Shikast / شکست

by Krishan Chander, کرشن چندر

Paperback

About the author

हिंदी : कृश्न चन्दर
Urdu Profile:کرشن چندر
Krishan Chander was an Urdu and Hindi writer of short stories and novels. He also worked on English.

He was a prolific writer, penning over 20 novels, 30 collections of short stories and scores of radio plays in Urdu, and later, after partition of the country, took to writing in Hindi as well.

He also wrote screen-plays for Bollywood movies to supplement his meagre income as an author of satirical stories. Krishan Chander's novels (including the classic : Ek Gadhe Ki Sarguzasht, trans. Autobiography of a Donkey) have been translated into over 16 Indian languages and some foreign languages, including English.

His short story "Annadata" (trans: The Giver of Grain – an obsequious appellation used by Indian peasants for their feudal land-owners), was made into the film Dharti Ke Lal (1946) by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas – which led to his being offered work regularly as a screenwriter by Bollywood, including such populist hits as Mamta (1966) and Sharafat (1970). He wrote his film scripts in Urdu

Reviews

[Osama Siddique · Rating 3 out of 5]

After borrowing some advance money Krishan Chandar planned and took off to Kashmir and apparently wrote this novel for Shahid Ahmad Dehelvi in just twenty-five days. Published in 1943, it has all the characteristic features that have come to define his books - a love of nature; great, almost unrealistically beautiful and heroic (or villainous) characters; a pervading sense of romance; humanism; a strong reaction to discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, gender, class or ideology; and, a broadly defined idealism and pursuit of social justice - and one sees all this reflected in almost all his subsequent books.

There is a scene near the middle of the book where the villagers gather together to cut the long grass on the side of the hill on which the Tehsildar's house is perched. Food is cooked, there are songs and merriment, there are competitions to see which team clears out more area and all in all an earthy, jocular, pure joy in companionship, collaboration, labour and reaping the produce of land. To my mind these are moments of triumph for Krishan Chandar in this novel - his celebration of nature, his romanticization of ordinary lives led close to nature and the kind of equality and camaraderie that emerges in such moments of collective endeavor that transcends the usual divides and hierarchies. It is connected of course to his primary underlying preoccupation in the novel which is promotion of humanism that transcends all boundaries and shackles perpetuated by caste, religion, class and gender. These scenes strongly reminded me of some the country scenes in Anna Karenina. That his sojourn in Kashmir has a deep impact on him is quite clearly evident.

Krishan Chandar's tone is unabashedly and quite effectively satirical when he describes the greed, false pretenses, and deceptions of the arch villain Pandit Roop Kishan and his lackeys as well as the Mahajin money-lending businessmen who run the bazaar. Time and again, he mocks how they have no clue what the ashlokas they utter actually mean, let alone them following their moral spirit and message. It is a scathing critique of Brahmanic caste domination, its ostracization of others and its abuse of ritual and dogma in order to dominate (this critique is not restricted to any one religion even though here the Pandits and Mahajins are the particular focus in the context of the story).

At the heart of the story are various marginalized or disempowered women (Chandra, Nooran, Sayidaan, Chaaya, Wanti) - marginalized due to their defiance of oppressive norms and family and community pressures (in some cases the cycle involving more than one generation) - who married or want to marry out of choice and in violation of caste or religious restrictions and taboos. The protagonist is a college student Shiam who heads to his father's abode in Mandar valley in Kashmir where he is posted as a tehsildar. The book is full of detailed and loving descriptions of the valley and its flora and fauna as well as its seemingly idyllic way of life (I came across many names of trees that I had not encountered before) and contains scenes containing outdoor picnics, harvests, pilgrimages, folk songs, village fairs and hunts. Romantic by inclination (like Krishan Chandar) he comes across many a damsel for whom his heart flutters even as he discovers the price they have to pay whom society and community prohibits from falling in love.

However, the novel gets more and more sombre as the lives of these women unravel and Shiam discovers that the unjustness and narrow-mindedness of society not only harasses and constrains them but indeed also impedes the desires of his own heart. A deep sense of empathy pervades Krishan Chander's books. In this case it is not restricted to these women but also to diverse other characters like Durga Das - Pandit Roop Kishan's ugly, deformed and demented son; the gallant Mohan Singh who is badly mauled in a hunting accident and is also made to pay the price of loving an outcast girl; and, Ali Joo - the reflective Naib-Tehsildar, who feel discriminated as a civil servant due to being Muslim. Krishan Chander's reflections and social commentary on caste and religious politics are scathing, insightful and quite progressive for his times. At the same time, there are flashes of brilliance in characterization, such as when he draws Pandit Room Kishan's character and dwells on how his awe-inspiring appearance and mannerisms reflect something one could trace back centuries ago in the Vedas, even though his character lies far apart from their spirit.

Where I find Krishan Chandar lacking is when his style and treatment becomes rather "filmy" - specially in the dialogues. Shiam reminisces a lot and when he speaks to a village girl one is often reminded of that regrettable era of Indian cinema when city boys went to idyllic valleys and fell in love with local damsels who called them "Baboo Jee." It was a real low point when it came to realism, believability and complexity. One wonders whether all those movies were inspired by this facet of Krishan Chandar's works which dilutes the literary merit of his novels (forced by Partition to leave his beloved Lahore and later in his life he also write film scripts). As also the melodrama which at times creeps in, especially in the endings. This is the reason I always fall short of ranking his novels very high from a literary standpoint. Even as I enjoy and admire his various other attributes - his fluency, his diction, his sense of romance, his descriptive prowess, his social commentary, and indeed his humanism and empathy.

This is a very nicely published edition by Book Corner. What I particularly appreciate are details of publishing history, a very informative essay on Krishan Chandar by Shahid Ahmad Dehelvi, and another by Kanahiya Lal Kapoor. It is so important to appreciate writers in their contextual milieu and such essays and introductions are not only the mainstay of good publications abroad but were also once common in our neck of the woods. Book Corner is doing a great job by reviving important feature this and making available all of this great writer's works in attractive new editions.

This is a very Krishan Chandar novel with all its sublimity as well as its constraints. The great humanity and deep empathy of the man always shines through. He will remain such an important voice of Urdu literature, and from an era when the love of this great language and its literary possibilities transcended all religious and geographical divides.

[Maheen · Rating 4 out of 5]

کرشن چندر کا ناول شکست، کہانی ہے ایک چھوٹی سی وادی میں بسنے والے والے کچھ تنگ نظر لوگوں کی۔

ناول پڑھنے کے بعد میں سوچنے لگی کہ کس کی شکست تھی؟ سماج کی؟ نہیں سماج تو جیت گیا نا۔ صدیوں سے چلتے آئے رواجوں کی؟ نہیں وہ رواج بھی جیت گئے۔ تو کیا یہ ہمیشہ سےانسانوں کو ذات پات، رنگ، نسل کی بنیاد پہ تقسیم کر نے والے سسٹم کی شکست تھی؟ نہیں، وہ سسٹم تو اب بھی قائم ہے۔ یا ایسے معاشرے کی جہاں عورت انسان کے درجے سے دور تھی، اور اسکا استحصال ایک فرض سمجھ کر کیا جاتا تھا، پر اس معاشرے کو تو شکست نہیں ہوئی، وہ معاشرہ تو آج بھی اپنی جاہلانہ رسوم پہ نازاں ہے۔

تو آخر یہ شکست تھی کس کی؟ ونتی کی؟ شیام کی؟ موہن سنگھ کی؟ چندرا کی؟ کچھ دلوں کی، محبت کی، ہر اس شخص کی جو معاشرے کی نا انصافی پہ کڑھتا ہے، یہ شکست ہر اس فرد کی تھی جو معاشرے کے رواجوں سے ٹکرایا اور پاش پاش ہو گیا۔

یہ اونچ نیچ، یہ ذات پات، تقسیم کرنے کے سب پیمانے ہیں۔ معاشرے میں موجود مذہبی ٹھیکیدار تمہیں تقسیم کرنے پہ قادر ہیں۔ جانے کتنے شیام، کتنی ونتی انہی مذہبی ٹھیکے داروں اور اس سماج کے ہتھے چڑھ گئے۔

یہ کتاب ضرور پڑھئیے معاشرے کی کئی بدصورت تصویریں آپ کو اس کتاب میں ملیں گی۔

کرشن چندر کی کوئی پسندیدہ لائن؟

[sohail bhatti · Rating 4 out of 5]

ازل سے جو ذات برادری، دولت و امارت سے جو تفریق رہی ہے اسی پر مبنی اس ناول میں محبت و عشق کا جزبہ بھی کس طرح قتل کر دیا جاتا، اس حقیقت پر روشنی ڈالی گئی ہے۔
کرشن چندر کا ایک اپنا اسلوب ہے۔ ناول ضرور پڑھنا چاہئے

[Muhammad Waqas · Rating 3 out of 5]

شکست کی کہانی ایک ہندوستانی نیم دیہاتی بستی کے گرد گھومتی ہے جہاں ذات پات مذہب اور طبقاتی تقسیم کے بیچ محبت کی داستانیں جنم لیتی اور مرتی ہیں۔

[Ashbar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've read 40% of the book, and I'm still clueless on what this book's about. It's just describing someone's life in a village, with incidents happening here and there. It's boring, and it failed to capture my interest.

Secondly, I am not fond of Krishan Chander's writing style. Sometimes he'd give a description of some minor character's features for 3/4th of the page. Random Farsi+Sanskrit collocations which sound very unpleasing and off putting to my ears, for e.g "فراخ ماتھا". I'd have liked it if the author had either said "faraakh peshani" or "bara matha", the amalgamation of these two words (one being very literary and the other being a daily word) is incredibly displeasing.

Next, what's with authors and their ideal sexualising of women? They always love to voluptuously describe a woman's bosom and her hips sexually, and make the reader/protagonist infatuated with her. And as always, the main character randomly stumbles upon a girl and is obsessed with her from the first meeting.

The dialogues are decent and natural. Descriptions are sometimes weird, too lengthy or irrelevant. There's not a lot of character bonding. A few Hindi words which are obscure in today's modern Urdu are used along with a bunch of village and Hinduistic terms as well. My book print had a multitude of spelling and grammatical mistakes, which added to ruin the experience. This book is probably good for someone from 100 years ago to kill time. It's definitely not up to par with today's standards.

[Izhar Hussain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shikast is a poignant tale of love, loss, and rebellion. With lyrical prose and rich imagery, Krishan Chander explores how caste, class, religion, and patriarchy crush dreams and divide hearts.

Through Shiam’s eyes, we meet women like Wanti, Nooran, and Chandra — brave yet broken by a society that punishes freedom. While nature thrives in his narrative, human relationships wither under the weight of oppressive traditions. The satire on religious hypocrisy and caste arrogance is sharp, and the empathy for the marginalized is deeply moving.

Yes, some dialogues feel overly “filmi,” softening the literary punch. But the soul of the novel — its humanism — remains strong and unforgettable.

In essence Shikast is the defeat of love in a world ruled by prejudice — and a timeless reminder that rebellion, even in heartbreak, is still a form of hope.

[Noor ul Ain · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been trying to read books in Urdu-my mother tongue and had so far only found a handful of authors I enjoyed. So it was with no real expectations that I picked up this book and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. Chander writes a fast moving story with just the right amount of philosophical musings. The characters are flawed in just the right way and the cultural realities are portrayed beautifully.

[Mian Inam · Rating 2 out of 5]

سچ ہے محبت کو بھی روٹی کی حاجت ہے۔ محبت بھی چاہے وہ کتنی ہی پاکیزہ کیوں نہ ہو، محض خالی خولی ہم بستری کے سہارے نہیں جی سکتی۔ عشق کو بھی روٹی چاہیے۔

[Mir Shahzad · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book discussed the stories happening in the village/area.

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"علی جو کی باتیں کتنی ٹھوس ہیں ، ٹھوس صحیح مجرب ، جیسے کسی ڈاکٹر کا نسخہ، ان باتوں میں جامعیت ہے لیکن حرکت نہیں کیا حرکت اضطراب، بغاوت کے بغیر انسان ترقی کر سکتا ہے۔ خود انسانی سماج نے پچھلے چند ہزار سالوں میں جو ترقی کی ہے کیا اسی حرکت اور بغاوت کا نتیجہ نہیں ہے۔ مذہب کے پیغمبر کیا باغی نہ تھے؟ کیا انہوں نے اپنے سماج سے انحراف نہ کیا تھا۔ کیا وہ اپنے وقت میں دہرئیے نہ سمجھے جاتے تھے۔ اگر زندگی ایک جگہ جم کر بیٹھے رہنے کا نام ہے، تو پھر..... موت کسے کہتے ہیں؟ اگر انسان کے دل میں اس فطری بغاوت کا شعلہ بلند نہ ہوتا تو وہ شاید آج اسی طرح جنگلوں میں لنگور کی طرح دم لٹکائے درختوں پر پھلانگتا پھرتا....."

شکست کہانی ہے ایک تنگ ذہن اور تنگ نظر معاشرے کی، جہاں جو لوگ آزاد فضا میں سانس لینا اور اڑنا چاہتے ہیں ان کے پر کاٹ دیے جاتے ہیں۔

ایک پتھر کا بت راکھ کے ڈھیر سے کیا کہہ سکتا ہے؟"

پتھر کا یہ بت وہ ہے جس سے معاشرہ اس کی مرضی کا حق چھین لیتا ہے اور اسکی زندگی اور خواہشات اس سماج کی قائم کردہ ذات پات، رنگ، نسل، مقام و مرتبہ اور جنس کی تفریق کی بھینٹ چڑھ جاتی ہیں۔ اور اس ظلم اور ناانصافی کے نتیجے میں یہ سماج ہی راکھ کا ڈھیر بن جاتا ہے۔ سماج کا قلعہ، جس کی دیواریں ہی طبقاتی فرق اور نا انصافی سے بنی ہوئی ہیں، افراد کو محفوظ کرنے کی بجائے انہیں قید کرتا ہے۔ تو سوال یہ ہے کہ کیا یہ صرف اس طبقے کی شکست ہے جو غلامی کی بیڑیوں میں جکڑا ہوا ہے یا انسانیت کی؟

کرشن چندر کا اندازِ تحریر زبردست ہے۔ ہر منظر کو اتنی تفصیل سے بیان کیا ہے کہ یوں محسوس ہوتا ہے کہ قاری خود وہاں موجود ہے۔ کرشن چندر کا یہ پہلا ناول ہے جو میں نے پڑھا اور پڑھنے کا تجربہ شاندار رہا ہے۔
ضرور پڑھیں 🙌🏻