Mohammed Hanif’s Rebel English Academy Mirrors South Asia’s Political Chaos

With Rebel English Academy, Hanif has perhaps surpassed his other works in style, characters, and form. The novel goes back to Zia’s Pakistan and is a chronological prequel to A Case of Exploding Mangoes. It begins with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s hanging, and an intelligence officer’s posting to a town to weed out his supporters who claim that “Bhutto lives” and are immolating themselves in protest. In OK Town, ISI officer Gul also continues his exploits — it doesn’t go well — as a “piston” ladies’ man. Then there’s the heart of the novel. The Rebel English Academy, run by Sir Baghi — a gay, lapsed communist — out of his friend-brother Molly’s (a moulvi and religious leader on the rise) mosque. Molly asks Baghi to shelter a young Sabiha, whose husband has died in a fire and whose parents are jailed for being jiyalas or Bhutto sympathisers. The book gives us the perspective of each of these characters, including Sabiha’s past through her “homework” assignments for Baghi.

Hanif’s Pakistan could be India or Bangladesh or Nepal or Sri Lanka, and so many other places in the world that are poor, divided and were once colonised. He deals head on, without being either maudlin or preachy, with the quotidian violence that so many of us learn to either live with or look past: Sabiha’s rape by her PT teacher — and then being married off to a seller of male enhancement snake oils; Baghi’s torture at the hands of the police because of a letter he wrote about an international summit as a communist; Molly being shipped off for being, in essence, a pubescent boy to a seminary, casual police torture and violence; the power of “English”.

In this world, Sabiha disrupts Baghi’s quiet corner, his haven. He teaches English and ensures that his students get visas, clear government exams and interviews. His students are his pride and joy. Even with Sabiha, he cannot help but teach. After his torture and rescue by Molly, Baghi still has his atheism and cynicism. But he would have you believe he has lost the will to act. In the end, however, he is drawn, almost against his will, to become Don Quixote. He knows he is tilting at windmills, and he fails even at that.

In 2008, too, we could relate to Hanif’s world. But then, it was with a bit of schadenfreude, which too was a mask. Because, even at the peak of the benefits of liberalisation and before the financial crisis that ended the political and economic infatuation with globalisation, there was something underneath, whose name we dare not whisper, whose form we did not know, like the Balrog in the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings. What if history had gone slightly differently? What if religious fundamentalists or military dictators ruled us, too, without fear or consequence? The violence that echoes across Hanif’s works, which we all relate to, is also set against a political backdrop. Sometimes, the past, especially a neighbour’s past, is another country. At others, it is like a mirror in one of the fancy clothes stores that none of the middle- and working-class characters in Rebel English Academy have ever visited. They flatter you just a bit, make you look a little thinner and your face is better lit. You know it is not quite the truth but you buy the stuff anyway.

Mohammed Hanif’s Rebel English Academy (Amazon.in)

In 2026, the mirror is no longer distorted. The comforts of decades past, of the contingencies of history and politics, aren’t as readily available. All that is left is cruelty and decency. And not in equal measure. The stories we tell ourselves about rights, diversity, justice and progress seem more like fiction, and Hanif’s world more the truth. Many, with the means to escape or leave, do so — the crumbling “first world” is still seen as a Golden Road. For the expatriates and their new compatriots, Rebel English Academy will be a brilliant, funny novel that provides insight into a world they want to know.

There is a small and growing set of readers, though, for whom the book is something more: Those of us who are too old, too stubborn, too “patriotic” or, most importantly, lack the marketable skills to leave. Who, like Baghi, do not have the energy for rebellion nor the ethical dexterity to jump on the bandwagon on a broken road and call it a luxury ride. In the moments that the self-lobotomisation of binge-watching shows, scrolling reels and consuming more on EMIs ceases to work, Baghi, Molly, Gul and Sabiha provide the tools to face the world. Every tragedy, if stared at long enough, is absurd. And if we can laugh at ourselves and cry for others, perhaps, that’s a life well lived.