Memory, History and Fictional Representations of the Partition

Author(s): Alok Bhalla

Source: Economic and Political Weekly , Oct. 30 - Nov. 5, 1999, Vol. 34, No. 44 (Oct. 30 -
Nov. 5, 1999), pp. 3119-3128
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/4408572

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 SPECIAL ARTICLES

Memory, History and Fictional Represen

of the Partition
Alok Bhalla

The violence that accompanied India's partition in 1947 was of such fiendishness that it has
understanding. Fictional writings about this period express this bewilderment. They also portray pre-
times of tolerance. The writers deal with the violence itself in different ways - redemptively, pessim
or cynically. A survey.

MEMORIES of the partition of the Indian some nightmarish image into a part of myman could negotiate his way back to his
subcontinent in 1947 have haunted me all being. Recently, however, my mother own neighbourhood without fear. Too late
my life and have marked with fear many confirmed that the essential details of myhad my father realised that he had failed
of my personal, ethical and political de- remembrance were accurate enough. Theto notice one of the shadowy corners of
cisions. As with almost everyone of my day was like any other usual hot day inthe wall marking the grounds of old St
generation, my childhood consciousness Delhi. The sun was harsh and indifferent;Stephen's College in Kashmiri Gate. The
was scarred by the cruelties I witnessed the dust was full of the dry buzz of fliesman had turned back and had tried to reach
during the riots of 1947-48 and the lam- and the smell of tar. The courtyard of ourour house again. My father had forgotten
entations that I heard. Indeed, there was small house was surrounded by a high wallhis name. There were too many who had
hardly a family which survived those years which was washed with white lime so that been killed.
without feeling perpetually threatened by it could absorb the glare of the sun and I have narrated what I remember with
the repulsive and the ruthless; there was resist the hot winds. The entrance to our a certain deliberateness in order to suggest
hardly anyone who didn't hide in some house was through a small green door with some ways of making sense of our expe-
dark corer for safety as mobs outside, a black chain - lock on it. Three brick and riences during the partition days. My
armed with thirst spears and the names of cement steps led down from the door to narrative account is marked by a degree
gods, killed each other for small and the level of the road below and its burden of agnosticism towards the idea that those
pathetic gain. Now when I look back upon of leaves outside. The details are impor- who have suffered treat others with pity.
those years, I realise that they carried grim tant; their ordinariness is necessary both Indeed, it often encourages them to regard
forewarnings about the world that I was as evidence and as boundaries against the themselves as self-righteous victims who
to grow up in - a world in which thugs, phantasmagoric. For without being sure can neither be consoled nor urged to
chanting a few lines of tribal lore gathered that my memory is located in the real forgive. However, at the centre of my
from some rag and bone shop of history, world, I cannot hope to make an ethical narrative, I have acknowledged the fact
and screaming religious or racial invec- enquiry into the history of my age and that there were countless people who were
tives, are always ready to expel, plunder, place. willing to risk giving aid and were shocked
rape or exterminate with impunity.l I recall that as I unlocked the door to by their failures.
I wish to record here one particular event our house, I saw the body of a man stretchedI would like to urge that, 50 years later,
from my childhood. It is a part both of my out on the steps below. He was lying face as we think about 1947 again, we resist
personal memory and of the long chronicle down. His bag had fallen near his feet;the it temptation either to write celebrative
of suffering that ordinary people caught was open and a few common household narratives of nationalist victories or to
in the maelstrom of the partition had to things had scattered out of it. His limbs become chroniclers of communities of
endure. I don't, however, want my frag- were in disarray, his clothes were soaked suffering.4 A generation later, it is impera-
mentary narrative to be read as a variation in blood and the sun had begun to darken
tive that we make, like many of our fiction
of other stories of massacre; as yet another his skin. There was no one in the street,
writers, a self-conscious attempt to de-
velop a twofold vision in which, even as
platitudinous account full of indignation not even the usual garbage dog. My father
and accusation.2 It is not a contribution had heard the sound of the chain on the we remorsefully accept our culpability in
to the notion of some contemporary his- door and had hurried out. Later, he toldthe evil of those days, we record stories
torians that the partition was constituted me that the man, marked with so manyabout events and people which are instinct
by violence.3 Instead, I want to record my wounds, had earlier in the day soughtwith pity and thoughtfulness. Only then
experience in such a way as to suggest that shelter in our house. He was a Muslim shall we, as literary critics and historians,
be able to make, with novelists like Krishna
even during the dark years of the partition trader who had been chased into our locality
there were countless small attempts by by violent men seeking revenge for blood Sobti and Rahi Masoom Reza, Intizar
fallible people to abide by the covenants spilled in Pakistan. We were HindusHusain and and Mohan Rakesh, Qurratulain
of a civil society. he had stayed with us in safety for aHyder few and Saadat Hasan Manto, sharp
My earliest memory is of a remote hours. Towards noon, my father had distinctionsgone between acts which deserve
summer afternoon in Delhi in 1948. That out to see if the streets were safe. The man
our sympathetic understanding and those
day lies so far back in my biography thatwas obviously anxious to get back to his are reprehensible; consider words
which
I sometimes wonder if what I remember family. My father had looked aboutand thedeeds which we ought to cherish as
ever really happened; if I haven't madestreet carefully and had thought thata the part of our heritage and those we should

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feel ashamed to acknowledge as a part of acters is limited and repetitive. Most of madness and crime, others either mark out
our history. Without such a double vision, them, however, do not show any serious the emotional and ethical map of our times
we would either be as bewildered as Nirmal interest in finding out how a society, with with indelible lines of screams, ash, smoke
Verma's historian, who discovered on a plurality of communities and religions, and' mockery, or crumble into shocked
returning home that the dead he had gone conducted its business of"world-making" silence.
to bury in a graveyard, far from his home(Nelson Goodman's phrase) before the Whether these fictional writings speak
and beyond the boundary of the city, were Pakistan demand was articulated. Nor do redemptively (e g, stories by Ashfaq
already back with him once more, or beany of them offer convincing and over- Ahmad, Mohan Rakesh, Rajinder Singh
morally obtuse like an amnesiac who is whelming documentary evidence to show Bedi, Lalitambika Antharjanam, or Intizar
Husain, and novels like Jhoota Such by
incapable of recognising the irrational and that the demand for a separate Islamic state
the demented in our society and politics.5 was itself a result of such bitter antago- Yashpal, Aadha Gaon by Rahi Masoom
Perhaps, before we gaze at the gorgon face nism between the Hindus and the Muslims Reza, Tamas by Bhisham Sahni, Epar
of the partition again, we should repeatthat they posed a real and genocidal threat Ganga, OparGanga by Jyotirmoyee Devi,
to ourselves the following words of theto each other.6 Aag Ka Dariya by Qurratulain Hyder, A
wise narrator of Rahi Masoom Reza's Considering that there are hardly any Heart Divided by Mumtaz Shah Nawaz)
great novel, Aadha Gaon, as a talismanic chronicles or songs, 'kissas' or'tamashas', or end on a note of hopelessness (e g,
defence against the petrification of ourrecord a long history of irreconcil- Guzara Hua Zamana by Krishna Baldev
which
moral impulses: "The tales of riotsable hatred between the Hindus and the
were Vaid, Ice-Candy Man by Bapsi Sidwa,
concluded, and the stories of life began Muslims, it is not surprising that many Looking
of through Glass by Mukul Kesavan,
- these are the stories which never end." these histories refuse to confront some Basti by Intizar Husain, Udhas Naslain by
(The Feuding Families of Village questions of social and moral values raised Abdullah Hussain, or the stories by Manto,
Gangauli, translated by Gillian Wright, by the partition: Can one, for example, Umm-e-Ummara, Qudrat Ullah Shahab,
Viking, New Delhi, 1994, p 277). retain the rational and moral autonomy of K A Abbas and others), there are two
Most of the available histories of the the self even as one surrenders one's structural and thematic elements that they
partition, written either as accounts of affective judgments to someone who have in common. The first is that they
victory or as nightmares, are constructed claims to speak on behalf of a religious either assume the existence of a commu-
in the form of 'compelling narratives' orpolitical collective? Is there any method,
nally shared history in pre-partition India,
concerned with the metaphysical identi- to use Edmund Burke's formulation,or ofimaginatively set up, with the help of
ties of different communities and their drawing up an indictment against a whole small remembered things, images of the
collective fate (Robert Jay Lifton and Eric people? Is it ever possible to conduct a
subcontinent as a place of tolerant com-
Markusen,The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi politics of identity without a paranoiac munities as structural counterpoints to the
Holocaustand Nuclear Threat, Macmillan, hatred of others? What is the measure of dispirited sense of exile and pain after the
London, 1988, p 12) rather than with the pain that can be inflicted on a people so division. Their fictionalised life - worlds
everyday selves of people and their acts that the demands of some for power canof villages and small towns invariably
in profane time. They are teleological be fulfilled? suggest that there was an essential feeling
histories in which the past is given a Novelists who have written about the of relatedness between the Hindus, Mus-
'retrospective intelligibility' and rational-partition, especially those who lived lims and Sikhs, not merely a passive ac-
ity (Paul Ricoeur, Times and Narrative, ceptance of different customs and beliefs.
through its days of terror, take their stand
vol 1, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin beside those who suffered, in order either That is why, perhaps, hardly any of these
and David Pellauer, University of Chicago to bear witness or to offer solace, to calltexts seriously concern themselves with
Press, Chicago, 1984, p 157). The fact down of damnation on those who were re- defining the metaphysical identities of
the partition permits them to arrange sponsible
a for it, or lay a wager on a life
different groups, but assert that such iden-
diverse variety of discrete incidents into of good sense in the future, to tities can only be forged in the social
a successive and logical order so that they rememorialise nostalgically communities relationships established between human
inevitably lead to a known and expected beings in the process of living together;
in the past or speak with bitter irony about
end. Some identify a moment in the past the possibilities of life in post-colonial that it is the daily interaction between
when old relations between communities days. The best of them, however, do not people which gives to theological beliefs
begin to show signs of fissure, while others repeat what the historians already know a significance and a value.8
read in the chance utterance of a politician - that there was violence of such fiend- I am not suggesting that the fictional
the causes of tragedy. The supporters of ishness that each reminder of it still comes works about the partition imagine that
the two-nation theory invariably talk about as a shock to our decencies and still vio- India before 1947 was made up of exem-
Muslim apprehensions of Hindu thraldom lates our sense of a common humanity. plary or utopian communities.9 These texts
and intolerance, and go on to prove their Instead, they seek to make connections do not claim that relations between the
charge through endless reassertions, while with the social and cultural life of a different religious groups were always free
their opponents speak virulently about community in its entirety within a histori-
from suspicion, distrust or stupid abuse.
Muslim collaboration with the British and cally specific period.7 That is why Indeed,
these they readily acknowledge that there
were
treachery. If the first set of histories read fictional accounts, unlike narratives of thetimes when the conflicts between
like incantations, the second work like old historians which move with certitude people could lead to murder and arson.
demonologies. Both use fragments of towards a definite end, contain all that But
is they also record that such moments
incontestable information gathered from of communal nastiness were rare and
locally contingent and truthfully remem-
government files, police records, newspa- transient. The experience of life was
bered, capricious and anecdotal, contra-
pers, letters, public speeches, memoirs dictory and mythically given. Their end-
sufficiently secure and rooted to enable
and reports about communal riots. Indeed, the society as a whole to evolve mecha-
ings too are various. While some manage
their repertoire of dates, events and char- to find their way out of the realms ofnisms for containing tensions. So that even

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if there was vile outrage, the rich hetero- Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi words through- which the stories are narrated are worth
geneity of life conducted dialogically was out the novel in such a way as not only recalling in some detail. As the evening
never dangerously threatened. The fic- to forbid their classification into commu- sets there is the usual fellowship of men
tional landscapes these works create are nal lexicons, but also to give to the speech who sit on cots outside someone's house
versions of the real,10 not only because of the region a strange 'cognate to exchange gossip, recite poems and read.
they are offered by a variety of writers with splendour'. 12 It is as if she is so scandalisedThe group consists of men whose various
distinct political and religious affiliations, by the fact that the language of the placelives we have followed through the years
but also because they are hard won - to she calls home has been gruesomely narrated in the text: Kashinath Shah, the
imagine them, after the carnage of the scrawled over by slogans of sectarian hatredzamindar, the 'hakim', Fateh Ali,
partition, without a feeling of vengeful- that she wants to cleanse it, give it back Maulanadad, Gurudutt Singh and others.
ness requires a lot of forgiveness and too its older conscience and trustworthiness. They speak in the same idiom, possess a
much grace. Sobti's version of life in rural Punjabcommon fund of personal and historical
Since fictional memory refuses to assert between 1920 and 1940 may not be moralreferences to comprehend their existential
that the religious communities in pre-1947 or peaceful, but it is certainly not undersituation and imagine a shared future which
India felt alienated from each other in their the sign of a curse. It has its usual shareis not different in kind from their past.
daily interactions, the second element that of violence and iniquity, but it also hasTheir private and social biographies are
informs nearly all the novels and stories the amplitude to permit a variety of human worked out within an inherited world.
about the partition is the note of utter beings to fully present themselves in theirBefore Kashinath reads the stories of Mian
bewilderment. There is hardly a fictional complex interactions with others. Its ten-Meer and Chhajju Bhagat to them, some-
text which presents the partition as an sions, which are increasingly voiced as the one casually mentions the murder of a
novel progresses, are never a result of'tehsildar' and another the proclamation
inevitable consequence of an ancient hatred
between the Hindus and the Muslims. religious intolerance but of economic of new laws by the British to fight the war.
Indeed, each of the novels and stories deprivation. Hindu, Sikh and MuslimThey dismiss them as distant political
finds the separation and the massacres peasants
so speak together about the bless-events- 'shahi mamlay' (dynastic affairs)
completely without historical or social ings 'rab-rasool' showers upon the Shahs(p 371) - which have nothing to do with
reason that all they can sometimes do andistheir own ill-fated lives of hard ne- them. No one speaks of the Muslim League,
cessity. Thus, when the young and arro-the Unionists or Hindu politics directly.
to record that the place they called 'home'
or 'basti' was reduced to rubble, and that
gant Muslim peasant, Mehr Ali, complains There is a tangential remark about fights
about the fact that the Shahs take away
the memories of a society with collective which sometimes take place in their vil-
rites and traditions, songs and legends,
all that they produce, Allah Rakha chas-lages, but they are dismissed as old 'niray
names of birds and trees, were tinged jhagrey' (only quarrels) (p 371). It is as
tises him and says: "The truth is that the
forever with the acrid smell of smoke and Shahs are destined to be Shahs! Jats are if the daily 'majlis' (p 370) wants to
blood. It is, as if, in contrast to the his- fated to be Jats" (p 84). It is in a similarrevalourise the claims of the local com-
torical narratives, these texts want to remind idiom that Mayaar Singh, a Sikh, voices munity and its ways of knowledge-making
us that "judgments of necessity are al- his unhappiness over his lot and is jealous as against the larger war of selfhoods
ways retrospective in character- the work of the wealth of the Shahs: "I say, even being waged at the national level.
of historians, not historical actors" the Shahs plough the land, but differently. The text from which Kashinath Shah
(Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: reads is a collection of stories about two
In these fields, they sow coins of brass and
A Moral Argument with Historical Illus- reap a crop of gold" (p 100). wise men who embody the finest examples
trations, Basic Books, New York, 1977, Sobti, during the course of an interview of Hindu and Muslim spirituality in India.
p 8). Mian Meer and Chhajju Bhagat are great
about the causes of partition, told me that
Thus, Krishna Sobti's Zindaginama the problems of poverty and 'zamindari' friends. There are no barriers between
(Rajkamal Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979; which had always troubled the peasantry them, no hesitations. Each of them be-
all translations from Hindi are mine) is an of western Punjab, began to be expressed lieves that his individual self acquires its
epic reconstruction of life between 1920 in communal terms only after 1940.13 But substantiality and grace because of the
and 1940 in western Punjab where people economic disparity, she insisted, was onlypresence of the other one. Their relation-
neither had the experience nor the memory the apparent reason for the separation. ship with each other is in sharp contrast
of communal slaughter. The novel, which There was something else, something more with their casual disregard for the em-
opens with the morning 'azan' and ends intangible and less caught up with the peror, Jehangir. Mian Meer and Chhajju
with stories which mock arrogant power, management of things which led to the Bhagat inspire respect and admiration, not
is lyrically written and sumptuously final estrangement. She refused, however, only because they pay no attention to the
phrased. Sobti refuses to accept the proc- to concede that the political division waspowerful, but also because they believe
lamation that Hindi and Punjabi belong a natural result of the pathological aver-that the political nearly always contami-
to the Hindus and Sikhs, and Urdu to the sion between the Hindus and the Muslims. nates the sustaining culture of a commu-
Muslims. Nor does she believe that only In order to explain what she meant by the nity. Their stories, recalled at a crucial
one religious sect has a claim over the profounder and more shadowy reasons for moment of time in the historical chrono-
songs of Baba Farid or Guru Nanak, the the communal divide which occurred later, logy narrated by Zindaginama, reinforce
sayings of Kabir, the story of Heer, or the she pointed to the two stories about Mian one of the major themes of the novel, that
parables about Mian Meer and Chhajju Meer, the Muslim 'pir', and Chhajju achievements in the political realm do not
Bhagat. Composed in Persian, Urdu, Hindi Bhagat, the Hindu 'fakir', in the days of contain anything that is either wise or
or Punjabi, they are 'eminent texts' I of Jehangir, with which Zindaginama con- precious.
the community as a whole and give to cludes. Thus, in the first story which Kashinath
everyone who lives there a sense of cul- The historical context and the social reads, some 'ahmuck' [idiot, p 372] tells
tural belonging. That is why Sobti scatters space of the novel, Zindaginama, within Jehangir that Mian Meer's place is always

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crowded with undesirable people. Jehangir of behaviour, an intentional rudeness.
you have made a second mistake. You
decides to investigate the matter person- should have walked in and hugged me!She was studying in Lahore. On her way
ally. On the way, the emperor's horse back home during the summer vacations,
I feel ashamed! You think that my kitchen
defecates in the river. As soon as Jehangir is more important than me! Saiyan, she be-got off at the station nearest to Gujarat.
arrives at Mian Meer's house, the 'pir' As usual, she was offered rest and comfort
tween friends that is a sin, a sin! With this
chastises him: "Your horse has polluted one act you have opened a sea between
by a Muslim shopkeeper who had always
the entire river. Where will I now perform looked after students. Later, riding back
us. From now on, I shall stay on one shore
my ablutions and take my bath?" When to her village home, she was thrown off
and you on the other!" After that the two
Jehangir laughs and says that a horse can't friends never met each other. the horse. Badly bruised, she managed to
defile a river, Mian Meer retorts: "If the Given the historical context within which get to the nearest settlement of people she
heart of a fakir, which is vast like an ocean, the story is being read in the novel, the knew. The village headman washed her
can be polluted by the world's filth, why responses of the listeners are interesting.wounds and then offered her his own
can't a river be polluted?" Jehangir ac- No one interprets it as a tale signifying thehorse to carry on with her journey. As she
cepts his carelessness. profoundly sad inability of the Hindus andwas about to mount the horse, a young
Soon after, when Chhajju Bhagat ar- the Muslims to overcome their stereotypesman whom she did not recognise, sud-
rives, Mian Meer respectfully rises from of each other. It is as if the partition is stilldenly stepped out of the group standing
his seat and offers it to him. This upsets beyond the imaginative possibilities of around her, held the reigns, and said to
Jehangir's sense of courtly hierarchy and each of them. Thus, Jahanabad says: "Shah the horse: "Go, drop her at home today.
religious pride. The lesson in humility, Sahib, like a single hair in milk or butter, Later, she'll have to leave behind her
which he is taught, is typical of the earthly a single unclean thought can darken thebangles and earrings. Then we'll see..."
humour which characterises rural Punjab. clarity of the heart's affections" (p 135).Sobti said to me: "That was the first time
His stomach is bloated and he can't pass Kashinath Shah reads the story in conven- a chill ran down my spine. There was
gas. He is forced to ask Chhajju Bhagat tional moral and religious terms: Chhajjusomething in his tone which frightened
for help, only to be told that he possesses Bhagat, he says, felt that if the two of themme. When I reached home, I didn't share
nothing of importance which he can offer continued to draw their spiritual wealththe incident with anyone. Because I felt
to the holy man in return for a cure, except,from the grace of each other's presence,that something strange and powerful was
perhaps, his kingdom which does not really they would forget god. The characters beginning to happen. And, of course, two
belong to him. who listen to the tale are not naive. But,or two-and-a-half years later, it did hap-
If the first is a parable reaffirming the there is nothing in their social experiencepen." What appalls her about the entire
feeling in Zindaginama that the politically or their political understanding which en- experience is not only the threat to a
powerful are so dazzled by themselves courages them to see in the story, as composite culture which she celebrates in
that they forget to pay heed to the simpler Sobti certainly does, a prognostication ofZindaginama, but the failure of the de-
and wiser world around them, the second the disintegration of the world. For themmands for separate religious states to base
is a forewarning about the fact that a long the stories of Mian Meer and Chhajju themselves on anything more ennobling
history of mutuality is no guarantee, even Bhagat are not only about an imaginedthan a desire for a share in the loot, and
for the wisest amongst us, that an inatten- ideal, but are also a way of comprehendingthe "humiliating submission of the soul
tive word or a discourteous act will not the actualities of their lives. In order to to the rule of the down-below" (Kundera,
destroy our sense of kinship. Zindaginama understand the complexities of the parti- op cit, p 153).
is, after all, an exploration of a society tion one must take into account the dia- Bhisham Sahni, who is a contemporary
after it has been wrecked - an attemptlogue to of Sobti's and who grew up in Rawalpindi
these stories set up with the histori-
find out if there were signs of doom which cal and political realities which were and Lahore, makes terrifying use of the
were not clearly visible to the historical unfolding in the world outside the fic- fact that most people in Punjab and else-
actors themselves. tional. where were caught unprepared to deal
The second story that I want to recall, Underlining the fact that the refusal of with the scale of violence that accompa-
and which Sobti narrated to me during theher fictional characters to take seriously nied the demand for the country's divi-
course of the interview, is also about Mianthe political threats to their life-worlds sion. The scene in his novel, Tamas, I wish
Meer and Chhajju Bhagat. One evening,was not inconceivably utopian, Sobti, in to draw attention to, is one of the finest
Mian Meer was seated in a trance when her interview with me, described the day in partition fiction (Tamas, 1973; rpt
he suddenly felt restless and went across in 1942 when she heard the first 'ahat' Rajkamal Prakashan, New Delhi, 1984.
to Chhajju Bhagat's house. He found (whisper, hint) of the coming partition. The translations from Hindi are mine;
Bhagatji in his kitchen cooking his meal. The choice of the word ahat, as well as English translation by Jai Ratan, Penguin,
Afraid of polluting Bhagatji's kitchen,the he date, were fascinating, considering New Delhi 1988).
stood at the door and asked Bhagatji for that she was describing a time when theInder, a young boy, is attracted by the
permission to enter. Bhagatji lookednoise at of slogans and the enthusiasm of politics of a Hindu group which prides
him sternly for some time and then said: crowds as the arbiters ofjustice was reach- itself on its strength and encourages patho-
"If you had walked in who would have ing its crescendo. Her choices suggested logical hatred of the Muslims. In order to
objected! But now you can stay outside! that for her, even as late as 1942, political
prove his solidarity with the group and his
Mian Sahib, do pirs and fakirs havewranglings a were not really important aggressive virility, Inder agrees to kill a
caste? How did the thought even cross enough to affect the ways of knowledge- Muslim. One day, when the town is silent
your mind? The thought occurred to you making in her social world. The ahat she and deserted because everyone is afraid
because it was already present!" Mian heard, which alerted her to the possibili- of a riot, he stalks an old Muslim perfume-
Meer felt ashamed and asked for forgive- ties of carnage ahead, was neither a threat seller who chances to pass through the
ness. This saddened Bhagatji even more. nor a passionately felt demand for a nation.street where he is keeping vigil with his
With tears in his eyes he said: "Mian Meer, It was rather a minor violation of a code friends. Inder and his companions are

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excited by fantasies of a compelling iden- amongst the passengers. In fact the Mus- stories by Saadat Hasan Manto, S H
tity of Hindu glory and patriotism which lim Pathans in the compartment joked Vatsayan, Kamleshwar, Krishan Chander,
is not subject to moral reasoning. When with a Hindu Babu for being weak because Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Kartar Singh
the perfume-seller sees Inder walking he only ate 'dal'. One passenger wondered Duggal, Sant Singh Sikhon, KulwantSingh
beside him, he assumes that the boy, who ifJinnah would leave his home in Bombay Virk and others16 are marked by a sense
seems innocent and lost, wants the reas- and migrate to Pakistan. Another passen- of rage and helplessness. They are terri-
surance and the safe guidance of an elderly ger confidently asserted that there was no fying chronicles of the damned which
man. He puts his hand on Inder's head and need for Jinnah to do that since he could locate themselves in the middle of mad-
asks: "Son, where are you going?" (p 152). always visit Karachi. ness and crime, and promise nothing more
The gesture and the words of affection Neither Bhisham Sahni nor Intizar than an endless and repeated cycle of
fulfil the expectations of the culture. Husain testified to any mystical or 'natu-
random and capricious violence in which
Together, they reaffirm kinship instead of anyone can become a beast and everyone
ral' urge to establish a religious and national
an egotistical identity. A man instinctively identity with people of their faith.15 canIn-
be destroyed. They offer no historical
offers help to a boy who ought to be at explanation for the carnage and see no
deed, Intizar Husain, at the very beginning
home in dangerous times. The perfume- of my conversation with him about the necessity for the suffering. And
political
seller, of course, recognises the boy as a partition and the subsequent problems theyoffear that payers will never again help
Hindu. It would have made no sense to migration, Islamic nationalism andusthe
to atone for what we have done.
sources of culture-making in the Indian
him, even if the times were communally Saadat Hasan Manto was, perhaps, the
subcontinent,
charged, to assume that Inder intended to finest and the most sardonic witness to the
said, "I have no idea what
kill him. a purely Islamic culture is". He addedgenocide
that that accompanied the partition.
As the two of them walk throughthough
the His first set of stories like 'Toba Tek
he accepted the fact of Pakistan
as an
empty streets, the perfume-seller talks Singh', 'Khol Do', 'Thanda Gosht',
to irreversible part of the geopolitical
daily of the region, he didn't think 'Mootri'
Inder about his ordinary trade and thereality that or 'Siyah Hashye', written im-
struggle for survival. He does so out of was anything either 'historically
there mediately after 1947, are vituperative and
kindness because he wants to divert the inevitable' about its creation or 'natural' brutally ironic.17 Harsh in tone, gratingly
boy's attention from the fearful day. Hisabout its emergence. To assert that the rough in diction, the scenes they describe
decency and courtesy are apparent. ItMuslimis identity in the Indian subconti- are unremittingly loathsome. Their strength
nent has always been utterly distinct from
precisely the concern of the perfume-seller lies precisely in the fact that they refuse
that hardens Inder's heart and makes him Hinduism and has been formed in antago- to suggest a religious, political or moral
even more determined to kill him. He nistic relationship with it, making the
solution to misery. Unlike most other
measures his distance "with the same formation of Pakistan a political necessitywriters about the partition who often find
concentration" with which "Arjun and had a logical outcome of cultural differ-a place in their narratives for virtuous men
who refuse to abandon their belief that it
"ences, is not only bad history but also bad
looked at the bird sitting on the tree before
piercing its eye" (p 154). The analogical metaphysics. The best of Muslim minds,is better to suffer wrong than to inflict it
reference to theMahabharat is deliberate. Intizar Husain said, like the best minds of
on others and who refuse to accept a politics
The modem warrior defending his faithany community, were in love with the without rules of ethical conduct, Manto
is neither righteous nor courageous. The 'good'. People like Nizamuddin Auliyamockingly asserts that the two new sov-
perfume-seller turns to look quizzically atand Amir Khusrau, Mirabai and Kabir ereign states were created to legitimise
Inder as he feels a dull pain shoot through were not the exclusive preserves of any our worst impulses. His stories are night-
his body. It is only when he sees bloodsingle community or sect. In fact, they mares because they reject man as a crea-
that he sobs for himself and cries out for realised that cultural and religious identity ture who has any ethical sense or religious
help to people, to anyone, Hindu orMuslim, could always acquire a richness and avirtue. His stories reveal that atrocities can
who would listen and pay heed. The doors clarity through a respectful acknow- be committed by any one of us, against
of all the houses remain dark and shut. ledgement of other ways of knowing and arbitrarily selected victims, in the name of
Vultures hover in the sky above - attracted being. And then he said, characteristically the finest political principles and god.
neither by the valour of Hinduism, nor the mingling personal memories, political Thus, when the old man, Siraj-ud-din in
defeat of Islam, but by the dead carrion history and religious speculation, "I am a 'Khol Do' asks eight young 'razakars'
in the streets below. Muslim, but I always feel that there is a (volunteers) in a refugee camp in Pakistan
Recently, Bhisham Sahni told me14 thatHindu sitting inside me". He further added, to find his daughter, who has been left
he had left Lahore on August 14, 1947. "I still feel that I am an exile who wanders behind in India, they pick her up, rape her
The train he got into turned out to be the between Karbala and Ayodhya". and then abandon her. Later, she, is brought
last one to Amritsar. He had no plans, he Given the utter sense of bewilderment to the doctor's tent in the camp. On hearing
said, of settling down in Delhi. Like manyand incomprehensibility about the vio-male voices, she, like a battered animal,
others, he was going there to watch thelence and the transfer of populations afterlowers her pyjamas and opens her legs as
independence day celebrations. What hethe partition amongst most writers, it isthe doctor and her father watch in horror.
heard and experienced during the journeynot surprising that the largest number ofLet me quote the last part of the story:
was later recorded in his classic story, fictional accounts published immediately The doctor turned towards the body on the
'TheTrain Reached Amritsar' (my Englishafter 1947 are not communal narratives stretcher, then took her pulse and said,
translation in Stories About the Partition which claim holiness for members of their
"Open the window..."
ofIndia, vol 1, HarperCollins, New Delhi own religion and damn others as accom- The body on the stretcher stirred...
1994, pp 147-58). According to the tes-plices in the crimes: rof the period. Instead, Lifeless hands pulled the cord holding up
timony of the fictional narrative (reiter-the earliest novels like Ramanand Sagar's the salwar...
ated during the interview), initially thereInsan Mar Gaya and Ram Kumar's Ghar And pulled the salwar down...
was neither antagonism nor anxiety Bane, Ghar Tootay (1953), along with Old Siraj-ud-din shouted with joy, "She's

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 alive...My daughter is alive." In 'Karamat' (Miracle), Manto asserts himself to being an exile in Lahore - an
The doctor broke into cold sweat. (vol 2, that there is nothing that reason can do to anguished migrant who had found a des-
p 202) (An English translation in prevent men and women, Hindus and tination but who knew that his days of
Stories About the Partition of India, vol 2, Muslims alike, from living like fools. The melancholy would never end. He had lived
pp 69-72.) story is about a man who steals two bags in Lahore earlier. But his memories, his
The story is profoundly despairing. It of sugar from a shop during the riots. companions and his writings belonged to
Trying to escape from the police, he decides other cities - cities which were now in
makes all ordinary responses to the world
in which we live seem obscene. The last to throw them into the neighbouring well. another country. He knew that the cities
Unfortunately, as he throws the second
cry of the father, as he notices the abused in which he had forged his identity, as a
bag in, he too falls into the well and
body of his daughter stir once more, cannot writer and as a person, had become inac-
drowns: cessible and had changed in unrecognisable
be read as a banal sermon against hard-
hearted patriarchs who refused to forgive The next morning, when people drew water ways. The place he had now moved to,
women for being raped during the riots.from the well, it was sweet. Lahore, was not home; it was merely a place
What is scandalous about the story is thatThat night people lit lamps at the man's to which he had been forced by circum-
it erases the common and normal world grave. (vol 2, p 288) stances to escape to. Pakistan too was for
so radically that there is nothing left to These stories are written by a man who him nothing more than a new name for an
hope for and nothing to retrieve. 'Hope'understands that mindless power converts old geographical space. Lahore, unfortu-
living things into grotesques (Simone nately, was incapable of offering him either
is a word one can utter if there is a
Weil's
recognisable authority which owes its formulation); see 'The Iliad, Poem a purpose or a meaning. And Pakistan
of Might' in Intimations of Christianity
legitimacy to binding truths, and if there failed to resolve the contradiction, as he
is a shared language which people can use the Ancient Greeks, Ark Paper- understood it, between a Muslim legal
Among
backs, London, 1987, pp 24-25). Manto state which sought to throw a protective
to establish relationships with each other.
Manto's story, however, is about maintainshow that people who have witnessed boundary around people who professed to
the carnage can only wait and pray for belong to certain sects of Islam, and his
language betrays, and how ordinary people,
in whose religiosity and decency others death like Toba Tek Singh, the Sikh from own understanding that citizenship was
had placed their faith, become ruthless the lunatic asylum, who stands in the no the right of anyone who had lived for a
man's land between two 'pious' and ethi- long time within a territorial boundary and
killers. In the story, horror is unflinchingly
observed, not in order to help us findcally
some 'pure' nations and calls down curses felt at home within its cultural space.
ersatz consolation which will make life upon both - except that as there seems to Thus, in 'Dekh Kabira Roya', (vol 4, pp
endurable, but to make us understand thatbe no god who can carry them out, the 255-58), a text made up of a variety of
we are all accomplices in the making interdictions,
of uttered with ferocity, threaten shifting scenes, he identifies with the great
a barbarous world. to turn into mere absurdities: "oper di gur saint-poet who wanders through the city
Manto's other stories are also fragmen-gur di annex di bay dhania di, mung di weeping not only over the vandalism of
tary records of terror and cries of pain,daal di of Toba Tek Singh and Pakistan" the past and the corruption of the present,
violation and pleas of mercy, vile sexu- (vol 2, p 197; An English translation in but also over the signs of a merciless
ality and cynical laughter. Their primaryStories About the Partition of India, vol future. Kabir believed that his poems were
argument is not only the Hobbesian one 3, pp 1-8). In this demented incantation dialogues with other men and god. The
that when men are freed from perpetual are encoded the entire range of fictional people he meets in Lahore obscure the
surveillance they become predators, but reasons used to incite people to entertain distinction between words and daggers,
fantasies of offended pride, retaliatory and confuse the passion of slogans for
also that, in a world which is as heartless
violence and religious communitas. In the thought. Kabir regrets that beauty is no
and selfish as ours, there is no reason for
story itself, one of the lunatics, Muhammed longer an attribute of god and that lan-
mercy and pity to create a safe ground for
the fragility of goodness to survive. Ali, thinks of himself as Jinnah and an- guage no longer honours man. The mi-
Thus, in one of the most acerbic piecesother as Master Tara Singh. At the end, grants, he realises, who have taken over
called 'Sorry', which is a part of the one sympathises with the death of Toba the city desire nothing but wealth and
Tek Singh because one senses that he was power, while he, the visionary poet, has
splintered text, 'Siyah Hashye', Manto not
the last man in whom one could still have inherited only a soulless city. Everywhere
only underlines the ruin of language during
recognised some of those values which he goes, he watches what men say and do,
the partition, but also jeeringly points out
once belonged to compassionate human- with tears in his eyes.
that all the talk about religious identities
and national loyalties was based on noth- ity. By making Toba Tek Singh into a One day, he sees a man tearing pages
ing more substantial than a vulgar absur- martyr, Manto seems to be saying with from a book of religious poems by Surdas
dity. Written in brief and spasmodic sen- Euripides: to make paper bags. He starts weeping.
tences, the entire story reads as follows: Alas, we look for good on earth and cannot When the man asks Kabir the cause of his

The knife recognise it tears, he says "Poems by Bhagat Surdas

ripped through the stomach
reached down to the penis.
The cord of the pyjama was cut.
The man with the knife
exclaimed
with surprise,
as if he was reading the Kalma to ward
off evil,
"Chi, chi, chi...I made a mishtake." (vol 2,
p 304)
When met, since all our human heritage are printed on these pages...Don't insult
runs mongrel (Euripides, Electra, trans- them by making paper bags out of them."
lated by Emily Townsed Vermeule in The man replies: "A man who is named
Complete Greek Tragedies, vol 7, edited Surdas can never be a bhagat" (vol 4,
by David Greene and Richmond Lattimore, p 255). Another day, Kabir finds the beau-
Random House, New York, 1960, p 227). tiful statue of the goddess, Lakshmi,
Between 1951 and 1955, the year he covered with bits and pieces of straw.
died at the age of 42, Manto wrote a People tell him: "Our religion doesn't
second set of stories about exile, home and permit idol worship". With tears in his
the partition. By 1951, he had reconciled eyes, Kabir retorts: "No religion teaches

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one to deface beautiful things" (vol 4, tion, '1919 ke Ek Baat' is told in 1952, of 1919 and the massacres of 1947. He
p 256). People merely laugh at him. almost five years later by an unnamed wants us to see that, while the hysteria of
In the other stories by Manto from this narrator to an unidentified listener on a crowds in 1919 doesn't cause or predict
period the historical, the autobiographical train which moves across unmarked po- in any mechanical way the horrors of the
and the mythological are intricately braided litical and geographical space. What ispartition, it contains what Paul Ricoeur
into the texture of the main narratives, and important is not the fact of liminality,(p 136) calls the initial conditions that
incidents are symbolically charged. Texts which is common to all journeys, but themake them possible; 1919 is merely a part
like 'Sahay', '1919 Ke Ek Baat' or 'Yazid' erasure of political boundaries. Manto'sof the sequentiality of events that lead up
seek to find the reasons that may have led travellers, who don't have religious, na-to 1947. To use Ricoeur again, one could
to the carnage during the partition and to tional or cultural identities, are carried argue that Manto thinks that once 1947
the large-scale migrations. They try to across a blank geographical space. Sincehas happened, one can find retrospec-
locate, down the chronological line from thejourney is being undertaken after 1947,tively in the fragmentary and disconnected
1947 back to the beginning of the national when so much religious and cultural prideincidents of 1919 a narrative which could
movement, those rifts and fissures in our was being attached to boundaries, Manto,
be said to prefigure the partition.
personal, religious or political selves which by obliterating all signs of territorial The story itself is about Thaila, a drunk-
enabled the monstrous to slip into our demarcations, wants us to understand thatard and a bully, who attacks some British
living spaces. Read together with Manto's maps don't bestow virtue, that sharply soldiers in the streets of Amritsar on April
other stories, they create out of the events defined religious enclaves don't ensure10, 1919, in retaliation for their firing
that make up the history of our indepen- upon a mob earlier. He is shot dead by
the sanctity of moral practices within them
dence movement, an ironic mythos of and that the separation of communities the soldiers. During the narrative, Manto
shame, humiliation and defeat. from each other doesn't legitimise theirmakes it clear that while Thaila's impul-
Thus, in 'Sahay', Manto tries to under- cultures. sive decision to kill a British soldier is full
stand why a man like him, who had spent Further, Manto quite deliberately struc- of exultation and energy, he is not a martyr
all his life trying to express his abhorrence tures the fictional event described in the to the cause of freedom. Read in Gandhian
of everything that was merely religious or story, the 'feigned plot' [Ricoeur, p ix]terms, his action is neither personally
political and in condemning ideas that did which pretends to be an authentic eye-redemptive nor nationally desirable. It is,
not emerge from the sensuousness of lived witness account of happenings in real time, instead, a sign of ill-willed animosity and
actuality as a swindle, was persuaded by within the two momentous historical not a part of the disciplined ethicality of
circumstances to leave for Pakistan after a 'satyagrahi'. Frenzied crowds, Manto
events. The first frame is, of course, pro-
1947. The story is about Mumtaz, who vided by the partition and the entiresuggests,
in- are invariably foolish for they
decides to migrate when Jugal, a Hindu ventory of dates, names, murders and neither have the time for thought nor the
slogans that gives it its factuality. patience
friend of his, after receiving a letter from The for justice.
Lahore about the massacre of his relatives crazed presence of the partition, Manto Soon after Thaila's death, some British
there, says to him: "I think, if there are seems to insist, must now intrude intosoldiers
any send for his sisters to dance for
them. This story has two endings. Both
riots in our locality...it is very likely that interpretative account of our nationalist
I'll kill you..." At first, Mumtaz is stunned history. He doesn't want to displaceare ourequally scandalous. In the first, Thaila's
into silence. A few days later he tells Jugal, shared assumptions about 1919 as the sisters
year rip off their clothes, give an eroti-
as a moral counter to his crass insensitiv- cally charged speech about their nation-
in which Britain revealed to everyone that
ity, the story of Sahay, a pimp. Sahay is its claim to being regarded as an enlight- alist aspirations and their brother's sacri-
killed during the riots in a Muslim ened culture was a sham and that its real fice. Mixing politics, eroticism and death,
neighbourhood where he goes to return aintention in India was to inflict 'racial they ecstatically invite the soldiers to
few ornaments and some money left in his hatred' on its people and to loot. But 'pierce'
he their bodies with the 'hot irons'
custody by Sultana, a prostitute. Later, ondoes want to read the events prior to the of their lust. They also request the soldiers
board the ship, before Mumtaz bids Jugalshootings at Jallianwalla Bagh from to hislet them 'spit on their faces'. The sol-
farewell, he says: "People who think thatperspective as a cultural and existential diers shoot them down. In the second
a religion can be hunted down with guns exile in Lahore in 1951. ending which the narrator, with tears in
are fools..." (vol 2, p 219). Faith, culture The second frame is constructed out of his eyes, admits is more truthful, the sisters
and tradition are not aspects of man's a densely vectored series of events in 1919,perform a 'mujra' for the entertainment
physical being: like the Rowlatt Acts and the violent of the soldiers. The first version satisfies

If you had killed me, you would have protests against them in Amritsar, Bombay, the narrator's offended pride, while the
regretted it more... But only if you had Lahore and Ahmedabad, General Dyer's ending of the second confirms his feeling
considered...if it had occurred to you that arrogance and his callous genocide,
that the times are utterly depraved. What
you had not killed Mumtaz...a Muslim...a Gandhian 'satyagraha' and its sad failure
he doesn' t realise is that in terms of political
friend, but a human being...If he was a to prevent enthusiastic mobs from doing
morality there is no difference between the
bastard, you wouldn't have killed a bas- rather 'heinous deeds' (Gandhi's melodramas of retaliatory violence or of
tard but murdered someone...If he was a base surrender; that both are without mean-
characterisation of mob violence on April
Muslim, you wouldn't have killed Islam 14th 1919, but without any knowledge ing,
ofwithout purpose and without end.
but a man...And if his corpse had fallenthe shootings at Jallianwalla Bagh the There are other kinds of fictional re-
into the hands of the Muslims, there wouldprevious day). (Collected Works of Ma-
presentations of the partition, written about
have been one more dead body in thehatma Gandhi, vol 15, Navajivan Trust, a decade later, in which the primary con-
graveyard, but one less human being inAhmedabad, 1965, p 221.) cer is not with bearing witness, but with
the world...(vol 2, p 221).
Manto creates such a complex temporal the fate of the survivors of those genocidal
While 'Sahay' is narrated by a Hindu structure in order to show that there is a days. They too recall with nostalgia earlier
in Bombay immediately after the parti- profound link between the mob violence days in small communities where they

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shared with others a 'secret life' (Vaclav in The Dawn on August 15, 1947 that with Husain is no less than his loyalty to his
Havel's notion) which flowed through time the formation of Pakistan a nation had village or to the Hindu guru who taught
even as political leaders and religious 'regained a lost homeland' (p 4). Thus, him to defend himself with a 'lathi'. He
priests either fought battles with each other Phunnan Miyan, who is as proud of being is willing to defend each one of them and
or spoke on theirbehalf. Novels like Aadha a Saiyid as he is of being a member to of fight for them. Though he is poor, he
Gaon by Rahi Masoom Reza, Jhoota- donates land for a temple and money to
the village Gangauli, argues for his notion
Such by Yashpal, Epar Ganga, Opar of a homeland against a student from the its priest so that he can support himself.
Ganga by Jyotirmoyee Devi, Arjun by Aligarh Muslim University, as follows: The real test of his convictions comes
Sunil Gangopadhaya or stories by Jamila
"Adaab, Chacha!" Anwarul Hasan's son when he has to sacrifice both his sons for
Hashmi, Vishnu Prabhakar, Ramlal, Farooq greeted Phunnan Miyan. the cause of India's freedom. He does so
Rajinder Singh Bedi, Syed Mohammed "Eh, bhaiyaa, how is your Pakistan do- with pride and sees in their death a re-
Ashraf or Lalitambika Antharjanam are ing?" enactment of the days at Karbala which
also troubled attempts to find out if, having "It's being made." he had moaned every year during
suffered so much, it is possible for sur- "Of course it is, bhaiyaa! You said it would Moharram.
vivors to cease to dwell in grief and to learn be so it must be. But will Gangauli go to It is through the actions and thoughts
to live in kinder ways; if they can accept Pakistan or stay in Hindustan?" of Phunnan Miyan that Reza often seems
the fact of being permanently marked by "It'll stay in Hindustan. Pakistan will be to define his notion of citizenship. Citi-
violence and yet resist the temptation to made up of the Frontier Province, Punjab, zenship can neither be acquired by physi-
retaliate; if they can mourn for those who Sindh and Bengal. And we're trying to get cally transporting oneself to a new land
the Aligarh Muslim University in Pakistan
were killed and still urge forgiveness. or by a shared metaphysical faith, in the
too."
Rahi Masoom Reza's Aadha Gaon is a same way as a gigantic banyan tree can't
"You're not trying for Gangauli?"
passionate epic which commemorates life be transported to another place without
"There's no question of trying for
in a small Shia-dominated village in being chopped down, or the tomb of a
Gangauli."
Ghazipur district in Uttar Pradesh before saint can't acquire the reputation of grant-
"If there's no question, then what is it to
1947 as possessing all those religious andme if Pakistan is made or not?" ing boons unless it has blessed the lives
affective qualities that made people who "There'll be an Islamic government." of several generations of people who have
lived there feel at home, even as it laments lived around it and offered prayers at its
"Is there any true Islam anywhere that you
the loss of that world and hopes to recon-
can have an Islamic government? Eh, bhai, site (p 5). It is something which is intu-
stitute a world of pluralities once more. itively imbibed through work, friends,
our forefathers' graves are here, our 'tazia'
The novel is set in an area where the platforms are here, our fields and homes speech, worship or hymns, not bestowed
argument of the Muslim League, that the are here. I'm not an idiot to be taken in upon one through ecstatic proclamations
Muslims could never feel at ease in a by your 'Long live Pakistan!' " orlegislation. ForPunnan Miyan, Gangauli
"When the British go, the Hindus will rule is home, and he wants to pass on his
Hindu India, was being most intensely
here!"
debated. Yet, in the novel there is hardly knowledge about it as a worthy gift to his
"Yes, yes, so you say. You're talking as descendants. There are others who share
any description of destructive religious
tensions even after the Pakistan demand if all the Hindus are murderers waiting to his sense that the village where they sing
was voiced and conceded. The reason slaughter us. Arre, Thakur Kunwarpal 'nauhas', and where they believe Imam
for this lies not only in the novel's Singh aes- was a Hindu, Jhinguriya is a Hindu.Husain comes every year to stay for the
Eh, bhai, and isn't that Parusaram-va a
thetics of reticence, but also in its argu- ten days of Moharram, is their proper
Hindu? When the Sunnis in the town started
ment that India is as much a land of the earthly inheritance.
Muslims as of all the others who live there. doing 'haramzadgi', saying that we won't In order to map out the complexities of
let the bier of Hazrat Ali be carried in
It is not that the terror of the 1940s is experience in Gangauli, Reza elaborates
procession because the Shias curse our
ignored. Instead, what is confidently as- on three notions of time which simulta-
Caliphs, didn't Parusaram-va come and
serted as a truth is that for the Shia neously give a structure and an ethicality
raise such hell that the bier was carried.
'zamindars' and the Muslim poor, theYour Jinnah Sahib didn't come to help us to the words, thoughts and actions of the
raquis, the chamars, the nais, the ahirs, thelift our bier." people who live in the village. The nar-
rajputs and the scavengers, the lifetime in
Farooq laughed. rator says that the "story is actually about
Gangauli was so common and ordinary"In reality the 'sincerity' of the Hindus is time. It is the story about time passing
that each of them unselfconsciously
a deception," he said using an English through Gangauli. Some old people die,
accepted the village as their natural, tem-
word. some young men grow old, some children
poral and sacred home. "Their what is a deception?" grow up and some are born...This is the
Gangauli is not, of course, presented as"Sincerity I mean that Arre, sahib, that story of the ruins where houses stood and
an exemplary community made up of is to say..." of the houses built on those ruins" (p 3).
peaceful and tolerant people. It has its "What is it, bhai? Have you forgotten the Indeed, what gives the novel its intricate
usual share of caste antagonisms and language of your forefathers?" (pp 149- texture is the fact that it is woven out of
50)
religious pride, its suspicion of strangers the sacred days of the origin of Islam, the
and anxieties about change, its fiercePhunnan Miyan, like many of the other historically significant time of the national
loyalties and local enmities. But noneMuslim of characters in the novel for whom movement and the daily routine of labour
its inhabitants feels either a sense of exile Gangauli is an ancestral village, is con- and toil of the people of Gangauli.
or longs for another place where his 'his- vinced that those who argue for the par- The central organising rituals in the lives
torical expectation' of justice and his tition of India are moved to do so by bad of the people of Gangauli - Shias and
messianic hope for grace would be ecstati- faith. It is neither religious idealism nor others together - are performed over the
cally realised. Indeed, at one level, the actual persecution which motivates them, last ten days of Moharram. The novel is
novel is a fierce rejection of the editorial but self-interest. His loyalty to Imam divided into ten chapters and concerns

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itself with the biographies of ten families again taste the halva of the eighth of the Muslims and the Hindus, enables Reza
of the village. The last days of the Imams Moharram. Allah is omnipresent. Then to argue that the claims of loyalty to the
Ali, Hasan and Hussain are paradigms of what is the difference between Gangauli village, which have sustained generations
exemplary courage and faith. By re- and Mecca, and the indigo godown and of one's kinsmen and neighbours, are
memorialising the sacrifices of the Imams the Ka'ba and our pond and the spring of always greater than all the abstractions
at Karbala during Moharram, the Shias of paradise? (p 249). and bookish ideologies. Despite the loud
Gangauli affirm their connection with the Like historical events, what people do hectoring of the Aligarh students, who
sacred. During the 'majlis' in the in their daily lives is also subject to judg- insist that Urdu is the language of the
Imambara, and the singing of 'nauhas' and ment by the ideal conduct of Imam Hasan Muslims, and the claims of the Hindu
the rhythmic performances of 'matam', in sacred time. The ethical and political politicians that Hindi is the language of
the Shias re-anchor their lives into some- actions of the Shia families invite the same their tribe, the people of Gangauli stub-
thing which transcends profane time, and criticism as the actions of the other people bornly refuse to abolish the dialect they
which doesn't suffer the whimsicalities in the community do. Ali Kabir, Mighdad speak. They dismiss English contem-
or Phunnan Miyan have to change and ptuously as 'gitir-pitir', and deride the
and erosions of history. What is especially
important about the Moharram in Gangauli adjust to the new realities like anyone else claims of the Muslim and the Hindu chau-
- and if they fail to do so, they, like other vinists alike as 'nikaundi' (stupid). They
is that it not only gives the Shias a sense
of their own special worth, it also helps citizens, have to suffer for their failure. know that to abandon their own language,
the Muslims renew their ties as a commu- But even as they succeed or fail, they which carries the secret lore of their life-
nity with others and integrates them more rarely ever succumb to the temptation oftime, is to become defenceless; to erase
securely into the region. Gangauli has its speaking in communal or separatist terms. the memories enshrined in their language
own 'Karbala', and significantly enough, The novel's assertion is that what happens is to live like 'mohajirs'. The following
no one from the village has felt the need to each of the Shia Muslims in their daily is the conversation that takes place when
to go on a 'haj'. It is only after the partition, lives is not different from what happens the women discover that the nauhas to be
the narrator says, that Gangauli is demo- to others. The times offer to each of them sung during a majlis are written in Hindi:
graphically pauperised - "For some time the same chances of survival - and betray "Naooj! What is this nikaundi language,
now the residents of Gangauli have been them all equally. The cunning of the Miyans bhai?" blurted out Umme Habiba, when
dwindling in numbers and the percentage and the Thakurs is matched; and those she couldn't restrain herself any longer.
of Sunnis, Shias and Hindus has been Hindus and the Muslims who have a prag- "Hindi!" replied Manno.
growing" (p 5). matic assessment of the opportunities "Lord in heaven, have mercy!" exclaimed
The historical events in the novel take available have the best chance of survival Saiyda's mother, gently slapping hercheeks
place between 1931 and 1952. They are in politically ambiguous days. Thus, the in repentance, "Have they started writing
framed by the first elections to the pro-impoverished Saiyad zamindar, who be- the name of Allah and the Prophets in that
wretched Hindi now?"
gins to sell shoes much against religious
vincial legislative assemblies and the first
and class objections, or the sad 'hakim' "I've heard of Urdu, Arabic-Persian...but
free general elections in free India. The
what's this language that's come up now?"
story then winds its way through thewho is willing to let his children marry asked Rabban-bi.
different phases of the nationalist strugglelower caste Muslims with money, have the
"Bashir-bhai's daughter Suraiya has writ-
against colonialism and the increasingbest chances of survival. But, prosperous ten out the namaz in Hindi and learnt it
demands for a separate Muslim nation or
- poor, they refuse to leave Gangauli off by heart," said Mammo.
the Lahore resolution of the Muslim because their Karbala is in the village a
"Now there's no reason," said Sakina,
League, the Quit India movement of little
1942,south of the tomb of Nuruddin. "that you should do what your cousins
the great famine of Bengal, the second "...Accha, so I suppose people there must do."
world war and finally the euphoria and spend
the their time fasting and praying?" "Recite, bhai, recite!" Saiyda told Manno,
"Why?"
terror of 1947. What is argued throughout "Come on, I'll read with you."
"Arre, bhai, it's an Islamic government.
is that the Muslims of India have, as they But the whole majlis had become a
How
always had, a crucially important place in can you ask why!" mockery. The nauha was the same, the
all the culture-making processes of "So
theyou think an Islamic government words were the same, the tone of voice
country. No matter what happens in the means fasting and praying!" was the same. Just the unfamiliarity of a
succession of events that follow one after "Have you people changed the meaning script had annoyed the ladies. As a result,
of Islam?" tears rose in no one's eyes, and no one
the other in the course of historical time,
the Shias of Gangauli know that during "Islamic government means, Dada, that raised their voice in grief (p 301).
Moharram they resanctify their place and
Muslims get jobs." On one level, the sequence is about the
"Really! I never knew that the Prophet offact that the loss of a familiar language
their days. Thus, Tannu tells one of the
God made all that effort and noise just forleads to moral and religious disorienta-
educated proselytisers of Pakistan:
Muslims to get jobs. You've really set mytion. On another level, it suggests that for
I am a Muslim. But I love this village
mind at rest..." (p 321)
because I myself am this village. I love the people of Gangauli, after the turmoil
the indigo godown, this tank and these The other major concern ofAadha Gaon of the partition, Moharram acquires a new
mud lanes because they are different forms is with language. It is written quite delib-
and entirely unexpected historical mean-
of myself. On the battlefield, when death erately in the Devanagari script so as to ing. The women who gather every year to
came very near, I certainly remembered defeat any attempt to suggest that Urdusing nauhas, must now weep, not only for
Allah, but instead of Mecca or Karbala, and Hindi are separate languages and are the sacrifice of Imam Hussain, but also for
I remembered Gangauli. And I used to be somehow implicated in the religious the ordinary men, women and children
upset and cry at the thought that I may .politics of the nation. The people speak exiled and slaughtered during the parti-
never again be able to chew the sugarcane a coarse and sensual mixture of Bhojpuri,tion. Karbala belongs to their religious
at the indigo godown, and that I may never Urdu and Hindi. The dialect, spoken by traditions, as well as to their own times.

Economic and Political Weekly October 30, 1999 3127

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 Aadha Gaon is a lament, but it refuses midst of horror. novels about the partition, especially about
4 Veena Das, Critical Events: An Anthro- Punjab, do construct an ideal community in
to think endlessly about the atrocities we
committed. It is also a record of Reza's pological Perspective on Contemporary India, which Hindu-Muslim relations are uniformly
Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1995, harmonious. See her essay 'From Harmony
personal attempt to regain coherence. Itspp 175-96. Das wonders why, immediately to Holocaust: A Study of Community Relations
complex narrative movement spiralsafter the partition and its trauma, those who in the Partition Novel', Studies in Humanities
through a rediscovery of the past towards had suffered the most, particularly the women, and Social Sciences, vol 1, 1994, pp 103-12.
the hope of redemption in the future. Rezadidn't come together to form a moral com-10 See Jerome Bruner, 'The Narrative
knows that he cannot offer consolation to munity where they could not only speak to Construction of Reality', Critical Inquiry,
each other but also force 'society' to confront vol 18, 1991, p 4.
those who suffered, but he does suggest its own 'evil' (p 193). I would like to suggest 11 See Hans-Georg Gadamar, 'Text Matters' in
that if we can imagine pluralistic societies that, while there were many who simply States of Mind: Dialogues with Contemporary
with their tolerant worldliness, we may be couldn't find their way back into a society of Thinkers on the European Mind, edited by
able to find a minimum ethic that will ordinary decencies, the "therapeutic space" Richard Kearney, Manchester University
enable us to live in kinder ways. (p 193) Das recommends did come into being Press, Manchester, 1995, p 269.
through countless acts of decency and courage 12 The phrase is from Richard Wilbur's poem,
by neighbours and small communities who 'Lying' in Contemporary American Poetry,
Notes
came together to defend each other, to console edited by Helen Vendler, Faber and Faber,
those who had suffered and to help many to London, 1986, p 131. What makes Krishna
1 Hans Magnus Enzensberger says that in overcome melancholy so as to get on with the Sobti difficult to translate into English is that
modern ethnic conflicts "scraps ofjustification processes of living. While talking about the she uses a language in which dialects are
are paraded, like rags from the wardrobe of history of the partition (or about any social inextricably mingled. In this context, I must
history" (Civil War, translated by Piers Spence catastrophe), one needs to pay careful attention record with consternation the following
and Martin Chalmers, Granta Books, London,
not only to the frightening and the remorseless, statement by Susie Tharu and K Lalitha in
1994, p 22). but also to acts of civil morality and trust, for their introduction to their anthology Women's
2 Joseph Roth in a novel about anti-Semitism otherwise the structures of one's thoughts will Writing in India: "...she [Sobti] writes a dialect
and its representations in Europe says, only be mirror reflections of modes of thinking translators felt would be difficult to render
"there was one platitude for protests and which lead to disaster. into standard English and uses an earthy, lewd
proclamations, another for sketches and 5 Nirmal Verma, India and the West: Selected diction. Standard forms of English, sanitised
reminiscences, a third for indignation and Essays of Nirmal Verma, ed by Alok Bhalla, as they have been over the last two hundred
accusation" (Flight Without End (1927), Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, years, did not stretch into anything that
translated by David Le Vay, Peter Owen, forthcoming. resembled the scope of Sobti' s idiom" (Volume
London, 1977, p 25). 6 For a recent defence of the pre-partition India 2, Feminist Press, New York, 1991, p xxi).
3 "Perhaps the most obvious sign of the Partition as a place where secular spaces were always This statement is both astonishing and ill
of India in 1947 was the massive violence that
available, see Mushirul Hasan, The Legacy informed. Sobti's language is hardly 'lewd',
surrounded, accompanied or...constituted it" of a Nation Divided, Oxford University Press, and stories about the partition, like 'Sikka
(Gyanendra Pandey, 'The Prose of Otherness', New Delhi, 1977. Badal Gaya', and 'Meri Ma Kahan Hai', are
Subaltern Studies, vol 8, ed by David Arnold 7 These formulations have been considerably written in a standard, 'sanitised' Hindi which
and David Hardiman, Oxford University Press, influenced by Milan Kundera's, Art of the has nevercaused any problems to its translators.
New Delhi, 1994, pp 188-221). In an another Novel, translated by Linda Asher, Harper and A translation of the second story is available
essay, Pandey says that "the history of Partition Row, New York, 1988. in my collection, Stories about the Partition
is the history of rape and abduction and killing, 8 "The dimension of the divine opens forth from ofIndia (vol 2, pp 135-39). I don't know what
and of the state-sponsored drive that followed the human face...Hence metaphysics is enacted to make of the second half of the statement
to evict 'aliens' and recover 'nationalists' where social revelation is enacted - in one's quoted above.
(especially abducted women and children)"
relations with other men...It is our relations 13 For an English translation of my interview
('Voices from the Edge: The Struggle to Write
with other men...that gives to theological with Sobti, conducted at the Indian Institute
Subaltern Histories', Ethnos, vol 60, 1995,
concepts the sole significance they admit of' of Advanced Study, Shimla, in 1996, see
p 234). (Emmanuel Levinas, quoted by Arnold I 'Memory and History' in Crossing Bound-
Pandey's assertion has melodramatic force, Davidson in 'Questions Concerning aries, ed by Geeti Sen, Orient Longmans, New
specially wh,:n it is equated with all acts of Heideggar: Opening the Debate', Critical Delhi, 1997, pp 55-78.
violence by 'men', 'science', 'modernity' and Inquiry, vol 15, 1989, pp 424-25). Also, in 14 My interview with Bhisham Sahni was
the 'nation' - all members of the 'Bestiary' the same article, Davidson quotes Stanley conducted at the Indian Institute of Advanced
that makes up the new discourse of our times, Cavell's statement about the "recovery of the Study, Shimla, in 1996. The text of the recorded
all fated by a strange conjunction of biology, finite human self through the acknow- interview will be published soon in a book
rationality and class to a predetermined ledgement of others" (p 425), as a defence on the partition edited by Indira Baptista
programme of stupidity and brutality. The against the politics of identity, will and all Gupta and Sattar, Manohar, New Delhi, 1999.
ideological intent of the argument is obvious forms of rhetoric about the state. 15 For further details of my interview with Husain
(and is supported by many of the contemporary Also consider the following statement by and a reading of his stories about the partition,
commentators on the partition like Veena Zygmunt Bauman: "Without clear institutional see my 'An Introductory Note' in Leaves and
Das, Urvashi Butalia, Ritu Menon and Kamla anchorage and guarantees, concerns with Other Stories, by Intizar Husain, translated
Bhasin). To say that there was enormous identity are fraught with anxiety rebounding by Alok Bhalla and Vishwamitter Adil,
violence during the partition is tautological. as aggression. Collective identities can only HarperCollins, New Delhi, 1993.
There is violence in every civil strife. Any be born - and survive, however briefly - 16 English translations of stories by these writers
encyclopaedist of terror can compile an through acts of self-assertion; the louder, theare included in my anthology Stories about
endlessly cumulative dossier of barbarity in more attention-drawing and shocking, the the Partition of India (3 volumes), Mushirul
times of social and political turmoil. One turns better. As no act is powerful enough to lay Hasan, India Partitioned: The Other Face of
to a historian or a novelist, not to learn how future uncertainties to rest, identity-seeking Freedom, 2 vols, (Roli Books, New Delhi,
to add sorrow on sorrow, but to hear in is an intensely emotional process, punctuated 1996) and Saros Cowasjee and K S Duggal,
"unqualified horror or despair" the more by explosions of collective frenzy. Identities Orphans of the Storm: Stories on the Partition
difficult cadence "of tragedy" (cf Northrop are made almost entirely of emphatic, possibly of India, UBSPD, New Delhi, 1995.
Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Athenaeum, New violent, acts of self-separation, which always 17 All references to the works by Manto are to
York, 1969, p 222). The best of the fiction involve naming and assaulting a selected, the 5-volume edition published in the
writers about the partition are not concerned concrete Other" (Life in Fragments: Essays Devanagari script entitled, Dastavez, edited
with merely telling stories of violence, but in Post-modem Morality Blackwell, Oxford, by Balraj Menara and Sarad Dutt, Rajkamal
with making a profoundly troubled inquiry 1995, pp 220-21. Prakashan, New Delhi, 1993). The translations
about the survival of our moral being in the 9 Rupinderjit Saini, however, claims that the are mine.

3128 Economic and Political Weekly October 30, 1999

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