CHAPTER-VI

PARTITION SHORT FICTION: UNFOLDING WOMEN’S

MULTILAYERED EXPERIENCE OF PARTITION

I inhabit a terrain called existential in-betweenity. That, I suppose, is the

metaphor for our times. Perhaps that is a metaphor for life itself.

-Brij V. Lal

The short story, although of a comparatively late origin occupies a popular and

significant space in literary discourse. This observation is justifiably applicable to the

Partition short story as well. As Hasan (2008) rightly observes:

In the literature on Partition, the short story holds a position of pre-

eminence...The short story, by encapsulating individual fates, held its own

against the unfolding of multiple histories in the novel. The short durative of the

story carried as much punch as the epic sweep of novelistic time. (p. xiii)

The short stories written by the women writers take the reader beyond the blood and

gore of Partition violence to engage with the consequences of the event on the human

psyche. The Partition short story also assumes significance in that it is a potential

medium to sound a warning about the lessons to be learnt from history.

This chapter is divided into three sections dealing with Amrita Pritam’s The

Skeleton, Jamila Hashmi’s Exile and Ismat Chughtai’s Roots respectively. These

Partition short narratives defy any attempts at categorisation. The Skeleton and Exile

both reveal stories of abduction. There are common concerns of exploration of memory

and trauma that connect them but they are also different in many ways. The Skeleton

begins in the third decade of the 20 th century and ends with Partition, whereas Exile

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begins with Partition and explores the post-Partition consequences of abduction. The

women protagonists in the two stories differ in the way they respond to their abduction

and work out differing strategies to come to terms with it and make peace with their

inner selves. Roots explores the story of an old woman whose sense of belonging to her

land of birth is deeper than her allegiance to her religion. Memory is one common area

that it shares with the other two stories. These stories are about women who are placed

in their individual predicaments and whose sense of self is carved out of their ability to

negotiate these predicaments.

Amrita Pritam’s The Skeleton

From the depths of your grave,

Waris Shah,

Add a new page to your saga of love

Once when a daughter of Punjab wept

Your pen unleashed a million cries,

A million daughters weep today; their eyes turned

To you, Waris Shah.

-Amrita Pritam

This section examines The Skeleton as a story that acknowledges the presence

of polarisation of communities based on religion even before Partition happened. It

seeks to understand the effects of abduction and forced marriage on the mind of Pooro

with the added experience of parental rejection, all of which are causes for intense

trauma. This section also explores how Pooro’s journey of reconciliation is marked by

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her belief in the ideas of an all encompassing humanism, Partition providing her the

moment when she is able to make peace with her inner ghosts.

Amrita Pritam (1919-2005) was amongst the first of the Partition writers to

have pioneered the entry of women into Partition fiction. Her immensely troubling

story, The Skeleton, focuses on the plight of abducted women. No writer from the

Punjab was better informed than Pritam of the manner in which women were caught in

inter-religious or inter-clan wars. Her stories draw from her own vast experience of the

conflicts that arose before and during Partition. In her autobiography The Revenue

Stamp, she recollects about Partition:

At the time of the partition of the country in 1947, when all social, political and

religious values came crashing down like glass smashed into smithereens under

the feet of people in flight…Those crushed pieces of glass bruised my soul and

my limbs bled. I wrote my hymns for the suffering of those who were abducted

and raped. The passion of those times has been with me since, like some

consuming fire – … (1994, p.16)

Pritam and her family were uprooted from Lahore and in the mass exchange of

refugees had moved to Delhi. She recalls the horror-filled days:

The most gruesome accounts of marauding invaders in all mythologies and

chronicles put together will not, I believe, compare with the blood-curdling

horrors of this historic year. Tale after tale, each more hair-raising than the last,

would take a whole lifetime to tell. (1994, pp. 29-30)

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It speaks volumes for the insight and farsightedness displayed by Amrita Pritam in her

ability to acknowledge the need for forging reconciliations. She acknowledges the

damage that is caused to a woman’s psyche and dignity when she is the target of

violence – both everyday and communal. Pritam finds the answer not in polarisation

and division, not in reaction and revenge, but in the process of social repair and

acceptance of such abused women. Amrita Pritam has avoided a stereotypical portrayal

of Muslims while projecting the Hindu-Muslim divide. Even as a small child Pritam

had not been able to accept the idea of separate utensils in their home meant for her

“father’s Muslim friends” (Pritam, 1994, p. 6). Rebelling against this custom she says:

This broadened the outlook of my innermost eye, and even after having suffered

so much from the Partition, I found it within me to deplore dispassionately the

holocaust caused by the devotees of the two religions. Thus it was that I came

upon that painfully sensitive face around which my novel (sic) Pinjar

(Skeleton) was written. (1994, p. 19)

Pritam’s story is about sixteen year old Pooro who is abducted by a Muslim as a

revenge against her family. Though Pooro escapes from the clutches of her abductor,

her Hindu family refuses to accept her as they no longer consider her to be ‘pure’. This

rejection by her parents forces Pooro to return to her abductor, Rashida, undergo a

forceful conversion to become the Muslim Hamida and marry him. In order to

understand the abduction of Pooro, one needs to go back to the events in the past

history of the two families. The chief source of friction was an unsettled payment of a

loan on interest taken by the Sheikhs by mortgaging their house. Pooro’s family, the

Sahukars, realised the loan by taking possession of the mortgaged house. This left the

Shaikhs “homeless” (Pritam, 1987, p. 7) and the Sahukars heaped further humiliation

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on them when their men abducted Rashida’s aunt keeping her for three nights. The loss

of home and their woman’s honour goaded the Sheikhs into doing to the Sahukars what

was done unto them. It called for a similar violence and Pooro’s abduction is a sequel to

that act. The social conflict relating to non-payment of a loan is at bottom a religious

conflict. The ill will between the families culminates in a feud with women caught in

the crossfire. Therefore, Pooro is a victim of both Hindu and Muslim vengefulness and

intolerance. This communal hatred has crucial gender dimensions. The abduction of

Pooro is based on the idea of difference. That both families perceive each other as the

‘other’ is evident from the fact that they “have been at loggerheads for many

generations” (Pritam, 1987, p. 7). The Sahukars gain a dominant position by not only

rendering the ‘other’ homeless but also reinforcing this by forcibly taking their woman.

The Shaikhs perceived this loss as a loss to men of the ‘other’ religion. Religion, in

fact, is a deciding factor in setting boundaries for identities. The idea is found in

Raman’s (2010) observation, “Identities are delineated by deciding on differences; this

invariably involves the marking of boundaries, and gender is crucial in the maintenance

of these boundaries” (p. 14).The ‘other’s’ religion is marked on Pooro for life when the

name Hamida is engraved on her hand. Later, as part of violent acts committed on

women’s bodies during Partition a somewhat similar marking would take place. A

similar fact is recorded by Menon and Bhasin (1998), “Tattooing and branding the body

with “Pakistan, Zindabad!” or “Hindustan Zindabad!” not only mark the women for

life, they never allow her (or her family and community) the possibility of forgetting

her humiliation” (p. 43). This way, the women “became the respective countries,

indelibly imprinted by the Other” (Menon and Bhasin, 1998, p. 43). Daiya (2008) has a

similar opinion about it:

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 …these symbols, like “Om” or the crescent moon on the women’s bodies, did

not signify the women’s conversion; instead these symbols represented their

“otherness” (or their prior, other identity as Hindu, Sikh or Muslim) before the

violence , and their “other” identity as shamed, conquered and violated by the

ethnic community with whose symbol they were branded. (p. 70)

Pooro’s new name also raises questions of identity and identification of the female. The

original Hindu self vies with the new Muslim one. The subconscious defies complete

erasure of the past self. The shifting boundaries between Hamida and Pooro – “Hamida

by night, Pooro by day” (Pritam, 1987, p. 11) – wrecks psychological havoc on her so

much so that “In reality, she was neither one nor the other; she was just a skeleton,

without a shape or a name” (Pritam, 1987, p. 11). Abduction has placed her on a point

of no return to her earlier identity, yet memory of the now displaced identity still

survives. This reconstructed identity is one that is ambivalent because the sense of

duality as well as shrinkage is there. She is Pooro, yet not wholly Pooro; she is both

Pooro and Hamida; she is a living human yet still only a skeleton. All that constituted

her earlier identity – family, home, honour, bride-to-be, religion, and finally name –

have been stripped away one by one. The series of shock experiences has left her numb.

This incapacity to be whole again will remain till the time of Partition when she will be

able to rescue Lajo, her abducted sister-in-law, from the trauma of a similar fate as her

own.

The inability to accept Pooro back and protect her after her abduction makes her

family equally culpable in her trauma and tragedy. The family is under a sense of siege

and its very existence will be under threat if Pooro is taken back hence they have no

qualms in shunning her. Her very identity as a Hindu no longer stands. The best bet for

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her parents is the preservation and protection of the sons and her presence would

jeopardise that now. They are, to borrow from Menon and Bhasin (1998), under the

“shame-fear-dishonour syndrome” (p. 59). A similar obsession was at work during

Partition when the voices of women who had been abducted or raped was sought to be

silenced. The other women that Pooro empathises with, i.e., Taro, Kammo and the mad

woman, although are not Partition’s victims, are subjected to abuse. They are victims of

the same patriarchal mindset that was at work which created Partition’s abused women.

Their experience points towards the potential for destruction that human beings have.

Their stories along with that of Pooro’s acknowledge this potential as being present not

only during the specific event of Partition. The capacity to destroy is exhibited in the

ordinary day to day course of existence. To borrow a term from Menon and Bhasin, this

can be seen as “a continuum of violence” (1998, p.40). Twelve-year-old Kammo,

motherless and abandoned by her father, has been enslaved by a grim aunt under the

guise of offering her shelter. A spirited Taro challenges the institution of marriage.

Married to a man who already had a mistress, she considers herself to have been

demeaned to a prostitute who is used for her body. The mad woman who takes shelter

in Pooro’s village is raped and dies during childbirth. This serves to highlight the

violence and abuse that are a part of women’s everyday experience. The only difference

is that during communal violence instances of abuse towards women take on more

savage and inhuman proportions.

The skeleton imagery is used by the author to bind the experiences of the three

women – Pooro, Taro and the mad woman – together. The stripping away of her

original identity has left Pooro “just a skeleton” (Pritam, 1987, p. 11). Taro’s marriage

to an adulterous husband has caused her great trauma to which her family remains

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immune and this results in her physical emaciation and “her bones stuck out of her

flesh” (Pritam, 1987, p. 18). The tramp like woman who has been cast away by her

husband and second wife turns mad and, “she was more like a skeleton than a living

person” (Pritam, 1987, p. 21). This suggests the connection and affinity that Pooro feels

towards these women who are experiencing not just a physical wasting away but one

that is psychological and emotional as well. The suffering of these women brings about

a changed perception and new awareness in her:

She had seen other people’s sorrows. They made her own troubles appear very

small. She had heard of houses that were not homes. Taro’s story made her own

home appear like a haven of refuge. (Pritam, p. 20)

This realisation enables her to clear, to a very large extent, the debris from the past and

to organise and give to her life some sort of order and happiness. Her love for her son

Javed and the adopted child and also gradually evolving affection for Rashida help her

in holding on to her sanity.

These events occur as a kind of prelude to what was to unfold some years later

with Partition. Pooro’s experience is one that countless other women went through

when they were made to carry the burden of their community’s honour. It also

acknowledges the undercurrents of communal divide that was present even before

Partition took place. Narratives of violence to women and their dislocation are not

peculiar to Partition. The attitude displayed by Pooro’s parents is typical of the Hindus

in North India who place “greater emphasis on purity and pollution” (Butalia, 1998,

p.161) than do the Muslims. Butalia mentions about rescued women during Partition,

“Such was the reluctance of families to take these women back, that Gandhi and Nehru

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had to issue repeated appeals to people assuring them that abducted women still

remained ‘pure’” ( 1998, p.160). Pandey (2001) voices a similar experience of

Partition’s abducted women, “Many abducted women, separated from their husbands,

fathers, brothers, and other male and female relatives, for a few days, or weeks or

months, found it difficult to gain acceptance back in their original families and

communities” (p. 182). Altekar (2009) observes that in ancient times “the son was

valued more than the daughter” (p. 30). Elaborating this point, he writes:

In the Brahmana literature there is one passage observing that while the son is

the hope of the family, the daughter is a source of trouble to it. A similar idea

occurs in the Mahabharata also. The Ramayana tells us that when Sita came of

age and her marriage had to be arranged her father’s anxiety became as intense

as that of a poor man, who suddenly loses all his money. (2009, p. 5)

Recent surveys done by Chaturvedi and Srivastava (1914) have come up with findings

that the parents of the region of North India still exhibit a preference for boys over

girls. Daughters are reared only to be shoved towards their ultimate calling in life, i.e.,

marriage at a young age. They emulate their mothers. According to Chaturvedi and

Srivastava, “When a girl sees her mother looking after the household chores, like,

cleaning, washing, cooking, baby, care etc., and deprives herself of comforts of life, she

also imbibes these notions” (1914, p. 33). Fourteen year old Pooro’s marriage is

arranged to Ram Chand because “Pooro’s parents were resolved to lighten themselves

of the burden of a daughter” (Pritam, 1987, p. 1). Thus even before the final act of

rejection after her abduction, Pooro has once already borne rejection when perceived as

a ‘burden’ to be removed. Rejection is also implied in Pooro’s mother looking forward

to her sixth child hoping fervently it is a boy as “She had had enough daughters, and

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now that fortune was smiling on them once again and they had plenty to eat and

sufficient to wear, she wished that her next child should be another son” (Pritam, 1987,

p. 2). Fulfilling cultural expectations Pooro has acquired more than sufficient training

in cooking and running the house and was “like her mother’s right hand” (Pritam, 1987,

p. 5).

It is interesting to note that Pooro, though belonging to a rural background, has

a consciousness that places her at par with one like Laila of Sunlight on a Broken

Column. They are similar in their ability to empathise with the marginalised and the

voiceless, in having a sensibility that is disturbed by the indignity and injustice heaped

on women, and in the solidarity and responsibility they feel towards the less fortunate.

The Skeleton reinforces Amrita Pritam’s faith in the power of the woman as the

redeemer. Pooro’s abduction and forced marriage to Rashida sets her on a ceaseless

quest for a credible meaning to life, eternally seeking an intelligent purpose to living.

The romantic veil of life having been abruptly snatched away at the age of fifteen, she

is able to take a hard look at society’s injustices towards her. Although a victim, Pooro

transforms herself into a vibrant personality with an indomitable will of her own.

Pooro’s acceptance of her fate is born out of pragmatism. Sensing Rashida’s

personal merits, her disgust at her situation gradually wanes giving place to a stoicism

that sees her through. She initially undergoes a paralysis of will with the disintegration

of her familiar world. There is a resignation to the inevitable. Therefore, she first

appears as the doomed female. But, after this phase, she is forced to acknowledge the

innate goodness in Rashida and she gradually develops a bond with him. Life with her

abductor, after marriage and over a period, becomes bearable. Rashida is protective

rather than restrictive and they can easily be termed a happy, well-balanced couple.

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There is a distinct transformation in her from youthful, emotional to pragmatic, and

maternal. Their marriage is a gamble, the odds heavily piled against Pooro. Part of her

vital nature has been destroyed. Even her newborn baby at first fill her with disgust and

she equates it to “a slimy slug”, “a tick” and “a leech” (Pritam, p. 14) desperate to fling

it away. However, it is this baby which helps her to pick up the threads of normal life.

Butalia has presented accounts of men claiming that women jumped to their own death

rather than face dishonour, thereby protecting their family’s honour. Pooro’s parents

would also rather have her dead. However, Pooro herself does not subscribe to the idea

of adopting a role as upholder of community’s honour.

Pooro is seen to contain great capacities as a mother. Apart from being a

mother to her biological son Javed, she becomes a mother to an adopted child and

showers her motherly care on the scared and neglected Kammo. Born to a madwoman

and obviously the result of rape, the child is readily adopted by Pooro who nurtures him

and breathes new life into him. Her motherhood is also compelled to pass the test of

religion when the child is exploited as a weapon to polarise the two communities.

Refusing to think in binaries, she embodies a more pluralistic understanding of society.

When the Hindus claim the child forcing her to give it up it is as if the story of her own

abduction on the basis of religion were being repeated.

Abduction and forced marriage could have resulted in the waste of her life. But

Rashida’s nature breaks the spirit of rebellion in her. This, however, does not mean that

the routine of domestic life has helped her forget the past. A quest remains. Pooro’s soul

seeks closure. There are two things which haunt her from her past. Ram Chand, her

fiance before her abduction, and his village Rattoval still hold a compulsive fascination

for her so much so that she agrees to accompany a relative to Rattoval to lay these past

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ghosts to rest. At the end of a brief meeting with Ram Chand, she is finally able to turn

away from this memory forever saying, “Pooro has been dead a long time” (Pritam,

1987, p. 31). The other quest is to experience the homecoming she was denied when

her parents shunned her after her abduction. Forced to accept her circumstances, she is

never reconciled to it. Her inner self still needs to come to terms with her abducted

state. Even years later despite achieving a balance in her relationship with Rashida, the

demons of the past still remain to be extirpated. This is, however, not gained through

revenge and bitterness, but through her understanding of the plight of other women and

extending her solidarity and support to them. She sees herself in other women who

have been victims of patriarchy and makes it her mission to make a difference to their

lives. In their redemption, she is redeemed, in their suffering she suffers. With each

wronged woman she encounters she establishes a bond, a kinship that goes beyond

family or blood ties. Pooro’s soul finds liberation through that which is positive. Unlike

the passions being played out in the larger arena, Pooro creates harmony, not conflict.

Hers is the image of the author’s faith in hope and humanity. Placed in a desperate

situation, Pooro’s narrative is yet not one of despair. With such abundant generosity of

heart, Pooro cannot remain a victim for long. What has happened is that the revolt and

turmoil have been channelled towards the more positive. She has replaced futile

rebellion with the policy of inclusion and a serene wisdom. She chooses action rather

than defeat and withdrawal. She never believes in the apathy of inaction – fulfilling

both her need for dignity as a human being and her need for nurturance. She continues

her meaningful engagement with life and with living. All her past ghosts are finally laid

to rest with her act of rescuing her sister-in-law, Lajo, from her abductors during

Partition. Having confronted the same situation herself, she sees her own return and

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restoration in Lajo’s. Pragmatism is at work here too when she refuses to take this one

last chance to finally join her long lost family and be herself ‘restored’. She realises the

futility of reclaiming her identity as ‘Pooro’. Having been forced to reconstruct herself

as Hamida, with not even the remotest connection with her parents, she chooses not to

cross the border, but remain in Pakistan. For Pooro, an inner Partition along with the

crossing of borders had already occurred with her abduction. A physical crossing over

would not recover her past nor erase memories.

Pooro’s disguising as a khes seller is used as a subterfuge to deceive Lajo’s

abductors. Her strategy is reminiscent of Butalia’s account of the methods adopted by

women workers involved in the rescue and recovery operations. They “adopted

disguises, used false names” (Butalia, 1998, p.145), entered the house of the abductors,

won their confidence and extracted information. According to one oral account

recorded by Butalia, they would “sell eggs and ask for lassi” (1998, p. 145). A deep

knowledge of the state of affairs regarding both the plight of abducted women and the

daring attempts that were made by women workers to rescue these women seems to

have guided Amrita Pritam while narrativising Pooro’s experience. Pooro sells khes to

Lajo’s abductors and asks for water winning the trust of the woman in the house. Pooro

can well be seen to have a potential to become an activist on the lines of Kamlaben

Patel, Damayanti Sahagal, Anis Kidwai or Mridula Sarabhai, all of who were deeply

involved with the recovery and rehabilitation of women abducted during Partition.

Pooro’s own secret and almost lone mission – she is helped only by Rashida – to rescue

and rehabilitate Lajo by singlehandedly freeing her from the clutches of her abductor,

becomes all the more poignant for it is a reminder of the support she herself was

denied. Pooro’s refusal to go “back to her people” (Pritam, 1987, p. 49) is dictated by

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her realisation that a simple return to the past is not possible. When she asserts at the

end , “My home is now in Pakistan” (Pritam, 1987, pp. 49-50), it is actually a reference

to a third space that she has carved out for herself – between a familiar, romanticised

past and the present with its futile opportunity of reconciliation with her family. The

one is in the past; the other has come too late. Pooro’s decision calls to mind the

accounts of protests recorded by Menon and Bhasin of abducted women who refused to

be rescued:

You say abduction is immoral and so you are trying to save us. Well, now it is

too late. One marries only once – willingly or by force. We are now married –

what are you going to do with us? Ask us to get married again? Is that not

immoral? What happened to our relatives when we were abducted? Where were

they? (1998, p. 97)

Pooro carries within her a similar anguish of being cast aside by her own parents who

she comes to see as being transformed into a “stepfather” and “step mother” (Pritam, p.

16).

Pooro’s pre-Partition experience of abduction, thus, finds an echo in the stories

of abduction of thousands of women during Partition. This section has examined how

her story serves to underscore the similar price that women paid during Partition for the

appeasement of men’s desire to settle inter-community rivalries. The humiliation and

trauma thus unleashed fell to the women’s lot. Pooro’s response to the dark side of

humanity lays stress on tempering conflict than emphasising it.

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 II

Jamila Hashmi’s Exile

Eyes closed, I often cross the border.

Eyes don’t need a visa

Dreams have no borders.
-Gulzar

Jamila Hashmi’s Exile shares a similarity with Amrita Pritam’s The Skeleton in

that it too engages with the theme of abduction. The abduction sponsored by communal

conflict and a patriarchal mindset that Pooro faced in the pre-Partition era, Hashmi’s

protagonist Bibi faces as a direct form of Partition violence. This section of the chapter

examines the great spiritual price of compromise that the abducted woman had to pay

during Partition. Memory and trauma, being two key issues, are used to explore Bibi’s

experience of being Partition’s witness, victim and survivor.

Jamila Hashmi (1929-1988) was an Urdu writer from Lahore. Hashmi was also

Partition’s witness. Born in Amritsar, her family migrated to Pakistan “because there

was so much violence and bloodshed in Amritsar” (as cited in Alipota and Khurshid,

2014, June 16). Hashmi offers new perspectives into the abducted woman’s experience.

Besides suggesting the large scale violence that overtook a large number of people from

both sides of the border, Hashmi has very efficiently placed the story of the fate of

women in the context of Partition. Hashmi is not interested in the historical reasons for

the cause of the abduction. She engages with the impact of the abduction on the woman

and explores her inner consciousness as result of this abduction. She is interested in

how the abducted woman struggles to negotiate the new meanings of social space,

grapples with memory and trauma, accepting that which is inevitable and yet exhibiting

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an abiding sympathy for those dependent on her. Hashmi narrativises the exilic

experience of abducted women who were brought to the wrong side of a border created

by a history of conflict engaged in by men and whose position is omitted in historical

narratives.

That the author is sensitive to the fate of the abducted women is clear from the

fact that she relates the story of a Muslim woman who is abducted by Gurpal, a Hindu

without denominating them by their specific religions. The woman remains unnamed

throughout the narrative and all we know is that she had been addressed as Bibi by her

brothers before their separation at Partition. Bibi’s family becomes a victim of the

communal violence. Her father had failed to realise the full implications of Partition

and by the time he does, the violent mob had come to his doors. He had made the

mistake of placing “his faith in the life and values of the past” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 49).

Her father and mother were butchered to death and Bibi is the lone survivor and a

witness to the cruel carnage. Her brothers presumably are alive as they were not on the

scene of the carnage but her connection with them is permanently severed as she now

belongs to a different country and her exile and dislocation are complete. At the time of

her abduction she was dragged when “my head was not covered with a chunni”

(Hashmi, 2012, p. 49) by Gurpal. The ‘chunniless head’ is the symbol of violation of

the honour of a Muslim woman who is traditionally not supposed to expose her

uncovered face before strangers. Like many other women who were abducted, and

brought to the village of Sangraon Bibi is forcibly brought to Gurpal’s house and

presented to his mother as his wife and her bahu. He promises his mother that Bibi

would serve her like a slave. The cruelty of the situation is intensified by the fact that

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she was forced to become a bride without any ritual ceremony. She undergoes the

devastating experience of feeling profoundly violated.

Bibi is acutely conscious of not being the traditional bride. Marriages in North

India are lengthy affairs with events being spread over several days. However, there

were no rituals that reinforced the significance of marriage for Bibi. A particularly

popular custom for brides is the application of mehendi on her hands, a wish that was

never fulfilled for her. The word marriage rings hollow for her. Her status of wife has a

false ring to it because she never experienced the ceremony of rukhsati or bidai as is

the custom in various communities of North India. Rukhsati or bidai is the ceremony

after the wedding when the bride leaves her natal home and is taken to her husband’s

house. It is accompanied by traditional songs lamenting the daughter’s separation from

her parents and involves an emotional and tearful farewell. Such customs are

sanctioned by culture and their non-performance leaves a traditional wedding

incomplete. These rituals signify a girl’s transition from her natal home to her

husband’s home. The bride is also entitled a traditional welcome in her new home,

which includes the singing of wedding songs, music, dancing, new clothes and

jewellery. Apart from the celebration and gaiety that they entail, these ceremonies have

the supposed function of smoothening the bride’s integration into the new family. The

idea of becoming a wife without the actual ceremony being performed is unacceptable

to Bibi who mourns its absence.

The story takes off from the symbolic context of Dusshera and the related fair

linking the burning of the effigies with the violence of Partition and the abduction and

exile of Sita to Bibi’s. Gurpal, in Hashmi’s Exile, represents Ravana the archetypal

abductor. It is on a day of Dusshera that Gurpal is taking Bibi and the children to the

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fair. On her way to the fair, Bibi remembers her past of a happy family and how she

longs for a reunion with her brothers and is also tortured by the thought that the return

to the past was impossible, “The very fact of separation stands like a wall between

people who once loved each other. Once separated they are fated never to see each

other’s face again...they can never return to their past again” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 41).

There is an intense longing for the past which results in constant turning back to the old

days. Nostalgia no doubt reminds us of happier times but nostalgia is always triggered

by the sense of loss of something in the present. The present therefore has to be marked

by melancholy for nostalgia to set in. Bibi experiences nostalgia and melancholy of the

expelled. She feels intensely isolated and lonely. The passage of time has not dimmed

the memory of the past and it is a constant in her life. Bibi inhabits two worlds – one in

reality and the other in her imagination. Like all exiles, Bibi’s quest for a return to her

own country represents the quest for a home which she can only recreate in her

memory but which will forever be out of reach.

There are spaces and places of remembrance. The space before abduction was

her home consisting of her parents and her brothers. Embedded deeply in her psyche is

the image of family get-togethers; a childhood filled with innocent moments playing

with and decorating the doll’s house and looking at photographs. As Bachelard (1994)

puts it, “the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house

allows one to dream in peace” (p. 6). Looking at it from Bachelard’s perspective, Bibi’s

natal house is her “first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word” (1994, p.

4). That house was “Paradise itself. A real place of bliss” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 44) which

had lulled Bibi into imagining and dreaming it would always retain the characteristics

of her ‘doll’s house’, “We can all live here – Amma and Baba, Bhaiya and Bhabhi. All

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of us. Life is a happy song. We lack nothing. There is no need for anything more”

(Hashmi, 2012, p 44). She refers to that home as “city of magic” (Hashmi, p. 50) and

“city of dreams” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 50). Bibi carries this earlier daydream of her

picture-perfect home and relives it in her new home born out of the reality of her

abducted state. This idyllic picture of her earlier home is permanently etched in her

mind, never to be forgotten. Bachelard’s idea of home and its association with day

dreaming may be mentioned here for a better understanding of Bibi’s experience:

...the places in which we have experienced daydreaming reconstitute themselves

in a new daydream, and it is because our memories of former dwelling places

are relived as daydreams that these dwelling-places of the past remain in us for

all time. (1994, p. 6)

Bachelard further suggests:

Through dreams, the various dwelling places in our lives co-penetrate and retain

treasures of former days. And after we are in the new house, when memories of

other places we have lived in come back to us, we travel to the land of

Motionless Childhood...We live fixations, fixations of happiness. We comfort

ourselves by reliving memories of protection...memories of the outside world

will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these

memories, we add to our store of dreams... (1994, p. 6)

Bibi’s mind has accepted that the route to home no longer exists, but even when that

space, to borrow from Bachelard, “is forever expunged from the present, when,

henceforth, it is alien to all the promises of the future” (1994, p. 10) yet its power in the

present cannot be denied. The past home, to borrow from Bachelard once again, carried

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“experiences of heartwarming space” (1994, p. 10) which have remained so indelible

that they have the power to instil hope and expectations when she “recalls old dreams

and tales” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 52).

Bibi finds that she has embarked on a journey and covered a long distance. The

spaces between the past and present are unbridgeable and she “...can no longer walk

across to the other country” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 45). The boundaries that divide the two

nations also create irreversible borders between her and her relatives. For Bibi the lines

that divide her past and her present, i. e., ‘here’ and ‘there’ are starkly etched out lines

in her imagination without any blurring or fluidities of borders. A whole host of words

are chosen to reiterate many times this divide – ‘wall’, ‘obstacle’, ‘distances’,

‘paths....obliterated’, ‘lights....extinguished forever’, ‘wilderness’, ‘no fixed

destination’. The lavish use of spatial metaphors is the clue which conveys the

immobility that affects her present moment. After her abduction ‘home’ takes on new

meanings. Her mind rejects the notion of the new ‘home’ as home. Although she adjusts

over time, she can never really shake off the feeling of isolation. Sangraon is an alien

country; and the consciousness of being in exile, of being banished cannot be erased.

She sees her house in the new country as a “wilderness” (p. 42) and herself as a “lonely

tree” (Hashmi, p. 42) which reinforces the idea of barrenness. She perceives the

“distance” between her relatives and herself as “very great” because of her “despoiled”

state. Partition and her condition of abduction have produced different social spaces

which have forced her to re-determine human relationships.

Bibi undergoes multiple exiles – from her past, from her family and home, from

her culture and country. Said’s (2000) remarks in Reflections on Exile can be related to

Bibi’s experience, “Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to

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experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place,

between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted”.

Bibi’s condition of exile has to be understood as different from that experienced by

diasporic people in the twentieth century context. Largely, such people have the option

of reclaiming their original countries and the severing from the homeland need not

necessarily be permanent. Said (2000) likens exile to “death but without death’s

ultimate mercy”. As he sees it, exile “has torn millions of people from the nourishment

of tradition, family and geography” (Said, 2000). For Said (2000), it is a tall order to

expect writers and poets to capture the loss and mutilation suffered by the exiled in all

its exactitude because they elevate the condition of exile and “lend dignity to a

condition legislated to deny dignity”. They obscure in their writings “the compounded

misery of undocumented people suddenly lost, without a tellable history” (Said, 2000).

Hashmi, however, cannot be accused of this as she has recovered in creative literature

the experience of mutilation and loss suffered by Partition’s exiled and that which

otherwise has no historical documentation. Bibi has been wrenched from everything

she had previously been familiar with and finds herself to have been deposited among

strangers. In her journey from the familiar past to the alien present, she has seen

unimaginable horrors to her family and the memories of which she carries within. The

condition of exile for Bibi is not created merely out of the event of Partition but linked

to it is also the desire of the male to assert his identity and dominance over the ‘other’.

Her abduction and rape occur due to her being a woman and she is consigned to further

peripherality in Gurpal’s house. She encounters power imbalance in his household with

him, his mother and his grandmother turning masters and she denigrated to the position

of a slave. ‘Dumping’ Bibi before the women of his house, as if she were an inanimate

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object, Gurpal gives them the licence to do as they please with her, “She will be your

slave. Order her to grind corn, fetch water. As far as I am concerned, you can ask her to

do anything you wish. I have brought you a Bahu!” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 40).

The bahu is a North Indian cultural construct and she is traditionally assigned

women-centric domestic duties and chores which most of the time verges on unpaid

labour exploitation. Bibi will replace the maids who have to be paid and this would be a

sure shot method for cutting costs. Gurpal’s mother and grandmother are as much

complicit as Gurpal himself in reducing Bibi to her devalued status. The subsequent

value that she earns is because of her exemplary behaviour as dutiful daughter-in-law

and wife, ironically without legally being either. Carrying cow dung, milking the cows

or weaving are chores she adapts herself to and in the course of time Muslim Bibi earns

her mother-in-law’s approval and fits into the “Hindu construction of Grihalaksmi or

the goddess of the home” (p. 143) as Bannerji (2011) puts it in another context.

However, under the visible dutifulness of doing “everything quickly and efficiently”

(Hashmi, 2012, p. 46) is the invisible intention to lose oneself in work so as not to have

“time to think about my loneliness” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 46). Bannerji (2011) also

observes that, “In order to qualify as ‘good’, women have to foreswear their desire for a

self” (p. 160) and having to fit into the mythical mould of the ‘devi’ or goddess, Bibi’s

life becomes less oppressive and more bearable. But all the while as she engages in

normal activities in the present, her other side remains troubled by memories of the

past. These memories constantly disturb the present. Such memories can never bring

about a complete closure of the past suggesting that the event of Partition itself can

never be considered to have achieved completion. The rupture that Partition brought in

the life of Bibi is one, which continues forever. Bibi’s act of remembering is the

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writer’s attempt to include the perspective of women while trying to make sense of the

events of Partition.

Although Bibi continues to dream of a return to her past and to be united to her

original family, she is aware of the impossibility of its realisation. When she is asked by

her daughter Munni about her ‘Mama’ (maternal uncle), she finds herself at the

crossroads of the past and the present. It revives the memory of the past, which cannot

be completely erased. Like the division of the country, her soul is divided between her

two lives, the past and the present. There are moments when she hopes that her brothers

would come and take her home. However, she also realises that she has crossed the

border and “can no longer walk across to the other country. Besides, I have travelled far

with Gurpal and I no longer have the strength to go any further” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 45).

The story is a metaphor for journey on many levels. One is the spatial journey which

Bibi has to undertake when she is forced to move from one country to another after her

abduction. The second is the cultural shift, which occurs for she is forced also to move

from one community/religion to another. The other kind of journey she undertakes is

the temporal one where she moves backward and forward in time. The story stresses

upon the spatial and temporal movements. The old spaces – her parents’ home and her

‘country’ – have been left behind forever. However, memory will not erase the old

spaces. Bibi continuously talks about movement from one place to another without

reaching any sort of a destination. The conflict between the past and the present,

between the dream and the reality remains perpetual, “The heart is very stubborn. I

don’t know why it refuses to forget the past.” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 52) The Partition of the

country was done with a stroke of Radcliff’s pen, but the exiled has to suffer a

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perpetual division of the self between the past and the present. Memory does not

remain silent forever.

Forgetting is an integral part of memory. There is a relationship between

forgetting and forgiving – these provide answers to questions of how to live with

memories, which are disruptive and traumatic. To be able to move on with the business

of living Bibi must attempt to accept the new that is thrust upon her and acknowledge

the loss of the old that she still yearns for. Closer to the event Bibi remains in

mourning; it is only later that she is able to engage with it, come to terms with and

make peace with her own self. One strategy to affect such a peace is to realise that as a

woman marriage for her would anyway have entailed living with a complete stranger

because cultural practices would disallow any say in the selection of a husband. From

her point of view marriage would have been a journey into the unknown, similar to the

one she is forced to undertake now.

A woman like Bibi is sought to be subjected to two separate patriarchal

agendas. In the first one, men like Gurpal use the bodies of women of the ‘other’

community to proclaim their conquest, and in the other, the state assumes a patriarchal

role by choosing to decide the fate of such women. Butalia (1998) and Menon and

Bhasin (1998) have in their work discussed elaborately about the state project which

undertook the task of recovering and restoring women who were abducted during

Partition. This project was equally coercive in that it forced the restoration of countless

women regardless of the fact whether they wanted to be restored or not. According to

Manchanda (2006), “The patriarchal state infantilised the abducted and raped women,

denied them the possibility of representing themselves and in the process effectively

disenfranchised them” (p. 213). Ramone’s (2011) critique of the attempts by the state

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to ‘recover’ the victims of violence and abduction “long after they were practically

useful to those victims in many cases” (p. 67) is relevant here to comprehend Bibi’s

dilemma as an exile and her reconciliation to exile as home:

Women who had been abducted were intended to be ‘recovered’ from their new

homes and taken back to their original region and their family. The Abducted

Persons Recovery and Restoration Ordinance became a Bill and then an Act,

under which legal authority it created a working definition of an ‘abducted

person’, which took no account of free will either at the time of the assumed

abduction or at the time of ‘recovery’. In practice, although there may well have

been a number of women who were relieved to be recovered from positions of

servitude within their abductor’s household, there were a large number of

women who wanted to stay with their new families. From an outsider’s

perspective, it might be difficult to imagine that a woman would choose to stay

with a man who had once abducted and raped her and forced her into marriage,

as was the common scenario. (p. 67)

Pandey (2001) writes in a somewhat similar vein providing a reason for abducted

women’s refusal to be restored:

As it happened, many abducted women were hesitant about returning to their

original families and countries – for fear of ostracism; because they felt they

had been ‘soiled’; because they could not bear the thought of being uprooted yet

again and exposed (possibly) to new levels of poverty and uncertainty; or

simply because they were grateful to their new husbands and families for

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 having rescued them from (further) assault and afforded them some protection.

([p.167] parenthesis in original)

Even with the passage of time and the growth of new bonds, Bibi still has the

option of leaving with the people conducting the recovery operations and so leaving

behind Gurpal’s house and her children forever. Facing a similar quandary like other

abducted women, she has done her own calculations and has come to the conclusion

that “circumstances force us to find our own paths” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 46). Bibi’s

refusal to be restored is caused by her apprehension and doubt about the future in the

old country, which would be yet another exile, “Instead of going into exile for a second

time it seemed as if Sita has accepted Ravana’s home” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 52). Bibi

needs answers to some questions when the soldiers come to take back abducted women

like her, “Where had they come from? To which country? To whom?” (Hashmi, 2012,

p. 50). Will the ‘Restoration’ process of the state lead to a total restoration and

‘recovery’ of her past? She doubts the state’s ability to reassure her. Her abduction and

the subsequent late recovery attempts make Bibi reconstruct her ideas of her country

and her changed notions are in response to the different person she now is, “For the

first time in my life, my faith was shaken. The city of dreams, which I had built,

crumbled into dust and vanished” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 50). She has to make her choices

keeping this situation in mind.

Bibi’s decision to stay back and remain ‘unrecovered’ also stems from a

mother’s concern for her child. This decision is more significant in the light of the fact

that she reminds herself that she is “Munni’s mother” (p. 50) and “[Munni] now stands

as an obstacle between me and my relatives on the other side. The distance between

them and us is very great” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 45). She has two other children who are

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boys but her decision is never associated with them. It is only “Once Munni was born,

however, my dreams loosened their hold over me” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 50). Munni is a

girl and hence Bibi cannot abandon her and choose to go over to her own country. The

possibility of being abducted and raped comes particularly to the woman’s lot which is

the lesson life has taught her. This also takes us to the traditional role of women

engaged in childbearing and childcare which is one of the reasons which has always led

to lack of mobility for women. It reinforces the idea of woman as the nurturer who has

to give up her desire for freedom at the cost of motherhood. Her decision is guided by

pragmatism and she accepts the life with Gurpal and the children because “a journey

with companions is easy” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 47).

With the birth of Munni, the old bonds are loosened and their hold on her

becomes weaker. Bibi starts participating in the social life of her new home:

“occasionally my voice could even be heard in the songs of Sangraon” (Hashmi, 2012,

p. 50). She has become conscious of her new responsibility that “apart from being a

sister, I was also Munni’s mother” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 50). She is compelled to create for

herself a revised sense of community and responsibility. The new space that destiny has

carved out for her makes her grapple with new meanings of identity, home, and

changed landscapes, both physical and cultural. Now that she finds her “life had taken

roots in Sangraon, and the roots had spread wide and deep,” (Hashmi, p. 50) her dreams

of return to her past “crumbled into dust and vanished” (Hashmi, 2012, p. 50). As a

result, she refuses to go with the soldiers who had come to Sangraon as part of the

rescue party. According to Manchanda (2006) the state perceives a displaced woman

like Bibi “as being devoid of agency, unable and incapable of representing herself,

powerless and superfluous” (p. 206). She points out that “women in our patriarchal

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acculturated state system are largely seen as non-subjects” (2006, p. 206). Hashmi’s

Bibi thwarts this masculine state machinery by means of subterfuge. In order to subvert

the state’s plans, she remains undiscovered and invisible to the state. Discovery would

place her at the mercy of the unknown men and take away forever her right of

selection. Her decision can be seen as an attempt to find her feet and consciously

restore her life towards a footing which makes more sense than all the senselessness

that has been the cause for the uprooting in her life. For the sake of survival and her

daughter’s future, she negotiates a compromise and reconciles to the present. Kamra

(2015) suggests that “we have let nostalgia and lament become the end points of our

engagement with the 1947 partition” (p. 163). But Hashmi moves beyond the mere

representation of nostalgia and lament to foreground not only the trauma of an abducted

woman as victim but also the woman’s ability to rise above her victimhood and evolve

the most pragmatic strategies available to her for not only her own survival but those

dependent on her.

Hashmi’s linking of the ancient Hindu myth of Sita’s abduction to that of Bibi’s

is an attempt to prove that the issue of abduction transcends Partition. At the time of

Partition abduction of women took place across religions – Hindu, Sikh and Muslim

men were guilty in equal measure in taking on the role of Ravana to abduct the other

community’s Sita. We assume that Bibi, the abducted woman is a Muslim and Gurpal

her abductor is a Hindu or a Sikh, for Hashmi relates the story without denominating

them by their specific religions. That her abductor is constantly referred to as Ravana

and she is seen in terms of Sita facing a ‘second exile’ implies that the question of

abduction transcends both Partition and religion. It was an issue during the ancient

times; it happened on a large scale during Partition involving all three communities

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directly affected by Partition; and the apprehension that this situation could be repeated

in the future is inherent in Bibi’s decision to remain behind for the sake of her daughter.

Partition has set a journey in motion, which is endless. Bibi’s story provides a

vital glimpse into the complex layers that make up the life of Partition’s abducted

women. Bibi’s schizophrenic existence would preclude reconciliation, but she is finally

able to transcend her predicament and works out the necessary adjustments to effect a

sort of self-rehabilitation. Menon in No Woman’s Land observes that abducted women

who remained untraced often adopted survival strategies by effecting an “honourable

compromise” (2004, p. 7). According to her, “Women like them challenge the very

notion of fixed identities, of birth-bound allegiances to religion and community,

because their only unchanging identity is that of womanhood” (2004, p. 7). Alienated in

a world to which Bibi is transported by force, she embarks on a long voyage of

contemplation to comprehend the meaning of the life thrust upon her. Although trapped

in an oppressive environment, Bibi’s challenge is to adjust with reality without giving

in to emotional frailty.

To conclude, it has been found that Bibi’s abduction during Partition has

imposed boundaries which like the political borders cannot be transgressed. It has also

created a complete divide from home and family that Bibi must settle for. Exiled and

alienated, her strategies of survival are guided by pragmatic considerations both for

herself and her daughter. Tracing Bibi’s constant movement between the past and the

present it is seen that her inner consciousness, riddled with memory and trauma, cannot

retrieve the past.

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 III

Ismat Chughtai’s Roots

You were slaves till yesterday, so were we.

And then came the season of freedom bathed in showers of blood...
Between you and us rage rivers of fire
Tall frowning barriers of hate
With a mere glance, however, we can tear them down;
We can forget, forgive the cruel part;
And again embrace you, yes we can.
But first you will have to break your swords,
And cleanse these bloodied garments;
After that we shall be strangers no more.
-Ali Sardar Jafri

Writers like Chughtai had already started the process of documentation of

personal experiences almost immediately after Partition. Roots, written in 1952, is a

Partition story subscribing to a secular progressive perspective. It is the unique story of

a strong-willed old woman who is on the brink of dislocation during Partition but

whose individualistic notions of community and nation go counter to the dominant

statist definition. The section analyses how the old lady, i.e., Ammi’s words match her

deeds and giving credence to home and its memories she rejects the idea of nation

based on one’s religion. Interconnected issues such as memory, home and community

have been explored by Chughtai in the context of the uprooting and displacement that

took place in the wake of Partition. She draws attention to the changed attitudes of the

Hindus and Muslims towards each other indicating the resulting differences. The aim

has also been to examine the stress that is laid on replacing the antagonism with

solidarity and reaffirmation of old bonds. Known as firebrand writer, Ismat Chughtai

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(1915-1991) was closely associated with the Indian Progressive Writers Association

and her perspective on Partition is imbued with its philosophy.

Ismat Chughtai’s Roots relates the story of an exceptional aspect of humanity in

the context of Partition. Radcliff’s mechanical division of the country created a large-

scale migration on communal lines. The narrator of Roots has placed the story of his

Muslim family and their neighbour, a Hindu family in the context of the Partition and

the consequent migration. The story goes on to show how the deep bonds of humanity

could not be completely snapped even in the midst of the growing distrust and violence

between the communities in general.

Ammi’s Muslim family and Doctor Sahib’s, i.e., Roopchand’s, Hindu family

lived in a Hindu majority area of Mewar with houses facing each other. The

relationship of the two communities and their conduct and culture was such that it was

difficult to distinguish between an ordinary Hindu and an ordinary Muslim. The

question of Pakistan and Hindustan remained only a subject of political debate among

the members of the two families cutting across religious lines. Political affiliations did

not have any effect on the relationship between the two neighbouring families. The

political drama that was unfolding all around had no effect on “the love and friendship

between the two families” (Chughtai, 2012, p.12). The entire issue of the creation of

Pakistan was discussed as if it were a sport not to be taken up seriously. So far as the

women were concerned they remained indifferent to the entire proceedings: “Ammi

and Chachi would stay clear of politics” (Chughtai, 2012, p. 12).The day-to-day life of

the two families was deeply interconnected. Even after the narrator’s father’s death, the

Hindu Doctor Sahib “not only continued to love the family but also became aware of

his responsibilities towards it. No important decision was made in the house without

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consulting him” (Chughtai, 2012, pp.13-14). This idyllic world of neighbourly

friendship and human relations was gradually coming under the attack of the distrust

and the growing divide between the communities at large. A very ordinary incident

became the beginning of the growing distance. The tension caused by the communal

violence on the other side of the border slowly brought about the divide between the

two families. They were earlier more or less politically neutral. But, now the tricolour

was hoisted over Hindu Doctor Sahib’s house and the League’s flag over the Muslim

narrator’s house. When the news of the growing number of refugees from Rawalpindi

percolated to the region, “the distance between the two houses seemed to crawl with

venomous snakes” (Chughtai, 2012, p. 14).

All the members of Ammi’s family prepare to migrate to Pakistan but Ammi

refuses to move as she is rooted to the place. When they try to persuade her to go along

with them to the new country she asks:

What is this strange bird called our country? Tell me where is that country? This

is the land where you were born, which gave birth to you: this is the earth on

which you grew up; if this is not your country, how can some distant land where

you merely go and settle for a few days become your country? (Chughtai, 2012,

p. 16)

The departure of his neighbours leaves Roop Chand so conscience-stricken that he

suddenly goes to the station and brings the migrating family back to the house. The

return of the neighbours revives the old bond and a smile begins to play on Ammi’s

lips. Thus, the earlier jovial atmosphere of the past is restored.

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 In the midst of the universal madness that had gripped the two communities

during Partition there were also at least a few stories of neighbours risking themselves

and protecting the property and life of the persons belonging to the other community.

Roots attempts to restore sense and faith in human relationships in the midst of

Partition violence and mayhem. As a writer delving into the woman’s psyche in most of

her stories, Chughtai tells the story of an old woman who strongly resists the idea of

giving up her home. The old woman Ammi is portrayed not as a passive character or as

one who seeks protection. She exercises agency and choice and attempts to survive the

horrific events by electing to stay rooted to her home. Her obdurate will cannot be bent.

When her family decides to migrate, she swims against the tide and does not let

Partition’s blow consume her. Ammi is like those “large numbers of people (who) chose

fidelity to place rather than to religious community” (Menon and Bhasin, 1998, p. 230).

It is her powerful memories of her life in the family house that is one of the deciding

factors for her choice. Another is the deep sense of belonging to India which is also her

home.

Ammi does not leave home, and is signified as a wife and a mother, thereby

seemingly not challenging the bifurcation between home and the public space. Yet in

Ammi there is to be noted an alternative formulation of womanhood. She rises above

the maternal familial role and transgresses societal expectations. The state’s notion of

freedom is seen as an imposition by Ammi. She does not subscribe to the idea of

nationalism shaped by the forces of religious fundamentalism. The ‘us’ versus ‘them’

rhetoric of freedom is not for her. Her decision goes against the established notion of a

mother who is all sacrificing for her children. Her decision to not accompany her

children to Pakistan is at variance with the established trope of motherhood. Roots

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questions the concept of defining one’s identity as members of a particular religious

community rather than as citizens of a secular state. According to Menon and Bhasin

(1998), “For the vast majority, “country” was something they had always thought of as

the place where they were born and where they would like to die” (p. 229). They also

point out, “Partition made for a realignment of borders and of national and community

identities, but not necessarily of loyalties” (p. 230). The central players of

Independence and Partition proceeded with the decision of dividing the nation on the

basis of religion. Ammi questions this and destabilises their theory of Pakistan as an

ideal nation for Muslims and India for Hindus and other religions. Ammi’s act of

resistance, to borrow an expression form Behera (2006), is a “triumphant rejection of

borderlines imposed by both states” (p. 42). Agha (2012), commenting on the character

of women like Ammi in Chughtai, finds in them a duality as they are the “annapurna”

(p. 201) and at the same time “violently disturb the convention” (p. 201).

Ammi cannot begin life anew – a predicament faced by all those who were

forced to migrate whichever side of the border they were in. For her the space of the

home is not a passive container or a simple canvas against which the events of her life

unfold. It is in fact an active player suffused with meanings and the significance of

which has been undermined by the larger narratives of Partition. Writing about the

relationship of the house and memories, Bachelard (1994) remarks:

...thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the

house is a bit elaborate...our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly

delineated. All our lives we come back to them in our daydreams. (p. 8)

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Contained within the home for Ammi is the social space staging the enactment of

personal interactions at both the individual and group levels. The way she interprets her

house is defined by her relationship to it. Spaces and things are cherished. The house is

not a mere structure for her. To borrow a term from Bachelard (1994) it is “eulogised

space” (p. xxxv). For Ammi, the space of the home is associated with her entry into the

house as a newly wedded bride – an experience which in the traditional Indian context

is the most important phase of a woman’s life. The home contains in it the memories of

her life as a wife and a mother. She moves from room to room – rediscovering and

reliving all the past moments – her whole being revolting at the idea of leaving the

treasure-house of memories forever. To use an expression from Bachelard, Ammi finds

herself “on the threshold of a day-dream” (1994, p. 13). Day-dreams help her retrieve

memories of the house and she not only recaptures still images but also moving images

whose energy makes them come alive to rise up to meet her. Some images are captured

with photographic precision, “she saw the room in which her husband had first

embraced her; where the veil had been lifted for the first time from the face of an

innocent and trembling bride...” (Chughtai, 2012, p. 17) and recalls the day her husband

died, “It was in front of that door that his body had been lowered into that coffin”

(Chughtai, 2012, p. 17). She reconstructs her past through her memories embedded in

each of the rooms of the house. Every room tells the story of the different roles she has

fulfilled in life – that of the newlywed bride, wife and mother. The very corners of the

room have emotional significance for all her ten children were born in the room and

their umbilical cords buried in the corner. It is as if the room had become a part of her

own self and severing herself from it was unthinkable. They are not mere rooms but

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intimate spaces attached to her identity. To borrow from Bachelard (1994) again this is

“localization of our memories” (p. 8) in “the spaces of our intimacy” (p. 9).

Home for Ammi has also produced the cultural space where she and her family

interact with the Hindu neighbours. It is therefore the lived space where the everyday

life of the members is tangibly played out. The precincts of the house and the home

have thus played a decisive role in shaping her identity as a wife and mother and also as

a member of the larger community. J. Singh (2014) has pertinently observed on how

strong the bond is between home and women:

The Partition meant mass migrations but the women reacted from the depths of

their being at the idea of leaving home. Many literary narratives bring out this

anguish. The women, in the patriarchal system of India, were always confined

to domesticity and it perhaps symbolised their world of living and the outer

world was prohibited for them. That was why women reacted sharply to the idea

of leaving home. In the normative structure of society, a woman is complexly

identified with the home and woman fixes her identity securely within the

framework of her family confined to the four walls of house. (p. 198)

The family’s interactions with neighbours have taken place within the domestic space

of the house. The intimate spaces within the home have had a powerful influence

leading to emotional attachment through memories and a sense of familiarity. Raju

(2011) suggests, “So overwhelming can be the power of place that it may effectively

cut across other axes of differentiation...” (p. 33). The space of the home provides the

sense of safety – this safety is threatened if dislocated from home. It is traditionally

living away from home that entails living away from guardians, but in Ammi’s case,

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this is reversed. It is by living in her home that she loses her guardians who in her old

age are her family who elect to migrate to Pakistan. She stretches the traditional gender

boundaries by refusing to choose her children over her roots and her nation. During

times of conflict, the ties which bind people together are shared cultural and religious

identities. Thus, Ammi’s own identification should have been with her own ‘imagined

community’ of people in Pakistan and her family. But subverting such notions of

nationalism, she refuses to acknowledge such clear-cut distinctions which polarise

groups. Her electing to stay in India while her family migrates pushes her towards an

old age vulnerable to loneliness. However, she is undeterred in putting her dignity and

self-determination centre stage even in harsh and challenging times. Her valorisation of

the home over the new Muslim nation of Pakistan is a result of the identity as a woman

she has constructed and derived from the former.

Ammi’s decision asserts that religion can survive without compromising on its

original tenets – not in isolation from other cultural, intellectual and religious currents,

but in close interaction with them. This interaction which has been an ongoing process

between the two families is sought to be reversed, an idea that Ammi abhors. There was

an unquestioning acceptance of intermingling of lives till the communal riots broke out.

Through Ammi, Chughtai advocates building relationships within a secularised idiom.

Ammi is all for reviving cross-community linkages and age-old ties which may have

been fractured by Partition. Ammi blames her sons and other members of her family for

giving in to the state’s agenda which has at the hands of the cartographers created rifts

between people of the same home and members of the community. She attacks them for

so easily changing their concept of belonging and citizenship. Their decision to migrate

and the withdrawal of emotional support by those whom she had previously loved

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throw into total disarray the concept of home and community which she had hitherto

envisioned. The story draws attention to the changed attitudes of both communities and

the split it resulted in. But it also articulates as to how solidarities across these

differences are made possible. The doctor persuades and brings her family members

back home at considerable risk to his own life. This achievement translates into a

victory of sorts.

The film Garam Hawa, based on an unpublished story by Chughtai and directed

by M.S. Sathyu, continues, as in Roots, to engage with the consequences of Partition.

Even in the picturisation of her story, Chughtai’s basic concerns with issues relating to

Partition remain fore-grounded. When Salim’s brother Halim chooses to migrate to

Pakistan, their ancestral house is declared an evacuee property as it was in Halim’s

name. As the house is handed over to a Sindhi Hindu refugee from Pakistan, Ajmani

Sahib, Salim’s family is exiled from their home. This pathetic situation becomes the

occasion for the representation of Salim’s mother’s rootedness to her ancestral home.

The grandmother, Dadda, in spite of her refusal to move, has to be physically lifted and

taken to a rented house. However, despite this uprooting she cannot die in this alien

home. Therefore, she is brought back to her ‘real home’ the haveli, where she dies in

peace. Like Ammi of Roots, Dadda too finds the idea of leaving the house

unacceptable. When the family discusses the notice from the Custodian to vacate the

house Dadda says, “Show me. Who can make me leave my house?” Bachelard’s (1994)

opinion that “Memories are motionless, and the more securely they are fixed in space,

the sounder they are” (p. 9) proves apt in both Ammi’s and Dadda’s case.

The ending of Roots is in keeping with Chughtai’s liberal humanist ideals,

which had deep faith in notions of interpersonal relationships between communities. It

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is a story of repair and restoration amidst an atmosphere of betrayal and terror. In her

survey of Partition literature by writers from the subcontinent in ‘Communal Violence

and Literature’ Chughtai’s philosophy becomes equally apparent. Not agreeing with the

one-sided and biased representation of either community in the works of writers like M.

Aslam and Ramanand Sagar, she attacks them for being “reactionary” (Chughtai, 2004,

p. 48). She criticises them for engaging in a blame game and producing a literature

which did nothing to assuage the pain of Partition. She feels this literature was

ineffective. She was firmly convinced that literature had the responsibility to create and

rediscover hope and optimism and that “to create great literature one needs a sensitive

heart” (Chughtai, 2004, p. 54). Ahmed’s (2009) observation on the Progressive Writers’

Association, of which Ismat Chughtai was an active member, is worth mentioning here:

The progressives did not write to produce mere fiction. Their imaginative

literature provided social commentary on events that were shaping the

subcontinent over an extremely turbulent period. They did not just reflect such

events as they unfolded; instead they chose to raise social concerns and

questioned established ideas. The PWA set out to use literature and the arts to

reshape society as well as give expression to people’s lives. (pp. 4-5)

Though Chughtai was a Muslim, she decided to live in India in spite of quite a

few of members of her family migrating to Pakistan. In her writings she has conceived

of a secular India while at the same time acknowledging the tensions between religions

which according to McNamara (2010), “secular nationalism tended to side step by the

celebration of unity in diversity” (p. 97). Bharat (2012) translates from Chughtai’s

autobiography which records that as a child, the writer was a witness to the closeness

shared by Hindus and Muslims but also “realised that there was something inherently

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different between a Hindu and a Muslim” and she was “conscious that the verbal

avowals of brotherhood went hand in hand with a certain constraint” (p.23). Ammi

refuses to acknowledge the Indian-Muslim binary that led to the creation of Pakistan.

For her, as for Chughai, Indian nationalism is fluid enough to allow for differences,

even the Muslim one. Bharat (2012) translates Chughtai’s beliefs thus:

Religion and the culture of a nation are two different things. Here I have an

equal share just as I have in its soil, its sunlight, its water. If I play with colour

during Holi and light lamps during Diwali, does my religious belief take a

beating? Is my belief and conscience so weak, so incomplete that it can be

reduced to pieces? (p. 32)

M. Asaduddin (2009) states that stories like Roots “show the existential absurdity of the

hatred that erupts between Hindus and Muslims. They also demonstrate the power of

stereotypes in perpetuating cultural prejudices and explode the myth of cultural

incompatibility between the communities” (p. xxiii).What emerges here is Chughtai’s

belief that individuals have the option to select their religious and cultural identities

within the private spaces of their lives. Ammi makes her choice by freeing herself from

communal constraints.

The above analysis reveals the protagonist Ammi to be similar to some other

women characters that have been examined in this study. In her pluralistic concerns,

she echoes Laila and Pooro. Like them, Ammi emphasises human relationships over

individual concerns of class or religion. It has also served to underscore the

significance of ‘home’ for the ordinary persons threatened with dislocation during

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Partition, a concern that has been completely missed out by the official versions of

Partition history.

This study had set out to establish whether the women’s Partition experience

was linked to their everyday experiences as women. The women protagonists in the

three selected stories have been examined in their relation to family, home and

community in their life-course and also their experiences of Partition. What emerges is

that the latter experience cannot be delinked and seen in isolation to their perception as

wife, mother or daughter. The issue of abduction with its resultant trauma in the case of

Pooro and Bibi, and the threat of being uprooted in the case of Ammi, have been seen

and understood in terms of their position as women within the family and community.

As delineated in the chapter, their involvement in the Partition experience has been

shaped by patriarchal structures, be it of family or of state.

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