Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India1947 PartitionDeepa Meh.docx
- 1. Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India 1947 Partition Deepa Mehta’s earth (1998) Characters Aamir Khan - Dil Navaz, the Ice Candy Man Nandita Das - Shanta, the Ayah Rahul Khanna - Hassan, the Masseur Maia Sethna - Lenny Sethna Shabana Azmi - older Lenny, narrator Kitu Gidwani - Bunty Sethna Arif Zakaria - Rustom Sethna Kulbhushan Kharbanda - Imam Din Kumar Rajendra - Refugee Police Pavan Malhotra - Butcher IN Deepa Mehta’s words I wanted desperately to make CRACKING INDIA into a film, a particular film, EARTH, which would be the second in my trilogy of the elements of Fire, Earth and Water. Tracing Bapsi was no easy task but persevere we did and soon I was talking to Bapsi on the phone, hoping that the film rights to her book were still available. Two months later, thanks to David Hamilton's unwavering belief in the project, we owned the rights, had development funds, and I was sitting at my kitchen table, writing the screenplay of EARTH.
- 2. David and Anne Masson and I had worked together on FIRE and we re-assembled the team to begin the detailed planning of the production. During this phase Bapsi became a friend and was exceedingly generous with information and old photographs. She would talk with me for hours about what it was like growing up in Lahore during those times. Lenny, after all, was based on Bapsi. In fact, Lenny was Bapsi. The irony of our situation hasn't escaped Bapsi or myself. Bapsi is from Pakistan and now a US citizen. I'm from India and now living in Canada. If neither of us had moved from our respective homelands, the film just wouldn't have been possible. Pakistan and India, since the Partition of 1947, are sworn enemies. Not only have they fought three major wars against each other, but also, as I write this, both countries talk blithely about their nuclear capabilities and continue their militant aggression against each other across the still- disputed Kashmir border. Fallen Women in the novel and film Abducted women like Ayah and Hamdia, Lenny’s new nanny are viewed with suspicion from Lenny. Page 226 “It isn’t a jail, Lenny baby…it’s a camp for fallen women.” “What are fallen women?” “Hai! The questions you ask! Your mother won’t like such talk…Now keep quiet” “Are you a fallen woman?” Fallen women – Abducted and raped women In the aftermath of the 1947 declaration of Indian independence, the roughly drawn new state boundaries triggered what may have been the biggest migration in human history.
- 3. Historical consensus supports a figure of 12 million people displaced, although the BBC suggests figures as high as 14.5 million people. An undeclared civil war erupted as communities of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fought one another to establish their own identities in their redefined homelands. And, in the process, the Indian government estimates, 83,000 women were abused and abducted. Others put the number even higher. “Rather than being raped and abandoned,” Yasmin Khan writes in The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, “tens of thousands of women were kept in the ‘other’ country, as permanent hostages, captives, or forced wives; they became simply known as ‘the abducted women.’” Why did men “keep the women they had attacked?” Khan asks. The underlying reason—whether men forced women into unpaid labor or took them as forced wives—was the “impulse to consume, transform, or eradicate the remnants of the other community,” she says. Menon and Bashin “the material, symbolic, and political significance of the abduction of women was not lost either on the women themselves and their families, on their communities, or on leaders and governments. As a retaliatory measure, it was simultaneously an assertion of identity and a humiliation of the rival community through the appropriation of its women. When accompanied by forcible conversion and marriage, it could be counted upon to outrage both, family and community honour and religious sentiments. The fear of abduction or falling into heads of the enemy compelled hundreds of women to take their own lives, equal numbers were killed by their own families and literally thousands of others to carry packets of poisons on their persons in the eventuality that they might be captured. Any many committed suicide after they were released by their captors for having been thus ‘used’ and polluted” (WS-3)
- 4. Official estimates In 1950, Menon and Bhasin write, the “official estimate” for numbers of abducted women stood at 50,000 Muslims in India and 33,000 Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. But rehabilitation workers place these figures higher. Mridula Sarabhai, they write, a director of rehabilitation projects for abducted women, believed that as many as 125,000 Hindu and Sikh women were abducted in Pakistan. Fallen women “Mummy and your aunt rescue kidnapped women. When they find them, they send them back to their families or to the Recovered Women’s amps. She arranged for Ayah to be sent to her relatives. She felt you had accepted her absence – you’d only start fretting again. (251) 252 – question of her current status but no answers Is she a Christian? Is a prostitute? Is she married to the Ice Candy Man? (page 258-9) How does he downplay his marriage? How his community protects their women? Where is her voice? Her narrative? Theme of shame and Lenny’s guilt: page 266 Themes in the novel Child narrator Female sexuality Masculinity – Ice Candy Man’s transformation Critique of colonial power and fickleness of human nature The metaphor of “cracking” – breaking of a country; division of communities The novel creates space for the unraised voices of the females who had to go through the dual turmoil in the "cracking" of the nation and the young girl's "breaking" of the patriarchal
- 5. nationalist code Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India 1947 Partition Lecture 3: chapter 23-end Essay #2 Due 3/31/2017 Essay #2: Film Versus Novel: In 1000-1200 words, compare and contrast Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India with Deepa Mehta’s film adaptation, 1947 Earth. You can discuss the themes of child narrative, war and conflict, gender and violence, masculinity and violence, and so on. Times new roman, 12, double space Please make sure your thesis is present at the beginning of your essay and clearly states your argument and the supporting evidence you will be discussing throughout your paper. Review my comments from your first essay and feel free to ask questions. I am happy to give a 100 but if its earned: strong, clear thesis with good supporting evidence, properly formatted long-in text quotations following MLA 8th edition. Because of the snow day, we will watch the film today and Monday. I will introduce the new novel to you on Monday. Please complete the assigned reading for Monday either way. We will be reading De Niro’s Game that focuses on the civil war in Lebanon. Ayah’s Adbuction Page 191-195 Lenny’s betrayal: “Something strange happened then. The whole
- 6. disorderly melee dissolved and consolidated into a single face. The face, amber eyed, spread before me: hypnotic, reassuring, blotting out of the ugly frightening crowd. Ice candy’s versatile face transformed into a savior’s in our hour of need (193) Ice candy man is crouched before me. “Don’t be scared, Lenny baby,” he says. “I’m here.” And putting his arms around me he whispers, so that only I can hear: “I’ll protect Ayah with my life. You know I will…I know she’s here. Where is she?” (194) Ayah’s Abduction They drag Ayah out. They drag her by her arms stretched taut, and her bare feet – that want to move backwards –are forced forward instead. Her lips are drawn away from her teeth, and the resisting curve of her throat opens her mouth like the dead child’s screamless mouth…the men drag her in grotesque strides to the cart and their harsh hands, supporting her with careless intimacy…I am the monkey-man’s preforming monkey…the last thing I noticed was Ayah, her mouth slack and piteously gaping her disheveled hair flying into her kidnapper’s faces, staring at us as if she wanted to leave behind her wide-open and terrified eyes. (195) Ayah’s Rape vs. Ranna’s Story The text's silence about Ayah's story, moreover, has other ramifications. The rape of Ayah—absent and untold—occurs structurally at the center of the text, the point from which the narrative separates Lenny (in every way) from her erstwhile double. In fact, upon her disappearance, it shifts unexpectedly to a segment entitled "Ranna's Story." Ranna, a Muslim village boy and Lenny's cook's great-grandson, arrives suddenly to give his harrowing account of his escape from the mass violence perpetrated upon his family by Sikhs. While perhaps the most graphic section of the novel, it is structurally set aside from the main narrative. The only part of the novel not told in Lenny's
- 7. voice, this oddly juxtaposed, artistically awkward device bespeaks a desire perhaps to bring in the horror in some other way, but not to bring it too close. Ranna and his lost women relatives appear briefly only to vanish quickly from the main narrative, as if their only function was to substitute for what happened to Ayah, who substitutes for Lenny. Interestingly, Lenny acquires another "ayah," who is a lower-class peasant Muslim woman in turn a victim from the other side. While the narrative's inclusion of Hamida here suggests an impulse to render equally the violence enacted upon Muslim women too, it does not attempt to grant her even the agency or centrality given to Ranna. Moreover, it solidifies the illusion that rape is a lower-class affair and serves to enhance the rehabilitatory generosity of the family that takes her in. Rape and Abduction It may be said in defense that Sidhwa's effort is precisely to mark the real silence that still haunts the violence of Partition and to represent the reality where such women were silent, and continue to be so. Even survivors' accounts such as those included by Butalia and Menon and Bhasin describe murder but do not acknowledge rape. Indeed, many rape victims may not wish to speak of the rape precisely as a strategy of survival, in order to put it behind them.3 HonoR: Tamas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwe8- UM9H5U&list=PLmNDZHM- lS98sqEbNk_ESS5MK9WVyrJdf&index=4 Pinjar (1998): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvFlSc_OVh0 Silent Waters (2003): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKYq9FZ3pHU
- 8. Menon and Bashin “the material, symbolic, and political significance of the abduction of women was not lost either on the women themselves and their families, on their communities, or on leaders and governments. As a retaliatory measure, it was simultaneously an assertion of identity and a humiliation of the rival community through the appropriation of its women. When accompanied by forcible conversion and marriage, it could be counted upon to outrage both, family and community honour and religious sentiments. The fear of abduction or falling into heads of the enemy compelled hundreds of women to take their own lives, equal numbers were killed by their own families and literally thousands of others to carry packets of poisons on their persons in the eventuality that they might be captured. Any many committed suicide after they were released by their captors for having been thus ‘used’ and polluted” (WS-3) Ranna’s Story Page 223 What is his importance? Since his presence is to be a foil to Lenny, does his story enhance the trauma or seem out of place? Fallen Women Page 226 “It isn’t a jail, Lenny baby…it’s a camp for fallen women.” “What are fallen women?” “Hai! The questions you ask! Your mother won’t like such talk…Now keep quiet” “Are you a fallen woman?”
- 9. Ayah And suddenly the hunt for Ayah is off. I sense it. So does Adi. They only pretend to look for her. Mother still takes off in the Morris but I know it is not to look for Ayah. I can tell by the car’s wheels flatten on the stones by the determined angle of Skinny aunt’s chin – that the car’s dicky is loaded with petrol. They can set fire to the world for all I care – I want my ayah ! (240) AYAH 243-244 The presence of Ayah – Cousin uses Ayah as a way to tease Lenny but says that she is all “made up” and looks “like an actress” “And then, one late evening, I do see Ayah. It doesn’t register at once.” (246) Are these visions of Ayah reflective of Lenny’s guilt? – page 250 “I saw her with my own eyes.” Mini aunty – “sometimes we only see what we wish to see…” “It can’t be her. Ayah is with her family in Amritsar!” – is Godmother telling the truth or trying to appease Lenny? Ayah “Mummy and your aunt rescue kidnapped women. When they find them, they send them back to their families or to the Recovered Women’s amps. She arranged for Ayah to be sent to her relatives. She felt you had accepted her absence – you’d only start fretting again. (251) 252 – question of her current status but no answers Is she a Christian? Is a prostitute? Is she married to the Ice Candy Man? (page 258-9) How does he downplay his marriage? How his community protects their women? Where is her voice? Her narrative?
- 10. Theme of shame and Lenny’s guilt: page 266 Page 272 – Ayah/Mumtaz – “ I will not live with him” ‘That was fated, daughter. It can’t be undone. But it can be forgiven…Worse things are forgiven. Life goes on and the business of living buries the debris of our pasts. Hurt, happiness, fade impartially…that’s the way of life” “I’m not alive” (274) Deepa Mehta’s 1947 earth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEJdS7_RC4Q&t=726s Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India 1947 Partition Lecture 2: chapters 9-16 The impact of the trauma from the riots (pp. 148) I examine the sari-and dhoti-clad Indian dolls…I hold it upside down and pull its pink leg’s apart. The knees and thighs bend unnaturally, but the stitching in the center stays intact. I hold one leg out to Adi. “Here,” I say, “pull it” “Pull damn it!,” I scream, so close to hysteria that Adi blaches and hastily gravs the proferred leg...Adi crouches close to me. I can’t bear the disillusioned and contempuous look in his eyes. “Why were you so cruel if you couldn’t stand it?” (148) Cracking India
- 11. “I am a Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that. A new nation is born. India has been divided after all. Did they dig a long, long canal Ayah mentioned? Although it is my birthday no one has time for me. My questions remained unanswered even by Ayah (150) The new pakistan – incorporation of historical events “I blow out the candles and cut the squashed cake. And then we sit around the radio listening to the celebrations of the new Nation. Jinnah’s voice, inaugurating the Constituent Assembly sessions on August 11 says, “You are free. You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosque or any other place of worship in the state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of State…etc,...etc...etc, Pakistan Zindabad!” (154) The climax – the breaking of Punjab IceCandy man comes to an abrupt and jolted halt. He is breathless, reeking of sweat and dust, and his frantic eyes rake the group. They rest for an instant on the Sikh, and flutter back to us. “A train from Gurdaspur has just come in,” he announces, panting. “Everyone in it is dead. Butchered. They are all Muslim. They are no young women among the dead. Only the two gunny-bags full of women’s breasts!” (159) Ice-Candy Man’s Revenge “What’s it to you, oye?”…”If you must know, I was. I’ll tell you to your face – I lose my senses when I think of the mutilated bodies on that train from Gurdaspur…that night I went mad, I tell you! I lobbed grenades through the windows of
- 12. Hindus and Sikhs I’ve known all my life. I hated their guts…I want to kill someone for each one of the breasts they have cut off the Muslim women…the penises” (166) Ayah and the Masseur Ayah is crying softly, “I must get out of here.” She says, sniffling and wiping her nose on her sari-blouse sleeve. “I have relatives in Amritsar I can go to.” “You don’t need to go anywhere, “ says Masseur, so assuredly possessive that I feel a stab of jealousy, “Why do you worry? I’m here. No one will touch a hair on your head. I don’t know why you don’t marry me!” he says, sighing persuasively, “you know I worship you..” (168) The aftermath of partition “Instead, wave upon scruffy wave of Muslim refugees flood Lahore – and the Punjab west of Lahore. Within three months, seven million Muslims and five million Hindus and Sikhs are uprooted in the largest and most terrible exchange of population known to history. The Punjab has been divided by the icy card- sharks dealing out the land village by village, city by city, wheeling and dealing and doling out favours. For now the tide is turned – and the Hindus are being favored over the Muslims by remnants of the Raj. Now that it is objective to divide India is achieved, the British favor Nehru over Jinnah. Nehru is Kashmiri; they grant him Kashmir. Spurning logic, ignoring the consequences of bequeathing a Muslim state to the Hindus, while Jinnah futilely protest: “Statesmen cannot eat their words.” Statesmen do. (169) The masseur’s death Himmat Ali (Hari), too is uneasy. He pulls back saying: “Stay
- 13. here. There is something on the other side.” By my fear of the wall and my congenital curiosity prevail. It is only a bulging gunny sack. We cross the road. The swollen gunnysack lies directly in our path. Hari pushes it with his foot. The sack slowly topples over and Masseur spills out – half on the dusty sidewalk, half on the gritty tarmac – dispelling the stiletto reek of violence with the smell of roses.” (185) Ayah’s Adbuction Page 191-195 Lenny’s betrayal: “Something strange happened then. The whole disorderly melee dissolved and consolidated into a single face. The face, amber eyed, spread before me: hypnotic, reassuring, blotting out of the ugly frightening crowd. Ice candy’s versatile face transformed into a savior’s in our hour of need (193) Ice candy man is crouched before me. “Don’t be scared, Lenny baby,” he says. “I’m here.” And putting his arms around me he whispers, so that only I can hear: “I’ll protect Ayah with my life. You know I will…I know she’s here. Where is she?” (194) Ayah’s Abduction They drag Ayah out. They drag her by her arms stretched taut, and her bare feet – that want to move backwards –are forced forward instead. Her lips are drawn away from her teeth, and the resisting curve of her throat opens her mouth like the dead child’s screamless mouth…the men drag her in grotesque strides to the cart and their harsh hands, supporting her with careless intimacy…I am the monkey-man’s preforming monkey…the last thing I noticed was Ayah, her mouth slack and piteously gaping her disheveled hair flying into her kidnapper’s faces, staring at us as if she wanted to leave behind her wide-open and terrified eyes. (195)
- 14. Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India 1947 Partition Lecture 2: chapters 9-16 The Day India Burned – Class Discussion 1) In the documentary, did you agree with Mountbatten’s decision to leave India early? 2) Rape and abduction of women was a pretty common occurrence, so were honor killings. What were your thoughts on Bir Bahadur Singh’s sister’s decision to willingly accept death in order to protect her honour? 3) What were your thoughts about the ways in which Cyril Radcliffe’s precarious position to divide British India? 4) How were the refugees treated during the migration between India and Pakistan? 5) Do you think the politicians made strong decisions, especially Nehru, Jinnah, and Gandhi? What were their goals? What were the consequences of their decisions? Cracking india What does The Scarlet Letter reveal about early attitudes toward Native Americans? Think of Pride and Prejudice and Lord of the Flies as texts about class and gender roles and expectations. Similarly, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India is an international classic that reveals the gender and class politics during the time of the Partition in India. Cracking india - themes The experience of being handicapped
- 15. the effects of religious racia lconflicts the subjugation of women (e.g., arranged marriages, prostitution); sexuality; class and caste prejudice; and political violence. The novel also concerns generational differences, and children’s rights and vulnerabilities. By writing about a child growing up during this time in India and Pakistan’s history, Sidhwa confronts many important social, historical, and political issues with humor and compassion. The end of colonialism Page 25 – “Lenny is weak. Some child with only the symptoms of a severe cold could have passed the virus.” And he roars a shocking postscript: “If anyone’s to blame, blame the British! There was no polio in India till they brought it here!” – product of colonialism? Trauma? CracKing India –Pg 11-78 “The Goddamn English!” I think, infected by Colonel Bharucha’s startling verocity at this “dastardly” (one of Father’s favorite words, just as “plucky” is Mother’s) instance of British treachery. “They gave us polio!” And not withstanding the compatible and sanguine nature of my relationship with my disease. I feel its my first personal involvement with Indian politics: the Quit-India sentiment that has fired the imagination of a subject people and wil soon sweep away the Raj! (page 26) Quit India movement: civil disobedience movement launched by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on 8 August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British Rule of India. Cracking India
- 16. Far away I hear a siren…into a single German soldier in a motorcycle (31) I recal another childhood nightmare from the past. Children lie in a warehouse. Mother and Ayah move solicitiously. Godmother sits by my bed smiling indulgently as men in uniforms quietly slice off a child’s arm here, a leg there. She strokes my head as they dismember me. I feel no pain. Only an absymal sense of loss- and a chilling horror that no one is concerned by what’s happening (31) Themes: foreshadowing; dismemberment of self/other, siren = impending violence? Cracking India The role of Gandhi – page 41 Suddenly I hear him declare – “Gandhi says, we must stop buying salt. We should only eat salt manufactured from the Indian Ocean!” The colonel pauses, dramatically, and my loafing mind becomes attentive. The pause, shrewdly timed to permit just that tiny license so dear to a Parsee audience, is snapped up. “Who does this Gandhi think he is?” shouts an obliging wag promptly for somewhere in the middle. “Is it his grandfather’s ocean?” (44) Cracking India “When we were kicked out of Persia by the Arabs thirteen hundred years ago, what did we do? Did we shout and argue? No!” roars the colonel, and hastily provides his own answer before anyone can interrupt. “We got into boats and sailed to India” (page 46)
- 17. Cracking India Hari’s character “spare dark body” (pg 53) Lower caste/class Gardener Fate after the Partition – guesses? Cracking India Imam Din: “I’ve not come all this way without a reason.” The villagers, who are wondering why he is visiting them, look at him attentively. He rubs his face with both hands; as if it pains him to state the reason. “I don’t think you know how serious things are getting in towns. Sly killings; rioting and baton charges by the police…long marches by the mobs...The Congresswallahs have started a new stunt...they sit down on the rail tracks – women and children, too. The police lift them off the tracks...but one of these days the steam engines will run over them...Once aroused...the English are savages” “Then there is the Hindu-Muslim trouble,” he says, after a pause. “ugly trouble. It is spreading. Sikh Muslim trouble also.” The villagers, Sikh and Muslim, erupt in protest. “Brother,” the Sikh granti says when the tumult subsides. “our villages come from the same racial stock. Muslim or Sikh, we are basically Jats. How can we fight each other?” (64) Cracking India “Rivers of blood will flow all right” General Rogers shouts, almost as loud as Mr. Singh. “Nehru and the Congress will not have everything their way! They will have to reckon with the Muslim league and Jinnah. If we quit India today, old chap, you’ll bloody fall at each other’s throats!” “Hindus, Muslims, Sikh: we all want the same thing! We want independence!” Inspector General Rogers recovers his imperial phlegm. “My
- 18. dear man,” he intones, “Don’t you know the Congress wont agree on a single issue with the Muslim league? The cabinet mission proposed a federation of the Hindu and Muslim majority provinces. Jinnah accepted it; Gandhi and Nehru didn’t! (pg 71) Cracking India Sarbat Khan cautions Ayah: “These are bad times-Allah knows what’s in store. There is big trouble in Calcutta and Delhi: Hindu-Muslim trouble. The Congresswallah are after Jinah’s blood…” What’s it to us if Jinnah, Nehru, and Patel fight? They are fighting our fight,” says Ayah, lightly. “ (84) Ayah says, “Funny things are happening inside the old city...Stabbings...Eiher the police can’t do anything-or they dont want to. It was discovered this morning becasue of the smell: a young, good, looking man. Several bodies have been found in the gutters and gullies of Kashmiri, Lahori, and Bhatti Gates and Shalmi. They must have been dumped there from different neighborhood because no one knows who they are.” “Are they Hindus?” asked Ayah, her carefree mood dispelled “Hindu, Muslim, Sikh. One can tell they are from prosperous, eating-drinking households...” (84) Cracking India “I was set firmly and relentlessly on the path to truth the day I broke a Wedgwood plate and, putting a brazen face on my mischief, nobly confessed all before Mother bent over me, showering me with the radiance of her approval. “I love you. You spoke the truth! What’s a broken plate? Break a hundred plates! “ I broke plates, cups, bowls, dishes. I smashed livers, kidneys, hearts, eyes…the path to virtue is strewn with broken people and shattered china.” (94)
- 19. Cracking India Gandhijee visits Lahore. He is small, dark, shriveled, old. He looks just like Hari, our gardener, except he has a disgruntled, disgusted, and irritable look, and no one’d dare pull of his dhoti! He wears only the loin cloth and his black and thin torso is naked. Gandhijee certainly is ahead of his times. He already knows the advantages of dieting. He has starved his way into the news and made headlines all over the world (94). Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamdas Gandhi He began his activism as an Indian immigrant in South Africa in the early 1900s, and in the years following World War I became the leading figure in India’s struggle to gain independence from Great Britain. Gandhi was imprisoned several times during his pursuit of non- cooperation, and undertook a number of hunger strikes to protest the oppression of India’s poorest classes, among other injustices. As part of his nonviolent non-cooperation campaign for home rule, Gandhi stressed the importance of economic independence for India. He particularly advocated the manufacture of khaddar, or homespun cloth, in order to replace imported textiles from Britain. Gandhi strongly opposed Partition, but he agreed to it in hopes that after independence Hindus and Muslims could achieve peace internally. Amid the massive riots that followed Partition, Gandhi urged Hindus and Muslims to live peacefully together, and undertook a hunger strike until riots in Calcutta ceased.
- 20. On January 30, 12 days after that fast ended, Gandhi was on his way to an evening prayer meeting in Delhi when he was shot to death by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic enraged by Mahatma’s efforts to negotiate with Jinnah and other Muslims. Jawaharlal Nehru Jawaharlal nehru Jawaharlal Nehru was a leader of India’s nationalist movement and became India’s first prime minister after its independence. His father was a renowned lawyer and one of Mahatma Gandhi's notable lieutenants. Educated in England, like Gandhi. He eventually practiced law. In 1919, while traveling on a train, Nehru overheard British Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer gloating over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. The massacre, also known as the Massacre of Amritsar, was an incident in which 379 people were killed and at least 1,200 wounded when the British military stationed there continuously fired for ten minutes on a crowd of unarmed Indians. Upon hearing Dyer’s words, Nehru vowed to fight the British. The incident changed the course of his life. Jawaharlal nehru After his father's death in 1931, Nehru became more embedded in the workings of the Congress Party and became closer to Gandhi, attending the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin pact. Signed in March 1931 by Gandhi and the British viceroy Lord Irwin, the pact declared a truce between the British and India's independence movement. The British agreed to free all political prisoners and Gandhi agreed to end the civil disobedience movement he had been coordinating for years. Unfortunately, the pact did not instantly usher in a peaceful
- 21. climate in British-controlled India, and both Nehru and Gandhi were jailed in early 1932 on charges of attempting to mount another civil disobedience movement. Neither man attended the third Round Table Conference. At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, British viceroy Lord Linlithgow committed India to the war effort without consulting the now-autonomous provincial ministries. Nehru's four pillars of domestic policies were democracy, socialism, unity, and secularism, and he largely succeeded in maintaining a strong foundation of all four during his tenure as president. Mohammad ali Jinnah Mohammad Ali Jinnah Jinnah was an Indian politician who successfully campaigned for an independent Pakistan and became its first leader. He is known there as 'Quaid-I Azam' or 'Great Leader'. Jinnah studied at Bombay University and at Lincoln's Inn in London. He then ran a successful legal practice in Bombay. He was already a member of the Indian National Congress, which was working for autonomy from British rule, when he joined the Muslim League in 1913. The league had formed a few years earlier to represent the interests of Indian Muslims in a predominantly Hindu country, and by 1916 he was elected its president. During Jinnah’s visits to the House of Commons, he had developed a growing interest in politics, deeming it a more glamorous field than law. Now in Bombay, Jinnah began his foray into politics as a liberal nationalist. As a member of Congress, Jinnah at first collaborated with Hindu leaders as their Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity,
- 22. while working with the Muslim League simultaneously. Gradually, Jinnah realized that the Hindu leaders of Congress held a political agenda that was incongruent with his own. Earlier he had been aligned with their opposition to separate electorates meant to guarantee a fixed percentage of legislative representation for Muslims and Hindus. But in 1926, Jinnah shifted to the opposite view and began supporting separate electorates. Still, overall, he retained the belief that the rights of Muslims could be protected in a united India. At that stage of his political career, Jinnah left Congress and dedicated himself more fully to the Muslim League. The Queen’s Park– Gathering place & Brotherhood The Queen’s Park is packed. Groups of men and women sit in circles on the grass and children run about them. Ice candy man, lean as his popsicles and as affable, swarming with children, is going from group to group doing good business. Masseur, too, is going from group to group: handsome, reserved, competent, assured, massaging balding heads, kneading knotty shoulders and soothing aching limbs. (97) What was your impression of Ice Candy Man and Massuer? Cracking India Page 118 – The Gurkas versus The Refugees Page 125 – “One man’s religion is another man’s poison” Page 128 – Ayah and Masseur Page 131-2- Ayah and Lenny witness a riot themselves Page 134 – Conflict rises between Ice Candy Man and Masseur Page 140 – Religion versus politics – Masseur’s take – significant passages Page 144 – the violence errupts Page 145 – dismemberment of the Hindu men – Lenny witnesses
- 23. the trauma Page 146-7 – mob mentality, the idea of tamasha or spectacle One man’s religion is another man’s poison “Our shadow glides over a Brahmin Pandit. Sitting cross-legged on the grass he is eating out of a leafbowl. He looks at Yousaf and at me- and his face expresses a full range of terror, passion, and pain expected of a violated virgin. Our shadow has violated his virtue. The Pandit (priest) cringes. His features shrivel into arid little shrimps and his body retracts…I am a diseased maggot. I look at Yousaf. His face is drained of joy, bleak, furious. I know he too feels himself composed of shit, crawling with maggots. Now I know surely. One man’s religion is another man’s poison. (125) Cracking India “Gandhi, Nehru, Patel…they have so much influence even in London.” says the garderner. The bastards!” says Masseur with histronic fury that conceals a genuine bitterness. “So they sack Wavell Sahib, a fair man! And send for a new Lal Sahib will favour the Hindus” “With all due respect, malijee.” says Ice Candy man, surveying the gardener through a blue mist of exhaled smoke, “but aren’t you Hindus expert at just this kind of thing? Twisting tails behind the scene...and getting someone else to slaughter your goats?” (99) Cracking India “Just the English?” asks Butcher. “Haven’t the Hindus connived with the Angrez to ignore the Muslim league, and support a party that win a single seat in the Punjab? It’s just the kind of a
- 24. thing we fear. They manipulate one or two Muslims against the interests of the larger community. And now they have manipulated Master Tara Singh and his bleating herd of Sikhs!” (100) Cracking India – can a country be ‘broken’? There is much disturbing talk. India is going to be broken. Can one break a country? And what happens if they break it where our house is? Or crack it further up on Warris Road? How will I ever get to Godmother’s then? I ask Ayah. “They’ll dig a canal…”she ventures. “This side for Hindustan and this side for Pakistan. If they want two countries, that s what they’ll have to do-crack India with a long, long canal.” (101) Lenny Position: The Sikh women pull me to their laps and asks my name and the name of my religion. “I’m Parsee.” I say “O kee? What’s that? They ask: scandalized to discover a religion they’ve never heard of. That’s when I realized times have changed. The Sikhs, only their rowdy little boys running about with their hair piled in topknots, are keeping mostly to themselves. Only the group around Ayah remains unchanged. Hindu, Muslims, Sikh, Parsee, are always unified around her. (105) Riots and violence in Lahore “He glances at Yah. Since Ayah appears content to have me stay, he says: “Well Sher Singh, his brothers Prem and Pratab, and one or two cousins – all strapping fellows…and I. Armed with hockey sticks, we went ot their tenants’ house while the men were at work. We made a bit of hulla-golla (commotion) outside the building. Waved our hockey sticks and shouted: ’Come to your widows, pretty ladies: don’t hide. We have
- 25. something to you.” (131) ” Cracking India – The burning of lahore and the mob ”The terror the mob generates is palpable – like an evil paralyzing spell…The processionists are milling about two jeeps back to back. They come to a halt: the men in front of the procession pulling ahead and the mob behind banked close ip. There is a quickening in the activity about the jeeps. Mey eyes focus on an emancipated Banya wearing a white Gandhi cap. The man is knocked down. His lips are drawn away from rotting, paan-stained teeth in a scream. 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. Ayeah, holdign her hands over mey eyes, collapses on to the floor, pulling me down with her. There is a roar of a hundred throats: “Allah-o-Akbar” and beneath it the growl of revving motors.” (145) Discussion Questions On page 125, Lenny says, "Now I know surely. One man’s religion is another man’s poison.” Given the violence that breaks out and the fact that India is “cracked” along religious lines, explain Lenny, Ayah, and the other significant characters who experienced the trauma. What were their psychological, emotional, and physical repercussions , which were generated by religious conflict between various groups? How would you relate it to today? Chapter 21 takes the reader back into Lenny’s family world, characterized by humor, joy, and a "regular life." Why do you think the author shows us Lenny’s family here? How does Lenny use her handicap? How does she feel about it? Find examples of her taking advantage of her disabled status as a polio victim.
- 26. Describe the hyper masculine tensions in the novel. Think of Ice-Candy Man, Masseur, and the other men who linger around the Ayah? How are they different from the other group of men in Iman Din’s village? Focusing on pages 144-5, what were your impressions of the Hindu man being dismembered violently and Ice Candy Man’s reaction to his death. How is civilian life impacted by political decisions? It is the desensitization of the violence but also how violence is responsible for fragmenting the body and the nation. How would you explain this phenomena? What other countries have experienced a similar kind of trauma? How can we reconcile this notion?