Jamila in Tree Without Roots – A Complex Character Unveiled

Jamila is the second wife of Majeed in Tree Without Roots. Majeed marries him to satisfy his raging libido and to have children by her. At first sight, Jamila appears an adolescent girl having a very soft body and scared, but the events of the novel prove that she is different from what she appears. 

Jamila’s Background and First Impressions

She has been the daughter of a penniless father who has to hand his daughter over to Majeed. At Majeed’s household, she smiles unmindfully while weaving mat with Rahima for she took Majeed and Rahima for the bridegroom’s father and mother respectively. This smile leaves with the reader a signal of the storm of a rebellion in the making. 

Rebellion and Defiance in Jamila’s Character

Jamila does not say her daily prayers even after the stern orders of Majeed. When she is made to sit at the mat for prayer, she falls asleep on the mat. When there is an event of zikir chanting around the shrine, Jamila leaves the house of Majeed. 

A Bold Statement of Resistance

Jamila sits at the threshold of her room and begins to make her beauty with a mirror and a comb. This is plain audacity to Majeed. He cannot take this. He decides to use physical power. Jamila shows her hatred by spitting at Majeed’s face. 

The Tragic End – A Martyr of Patriarchy

Majeed keep Jamila fastened to a side of the shrine overnight. In the morning, he finds her lying dead with a leg stretched out to the shrine.

Jamila: A Symbol of Silent Rebellion in "Tree Without Roots"

Green Land | July 16, 2025 | 0 comments

Jamila in Tree Without Roots – A Complex Character Unveiled

Jamila is the second wife of Majeed in Tree Without Roots. Majeed marries him to satisfy his raging libido and to have children by her. At first sight, Jamila appears an adolescent girl having a very soft body and scared, but the events of the novel prove that she is different from what she appears. 

Jamila’s Background and First Impressions

She has been the daughter of a penniless father who has to hand his daughter over to Majeed. At Majeed’s household, she smiles unmindfully while weaving mat with Rahima for she took Majeed and Rahima for the bridegroom’s father and mother respectively. This smile leaves with the reader a signal of the storm of a rebellion in the making. 

Rebellion and Defiance in Jamila’s Character

Jamila does not say her daily prayers even after the stern orders of Majeed. When she is made to sit at the mat for prayer, she falls asleep on the mat. When there is an event of zikir chanting around the shrine, Jamila leaves the house of Majeed. 

A Bold Statement of Resistance

Jamila sits at the threshold of her room and begins to make her beauty with a mirror and a comb. This is plain audacity to Majeed. He cannot take this. He decides to use physical power. Jamila shows her hatred by spitting at Majeed’s face. 

The Tragic End – A Martyr of Patriarchy

Majeed keep Jamila fastened to a side of the shrine overnight. In the morning, he finds her lying dead with a leg stretched out to the shrine.

Tree Without Roots

Introduction

Majeed, the protagonist of the novel Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah, is a rounded character who undergoes changes in the course of the novel. Majeed, who is a rootless, financially helpless and religiously corrupt person at the beginning of the novel, turns into a socially and economically strong and deeply rooted religious guru at the end of the novel.

At the beginning he introduces himself as a saviour of the people of Mahabbatpur and earns their faith. Gradually he becomes the sole proprietor to guide them to spiritual salvation. He also gains material possessions by selling religious faith and becomes rich within a few years. He also fulfils his carnal desires by marrying twice. So, by the end of the novel, Majeed appears socially, economically, and religiously very strong. But Majeed remains very much lonely from the beginning to the end. He also suffers from a sense of insecurity throughout the novel.

Majeed’s Arrival in Mahabbatpur

Majeed, a poor man from a devout Muslim background, comes to Mahabbatpur. He declares an old grave to be the mazar of a pir (a Muslim saint), covers it with the traditional red cloth used for Muslims, and establishes his stronghold on the life of the people using the reflected power on him of the supposed saint.

Through his charismatic behaviour, Majeed quickly establishes himself as a spiritual guide of the people, most of whom are illiterate and hold a blind religious faith. Like a parody of the Prophet, Majeed, the middle-aged protagonist of Tree Without Roots, exiled in Mahabbatpur pretends to be the ‘bearer of the light’ to show the ‘rustic,’ ‘illiterate’ ‘non-believer’ inhabitants, the ‘right path.’

However, Majeed had actually migrated to Mahabbatpur fleeing drought, famine and poverty, driven by a sheer need to survive and thereafter seeking a better life. Majeed wholly capitalizes the religious faith of the poor villagers and soon earns the confidence of the village people. Like the villagers, readers are also enchanted by Majeed’s story-telling genius and by his ability to understand others’ psyche.

Majeed as Symbol of Patriarchal Power

Majeed represents the patriarchal power of the Bengali Muslim society of the 20th century. Using his clever religious role with aids from the patriarchal superstructures, he is able to create patriarchal hegemony in Mahabbatpur.

After settlement, Majeed marries twice:

First, Rahima, the widow, who is ‘wide-hipped, strong and beautiful’

Then, Jamila, the young, lively and curious one

His jealousy of Khaleque’s loving relationship with his first wife Amena leads him to devise the unsolicited fatwa of Amena’s having evil coils in her belly — a strategic move to label her unchaste and work towards a divorce between them.

Existential Loneliness and Tragic Fall

Again, like a modern man, Majeed is very lonely. In existential philosophy, the individual realizes his aloneness. Despite having two wives and a powerful landowner as a friend, Majeed is very lonely indeed. Moreover, he cannot share his secret with anyone, not even with his wives.

To fight back from this oblivious loneliness, Majeed looks forward to strengthening his social security by imposing certain codes of conduct for the villagers as their religious and spiritual guide.

Yet, his second wife Jamila seriously challenges this order and intimidates Majeed so much that she is physically gagged and left to die. However, even in her death, she threatens Majeed’s authority—the feet of her dead body desecrating the sanctum sanctorum of Majeed’s constructed place of worship.

Majeed in Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah – A Powerful Portrait of Faith, Patriarchy, and Existential Isolation

Green Land | July 12, 2025 | 0 comments

Introduction

Majeed, the protagonist of the novel Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah, is a rounded character who undergoes changes in the course of the novel. Majeed, who is a rootless, financially helpless and religiously corrupt person at the beginning of the novel, turns into a socially and economically strong and deeply rooted religious guru at the end of the novel.

At the beginning he introduces himself as a saviour of the people of Mahabbatpur and earns their faith. Gradually he becomes the sole proprietor to guide them to spiritual salvation. He also gains material possessions by selling religious faith and becomes rich within a few years. He also fulfils his carnal desires by marrying twice. So, by the end of the novel, Majeed appears socially, economically, and religiously very strong. But Majeed remains very much lonely from the beginning to the end. He also suffers from a sense of insecurity throughout the novel.

Majeed’s Arrival in Mahabbatpur

Majeed, a poor man from a devout Muslim background, comes to Mahabbatpur. He declares an old grave to be the mazar of a pir (a Muslim saint), covers it with the traditional red cloth used for Muslims, and establishes his stronghold on the life of the people using the reflected power on him of the supposed saint.

Through his charismatic behaviour, Majeed quickly establishes himself as a spiritual guide of the people, most of whom are illiterate and hold a blind religious faith. Like a parody of the Prophet, Majeed, the middle-aged protagonist of Tree Without Roots, exiled in Mahabbatpur pretends to be the ‘bearer of the light’ to show the ‘rustic,’ ‘illiterate’ ‘non-believer’ inhabitants, the ‘right path.’

However, Majeed had actually migrated to Mahabbatpur fleeing drought, famine and poverty, driven by a sheer need to survive and thereafter seeking a better life. Majeed wholly capitalizes the religious faith of the poor villagers and soon earns the confidence of the village people. Like the villagers, readers are also enchanted by Majeed’s story-telling genius and by his ability to understand others’ psyche.

Majeed as Symbol of Patriarchal Power

Majeed represents the patriarchal power of the Bengali Muslim society of the 20th century. Using his clever religious role with aids from the patriarchal superstructures, he is able to create patriarchal hegemony in Mahabbatpur.

After settlement, Majeed marries twice:

First, Rahima, the widow, who is ‘wide-hipped, strong and beautiful’

Then, Jamila, the young, lively and curious one

His jealousy of Khaleque’s loving relationship with his first wife Amena leads him to devise the unsolicited fatwa of Amena’s having evil coils in her belly — a strategic move to label her unchaste and work towards a divorce between them.

Existential Loneliness and Tragic Fall

Again, like a modern man, Majeed is very lonely. In existential philosophy, the individual realizes his aloneness. Despite having two wives and a powerful landowner as a friend, Majeed is very lonely indeed. Moreover, he cannot share his secret with anyone, not even with his wives.

To fight back from this oblivious loneliness, Majeed looks forward to strengthening his social security by imposing certain codes of conduct for the villagers as their religious and spiritual guide.

Yet, his second wife Jamila seriously challenges this order and intimidates Majeed so much that she is physically gagged and left to die. However, even in her death, she threatens Majeed’s authority—the feet of her dead body desecrating the sanctum sanctorum of Majeed’s constructed place of worship.

Tree Without Roots

The celebrated novel Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah depicts the sorrow and happiness, thoughts and dreams, struggle and urge for life of the people in a society hopelessly and helplessly fallen prey to religious fraud. The novel is set in a village called Mahabbatpur in northern part of the present Bangladesh. This village represents the rural life of the ignorant millions made to accept the feudalistic systems imposed upon them by the chieftains or religious leaders.

This novel is set in a time just around the Second World War when the genre ‘novel’ has become essentially urban. Syed Waliullah has directed his readers to a hitherto unknown village of northern Bengal and made them ‘encounter an existentialist character Majeed, hailing from a barren but populous area of Bengal.

This man, like an uprooted tree, enters Mahabbatpur along the road of Motiganj and finds the weapons of his struggle for food and livelihood in an old and broken grave of some yet unknown person, which he identifies as the tomb of some saint and covers it with a piece of red cloth.

The villagers become simultaneously alarmed and ashamed that they did not pay proper homage to the tomb of a great person of spiritual power. To compensate this shameful ignorance, the villagers begin to rush to the tomb with their heartfelt pleas and pledges.

The tomb covered with a red cotton cloth looks like the back of a dead fish and begins to flicker the light of candles and to spread the fragrant smoke from incense sticks. People from the villages around begin to follow with their tales of hope and dismay, success and failure, and gratitude to the tomb and with the shines and tinkers of coins.

A Harsh Mirror to Superstition and Rural Life

Tree Without Roots depicts the decadent state of the superstitious Muslim Bengal. Majeed struggles existentially, but he uses fraud as a tool for his fight against poverty and by the time he gains victory over poverty, he destroys the serenity in the social life of the village and injects dread into it.

Majeed’s exploitation of the villagers, his marrying twice, evoking a sense of religious passion in villagers’ mind, himself being not that committed—all these events are delineated by Waliullah with unfailing realistic touch.

Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah: A Stark Portrayal of Religious Exploitation in Rural Bengal

Green Land | July 12, 2025 | 0 comments

The celebrated novel Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah depicts the sorrow and happiness, thoughts and dreams, struggle and urge for life of the people in a society hopelessly and helplessly fallen prey to religious fraud. The novel is set in a village called Mahabbatpur in northern part of the present Bangladesh. This village represents the rural life of the ignorant millions made to accept the feudalistic systems imposed upon them by the chieftains or religious leaders.

This novel is set in a time just around the Second World War when the genre ‘novel’ has become essentially urban. Syed Waliullah has directed his readers to a hitherto unknown village of northern Bengal and made them ‘encounter an existentialist character Majeed, hailing from a barren but populous area of Bengal.

This man, like an uprooted tree, enters Mahabbatpur along the road of Motiganj and finds the weapons of his struggle for food and livelihood in an old and broken grave of some yet unknown person, which he identifies as the tomb of some saint and covers it with a piece of red cloth.

The villagers become simultaneously alarmed and ashamed that they did not pay proper homage to the tomb of a great person of spiritual power. To compensate this shameful ignorance, the villagers begin to rush to the tomb with their heartfelt pleas and pledges.

The tomb covered with a red cotton cloth looks like the back of a dead fish and begins to flicker the light of candles and to spread the fragrant smoke from incense sticks. People from the villages around begin to follow with their tales of hope and dismay, success and failure, and gratitude to the tomb and with the shines and tinkers of coins.

A Harsh Mirror to Superstition and Rural Life

Tree Without Roots depicts the decadent state of the superstitious Muslim Bengal. Majeed struggles existentially, but he uses fraud as a tool for his fight against poverty and by the time he gains victory over poverty, he destroys the serenity in the social life of the village and injects dread into it.

Majeed’s exploitation of the villagers, his marrying twice, evoking a sense of religious passion in villagers’ mind, himself being not that committed—all these events are delineated by Waliullah with unfailing realistic touch.

Tree Without Roots

Majeed is the pivotal character in Syed Waliullah’s novel Tree Without Roots. Hailing from a barren land called Noakhali, Majeed with a meagre knowledge of Koran and Hadith leaves his native land finds an occupation of an Imam somewhere at the foot of Garo Hills just to earn the day’s bread.

Somehow, he does not find things quite manageable there and he enters the affluent Mahabbatpur village dramatically. He meets a congregation of villagers near the house of Merchant Khaleque and tells them that he had been well in the Garo Hills but the ascetic Modasser Pir has visited him in his dream and has asked him to come to Mahabbatpur and to look after his tomb.

He then identifies an old and broken grave of some yet unknown person as the tomb of Modasser Pir and covers it with a piece of red cloth. Thus he begins his business around the tomb. In almost no time he acquires landed property and honour.

He then marries a strongly built widow about the village called Rahima. He gained immense power over the people of the area with the help of Merchant Khaleque. He controls the religious affairs of the life of all the villagers by virtue of the tomb which he turns into a shrine.

Majeed: The Pivotal Character in Tree Without Roots by Syed Waliullah

Green Land | July 12, 2025 | 0 comments

Majeed is the pivotal character in Syed Waliullah’s novel Tree Without Roots. Hailing from a barren land called Noakhali, Majeed with a meagre knowledge of Koran and Hadith leaves his native land finds an occupation of an Imam somewhere at the foot of Garo Hills just to earn the day’s bread.

Somehow, he does not find things quite manageable there and he enters the affluent Mahabbatpur village dramatically. He meets a congregation of villagers near the house of Merchant Khaleque and tells them that he had been well in the Garo Hills but the ascetic Modasser Pir has visited him in his dream and has asked him to come to Mahabbatpur and to look after his tomb.

He then identifies an old and broken grave of some yet unknown person as the tomb of Modasser Pir and covers it with a piece of red cloth. Thus he begins his business around the tomb. In almost no time he acquires landed property and honour.

He then marries a strongly built widow about the village called Rahima. He gained immense power over the people of the area with the help of Merchant Khaleque. He controls the religious affairs of the life of all the villagers by virtue of the tomb which he turns into a shrine.

Tree Without Roots

Introduction: High-Seriousness in Modern Poetry

'High-seriousness’ in poetry, to quote Matthew Arnold’s favourite phrase, is well pronounced in Wilfred Owen and T.S. Eliot, two great names in modern English poetry, in their powerful treatment of the social reality of the modern world. Of course, their subject-matters are not identical. While Owen exposes sharply the grim, poignant, dreadful reality of war, Eliot delineates the dreary, passive, emotionally empty urban civilization of the modern age. But poetry is found to change as civilization advances. This is true in respect of modern English poetry, too. A new kind of social reality, however, is found treated by a new group of English poets in the thirties of the last century.

The Poets of the Thirties: A New Literary Movement

These new English poets, popularly called the poets of the thirties, have a new poetic treat, with a new point of view, for their readers. Though inspired by Owen and Eliot, along with Hopkins, as admitted by their pioneers, the plane of the social reality of their poetry is altogether different and, perhaps, more immediate to the changing problems of their age and society. This new poetry is found animated with an intense social consciousness and imbued with a new political idealism, under the impact of the existing social and political environment of Europe.

The Historical Context: Post-War Crisis and Political Upheaval

The new poets started their literary career in a crucial period. War was over, but peace was not ensured, despite the function of the League of Nations. Distrust, hatred and grievance were freely generated, and Europe seemed to have been staked by political opportunism and sinister manoeuvre to preserve authority and domination.

But more threatening was the state of affairs on the economic front. Europe was almost engulfed by the post-war economic depression that hit England severely in particular. Privation, unemployment, economic insecurity and consequent social perversity disturbed the structure of the existing society and exposed the hollowness of the capitalistic order.

The social picture was, indeed, a dismal one. At the same time, there was a new ideological stimulation from the establishment of the socialistic society in Russia and the emergence of communism as a principle of social living. The Russian political experiment, with the principle of communism, was favoured by liberal intelligentsia, overlooking its atrocities and regimentations. Moreover, the growing threat of Nazism began to take dimensions to affect the political affiliation.

Political Poetry and Left-Wing Ideals

The poets of the thirties came in such a situation and were affected strongly both by the desperation of the post-war economic situation and by the inspiration of the socialistic revolution in Russia. They appeared, to some extent, akin to the early Romantic poets of the nineteenth century.

Like them, they were filled with disgust at the state of their society and drawn to the political revolution that had promised a happy future for mankind. The Romantic poets had before them the French Revolution and Rousseauism, as social ideals, while the poets of the thirties set before them the stimulus of the Russian Revolution and the gospel Marxism and Leninism.

They were thoroughly annoyed with the whole trend of their capitalistic civilization, sought a remedy for the existing social ills and inequalities and found it in the principle of communism, no doubt then in an experimental stage in Russia. They missed the brutal business of war, witnessed the economic ills of the Post-War time, had no social security to lose, felt guilty of the privileges enjoyed even by themselves and were invariably drawn to the ideal of equality and even of the revolution to attain the same.

They believed, as stated by one of their protagonists, that ‘only a revolution’ could ‘save’ the English standards of living from the present degeneration. They believed, too, ‘that the full development of the individual’ could be ‘possible in a state of social communism’ and detected ‘the vibration of new life’ in it.

Cultural Unity and Literary Objectives of the Poets

The poets of the thirties had some commonness in their cultural associations and literary objectives. They were young, upper, or at best, middle class intellectuals, with good education at renowned institutions and at the University of Oxford or Cambridge.

They were responsible thinkers, conscious of the prevalent frustration of their society, and humanitarian idealists, with visions for a new kind of society. They had contempt for the bourgeois outlook and for the capitalistic standard of living.

They were all imbued with the new missions to employ art to the service of the community for the welfare of the exploited masses. They shared in common the belief that poetry must be revolutionary, aiming to have a new world of human happiness and fraternity.

They worked together, under the inspiration of the red banner, developed a mutual understanding of the social objective of poetry and took the Russian poet, Maykovesky, as their very literary idol. Their poetry had a political background and a left-wing swing. In the Spanish war, they supported the Republican against the menace of expanding Fascism under General Franco.

They were political poets — left-wingers, so to say, with social consciousness and humanitarian conscience.

The Key Figures of the 1930s Poetry Movement

Those young poets of the thirties, who, thus, thought and acted together, were not many. The protagonists of them included:

• W. H. Auden
• Stephen Spender
• Cecil Day Lewis
• Louis MacNeice

Other, though less notable, poetical personalities of the group were:

• Michael Roberts
• Charles Madge
• John Lehmann
• George Barker

Two South African born poets — Roy Campbell (1901–57) and William Plomer (1903–73) — are also anthologized with the Auden group for their political affiliation.

The Rise of Social Realism in Modern English Poetry: A Study of the Poets of the 1930s

Green Land | July 12, 2025 | 0 comments

Introduction: High-Seriousness in Modern Poetry

'High-seriousness’ in poetry, to quote Matthew Arnold’s favourite phrase, is well pronounced in Wilfred Owen and T.S. Eliot, two great names in modern English poetry, in their powerful treatment of the social reality of the modern world. Of course, their subject-matters are not identical. While Owen exposes sharply the grim, poignant, dreadful reality of war, Eliot delineates the dreary, passive, emotionally empty urban civilization of the modern age. But poetry is found to change as civilization advances. This is true in respect of modern English poetry, too. A new kind of social reality, however, is found treated by a new group of English poets in the thirties of the last century.

The Poets of the Thirties: A New Literary Movement

These new English poets, popularly called the poets of the thirties, have a new poetic treat, with a new point of view, for their readers. Though inspired by Owen and Eliot, along with Hopkins, as admitted by their pioneers, the plane of the social reality of their poetry is altogether different and, perhaps, more immediate to the changing problems of their age and society. This new poetry is found animated with an intense social consciousness and imbued with a new political idealism, under the impact of the existing social and political environment of Europe.

The Historical Context: Post-War Crisis and Political Upheaval

The new poets started their literary career in a crucial period. War was over, but peace was not ensured, despite the function of the League of Nations. Distrust, hatred and grievance were freely generated, and Europe seemed to have been staked by political opportunism and sinister manoeuvre to preserve authority and domination.

But more threatening was the state of affairs on the economic front. Europe was almost engulfed by the post-war economic depression that hit England severely in particular. Privation, unemployment, economic insecurity and consequent social perversity disturbed the structure of the existing society and exposed the hollowness of the capitalistic order.

The social picture was, indeed, a dismal one. At the same time, there was a new ideological stimulation from the establishment of the socialistic society in Russia and the emergence of communism as a principle of social living. The Russian political experiment, with the principle of communism, was favoured by liberal intelligentsia, overlooking its atrocities and regimentations. Moreover, the growing threat of Nazism began to take dimensions to affect the political affiliation.

Political Poetry and Left-Wing Ideals

The poets of the thirties came in such a situation and were affected strongly both by the desperation of the post-war economic situation and by the inspiration of the socialistic revolution in Russia. They appeared, to some extent, akin to the early Romantic poets of the nineteenth century.

Like them, they were filled with disgust at the state of their society and drawn to the political revolution that had promised a happy future for mankind. The Romantic poets had before them the French Revolution and Rousseauism, as social ideals, while the poets of the thirties set before them the stimulus of the Russian Revolution and the gospel Marxism and Leninism.

They were thoroughly annoyed with the whole trend of their capitalistic civilization, sought a remedy for the existing social ills and inequalities and found it in the principle of communism, no doubt then in an experimental stage in Russia. They missed the brutal business of war, witnessed the economic ills of the Post-War time, had no social security to lose, felt guilty of the privileges enjoyed even by themselves and were invariably drawn to the ideal of equality and even of the revolution to attain the same.

They believed, as stated by one of their protagonists, that ‘only a revolution’ could ‘save’ the English standards of living from the present degeneration. They believed, too, ‘that the full development of the individual’ could be ‘possible in a state of social communism’ and detected ‘the vibration of new life’ in it.

Cultural Unity and Literary Objectives of the Poets

The poets of the thirties had some commonness in their cultural associations and literary objectives. They were young, upper, or at best, middle class intellectuals, with good education at renowned institutions and at the University of Oxford or Cambridge.

They were responsible thinkers, conscious of the prevalent frustration of their society, and humanitarian idealists, with visions for a new kind of society. They had contempt for the bourgeois outlook and for the capitalistic standard of living.

They were all imbued with the new missions to employ art to the service of the community for the welfare of the exploited masses. They shared in common the belief that poetry must be revolutionary, aiming to have a new world of human happiness and fraternity.

They worked together, under the inspiration of the red banner, developed a mutual understanding of the social objective of poetry and took the Russian poet, Maykovesky, as their very literary idol. Their poetry had a political background and a left-wing swing. In the Spanish war, they supported the Republican against the menace of expanding Fascism under General Franco.

They were political poets — left-wingers, so to say, with social consciousness and humanitarian conscience.

The Key Figures of the 1930s Poetry Movement

Those young poets of the thirties, who, thus, thought and acted together, were not many. The protagonists of them included:

• W. H. Auden
• Stephen Spender
• Cecil Day Lewis
• Louis MacNeice

Other, though less notable, poetical personalities of the group were:

• Michael Roberts
• Charles Madge
• John Lehmann
• George Barker

Two South African born poets — Roy Campbell (1901–57) and William Plomer (1903–73) — are also anthologized with the Auden group for their political affiliation.

Modern Period