Volume 7, No. 11, November 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
It is only in the 19th century that the modern concept of nation and nationality took on a relevance that the world has never been able to shake off since. Largely a direct consequence of the massive upsurge in the conquest, subjugation and resultant colonisation of alien territories, the concept of nationhood remains a fairly recent historical phenomenon. By comparison, the ancient world can be seen to have remained largely unfamiliar with the idea since ‘the citizen’ as an individual entity in the modern sense, did not exist among the people inhabiting the banks of the Nile in North Africa ruled over by a Son of Ra or similar deity in human form tracing their civilisational roots to a distant 3300 BC; nor those settled around the Indus River basin in the Indian Subcontinent 5,000 years ago. Centuries later, and reinforcing Edward Said’s theory of ‘the other’, it is in the Greek encounter with the ‘barbarian’ that the notion of identity and the ‘self’ begin to form, as the former’s use of a distinct Hellenistic language set the two apart. Herodotus called non-Greek societies ‘barbarian’, a word that in his time meant people whose language, religion, way of life and customs differed from those of the Greeks. In time however, the initial exclusionary view that the ‘other’ was less than human was revised to allow the Hellenistic concept of identity to perceive the non-Greek as ‘human but different’, while the word ‘barbarian’ found a new meaning altogether.
By the late 18th and 19th century, language began serving as a powerful rallying cry as a direct result of how a people viewed themselves, and the idea of nationhood became integrally linked with the language that people spoke. An otherwise intellectually sound Samuel Johnson’s diary entry dated as far back as 1773, states: “Languages are the pedigree of nations”, which has a decidedly anachronistic flavour to it. Yet closer to home, the notion found its perfect articulation in 1971, as a Bengali speaking East Pakistan broke away from the western half to form the independent republic of Bangladesh. There can be no doubt about the fact that language is a means towards creating an identity, an idea fully supported by the Arabic-speaking Naguib Mahfouz: “To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.”
In the 20th century the captivating slogan ‘One nation, one people, one language’, implying that one’s identity was directly related to the language one spoke, began to assert itself. Linguists define a speech community as one that uses the same linguistic code and a discourse community to refer to the common ways in which members of a social group use language to meet their social needs. This is a view of language and culture that focuses on the ways of thinking, behaving, and evaluation shared by members of the same discourse community. That language plays an important communicative role in the life of the native speaker in his own linguistic community is an undisputed fact, but for the writer as opposed to the speaker, it is also the most critical tool for the expression of ideas. Be it verse or prose, fact or fiction, art or science, language is the life-giving force for the men and women who venture into the world of ink and pen. That some languages fall into obscurity for lack of use while others continue to thrive is also true since usage adds to and expands vocabulary in practice, which explains the need for periodic revisions of lexicons, dictionaries and thesauruses.
One of the major outcomes of recent world events has been the creation of an entire new vocabulary resonating with the heart-breaking experience of exile. As a result of individual and communal global movements engineered by a world constantly at war with itself, words such as refugee, émigré, diaspora, nostalgia, rupture, deportation, banishment, homesickness, etc., with their visceral emotional impact, have found a fresh nesting space among global lexicons.
The present essay therefore concerns itself with what Edna O’Brian chillingly lists as the “Many words there are for home and what savage music can be wrung from it” by a heart-in-exile forced to ‘invent’ a language for itself. Perhaps language would be the first note played in a symphony of exile as the sound of one’s own language has the ability to create a home away from home. The rupture caused by exile from the language one associates with home, forces a re-evaluation of identity as can be seen during the settlement of Muslim refugees after their blood-soaked exodus from India to the newly created state of Pakistan in 1947. Large numbers of muhajirs settled in parts of Sindh, adhering stubbornly to an identity labelled ‘Urdu-speaking’. Almost 78 years later, the sociocultural entity remains largely intact as a co-culture, but with the addition of a strong political face patched onto its original visage.
In viewing any language per se, philosophers such as Bakhtin relegate its use for communication purposes to a secondary function, as in their opinion the need to express oneself far outweighs the functional aspect. Consequently, language development is seen in the context of a speaker’s efforts to enhance the ability to express, rather than merely communicate with others. Occasionally this leads to hard choices, such as that faced by the Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe. Raised at a cultural crossroads, Achebe chose to write in a language that according to him “History has forced down our throats.” In Achebe’s case, using a language other than his own presented itself not just an artistic necessity but an imperative, especially when seen against the backdrop of the devastating effects of colonialism on the sociocultural, political and psychological life of the indigenous Igbo. The appropriation of the language of the ‘Centre’ therefore, i.e. the coloniser, and using English as a medium of expression should not, as in this particular case, be seen merely as a political act, but also as an attempt by Achebe to reclaim a segment of African history and correct the misrepresentations of the past.
Symptomatic of the moral obligation that burdens most postcolonial writers, it is a perfect instance of using language almost like an instrument of war. Yet, for some writers, language appropriation remains unnecessary, since they believe that their own language is powerful enough to define who they are in terms of a specific topology and sociocultural entity. The concerted attempts therefore to ‘fashion a brave new man’ in a postcolonial world trying desperately to heal its old wounds must necessarily take cognizance of the fact that a human being is born into a language as much as into a culture, and being deprived of access to either results in incapacitating traumas both at individual and collective level. Exile as a form of protest or necessity may provide some temporary relief, but the most devastating effect of moving away from home is the necessity for a re-evaluation of the ‘self’, which remains romantically attached to the life left behind.
The late humanist Edward Said’s description of the exile’s life, echoing the thoughts of the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, emphasises that “[Exile] requires detaching oneself from all belonging and love of place.” In lay language and without the attachment of any poetic frills, exile is a state of limbo – a nomadic period during which one belongs nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Negotiating the distance between the remotest place on earth to the proximity of one’s own heart therefore requires a massive reorientation of the ‘self’, which includes in Adorno’s view a valuable, moral aspect as “It is part of morality not to be at home in one’s home.”
Thematically therefore, the lost homeland is a state in which the exile, voluntarily or perforce, lives with what Wallace Stevens calls “a mind of winter”, i.e. a state of being in which the light never shines as brightly as it did at home, the bread is never fresh enough, salt tastes of anything but salt, and the scent of hand churned butter or smoke emanating from a wood stove becomes a distant memory. Exile therefore, may be seen as a condition of the mind rather than a physical state, as can be seen in the literatures of exile and the diaspora. Yet, perhaps the bitterest harvest is the literature produced by the writer/poet while physically present at home but with a heart in perpetual exile from the conditions prevalent in the homeland.
Though the idea of exile is a universal one, the rationale for voluntarily opting for it or being forced to leave – as in banishment – lists an enormous spectrum of motives ranging from religious persecution at one end to political dissent at the other. Historically, according to popular religious belief, the first exiles – Adam and Eve – were forcibly evicted from Eden as punishment for their transgression against an unforgiving Yahweh, never to return. Biblical records list other notable exiles such as Moses seeking the Promised Land for 40 years only to die before he set foot on it, just as in another part of the world and another time, Hindu mythology sees the goddess Sita exiled twice. Initially accompanied by her husband Rama, Sita accepts a second solitary exile in deference to the pressure of public opinion upon her husband, during which she gives birth to twin sons, Loh and Kush. In the same part of the world, the princely Siddhartha transforms into the Buddha discovering the state of nirvana during a permanent voluntary exile from his previous aristocratic life. Centuries later and halfway across the world, classical literary history details the trials of Ulysses as described in Homer’s epic The Odyssey, with the protagonist wandering for almost nine years as punishment for the sack of Troy, before finally returning home to a patiently waiting loyal wife and son.
Even the briefest compilation of famous exiles evidences that being in exile, either as a form of punishment or protest, as an escape from notoriety or a primeval instinct for survival, aligns itself with no discernible boundaries of status, rank, calling or justice. While every exile may not necessarily be a victim, history is witness to numerous cases of overenthusiastic censorship, and/or judicial and moral policing by the state, resulting in an exodus of some of the brightest minds that the state itself may have produced. The ancient world for example, exiled Seneca as far back as 41 AD on allegations of adultery, which were never proven; while Aristotle’s voluntary exile from Athens after Alexander’s death attributed to charges of impiety – a crime punishable by death – signals the origin of institutional attempts at asphyxiating the right to speak one’s mind. Confucius spent 13 long years on the road propagating reforms for better governance only to return home disappointed by the lack of response, even as 14th century Florence condemned Dante to exile for life for his political views. In the 18th century, accusations of indecency and affront to religion prompted Giacomo Casanova’s imprisonment, but a daring escape freed the alchemist, spy and church cleric, who then spent the rest of his life wandering Europe. While Napoleon’s first exile to Elba as an outcome of the Treaty of Fontainebleau helped reinstate the Bourbon dynasty in the 19th century, the French emperor of Corsican ancestry’s second exile to the island of St. Helena drew a romantic response from the English poet Lord Byron, who presented him to the world as the epitome of a persecuted, lonely Romantic hero, a trope associated with the poetry of the age. As a matter of historical record, island exile is not an exclusively European or western practice, since feudal Japan is known to have used shimanagashi as a form of punishment for political offenders, which entailed imprisonment on the island of Sado in the Sea of Japan.
Recent history is witness to the fact that the 20th century was no stranger to the state of exile either, as Trotsky’s flight from his country in fear of his life in a Soviet Union headed by Stalin proves. Down south in Latin America, the Argentinian army General and three time elected President Juan Peron, overthrown in a 1955 coup after his re-election, was forced into exile in Paraguay from where he eventually moved to settle in Madrid. However, Peron made a spectacular comeback after 18 years in exile and was elected President for the third time with an overwhelming majority. “Germany and I don’t speak the same language any more,” exclaimed the enigmatic, famously high cheek boned, self-exiled actress Marlene Dietrich, when asked to return to her native Germany overrun by Nazis. Similarly, celebrated theatre director Bertolt Brecht, whose drama techniques have been embraced worldwide, fled Germany fearing persecution as Hitler rose to absolute power. In the same year, on a visit to the US, one of the world’s most celebrated personalities Albert Einstein, chose never to return to his native country and was eventually granted US citizenship in 1940. Consequently, it would be safe to assume that exile, whether forced or chosen, is a permanent rather than a temporary state since the return home, if ever, never really compensates for the years lived away from the homeland.
Though political history, literature, philosophy, art and music may cite the cases of an enormous number of notable exiles, all of whom have contributed to the sociocultural richness of the world’s shared histories such as the Caribbean Nobel Prize winning writers V S Naipaul and Derek Walcott, the early 20th century is dominated in particular by several towering figures who remapped what it meant to be deprived of home. With their light constantly under threat of being snuffed out by the pursuing dark shadow of their native states, these men and women, either fled under duress or voluntarily left their homes to write and speak about people, universal injustice, the rights of man and, by default, their longing for the place they called home.
The writer is a Pakistani academic, Film/TV actor, writer and director. Her book Aslan’s Roar: Turkish Television and the Rise of the Muslim Hero (2019) is an extensive study of Turkish popular culture and its rise in the modern world. She is the recipient of one of Pakistan’s highest civil awards, the Pride of Performance for Literature and the Fatima Jinnah Award for Artistic Excellence. As Associate Professor she taught English Literature at the University of Punjab before helping to establish Beaconhouse National University where she set up the Department of Theatre, Film and TV and is designated Distinguished Professor of Performing Arts. She is currently the Academic Advisor at Lahore Grammar School system.
(To be continued)