Partition Literature and Cinema

A Critical Introduction

Jaydip Sarkar, Rupayan Mukherjee

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000067545
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Indische & südasiatische Geschichte

This book studies literary and cinematic representations of the Partition of India. It discusses Partition as not just an immediate historical catastrophe but as a lingering cultural presence and consequently a potent trope in literary and visual representations. The volume features essays on key texts – written and visual – including Train to Pakistan, "Toba Tek Singh", Basti, Garm Hava, Pinjar, among others.

Partition Literature and Cinema will be indispensable introductory reading for students and researchers of modern Indian history, Partition studies, literature, film studies, media and cultural studies, popular culture and performance, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies. It will also be of interest to enthusiasts of Indian cinematic history.

PART I

Historical reality: texts of response

1

Political mayhem and the moment of rupture

Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas

Arnab Roy and Jaydip Sarkar

The modern Nation state, as opposed to the more indigenous paradigms of community, is founded on an ethos of transcendence. The universalised ideal of a homogeneous commune indeed tends to incorporate and simultaneously transcend the “phantasms of the lost community” (Nancy 1991: 12), i.e., those more fundamental and material conditions of race, colour, religion, language etc. In his celebrated philosophical work, The Inoperative Community, Jean-Luc Nancy observes that community is an irreducible component of human being and becoming, an apriori “given…with being and as being” (ibid.: 35) leading to the genesis of a “culture of immanence.” Benedict Anderson’s understanding of the modern Nation State is, however, the conception of a “solid community moving steadily down (or up) history” (Anderson 1983: 26) which is marked by the Hegelian notion of “having in another the moment of one’s own subsistence” (Nancy 1991: 12).

The evolution of the Modern Nation state in the subcontinent and its consequent arrival into sovereignty is marked by rupture; a rupture that had its progeny in more rudimentary parameters of community such as religion. The conceptualisation and the enactments to ensure the culmination of a transcendental modern spatial paradigm called Nation were interrupted by a non-modern essence of community. The moment of modernity in the subcontinent is thus paradoxically, a movement backwards, a movement into non-modernity, where religion overruled other considerations, bifurcating a shared cultural lineage and splitting a geo-spatial paradigm into two distinct political communities: India and Pakistan. The Hegelian notion of progressive history that is central to any considerations concerning the genesis of a modern Nation State is dysfunctional when one takes into account the history of sovereignty and political independence of the subcontinent. Instead, the history of political modernity in India and Pakistan is indissociably associated with an element of the non-modern, when religion and communal considerations over-ruled the progressive advent of modernity.

As such, the Nationalist historiography of India concentrated its attention almost entirely on the unified nature of Indian nationalism and eulogised a progressive narrative of India’s struggle for independence (Pandey 2001: 3), consistently denying the ‘other side of history’ (Butalia 1998: 349), which was a saga of rupture, genocidal massacre and the consequent inception of two independent Nation states. Such a nationalist narrative of history essentially relied on a sequential exposition of a stagist narrative that culminated into independence. But a more serious account of Partition, a moment of split of a unified nationalism, is missed from the ambit of this nationalist historiography, which came under scholarly criticism in the late 1980s from a brand of historians, comprehensively known as the Subaltern school.

Following E.P. Thomson’s concept of history from below, on one hand, and using a Gramscian framework, on the other, the Subaltern historians have offered a useful critique of Indian nationalism. Instead of focusing on the role of the elites and glorifying the unified nature of Indian freedom struggle and nationalism, it surfaced the role of the subordinate groups and their complex relationship with Indian freedom struggle. Undoubtedly, Subaltern schools searched for an alternative model that problematised the notion of unity and instead, focused on the diversity of Indian nationalist movements. A more radical historiography, in the recent times, has gone to the extent even to challenge a pan-Indian nationalism that claimed to have existed in colonial India.

In these processes, a different account of Partition, an-other side of history, has redeemed significant spaces in the academic engagement of the past three decades. Historians, particularly of the Subaltern schools, have constructed the meanings of Partition for many ‘Subaltern’ communities, drawing on from the narratives of everyday lives. Shifting its focus away from a nationalist discourse on Partition, the Subaltern scholars have now been able to ‘deconstruct’ the grand narrative of Partition. As such, later historiography has studied the character of its unprecedented violence. The killing, rape and massive genocide etc. have formed a part of the historiography. Thus, for instance, historians like Pandey (2001) provide accounts of the violence accompanying Partition by focusing on the narratives of the people who had experienced it. This has accounted the story of many individuals and groups, unheard before, and the extraordinary torment that they had to endure during Partition. Not surprisingly, historians have increasingly become interested to turn to oral history that seemed to have helped to bring out the narratives of violence of Partition. This trend towards oral history has taken Subaltern historiography towards the evolving discourses of memory studies where intimate histories become an essential component of the greater enterprise to comprehend “history from below” This is most tellingly illustrated in the works of Butalia (1998), Menon and Bhasin (1998) and Roy (2010) and some others.

The engagement with oral histories and the consequent evolution of an alternative historiography often considers texts¹ as authentic chronicles that testify the agony of the age. Partition and its menaces have often been captured in the literary and cultural genesis of what we understand as Partition literature today. Thus, for instance, in the films of Ritwik Ghatak or in the songs of Hemanga Biswas or in the stories of Saadat Hasan Manto the tragic catastrophe of an enormous mass of people during Partition is more tellingly illustrated than in any historical account. It is in this sense that these texts can be considered as important historical evidence.

This chapter attempts a reading of Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas from the perspective of New Historicism. Since 1980s, New Historicism has evolved as an approach in the study of history with its preoccupation with the historicity of the text and the textuality of history. The phrase was coined by Louis A. Montrose in 1989. The proponents of traditional Historicism focus on the reality of history as more important than literary texts. New Historicism, on the contrary, argues that both history and literature belong to the same semiotic and symbolic system. While text is considered as condensed history, history is viewed as an extended text. Therefore, any literary text seems to disclose different historical events at a particular historical specific situation. It must be noted that in the methodology of New Historicism both literature and history occupy importance and both are given same weight. In other words, the school of New Historicism seems to extend its attention to the particular socio-cultural and historical context in which a literary text is originally produced. At the same time, in this process, such literary works, in the methods of New Historicism, establish its relationship with contemporary social and political institutions and historical events (Veeser 2013).

There is no denying that while history deals with facts and figures, literature has the innate capacity to portray the experiences of the people involved in the event. Thus, any standard account of history, relating to Partition, might not be able to represent the dismay and adversity of the huge mass of people. But literature, at least in the readings of New Historicism, helps one to bring out the experience of the Partition from different viewpoints. It is in this sense of the term that literature represents the complexity and holocaust of the tragedy of the Partition, more than any standard account of history. Thus, any literary text appears to enrich the historical account of Partition. Reflecting upon the necessity to bring out memories of horror involved in Partition, Urvashi Butalia (1998) observes that the historical reality called Partition exists publicly in history books while the particular rests in rather unreliable, dubious narratives in the paradigm of fiction.

It is true that the recent engagement with fiction, i.e., with the ‘particular’, has exercised a dominant influence on the Partition historiography. The issue of violence, as expressed through the memories etc. has taken a front seat in the more recent account of Partition. Ironically, one of the consequences of this trend is a surprising silence on the political and social events at a larger level that shaped Partition. In their effort to distance themselves from the nationalist historiography, scholars have been increasingly pushed away from the larger political history of the day to day account for Partition. This, however, is not to argue and defend the nationalist school of historiography that eulogised a romantic and unified notion of Indian nationalism and hence, saw Partition as a troubling moment that ruptured the idea of a pan-Indian nationalism. This nationalist perspective, however, in any case, does not problematise the very notion of nationalism in colonial India. The present chapter attempts to bring out both these issues. On one hand, it deals with the problematic of nationalism in colonial India that led to Partition and simultaneously brings out the violence of Partition, portrayed in the novel.

Colonial rule undoubtedly has had a deep and profound influence that was to shape and fashion the nature of polity, economy and society in the making of modern India. It has played a momentous role in the making of nationalism in India, often marked with religious identities. This is particularly true in the case of formation of a Muslim identity and a distinct Muslim nationalism, as opposed to a pan-Indian view of nationalism, advocated by the Indian National Congress. Nationality became a contested terrain for both the parties which furthered the political trajectory in such a course that would inescapably result in the creation of two separate nations.

The idea of Muslim nationalism, based on a particular culture and religion, did not exist till the end of the Muslim rule in Delhi sultanate. The advent of the colonial rule marked an end of the era of Muslim rulers. The rise of colonial power in the socio-political scenario of India from the middle of the 18th century was simultaneous with the gradual defamation of the erstwhile elite Muslim aristocracy and intelligentsia from their prestigious position. The cultural and communitarian lineage of the Muslims were compromised in favour of an evolving order of political modernity. Farzana Shaikh observes

Modern liberal representation has, on the whole, tended to assume that the unit of representation consists primarily of the individual and his interests. This quintessentially European view which emerged early in the nineteenth century was vitally related to the principle of individual equality … In Islam, on the other hand, the preoccupation with communal identity has necessarily entailed a focus upon communal claims and the communal group as the basic unit of representation and focus of loyalty.

(Shaikh 1986: 541)

Muslim intelligentsia, under the new rule, lost both its material interest and social-cultural status and was systematically marginalised. This social alienation was further deepened by the political reassertion of the Hindu community. With the advent of the colonial rule, the Hindus had quickly accommodated themselves within the European discursive models and frameworks.

This was possible as the many proponents within the Hindu community, from the beginning of the 19th century, had engaged in the reformation project. The introduction of Bengal Renaissance was heavily influenced by the advent of English education in Bengal presidency. Bengal Renaissance was also hybrid in disposition as it continuously promoted the necessity to combine ancient Indian culture with that of modern European civilisation. With the introduction of modern education, Eurocentric thoughts and matrixes like positivism, rationalism and utilitarianism encroached into the non-modern epistemic and cultural models in the Indian social life. (Mittra 2001). The Muslims, however, were apprehensive to the modern education and viewed it as something that would corrupt the Islam and Muslim culture. They maintained a distance from the British culture and modern education that accompanied it. Naturally, the benefit of a modern English education system during the time of Bengal Renaissance was solely enjoyed by the middle-class Hindu Bengalis. Thus, for instance, in 1817, stalwarts like Ram Mohun Roy had founded the Indian College in Calcutta. Many other social reformers, primarily coming from the rank-and-file of middle-class Hindu families, had promoted modern education among the common mass of the Hindu people. On the contrary, the British-Indian Muslims had no similar efforts at that time. According to the data of the British India Board of Education, published in 1883, the number of the Muslim college students was precariously low, as compared to that of their Hindu counterparts. As a consequence of their adverse attitude towards the English educational system, Muslims lost their control and social position from different departments of the British Colonial Government. Thus, for instance, from 1852 to 1862, only one among 240 High Court judges was appointed from the Muslim community. In another such estimate, in 1871, the number of the Muslims in administration, health, police and other departments were abysmally low than that of the Hindus. Only 92 Muslims were appointed in all these positions against 681 Hindus (Jiang 2016).

The knowledge of and acquaintance with the culture of the colonisers helped the Hindus to transform themselves and consequently occupy an important position in the political and social landscape of British India. The anxiety of self-backwardness and a continuous threat of Hindu hegemony might have played a critical role in constructing an identity crisis for the Muslim population. This Muslim identity crisis further led to the construction of a Muslim nationalism.

Faced with identity crises, the Muslims adopted some reform programmes within the community to gain and assert a self-identity. It is in this context that one should look at the magnitude of the educational project of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in shaping the political aspirations of Muslim upper class. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817–1898) was a pioneer who championed a social reform movement among the Muslim community. He promoted a sense of modernisation among the Muslim community by imparting the English educational system. He realised the necessity to push the Muslim community to participate in the colonial administration. Muslim literary society in Calcutta, established in 1863, was the brainchild of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Literature and film: an alternative archive of the Partition of India
• PART I: Historical reality: texts of response
• PART II: Memory and mnemonic: of homeland and homelessness
• PART III: Body politics: the woman in question
• Postscript: Inverted prisms, imperfect histories: towards a Dalit historiography of India’s Partition
• Index