International Journal of The Frontiers of English Literature and The Patterns of ELT ISSN :

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2 Cracking India: Rewriting of History by A Parsi Woman Sakshi Thakur MPhil. Scholar, University of Jammu. Jammu and Kashmir, India. sakshithakur86@gmail.com Abstract This paper deals with Bapsi Sidhwa s Ice Candy Man (1988) later republished as Cracking India in The novel is a unique socio-political cum feminist perspective on Pakistani history, politics and culture as well as events surrounding partition of India. Sidhwa skillfully links gender to community, nationality, religion and class demonstrating the ways in which these various aspects of cultural identity and social structure do not merely affect or reflect one another but instead are inextricably intertwined. A work with political overtones, it presents partition from Pakistan s point of view. The world of Lahore is presented before the readers through the eyes of child narrator, Lenny. She witnesses how Lahore which is an epitome of secularism during pre-partition days turns into a world of trivial realities, sterile theologies, dogmatic beliefs during post-partition period. There are innumerable women like Ayah who dwindle into fallen women in the apocalyptic year of 1947.The novel is both a political as well as feminist allegory. It is also one of the few Pakistani novels on the subject of partition and the first Partition Anglophone novel from the subcontinent that tells the female version of the story. Keywords: Borders,Ethnicity, National divide,pakistani History, Patriarchy and Male Chauvinism, Violence of Partition. Bapsi Sidhwa s fiction deals with both the pre-colonial and post-colonial period of the Indian subcontinent. She is a distinguished international writer who lives in America but travels frequently to the Indian Subcontinent. The paper focuses upon how Sidhwa rewrites the history of the Indian subcontinent by presenting the Pakistani point of view about partition. She is motivated to take up this issue after reading a good deal of literature written by the British and Indian writers which seemed reflecting bias to Sidhwa. She had a feeling that grave injustice was being done to Pakistanis by not projecting their side of the truth. In an interview with David Montenegro, she clearly states this agenda: Page2

3 As a writer, as a human being, one just does not tolerate injustice, I felt whatever little I could do to correct an injustice I would like to do. I have just let facts speak for themselves, and through my research I found out what the facts were. (Montenegro 36) Lenny, the young narrator, in the process of narrating the story of her family rewrites the history of the subcontinent, there by undercutting the British view of history imposed on the subcontinent. The story revolves around partition of India, a subject as harrowing as the holocaust. Before our disbelieving eyes, Sidhwa performs the remarkable feat of bringing together the ribald farce of Parsee family, life and the stark drama and the horror of the riots and massacres of She has achieved the impossible through one masterly stroke creating a child s world of home and games in the park amidst a motley-company. At the center of this world is the child, Lenny. For all that she bears the bitter burden of history on her eight-year old shoulders, Lenny is not allowed to become merely the embodiment of an abstract idea. Subhash Chandra in his critical work, Bapsi Sidhwa s Ice Candy Man: A Feminist Perspective comments: Ice Candy Man commands attention and admiration on several counts. It is the second novel by a woman writer (the first being Sunlight on a Broken Column by Attia Hosain) dealing with the theme of partition of India, but it is the first by a non-partisan writer, as Bapsi Sidhwa being a Parsee does not belong to either of the two communities which perpetrated mayhem on each other.. (Chandra 118) The novel was first published in 1988 under the title Ice Candy Man and subsequently it was changed as Cracking India in 1991 in the North American edition. The new title focuses on the political aspect of the novel though with multiple meanings exhibited in the story, personal and social aspects do not get ignored. Cracking India is set in the partition period when the colonizing power presented her erstwhile Empire with the parting gift of a yet-to-heal wound, i.e. partition of India into two nations of India and Pakistan. The novel could thus be interpreted as a political novel. However, Sidhwa also maintains a feministic stance. The scenes are typical of the fate that awaits women and children in any evil and political turmoil. Women are the worst victims of atrocities. It is the women who bear the brunt of violence that accompanies these disputes. Women are rooted in the soil and they are not interested in politics but suddenly they find that their bodies are being brutalized. During Page3

4 partition also, women became the targets of brutality. They were seen as the receptacles of a man s honour. Through the character of Lenny, Sidhwa explores a female universe hemmed in by the restricting and reductive forces of patriarchy and colonialism. The novel begins on this note of restriction and reduction: My world is compressed... my child s mind is blocked by the gloom emanating from the wire mesh screening the oblong ventilation slits (of Salvation Army Wall). I feel such sadness for the dumb creature I imagine lurking behind the wall. I know it is dumb because I have listened to its silence, my ear to the wall.... (1) This capacity to listen to silence, to create text from a negation, is the special gift of women writers who are denied place in the patriarchal society. The Lame Lenny is looked after by her Ayah Shanti, a Hindu woman. Although, suffering from polio, in no way does Lenny s lameness become a source of self pity or a constricting force on her psyche. She remains assertive, at times even aggressive and holds her own when it comes to the crunch. Her Ayah is the formative influence on Lenny. Ayah is a flame of sensuousness and female vitality around whom the male moths hover constantly and hanker for the sexual warmth she radiates. She acts like the queen bee who controls the actions and emotions of her male admirers - the Fallatis Hotel cook, the Government House gardener, the butcher, the compactly muscled-head and body masseur and the Ice Candy Man. Epitomizing the strength of the feminity of a female, she infuses in Lenny the ideas of independence and choice. Flirtatious and coquettish, the Ayah is fully aware and confident of herself as an individual, who cannot be taken advantage of. At the same time, she is fiercely loyal to the interests of the family she serves and is extremely protective of Lenny, as a mother would be, besides being emotionally attached to her. The novelist describes Ayah through the eyes of the child narrator: The covetous glances Ayah draws educate me. Up and down, they look at her. Stub-handed twisted beggars and dusty old beggars on crutches drop their poses and stare at her with hard, alert eyes. Holy men masked in piety shove aside their pretences to ogle her with lust. (3) Page4

5 Ayah s sensuous beauty can be sharply contrasted with Lenny s lameness. Col. Bharucha identifies her physical deformity with her femaleness to deprive her of a proper education: According to the doctor... She is doing fine without school... Don t pressure her... her nerves could be affected. She doesn t need to become a professor. She will marry, have children, lead a carefree, happy life. No need to strain her with studies and exams, he advises, thereby sealing her fate. (15) Throughout the novel, one can find an ironic tone of the novelist who relentlessly depicts how a woman is always betrayed by society, her own nears and dears, at times even her family. There are women in the novel like Ayah who are betrayed by the nation and they become victims to the changes taking place in national polity. Lenny mourns for all such women in the novel. In the novel, Ayah is the embodiment of beauty and vitality. Lenny is bound to her Ayah, Shanti - the chocolate brown, round-cheeked, full breasted woman who is symbolic of cultural diversity of India because she is assiduously courted by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. The novelist herself says: Only the group around Ayah remains unchanged. Muslim, Sikh, Parsee are as always unified around her (97). Persons from different communities - Imam Din, Yousaf, the Ice-Candy Man, Hari and Moti, all are her admirers. Every day they meet and chat at Queen s Park. In the novel, initially, one can envisage the peaceful society of Lahore of 1940 s in its different shades and colours. But what disturbs the peace and unity of that society is the whirlwind of partition. The news of Hindus killing Muslims ignites the fire of revenge among the Lahore Muslims. The company of Ayah falls apart. Lenny becomes a witness to this traumatic episode. Bapsi Sidhwa in her interview with Alok Bhalla about her novel Cracking India (conducted on 15 October 1997 in London, at the residence of a mutual friend) later titled as Grief And Survival In Ice Candy Man says: The novel reflects my own experience as a Parsi living in Lahore in the 1940 s. It reflects how the position of the Parsis was difficult at a time when there was so much animosity between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in Western Punjab. Second, how does one feel as a Parsi, growing up in a society with different religious communities living in close proximity with each other Page5

6 before partition, changing to genocidal hatred between them in post-partition period. I remember there used to be regular fights over the issue in our house. Once or twice, visitors even came to blows with each other during a particularly tense argument over politics. Even today what do Indians and Pakistanis talk about when they meet? They discuss politics and do so vehemently. (Bhalla 226) Lahore was in fact a microcosm of India s pluralism: a place where there was comingling of races, cultures and religions. Partition has little to do with cultural differences between the common people. It was the result of a series of political miscalculations. That is why the book is also called Ice Candy Man. The politicians were the ones who coldly and manipulatively destroyed so many lives. The violence of partition on both sides of the dividing line between India and Pakistan comes from the story of Ranna, Lenny s friend. The novel is intended as a political critique of the partition. Ranna is leading the unspoilt life of a village boy shorn of pretensions, forty miles east of Lahore, in a Muslim village. Lenny gets a chance to meet him when she is been to Pir Pindo, for two days with Imam Din. Imam Din feels that the tension in the cities will spread to the villages. So, he is concerned for his numerous kin in Pir Pindo and decides to pay them another visit. The narrator describes in detail how the bitterness of partition engulfs the peace loving atmosphere of Pir Pindo and the idyllic bliss in the village is soon replaced by clouds of suspicion and hatred: We have been in Pir Pindo for two days. On Baisakhi, the day that celebrates the birth of the Sikh religion and of the wheat harvest, we go to Dera Tek Singh.... The villagers could notice in their village the presence of strangers. The granthi with his bowed head informs every one - they are Akalis... the immortals... they talk of a plan to drive the Muslims out of East Punjab... to divide the Punjab. They say they won t live with the Mussulmans if there is to be a Pakistan. Imam Din lumbers up, sighing - Ya Allah! Ya Rahman! Ya Rahim! (107) One can clearly envisage the changes taking place in Pir Pindo. Although, Pir Pindo was too deep in the hinterland of the Punjab, where distances are measured in foot-steps and at the speed of bullock-carts for the larger politics to penetrate. But ultimately it did. One could hear of attacks on Muslim villages near Amritsar and Jullunder. The details were so Page6

7 brutal and bizarre that they could not be believed. What was left for innocent muslim villagers to think was: How could they abandon their ancestor s graves, every inch of land they own, their other kin. (108) The sudden and obnoxious change in the atmosphere of Pir Pindo is not acceptable to the villagers. It is apparent that most people did not choose to migrate before 1947 because they were confident that the civilization of which they were the inheritors together, a civilization carved out of a long duration of shared songs, stories, pilgrim-routes, placenames, and rituals was strong enough to sustain them through each of those disturbances that sometimes threaten the peace of every civil and political society. Thus, Rahi Masoom Reza when taunted about his village, home, nationality, and heritage by Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists disrupts the flow of his novel Adha Gaon to assert in his personal capacity as a novelist: I belong to Ghazipur. My bonds with Gangauli are unbreakable. It s not just a village, it s my home. Home - this word exists in every language and dialect. And that is why I repeat my statement because Gangauli s not just a village, it s my home as well... I will remain Saiyid Masoom Reza Abidi of Ghazipur wherever my grandfather hailed from. And I give no one the right to say to me - Rahi! You don t belong to Gangauli, and so get out and go... I will not go. (Abidi 290,291) The village of Pir Pindo was attacked by Sikh rioteers who came like swarms of locusts, moving in marauding bands of thirty and forty thousand. They were killing all Muslims. Setting fires, looting, parading the Muslim women naked through the streets, raping and mutilating them in the centre of villages and in mosques. The Bias flooded by melting snow and the monsoon is carrying hundreds of corpses. In fifteen minutes, the village was swamped by the Sikhs, tall men with streaming hair and thick biceps and thighs, waving full sized swords and sten-guns, roaring, Bolay so Nihal! Sat Siri Akal! (201) Derek Walcott, a Saint Lucian poet (West Indies) and the Nobel prize winning author writes in his epic poem Omeros: they wept, not for Page7 their wives only,

8 their fading children, but for strange ordinary things. (Walcott 139) Those characters who refuse to migrate are forced to live in communities of memories and images without figuring out how to conduct their lives henceforth, in the new reality that is taking shape, how to build a new home, re-establish their place in the basti, think of themselves as citizens. They therefore, live in sorrow, haunted by memories of their lost homes. It wasn t only that the country was split in two; bodies and minds were also divided. Moral beliefs were tossed aside and humanity was in shreds. Government officers and clerks along with their chairs, pens and inkpots were distributed like spoils of war. Those whose bodies were whole had hearts that were splintered. Families were torn apart. One brother was allotted to Hindustan, the other to Pakistan; the mother was in Hindustan, her offspring were in Pakistan; the husband was in Hindustan, his wife was in Pakistan. The bonds of relationship were in tatters, and in the end many souls remained behind in Hindustan, while their bodies started off for Pakistan. But in the novel, Ranna is able to reunite with his Noni Chachi and Iqbal Chacha. Amidst all this chaos, terror, bloodshed, anarchy, what gives solace to small boy when he confronts death is his father s assurance, What s there to be afraid of? It won t hurt any more than the sting of a bee (200). Eminent English Poet W. B. Yeats in his poem, Second Coming describes in detail such a situation of chaos when the civilization of Christ is coming to an end, to be replaced by a beastlier civilization: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? (Yeats 211) How a beastlier civilization is slowly but steadily engulfing earth is rendered clearly in the novel: And the vision of a torn Punjab! Will the earth bleed? And what about the sundered rivers? Won t their water drain into the jagged cracks? Not Page8

9 satisfied by breaking India, they now want to tear the Punjab.... now, I know surely. One man s religion is another man s poison.... ( ) Everywhere one could see mangled bodies. The processionists were brutally murdering the people. There was a quickening in their activity. The narrator says: My eyes focus on an emaciated Banya wearing a white Gandhi cap. The man is knocked down. The men move back and in the small clearing I see his legs sticking out of his dhoti right up to the groin; each thin, brown leg tied to a jeep.... Tongues of pink flame lick two or three brick buildings in the bazaar.... ( ) Next to it was Mozang Chawk. It burned for months. But the rage and fury of envy could not destroy it: Despite the residue of passion and regret, and loss of those who have in panic fled, the fire could not have burned for... Despite all the ruptured dreams, broken lives, buried gold, bricked-in-rupees, secreted jewellery, lingering hopes... the fire could not have burned for months and months. (139,140) And Finally comes Partition! The Radcliff Commission deals out Indian cities like a pack of cards. Lahore is dealt to Pakistan, Amritsar to India. Sialkot to Pakistan, Pathankot to India. I am a Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that. A new nation is born. India has been divided after all (143). The colossal upheaval of partition, when cities were allotted to India or Pakistan like pieces on a chess-board and their frightened inhabitants were often savagely uprooted, runs like an earth tremor through this thoughtful novel. The sacred, edenic world of Lenny is ultimately effected by Satanic forces of partition. There are no Hindu families left on the Warris Road. A train comes from Gurdaspur. Everyone in it is dead, mercilessly butchered. They are all Muslims. There are no young women among the dead. Only two bags full of women s breasts. The gardener simply reflects the general opinion, It is the Kaliyuga (148).. In order to describe the painful memories associated with this saga of separation, the novelist makes use of melodious song of popular film Nur Jehan that is now so strangely apt: Friends from our childhood, don t forget us / See that a changed world does not mock us (159). The division of the subcontinent left the moral, political and social imagination of Page9

10 people utterly paralyzed. Instead of making life more secure for them among people of their own religious faith, the partition makes them feel both anxious and humiliated. Hari, the gardener has become a Muslim and has changed his name to Himat Ali as he chooses to stay in Lahore where he spent all his life. The partition of 1947 does not make Hari, Imam Din, Sher Singh, Ayah or the Ice Candy Man more lucid or aware of their particular religious identities. Instead, it shocks them at first. It bewilders them, reduces their moral worth, and transforms them into ciphers of separate Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian or Parsi communities. The irony surrounding their names becomes more sordid and distasteful as each one of them gets caught up in the frenzy, arrogance, the rage and the folly of religious politics. The novelist shows her utter surprise that how within a short span of time things are changing in Lahore: One day, everybody is themselves and the next day, they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. People shrink dwindling into symbols.... we are Parsee. What is God? (93-94) Unable to comprehend either the nature or the cause of the cruelty she witnesses, Lenny, like many other characters in Partition stories, breaks down and cries: I have never cried this way before. It is how grownups cry when their hearts are breaking (254). Despite Hari s conversion, the moral geography of the home of which he had been an integral part, and which had seemed so trustworthy, durable, and secure in the pre-partition days, becomes hallucinatory. Surrounded by a mob looking for bodies it can rape, abduct, or kill, Himat Ali must strip so that everyone can gaze at his circumcised penis and affirm that he has at last become a proper Muslim and has been accepted by their God as one of the faithful. The mob would not have understood if it had been told, no people can become an incarnation of God. The partition has been portrayed, in the novel, instead, as the result of something as trivial and venal as that which made the bodies of Hari or Himat the sites of Jehadi struggles. In the novel, partition determines the future course of lives of women like Ayah and Hamida who are turned by violence of society and time into fallen women: As the processionists approach the house of Lenny, cries of Allah-o-Akbar! and Pakistan Zindabad are audible to every member of the house. Mother is alert.... A lioness with her cubs. Flanked by her cubs, her hands resting on our heads, she is the noble embodiment of theatrical motherhood. Undaunted, Page10

11 endearing, her cut-crystal lips set in a defiant pucker beneath her tinted glasses and her cropped, waved hair. (179) The way Lenny s mother has been portrayed, one can see in her image of goddess Durga or Kali. She has been shown as the embodiment of feminine courage and fortitude. No matter how hard she tries to save Ayah, a Hindu girl, it is hypnotic power of Ice Candy Man that works and foils all the attempts of the Parsee family. Taken in by the blandishments of the Ice Candy Man, Don t be scared Lenny baby... I ll protect Ayah with my life! (182) Lenny gives away her hiding place and sees the Ice Candy Man change before her eyes. Here, Lenny is like Muccho who betrays her own daughter into male bondage. A betrayal, the result of centuries of patriarchal conditioning, a misplaced faith in the integrity of men and a searing lack of confidence in and hatred for the female self. The much loved Ayah now becomes what Lenny s cousin calls, the opposite of Virgin Mary, a whore. As a whore, she is outside the pale of respectable society. The Ayah who fearlessly roamed the wide open spaces of Lahore is now confined to the enclosures of the Prostitute s Quarter in Hira Mandi in Lahore. Her name is changed from Shanti to Mumtaz and she is kept at a kotha even after her marriage. Ice Candy Man is her ravisher. His innocuous and cool exterior - the dispenser of candies hides a sinister reality - the reality that he is a consummate politician even when it comes to relationships. Ultimately, Lenny s grandmother releases Ayah from the dark world of pimps and prostitutes once she is assured that Ayah is a part of that world against her will. The narrator s comment in this context is significant: The long and diverse reach of God mother s tentacular arm is clearly evident. She set an entire conglomerate in motion immediately after our visit with Ayah and single handedly engendered the social and moral climate of retribution and justice required to rehabilitate our fallen Ayah; Everything came to a head within a fortnight, which in the normal course of events, unstructured by Godmothers stratagems, could have been consigned to the ingenious bureaucratic eternity of a toddler nation greenly fluttering its flag. (274) Page11 Thus, the political is manifest in the novel as a moment of sexual transgression. It is emblematic of a system that perceives women in binary terms and chooses to exploit or

12 marginalise them. However, Ayah s final departure from Lahore is probably the one moment of optimism in the novel. The role of Grandmother and Lenny s mother is mainly to find ways of rehabilitating the women who have been abused. They therefore, remain as bulwarks against the forces of dissolution. By gendering the political, the novel makes the issue of woman a central aspect of the novel. The novel depicts the growth and awakening of a young heroine who witnesses the trauma of partition, ethnic violence as well as sexual violence both of which are inevitably linked as one always leads to the other. Even though, Sidhwa tries to depict the atrocities committed by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs without partiality, being a Pakistani writer she makes it obvious that she is more sympathetic towards Muslim victims. Not only is the Sikhs attack on Muslim villages in Punjab described vividly but also it is seen through the eyes of the Muslim child Rana, so that the reader sympathizes with the Muslims. To rewrite the history and to counter the British and the Indian versions of the partition, Sidhwa resurrects the image of Jinnah. She wanted to write dispassionately about Jinnah and tried to show him as a man who wasn t really the devil that the British and Indian historians had projected him to be. In order to give an objective view about Jinnah, she invoked the image of Jinnah projected by someone like Sarojini Naidu. For her, Jinnah was a brilliant and a liberal man who had passionately advocated the course of Hindu-Muslim friendship. In another step towards this direction, she demystifies the image of Gandhi and Nehru too. The sublime image of Gandhi is totally undercut when he is seen through the eyes of Lenny. Sidhwa asserts that after 1857, the British adopted policies which tended to widen and exacerbate the differences between Hindus and Muslims. They also encouraged acts of vandalism and desecration of religious sites. Later Gandhiji s use of religion to rouse people to political action added to the tensions. And Gandhiji s religiosity frightened the Muslims. Another cause was Nehru s refusal to accept Gandhiji s suggestion to make Jinnah the first Prime Minister of India. Nehru s ego would not accept that as a possibility. If he had, the partition could not have happened. Nehru is presented as a shrewd politician who inspite of all the efforts of Jinnah will walk off with the lion s share (131). Nehru, according to Cracking India is a sly one... He has got Mountbatten eating out of his one hand and the English s wife out of his other... He s the one to watch (131). Thus, Sidhwa changes the perspective of readers by giving an unbiased and balanced account of events and political leadership of both Hindus and Muslims. Cracking India is one of the best novels about Page12

13 partition. It is remarkable at once for its view point, which is an outsider s view point, and for its artistic representation of the tragedy of a nation and women simultaneously. References Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 5 th ed. New Delhi: Wadsworth, Print. Bhalla, Alok. Partition Dialogues. New Delhi: Oxford UP, Print. Chandra, Subhash. Bapsi Sidhwa s Ice Candy Man: A Feminist Perspective. Ed. Veena Noble Dass. Feminism and Literature. New Delhi: Prestige Books, Print. Reza, Rahi Masoom. Adha Gaon. Alok Bhalla. Partition Dialogues: Memories Of A Lost Home. New Delhi: OUP, Print. Sidhwa, Bapsi. Cracking India. Minneapolis: Milkweed, Print. Sidhwa, Bapsi. Interview by Alok Bhalla. Grief And Survival In Ice Candy Man. London, 15 Oct., Oxford UP, Print. Sidhwa, Bapsi. Interview by David Montenegro. Points of Departure - International Writers on Writing and Politics, OUP, Print. Walcott, Derek. Omeros. New Delhi: OUP, Print. Yeats, W.B. Second Coming. New Delhi: Educational P., Print. Page13