, but it is also a metaphorical fire that burns within a man’s soul, recurringly evoked throughout the narrative to symbolize rage, regret, and revolution. Unfortunately, this fire is often doused with “sand-stowing”—or in the case of men, with alcohol and violence.
Another major character, Majumdar, is the portrait of a Marxist hero, a Che of the collieries. His journey through the novel is parallel to that of Sahdev’s, contrasting the protagonist’s eventual dissent to the corrupt machinations of the labour union mafias. Majumdar is the moral compass pointing towards the power of the people, leading the march of resistance throughout his life and beyond.
Furthermore, the companionship that Sahdev shares with Rahmat is a paean to bonds of brotherhood, with sometimes, an almost homoerotic charge that is largely invisibilized.
This novel is in some ways also a result of cinematic interest in the mining areas. One of the most famous movies to be based on this region was the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer, Kaala Pathar, based on the fateful Chasnala tragedy. Bachchan headlined the ‘Angry Young Man’ era in Indian culture and society, one which came down from the English stage of the 1950s—popularized by works like Look Back in Anger—and was eventually pilfered into mainstream Bollywood of the 70s. Gaddi’s novel falls into the trap of this genre’s sexist connotations.
The author does portray the brutal realities of being a mining worker and a woman in the coalfields. However, his narrative is not free of phallogocentric constraints. There is relentless objectification of its female characters, especially on the bodies of women belonging to oppressed castes. Almost all female characters fall into the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. These female characters are reduced to almost puppet-like entities, performing their roles as the village belle, the pious widow, or the wayward “vamp-y” sex worker.
On the other hand, Gaddi is not afraid to show a realist depiction of sexual exploitation prevalent in the coalfields. Phool Mania, Rani, and Bharat Singh’s unnamed sister: though none of the characters are given the space to voice their psychological turmoil the way Sahdev and his fellow brotherhood in the mines, they are at the least given a nuanced portrayal reminiscent of Manto’s works, another Urdu literary giant. Through the characterization of Priti Bala, Gaddi is also able to portray the complexities of womanhood in India’s caste-based society. At first, Sahdev’s wife is victimized due to her first husband’s death and early widowhood. But she soon remarries and transitions into a respectable domesticated wife, and is not shy of using her privileged position of power as a Brahmin woman. While rape and molestation are used as weapons of choice in the toxic masculinity-fuelled conflicts of coalfields, Gaddi uses the oft-repeated trope of the “man -saviour” to elaborate on the understanding of masculinities in 20th century South Asia.
Gaddi caricaturizes colonial forces through the racist, white supremacist, and imperialist agents of Turner and Morrison’s Mohna colliery, and thus illustrates the role of British empire in looting the riches of the land while exploiting its people. Furthermore, the author alludes to the unchanging state of affairs for the workers and the human rights violation in the collieries that continue even after independence. The novel also brings to light the socio-political sway of labour union leaders with the introduction of INTUC (Indian National Trade Union Congress) into the plot with the character of P.N. Verma—a loosely-based fictionalized account of the real-life trade union leader B.P Sinha.
In the preface to the novel, Gaddi mentions his fear of retribution from the mafia lords for disclosing the dirty politics of the colliery owners and managers. This insider narrative is deeply personal that is evident from his acutely realistic description of the backbreaking labour of workers. Murders take place both in broad daylight and the depth of nights. It is condoned by the government machinery, bureaucratic vineyard, and mafioso musclemen.
One of the redeeming qualities of Gaddi’s magnum opus is its allegiance to the working class. The book is also the result of a romance with the Nehruvian era against the backdrop of a socialist vistas. Perhaps, this is why Fire Area’s ending harkens to a revolutionary utopia led by the people. At the same time, the recent protests against mining in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo forests is a reminder of the continuous resistance of indigenous populations against state-sponsored environmental degradation in other Indian states.
Fire Area is a clarion call to formulate an ecocritical analysis of the narratives of developmental politics that the present hyper-nationalist government loves to propagate. The “Mining Encounter,” too, deserves the same intensity of focus that scholars place on “petrofiction” in the neo-colonial context. The lack of employment opportunities, rehabilitation measures, and unscientific mining practices have continued even in the 21st century.
It is interesting to note that just like Munif’s Cities of Salt offers on optimistic end, Fire Area, too, ends with workers marching in protest. Both these narratives culminate into an escapist fantasy, the reality known by both the writers is that the conflict never ends. As long the coal remains a major player in the neo-liberal globalized world, the metaphorical and literal fires that Gaddi writes about will remain burning.
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Sudeshna Rana is a writer, poet, and editor with an MA in English Literature from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. Her work appears in the Narrow Road Journal, Feminism in India, Cocoa & Jasmine Magazine, Usawa Literary Review and Red River Publishing. Her piece on female friendship will appear in an anthology published by Yoda Press. A recipient of South Asia Speaks 2022 fellowship, she is currently writing an ecofeminist account of Dhanbad, the coal capital of India. You can learn more about her work on Instagram @dhanbad_journal and the_blackcottoncandy.
