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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Allegiance is due, under God, to the head of the family from his dependents, as to a king; and though I confess with shame that I have been a weak and faithless ruler hitherto, the time has come for me to exert my authority in removing the abuses which I have allowed to creep into my jurisdiction … I have been close to death, and have realised that sooner or later I must give account to God not only for myself but for my family.
In a bleak and diseased Delhi, sometime after the wanton British decimation of the city in the wake of the 1857 rebellion, a Muslim nobleman by the name of Nasuh succumbs to the city’s recent cholera epidemic. After Nasuh falls unconscious, his father, who had recendy died in the same outbreak, appears to him in a dream. He tells his son that a day of reckoning awaits, and that as a father it is Nasuh’s duty to inculcate piety in his home. Surviving his illness, Nasuh sets about correcting the excesses of the various members of his family. These include his eldest daughter, who had such foolish habits as playing all night at cards, reading romances and singing idle songs; and his three sons, who were neglectful of their religious duties, read unsuitable poetry, flew kites and kept company with scandalous friends. Despite these blemishes in their household lives, Nasuh is able to persuade some members of his family of the rightness of his vision, turning his children into (respectively) a God-fearing wife and mother, and upstanding gendemen with right manners and good government professions. All are thus rewarded both in this world and the hereafter.
Thanks to David Bebbington, Katherine Schofield and Alexandra Walsham for their advice on aspects of this essay, and to the British Academy for research support.
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