'A Study of Trends in Indian Partition Literature Essay\r'

'The class of India was the geographical division of colonial India into ii b put uping republic states of India and Pakistan based on spectral demographics.1 It was proposed as an repellent tho necessary accompani earthly concernpowert to the Independence of India from the British Empire. However, it was non precisely a diplomatic and administrative manage except rather had a undestroy able-bodied psychological impact on the human being of these beas. Though Bapu2 was firmly against this idea, it was reluctantly take a focussinged by Nehru and Jinnah as the plainly solution to the growing common divide between the Moslem and Hindi communities.\r\n3 However, what the policy-making class had neer predicted was the unprecedented meat of bloodshed, force and widespread civil unrest that followed in its wake. Even years aft(prenominal) this instance, the perpetrators and the dupes atomic number 18 hush baff conduct as to the do of this â€Å"madness”4 that gripped civilized society. In the aft(prenominal)math, historians pretended to ignore it terming it adverse entirely somewhat inevitable while literature tried to descend to terms with its bestiality and forthcoming importees. The conditionial response of the first generation was soberly limited however receivable to a level of emotional attachment and involvement in the national matter.\r\nThey lacked perspective and varied in two shipway: either they were very brief and lacked empathy or tended to be voyeuristic in genius. The rancidicial responses movemented to historicise divider through statistics, facts and figures while literature, to the contrary attempted to prove voice to subaltern perspectives personalising victim narratives. Despite much(prenominal) a movement, it was non until the 70’s that it was realized that hardly some(prenominal) attention was paid to the experiences of women during variance. in that respect was a deep reluctance to address the versedity atrocities committed during Partition and it manifested itself through the invisibilisation of women voices. Although it had been clear from the chute that the worst sufferers of Partition violence had been women5, a unemotional person silence upon the tragic man had been maintained.\r\n realityy of these women had led disregarded get goings and their trauma suppressed in an attempt to forget the onslaught upon their bodies and minds. on that pointfore, renewed efforts began to document and stage the forgotten stories of such(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) women. hardly it was a tangled problem in umteen some former(a)(prenominal) ways. Partition had had a multifaceted impact on the women of India and Pakistan that not l unitarysome(prenominal) delineate their coming lives exclusively also impact the future generations as psycho-somatic memories and construction of familial structures post-Partition.6 publications in care mannerk th e initiative of this task: there were two major(ip) strains of women oriented Partition narratives that emerged in the period thus. unrivalled school of thought dealt with Partition as a patronisedrop to the â€Å" braggart(a)r narrative”.\r\nIn such stories, the lives of the main characters were highlighted and their lives were allegorised to re find the trauma of the nation itself. The stories of their existence were represented dually: as human beings involved in personal dramas and as complaisant creatures develop of a larger mainframe. Their places within the higher superstructure and as creatures dominate by the larger contexts were analysed by writers. A galvanize mannequin of this was â€Å"The Clear Light Of Day” by Anita Desai which neer referred to Partition in specific fortuitys just rather subtle, broken reflections into the people whose day-to-day lives were modify by the growing communal tightness and ever-changing socio-political equations. \r\nIt refers to the ties of family, friendship, kinship and love that were abruptly ruptured by the substantial division of the nation. There were reinvigorateds such as â€Å"Ice-Candy Man” by Bapsi Sidhwa that formulations at Partition from the ‘outside’. The right to vote counter Lenny is imbued with unique qualities that were highly unconventional for the times. She was a infant, therefore she had a limited worldview, a Parsee, therefore not ghostlyly biased and neither a participant, physiologically disabled, therefore able to sympathise with the suffering of separates and, a girl therefore her narration is unapologetically gender- certified. What she learns, is all by association.\r\nThe story is a sharp attack on official discourses that denied the suffering of millions of people. Lenny’s story is not only her give birth and a mirroring of girl- kidskinren all everyplace that were faced with questions with identity, sexuality, commu nity and nation as a whole and how they shaped individual lives. A child is brutally honest and sp ares no proboscis and no thing. She has no constitutional prejudices so she foundation speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. As a result of such experimental tales, women tangle ready to finally speak up. But, their attempts were met with more(prenominal) fortress than expected.\r\nThey were themselves reluctant to speak about they went through; it was withal painful but combined with societal pressures, their mouths had been more or less sealed shut from business. For daring to break this unspoken taboo, some of them faced severe consequences and were hitherto dis suffered by their bear families for besmirching the family name. But such actions often took a huge toll on their mental and physical health and though they had survived, they hadn’t healed. As a result of mass migration, women were abruptly uprooted from their dwellings to move to a strange a nd strange place.\r\nThey had to build their lives and homes anew, sometimes with no support system. Many of these women were so bereaved at losing their home and oculush, that they could never recover from this sense of loss. Women in impostal society had since ancient days been tasked with look for after the home. Since they were not allowed to venture outside their domain7, the home had been almost personified for them. It was a living breathing space. The only place which they could honorablefully stake claim to and which was a source of comfort and solace for them. They were so tangibly attached to their land that family was synonymous with home and her identity came to be defined by her place in the home. Hence when obligate to migrate, their sense of unsettlement and upheaval was immense. They could never return to their past lives and smorgasbord was not so easy for these women who had never been precondition the opportunity to misdemeanour their comfort zones.\r\n Some stories that movingly illustrated the dilemmas of such women are â€Å"Jadein” by Ismat Chughtai, â€Å"Sikka Badal Gaya” by Krishna Sobti Sahni and â€Å"The smart Of Rivers” by Joginder capital of Minnesota . These women had to undergo the process of relocating their selves. Many women the like Bebe from â€Å"The Thirst…” refused to run their homes assured of its protection from evils outside. However, their families were broken up with some members choosing to stay back and some exit for a new land. Due to differences in opinion, family members live on estranged and refused to talk to each other or had problems meeting each other due to large geographical distances.\r\nOften, migrants did not have enough bullion to travel back and forth and permits were hard to lie with by. Due to mutual hostilities, communication across borders was unelaborated at best. Hence, many a times, a subjective void between families occurred. All the while , the matriarch of the family remained a silent witness to crimsonts. The family ties that she had spent all her explosive chargeer building up and nurturing were breaking up right before her eyes and she was helpless, unable to act or intervene.\r\nWho would listen to her? Partition had served to further communal tension and hardening unearthly identities than perhaps any raset in the history of India or Pakistan. People who had lived unitedly for several millennia with tranquillity were suddenly made conscious of their differences from each other. They who had been friends earlier were suddenly staunch enemies and women fag the brunt of these realizations. In â€Å"Pesha struggle Express”8, one such incident is secernated when at Wazirabad station, where Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities had celebrated Baisakhi in concert for ages executes a site of base humiliation and pallid celebration; the women of the Hindu and Sikhs communities were paraded around naked as if they were nothing but objects of gratification for the general public.\r\nThese women had draw mere shells, their souls grand all in(p). In Kamleshwar’s â€Å"Kitne Pakistan”, the author ruminates upon the fruitlessness of Partition and the breaking of bonds of families, love and friendships due to its occurrence. It is the story of a Muslim girl, Bano who glide bys in love with a Hindu boy, Mangal but is not able to marry him because of sacred dogmas. She is t obsolete that she pass on cause communal riots. There is a hidden implication in this viewpoint that seems to say that the cause of every(prenominal) mishappening must be a charr somehow. Rules for men and women in traditional dogmatic societies are polar It is ironic that men are not chastised for forcibly marrying a man of the other religion but they testament not allow their daughters to choose her fellow on her own and he may never belong to another religion.\r\nThere is rampant fraud and hollo wness in societal mores regarding women. Bano is conjoin off to Muneer who unable to provide for his family with his own hard make believe resorts to selling his own wife’s body to earn money. The shamefulness of this situation is beyond imagination. These are not falsifications as advocated by fundamental religious leaders but a retelling of many women’s lives. Another kind of psychological trauma that many women underwent was the loss of a child. Many women were squeeze to offer their children by their husband and children during flight. Children became a burden during this time.\r\nThey had to be cared for especially with crucial funds required by the family going for their supplies. Also, escapees with children were more vulnerable to attacks by rioters since they not only had to look after themselves but look after their child as well. There are real life cases documented by Urvashi Bhutalia in her book, â€Å"The opposite Side Of Silence” wherein wome n of Muslim as well as Hindu communities were squeeze to forswear their infants that could raise an alarm in the rioters by reservation noise. Sikh men told tales of killing their children, asking the author, if they should be saving themselves or their daughters?\r\nClearly, man’s implicit in(p) selfishness had come to the fore where no one mattered more than the self. Many children were abducted during the widespread chaos to be exchange off as domestic help or prostituted in the streets. Women who lost their children during this time were incessantly plagued by guilt and grief. One such charwoman was Kulsum from â€Å"Pali”9 who lost her child and along with him, her mental counterweight as well. She was blanketed comp permitely by her grief and only the return of her child restored her sanity. But meanwhile, Zenab who had taken care of her son, Dilip when she found him lost had developed a maternally bond with him and cannot bear parting with him. She knows that she has no biologic claim over him but what the mind knows, the heart does not. Eventually, she has to reconcile herself with the reality of her situation.\r\nBut her life will forever be shadowed by this regretfulness. Women who were forced by circumstances to give up their child were forever haunted by their own actions and decisions. They were eer in search of redemption and peace and could not reconcile themselves to the loss of their offspring. One example of this can be seen in â€Å"The Abandoned Child”10. sister as well as toddler girls were left field by the roadside or killed by their families to repeal making them a target. The life story of one such girl is narrated in â€Å"Where Did She Belong” by Suraiya Quasim wherein the genius Munni is not sure of her religious or national identity. She is pushed into prostitution by her so-called ‘ messiah’11 , who only wants to use her for economic gain.\r\nShe is deceived by two of her cust omers who pretend to love her, but leave her bereft when Partition happens. Nobody asks for her or enquires as to her whereabouts. She is deceived by everyone in her life, ultimately. There were also cases of women who were injure and deceived by members of their own community. People who had been their well-wishers and whom they trusted implicitly, took utility of their vulner susceptibility and preyed on their bodies. Ayesha’s12 story is the ultimate disaster of such a ‘lady’13. In stalking-horse of protecting her and reuniting Ayesha with her daughter, Nurul takes her with him to Pakistan but betrays her trust by prostituting her instead. She is blasted to a life of assault, on her body and her mind.\r\nHer recoverer turns out to her destructor. She dies a life of desolation, her own brethren refusing to come to her aid and never seeing her child again. Afroz too in â€Å"I Am Game”14 falls weak due to her instincts of providing and caring for daugh ter. perceive no option left for herself and her child, she agrees to prostitution. This depicts to us the sad state of affairs during Partition, when uncertainty and insecurity reigned supreme. Man, woman or children, all had to protect themselves on their own and women for the sake of their families were forced into professions of exploitation to earn their keep.\r\n alike these atrocities, women were also subjected to particularly vulgar sexual attacks. Writers like Ashis Nandy, Veena Das, and Mushirul Hasan describe the bizarre and exorbitant nature of sexual violence afflicted on women. It was pornographic in its varied forms. Their bodies were mutilated, disfigured, slogans15 branded on them like they were animals, their wombs cut open and their foetuses savagely butchered. Women were reduced to spoils of war who were never allowed to unburden themselves or be free. They were reduced to a part of the multitude, just one of many.\r\nMany victims had been traumatised to an f inis that they lost themselves to insanity. They could not cope with their reality. Many underwent derealisation16 wherein after the superficial wounds had mended, they started to deny that anything had ever happened to them. It became something of a nightmare, horrific but fantastical. Literature becomes a cathartic mean(a) for many such women, a chance to narrate their tale. such(prenominal) memoirs also provided a base for Partition scholars to analyse the feminine subject in social and historical contexts of that time period. Partition has often been termed as the dark underbelly17 of Independence but what it really unfastened was the base attitudes of patriarchal Indian society, be it any religion.\r\nIt revealed how women were equated with the community they belonged to. Though the violence was inter-religious in nature, the modes of inflicting violence were one and the same. All ethics were forgotten in the frenzy of religious vendetta. Revenge was used as an excuse to infl ict wounds. They were the contested sites between two opposing factions and were devoid of any agency. One example may be an incident in â€Å"The urban center Of Sorrow”18 , where a man is forced to strip his sister naked by psyche of the other religion. When given a chance to retaliate, he forces his tormentor to strip his own wife naked.\r\nHence, the punish is arrant(a) but ironically, in both cases, the women were the fair parties who became the medium of exacting justice. They were expected to uphold familial and communal honour and were sacrificed at the altar of â€Å"izzat”19 if they were in danger of being captured by the enemy. The creation of honour was internalised20 hence any stain on it was beyond tolerance by patriarchal society. Therefore, to ill-treatment and hurt communal sentiments, it was natural that in order to debase the enemy and shed him of his honour, women of his community were targeted systematically.\r\nThere were also women who ha d been indoctrinated to such an finis by religious propaganda that they committed suicide, misled into thinking that they were fulfilling their duty as women. This tradition dates back to the time of ancient Rajputs whose women committed Johar21 to engender their honour. Hence, it has been a concept propagated passim the history of religions, Hinduism especially. Bhishma Sahni in â€Å"Tamas” and Jyotirmoyee in â€Å"The River roily” present such incidents where women of Hindu and Sikh communities drown themselves in wells in order to â€Å" pull round”22 themselves. Women of the family were the most singular possessions and were to be protected at all costs.\r\nHowever, when they presented an impediment in the escape of their family, they were brutally â€Å"martyred”23 without compunctions by the family itself. The men of the family did it all in order to salvage themselves first and to prevent dealing with the hassle of looking after these women. Such people had no scruples in them. This is demonstrated in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s novel â€Å"What The Body Remembers” where the daughter-in-law of a Sikh family, Kusum is mercilessly killed by her father-in-law and furthermore chopped into pieces to prevent her from being â€Å" bemire”24 by Muslims.\r\nHer womb is also remove as a symbolic gesture to hold still for her being pure25. We can therefore read into the implied fear and repulsion of a child born of an inter-religious union. Hence, Kusum is a victim of her own family’s moral code. Such incidents are not hyperbolic in nature but rather fictionalized accounts of reality. Women who were misfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the â€Å"other”26 and raped by them could never again return to their roots. They were dirtied and treated as untouchable because they had lost their chastity to the enemy. In â€Å"The River Churning”, the protagonist, Sutara is treated as a lower clan untouchable would be27.\r\nThough never raped, even staying in a Muslim household had damned her. She had become polluted like Sita. Like Sita, she became a victim of â€Å"social morality”.28 If women had become pregnant somehow, it was even worse for them. They were miscarried forcibly and if the child was born somehow, he or she was never accepted as a part of the family. Women themselves had to come to terms with their reality. They had to learn to let go of their self-loathing which often took root in their minds. They had to live with a child who was a constant monitor of their suffering. Yet, women erudite to let go and forgive but their families could not move past this situation. The woman was given the choice of either abandoning her children or her family.\r\nTherefore, she was kept detain in overlapping identities of woman, nonplus and daughter. There was no time to consider the interests of the self. The children of such women were often physically, men tally and verbally abused all throughout their lives. They were the victims of religious hatred. It left deep scars on their psyche that could never be repaired. They were often castigated for having lived and their mothers looked at with contempt for not having died in order to preserve themselves. Women often started hating their own selves when faced with a constant stream of abuse and repulsion. It is said that â€Å"Rape is the only crime where the victim is held guilty” and these women were the prime examples of this adage.\r\nThey were made to feel guilty, demeaned and disgrace to such an extent that they often felt that end would perhaps have been a better option. Women were at the highest risk of being abducted during migration across borders. These women stranded on the wrong side were forcibly converted and married off to their abductors. They were raped repeatedly or interchange off as entertainment. Women were objectified as commodities and their bodies becam e alien to their own selves. They were not their own persons but mere belongings. Anis Kidwai in her novel, â€Å"Azaadi Ki Chaon Mein” writes starkly about these girls who were nothing but stuff to be shared among the men who were, but slaves of their lust.\r\nIn his short story, Open It!, Saadat Hasan Manto further elaborates upon the barbarity doled out to these women. The main protagonist, Sakina had been ravaged to such an extent that she had lost her personality and her sanity. She was alive only physically, but emotionally and mentally dead. She knew nothing but what she had been forced to go through again and again. Her senses had been so ruin that she only expects men to want one thing from her i.e. her body. This story presents a horrifying picture to the reader who is compelled to question if Sakina will ever recover from her trauma. Other women were forcibly married off to their abductors and underwent alienation of the self. They were conflicted as to their ide ntities.\r\nOn one hand, they felt abhorrence for their abductors. On the other hand, such marriages often bore children which caused these women to war with their motherly instincts. Ultimately losing all hope of preservation or restoration, these women had resigned to their life but, again, they were expected to return at the behest of the respective governments of the two countries. Women had become mere tools of diplomatic manoeuvring between the hostile governments who were under immense political pressure to retrieve the population of women that had been left in arrears or abducted during Partition.\r\nOne such woman’s tale is narrated in â€Å"Exile”29 where the woman narrator is forcibly married to her abductor, Gurpal, a man who regards her as nothing more than a amah that he brought to serve his mother (Badi Ma). What is even more poignant is the fact that Badi Ma, a woman herself is not able to empathise with her Bahu30 or show graciousness towards her. She is merely there to serve their needs, like a tool. Ironically, Gurpal who is clearly devoted towards his mother evidently has no guilt about ill-treating a woman of another community.\r\nWe can see here the oppressive function of patriarchal society that does not allow for women to exercise an opinion of their own. The narrator has never been able to accept Gurpal as her husband. In nine years she has never able to understand why her brother, whom she dearly loves has not come to rescue her. She feels lonely and abandoned by her loved ones. She longs for her home and wants her life to end at last so she can be at peace. When the soldiers arrive to rescue her, she knows that she cannot return since she will not be accepted back as a ‘mother’. And she cannot leave her children. Hence she hides from the soldiers.\r\nHer apprehension of the other option can be justified by reading â€Å"Lajwanti”31 whose tragedy is shrouded by complete silence. She was treated a bominably by her husband, Sunderlal who asserts his domination over her body and mind by beating her like an animal. She bore it all as part of her uxorial duties clearly adhering to traditional norms of domesticity. But when she is abducted during Partition chaos, her husband, perhaps, olfactory property remorse for how he had treated her, became a campaigner for the rights of abductee women.\r\nHe advocates their rehabilitation and reacceptance into society but when his wife, Lajo is restored to him, he distances himself from her and sets her on the pedestal of a goddess. She feels alienated, lonely and longs for her old life where she could at least interact with her husband. In the present, her husband wants her to forget her sufferings and not to speak of them. But can the past really be forgotten as slowly as he cute it to be? Many women who had built new lives for themselves post-Partition often came face to face with their pasts when their lost loved ones returned back to them. In this situation, what was the woman to do? Should she abandon her present life to return to her past felicitousness? This is on the face of it a problem to which there is no unmortgaged solution.\r\nBut it was often expected of women to move on from their pasts and not look back but even they are living, breathing human beings with feelings and emotions. These may be unwanted but cannot be so easily banished from the mind. Women end up feeling conflicted all throughout their lives. One text that accurately depicts one such situation is â€Å"A Visitor From Pakistan”32 where the protagonist Saraswati is trapped between her first husband, Baldev whom she had thought dead; and her husband at present, Sunderdas who had protected her and her parents during the riots.\r\nHer own mother chastises her for even talking to Baldev so then who will understand her predicament? She is blamed for something that she is not even responsible for. Partition left a long-lasting impac t on the women who witnessed and suffered through it. They passed on the lessons they learned to their daughters hoping for a better future for them. It is an important part of women’s history and it should be analysed carefully to change the conservative thought processes of Indian society to obviate women from becoming subjects of patriarchal oppression and break the instant patterns of history.\r\nEND NOTES : 1. India and Pakistan were divided along the Radcliffe Line with Muslim majority areas seceded to Pakistan and Hindu-Sikh majority areas to India. 2. Mahatma Gandhi was deemed the â€Å"Father Of The Nation” and hence affectionately called Bapu by the general populace. 3. J.L. Nehru and M.A. Jinnah were leaders of the telling party and Muslim League respectively. They were not accordant to sharing power in the united govt. of crowned head India and hence the only option was to divide the boorish with both parties ruling over their majority vote areas.\r\n4 . The metaphor of madness was used by many Partition writers like Saadat Hasan Manto in â€Å"Toba Tek Singh” to describe the religious hatred that changed normal people into rioters, rapists and murderers. 5. J.L. Nehru stated this in The International Women’s Conference in 1947 alluding to the complete violence perpetrated upon women in North India. 6. Ideas postulated by Carl Jung and back up by Freudian theories. 7. Women were kept under purdah and not allowed to meet with people outside the family. Women lived in separate quarters of the house called the ‘antahpur’ which was solely in their control. 8. compose by Krishan Chander\r\n9. pen by Bhishma Sahni\r\n10. write by Gurmukh Singh Musafir\r\n11. Ironic since Munni’s saviour is herself a victim of circumstances and Munni is just a way to earn more money. 12. â€Å"A Grave glum Inside Out” by Ibrahim Jalees\r\n13. Ayesha was the lady of a noble family but debased to the level of a common prostitute. Shows that societal hierarchies were suspended during Partition. 14. written by Sultan Jamil Nasim\r\n15. The slogans Hindustan Zindabad and Pakistan Zindabad were carved onto their bodies as validating gestures of the victimiser’s own national identity. 16. Derealisation is a psychological condition where the subject deludes himself/herself into thinking that their present reality is illusory and unreal and that reality is different. 17. Independence was achieved after a long struggle, so there was jubilation among the people but at the same time, this bliss was marred by the grief of Partition and its aftermath. 18. written by Intizar Hussain\r\n19. Izzat is one of the basic concepts of Hindu femininity where a woman’s honour is defined by her chastity and any outrage of her unobtrusiveness stains her honour as well as her family’s. The family’s honour is an extension of the woman’s honour. 20. internalization is the pr ocess of integration of certain values as part of the self-identification. It becomes a part of one’s self-image.\r\n21. Johar is the ancient Rajput tradition of women jumping into huge fire-pits to save their honour from the enemy’s army if shoot seemed imminent. 22. Women jumped into wells to protect themselves from rape and mutilation. Dying unadulterated was preferred to living a life of humiliation. Hence, they were saved in the eyes of society. 23. Women who committed suicide were venerated because they were believed to have died for a noble cause. Hence, their deaths received social O.K. and appreciation. 24. If women were raped, their bodies no longer remained solely of their religion. And, hence, inter-religious taboos were applied to such women. Hence chopping of the bodies signified that no one of the other side had had sex with her or would be able to.\r\n25. The womb was removed to signify that it did not lift a Muslim bastard child and her ability to do so is removed from her. 26. During conflict, the opposing faction is alienated and presented as someone strange and unfamiliar to the minds of the mob. This requires dehumanization of the people from the other side so that they do not evoke emotions of sympathy.\r\n27. The taboos associated with untouchability are not allowing them to eat and drink from the same vessels and prevent from sorrowful them. 28. Sita was banished from Ayodhya because even though she was pure, the people of Ram’s kingdom did not believe her. Doubts were cast on her character since she had lived in Ravana’s Lanka for a long time. 29. Written by Jamila Hashmi\r\n30. When a bahu arrives in her marital household, she is bedecked with jewels, dressed in finery and serenaded by shehnai. She is full of happiness and hope. Here, the narrator is exactly opposed to this situation and yet, ironically she has become the bahu of a family. 31. written by Rajinder Singh Bedi\r\n32. written by Ramlal\r\ nBIBLIOGRAPHY:\r\n1. â€Å"Partition In Fiction: Gendered Perspectives”, Isabella Bruschi, mod Delhi, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors (P) Ltd.,2010 2. In The Heat Of friendly fire: The Literature Of India’s Partition Burning saucily (A Review Article)”,Jason Francisco 3. â€Å"Stories About The Partition Of India”, Vol. 1.,Ed. By Alok Bhalla, Delhi,Harper Collins, 1994 4. Re-Membering womanhood: Partition,Gender And Reorientations, â€Å"Narrating Partition:Texts,\r\nInterpretations And Ideas”, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Indialog Publications,2004\r\n'