Witnessing Partition: Memory, History, Fiction

273 Pages·2019·1.755 MB·English

by  Tarun K. Saint

WITNESSING PARTITION
This book interrogates representations – fiction, literary motifs and narratives – of
the Partition of India. Delving into the writings of Khushwant Singh, Balachandra
Rajan, Attia Hosain, Abdullah Hussein, Rahi Masoom Raza and Anita Desai,
among many others, it highlights the modes of ‘fictive’ testimony that sought to
articulate the inarticulate – the experiences of trauma and violence, of loss and
longing, and of diaspora and displacement. The author discusses representational
techniques and formal innovations in writing across three generations of
twentieth-century writers in India and Pakistan, invoking theoretical debates on
history, memory, witnessing and trauma.
With a new afterword, the second edition of this volume draws attention to
recent developments in Partition studies and sheds new light as regards ongoing
debates about an event that still casts a shadow on contemporary South Asian
society and culture. A key text, this is essential reading for scholars, researchers
and students of literary criticism, South Asian studies, cultural studies and modern
history.
Tarun K. Saint taught English literature for many years at Hindu College, Delhi
University, India, and is now an independent scholar and writer. His research
interests include the literature of the Partition and science fiction/speculative
literature. He edited Bruised Memories: Communal Violence and the Writer (2002)
and co-edited (with Ravikant) Translating Partition (2001). He has co-edited the
anthology Looking Back: India’s Partition, 70 Years On (2017), with Rakhshanda
Jalil and Debjani Sengupta. Recently, he has edited The Gollancz Book of South
Asian Science Fiction (2019).
‘ Witnessing Partition . . . remains crucial to our understanding of the many ways
in which that process continues to structure politics and culture across the
subcontinent.’
– Suvir Kaul, A. M. Rosenthal Professor, Department of English,
University of Pennsylvania, USA
‘The second edition of his book should again remind us about two contemporary
ethical and political concerns: the troubling relation between religious, nationalist
and racial politics and genocide; and the urgent need of “courage-teachers”
(satyagrahis) who always refuse, under all circumstances, hysterical demands for
aggression and revenge.’
– Alok Bhalla, author of Stories about the Partition of India
(4 volumes) and Partition Dialogues
WITNESSING PARTITION
Memory, History, Fiction
Second Edition
Tarun K. Saint
Second edition published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business .
© 2020 Tarun K. Saint
The right of Tarun K. Saint to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2010
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-21035-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-21036-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-26498-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
To my parents, for their constant support and
encouragement .

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Negotiating the effects of historical trauma: novels of the
1940s and 1950s 43
2 Partition’s afterlife: perspectives from the 1960s and 1970s 81
3 Narrativising the ‘time of Partition’: writings since 1980 127
4 Short stories about the Partition: towards a self-reflexive
mode of testimony 171
5 Reinventing testimonial fiction in the wake of the
Partition 210
Afterword 222
Bibliography 240
Index 259
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to acknowledge with thanks the help and suggestions extended by the
following:
The Partition Studies Group, including its different versions Deeba Zafir,
Soofia Siddiqui, Debjani Sengupta, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Meenakshie Verma,
Alpana Kishore, Indivar Kamtekar, Anil Sethi, Mahmood Farooqui, Furrukh
Khan and Shail Mayaram for many rewarding exchanges of ideas, and also Ira
Bhaskar, Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Isabel Hofmayr and Hina Nandrajog for mate-
rials and support at critical stages of the research.
Dilip Menon, Rimli Bhattacharya, Aamir Mufti, Bidyut Chakraborty, Deepak
Mehta and Prof. Harish Trivedi for discussions and materials that helped generate new
perspectives; the Department of English, Delhi University, in particular Prof. Sumanyu
Satpathy, for the invitation to present a paper at the seminar ‘Past the Post: New Litera-
tures in English’; Ashis Nandy and Ravi Vasudevan for their generosity and patience.
Colleagues at Hindu College, especially Tapan Basu and Lalita Subbu, for
being there; the faculty at Jai Hind College, Mumbai, especially Kamal Jadhav,
for the chance to present my ideas at the National Seminar on Partition Narra-
tives; Urvashi Butalia for great conversations during and after this seminar.
Ravikant for many dialogues on issues previously explored in collaboration.
M. Asaduddin for his patient reading of the draft of the manuscript and intellec-
tual comradeship, as well as the invitation to be part of the workshop on Parti-
tion Literature at Jamia Millia Islamia; Prof. Alok Rai for invaluable inputs and
critical encouragement; Suvir Kaul and Niaz Zaman for incisive critical com-
ments and Prof. Alok Bhalla for his meticulous reading of the thesis.
The in-house editorial staff at Routledge, especially Nilanjan Sarkar, and the
anonymous referee.
My father, Chand Kishore Saint, for reading the manuscript with care.
Finally, I acknowledge the supportive guidance and incisive supervision of Prof.
Udaya Kumar, without which this project could not have reached completion.
INTRODUCTION
The Partition of India, one of the most traumatic and disruptive events of the
twentieth century, ushered in an era of uncertainty and dislocation following
widespread collective violence, rape, and arson and the displacement of millions
of refugees across South Asia. Hitherto neglected aspects of this catastrophe,
especially the experience of abducted women and divided Muslim families (for
many of whom ‘the long Partition’ remains a reality of everyday experience, as
Vazira Zamindar argues), have been addressed in recent times, reconfiguring the
historical archive. 1 The basis for some of this questioning of prior assumptions
about the historical experience of 1947 has been a revisiting of the literature of
the Partition. This corpus of writing has provided illuminating insights regard-
ing the moral and psychic economy underpinning the near-genocidal violence
that took place during 1947–48, as well as about the resistance to ideological
formations that propagated such violence. Witnessing Partition focuses on liter-
ary representations of the Partition, which, I will argue, offer crucial insights
into the traumatic effects extreme violence has had on the collective psyche and
imagination over time. Through contextual readings, I hope to indicate the
potential of selected texts, primarily novels and short stories, to stand as testi-
mony to the horrors of collective violence. 2
Major novels and short stories in English and in translation from Hindi, Urdu
and, in some instances, Punjabi, that negotiate public as well as personal memo-
ries of the historical experience of the Partition in North and Northwest India
are discussed in the chapters to follow. Critical accounts of the Partition and its
afterlife in the social sciences provide the point of departure for the subsequent
argument about the different strategies of representing the Partition in literary
writings across three generations from India and Pakistan. 3 Theoretical debates
dealing with history, memory, witnessing and trauma are invoked as I situate