Assumed Free, Terrifically Chained: A Marxist Study of Hand Pump by Khadija Mastoor

Abstract

This study aims at analysing a short story The Hand Pump (2008) by a well-known Urdu writer, Khadija Mastoor. This short story is taken from Modern Urdu Short Stories from Pakistan (2008) by S. Viqar Azam. The study is qualitative in nature and based on the framework of The Communist Manifesto (1848) of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (Marx, Engel, & Taylor, 1967). Mastoor (2008) has used similar class struggles and stratification of bourgeoisie and proletariat in her The Hand Pump (2008) as given in the Manifesto. The significance of this study lies in the fact that it highlights Marxist notions, of class division, class struggle, commodification, and false consciousness in a Pakistani writer’s work through the character of Begum of Delhi, Begum of Lahore, and Chunni Begum. It explores how the labour of poor like Chunni Begum is exploited at the hands of the bourgeoisie and they are treated as commodities