[Reader-list] Borders and Boundaries in Partition Literature

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Borders and Boundaries in Partition Literature


A paper presented on 12 September 2003 by SHIVAM VIJ
BA English I, St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi

Such was the magnitude of the devastation wrecked by the 
Partition of undivided India that it was, and is a mammoth task for 
writers to deal with it. Historians, for one, talked in aggregates: 
ten million refugees, two million of them dead, seventy-five thousand 
women raped and so on and so forth. These statistics fail to impart 
even a fraction of the enormity of the tragedy that was the 
Partition. Statistics do not tell us how women must have felt while 
drowning themselves in wells lest they be abducted by men of the 
other community. Statistics fail to tell us how for most people the 
deciding factor in choosing India or Pakistan was not politics or 
religion but insecurity. Statistics fail to even hint at the trauma 
of husbands and wives, sons and mothers separated by the Radcliffe 
line. And the last thing that statistics or historical narratives can 
ever do is to reflect on identity crises of innocent individuals at a 
time when identity can be altered by loot and rioting.

Identity

The Pakistani poet Harris Khalique is a Kashmiri, but his identity 
crisis is that he does not fit what he calls the "Kashmiri 
stereotype" — "No pink cheeks or blue eyes, the only brother even 
darker than I am and the family hardly able to make out the 
difference between Pahari and Kashmiri." His friends often ask him 
derisively, "Sir, why don't you mediate between Pakistan and India? 
Kashmir is your land after all." Khalique's reply is that every town 
in the subcontinent is to him what Toba Tek Singh was to Bishen 
Singh. "I cannot mediate between India and Pakistan," he writes, "I 
am an unresolved business of Partition myself. You are right. I am 
not Kashmiri. I am Kashmir." 

Another Kashmiri, Saadat Hassan Manto, was so aggrieved by a similar 
identity crisis that it was, partially if not wholly, responsible for 
his alcoholism and eventual death about eight years after the 
Partition. Communal tensions in Bombay and persuasion by his family 
made him migrate to Pakistan in 1948. By this time, in a life full of 
ups and downs, he had achieved considerable acclaim and some 
prosperity for his short stories, radio plays, film scripts and 
dialogues and as the editor of two Urdu magazines. In Lahore, 
however, Manto found himself completely disoriented, rootless and, 
perhaps most of all, unemployed. In the eight years that he lived 
there, he failed to get a single regular job. Manto had earlier 
written against communal conflict, and his choice of migrating to 
Pakistan was impulsive; he must never have thought the Partition 
would ruin him just when his life seemed to have achieved some 
stability. No wonder then that his post-'48 stories often question 
the idea of nationality ("Toba Tek Singh" ) and the effects of the 
Partition on individuals ("Black Margins" ).

"Toba Tek Singh" is an outstanding work of Manto that poignantly 
describes the individual's identity crisis. Set in a madhouse the 
story uses madness as a metaphor for sanity. The ambiguity of 
nationhood is expressed when we are told that one madman got "caught 
up in this whole confusion of Pakistan and Hindustan and Hindustan 
and Pakistan that he ended up considerably madder than before". The 
madmen in the Lahore asylum are a microcosm of society, through them 
all sections of society are satirised, and amidst them is Bishen 
Singh, who wants to live in neither Hindustan nor Pakistan. Hindustan 
and Pakistan are identities that have been deliberately created and 
constructed and Bishen Singh successfully resists all attempts for 
any such identity to be thrust upon him. He wants to go back to Toba 
Tek Singh, the village where he was born, which is his natural 
identity. Manto therefore is questioning not just the two-nation 
theory but also the very idea of nationhood as the pivotal basis of 
identity. Bishen Singh would rather die in no man's land than make a 
choice between Hindustan and Pakistan. 

Arjun Mahey, in his paper "Partition Narratives: Some Observations" 
says that "Taba Tek Singh" is not a short story but a fable. It is 
perhaps the fable-like quality of this story that makes the idea of 
Toba Tek Singh somewhat sentimental — unlike most of Manto's works. 
Gulzar, for instance, was so moved by the story so as to write a poem 
on it:


Toba Tek Singh 

I've to go and meet Toba Tek Singh's Bishan at Wagah!

I'm told he still stands on his swollen feet
Where Manto had left him,
He still mutters:
Opad di gud gud di moong di dal di laltain

I've to locate that mad fellow
Who used to speak up from a branch high above:
"He's god —
He alone has to decide — whose village to whose side."

When will he move down that branch — 
He is to be told:
"There are some more - left still
Who are being divided, made into pieces —
There are some more Partitions to be done 
That Partition was only the first one."

I've to go and meet Toba Tek Singh's Bishan at Wagah,
His friend Afzal has to be informed —
Lahna Singh, Wadhwa Singh, Bheen Amrit
Had arrived here butchered —
Their heads were looted with the luggage on the way behind.

Slay that "Bhuri", none will come to claim her now.
That girl who grew one finger every twelve months,
Now shortens one phalanx each year.

It's to be told that all the mad ones haven't yet reached their 
destinations —
There are many on that side
And many on this.

Toba Tek Singh's Bishan beckons me often to say:
"Opad di gud gud di moong di dal di laltain di Hindustan te Pakistan 
di dur fitey munh."

Another story of Manto that looks at the question of identity is "The 
Dog of Tetwal" , one that is a harsher critique of militant 
nationalism than "Toba Tek Singh". The plot revolves around a stray 
dog caught between two frontier posts of the Indian and Pakistani 
armies at a time of cease-fire. The story is an allegory which, 
through its simple plot, manages to satirise several aspects of the 
act of the Partition. The most obvious effect is evident in the 
statement that "even dogs will now have to be either Hindustani or 
Pakistani!" This is how far armies can go, not sparing even stray 
dogs, Manto seems to be saying, once borders and boundaries have been 
demarcated. The dog of course symbolises Partition refugees — like 
Manto — who felt like playthings in the hands of politicians. The 
absurdity and black humour are heightened when one realises how 
borders are drawn — by simply holding on to an army post on a 
mountain. 

Ravikant and Tarun K. Saint have remarked on this story that Manto is 
trying to show how troops that were "formerly comrades-in-arms now 
belonged to different national armies" and now that the British enemy 
was gone, they found enemies in each other . Manto therefore has 
proved to be prophetic. The Indo-Pakistani dispute in Kahsmir, and 
its relentless violence that Kashmiris face, is indeed a "Dog of 
Tetwal" kind of situation. The dog runs helter-skelter for safety 
even as the two armies shoot at it, eventually killing it, making it 
a martyr for one side and an object of pity for the other. This is 
what borders and boundaries do to individuals.

The question of identity has been pondered over by several other 
writers too, although in far more sentimental tones that Manto. 
Krishna Sobti's story "Sikka Badal Gayaa" or "The New Regime" tells 
the story of a village matriarch, Shahni, who had looked after 
village folk, both Hindu and Muslim, as though they had been her 
children. But today she is going to `India' because of the Partition 
and her `children' are only too happy because they will partake of 
her property left behind. The story tells of the social 
transformation wrought by the Partition, how even deep-rooted 
communal harmony was torn apart. When somebody says it's getting 
late, Shahni reflects:
Getting late? In her own house?... She was the queen of this big 
house dating back to her ancestors. How could they be so audacious as 
to pounce upon her own victuals?
The Partition changed for millions of people the very idea of `home'. 
People who had never been out of their insulated villages for 
generations were suddenly forced to choose a country, and this also 
changed for them the idea of a `nation'. Perhaps for many, nationhood 
became a conscious fact only because of the Partition, when friends 
became foes because they were of the other community and compelled 
them to flee to a land far away.

Kamleshwar's story "Kitnay Pakistan?" ("How Many Pakistans?") is a 
tale of unrequited love in the backdrop of the Partition. The Hindu 
protagonist is in love with a Muslim girl but the socio-political 
circumstances of the day do not allow their union. For the 
protagonist the word "Pakistan" is a metaphor for all that came in 
their way, for all the ways in which the Partition affected his life. 
Mangal was sent out of Bhiwandi and Bano is married to a Muslim; 
sometime later Mangal tries to return to Bhiwandi which is now in the 
grip of riots. His grandfather loses an arm and Bano's newborn child 
dies, both bcause of the riots. As Mangal, whose loss is emotional 
not physical, eventually tries to forget Bano and Bhiwandi, ending up 
in a brothel in Bombay, he is confronted by a prostitute asking for 
customers, "Anyone else?" The pathos of the story reaches its zenith 
when the prostitute turns out to be Bano. Mangal eventually has to 
accept defeat in his attempt to escape from the past. He ponders: 

Where should I go now? Which place, which town, which city? 
Where should I hide? Moving from place to place, could I ultimately 
land up somewhere away from Pakistan? A place where I could live in 
the fullness of life, with all my longings and desires

But that is not to be, Bano. I discover a Pakistan at every 
step. Bano, it plunges a knife in your body and mine. We bleed and 
feel so betrayed and humiliated. But it continues to be. 

The question of identity assumes a different angle when stories focus 
on `return'. Refugees who left their land to facilitate the identity-
formation of nations, undergo an identity transformation themselves. 
They return to their old land in the other country a few years later: 
this provides a vantage point to see how the `refugee' has changed 
and how his old land has changed. The problem of identity, therefore, 
is not just the problem of individuals but also that of entire 
mohallas, colonies, cities and countries.

Such nostalgia of `return' also insists that people lived in absolute 
communal peace and `harmony', and the monster called the Partition 
changed it all. Historical research proves this assumption wrong: 
there were undercurrents of communal conflict in all the places that 
burned.

Violence

"How Many Pakistans?" is also remarkable for its depiction of 
violence in contrast with the romantic world of Mangal the dervish or 
the drillmaster-poet who was Bano's father. There is no escaping 
violence in Partition literature: there are undercurrents of it even 
in purely political stories such as "Toba Tek Singh". 

For some narratives the depiction of violence is an end in itself. 
This is certainly the case with parts of "Black Margins". Such was 
Manto's initial shock and astonishment with his new surroundings 
called Pakistan that he could not write for several months. And when 
he finally did write, "Siyâh hâshiye" or "Black Margins" was one of 
his first works. This is a series of twenty-eight narratives, some of 
them as long as two lines, that was hardly noticed at the time. 
Written in the most unemotional and unsentimental tone, "Black 
Margins" stands out for its shock value, accentuated with the use of 
pun and clever turn of phrase. An example:

HOSPITALITY DELAYED
Kasri-Nafsi

Rioters brought the running train to a halt. People belonging to the 
other community were pulled out and slaughtered with swords and 
bullets. 
The rest of the passengers were treated to halwa, fruits and milk.
The chief assassin made a farewell speech before the train pulled 
out of the station: "Ladies and gentlemen, my apologies. News of this 
train's arrival was delayed. That is why we have not been able to 
entertain you lavishly — the way we wanted to."

At the first instance, the tone seems journalistic. There is no 
auctorial intervention or delineation of characters, or any context 
provided, leave alone a comment. Manto is simply reporting an 
anecdote, telling it like it is. Unlike other writers of Partition 
literature, his aim is not to move the readers through sentiment or 
emotion. Such was the enormity and inhumanity of the Partition riots, 
that they cannot be expressed in sentiments. By juxtaposing massacre 
with feast in the above example, he is using irony to communicate the 
extent of social breakdown that the riots entailed. This is also 
evident in his dedication of "Black Margins" to "the man who, in the 
course of narrating his bloody exploits, conceded: `When I killed an 
old woman only then did I feel that I had committed murder.' " These 
narratives do not tell us that these individuals are behaving in this 
way because of the Partition; there is no attempt to justify their 
animalism. Manto is, therefore, outlining human depravity. 

Some of the narratives in "Black Margins" are also humorous, like the 
one in which a man helps rioters loot his own house, repeatedly 
warning them to loot in a civilised manner. What we are seeing here 
is the use of black humour. Black humour is the humorous treatment of 
the horrific and macabre. This modern literary device conveys extreme 
despair. This seems to be only one step behind the pessimistic genre 
of War literature that commented not only on the futility of War but 
also of life.

"Black Margins" is a somewhat controversial work, Describing it as 
an "intellectual joke", Leslie A. Flemming says that in his "first 
shocked reaction to Partition the only way Manto could deal with it 
was to divest them of all possible emotion and laugh at them
" 
Flemming says that the presence of sarcasm, anger and compassion in 
his later stories show a maturity in his response to the Partition. 
There can, however, be a different way of looking at "Black Margins". 
The above characteristics are conspicuous by their absence, which is 
what makes "Black Margins" more effective in achieving its aim than 
any number of clichéd and sentimental Partition narratives. 

Representations of violence in Partition literature depend for their 
impact on the inherent power of violence to stir the reader's 
conscience. If there is one single symbol of the Partition riots, it 
is that of trains arriving at their destinations with their 
passengers massacred on the way. The singularity of the running train 
is the story's driving factor in Khushwant Singh's debut novel, Train 
to Pakistan. It is the arrival of this train with dead bodies that 
disturbs the communal peace of a village. (It is interesting how so 
many of these narratives are set in the village despite most of the 
violence having taken place in the cities. This could be because 
India was not as urbanised then as it is now, and many of these 
writers had their roots in villages where they may never have seen 
communal conflict take a violent turn.)

In Agyeya's story "Muslim-Muslim Bhai-Bhai", Muslim women wanting to 
escape potential violence from Hindu neighbourhoods are waiting for a 
train to take them to the newly formed Pakistan. They are, however, 
not allowed to board the train because it is already full of upper-
class Muslim women also travelling to Pakistan. The irony is not only 
that class for them was more important than a religion on whose basis 
their new country was formed, but also that they may meet the same 
fate on the train as the women they left back on the platform.

Bhisham Sahni's story "We Have Arrived in Amritsar" is set in a 
moving train whose passengers learn of the riots during their 
journey. The environment inside becomes tense but is under control. A 
feeble Hindu, however, is enraged enough to kill a Muslim trying to 
get on the train. The transformation of this character is a comment 
on how the madness of the times made murderers out of ordinary men. 
This is also reflected in the character of Ranvir in Sahni's novel 
Tamas, who, having once killed a cock, can kill any human being 
without remorse. 

Gender is a secondary theme of "How Many Pakistans?" Rajinder Singh 
Bedi's "Lajwanti" , however, is a heart-wrenching portrayal of the 
gender aspect of the Partition. Thousands of women faced sexual 
violence during the Partition riots. This included not just rape but 
also other forms of violence such as parading women naked, some times 
with their private parts mutilated or their bodies tattooed with 
symbols of the other religion. Sexual violence against women of 
the `other' community was a way of asserting the `superiority' of 
one's own community. Many were forced to drown themselves in wells 
lest they fall prey to such violence and destroy the `honour' of the 
family. Yet another aspect was that women of the `other' community 
were abducted, forced to convert and marry. Two years later the 
governments of India and Pakistan decided to heal some wounds by 
tracing abducted women on both sides and returning them to their 
homes. They did not realise that they could be creating another 
problem: many of these women may be married with children and may 
have resigned to their fate when they are asked to re-live the trauma 
of the Partition. In any case, the greatest problem for them was 
whether their families `back home' would accept them now that they 
had been `polluted'. 

This was the story of Lajwanti, Sunder Lal's wife. The story presents 
a very realistic picture of gender roles when we are told that Sunder 
Lal like all men was a wife-beater, and that Lajwanti would consider 
this a part and parcel of being a wife. But now that she had been 
abducted into Pakistan, Sunder Lal's views of husband-wife 
relationships underwent a sea-change. He longs for his Lajo to return 
and he persuades other men to accept their abducted women. 

It was, however, a particular picture of Lajwanti that Sunder Lal had 
in mind, and when she does return she is completely changed — and not 
just because of her Muslim dress. Sunder Lal had to reluctantly 
accept her — partly because he could not reject her now after being a 
leading activist of the cause of abducted women. However, he 
withdraws from Lajo by raising her to the pedestal of a goddess. 


Silence

The silence between Sunder Lal and Lajwanti could not really be 
broken, which brings us to the issue of silence. Such was the trauma 
of the Partition that many didn't want to even think about it. There 
was a feeling that the Partition has to be forgotten as an aberration 
and we have to move on. This was reflected in literature: it took 
several years before many authors could look back and reflect on the 
Partition. 

Urvashi Butalia's book The Other Side of Silence is an investigation 
of what lay beneath this silence. Beginning with her own family's 
traumatic experience with the Partition, Butalia interviewed dozens 
of people about what they went through and she found that many of 
them were relating their experiences for the first time. It proved to 
be a cathartic experience for many, although Butalia was conscious 
that she could renew old wounds and end up disturbing the calm of 
people who had made their peace with the tragedy of the Partition. 
Butalia's book looks especially at how women, children and Dalits 
coped with the madness of 1947 

In the past decade or so this silence has almost been turned on its 
head. More and more research on this subject, its depiction in 
literature and cinema, seems to be suggesting an outburst of 
catharsis.

When the novel Tamas was televised, there was an upsurge that it 
should not be shown. There is a view that we should not remember the 
Partition because it's no use remembering the gore and dementia of a 
day and age gone by. This does not seem to be a valid argument given 
that `Partition' has never ended; it lives on as communal violence 
rears its ugly head every now and then. Communal violence in 1947-48 
was often sparked by a trainload of dead bodies — not very different 
from what happened in Gijarat last year. A poem circulating on the 
Internet after 9/11 compels the reader to wonder if `Partition' will 
ever end: 

For Papa

August 14th 1947. Firozepur, Punjab.
You —
eighteen years old
sit alone and wait
for news of your parents.
When they arrive days later
My grandfather, grandmother, and her brother
offer no explanation, no report, no narrative
of how they ended up alive in a train from Lahore, Pakistan
Their arrival simply becomes a fact
— a fact that even the children — my brother and I
Learn never to question.

November 1st 1984, Delhi.
You wait again.
This time with your parents,
My mother, my brother, and I.
Murdering mobs parade the streets,
announcing their arrival by rattling street lights.
My grandfather sitting in front of the house
Reads the newspaper, pretending oblivion.
The neighbours demand he go inside.
"I left once," he says,
"where am I to go now?"
You —
I know, are afraid
But refuse to remove your turban or cut your hair—
as some neighbours and so-called friends suggest.
You, who would not enter a temple
mock religion and even God
Say that you are a teacher
And do not wish to teach submission to fascism.

September 11, 2001 — to date. Delhi, India and Carbondale, U.S.A
You wait there
And I — here
My brother who is visiting me
Finds again that wearing a turban invites the name "terrorist".
And, just as in 1984, he wants to be on the street.
I wait here
For news of American bombs on Afghanistan,
While the successors of Gandhi's assassins
Rule his birthplace,
Drowning in blood the hopes of 1947
Sowing land mines into the line your parents had crossed
But one they would not let cross their hearts

Years later in 1972,
My grandmother would visit that border again
Pick up a handful of dirt and call it "home".
My brother and I would joke
That our grandmother created nations wherever she went.
Born in Burma she was twice a refugee,
Once in Pakistan, then India.

Children know
That if not this history there would be another.
But if not for those who labour to make this children's belief come 
true,
The only drops to fall on this desolate drought-stricken earth would 
be blood.

Today —
As I imagine you eighteen years old,
I long to take your hands into my grown hands,
And walk into refugee camps where children still get born.


Tarun K. Saint remarks, "It has taken years for the psychic numbness 
that refugees experienced to give way to a new kind of communication 
between generations that the poem alludes to." 

But is such communication always healthy? Recalling Gulzar's 
comment, "There are many more Partitions to be done/ That Partition 
was only the first one," it is impossible to deny the function of 
Partition literature as a moral warning about what another Partition 
can do to us. Yet, as another side of the coin, such warnings can 
have an invert effect: they can actually provoke more violence. The 
above poem, for instance, could help another Bhrindanwale in his 
political ambitions. The extremely gory violence in Kamal Hasan's 
film Hey Ram, did not prevent a blatantly communal response to the 
film in theatres across India. Crowds were clapping and jeering when 
Gandhi was being ridiculed. Right-wing intellectuals have off and on 
called Bhishm Sahni communal, wondering why his stories show Hindus 
in a specially bad light, suggesting they were more responsible for 
the violence than Muslims. Given the sensitivity of the subjects we 
are dealing with here, we must recognise that some subtlety, if not 
silence, is warranted. 

This is what gives credence to the viewpoint that the best way to 
deal with Partition is not to deal with at all. This, however, has 
its own absurdities: how can anyone dictate a writer not to make a 
literary inquiry into such a major event in Indian history, an event 
that Indian history writing doesn't tell us much about.

Amidst these complexities, two things are clear. Firstly, the use of 
violence could be controlled and suggestive. No one can say 
that "Toba Tek Singh" or "Tetwal ka Kutta" can be misused by 
communalists. Secondly, the transformation of text into celluloid 
should be done with special responsibility considering that celluloid 
can have a tremendous public impact. Otherwise Partition literature 
may end up exacerbating the very borders and boundaries that it seeks 
to question.

***

Shivam Vij is moderator of the Zest Reading Group - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zest-india. Email: 
shivamvij at hotmail.com
 
 



 


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