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6 The wounds of history Before you read With a partner, discuss possible problems that might have turned up after partition. Word bank to maintain law and order  • multicultural society  • tensions between ethnic/religious groups  • ethnic cleansing  • genocide  • economic factors  • to take over responsibility  • to reach a political solution  • to negotiate  • to result in  • to lead to W Fact file The partition of India The partition of India took place in 1947 as India gained its independence from the British Raj (Empire). The northern, predominantly Muslim sections of India became the nation of Pakistan, while the southern Hindu section became the Republic of India. F Reading: Cracking India a) Read the text and underline the names of all the people mentioned in this extract. Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel Cracking India is set during partition in 1947. The narrator, an 8-year-old girl called Lenny, lives in Lahore with her affluent and well-educated Parsee family. She has a habit of making up fantasy names for people and things she likes. 1  2  VIP file Bapsi Sidhwa (* 1938), a Parsee (member of a very powerful religious group in India) from Karachi raised in Lahore, lives in Houston/Texas today and is one of Pakistan’s most acclaimed diasporic writers. Her novel Cracking India (1991) was made into the award-winning film Earth (1998) by director Deepa Mehta, who called this film her “antiwar statement”. V 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 Cousin. “Rubbish,” he says, “no one’s going to break India. It’s not made of glass!” 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.” Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Iqbal, Tara Singh, Mountbatten are names I hear. And I become aware of religious differences. It is sudden. One day everybody is themselves – and the next they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. People shrink, dwindling into symbols. Ayah is no longer just my all-encompassing Ayah – she is also a token. A Hindu. Carried away by a renewed devotional fervour she expends a small fortune in joss-sticks, flowers and sweets on the gods and goddesses in the temples. Imam Din and Yousaf, turning into religious zealots, warn Mother they will take Friday off for the Jumha prayers. On Fridays they set about preparing themselves ostentatiously. Squatting atop the cement wall of the garden tank they hold their feet out beneath the tap and diligently scrub between their toes. They wash their heads, arms, necks and ears and noisily clear their throats and noses. All in white check prayer scarves thrown over their shoulders, stepping uncomfortably in stiff black Bata shoes worn without socks, they walk out of the gates to the small mosque at the back of Queens Road. Sometimes, at odd hours of the day, they spread their mats on the front lawn and pray when the muezzin calls. Crammed into a narrow religious slot they too are diminished, as are Jinnah and Iqbal, Ice-candy-man and Masseur. Hari and Moti-the-sweeper and his wife Muccho, and their untouchable daughter Papoo, become even more untouchable as they are entrenched deeper in their low Hindu caste. While the Sharmas and the Daulatrams, Brahmins like Nehru, are dehumanised by their lofty caste and caste-marks. The Rogers of Birdwood Barracks, Queen Victoria and King George are English Christians: they look down their noses upon the Pens who are Anglo-Indian, who look down upon all non-Christians. Godmother, Slavesister, Electric-aunt and my nuclear family are reduced to irrelevant nomenclatures – we are Parsee. What is God? (From: Bapsi Sidhwa, Cracking India ) 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 b) Draw a grid and fill in some of the names mentioned, who they are and what effect partition has on them. 84 India Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv