The objective of the proposed research is to understand the catastrophe of 1947 known as Partition of India- Pakistan in South Asian Literature with the references from Indian and Diaspora Writers. The study will be focused on how literature perceived the event and its repercussions on the lives of people. The project is based on the hypothesis that the relevance and continuity of South Asian Partition Literature preserves in Twentieth century where echo of partition can still be heard and felt.
Twentieth century saw rise of many new nations Ireland, Cyprus, Palestine, Korea, Vietnam, Hongkong, Poland, Germany, India, Pakistan and many others. Holocaust had been the darkest chapter in the history followed by the upheaval created by Partition of 1947. The moment of Partition was captured and presented by the Historians barring it of any social and humane facet. Though there were many Indian novelists who wrote intensively on the social and economic scenario of early twentieth century but it was not until 1950s when Partition Literature started to make its niche. Pinjar was the first text in Punjabi which told the barbaric tale of Partition. Khushwant Singh translated Pinjar to English and published his own debut novel, Train to Pakistan.
For the purpose of proposed analysis, instances would be taken from selected novels Amrita Pritam’s Punjabi novel Pinjar (1950), translated into English as The Skeleton by Khushwant Singh (1956), Khushwant Singh’s The Train to Pakistan (1956), Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas (1974) translated to English by author in 2001 , Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man (1988), and Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers (1999) and others that depict the engraved footprints on the soul of the humanity.
The Partition of India in 1947 was the greatest manmade calamity that took place in the 20th century. It happened when the British Empire announced independence to India and its territory was fragmented into Pakistan and India. It left India wheedling through the violence which was largely communal in nature between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs with a great sense of insecurities, fears, and anxieties among them. As cultural historian, Gyanendra Pandey pointed Partition as ‘moment of rupture’ disrupting the episteme of its time frame. It was not simply construction of two new ethnically different state nations on a new constitutional or political arrangement but rather it was a radical re-structuring of communities, regions, religions, culture, heritage with unprecedented mass-movement across the borders with a haunting number of atrocities like abductions, rapes, murders, forceful marriages and even the atrocities unimaginable. According to United Nations Human Refugee Commission. “an estimated 14 million people were displaced at the time, as Muslims in India fled to Pakistan and Hindus in Pakistan fled to India.” (1)
Men, women and children were captured, raped, slayed and disfigured alike. Families left their ancestral lands, properties and crossed the borders thus ended up becoming immigrants. Influx of people were observed from East Pakistan and West Pakistan to India to seek refuge. Several Muslim families had migrated from Punjab and UP to Karachi, likewise several Hindu and Sikh families migrated to India and settled in Punjab, Delhi and Bombay. Historian V.N. Dutta said, Delhi “the city that was once a Mughal city, then a British city, had by the 1950s emphatically become a Punjabi city”. Partition of 1947 saw unprecedented proportion of people crossed over borders in a short span of few months to live with angst of lost home and people left behind. Almost every second family in Punjab – India, and Pakistan – survived a tale of sorrows, pains, anguish, helplessness and traumatic experience. A smaller number of people were interested to leave their place of origin, as Iman Baksh said “We were born here. So were our ancestors. We have lived amongst you as brothers.” (Train to Pakistan 133)
It was the time when society was pre-dominantly structured in patriarchal system and unforgivable savaged actions were condoned by people. As Khushwant Singh said in an interview, “The belief that I had cherished all my life were shattered. I had believed in the innate goodness of the common man. But the division of India had been accompanied by the most savage massacres known in the history of the country. I had believed that we Indian were peace loving and non-violent…After the experience of autumn of 1947, I could no longer subscribe these views. I became… an angry middle-aged man, who wanted to shoot his disenchantment…I decided to try my hand at writing …” (2)
Train to Pakistan depicted the dark reality of Partition with no sugar-coated version but rather it unveiled the ugly scenario of distrust which followed the times of Partition. Unlike the Holocaust, in Partition, both sides were guilty of violence, “The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped” (Train to Pakistan,1). Villages which were once cohabited by Hindus-Muslims and Sikhs were swayed in the hatred so deep that they wanted the “train to carry as many dead to the other side as you have received” (Train to Pakistan,159). They were no more people of one region but rather they were now of different religions. A Single line drawn on land had severed so many hearts that no-one felt safe anymore if not surrounded by people of their own religion. Abductions, rapes, forced marriages were innumerable that no accurate data had been available to know how many became victim to “sexual savagery” (3).
Pinjar (Punjabi: ਪਿੰਜਰ,پنجر , Urdu: پنجر, Hindi: पिंजर, English/Translation: The Skeleton ) was a novel written by Amrita Pritam first person narrative which was akin to the reality faced by women and society of her times. The word Pinjar literally means ‘a skeleton’ in Punjabi language. The novel encapsulated the poignant atmosphere of 1947. In an interview with Andrew Whitehead, Pritam had said that she wrote this novel while she was travelling from Lahore to Dehradun based on the reports she heard of abductions, rapes and killings; this novel started with an invocation to a Sufi poet , “Aj aakhan Waris Shah Nun” to raise himself from dead and see the deplorable situation women of his land had suffered. The story of Pinjar revolve around a girl named Pooro who is raised in a Hindu household family where woman is defined by her religion and her voice most of the times subdued or unheard. Plight of woman presented in this is in resonance with its title.
Women of 1947 faced untold pains and miseries. They suffered twice, once by the iron hand of patriarchy and another by religion. Women’s body had become the site for battle wounds, Pooro wasn’t accepted by her parents after she was abducted by Muslim as “If we dare to help you, we will be cut down and finished without a trace of blood left behind” (Pinjar,23) enforcing the fear of Hindu-Muslim rivalry. Death was a preferable option by many in times of uncountable sufferings and brutalities. After the Sikh couple, Harnam and Banto was burglarized and their son was forcefully circumcised and transformed to Islam couple flees from their town and found themselves on mercy of others. They were clear on their next action if they were caught in any unwanted circumstances, “if we find them hostile, then I shall first finish you off with my gun and then kill myself” (Tamas,227). Bachan Singh killed his daughter-in law Kusum to save her from the atrocities by other people-
Kusum, she was my (Papaji’s) responsibility… I said to myself: Kusum… is young, still of childbearing age. I (Papaji) cannot endure even the possibility that some Muslim might put his hands upon her. Every day I had been hearing that the seeds of that foreign religion were being planted in Sikh women’s wombs. No, I must do my duty… Roop knows because Papaji’s story cannot be so very different from other men who see their women only as bearers of blood, to do what women are for… Revati Bhua was right-Papaji [Roop’s father] thinks that for good-good women, death should be preferable to dishonour.(What the Body Remembers,453)
Das has aptly summed up the scenario of 1947 in her statement- “Family narratives abound on men who were compelled to kill their women to save their honour. Such sacrificial deaths are beatified in family narratives while women who were recovered from the abductors and returned to their families or who were converted to the other religion and made new lives in the homes of their abductors hardly ever find a place in these narratives, although they occur frequently in literary representations” (4)
Many Sikh women dreaded more molestation that they dived into the well and executed themselves during partition. Manto was perhaps the most sardonic writer of Partition times. In his short story, “Khol Do” he portrayed the downfall of human mind when a young girl who was almost dead on hospital’s stretcher opens strings of her trouser when she heard the words ‘khol do’ assuming she would be raped again though this time this utterance was simply said to open the windows.
The India Partition left uncountable people displaced, hurt and/or dead. This period has been renowned from several viewpoints, but the novel of Sidhwa approached the matter from the little girl’s point-of-view who existed through the distresses, “How long does Lahore burn? Weeks? Months?… the fire could not have burned for months and months…But in my memory it is branded over an inordinate length of time: memory demands poetic license.” (Ice Candy Man, 139). Ice Candy Man was a heart-breaking story where a Hindu Ayah was abducted and sold in brothel by Ice Candy Man because he wanted to avenge the death of his sister along with other women who came back dead in Gurdaspur Train “… young women among the dead! Only two gunny-bags full of women’s breasts!’ (Ice Candy Man 149). The story often found hilarious points-of-departure to remark on, and given the reader the innocence of a point-of-view of a child.
The narrative also presented just how significant community was, especially during unrestrained times. Lenny rescued her Ayah with the help of Rodabai and helped Ayah to cross over the border to reach her family. Ice Candy Man captured the essence and ideology of partition “It is sudden. One day everybody is themselves – and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols. Ayah – she is also a token. A Hindu”. (Ice Candy Man 93).
