Partition in Novels

Sahitya Akademi
Literary Representation: Partition in Indian and Pakistani Novels in English Author(s): FRANCES HARRISON Source: Indian Literature, Vol. 34, No. 5 (145) (September-October, 1991), pp. 94-110 Published by: Sahitya Akademi Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23336961 . Accessed: 07/02/2014 08:59
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Literary Representation
Partition in Indian and Pakistani
FRANCES HARRISON
Novels in English
Partition or even Partition
Literature:.
.any writing that poses or attempts to answer a question or indirectly by the inspired pursue directly must be included within the body of Partition Literature.'1
is a term that suggests an easy and peaceful PARTITION division of territory. Instead, India's Partition on 15 August One million people in Northern 1947 resulted in a holocaust. India were killed in brutal and primitive ways. The largest two way land migration in history ensued, uprooting hundreds and thousands of long-entrenched people and transforming them into refugees overnight. It is only surprising that there is so relatively little fiction to its effect on people's written on Partition, proportionate of what was written there is, not long after 1947 lives. Much and finds difficulties in its choice of subject matter, possibly The novels have at their core caused by Partition's proximity. the problem of writing about the violence of Partition. Naturally they question why and how the holocaust occurred, but unnatur ally these two
novels,
questions
polarise
into opposing
strains within
The
the
sometimes
sparking
off peculiar
contradictions.
violence is an enormous question historical issue, which has to take into account varied groupings
of the cause of Partition's
Literary Representation / 95 of people, categorised according to religion, class, caste, political entities, at a number of allegiances and different geographical moments in time. This sort of scope is perhaps impossible for a
novel.
this approach, for it largely took the form of mob violence, a difficult subject to depict in terms of individuals. The Partition novelists try to extend the scope of their stories. They do this by, for example, juggling an irritatingly large number of different plots Malgonkar in A Bend in the Ganges. their main plot with a list Alternatively, they supplement of anecdotes, artlessly tacked on, to lend the novel an aura of The novels also tend to have so many universality and breadth. within one novel, as
Instead of focusing, for example, on the psychological motiv ation behind an individual perpetrator of violence, the novelists attempt to discuss the more abstract historical factors contributing to Partition. Perhaps the very nature of the violence itself dictates
that they offer their reader a list of dramatis to refer to in moments of confusion. This is indicative personae of the novelists' attempts to depict the whole of Partition in microcosm in their stories, rather than resting content with an characters unrepresentative slice.
fictional imaginings:
The novels
they claim
become
historical
more
than merely
representativeness.
plots as illustrations of their conception of the historical causes of Partition, but they pretend to do the reverse: deduce opinions from the plot, which masquerades as genuine historical events.
Some writers unconsciously of Partition; others falsify view project a selective and partial what they actually knew about the history of Partition. It is difficult to pin down the authorial intention underlying the writers' portrayals of Partition precisely. All the novelists use their biases all contradict
This puts an unusual symbolic weight upon the structure and events of the story. It also necessitates an historical examination of what the novelists tell their reader, either explicitly or implicit ly, about Partition. Aware of the highly political nature of their subject matter, Partition novelists stand united in claiming to be Taken as a whole their respective impartial and unpartisan. one another.
No. 145
6 j Indian itetatt At the other pole are the novelists* descriptive accounts of to its rationalised causes. This itself, as opposed highly imagistic description is characterised by its reluctance to question the causes of the violence; indeed the metaphoric logic the violence
of such passages attributes the human causes of the violence to some overwhelming, natural, non-human force. These descrip tions of what the violence was like are partitioned oiT from the historical Hence debate over its causation strains seem elsewhere in the novels. contradictory in their to refer to each other. This leads to a schizophrenic inability to Partition, both in the novels and in critical dis approach cussion. The degree of selectiveness in the novels' portrayal of Parti tion only becomes legible when set against an array of points of view. This casts an ironic light on the novelists' artistically based almost are claims to impartiality. Dinkar for example says of writers, 'They in their outlook'2, that is, perhaps the least communal these two
she has stated her allegiance to Kemal' (p. 287)], who believes in the other Muslim, Saleem. Saleem but is depicted by the author as
['My heart was with to India in contrast to loyalty his pledges loyalty to Pakistan, an opportunist who only goes to Pakistan because of the prospects of promotion. Rajan, in The Dark Dancer, describes himself as 'anxious to be reasonable in a climate of prejudice' and says the writer is neutral because 'he establishes the tensions but doesn't make the choice'4. Anand claims that 'the Likewise novelist offers in the myths he builds disinterested truth, the truth above all personal
bias of India and Pakistan, by the Hindu/Muslim Attia in her Hosain, novel, says she passionately respectively. believed in not appearing 'prejudiced, taking sides'3. Yet earlier unaffected Kemal
Despite their claims to impartiality, some writers do reveal a sort of them/us dissociation from the actual perpetrators of This is perhaps because the educated classes, to violent acts. Sept.-Oct. 1991
up. . .the most truth'5, but this is necessarily flawed by his self-avowed Marxist An historical examination of these writers' novels standpoint. reveals how bogus such claims of impartiality are.
Literary Representation / 9) these novelists decidedly belong, were probably least involved in actually committing the murders and other atrocities of Partition. The novels' readership within their respective countries would be severely limited by their being written in the which
medium of English (in 1941, for example, only 3% of the total population could read English6). These restrict the readership of these novels to an educated, urban minority. These will know as little about Punjabi peasants as the absurd Marxist agitator, Iqbal, with his water-purifying pills and hygenic food supplies, in Khushwant Singh's novel A Train to Pakistan. Zulfikar Ghose, for instance, is ambivalent about acknowledging responsibility for the violence. He writes, for example: 'On the one hand, there was a tremendous love between Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs; on the other, they killed each other with a savage hatred', but then goes on to say that these tragic years left behind 'the taint of sin on all of us. . .' (my emphases). Similarly, Rajan does this when he says 'But there are plenty to whom pulling a knife comes easier. . .but down in many of us there's a core of desper ation
waiting to explode. . .' (p. 76): he implies that we are all potentially violent and therefore guilty, but that only other people do the dirty business of actually killing. In Azadi the
killers are continually described as evil. The procession of abduc
outlook
ted Muslim women is described as 'the very core of evil' and 'evil incarnate' (p. 296). This demarcation of the perpetrators as evil, distances them from the narrator and the point of view of the reader, who condemns them as foreign to his own humane to share a feeling of 'common fails consequently guilt' (Rajan, p. 259). The novels themselves also question this claim to impartiality and
they show of the differing arguments voiced by their characters. This invites the reader to take a similarly sceptical approach to the selective nature of the experi ence he is offered in the novels. Such a sceptical approach an awareness of the historical issues. In short, the depends upon novels have within them an inbuilt, reflexive questioning of all claims to impartiality, which rebounds upon their critics. Indeed, No. 145
in the critical awareness
98 / Indian Literature inadvertently the novels admit their own potential political bias and manipulation when they demonstrate that in 1947, the 'tales of horror and disgust' told by incoming refugees played an As the character important role in increasing the violence. Chaudhri Barkat Ali says in Azadi: 'When refugees with stories
of personal misfortunes land here, the politicians use them to their advantage to fan up further hatred.'8 Likewise their a what sensitive reception suggests political subject this is. One writer on Partition, Sadat Hasan Manto, has been imprisoned for the political import of his work in Pakistan. The politics of India and Pakistan today Partition. I have
are still enmeshed in the history of
concentrated upon the violence of Partition as a central issue in the novels. However, for some writers this would seem to be a manifestation of prejudice against the creation of Memon represents this particular stance. He complains of his compatriots: 'Unfortunately, for most Urdu writers, India's division and the subsequent emergence f Pakistan had no deeper meaning than communal violence!' (p. 382) and therefore 'one gets the impression that the writer does not like the Parti tion. . .not seeing any deeper historical significance' (p. 388). Memon points out the political implications of concentrating Pakistan.
merely upon the communal violence and generally highlights the fact that Partition is a highly sensitive subject about which it is At very difficult to be impartial in everyone's eyes at once. another extreme is this Indian which standpoint, to its a of an Indian writer on holocaust, similarly shuts eyes Partition: unusual
It may ots and seem the one to be a short period in terms of the sacrifice inflicted upon for the
motherland, definitely
the will to face the brutal
patri of the country, this was socio-political upheaval of the most glorious periods in the history of India.9
tortures
In a similar fashion, Nayantara Sahgal ignores the Partition violence completely in her autobiography and in communal She writes about Partition based doing this she is distinctive. Sept.-Oct. 1991
Literary Representation / 99 of her uncle Nehru and cousin Indira solely upon observations she claims to be 'like many others'10. Gandhi. this, Despite Entrenched in the Congress elite she also entirely ignores the Muslim League, which claimed to represent one quarter of India's Partition Instead When it comes to the before Partition. population she mentions them except in passing. riots, scarcely to dwell upon Delhi as 'a vital new Sahgal prefers
Sahgal somehow manages also to ignore the three hundred thousand Muslims who had been forced to leave Delhi and the siderable
216) even though by August 1947, capital waking to life'(p. communal violence was widespread. Novelist Nahal describes it as 'mass killing or organized killing' (Azadi, p. 125) with 'a movement behind the violence to annihilate. . .en masse' (p. 126).
six hundred thousand refugees from Pakistan who put a con strain on the city's resources, described so vividly by the novel Azadi (pp. 368-9). Even if she had only looked out of of the Nehru residence where she lived after Inde would have noticed the crowds of desperate she pendence, from Pakistan that Azadi describes, trying in vain to refugees attract the attention of their Prime Minister to their plight. Sahgal merely asks: 'Will anyone ever understand why Gandhiji
was shot or for that matter Christ crucified or Socrates con
the window
of politicians in Delhi, India were it not for the machinations never have needed to be partitioned. Obviously the historical issues regarding Partition are particularly complex, would not least because the sheer size and diversity of India render No. 145
the violence but is dishonest about when it started, in order and Muslims living in blissful harmony to depict Hindus He does this to stress his opinion that, until after Partition.
Partition violence. Sahgal's view on Partition is closest to Indian nationalist propaganda and is blatantly unrepresentative in what it choses to show of Partition. Khushwant Singh's A Train to Pakistan does not ignore
demned to death?' (p. 218), rather than asking why a million Indians were being killed. She glorifies the birth of India's and its political leaders, omitting to mention Independence
iO / IndianLiterature
generalisations abnormally inaccurate, but when an historical account pretending to be representative and typical, is in fact blatantly implausible, it betrays more than merely the incom A journalist by profession, Singh pleteness of a generalsation. has
falsified historical facts in an overtly historical novel. I do not wish to subjugate fiction to some arbitrary notion of fact, were it even possible, but it is significant that Singh should claim
impartiality and yet be dishonest about the history of Partition he knew. Singh depicts the villagers of Mano Majra as politically unaware even after Independence ('Independence meant little or
nothing to these people' and 'no one knows of Partition in Mano This is extremely unlikely, given that Singh sets the Majra'11). not only on the Punjab border between Pakistan and village in India August 1947, but also on the railway route between the two countries, along which much of the killing occurred. More over the Punjab had already experienced communal violence, before Partition: 'By 20 March casualty figures in Punjab showed is 2,049 killed, and 1,103 injured'12). Mano Majra's population half Sikh and half Muslim; since Singh is quoted by Robin Jeffrey as his source ['The Sikhs began to arm from April 1947 Singh' (p. 159)] in an article on 'The according to Khushwant Punjab Boundary Force and the Problem of Order, August 1947'), it cannot be argued that Singh did not himself know of the mounting violence all over the Punjab. Other novels, such as Malgonkar's A Bend in the Ganges, stress the political awareness even in the most obscure
areas of India, thus contradicting of writes 'And even in that Debi-dayal: Malgonkar Singh. remote corner of the country, so far away from its heart, he could see signs of the national ferment. . .'13); as well as British preparations for withdrawal from India and as early as Spring 1944 'things moving to a climax of violence' (pp. 266-7). Nahal's novel Azadi states that the first attack on a refugee train going from Pakistan
to India was in mid-July 1947 and that people He were already in refugee camps at the beginning of August. shows that by 17 August, with the Boundary Commission an nouncement, 'violence had reached an unprecedented pitch in the Sept.-Oct. 1991
Literary Representation / 101 Punjab' (p. 214). This novel also shows Sikh and Hindu minori ties in Pakistan beginning to train in guerilla activities a year before Partition: 'each house had its store of acid-filled bottles, bricks and heavy sticks'(p. 71). Obviously, there is not one violence that prefigured opinion about when the communal Partition actually commenced, and it is hard to pinpoint a time when the Partition of India became a certainty. To claim, as Khushwant Singh does, that an entire village right in the middle of the action was oblivious of it, even after it had happened, is absurd. Perhaps the reason ignorance their level of political of his fictional why Khushwant Singh villagers, is so that he stresses the can increase
innocence, even if this is at the cost of his This is the patronisingly making peasants look stupid. liberal vision of intellectual's the Indian typical simple peasant. Singh acquits the masses from the charge of premeditated, organised arms build-ups and he depicts them as the victims of manipulation, fiery rhetoric and anger of the moment. There is, however, considerable historical debate as to whether Partition was brought about by high level political negotations amongst
the leaders in Delhi (as Jalal's book14 on the history of Jinnah's
negotiations with Congress assumes) or as a result of widespread demotic movements. Singh ignores the argument that Partition came about as a result of a mass popular demand for it. Thro ugh this device, he stresses that Partition was not the result of cultural incompatibility, for he shows a village of Muslims and Sikhs coexisting in complete harmony, right up until after Their harmony is disturbed only as a result Independence. of remote politicians in Delhi. of the decisions Nowadays with the separatist Sikh movement in India seeking to create their own which some independent nation and partition India once again, would argue is the logical outcome of the 1947
Partition which legitimised separatism, Khushwant Singh stresses the former compatibility and alliances of the Sikh and Hindu religions. In his essay in The Punjabi Story15, (written on 23 June 1984 shortly after the Amritsar Temple Operations), he stresses No. 145
102 / Indian Literature the fact that the Sikh religion was created out of Hinduism. By A had in Train to the to contrast, Pakistan, Singh preface emphasised that the original intention behind the creation of the Sikh religion was to draw Muslims and Hindus together. Now the reader of the role of the revivalist Arya Samaj in 'bringing Sikhs back to Hinduism' (p. 5). He also suggests that Hindu and Sikh collaboration in murdering Muslims during Partition riots is another good reason for their cultural movement he reminds
riots broke out. . .Hindus compatibility: 'As. . .Hindu-Muslim and Sikhs once again formed a united front' (p. 6). The two arguments juxtaposed show Singh's wish, at the cost of virtually
contradicting himself, to show that it is possible for two different be they Muslims and communities to coexist harmoniously, and It is not Hindus or Hindus Sikhs. surprising therefore that Khushwant Singh, who was a Sikh M.P. in India, is, as he says, on the Sikh
oppose
extremists'
Partition.
hit-list, for going

As Memon points
to such lengths to
out, to emphasise
a further
only the violence in Partition can be implicitly to say it was To emphasise the wrong and with it the creation of Pakistan. lack of violence preceding the decision to partition, is also to imply that Partition was wrong. One way of explaining the violence of Partition is to refer to the long history of cultural incompatibility between Muslims and Hindus. Malgonkar's A Bend in the Ganges addresses this ques tion of whether the two communities were necessarily two nations. One
claims that in the incipient critic, Gomathi Narayanan, the future tensions be Shafi and between Debi-dayal, rivalry and Muslims are Hindus tween apparent. This critic's interpret ation attempts to view Partition as portrayed as inevitable, but such an interpretation is flawed. In the novel the rivalry between Shafi is not on religious grounds, but more a and Debi-dayal result of their age difference. Malgonkar does say of the Freedom
Fighters:
primordial pulls. . .' (p. 85). This seems to assume cultural con flict is inevitable. However, taken in the context of the whole this is undercut questioning of racial by Debi-dayal's novel, Sept.-Oct. 1991
they
were
'not
able
to withstand
the
more
fundamental,
Literary Representation / 103 hatred even after it has caused his imprisonment. For Debi-dayal it is as if 'the clocks had stopped, as though the Hindus and Muslims were still united. . (p. 296). This character implicitly conflict. need for their the Malgonkar writes of the questions were and the learning to hate each other League, 'they Congress with the bitterness of ages' (p. 75), which both implies that the hatred of ages is old and yet also being learned for the first time. This pinpoints the question of whether a tradition of enmity and incompatibility existed before Partition. Shaft of course says, 'The Hindus and Muslims w ere traditional enemies' (p. 288). He goes on to argue that by sheer weight of numbers the Hindus are bound
This is in direct contrast to his to crush the Muslims. earlier belief that 'the Hindus can never constitute a danger to the Muslimsnot here in the Punjab' (p. 84). His very conviction that Muslims and Hindus have been traditional enemies is thrown into ironic perspective given his prior leadership of the Freedom Fighters, a joint Hindu-Muslim terrorist group. Thus Malgonkar seems to establish the tensions between different opinions and evades making the choice between them himself. It is only critics who nail dow n the ambiguity of this novel's stance.
One opinion that writers assert is that the violence which
tore the Punjab apart in 1947 was merely the intensification of communal violence that had been simmering for some years. The emergence of communal Historically this is questionable. riots cannot be firmly dated even to this century as Christopher Religi Bayly's article on 'The Pre-History of "Communalism":
sees the pre-1947 riots as an endorsement of the two nation
ous Conflict in India, 1700-1860'16 demonstrates. A novelist who assumed that India
had always comprised two theory (which based on the two major religions) is Zulfikar separate countries, He writes in his Confessions of a Native Alien, that the Ghose. forties were:
. . .the years of death in India. A plague scourged and Moslems form of communal rioting. . .Hindus by the clearly thousands, that India by the would village, to have be partitioned the country killing into two each in the other
by the train-load,
demonstrated countries.
(P. 13) No. 145
104 / Indian Literature Ghose assumes that all the riots during the forties were com munal in cause; Sumit Sarkar though in his article 'Popular and National 1945-47' says of the Movements Leadership, troubles in Calcutta before August 1946: 'a striking feature was the total submergence of communal divisions'17. Many of these riots may in fact have been initiated as social uprisings. For example, impoverished Muslim peasants in Bengal, where most of the pre-1946 riots occurred, rioted against the oppression of In Azadi, Nahal wealthy Hindu landlords and moneylenders. shows awareness of this: 'Heads shape Zulkifar was were broken and later communal This contradicts given to these fights' (p. 99). who not assumes all the riots of the Ghose that only
forties had a religious basis, but also makes the assumption that the steps that led to the creation of Pakistan were directly influenced by the rioting, which again is questionable. Some historians, such as Ayesha Jalal, argue that Pakistan is more the result of negotiations at a national level than of popular politics. Ghose, like many Muslims, asserts that the Partition of India was necessary, in spite of its violence. Not only do Partition novelists' allegedly all-encompassing and impartial representations of Partition contradict one another, but they sometimes even contradict themselves. Chaman Nahal does this within his novel, Azadi, where he says of Muslims and Hindus in Sialkot
in 1947: 'there was utter harmony between he has already revealed that killing has but them. . .' (p. 54), been going on for many months (p. 41) and later says'It was only during the last year they had formed a youth club to face (p. 71). Such cracks in the surface of their discus the strain that pulls the novelists in two opposing indicate sion, directions: towards a theoretical and intellectualised recreation of what happened, much influenced by what they would like to read into the past with hindsight, and simultaneously towards the Muslims'
an honest account of what they remember of their experience of
desire to excuse his the time in question. Similarly, Tandon's home town from a long history of political awareness, leads him He says awareness of Gandhi's into contradictions. political Sept.-Oct. 1991
Literary Representation / 105 ideas 'hit Gujarat without much warning or build-up' and changed life there18. Then a few pages on, he claims that Gujarat was not a very politically aware place and that politics 'did not affect us much in Gujarat' (p. 122), which seems incompatible
particularly vivid events on both sides of the border between India and Pakistan. In Azadi the majority of the novel deals with the agonising experience of Hindus leaving Pakistan, but in order to make a show of impartiality, Nahal spends a few pages mentioning equivalent atrocities performed in India against In passing he refers to 'a train with hund departing Muslims.
certain
discuss all the strands of Partition within their plots. The novels' structure becomes representative of the whole historical event, so that in order to give a semblance of fairness, the novelists repeat
impartiality in its structuring which seeks to effect a balance of each side's atrocities. In this balancing the novelists acknowledge the symbolic nature of their stories, which tacitly claim to
with his earlier remark. This sort of contradiction is the result of the unresolved tension between describing a genuine historical situation that really happened and inventing a fiction. Partition Literature does make a token gesture towards
reds of slaughtered Muslims. . .' and 'a procession of Muslim women' (p. 327), which parallels the vividly described procession of Hindu women earlier in the book, but does not carry the same emotional weight as the first account, although it may be In A Train to Pakistan Khushwant emblematic of the violence. main the balances story of the train full of Muslims being Singh
imply that these events have a symbolic universality beyond their literal significance. These novelists mentioning the atrocities committed on both sides of the border, do not give them both a parity of emotional weight and thus do not succeed in achieving their desired impartiality. The efforts that the novelists make to explain the violence's No. 145
attacked, with a supplementary list of Sikh victims of Muslim atrocities. Clearly it is an impossible task to represent the widespread scale of the violence in Northern India at Partition: writers tend to focus upon a small canvas and consequently
106 I Indian Literature causes is at odds with the air of inexplicability that is propagated by the imagery of the novels. The imagery seems to explain the violence away as some kind of act of God, beyond man's control. They do this through the underlying logic of recurrent imagery
in their descriptions of the violence. One of the strands of to that is most common all the novels is of the violence imagery Such as a river, flood or storm. natural imagery suggests that the killings were akin to a natural disaster and individual responsibility. Clearly this dissociates Partition from the realm of human responsibility. have no qualms about depicting the gory details Chaman Nahal states the deaths them all: not a matter of the murders of Yet the writers of the violence.
had 'one thing in common to the brutality of the act. . .the killers had a macabre fascination for ripping open stomachs' (p. 126), and describes the opposition's abducted women being:
. . .subjected to mass rape. . .The rape was followed by other atroci off the breasts, and even death. Many of tbe pregnant ties, chopping women had their wombs torn open. The survivors were retained for humiliations. . .In the mean time more women repeated rapes and were abducted and the cycle was repeated all over again, (pp. 293-4)
It is odd that the novelists attribute the blame for such brutality to some sort of overpowering external force. The metaphoric the perpetrators of all responsibility for the logic absolves killings. Rajan talks of the exodus of refugees as:
. . .the like two immense disaster with implacable reaching another endless rivers pressure the anger orgy, down, convulsion processions moving of festered their moving pain and westwards and eastwards. . .
onward,
unseeing, dictated.
as the irrevocably, . .But on the banks of the
smouldered, violence. brain 162)
a compulsive
purposeless the flooding forcing the (p. of hate.
destroying and pillaging . .inching forward in the its unappeasable fever, to yet another and
with
demented
hands
By depicting the refugees as an autonomous procession, predeter mined to flow, unconscious of their actions, along a certain Sept.-Oct. 1991
Literary Representation / 107 with no choice to do anything other than what their pain dictates, Rajan absolves them of their burden of responsi bility. The cause for the violence is removed from the individual perpetrators into an independent agent of destruction: 'the anger'. The people who commit violence are described metonymically as 'demented hands', divorced from their respective bodies. Rajan course, continues the water imagery consistently throughout the book and other writers such as Prakash Tandon also use river imagery control over their own lives to depict the lack of individuals' Azadi in Nahal's the violent mob is described (p. 249). Similarly, river breaking a small dyke with all its force' an image that absolves the mob of blame. Malgonkar (p. 88), this also uses image for the same purpose describing 'two great rivers of humanity flowing in opposite directions along the roads and railways, jamming, clashing, pitifully inadequate Hosain describes 'the riots that colliding head-on. . .' (p. 326). the the East to the West to the across from country spiralled their bloody of a spiralling as 'a swollen
towards gaining murderous momentum climax. . .' (p. 282) also suggesting with her image tornado that the violence was akin to a natural comparing the violence of Partition with natural as floods the imagery implies that the blame does the people involved and purifies them of guilt. North
happening. By disasters such not rest upon
strains of imagery are based on natural and Other the this of whether unavoidable events; question begs one of inevitable or the issues the was novels Partition not,
are so keen to attack elsewhere. For example a constant com
parison of the political tension in August 1947 to the tension in the weather preceding the monsoons, which were late that year. There are also many images which have at their core the notion of partition, be they images of birth and separation from the mother; images of schizophrenia and the divided self; of death; the parting of body and soul; dismemberment: the parting of limbs; or of uprooting; the parting of the roots from the soil. Attia Hosain describes Pakistan and India, as 'separated Siamese of Partition, the progeny twins' (p.285). This No. 145
IOS / Indian Literature is ambiguous as to whether their Partition was a natural and their birth seems natural, but their separation event: necessary unnatural. Partition had says that her dreams of change and of 'birth without pain' (p. 278), always that the birth of Pakistan with its accompanying been Attia Hosain
suggesting violence are as natural as the birth of a child and as inevitable. Disease is a recurrent metaphor for Partition; as Tuker puts Morris-Jones talks of the problem of India it: 'Partitionitis'19. for the British as one that requires '. . .not an anaesthetic for the surgical operation but preventive medicine to secure a harmonious sub-continent'20. Zulfikar Ghose sees 'the murders in India. . .as an illness' (p. 34) which parallels his own illness at the time of Partition and calls communal rioting 'a plague' (p. 32) which suggests that India just had bad luck in catching the virus, were that fostered rather than asking what the conditions the disease, a question which the novelists ask at length in their books. Rajan also uses images of fever to explain violence:
'Maybe when the. . .fever got back to normal' (p. 205), 'or the
fever in the mind flashing to violence, as the more ordinary, everyday contagion [cholera] was revealed' (p. 226) and 'the throb of the other fever rising' (p. 242), which suggest that the criminals who caught the 'illness' (p. 263) are guiltless victims.
Thus images of disease imply that the communal violence of Partition was a passing and uncontrollable abnormality in the well-being of the body politic. It is impossible to divorce such imagery from the political connotations inherent in these novel ists' discussion of Partition. To write about Partition are terms of the discussion novelists are themselves at all is difficult given that the Partition constantly questioned. dubious about the precise relationship
of their fictions to history and politics. The writers are unsure about the symbolic weight which their stories carry; the novels are symbolic in so far as they claim to represent the main issues and events of Partition in miniature, in their fictions. It is this very" symbolic import that Rajan for example attempts to deny in his conclusion to The Dork Dancer, There is considerable Sept.-Oct. 1991
Literary Representation debate
/ 109
conscious discussion of the issues of Partition. Kamala's heroism, like Jugga's in A Train to Pakistan, offers a consolation to cancel out the 'sense of fatalistic despair engendered by the magnitude of the evil let loose amongst men'21 which Gomathi Narayanan
over the meaning of the death of the heroine, Kamala. to claim it has no meaning: 'Don't think her death tries Rajan was some kind of symbol' (p. 283) but clearly the fact that his main character, a Hindu, suddenly sacrifices her life to save a Muslim girl is important in the context of the novel's self
has claimed characterises these novels. Kamala's martrydom we are told is 'not in a marching and singing of meanings. . (p. 280). Rajan tries to deny the meaning of his story's events, but nothing is futile and random in a novel, especially a Rajan also contradicts tragic novel, least of all its conclusion. was death Kamala's himself by saying 'unavenged, futilely on a back
street. . .dissolved by the next violence' (p. 280) and yet later says, 'Maybe it did stop the riots. I think so myself' (p. 308). death on the general In contemplating the effect of Kamala's events of Partition, Rajan pretends to be considering a real event of the past, rather than a fictional construct of his own creation.
He encourages us to regard Kamala's death in relation to the
history of Partition he depicts, but not in its relation to the rest of the novel's symbolic, condensed version of Partition. This sort of confusion over the symbolic nature of their stories is typical of Partition novelists: writers simultaneously deny in their imagery and attempt to exploit in their structure, their fiction's political connotations.
Endnotes
1. 2. 3. 4. M.U. Modern In Indian Sunlight Memon, Asian 'Partition Studies, Vol. Literature: Vol. V, no. A Study p. 29. 1961), p. 305. 1959), pp. 164-65. (London, of Intizar Husain', 4, p. 379. 1, 1962, Dancer,
1980, Column
Literature, on a Broken Rajan,
(London,
Balanchandra
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Partition
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Partition in Novels

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Sahitya Akademi

Partition or even Partition

of the cause of Partition's

in the critical awareness

are still enmeshed in the history of

the will to face the brutal

hit-list, for going

(P. 13) No. 145

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smouldered, violence. brain 162)

purposeless the flooding forcing the (p. of hate.

happening. By disasters such not rest upon

Literary Representation debate

Literature, on a Broken Rajan,

llO / Indian Literature

While Memory Serves, of Transfer 'The Asian Studies,

Modern Gomathi India (Arts),

Narayanan, 'Indo-Anglian in Expiation', Panjab Vol. VIII, No. 1, 1963, p. 35.

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