Abstract:
Memory recreates and explores history. The memories of achievement of Indian freedom in 1947 evoke the tragic history of Partition of the subcontinent. A dark chapter shaking the whole nation, the partition is a human tragedy for millions of people still haunting the memories of human history. History and memory as the theme of creative fiction have cast a spell over many an Indian English novelists who pen the history of partition with critical attitude ‘unlocking and remembering’ its tragic ‘truth’. Necessarily preoccupied with the memory of the past, partition novels such as Chaman Nahal’s “Azadi”(1975) rewrites the partition history replete with memories of trauma and pain. Nahal’s “Azadi” dramatizes through the vision of Lala Kanshi Ram of Sialkot the sinister impact of partition resulting in a sense of pain and loss among its victims. This paper seeks to expose the partition memories and the sense of anxiety, pain and suffering of common people trapped in the vortex of partition violence, as Nahal depicts recollecting the historical past in “Azadi”.
Key Words: history, partition, memory, displacement, refugee, violence and pain.
Introduction:
History is recreated and reconstructed with memories. Memory is a way to explore historical facts. The personal and collective memories often expose the history of the public and political event. This is what happened in the 1947 event, one of the most memorable episodes in Indian history. The eventful memories of this period recreate the history of both gain and loss. Contemporary history was smeared with the tragic memories of Partition of the subcontinent, in spite of the achievement of independence. It is a historical fact that undivided India experienced an unprecedented threat in 1947 at the wake of communal segmentation plunging common people in horrendous panics and trauma. A dark chapter, Partition is a reminder of a human tragedy for millions of people still haunting the memories of human history. It was a communally conflicting heated moment. Despite Gandhi’s negotiations, the communal situation was then deteriorating throughout the country. Maulana Azad writes in India Wins Freedom: “In the meantime, the situation was deteriorating every day. The Calcutta riots had been followed by riots in Noakhali and Bihar. Thereafter there was trouble in Bombay. . . . Communal disturbances spread to other parts of the province” (Azad 196). Communal relationship so deteriorated in the last ten years of colonial regime that the cultural affinity reverted to the communal enmity. Neither of the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities could evade the fire of communal passion. Gradually, this descended into frequent communal clashes and killings. In this situation, Mountbatten reached Delhi on 22 March 1947 with the independence decree. On 24 March 1947, his talk to the leaders of different communities to reach a political solution went in vain. On 3 June 1947, he finally proposed the partition of the country into two separate dominions- the Hindu majority India and the Muslim dominated Pakistan. Shortly on 18 July 1947, the Atlee cabinet approved and made it a law. Finally, India won ‘fractured’ freedom at the ‘double price’ of partition and profuse bloodbath and atrocity unfathomable. Manohar Malgonkar writes in Preface to A Bend in the Ganges: “Twelve million had to flee, leaving their homes; nearly half a million were killed; over a hundred thousand women, young and old, were abducted, raped, mutilated”. Historically true, the partition turned the subcontinent to a communal battlefield where both the Hindus and the Muslims so callously engaged themselves into the organized butchery against one another. To quote Ismat Chugtai, “country was split in two – bodies and minds were also divided. . . [and] humanity was in shreds” (Bhalla 53). This contour of violence imbues the partition history with ‘uncomfortable and unpleasant memories’ (Butalia 356).
Memory reflects different layers of history and past events. Partition memories have different shapes and historical contexts. Urvashi Butalia argues: “Memory is a complex thing, however, and remembering Partition does not mean only recalling the violence of the time. For every story of violence and enmity, there is a story of friendship and love, and it is as important to recall those as it is to look at stories of violence” (Butalia, Partition and Memory n.p.). Remembering or rewriting of past-history is an act of creative process with a purpose of unearthing ‘the truth’. Journey down the memory lane offers access to revisiting past history beyond the mere information and it also creates a scope of exchanges of ideas of historical past thus shaping and reshaping the cultural identity and responses. Maurice Halbwachs writes: “Memory is not simply a means of retaining information but rather a force that can shape cultural identity and allow cultures to respond creatively to both daily challenges and catastrophic changes” (Wratch 201). Writing the memories of the past, which is a common literary practice, is thus an artistic exploration of both the articulate and inarticulate history (of a culture and a nation), of the reconstruction of events that happened in the past. History and memory as the theme of creative fiction have cast a spell over many an Indian English novelists too. Novelists preoccupied with the memory of the partition historicize the contemporary past realism. The writers of partition fiction have depicted the unleashing horror and painful fragmented memories of the victims during the 1947 cataclysm with humanitarian responses to recreate the experiences of dislocation, migration and dehumanization through the individual memories and perspectives. Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956), Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), Manohar Malgonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges (1964), and Chaman Nahal’s Azadi (1975) are some remarkable narratives of partition history and pangs. These literary narratives offer a vivid and powerful portrayal of fragmented, wounded and ‘hidden’ memories of partition that shaped social history. They depict the agony and pain of those who underwent the trauma for no fault of theirs, except their birth and belonging to one particular religion and region. Acknowledging the power of fictional writings in bringing out the ‘hidden histories’ of Partition days Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon consider partition fiction as a ‘far richer source because it provides popular and astringent commentary on the politics of Partition’ (Bhasin and Menon 12). These are more an eloquent witness to ‘unspeakable and inarticulate history’ than a political discourse. This is because the partition literature ‘truly evokes the sufferings of the innocent, whose pain is more universal and ultimately a vehicle of more honest reconciliation than political discourse’ (Hassan 17). Regarding the necessity of rewriting the partition history by the creative writers, Mushirul Hassan argues:
They [the creative writers] expose the inadequacy of numerous narratives on Independence and Partition, compel us to explore fresh themes and adopt new approaches that have eluded the grasp of social scientists, and provide a foundation for developing an alternative discourse to current expositions of a general theory on inter-community relations. Their strength lies in representing a grim and sordid contemporary reality without drawing religion or a particular community as the principal reference point. In their stories, the experiences of each community distinctly mirror one another, indeed reach out to and clutch at one another. No crime, no despair, no grief in exile belongs uniquely to anyone (Hassan 18).
The partition writers revisit the past, remapping the experiences of pain and sufferings which people like them underwent individually and communally, and the partition experience is enacted through their characters. This paper aims at exploring how Nahal portrays in Azadi the history of partition that creates the sense of anxiety and suffering for its victims. It will register the personal memory of pain suffered by the parents, friends and lovers in the process of partition. The paper is based on a close analytical reading of Nahal’s Azadi from the socio-psychological and historical aspects.
Nahal and the Portrayal of Memories of Pain in Azadi
Chaman Nahal (1927-1913) in Azadi fictionalized the socio-cultural and political reality of the mid-1940s with a view of ‘unlocking memory and remembering’ (Butalia 1998, 358) ‘the truth’ about the partition. Like Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, Chaman Nahal’s Azadi is concerned with the human crisis and pain in the partition days in 1947. Azadi is “about the partition of India that held the subcontinent in a nightmare of horror for months and left a trail of phenomenal bitterness and misery” (Iyenger 750) that still wounds the millions. Nahal handles the theme of the partition with a historian’s consciousness and accuracy. Like Singh, Nahal had personal experience of the partition catastrophe. A victim, Nahal considers the partition not a “historical necessity” but a huge blunder that engendered the root of Indian cultural heritage. In his interview with B.S. Goyal, Nahal expresses his reaction: “I think that historically, politically, ethically and morally partition was wrong. I believed and still believe that we are one nation, one culture” (Gayal 67). A disciple of Gandhi, Nahal never approved Jinnah’s ‘two- nations’ theory. He knew that this theory, instead of bringing in any ‘peaceful’ solution, would create crevice among men, as Nahal shows through the changing pattern of relationship between Abdul Ghani and Lala Kanshi Ram in Azadi. Nahal’s own anger against the decision of partition flares up in Azadi through the reaction of the characters, chiefly Lala Kanshi Ram and his son Arun.
Nahal sets the story in Sialkot, (his birthplace), a small Frontier town in the mid-1947. The narrative begins with the viceroy’s announcement of the partition of India on June 3, 1947, and ends with the assassination of Gandhi on 30 January 1948. The story covers seven months of extreme communal rift and violence causing unprecedented sufferings of countless people. The fictional canvas spanning from Sialkot to Delhi narrates the severe impact of partition through the story of the family of Lala Kanshi Ram, a Hindu merchant at Sialkot. Nahal remarks in the Introduction to Azadi: “As a novelist . . . I take up an average Indian family living in a small town and show how their entire lifestyle and attitudes are changed by partition” (xii). The novel opens in a serious tone that underscores the socio-political conflict and religious tensions of the subcontinent: “It was the third of June, 1947. This evening, the Viceroy was to make an important announcement. That’s what Lala Kanshi Ram told his wife Prabha Rani” (1). The novelist shows how the announcement makes people tense as well as gradually conscious of communally segmented religious identity. Lala Kanshi Ram is extremely conscious of the socio-political and religious connotations of the partition conflict. As an Indian, he is hopeful of the quick achievement of Independence of India after the immediate departure of the British Raj. But, as a Hindu inhabitant of the north western Punjab, he is highly critical of the impending religious amputation of India into Hindustan for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. Still he nurtures a faith that the great leaders like Gandhi and Nehru will not accept the proposal of partition: “Gandhi would never agree to a division of the county. . . ” (27). At the same time, he has a tension that in case of communal division Sialkot, his native place, may fall into Muslim Pakistan and he may be ruined. Like every tense Hindu of the province, Lala Kanshi Ram fears that the genesis of Pakistan would bring enormous misery and would be a threat to their life and community. Lala Kanshi Ram articulates his anxiety to his wife: “Arun’s mother, I’m worried about the announcement the viceroy might make. . . . Everything will be ruined if Pakistan is created” (26-27). In fact, Lala Kanshi Ram, like the novelist himself, never wants India to be partitioned. A resident of the western Punjab province, he apprehends displacement: “If Pakistan is created, we’ll have to leave” (28). Through Lala Kanshi Ram’s tension Nahal shows how the partition anxiety grips the minds of the entire Hindu-Sikh communities resulting in communal mistrust among the Hindus and Muslims of Sialkot.
However, the “last hope” Lala Kanshi Ram cherished is finally crushed with the viceroy’s announcement declaring the decision of communal polarization of the country in the evening news. Like the other Hindu and Sikh inhabitants, he is deeply shocked with the decision. The novelist registers the rising anxiety of the Hindu and the Sikh family members while they pay attention to the radio news in the Bibi Amar Vati’s room: “The viceroy spoke in a clipped, sharp accent and even this non-English speaking audience could sense the emotion behind what he saying . . . . Arun understood it all only too well, and in a shaken voice he said ‘Yes partition!’ and made a gesture with his hands of chopping a thing in two” (48). The declaration makes them shiver in fear. They apprehend the escalation of communal rivalry and distrust in the town. The suddenly but predictably changed atmosphere turning into volcanic explosion creates a wall of discord and difference between the Hindus and the Muslims, except the case of Barkat Ali and Lala Kanshi Ram family ties. When the procession led by the jubilant pro-Pakistan Muslims arrives, all the shops in the city close down and there prevails only a “rumbling noise”. It was a ‘wild sight’ (55) and “a scene of increasing chaos” (64). All these frighten the Hindu and Sikh people of the town, especially Lala Kanshi Ram and Jodha Singh’s family members. The novelist focuses on the mounting tension in the Hindu mahallas under the ‘threat to survival’: “They all agreed and climbed back into their homes. Arun and Niranjan Singh went up their stairs, bolting the street door behind them . . . . Soon every door in the street was shut tight, as if they were fearing a visit from some demonic prehistoric monster” (55). The words, ‘bolting’, ‘shut’ and ‘monster’ imply the end of the age-old cultural reciprocal tie of the Hindus and the Muslims when they suddenly become enemies to each other.
In the meantime, the Boundary Commission announces the final boundary for Pakistan and India, and unfortunately, Sialkot goes to Pakistan much against the ‘last’ wish of Lala Kanshi Ram. The Sikh and the Hindus had a strong hope that the boundary line would be settled at the ‘Chenab basin’, instead of the ‘Ravi basin’. Lala Kanshi Ram and other Hindus and Sikhs get utterly frustrated at the new geographical contour of partition. The Muslim ecstasy and celebration turn into a communal chaos soon. The Muslim outfits threaten the life of the non-Muslims by pillaging and setting fire to the houses and shops, killing and raping the Hindus and Sikhs.
By the time, with the government’s decision of mutual exchange of people from both sides of the border, the mass migration starts taking place. Bidyut Chakrabarty explains the then situation thus: “The immediate circumstances were a new social landscape in which communities were redefined in consonance with a political goal of the new states. Those who suffered in consequence were ‘ordinary folks’ who had hardly any roles in the realm of ‘high’ politics” (Chakrabarty 76). The partition politics posits the ‘ordinary folks’ in a state of dislocation turning them as refugees. The history of partition thus becomes a (his)story of renegotiation and relocation. In Azadi, the Hindu and Sikh families of Sialkot including Lala Kanshi Ram’s get frightened and receive shelter in the refugee camps. Lala Kanshi Ram expresses his anxiety for hastily becoming a homeless and alienated person. The Hindus and Sikhs, the suddenly turned refugees, like Lala Kanshi Ram, are forced to undergo the painful experience of displacement and migration, in spite of having their deep emotional attachment to the place of their birth and bringing up. The pain of being suddenly displaced people, as Lala Kanshi Ram feels, is echoed in his broken heart when he poses questions of dislocation, similar to Imam Baksh in Singh’s Train to Pakistan: “I was born around here. This is my home – How can I be a refugee in my own home?” (108). This remains, as we see later, a lifelong pangs for him. This uprooting for political demarcation creates psychological alienation or ‘spacelessness’ for those uprooted and the geographical space becomes a part of their memory overnight. The defining moment like partition forces the individual to realize the ‘pastness of the past’ (Chakrabarty 76) in terms of the present and the future. Torn between the ‘lost past’ and an uncertain future, the individual, like Lala Kanshi Ram, finds himself uprooted and displaced, a refugee, who, in the words of Bodh Praksh (2001:75), ‘has to relocate his/her identity in a radically different present, which, paradoxically enough, is shaped, influenced and conditioned by the very past which is irrecoverable’ (qtd. in Chakrabarty 76). The partitioned lives of Lala Kanshi Ram and many others shaped and conditioned by their religious identity undergo tremendous changes and traumatic experiences of murder, displacement and relocation following the identity as well as psychological crises. While migrating to Indian side Lala Kanshi Ram learns that his daughter, Madhu Bala, has been killed on her way to Sialkot by Muslim fanatics. Through the portrayal of Madhu Nahal enacts his pain when he lost his sister, Kartar Devi, a partition victim. Gradually, the communal conflict escalates everywhere and all the Hindus and Sikhs of the camp start quitting Sialkot in order to reach the Indian safe side. However, the influx of Muslim expatriates from the Indian side prompts the Hindus of Sialkot to quick exodus. News of killing of Muslims by Hindus on the Indian side of the border spreads like wildfire poisoning the communal relationships in Sialkot.
The novelist clearly exposes the way the partition upheaval makes the people communally conscious, and vindictive. Nahal in the introduction to the novel says: “The greatest harm the political decisions such as Partition do is that they polarize the ethnic groups and place them in their own narrow confines and compartments; they force them to act their ethnicity out . . . [thus] the link between the communities in general is temporarily smashed” (xii). Before the creation of Pakistan the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs lived in harmony and peace in Sialkot, despite their religious differences. Lala Kanshi Ram’s family has been living in the rented house of Bibi Amar Vati along with Sardar Jodha Singh, a Sikh family together in harmony. Lala Kanshi Ram and Chaudhri Barkat Ali, the followers of Gandhi, are good family friends. The friendship survives in their sons Munir and Arun. Arun has friendship with Munir’s sister, Nurul Nishar, which ripens into love. This lifelong family relationship and faith face serious challenges in the wake of the partition. The see-off picture of two friends, Kanshi Ram and Barkat Ali during the exodus, that reminds one about the pathetic scene of separation of Imam Baksh and the lambardar in Singh’s Train to Pakistan, evokes the sense of pain: “Khuda Hafiz, brother Kanshi Ram’, he said, folding his hands. ‘These had been good years’, said Lala Kanshi Ram, taking Chaudhri Barkat Ali’s hands in his own. There were tears in the eyes of both men. . . . We are one people and religion cannot separate us from each other” (241-42). Their friendship falls victim to communal identity politics of the day. The Arun-Munir friendship suffers so.
Nahal depicts another form of fractured friendship in the Lala Kanshi Ram-Abdul Ghani episode. Abdul Ghani lived on friendly terms with Lala Kanshi Ram. Ghani now nurtures venomous indignation towards Lala Kanshi Ram since the injection of communal passion for Muslim Pakistan in him by the Muslim League members. A fanatic for Pakistan, Ghani welcomes the partition. The Muslim identity consciousness makes him pleased even as the Hindus leave the town for India. Regarding Lala Kanshi Ram’s quitting, he says forgetful of long years’ friendship: “I want you to leave because you’re a Hindu, and you don’t believe in Allah” (112). Urvashi Butalia, concerning this psychological separation between friends, remarks: “Partition was surely more than just a political divide or a division of properties, of assets and liabilities. It was also . . . a division of hearts” (Butalia 8).
Nahal presents the Arun-Nur love episode to articulate the sense of pain Arun and Nur as lovers undergo. Arun and Nur’s love affair was well known on the college campus. Nobody questioned about it. But, after the announcement of partition, their love relation is suspected by the Muslim students. Munir says to Arun: “Muslim boys will lynch you if they see you with her [Nur]” (80). The partition brings a change in the identity consciousness of Arun and Nur too. During the migration of the Hindus, Nur pleads to Arun for conversion to Islam. Arun rejects the idea. Frustrated Nur deprecates Arun: “You’re a Hindu, after all – a Hindu. Too timid!’” (79). The questions such as why he should convert himself (“Why should I become a Muslim?”, “Why shouldn’t you [Nur] become a Hindu?” (78)), sweep over his mind. He is suddenly conscious of his ‘different’ religious affiliation that brings his emotional separation from Nur forever.
Nahal also records the memories of pain of partition through the pathetic experience of the refugees, particularly Lala Kanshi Ram’s. On their way to the Indian side of the border, the Hindu and the Sikh refugees have to go through several assaults by Muslims. Long foot-convoys pass through the important areas like Gunna Kalan, Pursur, Manjoke and Narowal. Lala Kanshi Ram is the leader of one of the foot convoys. The journey of the foot convoys is terribly painstaking and dreadful. Each moment of the journey is tense with fear that anyone can be killed, raped and abducted. The first attack on the convoy with the burst of machine gun fire reveals extreme violation of human values. Lala Kanshi Ram gets shaken. When Lala Kanshi Ram’s party passes “the spot where the ambush had been organized, they found the road littered with . . . dead bodies. . . . Most of the children lay with their faces downward. The men lay on their backs or on their sides, their mouths open. Some women lay doubled up like bundles” (252). Another gruesome spectacle is the naked procession of “the kafir women” in the open market of Narowal that shocks Lala Kanshi Ram. The novelist remarks: “The procession arrived. Arun counted them. There were forty women, marching two abreast. Their ages varied from sixty to thirty . . . . They were all stark naked. . . . They all were crying” (260). This wild response of the crowds shows their bestiality. Factually, what is painful is that the moral darkness clouds human conscience of both the Hindus and the Muslims during the communal orgy.
The novelist shows this balanced view through the vision of Lala Kanshi Ram. Crossing the border, he comes to know shockingly that similar atrocities are being experienced by the Muslim refugees from India on their hellish journey to Pakistan. Like the Hindu and the Sikh women, the Muslim women are paraded, abducted and raped by their Hindu and the Sikh counterparts in India. This makes Lala Kanshi Ram change his attitude to Muslims, as he says to his wife: “I’ve ceased to hate Muslims” (298). On his way to the Amritsar station Lala Kanshi Ram shamefully witnesses “a procession of Muslim women through the bazaar” (289). In terms of bestiality, the event parallels the infernal parade of the Hindu and Sikh women at Narowal. He is again shocked with the blood-stained train and platform at the Amritsar station: “A train with hundreds of slaughtered Muslims had pulled in and they were clearing up the platform. It was a train carrying Muslim refugees to Pakistan. It had been stopped at the signals outside Amritsar, when the Muslims were massacred. . . . Lala Kanshi Ram looked at the ground in humiliation” (189-190). The reference to such incidents shows that the novel abounds in the graphic descriptions of racial brawls that cause a sense of pain for the victims as well as for the entire humanity in the process of the partition upheaval. In the view of K.K. Sharma and B.K. Johri: “Azadi portrays vividly the horrors of the partition, the colossal violence that still haunts the Indian psyche” (Sharma & Johri 89).
The novelist evokes another sense of pain felt by Lala Kanshi Ram, as revealed in his existential crisis. Partition is not merely a history of violence and victimhood; it is also a history of relocation and reshaping the identity of the individual or the community. In the words of Gyanendra Pandey, it is also “a history of struggle of people fighting to cope, to survive and build anew.” (Pandey 187) Finally, Lala Kanshi Ram reaches tiresomely the Indian territory- the land of his desire and rehabilitation. A penniless refugee, he vainly searches for accommodation and socio-economic settlement. Even his relatives do not welcome him. He decides to settle in Delhi permanently where they are hardly welcome by the rehabilitation officers. One of the officers asks him why he has chosen to come to Delhi.
“Why have you come to Delhi?”
Lala Kanshi Ram looked up at him in surprise.
I’m from Pakistan’, he said, feeling certain this was identity enough.
The officer scoffed.
I know, I know. Why to Delhi?’
Lala Kanshi Ram was at a loss for reply. He had not thought for a moment he would have to justify his presence anywhere in India (301).
This unexpected interaction shocks him utterly. Now he realizes that he has come to an alien land, contrary to his dreamland. An unwanted refugee, he feels, like so many expatriates, isolated and humiliated. At the same time, his painstaking search for relocation and livelihood makes him physically as well as emotionally exhausted.
Nahal, thus, articulates the psychological impact of the partition resulting in the hopelessness and existential crisis. In spite of facing all the hardships in the journey to India, Lala Kanshi Ram finally undergoes psychic paralysis. He loses his power of communication. The novelist remarks: “That was another ruin Azadi had caused. He had lost the ability to communicate with his family” (326). Like him, Arun too undergoes a similar kind of psychological crisis due to the serious impact of partition pain that makes him unable to communicate with his family members. Like his father, Arun suffers tremendously beginning with his displacement, the killing of his dear sister Madhu, the loss of his love, first with Nur, and later, with Chandni, psychologically disabling him to sustain the contact with his parents: “In their beds, Arun and Prabha Rani too were awake. Their eyes were open and they were looking at the ceiling. Arun wanted to sit up and speak to his father, but he . . . could not form a connection with him. . . . A sadness weighed on their hearts, each felt stifled and crushed” (327). The novelist delineates the painful dimensions of the gruesome historic events that accompanied the partition showing their ‘physical and psychological impacts on human life’. K.K. Sharma remarks: “The novel brings out not only the irreparable material losses, but also the loss of personality caused by this tragic event” (Sharma 47).
Conclusion
To conclude, in Azadi Nahal as a partition victim remembers and revisits the past grim reality, historicizing with a balanced view the partition pain and memories through the experience of his characters. A humanitarian writer, Nahal evokes the miserable and ‘unpleasant memories’ intertwined with history for fictionalizing the multi-layered partition trauma and agony. In fact, instead of sensational and subjective portrayal, Nahal makes an objective and psychological delineation of partition tragedy, thereby convincingly penning the process and problems of contemporary painful historical reality.
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