INTRODUCTION WHY STUDY THE LITERATURES OF THE …

INTRODUCTION WHY STUDY THE LITERATURES OF THE PARTITION (1947)?

'Parthion literature of the early period - of which Sa'adat Hasan Manto's devastating stories are the outstanding examples - was largely confined to the strife-tom areas of Punjab and its environs in the decade or so after Partition. The violence of the times does not appear to have become a central motif in the Bengali literature of the post-Partition period. ...while the famine of 1943 deeply moved Bengali writers 'the Partition of Bengal. ..never became a dominating theme of Bengali fiction even during the 1950's or shortly thereafter.' - Gyanendra Pandey, In Defense of the Fragment

In 2003, while I was translating some short stories from West Bengal and Bangladesh

(erstwhile East Bengal/East Pakistan) dealing with the Partition of 1947, I came across

the words that I quote at the beginning. These and many others like them have troubled

me because of their validity and authenticity. The Partition in the eastern part of the sub-

continent has been a neglected area, particularly its literature, although some recent works have drawn our attention to the region. 1 In the course of my readings, I came across

virtually unknown (outside Bengal) and un-canonized (in the Bangia literary canon)

1 Historiography on the Bengal Partition and its aftermath is quite slender as compared to that on Punjab. In recent times, a few studies have come out like Joya Chattetji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947-1967, Cambridge, 2007; Willem van Schendel, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia, London, 2005, some articles in the two volumes of Sukanta Chaudhuri, ed., Calcutta: The Living City, Delhi, 1990, and Tai Yong Tan and G. Kudaisya, eds, Partition and Postcolonial South Asia: A Reader, London, 2008 are illuminating. Sankar Ghosh, The Disinherited State: A Study of West Bengal, 1967-70, Bombay, 1971, Partha Chatterjee, The Present History of West Bengal, Essays in Political Criticism, Delhi, 1997 and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Decolonization in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in post-independence West Bengal, London, 2009 are studies of post-Partition West Bengal. Explorations of the Partition's refugees like Gargi Chakravartty, Coming Out OfPartition: Refugee Women ofBengal, Delhi, 2005 and Pradip Bose, ed., Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Practices and Contested Identities, Calcutta, 2000, have inspired me profoundly. Kanti B. Pakrashi, ?The Uprooted: A Sociological Study ofthe Refugees of West Bengal, Calcutta, 1971 and Ranabir Samaddar, ed., Reflections on the Partition in the East, Calcutta, 1997 remain notable works. In Bangia, Sandip Bandopadhyay's, Deshbhag: Deshtyag, Calcutta, 1994, Prafulla Chakraborty, Prantik Manob, Calcutta, 1997 and Hiranmoy Bandopadhyay, Udvastu, Calcutta, 1970, Tushar Sinha, Moronjoyee Sangramey Bastuhara, Calcutta, 1999 continue to remain invaluable. Sandip Bandoppadhyay's Deshbhag: Smriti Aar Satta, Calcutta, 2001 is also important. Literature and the Bengal Partition have been discussed in a recent volume by Shemonti Ghosh, ed., Deshbhag: Smriti 0 Swobdhota, Calcutta, 2008. The two volumes by Jashodhara Bagchi and Subhor~njan Dasgupta, eds, The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India, Calcutta, 2003 and 2009 also contain interesting material.

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authors.2 At one point of this study, I was fi11ed with despair if I could ever do justice to

the enormously rich and varied literature that Partition has produced amongst the Bangia speaking peoples ofWest Bengal, the North East and Bangladesh.3

The Partition of 1947 has generated extensive literature ranging from scholarly

works, historical monographs, reminiscences to novels and bestsellers. The complex

political mosaic of a pluralistic society, the growth and acceleration of the nationalist

struggle,? the changes in Hindu-Muslim relations, popular protests, and British

imperial policies have resulted in a proliferation of writings on the various aspects of

the Partition. A look at even the currently available material convinces one of the

impossibility of grasping all the various issues involved - national, communal,

imperial in their social, religious, economic and political connotations. The emerging

trends in Partition Studies have also emphasized that the Partition in Bengal have not

received adequate attention from scholars and the vivisection of the subcontinent still

throws up faulty perspectives and false surmises. Certainly, a more balanced view of

the events leading to the Partition is now possible with access to new material

available in The Transfer ofPower (1942-47) series edited by Nicholas Mansergh and

Penderel Moon and the Muslim League documents (1906-47) compiled by Syed

Shafiruddin Pirzada while the Towards Freedom volumes are invaluable for archival materials from India.4 The diaries of British Governor Generals like Wavell and the

accounts of British historians, describing the last twenty years of the British rule in

2 The literary canon dealing with the Partition in Bengal is comparatively larger than its historiography. However, many authors who have written on the Partition and its effect have remained unknown outside Bengal, leading to fallacies of perception that no sizeable Partition literature exists in Bangia. Also, some authors remain un-canonized and unread even by a discerning Bangia readership. Shaktipada Rajguru's novel on Dandakaranya and Dulalendu Chattetjee's two novels (that I discuss in chapter 4) are examples that come to mind. Porimal Goswami is another author who seems almost forgotten. I have not found a single discussion on them in notable books of Bangia literary history including one that discusses Partition literature exclusively, Ashrukumar Shikdar, Bhanga Bangia 0 Bangia Sahityo, Calcutta, 2005. Short stories, dealing with Partition themes like riots, displacement, refugee-hood, are many and varied. For a list of notable short stories see Sanjida Akhtar, Bangia Choto Golpey Deshbibhag, 1947-1970, Dhaka, 2002. For a discussion of Partition novels see Sahida Akhtar, Purbo 0 Paschim Banglar Uponyash: 1947-1971, Dhaka, 1992. For a discussion on some Partition plays, see Jayanti Chattopadhyay, 'Representing the Holocaust: The Partition in Two Bengali Plays' in S. Settar and Indira B. Gupta, eds, Pangs ofPartition: The Human Dimension, vol., 2, Delhi, 2002, pp. 301-312.

4 Syed Shafiruddin Pirzada, ed., Foundations of Pakistan: All India Muslim League Documents, 1906-47, 2 Vols. Karachi, 1969-70 and P.N.S. Mansergh et al, Constitutional Relations Between Britain and India: The Transfer Of Power, 1942-47, 12 vols., London, 1970-83. See also Sumit Sarkar, ed., Towards Freedom, vol., I (1946), Delhi, 2007.

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India, are also available.5 On the Indian side, the multi volume Collected Works of

MK. Gandhi, Selected Works of Nehru, and correspondences and private papers of

public figures like Sardar Patel, S.P. Mookerjee, Meghnad Saba, Renuka Ray, Ashoka

Gupta are valuable source materials. The writings by Nirmal Kumar Bose, Saroj

Mukhopadhyay, Abani Lahiri, Hiranmay Bandopadhyay, Manikuntala Sen, Soofia

Kemal and Renu Chakravartty provide rich details, particularly about Bengal.

Institutional papers like the AICC files, government reports and the Assembly proceedings6 also contribute to our understanding of the Partition not only as a

division on the map but a division on the ground and in the minds of the people - the

uprooting and the looting, the rape and recovery operations, the riots and their fallouts

that marked these moments ofuncertainty in the political and social life of the people

in the subcontinent. Recent anthropological and sociological studies of Partition's

legacy of violence have also prompted considerable questionings especially of the

idea that the Partition's unfinished agenda of nation building in the subcontinent remains largely flawed and problematic.7

The Partition of 1947 meant massive population migration across the borders

of the newly independent nation states of India and Pakistan. Fifteen million people

5 Penderel Moon's Divide and Quit, London, 1961 and H.V. Hodson's The Great Divide: Britain, India and Pakistan, Karachi, 1985, remain essential readings.

6 A special mention must be made of the book by S. Dutta and M. Dutta, The Interaction, Confrontation, Resolution: the Economic Issues in Bengal Legislature, 1921-51, Calcutta, 1998 that helps in understanding the tug and pull of politics in the context of the Partition. Government reports are also numerous. Two Years Since Independence: A Resume of the Activities of the Government of West Bengal 1947-9, Directorate of Publicity, West Bengal Government, Calcutta, 1949 gives an important account of the two traumatic years after independence.

7 The Partition's legacy of violence and communalism has been studied in some detail by A.A. Engineered., Ethnic Conflict in South Asia, New Delhi, 1987, Veena Das, ed., Communities, Riots, Survivors: The South Asian Experience, Delhi, 1990 and Veena Das, Violence and Subjectivity, London, 2000. Selected Writings on Communalism, Delhi, 1994 brings together a selection of essays on the subject by Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra and K.N. Pannikar. Ravinder Kaur, ed., Religion, Violence and Political Mobilisation in South Asia, New Delhi, 2005 looks at the construction of 'communal' and seeks to open up the term through the complicity of state and religious mobilisation. Gyanendra Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Delhi, 2006 is concerned with the 'routine violence of our history and politics' and seeks to study the conditions, whether it is history writing or the construction of minorities and majorities, as shot through with violence. For West Bengal, Sajol Basu, Politics of Violence: A Case Study of West Bengal, Calcutta, 1982 remains important. Another study that I personally found helpful is G.G. Deschaumes and R. Ivekovic, eds, Divided Countries, Separated Cities: the Modern Legacy of Partition, Delhi, 2003 to understand questions of the Partition's diasporas. An introduction to communalism in colonial India is Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, Delhi, 1992 and Mushirul Hasan, ed., Communal and Pan-Islamic Trends in Colonial India, Delhi, 1981.

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crossed the newly defined boundaries; in West Bengal alone an estimated 30 lakhs of refugees entered by 1960. For over a million people, it was death in various violent encounters involving Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. For an estimated 80 thousand women, in India and Pakistan, it meant abduction and sexual assault. Although ordinary people suffered these traumas of displacement, murder and mayhem, the dominant hegemonic structures of public memory of the Partition, issued by the state and the majoritarian nationalistic discourses, have paid very little attention to these voices. However, in the last decade, some shifts in Partition Studies can be discerned. In the late nineties, Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin commented on the abundance of political histories of the events equalled by a 'paucity of social histories of it'.8 They also noted an absence of feminist historiography of the Partition. Around the same time, Urvashi Butalia began to retrieve through interviews and oral narratives the stories of the smaller, invisible players of the events: the women and the children and the scheduled castes. Butalia's contention was that we can not begin to understand what Partition is about 'unless we look at how people remember it' .9 These works, as well as others like Kathinka Kerkoff-Sinha's study of the Momins in Jharkahand, Sarah Ansari's study of the Muslim refugees in Sind and Papiya Ghosh's work on the Biharis in Bangladesh, question the homogeneity of nationalist discourses and have marked a significant break from an exclusive concentration on high politics. 10 These explorations have also ?seen marginal communities in a constant dialogue. with hegemonic state structures even as they i~temalize hegemonic perspectives. Other studies that look at the 'unfinished agenda' of nation building especially the participation of the Dalits and minorities in the formation of the nation state as well as

Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition, New Delhi, 1998, pp. 6-9. For an emphasis on social issues like abduction, displacement and communal violence when Menon and Bhasin was writing see D.A. Low and Howard Brasted, eds, Freedom, Trauma, Discontinuities: Northern India and Independence, New Delhi, 1998. 9 Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side ofSilence: Voices from the Partition ofIndia, New Delhi, 1998, p. 18. See also Kuldip Nayar and AsifNoorani, Tales of Two Cities, Delhi, 2008 for personal accounts

? of the trauma that transformed the subcontinent.

1 Kathinka Kerkoff Sinha, Tyranny ofPartition: Hindus in Bangladesh and Muslims in India, New Delhi, 2006. See also Sarah Ansari, 'The movement oflndian Muslims to West Pakistan after 1947: partition-related migration and its consequences for the Pakistani province of Sind' and Papiya Ghosh, 'Partition's Biharis' both in Tai Yong Tang and Gyanesh Kudaisya, eds, Partition and PostColonial South Asia: A Reader, Vol1, London, 2008, pp. 241-258 and 144-169.

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issues of social mobilisation have also opened up the complexities of the Partition. 11 On one hand, these studies have recognised and documented violence to see the importance of personal memory to demonstrate the plurality ofhow we remember the

Partition even within the same community just as they demonstrate that gender, caste and class variegate the memories of a community as the communities in tum are constantly reinvented and reconstituted at particular moments in history. 12

Mushirul Hasan sees this shift in focus as being animated by the intellectual resources made available to us by creative writers as 'they expose the inadequacy of numerous narratives on independence and partition, compel us to explore fresh themes and adopt new approaches.' 13 Only literature evokes the sufferings of the innocent by exploring the experiences of communities. So, in the last few years, historians have begun to pay serious attention to literary representations of the Partition, despite the claim that fictional representations are few, especially in Bengal. 14 The dimensions of experiences of the common people have been constructed through oral narratives and imaginative readings of their silences as well as from literary renderings of the Partition events. All this has meant that Partition studies have undergone a new and critical sensitivity that take representations more seriously than ever before. This call for new resources for remembering and representing the Partition means that social relations, locality as well as memory, that make up a subjectivity come under the historian's scrutiny. The ambivalent nature of memory, its healing and transformative role constructing individual and collective identities, also receives critical attention. As a form of representation and construction, memory is vitally implicated with imagination,

11 Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Politics and the Raj, Bengal 1872-1937, Calcutta University Monograph 5, 1990 and 'Mobilizing For A Hindu Homeland' in Mushirul Hasan and Nariaki Nakazato, eds, The Unfinished Agenda: Nation Building In South Asia, Delhi, 2001, pp. 151-195, give us an understanding of the lower caste identity formation in Bengal.

12 Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922-1992, Delhi, 1995, interrogates the construction of people into a nation by questioning the nationalist master narrative in relation to the events in Chauri Chaura, 1922.

13 Mushirul Hasan, 'Memories of a Fragmented Nation: Rewriting the Histories oflndia's Partition' in Mushirul Hasan, ed., Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition ofIndia, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 39-40.

14 Pradip Kumar Bose states that given the magnitude of the Partition there is a 'virtual absence of any socio-political analysis or evaluation of a human disaster of such magnitude' and even 'fictional representations of the refugee problems have been few and far between.' See P.K. Bose, 'Refugees in West Bengal: The State and Contested Identities' in Pradeep Bose, ed, Refugees in West Bengal: Institutional Practices and Contested Identities, Calcutta, 2000, p., I.

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