Partition of India -- Fictional Narratives : ELSA MEET 23 February 2020

Sir Cyril Radcliffe with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and other leaders

W. H. Auden captures beautifully how ruthlessly partition was decided in the poem "Partition" that he wrote in 1966.

PARTITION
W.H. Auden

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition

Between two peoples fanatically at odds,

With their different diets and incompatible gods.

“Time,” they had briefed him in London, “is short. It’s too late

For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:

The only solution now lies in separation.

The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,

That the less you are seen in his company the better,

So we’ve arranged to provide you with other accommodation.

We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,

To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.”

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day

Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away,

He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate

Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date

And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,

But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect

Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,

And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,

But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,

A continent for better or worse divided.

The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget

The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,

Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

ELSA MEET 23 February 2020
Partition of India -- Fictional Narratives
Goverdhan Hotel, Agra

Partition of India -- Fictional Narratives

“Subah subah ik khaab ki dastak par darwaaja khola…

Dekha sarhad ke uss paar se kuchh mehmaan aaye hain… 

Aankh khuli toh dekha ghar mein koyi nahi tha …/ 

Khaab tha shaayad…

khaab hi hoga

Sarhad par kal raat suna hai chali thi goli.” – Gulzar

["In the first flush of the dawn, a dream came knocking on my door 
I saw some guests had arrived from across the border.
As my eyes opened, I looked around, but there was no one 
in the home.
Perhaps it was a dream, a dream it must have been
For last night I am told the border echoed with the barrage of gunshots." - Tr. by Roopali Khanna]

Prof. Nibir K. Ghosh initiated the meet by reciting the above lines from Gulzar’s poem that serves as a befitting testimony to the nostalgia of happy togetherness that was shattered by the suffering, pain and trauma that Partition wrought upon the sub-continent and created a permanent wedge between the two communities. ELSA members made insightful presentations reiterating and reviewing many short stories, poems, and novels written on partition by different authors and poets that offered many vantage points to the same event and helped understand the nuances of the Event as it unfolded for different lives. 

The theme of Partition and the perspectives that emerged are evident from the range and variety of choices that included Metaphor of Madness: Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh” by Dr. Roopali Khanna, Attia Husain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column and Bhishm Sahani’s Tamas by Mr. Saurabh Agarwal, “Rahi Masoom Reza’s Aadha Gaon” by Dr. Sanjay Kumar Misra, W.H. Auden’s “Partition” by Mr. Rajeev Khandelwal, W.C. Douglas’s “A Girl with a Basket” by Dr. Rajan Lal, “Partition Narratives: Memoirs of Pain: Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar (The Skeleton) by Dr. Tanya Mander (Patiala), “Tasleema Nasreen’s Lajja: A Tale of Parting Lines Bruised on the Hearts” by Dr. Manju (Chandigarh), "Siyasi Sahityakar" by Adv. & Poet Anil Sharma, “Partition, Trauma and Toba Tek Singh" by Dr. Navleen Multani (Patiala), “The Ties of Blood: Humanistic Ethics in the Stories of Manto” by Ms. Seema Sinha (Pilani), “The Devastating Line of Partition – A Poem” by Sharbani Roychoudhury, “Overcoming the Pain of Separation” by Group Captain JPS Chauhan, “Partition and Beyond” by Mr. Shravan Kumar.

The vibrant and passionate discussion that followed each presentation ended with 

the resolve taken by ELSA members to instill within each one of us the love that transcends barriers of communal hatred to bring in a world signifying unity in diversity like the beautiful colours of the rainbow.

PRESENTATIONS

METAPHOR OF MADNESS: SADAT HASAN MANTO’S TOBA TEK SINGH

Roopali Khanna

Imagine having to wake up one day with the realisation that everything you have called yours, the land, the home, even people, are going to be taken away from you. The partition of India in the summer of 1947 was the most unprecedented and barbaric event in the history of the sub-continent with catastrophic and inexplicable results. Even history is not sufficient for a comprehensive understanding of the partition, for historians talked in aggregates: ten million refugees, two million of them dead, seventy-five thousand women raped and so on and so forth. But these statistics fail to impart even a fraction of the enormity of the tragedy that partition was. Statistics do not tell us how women must have felt while drowning themselves in wells just to escape from abduction and rape; how for most people the deciding factor in choosing India or Pakistan was not politics or religion but insecurity. Statistics fail to even hint at the trauma of husbands and wives, sons and mothers separated by the Radcliffe line.

It is my attempt here to remember partition by revisiting Manto's memories of the event documented in his partition stories. This historic and horrific event had an indelible impression on Manto’s delicate mind to which he remained a first-hand witness. He personalised the experiences of the partition so much so, that each story, each character speaks personally for the millions whose lives were devastated by the holocaust that partition was. Not only this, Manto had his own struggles in court as he was tried several times for obscenity, for the harsh truths that he addressed in his writing. In response to one such court trial he boldly proclaimed which I am quoting from his biopic by Nandita Das:

“Main wahi likhta hoon Jo jantaa hoon jo dekhtaa hoon. 

Main to bas apni kahaniyon ko ek aaina samajhta hoon 

Jismein samaj apne aap ko dekh sake. 

Agar kisi buri shakal wale ko aine se shikayat ho 

tou mai isme mai kya karun? 

[“I write what I know, what I see. I consider my stories as a mirror wherein society may see itself. If a person with an ugly face has a grudge against the mirror, what can I do?” (Translation mine).]

For me Manto is a thought, a thought which is revolutionary, which is eye-opening, which is bold enough to state the existing truth. Manto’s work was born from his experience. In his stories we see an author who never shrank from telling the truth about what he saw, no matter how ugly it was. Toba Tek Singh is one of his outstanding works that deeply ponders over the questions of identity in the most sentimental tone. Set in a madhouse the story uses madness as a metaphor for sanity. The lunatics in the asylum seem to be the only sane people left as the frenzy and madness of partition unfolded in the outside world.

The story is set two or three years after partition when the governments of India and Pakistan decided to exchange some Hindu and Muslim lunatics. There was a lot of clamour and confusion regarding this news inside the asylum. The ambiguity of nationhood is expressed  when we are told that one madman got so caught up in this whole confusion of Pakistan and Hindustan and Hindustan and Pakistan that he ended up considerably madder than before. All the lunatics were confused and wondered if they were in Pakistan how come a little while ago they were in India? The madmen in the Lahore asylum is a microcosm of society through them, all sections of society are satirised.

Well amidst all this confusion, we are introduced to the protagonist of the story, Bishan Singh, a Sikh inmate, who is often addressed by the name of his town Toba Tek Singh. Bishan Singh has not slept in fifteen years and utters unintelligible phrases in a combination of Urdu, Punjabi and English. He is often visited by his family members, but of late his family has stopped visiting him since post-partition. Therefore, Bishan Singh is shown anxiously asking the other inmates where Toba Tek Singh, his hometown, was, whether it was in India or Pakistan but he never a got a satisfactory answer.

Finally, the day arrived and as part of the exchange, Bishan Singh is sent under police escort to India along with other inmates. But upon reaching the border, and being answered by one of the guards that his hometown Toba Tek Singh is in Pakistan and not in India, he refuses to cross over the border into Hindustan. Instead, he runs-off into the no man’s land where he stands silent all night. But just before daybreak Bishan Singh, screams and collapses after fifteen years on his feet. And on a stretch of land that had no name lay Toba Tek Singh.

Toba Tek Singh stands as a metaphor for all those nameless victims who were forced to die homeless. It crystallizes the entire temper and ethos of the turning point in the life of not just the protagonist, but the entire society. Toba Tek Singh’s death is an act of defiance, a symbol of protest and rebellion, a challenge to history and a refusal to accept the political identity forced by arbitrary decisions of the policy-makers. Manto, therefore is questioning not just the two-nation theory but also the very idea of nationhood as the pivotal basis of one’s identity. Bishan Singh would rather die in no man’s land than make a choice between Hindustan and Pakistan.

Dr. Roopali Khanna teaches English at BDK Girls’ PG College, Agra.

EXPLORATION OF INTERIORS OF DARKNESS:

BHISHAM SAHNI’S TAMAS

Saurabh Agarwal

Tamas by Bhisham Sahani is a study of anatomy of riot which seeks to treat it as a primary character of the novel. It places rest of the other characters below as riot and arson acquire life of their own on the fertile ground of suspicion, fed on the heavy diet of rumours, made strong by doubt and fear and led to cancerous growth by the apathy and neglect of the governing authorities. The novel, set in a town in West Punjab, a few months before the Partition, shows us the potential terror that a small mischief in name of religion can unleash on the innocent inhabitants. An event of throwing dead pig at the steps of a mosque is shown to acquire disproportionate size which ends up in unleashing of unimaginable horrors where the neighbours and friends get incited enough to seek lives of each other.

Sahni has been first-hand witness to the communal violence in Rawalpindi but the book was inspired by his visit to the town of Bhiwandi, outside Mumbai, in the aftermath of 1970’s riots. Tamas neither seeks to give a solution nor does it seek to lay blame on a single party for the bloodshed. The author seems to be questioning the systematic failure to address the root cause of the problem at the nascent stage when the District Commissioner, Richard who is “going to write book about these people” and their history but will not to step in to curb violence spreading to burn one hundred and three villages because (in his words) “this isn’t my Country. Nor are these my countrymen.” 

   

In the novel, the chorus of the demand for separate country for Muslims becomes the inflection point for political ambitions of those who had once kept their lust for power in dormant state. One such man, Murad Ali, pays Nathu to kill a pig which is, next day, found on the steps of the Mosque. Religious sentiments get hurt. Incidents of individual murders are seen and acquire colour of communal killings. Rumours help the fire of hatred spread wide with anaj mandi being burned. The violence becomes rampant once it reaches the rural part of the country. Village after village is set on fire and innumerable crimes are committed on women.  

The characters, through the invocation of the historical incidences, glorify their stance. Fleeting reference to the historical battle of Haldighati and invasion of Turks are meant to provide meaninglessness and take a sarcastic look at the crime being perpetuated in the name of safeguarding religion. Ranvir, a  fifteen-year old boy presumes an avatar of Shivaji as evident in the following passage: “At times he wished a sword hung from his waist, and that he wore a wide cummerbund, a yellow turban and a helmet…. Holding his hands behind his back, stooping slightly, lost in deep thought, he’d stroll up and down the stairs of the arsenal exactly as Shivaji must have done before taking on Aurangzeb.”

Similarly siege of Gurdwara is portrayed as battle between Sikhs and Turks though “the Turks had come, but only from neighbouring village. The Turks were convinced that they were attacking their old enemies, the Sikhs. And the Sikhs believed that these were the Turks they’d clashed with three hundred years ago. This battle was but one link in a long chain of historical battles. The combatants had their head in middle ages.”

In the midst of savagery, author sees glimpses of sanity which gives us a ray hope in darkness. After the riots have subsided miraculously by sudden appearance of the plane flying over the villages engulfed by violence the damage done to lives is merely reduced to statistics. Gory tales are searched for quantifiable details. The callous attitude of DC to the widespread violence is evident when he suggests Liza, his wife, should come along with him while he visits the place where the women have jumped into the well so that they can “see all sorts of new birds,… can hear the call of lark.” Bhisham Sahni highlights the irony of the society by making Muraad Ali, the initiator of all havoc, who is seen as driver of the Peace Bus.  

This work, by its grotesque portrayal of communal violence, brings forth the relevant questions that why mob frenzy defies any sort of rational behaviour? How people who have lived together as neighbours and have been indulged in business with each other are ready to take lives? It makes us probe deeper into the psyche to see their transformation from the ordinary person to arsonist. We get to see how religion, which acts as immediate trigger to the rioting, is superseded by personal vengeance, lustful indulgences and looting. Tamas remains relevant, for communal violence still follows the trajectory that this work defines. 

 THE DEVASTATING LINE OF PARTITION

Shrabani Roy Chowdhury

It was not a biological birth.

Neither it was an innovation of science

The Great line of partition evolved,

When all the plans, discussions and strategies dissolved.

The selfish decisions of the national leaders

Acted as an epidemic breeder

In the name of religions, two nations emerged on the map

Cynicism, hatred and senseless killings fuelled the gap.

India on one side as a secular state

Pakistan on the other side with Muslim mates

The widespread killings and atrocities

Gave a blow to all the ideologies

People were slaughtered like animals

Behaved wildly like blood thirsty cannibals.

Both the countries lost their peace and smile

In order to reach new homes, had to measure miles

The reprisal killings of Hindus and Muslims

In the name of religion everyone became victim.

Freedom we achieved, with no freedom from hellish past

Bitter memories with wounded dreams, left the generation aghast

The communal divide broke the social fabric

An invisible line was founded without cement and brick

The line resonates the sad tales of partings and killings

Life was purchased and sold for few shillings

The generations wonder about the line of partition

The silent iron wires speak volume of words with new ambition

The cascading rivers, the flight of birds, the vibrant sun and the cool moon

Are still the same, with no parted ways, walk with same silver shoon.

The devastating line of partition narrates the psychological scars

Leaving me dreaming of a world with no boundary, no line and no wars.

Shrabani Roy Chowdhury teaches English at Col. Brightland Public School, Agra.

Siyasi Sahityakar

Anil Sharma

Mr. Anil Kumar Sharma is a noted Hindi Poet based in Agra.

Partition Narratives: AADHA GAON BY RAHI MASOOM RAZA

Sanjay Kumar Misra

To be frank, it is almost impossible to talk and write convincingly about the Partition when one is not a victim or not a member of a family which or whose earlier generation suffered and survived through the Partition. Otherwise, much of talk and discussion on the sense of pain, loss and suffering sounds quite hollow and hogwash. Nobody gives two hoots to erudite lectures full of sharp analysis and pontification on the Partition. Just like the lunatic inmate in Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’ who gets fed up with this India-Pakistan-Pakistan-India thing and talks for two hours about the problem of India-Pakistan perched high upon a tree without anybody caring to listen to him. So, the narratives, both fictional and autobiographical, of that horrific series of communal riots become authentic and moving only when they have been written by the sufferer or by someone from the family which suffered the gruesome hatred and violence of the partition holocaust. Yes, it was a holocaust in which roughly 10-15 lakhs of people got brutally killed and their homes and properties burnt and destroyed.

As they say, history repeats itself and those who do not learn from history and fail to take lessons from the past are bound to repeat the horrors of the days gone by. And, partition of the country into India and Pakistan in 1947 is one such horror from the past. It is rightly believed that partition was not a one-off thing: there have been several partitions and the partition is very much going on ever since. The times we are breathing in and breathing out today are excessively charged with communal passions of hatred and animosity of one community against the other. The communal riots which occurred in the wake of partition of the country happened on that scale and magnitude because the hatred and animosity was in the making for many years before the final call of partition of the country.

From the early 1940s to the 1947-48, the Muslim league men motivated by the call of Jinnah were going from village to village, town to town and cities to cities and spreading the message amongst the Muslims that Islam was in danger and Pakistan was the paradise and Muslims would not be safe in India amidst the majority of Hindu population once the British rule was over. So, when the partition actually happened, the communal passions were highly charged by then and hatred of the communities for each other had peaked up paving the way to such bloody massacres of people on communal basis. On the other hand, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha zealots were also viciously carrying out a similar mass mobilization on communal lines against the Muslims. The point is that communal riots do not happen overnight and the extremely catastrophic communal riots in the aftermath of India’s partition were a consequence of years of mass mobilization of Hindus and Muslims against each other by the fanatic leaders on both sides. That was true then and this is true now as well.  

It is in this connection that a discussion of Rahi Masoom Raza’s novel Aadha Gaon remains apt and relevant. This novel was published in 1966 and paints a touching picture of a small village named Gangauli in the Gazipur district of Uttar Pradesh. It was Raza’s native place where he was born and grew up before he moved to Aligarh for his higher studies and profession as professor and later to Bombay for writing highly successful scripts and dialogues of films and serials. The narrative of the novel focusses on life in a rural feudal society, particularly the Muslim people, in the initial years after India’s independence. Partition provides the backdrop. As Prof. Mushirul Hasan says in the introduction to his much acclaimed two-volume work India Partitioned, Gangauli was the microcosm of what was happening almost everywhere in terms of communal strife.

The following excerpt from Aadha Gaon, wherein a conversation takes place between the Aligarh students representing the Muslim League and the local village folks of Gangauli, is illustrative of quintessential innocence and social harmony that always exist among ordinary common people. But the false communal propaganda from both sides, sponsored by their political masters, disturbs it all and destroys peace and prosperity in the society. Let us see how evocatively Rahi Masoom Raza portrays the reality of the times:

‘If Pakistan is not created the eighty million Muslims here will be made, and made to remain, untouchables’, said the other [student]….

One of the young men proceeded to deliver a complete speech which Kammo didn’t understand in the least because the young man was mentioning matters not one of which had any connection with him or with Gangauli.

‘I can’t believe all that, sahib”, said Kammo after listening to the whole speech. “why should tis Gaya Ahir, this Chikuria or Lakhna Chamar or this Hariya Barhai become our enemies, for no reason, after Hindustan gets free? Is that what you people learn over there [Aligarh].”

‘At this moment you may not be able to comprehend this fact, but that is indeed what is going to happen. Cows will be tethered in our mosques [student].’

‘Eh, sahib, if all the Muslims go to Pakistan, what difference does it make if horses are tied in them or cows? It’s not as if Hindus are going to say prayers there. It’s a fine old bit of nonsense that we all go to Pakistan and then expect the Hindus to look after our mosques.’

At first the young men [Aligarh students] tried to persuade the peasant in front of them, but then gradually they became angry --- and rightfully so …. One of them said hotly, ‘Very well, but don’t you complain when the Hindus and carry off your mothers and sisters ….’

‘You must be aware that at the present time, throughout the country, the Muslims are engaged in a life and death struggle for existence. We live in a country where our position is no more than equivalent to that of salt in dal. Once the protective shadow of the British is removed, these Hindus will devour us. That is the reason that Indian Muslims require a place where they will be able to live with honour [student] …’

It was a very rousing speech. The brothers in Islam even interrupted from time to time to cry out Allah-o-Akbar! As a result, a large section of the traders and weavers decided that they should vote for the League as religious duty. Haji Ghafoor tried to speak several times but the young men wouldn’t allow him the opportunity.

….

The Haji Saheb stormed out of the mosque. The speech had been quite beyond his comprehension. He didn’t even understand why all of a sudden Muslims needed a place of refuge. And where was the protective shadow of the British that these boys had made such a song and dance about? No Englishman had ever been seen in Gangauli. And why then hadn’t the Hindus killed the Muslims before the British came to India? And what about the fundamental question --- was life and death in hands of God or the British an Jinnah Sahib?

‘And we’ll still be just weavers. Will the Saiyids start marrying their children to weavers in Pakistan?

….

Kammo, Haji Ghafoor Ansari and Phunnan Miyan in Gangauli village had sensed the impending danger long before. The Haji had exhorted the Aligarh boys: ‘No miyan, I’m an illiterate peasant. But I think there’s not the slightest need to make Pakistan-Akistan for the sake of our prayers. Lord God Almighty said quite clearly, “Eh, my Prophet. Tell these people that I am with people of Faith.” And someone was saying that this Jinnah of yours doesn’t say his prayers.’ Phunnan Miyan shared these words of wisdom, adding: ‘Is there true Islam anywhere that you can have an Islamic government? Eh, bhai, our forefathers’ graves are here. I’m not an idiot to be taken in by your ‘Long Live Pakistna’. ‘… You’re talking as if all the Hindus were murderers waiting to slaughter us. Arre, Thakur Kunwarpal Singh was a Hindu. Jhinguria is a Hindu. Eh, bhai, and isn’t that Parusaram-va a Hindu? When the Sunnis in the twon started doing haramzadgi, saying that we won’t let the bier of Hazrat Ali be carried in procession because the Shia curse our Caliphs, didn’t Parusaram-va come and raise such a hell that the bier was carried? Your Jinnah Sahib didn’t come to help us lift our bier.

The above scene from the Aadha Gaon depicts a real and chilling picture of the reality on the ground: that there was/is essentially no hostility between Hindus and Muslims; they live and work together in mutually helpful and amicable social relations; common people want to live in peace and harmony; it is the incendiary sloganeering and pamphleteering by the fanatic demagogues which spreads the venom of communal hatred amongst the people that leads to violence and riots between communities.

Dr. Sanjay Kumar Misra is Associate Professor in the Department of English at RBS College, Agra.

PARTITION NARRATIVES: MEMOIRS OF PAIN:

Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar  (The Skeleton)

Tanya Mander

Most of the narratives exploring partition feature an interplay of story, memory and agonising grief against the backdrop of ‘collective tragedies.’ Urvashi Butalia in The Other Side of Violence opines “working with memory is never simple or unproblematic” but is critical to counter what Ayesha Jalal describes as “straitjacket of official nationalist narratives” in The Pity of Partition. Within the realm of partition fiction the voice of women narratives highlight and encourage to question the portrayal of women in the stories of partition, where the metanarrative of ‘nation’ is still the archetypal. The women writing on partition sketch a subjective social history in contrast to the ‘truth’ of genocidal violence described in the official histories. They articulate the gendered reflection of partition.

Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar (The Skeleton) published in 1950 charts the course of events from almost 1930/31 to 1947/48, through the accounts of women victims of male violence. Pritam’s Pinjar narrates the violence of partition; she formulates images to translate the ‘internalization’ of acute suffering (psychological and physical) of women. It’s a story of Pooro, a Hindu woman, abducted by a Muslim man, as a part of vendetta plan against Pooro’s family; a mosaic of agony and torture is woven, spread across region and religion, as Pritam threads the distressing narratives of different women telling their stories to Pooro: there is a Hindu girl who is a victim of collective communal rapes during partition; Kammo, an orphan abused and manipulated by her aunt; Taro, a victim of being married to a married man, by her own parents; a mad woman who delivers a child and dies, a baby that Pooro adopts; Lajo, Pooro’s  sister-in-law (brother’s wife) who is kidnapped but saved and reunited with family by Pooro. Each account chronicles and locates the history of partition on woman’s body; a metaphor for violence, its impact and the resultant incoherence. The wretchedness experienced by women is conveyed through tropes of suffering and loathing; both placed in/on the female body: Pooro comprehends her pregnancy in terms of a worm in a putrid fruit: “If only she could take the worm out of her womb and fling it away! Pick it out with her nails as if it were a thorn, pluck it off if it were a maggot or a leech!”

The rise of violence is described in clear and factual terms but the proximity of the experience stimulates emotional responses. Pritam has embodied the encounter of violence, fear, pain, and anguish in the character of Pooro. The images of villagers beginning to flee, people murdered, hiding in homes as animals in a cage, charred corpses on street; crows and dogs eating flesh, a naked woman being paraded; convey the savagery and Pooro looks at the rampage unfolding as if someone had thrown  “glass splinters in her eyes” and final dejection as she puts it, “It was a crime to be born a girl.” The violence and the violation of a female body charts the history of partition. Pinjar is voice within the discourse of literature and not history; nonetheless it stretches the margins to offer space for exploration and expression of guilt, shame and paroxysmic violence.

Dr. Tanya Mander is Assistant Professor of English at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab.

TRAUMA AND SILENCE IN THE 

NARRATIVES OF PARTITION

Seema Sinha

The pain in the narratives of partition just refuses to die.  As the raw pink of the wound starts to heal, a fresh occurrence puts a knife through it, making the ordeal interminable and the pain never-ending. The evil returns with a vengeance, taking different garbs, the latest being the mindless loss of precious lives in the recent communal riots in Delhi. Whither the famous ‘Ganga-Jamuni’ culture that is the face of united India? Kabir? Nanak? Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti? Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia? Phoolwalon-ki -sair? Where has the trust and goodwill gone? At what cost? One is compelled to ask, in the words of the Sahitya Akademy Award winner, noted Hindi writer Kamleshwar: ‘Kitne Pakistan?’- How many more Pakistans?

Pakistan remains a metaphor for the toxic seeds of division sowed by the British, the lethal crop of which we are still harvesting. 72 years after the fractured independence that marked our freedom from the British rule, we are back to square one, our National Capital the most unsafe of places, and the rest of the country sitting on a powder-keg. The inclusive, ethical politics that the father of the Nation lived and died for is comatose and needs to be resuscitated with the memories of the loss that became our fate in 1947. How many Sakinas, Lajwantis, Vidyas and Zainabs will have to re-live the trauma of the loss of honor, identity and faith? How many mothers like Surjit will risk their own lives to save their children? Why is it that the victim invariably is a woman?

While problematizing the trauma and silence evident in these narratives, one finds a one-sided monologue positioned around gender and purity, with patriarchy acting as the bulwark against which the male-centric discourse ricochets. Partition stories like ‘Lajwanti’ by Rajinder Singh Bedi (1956) or ‘Open It’ by Sa’adat Hasan Manto (1946) draw our attention to the fact that oppression is not monochromatic in patriarchal societies, where seeing women either as ‘Devi’ (Goddess) or a ‘Patita’ (fallen woman, prostitute) is a tradition. The ‘Devi’ is an asexual being above carnal desires. A man may, like Sundarlal, accept Lajwanti after she has been rescued and returned to India from Pakistan, but in his heart, he remains the patriarch, who considers a woman defiled by another man a discard. Posturing for public was different from what one actually believed, as is evident from the behavior of Sunderlal who was not able to listen to Lajwanti’s tale of trauma and pain. Though a champion of the movement for rehabilitation of abducted women and the proponent of the ‘Dil mein basao’ initiative, he was not prepared to re-establish conjugal connect with his wife of several years. In the garb of calling her a ‘Devi’, he managed to establish the disconnect and denied her the rightful place in her own little world. He could not accept her as his conjugal mate. Either it was abject punishment, or the pedestal – there was no third alternative for a woman in our patrifocal world. Lajwanti, who was used to Sunderlal’s beatings, found this new position of ‘Devi’, devoid of the human touch, weird, and preferred the earlier situation where she found her bottom not big enough for her husband’s boots. To what extent can patriarchy manipulate a woman to degrade herself, and how males across communal divide were one in their exploitation of the gendered subaltern is evident in the partition stories of Bedi and  Kamleshwar.

Cathy Caruth, in her thought-provoking work ‘Trauma: Explorations in Memory’, challenges patriarchy: “Yet I cannot discount the literature which in the dark awakens the screams, which opens the wounds, and which makes one want to fall silent. The tragedies of Lajwanti and Sakina, though of different physical symptoms, represent a single pathology, a sclerosis of human relationships. Women have, in every age, been the target of power and its violence." If Lajwanti was abducted and violated by a man from the other side of the border, Manto’s Sakina was raped by men from her own country. The volunteers in whom her father Sirajuddin had reposed his trust were the ones who abducted and raped her, leaving her half-dead. Though her father was jubilant at the sign of movement in his daughter’s body, the doctor who was attending her shivered at the sight of the torn body. The woman was silenced – Lajwanti was hushed by her husband Sunderlal whenever she wanted to unburden herself of her trauma, and Sakina was muzzled by the brutality of the violation of her body. It reminds us of one of the recent horrors that India has witnessed – the horrific rape and assault of a young medical intern called Jyoti Singh, named ‘Nirbhaya’ because of her courage in the face of death. Woman’s body as a site of exploitation and a space for demonstrating male prowess is not unknown across religions, countries and cultures,  so powerfully portrayed  by Kamleshwar who sees no difference in ‘Hindu lust’ or ‘Muslim lust’.
Seema Sinha, BITS, Pilani 

Partition, Trauma and "Toba Tek Singh"

Navleen Multani

Literature envisages not only the political upheavel of Partition of India but also the psychological trauma of refugees. It voices the despair, anguish, displacement and disillusionment of the victims of Partition. Nostalgia, estrangement, alienation, dislocation and ruthless inhumanity ensues the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. Saadat Hasan Manto, master of Urdu fiction born in British India, a victim, writer and analyst of his times vividly recreates the horrors of the Partition period. Many of his short stories focus on the trauma of refugees and victims of the delineation of arbitrary borders (along the Radcliffe Line). The hypocrisy of the society, injustices and fraudulence of power and restlessness of refugees are central to these stories. The characters in Manto's stories confront mutilation, murder and rape.

Manto perceives the communal violence that accompanied Partition of "two peoples fanatically at odds, With their different diets and incompatible gods" ("Partition" WH Auden) as an act of collective madness. Manto recounts the "machinations" of the British rulers and events leading to Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar in the story, "It Happened in 1919" (1919 Ki ek bat). "The New Order" (Naya Qanun) puts forth the idea of a character who believes that the Hindu-Muslim riots are a consequence of a curse (divine wrath on the Emperor because of which Hindus and Muslims would remain at loggerheads and be ruled by foreigners). Manto reveals the hypocrisy of men in the turmoil and violence of Partition. He describes the abduction and rape of women in "Loosen Up" (Khol do). Manto voices the misery and plight of helpless and defenseless women in "I Swear by God" (Khuda ki Qasam).

Madness is a predominant metaphor in Manto's fiction. His story, "Toba Tek Singh", describes the exchange of Muslim, Hindu and Sikh lunatics between asylums in Pakistan and India. There is confusion amongst the inmates of the asylum regarding the country assigned to them. Bishan Singh, the central character of the story and inmate of an asylum in Pakistan for fifteen years, never sleeps. He mutters nonsensical Punjabi refrain. Bishan Singh belongs to a village Toba Tek Singh which is in Pakistan. Whenever he enquires about his home, he is given ambiguous answers. The response of the authorities escalates Bishan Singh's dilemma. While Bishan Singh's family migrates to India, he remains in Pakistan. The decision of governments of India and Pakistan to transfer lunatics from one country to the other brings an identity crisis in the inmates. Manto mixes the name of the place, village and individual. Hence, he refers to Bishan Singh as Toba Tek Singh (he is known by this name in the asylum).

Manto satirizes the religious dogmatism and politics of the period through the eccentricities of the lunatics. He inverts reality, assigns role of politicians to lunatics, to bring out irrationality and inhumanity prevalent during the Partition period. Manto interweaves the paranoia, bitterness and turmoil of the times with the metaphor of madness to recount the tortures and to reveal split identities of victims. The literary representations of aberration/insanity reveal cases of disequilibrium, loss of language, alienation and trauma emerging from the rupture of one's roots. Manto's invocation of Toba Tek Singh's mental illness and disorientation highlights the bewilderment of the common man. Manto's Partition narratives unflinchingly grasp the ethical catastrophe of Partition and question the logic of partitioning of consciousness. The historical trauma reverberating in individual, cultural and social spaces in his fictive world generates counter narratives which make the penumbral world of dissociation, moral ambiguity and inward decay visible.

Dr. Navleen Multani is Assistant Professor of English at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab.

Tasleema Nasreen's Lajja: 
A Tale of Parting Lines Bruised on the Hearts

Manju

Everyone is different from one another and these differences add beauty to the life therefore diversity is something which needs to be celebrated as it makes our planet unique and worth living. There are certain writers who are celebrating this diversity like T. S. Eliot who celebrates diversity in his “Definition of Culture” when he says that a nation should neither be too united nor too divided if its culture is to be flourished. But in the real world we find the things are quite contradictory as differences are despised in the world. Huge massacres are the example of this abomination. Humanity is slaughtered at the altar of differences be it religion, caste or nationality. Religion is the thread which binds and divides us simultaneously. The religion which teaches us that the creator is one and we all, irrespective of caste, class and religion are the offspring of the same God becomes the cause of hatred for those who are different from us in any sense. The people who otherwise live peacefully all of a sudden become blood thirsty at the time of communal riots. 

Tasleema Nasreen is also one of such writers who coloured her stories with the pain of atrocities that her characters go through at the time of partition and its aftermath. Lajja, a novel by Tasleema Nasreen portrays the story of Dutta family how religious identity dominates their national identity and they are compelled to leave the soil of Bangladesh which they love and respect from the core of their hearts. Sudhamoy with his wife Kironmoyee and their two children Suranjan and Maya live in Bangladesh. This family does not leave the country as most of their Hindu relatives do at the time of partition because they feel that religion does not matter for them. Rather they consider that the love for their motherland is their true religion. But this proves merely an illusion when Babri Masjid is demolished by some Hindu fundamentalists in India and the Muslim mob takes revenge upon the Hindus by raping Hindu women and attacking Hindu men living in Bangladesh. The people are forced to evacuate their homeland just because of being Hindus. Maya is abducted and brutally raped;  Suranjan is forced to identify himself with other Hindus when he finds his Muslim friends treating him as a foe. Those who love the land of Bangladesh from the core of their hearts are uprooted cruelly as their religious identity becomes more prominent than their national identity.
Dr. Manju is Associate Professor, Department of UILAH, Chandigarh University, Punjab. 

Harmonious Living and the Communal Divide: 

Some Reflections

Nibir K. Ghosh

“I know nothing of this silence except that it lies outside the reach of my intelligence, beyond words -- that is why this silence must win, must inevitably defeat me, because it is not a presence at all.” ― Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines

As an avid reader of Partition Narratives, I have often wondered why homo sapiens have, despite unprecedented enlightenment down the centuries, refused to yield to the voice of conscience and rationality in times of crisis and calamity. Innumerable stories of Partition, that I have been reading and re-reading for ages now, have always brought to the fore how an individual heart and soul that craves naturally for harmony and peace within and calm around falls an easy prey to the collective frenzy of violence, brutality, bestiality and inhumanness stirred by communal, caste or religious divide. Among the ravenous clouds of mass hysteria, hatred and violence as reflected in the stories by Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Khushwant Singh, Chaman Nahal, Amitav Ghosh, Kamleshwar, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Kamladevi Chattopadhyay etc. there do appear at times the silver lining of hope in universal brotherhood that give indications of the prevalence of better sense where individual relationships triumph over communal violence and hatred. However, such rare islands of hope often tend to get submerged in the huge sea of despair springing from fear, anxiety, disbelief and the like.

Nibir K. Ghosh is Chief Editor, Re-Markings (www.re-markings.com)