When Memories Become Traumatic : A Reading of Jamila Hashmi’s Exile and Joginder Paul’s Dariyaon Pyas

“India has never been a symbol of unity of Hindu-Muslim civilization. It is not possible for the British Government to create homogeneity between Hindu and Muslim culture and civilization as the two systems are distinctively opposed to each other. There is no way other than the partition of India”

Apart from religious and sectarian tensions between Hindus and Muslims, an ideological difference between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League is another key factor which led to the partition.

Topic: Critically analyse Dog of Titwal in the light of partition literature with respect to the Indian subcontinent.

The theory of the partition was initially opposed by most of the Indian people. For many people, the riots that took place during partition was completely beyond their wildest imagination. The idea was arbitrary, illogical, gruesome, unreasonable and mad and lead to immense confusion. Today, perhaps, it has become an accepted reality.

The ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan has been the subject of speculation and study by political scientists and historians for a number of years. The ethnic conflict seems to have been sparked at the very beginning in 1947, when the British used Muslim and Hindu mercenaries against each other before the area finally split into today’s countries of India and Pakistan (Spiegel et al. 2015, 185). The timeline since then has been full of conflicts, both major and minor. Brutal tactics used by security forces and a high rate of unemployment have added to the issue (BBC News 2016).

The British’s goal to separate the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs was a total disaster. “The trouble was that Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs were an integrated population so that it was impossible to make a border without widespread dislocation.” This quote states that making a border was impossible because the groups aren’t meant to be spread apart. “By the end of 1947 there were virtually no Hindus or Sikhs living in west India - now part of Pakistan - and no Muslims in the Indian east.” This explains how the British made Pakistan because of the partition. “The British government and Mountbatten must bear a large part of the blame for this tragedy." Therefore, the British caused religious violence and disagreement against each

The Partition of India was the partition of the British Indian Empire that gave birth to the two independent and sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan which was later split into the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Union of India later Republic of India on 15 August 1947. "Partition" here refers not only refers to the segregation of two nations, but also to the respective divisions of other assets of army and navy, valuable minerals in central treasury and other administrative possessions of the respective countries. This partition has been termed as the largest human migration in history to have ever taken place. That being said it also has paid the price of loss of lives which are innumerable, from being 200,000 to 500,000 recorded deaths and 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims being displaced from this partition.

Acculturation is a very significant issue of post-colonial literature. Pakistan shortly after independence divided into the phenomenon of regional identities and multiculturality which is a phenomenon of acculturation. Multiculturality gave way to the formation of different ethnicities. The present research paper is aimed to trace out the reasons for the failure of acculturation in South Asian context. For analysis of the novel, the acculturist model of J.W Berry (1995) has been used. Berry proposes that proper acculturation plays an important role in lessening social conflict. This paper purports that after the partition Pakistan could not assimilate properly the different ethno-linguistic groups in a unified national consocionationalism.

“The argument for Pakistan was simply that Hindus and Muslims were not two different religious communities but two separate nations” (Varshney 434), meaning that this divide was a denser than many might view it. The relations between both groups influenced the judgements of India’s founders and constitution-makers, given that it was one of the most traumatic periods in the history of India’s twentieth-century due to the millions of deaths that were accompanied by partition. These constitution-makers had to face four main issues: the relationship between religion and the state, separate electorates, religiously given personal laws, and educational institutions. The overall goal of the new nation was to put an end to the Hindu-Muslim violence, provide minorities a stake in the new nation and also reduce their fears of losing their identities. They wanted to do so in a way that would not deepen the divide that already existed, but that would unite them instead (Varshney

India had finally gained independence after 350 years of British presence. The plan for partition began when Britain ultimately handed over self-governance to India. After receiving its independence, India was further separated due to religious tensions between Muslims and Hindus living together. Because of these conflicts, Pakistan was formed the following day on August 15, 1947. Under the Mountbatten Plan, India was formed out of mostly Hindu regions and Pakistan was created out of the primarily Muslim regions. Pakistan was formed into two dominions: East Pakistan and West Pakistan. At the beginning of their independence, both countries dealt with both ruined lands and economies. The partition ended up leaving both Pakistan and India distraught. Riots erupted, looting broke out, women were raped, and over 15 million refugees were forced into unfamiliar regions. These refugees crossed borders into regions of the two new countries that were completely foreign to them. Women were raped and abused by both Muslims and Hindus, and each day trains filled with beaten women and children would arrive between the borders of Pakistan and India.

Bengal's growing need for an identity, equal and ethnic acceptance and a pride in their mother language eventually led to many conflicts both emotional and political. Having been recently independent from British India, the Two Nation Theory was engraved in everyone's minds. But the geographical division of East and West Pakistan was much more than distance; it was felt as a conspiracy for West Pakistan to govern the entire country (Bose, 1).The war was considered an unnecessary act by some as autonomy was the desired result and not a new country. However as the story of the lives of civilians unfold the distrust and unfairness of the situation in the country is seen to be evident.

On 14th August 1947 we received freedom and got a separate homeland named “Pakistan”. But on 16 December 1971 after the war we lost our one hand that is East Pakistan. The separation has many causes which are following :

The primarily muslim sections of India became Pakistan, and the primarily Hindu sections became the republic of India. The partition of India left more than a million dead, fifteen million refugees and tens of thousands of abducted women.

The Partition of India in August, 1947 was a significant event in history that accounted for the separation of one of the world’s oldest civilization into two, independent nations – Pakistan and India. Like many other wars in history, The Partition of India was instigated by religious, political and social conflict. This resulted in violence, discrimination and the largest human displacement in contemporary history. While the Partition was well-studied, much of our understanding was focused on the political side of history, not the human side of it. This was why oral history played an important role in manifesting the complexity of a historical event. Our focus here is Maya Rani’s testimony from Butalia’s book, The Other Side of Silence:

E.M. Forster’s classic novel “A Passage to India” tells the story of a young doctor, Dr. Aziz, and his interactions with the British citizens who are residing in India during the time of the British Raj. Throughout the novel, the reader gets many different viewpoints on the people and the culture of India during this point in history. The reader sees through the eyes of the Indian people primarily through the character of Dr. Aziz, and the perceptions of the British through the characters of Mr. Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mrs. Moore. Through the different characters, and their differing viewpoints, the reader can see that Forster was creating a work that expressed a criticism that he held of the behavior of the British towards their Indian subjects.