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Cracking
India: Cultural and Religious Representation in
Indo-Anglian Literature by Nadia Ahmad
The 1947 Indian Partition lingers as a pivotal moment in the modern world, not so much for its political significance in the emergence of the sovereignties of India and Pakistan, but for its lasting impression of monstrosity and horrific emotional duress. From the killings, rapes, kidnappings, looting, and banditry, the South Asian populace continues to suffer from psychological wounds, etched by Partition. Arguably before the Indian Partition, the twentieth century had not experienced such a massive and excruciating migration of people.1 In response to this tumultuous period a body of fictional explorations has arisen, attempting to define the inner turmoil and social complexes, plaguing the subcontinent. While it is significant to examine why this trend occurred, in terms of the novel form in some ways eclipsing historical accounts, what remains even more intriguing is the use of Partition and national independence as a backdrop to explore other social, political, and economic issues, which are foregrounded by these events. Partition is not a bygone event, but a contemporary phenomenon that continues to influence the politics of identity in South Asia along with subcontinent's attitudes toward interweaving aspects of religion and culture on the one hand and the relationship between tradition and modernity on the other. Arguably, Partition and the literature to describe it are very much an attempt at reconciling problematic configurations of modernity and tradition. The events leading up to Partition and the response to it were not as much a hope for independence as much as a desire for modernity. A reading of Partition or Indian independence culminates from an on-going struggle between tradition and modernity, especially when modernity in Western terms is defined as exclusive to religious belief. Postcolonialism has taught us that this Western understanding of modernity cannot be applicable to non-Western constructs because to remove established culture and religion from the social construct is to shatter the ideological virtues of a people, who are closely attached to their customs and belief systems. This paper will focus on Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India (1991), Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan (1956), Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), and Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters (1998) to analyze how these four concepts of modernity, tradition, religion, and culture are shown as being problematic, fluid in connotation, but also manipulated in the politics of identity. The paper will conclude with a comparative view into the displacement of these identity politics to the South Asian diaspora, where the same issues of modernity, tradition, religion, and culture continue to trouble, but produce new contradictions and resolutions.
The Significance and Use of Partition Literature Indo-Anglian Partition and Post-Partition works are a part of an emerging genre of postcolonial literature,2 which aim to cope with the intimate concerns of friendship and love against the backdrop of nationalism and religious fervor by linking the political with the personal. Within the past decade, several works of substantial and not-so-substantial quality regarding Partition are surfacing in European and American libraries, bookstores, and college reading lists. This newfound interest in Partition literature arises from multiple constraints and systems occurring simultaneously. For the large part, most South Asians are still experiencing the enduring hurt from the era because the emotional and psychological issues from the past incidents were never fully addressed in a large arena or even considered a concern. Mushirul Hasan says, "The history books do not record the pain, trauma and sufferings of those who had to part from their kin, friends, and neighbors, their deepening nostalgia for places they had lived in for generations, the anguish of devotees removed from their places of worship, and the harrowing experiences of the countless people who boarded trains thinking they would be transported to the realisation of their dreams, but of whom not a man, woman or child survived the journey."3 The tragedy of the Partition encounter, moreover, lies in the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs who were slain in the midst of communal violence, which at the same time displaced 15 million into refugee status.4 Ironically, the split between India and Pakistan only served to heighten each other's hostilities. For the past fifty years, the two countries remain entrenched in bitter animosity, fighting three wars in 1947-1948, 1963, and 1971, and during the last decade fighting low intensity wars over Muslim-occupied Kashmir and the drawing of boundaries in the high Himalayas.5 The depiction of Partition varies based upon the point of view of the individual. For the Indians in the classic nationalist interpretation, Partition appears the logical outcome of British interpretation of veni, vidi, vici. For Pakistanis, Partition became their founding moment, the glorious outcome of the struggle of the Muslims to have a separate identity recognized by both the British and the Indian nationalist movement. For the British, it was a regrettable necessity.6 The British colonial power had wielded considerable control in Asia. By 1805, they were the single largest European force in India, and within 50 years they controlled the entire subcontinent. South Asians resented the British colonists because of the cultural disruption.7 The English did not have the power to impose their will on their Indian empire which left it unified; Partition came to be the only way in which they could extract themselves from a commitment which they could no longer afford.8 In the making of Pakistan, religion appears to have been the determinant of nationality 9 because of the conflicting worldviews. According to Ayesha Jalal in The Sole Spokesman, two theories surface to explain the cataclysmic events. Firstly, the theory that Indian Muslims were always a distinct and readily identifiable community. Jalal says, "India, this theory argues, contained the seeds of two nations; the Muslims were never wholly assimilated into their Indian environment and had their own distinctive traditions."10 Thus, the emergence of Pakistan would be a political progression enforced by religious ties. The other model concentrated on the role of imperialism in iding two communities which history and tradition had joined: "The concept of Pakistan, according to this view, arose from the efforts of the British to ide and rule their Indian empire (and eventually to divide and quit).11 Both these theories are problematic because of the political, social, economic, and religious intricacies involved in the differing situations due to the vastness of Indian culture and geography. It would be difficult to base a theory on Partition solely on one model; the two models must be juxtaposed and merged with other theories of religious and national consciousness. Partition, however, points to the conflicted relationship between culture and religion on the one hand and tradition and modernity on the other. From the birth of the nations, communal riots flared up from the remote villages to the cities. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs slaughtered each other by stopping trains to and from India and Pakistan and slitting the throats of the passengers.12 They raped women and murdered children in the fields. Property was seized from migrating groups. Civil tension continued mounting for several months. More than 75,000 women were raped, kidnapped, abducted, forcibly impregnated by men of the "other" religion, thousands of families were split apart, homes burnt down, villages abandoned. 13 Some women were so embarrassed of the sexual humiliation that they refused to return home. The destruction of families through murder, suicide, broken women, and kidnappings caused grievous Post-Partition trauma. In The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, Urvashi Butalia writes, "Refugee camps became part of the landscape of most major cities in the north, but, a half century later, there is no memorial, no memory, no recall, except what is guarded, and now rapidly dying, in families and collective memories."14 The focus of this passage is the women who were forgotten. The ignoring of women's contributions to independence in the form of their memories indicates the disparity of treatment. Moreover, the communal hatred is difficult to pinpoint: was it rooted in a British propaganda that turned the South Asians against each other or a result of the existing tension between the native groups. Indians who had only one month earlier been chanting, "Hindu, Muslim, Bhai, Bhai" as slogans were then using slurs to address one and other. Entire generations of interconnectedness among differing religions groups were shattered in a matter of weeks or even days. Butalia points out: The transformation of the "other" from a human being to the enemy, a thing to be destroyed before it destroyed you, became the all-important imperative. Feelings, other than hate, indifference, loathing, had no place here. Later, they would come back to haunt those who had participated in violence, or remained indifferent to its happening.15 The heart of the matter is not determining what groups created such and such a situation because in actuality, all sides contributed to the physical, emotional, and sexual violence. The emphasis should be on how the groups can learn to reconcile with each other. The purpose of Partition literature can be seen as steps in conflict resolution because accusations, threats, insecurities, and fears are prevalent among those that were and continue to be traumatized by the events surrounding the independence movement. Even after Partition several issues remain unsettled, particularly in Kashmir. The continuing impact of unresolved geo-political issues illustrate the lack of closure from the Partition episode. The nations and their people are searching for a way to grasp a difficult history. Western countries still maintain an upper hand in South Asia policy because they supply arms. With the advent of urbanization, groups started moving into urban centers, which would cause the collapse of the village and family units because of separation from each other and the exposure to city life. The phenomenon of modernization in South Asia is manifested when Hollywood films and sitcoms along with large multi-national corporations like Coca-Cola and McDonald infiltrate into the social scene, creating an ever widening gap between tradition and modernity. Even after the British stepped off Indian soil, foreign Western powers, particular America, continue to wield considerable influence in the area. This may appear to be an oversimplification of the social scenario, but it is symptomatic of the crippling effects of modern multi-national capitalism.16 Therefore, given this fraught situation, it seems only the novel, with its "subjective objectivity" can be "trusted." The novelist creates a discourse to bring these past and current issues to the forefront of society. At the same time, the novels circle the issues of independence and Partition, using it as a means to explore other issues which then perhaps emerge as the larger picture to the devastation, bloody birth of nations, and continued problems. The fragmentation of cultural syncretism leads to religion and culture becoming equivalent. The novelists suggest that this was disastrous for South Asia, especially with the confused approach to "modernity." Since it is impossible to sort out the historical, political, and economic intricacies associated with Partition, history and historiography become inadequate mediums for examining Partition trauma; hence, the necessity of fiction. Examining Partition from a literary perspective provides keener insight into the vacillating personal experiences and national histories. The novel form creates a discourse for understanding the sentiments of various sides of the tale because the author is not bound to a superficial sense of historical objectivity. Anita Desai in her introduction to Sunlight on a Broken Column says, "To read [Attia Hosain's] novel and short stories is to become aware of the many and varied threads that go to make up a rich and interesting life as well as the doubts and struggles and contradictions it contained."17 The fiction writer has the astute ability to produce a greater comprehension of the events because he or she inserts racial, religious, socio-economic, and political biases in front of the reader to present an honest narrative account of Partition. The account is honest to the extent that it provides a medium to relate personal experiences without the guise of objectivity. Even though the narrator and characters in the text will not be free from bias, they can still offer a broader scope of the emotional and personal ramifications inherent within and penetrating into the social construct.
The Conflict of Defining Modernity in the Novel Form The notion of modernity creeps up--indeed bludgeons us--repeatedly in Partition literature. Characters in Cracking India, Train to Pakistan, Sunlight on a Broken Column, and Difficult Daughters present the notion of what constitutes modernity in its triumph along with its sense of alienation. Individual social constructs promote a type of syndrome for the modern, which becomes a vehicle for not only self-empowerment, but also self-aggrandizement. Understanding the linguistic origins of "modernity" provides a grasp of how to situate the term in context of the four novels. "Modern" signifies pertaining to the present time; contemporary; not antiquated or obsolete; characteristic of contemporary styles of art, literature, music that reject traditionally accepted or sanctioned forms and emphasize individual experimentation or sensibility.18 A "modern person" is one whose views and tastes are considered such. The word arrives into Modern English language by way of the Latin adverb modo, which means only, merely, lately, (of the time) just now. The word, modernus, is created from the original ablative singular of modus (mode) added to -ernus, the adjectival suffix of time.19 Elaboration on the etymology is crucial because of the element of time involved with seeing how the term "modern" is used because it is time that propels movement and, therefore, evolution. A definition regarding literary context is that modernism is the character, tendencies, or values with adherence or sympathy to the modern, while maintaining estrangement or divergence from the past in arts and literature occurring, especially in the course of the twentieth century and taking form in any of the various innovative movements and styles.20 An understading of the novel's narrative and thematic concerns will highlight the trouble with the concept of "modernity." In Cracking India, the spirited young daughter of an affluent Parsee family in Lahore narrates the story of the Indian Partition, as she witnesses Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsees, and Sikhs fighting for their land and their lives. The story represents how Partition society is composed of different elements through a motley group of characters from various socio-economic, ethnic, and religious backgrounds in the form of neighbors, servants, and relatives. According to Sidhwa herself, the Parsee perspective adds an interesting view to the issue of Partition. Sidhwa says in an interview, "As a Parsee I can see things objectively. I see the common people suffering while politicians on either side are having all the fun."21 The author also explores the consequences of Partition for women through the child narrator, Lenny, who realizes many of the immediate problems of the events when her young nanny, or Ayah, is kidnapped. Ayah, the desirable-woman figure with a substantial male following, suddenly becomes labeled along national and religious lines as an Indian Hindu. Other events, including the tragic death of Masseur, one of Ayah's Muslim admirers, and the departure of another ex-husband Ice-Candy Man, a Pakistani nationalist, to India after Ayah, foreshadow continued hostility across the border and into the future. The author uses the tragedy of Partition to justify a certain idea of relating culture and religion when different individuals become relegated to part of a larger construct. Khushwant Singh in Train to Pakistan portrays the individual problems of loyalty and responsibility faced by the principal figures in a quaint village on the frontier between India and Pakistan. In the summer of 1947, a train full of dead Sikhs stirs up a battlefield in the peaceful atmosphere of love and loyalty between the Muslims and the Sikhs. The protagonist Juggat Singh, the village gangster, who is having a love affair with a Muslim girl, Nooran, redeems himself by saving many Muslim lives in the final scene.22 In the midst of the struggle, Iqbal Singh arrives from a modern urban center in India, saying he is trying to organize and mobilize the villagers for social activism, who fear his intentions and question his legitimacy because of his ambiguous religious identity. The Punjabi rural folk in the novel feel a certain way about Iqbal because his character represents modernity, urbanization, and a confused religious identity. Thus, it seems futile to disengage religion from culture, according to Singh's narrative. In the novel, the rural construct has a high potentiality for an ideal syncretism. Meanwhile, Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column presents similar overlapping issues found in the previous two novels, but the focus here is on tradition versus modernity. As a semi-autobiographical story set in the 1930's during the waning moments of British rule in India, the novel focuses on the life of a young aristocratic Muslim girl just entering into womanhood, who is dealing with independence politics and her personal struggle to balance modernity and tradition. Her relationships with her peers and relatives provide the backdrop for discussing issues of Partition. The female protagonist, Laila, seeks to negotiate these inner conflicts within her own position and Islamic religion. She does not tolerate any level of hypocrisy whether it is in feudalism, religion, or modernity. Noticing the fragmentation of culture and tradition as well as seeking to find a space for herself, she deals with her questions and doubts through aligning herself in a position, which leads to a subtle realization of a certain spirituality present within Islam. Likewise, in Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur the story hinges on the tension between modernity and tradition. The author presents the life of a young woman from Amritsar during Partition, who struggles with family duty, educational aspirations, and an illicit relationship with a college professor. Kapur suggests that the root of all present-day evil is this tension between modernity and tradition, while religion and inter-religious conflicts become a subtext in the gender war. Difficult Daughters is unique because it was published recently (1998) in the shadow of Hindu nationalism. The novel form offers a disguised critique of religious communalism and the difficulty of nationalism. Consequently, all four novels being examined here provide a backdrop for dealing with issues of modernity and tradition. It is significant that the novels project to a particular moment of crisis, Partition. The novel form remains necessary to understand the ideology of the nation in a way distinct from the typical approach to South Asian history. In Cracking India, modernity professes a unique sort of progress, intrinsic to upbringing and social class. The Parsee people in the novel are projected as "modern." The Parsee ladies frosted, bobbed hair and tinted pairs of glasses point toward the emergence of modernity in the class construct. Modernity engenders class privilege, but is also some how hijacked by the Parsee narrator and equated with that religion. When addressing the Parsee audience about the turmoil in the state, Colonel Bharucha says, "'I hope no Lahore Parsee will be stupid enough to court trouble…. I strongly advise all of you to stay at home and out of trouble.'"23His speech utterance presupposes that the Parsees are more sophisticated than the rest of the Indian people. The way he phrases his sentences hints that Parsee are superior to the other groups: they should not be involved in the trifling affairs between Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims that cause political and social chaos in the moments leading up to the Indian Partition. In the dinner party scene, the Parsee parents arbitrate between the Sikh and English guests. Lenny's parents constantly try to prevent a greater fight from erupting, while Lenny and her brother are hiding under the table listening to the feud. A discussion about Partition politics turns violent:
The above scene points to the violation of a specific sanctity of the dinner table. The Englishman and the Sikh undermine the private space of their Parsee hosts. The narrator describes this scene in detail to suggest how she is offended by the men's rash behavior in the home and above all, at the dinner table. Lenny repeatedly points out Mr. Rogers's haughtiness from physical gestures of his nostrils flaring to his explosive and racist comments. There is no better word to describe Mr. Singh's comments except for jungali (Urdu: savage). Through the passage, there is the subtle rhetoric of Parsee superiority in mannerism and in anger management. Among the women, Lenny's mother is the one that maintains her composure, speaking up only at critical moments and trying to use her soft femininity to calm the men. The other women are presented as frantic and volatile, responding to the scene, instead of subduing it. Yet another underlying issue is that of Partition politics and how to approach it: the Parsee community would rather not be involved in the tension because not only of its status as a minority group, but also because in some ways they supercede the political tension. Modernity indicates a political activism that could lead to political change. Lenny reflects, "And notwithstanding the compatible and sanguine nature of my relationship with my disease, I fell it is my personal involvement with Indian politics: the Quit-India sentiment that has fired my imagination of a subject of people and will soon sweep the Raj."25 The political sentiment in this passage suggests nationalism. The highly formal British English of the quotation indicates nationalistic undertones to undermine British authority. Lenny's disease is also the disease of colonialism, which is often portrayed as a form of evil or social disease that eats away the organic body of the colonized people. The author hints at some of the motives of imperialist nations, which is the power complex intertwined with self-interest. This proclamation signifies the anticipated distrust toward the colonial regime. Furthermore, the deceptive tactics of imperialist power compel educated natives to action, using modern knowledge against the European aggressors. The nationalist can break the reins of colonialism by developing an alternative interpretation to modernism. If the nation's people can tap into political enterprises for their own benefit, they can use the modernist concepts against the Europeans to create their own revolution. Yet in spite of the political, economic, and social efforts, the Post-Partition situation appears doomed, especially within the context of the novel's conclusion.
The literary function of the roses is significant because it is juxtaposed with the image of cheap candy wrappers and goat droppings, which can respectively symbolize modern capitalism and religious communalism. This juxtaposition suggests the dire need to reassess the Post-Partition situation and understand what exactly went so terribly wrong. The novel truly lacks a sense of closure at this point, which should not be striking, considering that the chapter of Partition has not achieved resolution either and may actually have become a worse situation. Contrastingly, Train to Pakistan portrays a different aspect to the problem of Partition. The schism between the Western system and the Punjabi village structure is also visible in the ambiguous religious identity of Iqbal Singh. The clash of Western ideals is evident in the social interactions of Iqbal with the local Sikh residents. The ambiguous presentation of his character as either a modern Sikh or a Muslim delineate the conflicting notions of personal identity. When the local Sikhs discover he has been circumcised, they instantaneously brand him as Muslim. Yet Iqbal's insistence on being from Sikh origins leads to the question: is he truly a Muslim, or a Sikh, whose parents might have circumcised him for non-religious reasons. Iqbal maintains his stance throughout his stay in the village, including the imprisonment period: "I am not a villager. I come from Delhi. I was sent to organize the peasants, but the government does not like the people to be organized."27 He seeks to be identified as a cosmopolitan without religious leanings. Yet the village construct fails to conceive of his attempts to reject compartmentalization. Iqbal's dress, manner, and physical appearance point to him not being Sikh; therefore, the local question the veracity of his origins. The narrator writes about Iqbal:
This passage suggests inner turmoil because of futile attempts at understanding the reasoning behind Punjabi social responsibility and the desperation of his hopes at implementing "modern" ideals of truth, honor, and integrity over tribal bonds. Whatever Iqbal has studied and believed proves useless because the locals deny him the right to be recognized according to his true religious origin and humiliate him in attempts to confirm their suspicions. The painful realization strikes at the crux of the problem that in spite of all efforts to adopt modernity, the Punjabi authority refuses to fully accept the manifestation of Iqbal as a Sikh because of social stereotypes. The locals associate him with being anglicized and modern with the added complication of being circumcised. The word "modern" essentially like the age is meaningless; it is only a self-justification. This understanding produces a meaning that is nothing. Yet modernity is not entirely despairing. When a neighbor discovers that Iqbal is educated he says to him, "'May your Iqbal [fame] ever increase.'"29 Khuswant Singh presents Iqbal's education and ability to read English as intellectual prowess that commands a specific sort of respect. In trying to cope with isolationism, modernism introduces the medium of education along with print journalism, which is also mentioned in the novel, for connecting the people to each other in order to develop a national consciousness; moreover, if used effectively newspapers can become a potent tool for the native populations to communicate to each other. According to Benedict Anderson, the nation is an imagined community, which is a form that is limited because most citizens never come in contact with one another, but the nation maintain a sense of sovereignty because of its structure as a free autonomy and independent state with autonomous rights.30 All forms of the community are imagined once they exceed village status. A materialistic account of national consciousness can relate to the rise of modern education and print capitalism. Even though Partition India and Pakistan have dismal literacy rates, the emergence of public schools and newspapers, nevertheless, had a significant impact to the area with literally hundred's of regional language variances. "Speakers of a huge variety of [languages], who might find it difficult to or even impossible to understand one another in conversation, became capable of comprehending one another."31 Newspapers are the technical means for representing the kind of imagined community. The newspapers created a unity among the native people because they could recognize the situation and respond, and even if they did not agree with each other, they still related to each other at conceptual level of the legal wrangling and its implications. Journalism can promote forward progress among radical minds; it not only relates events, but an attitude that people, as a collective group, have a stake in what occurs. Meanwhile, the journalists and their readers should be somewhat wary of this emerging medium because of the propaganda involved. If approached with caution, newspapers are highly useful in mobilizing the people’s thoughts by exposing the true sentiment of writers, like Iqbal. As a misnomer, news articles can be inaccurate, laden with errors. The less discerning reader is less critical and objective of what he or she reads. Newspaper articles can portray a distorted perception of reality. In regards to "modern education" the aforementioned definition is suitable, but examining the use of the word "modern" in the course of nationalistic discourse, the term becomes problematic because it becomes an umbrella term for the self-justification of ideas, such as nationalism, humanism, rationalism, and secularism, which promote an individual subjectivity through rationalism, modern science, and technological process. Yet this equation brackets off the spiritual and religious as the irrational. This shift is antithetical to the Eastern ideology, which is known to be more spiritually-oriented. In Sunlight on Broken Column episode, Laila's relatives, Aunt Saira, Kemal, and Saleem, are having the following conversation concerning the subject.
The dialogic in the following passage expresses a preoccupation, even obsession with the modern age, which the characters are grappling to define.33 In rhetorical theory, the rhetor, the speaker, has a certain effect on the audience by anticipating and controlling his or her response to evoke a specific controlled response. Trained in modern education, which is equated with England, Saleem and Kemal illustrate the concept of the dialogic. They plan their responses from their words to their smiles, to evoke a specific response from their mother. The conversation indicates an inner struggle to achieve newness through modern education and European principles i.e. Marxism. At the same time, they can only "appreciate" Marxist principles. Interestingly, Marxism was a way of solving the problems of the feudal system, which is how the boys' family earns their wealth. A definite tension emerges within the text because of the conflict between the traditional source of their money and their seemingly modern philosophical principles. The sons cannot reconcile this issue and often project their confusion in their ill-treatment of their mother. Yet the two brothers appear rather cynical to their mother in terms of their smirks and witty putdowns. Are they modern, or merely exhibiting filial impiety? Hosain taps into religious ideals of showing disrespect to the parents, which is considered an enormity in Islam.34 In a well-known Hadith, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is reported to have said that Paradise lies under the feet of the mother. The Quran says,
If saying "Uff!" to the parental authority is not permitted, then mocking and belittling them is also in the realm of what is prohibited. Most religions and cultures exhibit the ideal of showing respect to the parents. The Hindu worship of the goddess as mother also presents the high sanctity of the maternal role. The modern phenomenon of child rebellion and filial impiety is adverse to the traditional construct of the parent-child relationship. The modern system, i.e. Western societies, emphasize the individual, in this case the child, but at the expense of the respect to parents. In this manner, Saleem and Kemal's cleverness reflects a feeling of personal insecurity on their part. If they were confident about their Western principles, they would not need to make humorous remarks about them. They do not have a true conviction to these foreign principles, which are adverse to their Indianness. Trapped between two worldviews, they cannot reconcile being shut off from the English on account of a racial prejudice and not being understood by traditionally unlettered folk "back home." Hosain suggests a level of hypocrisy here. An irony emerges in the passage because the author exposes that modernity is only a façade; the modern person only "thinks" his or her situation is better. In actuality, this improved condition is not necessarily the case. A certain distance between the sons and the mother appears, which was created through their being sent to England to study. This distancing between peoples occurs in other instances in the novel. Uncle Hamid aspires for Saira and his children to be "modern" in their education and thinking. Also, Zahra's husband wants her to appear "modern" in her clothing and mannerism. What does modernity signify in these instances? Arguably, they have achieved only a superficial level of modernity because it is only apparent in their academic degrees, apparel, and talk. This type of modernity should not be considered substantive. Consequently, the modern individual experiences a profound sense of alienation, induced by the disillusionment surrounding him or her. In the novel form, the protagonist can undergoes a change in character because of a feeling of disconnectedness to the modern world. In the case of Laila, the question invariably arises whether she is modern or traditional, and if so to what extent is she. Laila reflects, "I felt I lived in two worlds; an observer in an outside world, and solitary in my own--except when I was with friends as College. Then the blurred, confusing double image came near to being one."36 This duality in her personage or acceptance of hybridity represents a confused sense of identity. She cannot relate to her Muslim tradition, but at the same time, is hesitant to wholeheartedly accept the modern system of education. Meanwhile, Laila feels uncomfortable adopting the new social system of the British and modern India because it conflicts with her ideals of tradition and creates tension when trying to reconcile modernity and tradition at the danger of hypocrisy. She doubts that she will achieve inner satisfaction by studying because she questions it as a means to liberation. One of Laila's peers exemplifies what Laila views as the difficulty of attempting to preserve a Muslim heritage from the Mughul Indo-Islamic world. She says about Nadira, "Her visions of the greatness of the Islamic world in the past was blurred for me by its decadence in the present."37 Laila brings forth a valid complaint of the decadence of the Islamic present. But what is that she signifies by her world concept of Islam? Is it the religious or cultural aspect? The notion of adhering to religion per se is problematic for some in parts of South Asia and maybe everywhere because Islam is seen as a cultural expression that needs to be preserved, instead of as a religious ideal with mores and standard codes of conduct. This issue is compounded when the scholarly aspect of the din (way of life) escapes the concern of the people to be replaced by a seemingly meaningless goal of preserving an Islamic culture as opposed to Islamic din. Islam does not espouse a separation of culture and religion, rather a defining of cultural practices into the scope of Islamic methodology. That is, Islam is the overarching social construct with the cultural elements as subsidiary. In Sunlight on a Broken Column, Zahra's wedding is depicted, emphasizing the sheer luxury and extravagance:
In essence, material capitalism dilutes religion into a cultural entity, distinct from actual Islam, which encourages moderation in material as well as religious affairs. The practitioners of this form of Islam have found concordance and balance between the material and the spiritual, avoiding either extremes. Culture signifies the way in which the people celebrate weddings, mark death, eat food, in short, the customs and specific rituals. The concern in this case is that the concept of Islam becomes associated with these material elements when in actuality Islam strives to distant itself from material excess. Perhaps Hosain is providing how upper-class aristocrats should reduce culture to ostentatious displays--whether or not they are Muslim. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said, "Beware of going to extremes for those before you were only destroyed by their excessiveness." This specific problem is rooted in how Islam is perceived: a cultural norm versus din. Contrastly, the sense of alienation that Saleem and Kemal experience is indicative of emerging (post) modernism.39 Yet since variant forms of modernism exist in South Asia, it is essential to map out the different models. The standard mode of European modernism in the colonies was a capitalistic system, maintained by imperialist bonds. The colonizers staked their claims in the colonized countries because of monetary interests. According to Marx, imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. Moreover, capitalism has the capacity to integrate economic and socio-political elements within the colonial construct for self-interest. This system inverts the natural order when everything changes shape. The colonized in this system can easily be subjugated if they are convinced that their former tradition inhibits forward progress. At the same time, it is impossible for them to forsake tradition altogether. Looking back on the early Anglo-Indian encounters, the systematic attempt of the British to anglicize Indians is obvious, if not out and out blatant. Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay in his famous Minute on Education in 1835 helped devise "an Indian elite, junior allies in imperial progress: 'a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in opinions, in moral and in intellect'. The elite, in turn would assist in guiding India to a better future."40 Macaulay's vision symbolizes European humanism in South Asia: he sought to encourage the natives to abandon centuries old languages, values, and customs at the spur of the moment. This sentiment pervaded colonial India, but Macaulay was one the first Victorians to enunciate it. "Simply put, the more an Englishman an Indian thought and behaved the higher he scored on Macaulay's scale. A paradox lies at the heart of the matter: the more English the Indian becomes, the more alienated he is from his own people and the culture, which he is meant to represent."41 European humanism, which is the basis of colonialism, degenerates into racism when the civilized nations impart the doctrine of humanism to the colonized. The debate of modernism and tradition, which appears in the Sunlight On a Broken Column in the form of Islamic heritage and North Indian customs, is situated in an age-old intellectual argument. The process of colonization entailed several hundred years because of the intellectual might of the Muslims, who were considered the greatest threat to imperial rule, particular in the case of the British Raj. The British realized this strength and set about to win Muslim support.42 It would be far-fetched to assume that only military superiority conquered them. Syed Naguib al-Atas asserts in Islam and Secularism that there was a confrontation between Western and Islamic fronts on the historical, military, and social levels, but the conflict was moved to the intellectual level later. Once the colonizers conquered the Muslims militarily, they set about to remove what empowers the Muslims: their intellectual capacity. The confrontation between Islam and the West is a permanent one because the challenge is not to Western Christianity, but to the entire system of metaphysics, which results in them "not believing anything."43 Al-Atas says that the dispute between "you and them" is a perpetual clash between Islam and the Western worldview. As to the intellectual cause of the decline of Muslims, he says the basic problem is reduced to the single evident crying of the loss of adab (proper conduct).44 Thus, the tension between Aunt Saira and her sons is the clash of worldviews, evident through their disrespect toward their parents, a lack of adab to the parents. Eastern cultures place a high weight on adab, especially to the mother; therefore, disregarding this principle signifies a collapse of that construct. Modernity is what causes this dramatic change because it shifts the focus from respect and proper conduct to the individual, who can abandon these ideals. In Difficult Daughters, the space of the novel is a space where issue of woman and modernity can be discussed openly. The novel presents a bitter tone to the social and gender constructs that arose because of modernity. The female protagonist, Virmati, creates a scandalized family situation when she falls in love with the Professor, an already married man, who places her in his home alongside his wife and helps her towards reaching higher education in Lahore. Virmati is being exploited by a patriarchal system (the Professor) through the mode of colonialism (English literature) and Indian nationalism. Manju attempts to relate her main characters as symbolic of figures the Indian Partition. On a personal level, Virmati's character represents female naivete and passivity because she is easily taken advantage of by the Professor and abused on an emotional level. After a miscarriage, the author narrates:
Virmati realizes the importance of her body and how she, as a woman, is perceived when she violates her body. In understanding the gharr-bahir (home-outside world) dichotomy, women's personal lives and relationships were greatly impacted by the way they preserved their modesty. The shame motif continuously appears because it is a cultural and religious virtue. Virmati's feeling of guilt arise because she feels she has incurred divine wrath. She is trying to achieve a level of modernity through education and social mobility, but she finds herself stumbling on traditional values that haunt her efforts to grasp female agency. Her inner conflict is very much the issue of reconciling modernity and tradition. The author uses episodes likes the one above in relation to the larger political issues of the era to allow for a critique of politics and Indian independence. Another force at work in the novel is the religious communalism, which exhibits the tension of self-definition based exclusively on religion and nationalistic grounds. At a larger societal level, Kapur uses the novel to criticize the politics of Partition and Post-Partition events, especially contemporary Indian issues. The Bharatiya Janata Party, the political wing of Indian/Hindu nationalism is a phenomenon of the 1990's, which gained momentum in part as a response to the communal tension after the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition. At the same time, the discourse of Hindu nationalism professes to be a celebration of the nation back to the moment of birth, Partition. Manju Kapur critiques the formation of nationhood by mapping Virmati's relationship with the Professor on the political background. Virmati feels she should exhibit the ambitions of Hindu nationalism, apparent in her friend, Swarna:
In one sweeping stroke, the narrator reduces Hindu nationalism by relating it back to an attempt for male approval in a patriarchal construct. At one point, Virmati is admiring this other young lady's assertiveness, but in the meanwhile, she is narrowing her own views by agreeing with in response to how a male authority figure would perceive her affiliation with Hindu nationalism. The equation of Hindu nationalism has the aspect of forming within an underlying patriarchal system. The mixed message here suggests that there is a serious flaw in Hindu nationalism in the way that it is constructed because it works within the existing patriarchy, which can further limit the woman's sphere. The critique also takes the overt form of reevaluating "modernity" by looking at the patriarchal system. How "modern" can Hindu nationalism and the colonial education system be in a patriarchal system? There is even a collusion of patriarchy with colonialism, which appears through the English literature the Professor teaches. Swarna herself said she was studying English Honours in Lahore when she became active in Indian politics. The presence of English literature and language carries a foreboding association to colonialism. Through modern education, patriarchal elements of colonialism can further subjugate women. In the election for senior studentship at Lahore College for women, Swarna's rival was a Muslim student, Ashrafi, who had been "persuaded" by the principal,47 understandably British and probably male. The actual contest for the election was not even Hindu and Muslim, but was more along the planes of colonial authority and patriarchy. Even though Swarna won, she remained a pawn in the interest of Hindu nationalism. The novel is disguised critique of religious nationalism in the form of communal tension and nationalism which equate being Indian with Hindu. Instead of creating a feeling of community harmony and societal unity, Indian nationalism creates an antagonistic discourse, turning past friends into enemies because of political, national, and religious affiliations. Swarna says to Virmati,
The Hindu nationalism construct is problematic on multiple levels. Firstly, it can destroy friendships, which should not be evaluated as an abstract concept or devalued in any particular way. Kapur inserts this section to question the ethics of the nationalist movement, which party affiliations formed. The difficulty lies in what "the group" wants as opposed to the individual. Would Kapur support the claim that, "So many things are deeper than friendship?" Probably not. Since the narrator often associates religious communalism and nationalism as the result of patriarchal and colonial constructs, she feels the modern Indian is being pushed into a false dialectic of self-definition based on nationality and religion when having to decide between modernity and tradition along with culture and religion. Evidently, the term "modern" is problematic because of what it signifies. Yes, improved technology, education, and communication can potentially benefit people irrespective of their social positions, as evidenced in Train to Pakistan. At the same time, modernity from the European imperialist perspective is a self-justification for colonizing countries as well as pursuing nationalist and capitalist enterprises at the expense of the native populations. If, however, the well-to-do, educated natives can harness modernist ideals to achieve a sense of egalitarianism among their people, they can approach the revolutionary steps to oust the postcolonial powers. Thus, modernity becomes a tool for empowering the natives to free themselves and for assuming a national consciousness. At the same time, by virtue of being modern, the contemporary narrative perspectives are estranged from the past and create restlessness. The Indo-Anglian writer offers alternative views of modernity: in end, he or she feels it contributes to a feeling of disillusionment with the self, others, and the nation form. Along the same lines, because of the element of recalling certain memories, fiction is also able to do what history and historiography fail to do, similar to how an ideological understanding of the Muslim view of the woman replaces the estrangement of women through modernity. To leave out the reminiscing is to discount the personal and emotional element of Partition trauma. History constrains memories in its futile attempt to be objective, but it is humanly impossible to achieve absolute objectivity. Yet the "new" historiography of Partition is attempting to counteract the traditional mode to relating historical events. The novels, Cracking India, Train to Pakistan, Sunlight on a Broken Column, and Difficult Daughters, provide the backdrop for dealing with issues of Partition, particularly of women, that were often overlooked in retracing Partition. Writers, such as Urvashi Butalia, Mushirul Hasan, Ritu Memon, and others, are trying to recover the fragmentary and the overlooked by looking at a different kind of "history"--one based on memoirs, interviews, and women's testimonies. Hence, fiction is a better medium to cope with these emotions because fiction is intended to be subjective, and thus, is more valid as a testimony than history on account of its honesty. The memories are imbedded in the consciousness and the realm of the intellect; these memories are expected to open the doors for future understanding.
Endnotes 1. "The Partition of the subcontinent led to one of the largest ever migrations in world history, with an estimated 12.5 million people (about 3 percent of undivided India) being displaced and uprooted. In Punjab, the province most affected by the violence and the killings, 12 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims were involved, and migration of 9 million people began overnight in an area the size of Wales. In the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), nearly 4,000 Muslims a day boarded the train to Pakistan until 1950." Mushirul Hasan, "Partition: the human cost," History Today v47, n9 Sept 1997, 47. (back) 2. Postcolonial literature essentially refers to works arising after a period of colonialism. Depending on when the nation received independence would determine what constitutes that national postcolonial literature. For India and Pakistan, this era of postcolonial literature begins after 1947, whereas for some Latin American countries, their postcolonial works can date back to the nineteenth century. Yet this indication is significant not only historically, but also because it suggests a shifting mind-set toward colonialism, which is reflected in the fiction. (back) 3. Hasan, 48. (back) 4. Hasan, 47. (back) 5. Francis Robinson, "The Muslims and Partition," History Today, Sept. 1997: 40. (back) 6. Ibid., 40. (back) 7. Noel Grove, ed. National Geographic Atlas of World History (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1997) 264-267. The editors described the Indians' feeling toward their colonizers as resentment, but this is a mild term for the out and out hatred many natives carried toward the British Raj. (back) 8. Francis Robinson, "The Muslims and Partition," History Today, Sept. 1997: 40. (back) 9. Ayesha Jalal. The Sole Spokesman (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1985): 1. (back) 10. Ibid. (back) 11. Ibid. (back) 12. "By far the largest proportion of refugees--more than ten million of them--crossed the Western border which divided the historic state of Punjab, Muslims travelling west to Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs east to India." Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voice from the Partition of India (New Delhi, Viking, 1998): 3. (back) 13. Ibid., 35. (back) 14. Ibid., 35. (back) 15. Ibid., 56. (back)
16. It is important to note the global marketplace and
speculative finance become capitalism's dominant forms, displacing its
earlier industrial and monopoly states. In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham : Duke University Press, 1991), Fredric Jameson says, "This periodization underscores the general thesis of Mandel's book Late Capitalism; namely, that there have been three fundamental moments in capitalism, each one marking a dialectical expansion over the previous stage. These are market capitalism, the monopoly stage or the stage of imperialism, and our own, wrongly called postindustrial, but what might better be termed multinational, capital. I have already pointed out that Mandel's intervention in the Postindustrial debate involves the proposition that late or multinational or consumer capitalism, far from being inconsistent with Marx's great nineteenth-century analysis, constitutes, on the contrary, the purest form of capital yet to have emerged, a prodigious expansion of capital into hitherto uncommodified areas. This purer capitalism of our own time thus eliminates the enclaves of precapitalist organization it had hitherto tolerated and exploited in a tributary way. One is tempted to speak in this connection of a new and historically original penetration and colonization of Nature and the Unconscious: that is, the destruction of precapitalist Third World agriculture by the Green Revolution, and the rise of the media and the advertising industry. At any rate, it will also have been clear that my own cultural periodization of the stages of realism, modernism, and postmodernism is both inspired and confirmed by Mandel's tripartite scheme." (35-36). (back) 17. Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column (India: Penguin Books, 1992): ix. (back) 18. Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (New York, Grammercy Books, 1996): 1236. (back) 19. The New College Latin & English Dictionary, ed. John C. Traupman (New York, Amsco School Publications, 1966): 185. Middle French's moderne from the Late Latin term modernus. (back) 20. Webster's Dictionary: 1236. (back) 21. The College Street Journal, November 18, 1999. (back) 22. Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. 1998. (back) 23. Bapsi Sidwa, Cracking India (Minneapolis: Milkweed Publication, 1991) 45. (back) 24. Ibid., 71-73. (back) 25. Ibid., 26. (back) 26. Ibid., 289. (back) 27. Khuswant Singh, Train to Pakistan (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1956), 60. (back) 28. Ibid., 41. (back) 29. Ibid., 39. (back) 30. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991:) 7. (back) 31. Ibid., 44. "…In the process, they gradually became aware of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people in their particular language-field, and at the same time that only those hundreds of thousands, or millions, so belonged. These fellow readers, to whom they were connected through print, formed, in their secular, particular, visible invisibility, the embryo of the nationally imagined community." (back) 32. Hosain, 178. (back) 33. First, we must understand the role of the rhetor in comparing the monologic and dialogic theories. Mikail Bakhtin concedes that the importance of the communicative function of language is often underestimated, if not ignored. He accounts for this oversight on the part of language philosophers to their understanding of who the speaker is and his capacity as a speaker. In “The Problem of the Speech Genres,” he writes, “Language is regarded from the speaker’s standpoint as if there were only one speaker who does not have any necessary relation to other participants in speech communication.” Apparently, the monologic listener does not realize the importance of what is being said because he merely absorbs the information in a robotic way. The emphasis of the communicative approach is on the speaker, who is seen as an independent entity within the speaking-circuit. The monologic model is accurate, in terms of defining the speaker, but it fails when taken as the whole system of communication. Therefore, Bakhtin is not invalidating Saussure’s claim; he is merely developing the other half of Saussure’s speaking-circuit. The Russian language philosopher claims, “The fact is that when the listener perceives and understands the meaning (the language meaning) of speech, he simultaneously takes an active, responsive attitude towards it.” The perception and understanding of the speaker and his subject force the listener to take “an active, responsive attitude towards it.” Because this process occurs “simultaneously” with that which is being said, the speaker must be aware of this phenomenon and act accordingly, anticipating the response of the audience and even, in some instances, controlling it. (back) 34. Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Maryland, Amana Publications, 1991:) 655-656. "The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, 'Shall I tell you of the worst of the enormities…?' and one of those he mentioned was undutiful behavior to one's parents." (back) 35. Quran, Chapter 17, verses 23-25. (back) 36. Hosain, 124. (back) 37. Ibid. 125. (back) 38. Hosain, 112-113. (back) 39. "[The] second horizon, that of the social. The latter becomes visible, and individual phenomena are revealed as social facts and institutions, only at the moment in which the organizing categories of analysis become those of social class. I have in another place described the dynamics of ideology in its constituted form as a function of social class: suffice it only to recall here that for Marxism classes must always be apprehended relationally, and that the ultimate (or ideal) form of class relationship and class struggle is always dichotomous. The constitutive form of class relationships is always that between a dominant and a laboring class: and it is only in terms of this axis that class fractions (for example, the petty bourgeoisie) or eccentric or dependent classes (such as the peasantry) are positioned. To define class in this way is sharply to differentiate the Marxian model of classes from the conventional sociological analysis of society into strata, subgroups, professional elites and the like, each of which can presumably be studied in isolation from one another in such a way that the analysis of their "values" or their "cultural space" folds back into separate and independent Weltanschauungen, each of which inertly reflects its particular "stratum." For Marxism, however, the very content of a class ideology is relational, in the sense that its "values" are always actively in situation with respect to the opposing class, and defined against the latter: normally, a ruling class ideology will explore various strategies of the legitimation of its own power position, while an oppositional culture or ideology will, often in covert or disguised strategies, seek to contest and undermine the dominant "value system" (83-84). Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1981). (back) 40. Akbar S. Ahmad, Postmodernism and Islam (London: Routledge, 1992): 121. (back) 41. Ibid., 121. (back) 42. "At this time late nineteenth century] the British felt Muslims to be the greatest threat to their rule. They had failed to reconcile the former rulers of India to their government; the Mutiny uprising of 1857 was seen to confirm this. In 1870 they decided that the safety of the Raj demanded that they find ways of attaching powerful Muslims to their side. This policy was developed just at the time that Saiyid Ahmad Khan was striving to reconcile his co-religionists to Western knowledge and British rule. His initiatives received much official encouragement. Arguably Aligarh College would never have been founded, and may not have survived, but for the government support which ranged from land made available at derisory rates to personal donations from viceroys. His All-India Muslim Educational Conference, which from 1886 drew Muslims together from all over India for the first time, operated within the framework of government approval. He himself was given the most unusual distinction, for an Indian at the time, of being knighted. "Aligarh College and the Educational Conference were the institutional bases on which the All-India Muslim League, the spearhead of Muslim separatism, was founded in 1906. The first office of the League was at Aligarh; its first secretary was the College secretary. The League's first major campaign was to demand separate electorates for Muslims, and extra representation in those areas in which they were 'politically important' such as the UP, in legislative councils which Viceroy Minto and Secretary of State Morley were developing for India. With some misgivings the British were persuaded and these privileges were granted in the Council reform of 1909. Thus a separate Muslim identity was enshrined in India's growing framework of electoral politics. When in 1919 and 1935 the franchise was extended and further powers devolved, separate electorates were continued and the principle of Muslim separateness confirmed." Robinson, 41. (back) 43. The Arabic word, aamna, which is translated as to believe, has a different connotation than the English word. Aamna signifies belief in Allah, and is reserved only for that particular belief. Whereas in English it is possible to say, "I believe in Marxism." Aamna, however, cannot be applied to Marxism. This linguistic nuance illustrates clashing worldviews of the European and the Islamic. (back) 44. Islam and Secularism. (back) 45. Manju Kapur, Difficult Daughters (London: Faber and Faber, 1998:) 227-228. (back) 46. Ibid., 123-124. (back) 47. Ibid., 122. (back) 48. Ibid., 123. (back)
Akbar S. Ahmad, Postmodernism and Islam, (London: Routledge, 1992). Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller. (Maryland, Amana Publications, 1991). Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991). Amrita Basu, “Feminism Inverted: The Gendered Imagery and Real Women of Hindu Nationalism,” Women and the Hindu Right, ed. Sarkar, Tanika and Butalia, Uruvashi, (New Dehli, Kale for Women, 1995). Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voice from the Partition of India, (New Delhi, Viking, 1998). Katy Gardner, “Women and Islamic Revivalism in a Bangladeshi Community,” Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, (New York: Routledge, 1998). Noel Grove, ed. National Geographic Atlas of World History (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1997). Muhammad Hamidullah, Introduction to Islam, (Paris: Center Culturel Islamique, 1969). Mushirul Hasan, "Partition: the human cost," History Today (Sept 1997). Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column (India: Penguin Books, 1992). Ayesha Jalal. The Sole Spokesman. (Cambridge: Cambridge U Press, 1985). Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1981). Fredric Jameson Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991). Manju Kapur, Difficult Daughters, (London: Faber and Faber, 1998). Ania Loomba, "Tangled histories: Indian feminism and Anglo-American feminist criticism."Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature v12, n2 (Fall, 1993). The New College Latin & English Dictionary, ed. John C. Traupman, (New York, Amsco School Publications, 1966). Francis Robinson, "The Muslims and Partition," (History Today Sept. 1997). Shanaz Rouse “The Outsider(s) Within,” Appropriating Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, (New York: Routledge, 1998). Edward Said's Orientalism (1978). 2Bapsi Sidwa, Cracking India, (Minneapolis: Milkweed Publication, 1991). Khuswant Singh, Train to Pakistan, (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1956). Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, (New York, Grammercy Books, 1996).
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