Answer: Ahmad Ali’s Twilight in Delhi is not just an ordinary book or a critical commentary on the decline of Muslims of India in the previous century, rather this novel is the first two decades of the twentieth century, when Muslims’ culture was taking its last breaths. This decline was a decline of a great culture as it had belonged to that nation who ruled over sub-continent for centuries. This is Ali’s great artistic subtlety that he describes this gradual downfall and retrogression of his own culture and traditions without any sentimentality.
Downfall it is the time when Delhi had lost its grandeur and its position hence its values Ahmed ail portrays only Muslim life in Delhi and through Muslim life he shows people losing their religious values social norms .humanity was considered an alien word during that modern period. Characters were shallow and empty from inside (examples of characters and incidents) Relations had lost their values, relations were made only to fulfill social needs, they were not considered important (Asghar and Bilqueece‟s relation Mir Nihal and Begum Nihals relation Loss of religious values could be highlighted by throwing a light on shroud thieves, merchants, selling expensive cloth for dead ones.
This novel gives a clear impression that Ali’s purpose is not to justify the decline of his culture. As a matter of fact, he narrates a simple story of a Muslim family resides in Delhi, surrounded by its rich traditional and cultural values and how these values are destructed by the advent of a new foreign culture and force. By telling a story of central character Mir Nihal, a middle aged Muslim business man of Delhi, Ahmad Ali covers each and every aspect of Muslims’ lives of that time. Thus, Mir Nihal doesn’t remain an individual character but he is a representative of a whole Muslim culture, through which Ali does focus on every nook and corner of individual as well as collective lives of Muslims.
