2. BURDEN OF HISTORY AND THE WAY TO
GET RELIEVED:
I can only write about it [the past]… by bringing it in some
relation to my present-day thoughts and activities,
and then this writing of history, as Goethe once said,
brings some relief from the weight and burden of the past
The Discovery of India, Jawaharlal Nehru
The past is never dead. It's not even past.
William Faulkner
Requiem for a Nun
Act 1, sc. 3

3. A COMPLETE AND GRAPHIC PICTURE OF THE
THEN RARH REGION:
• The way of common lives was delineated like a
historian
• Their way of talking and their language especially
the language of the Muslims of the then Rarh
region( Bardhawan, West Bengal)

4. THE OUTBREAK OF SECOND WORLD WAR AND ITS
EFFECT ON THE THEN SUBCONTINET PORTRAYED IN
THE NOVEL:
• Common life came to a standstill due to the scarcity of
foods, clothes and many other daily commodities
• “the grand daughter of Sairatun Bibi- still unmarried
but marriageable – is sitting naked at home”
• The very basic fabric of the then society fell apart

5. POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS GROWN JUST AFTER THE
SECOND WORLD WAR
• “ Remember that this world is not an unclaimed property. It
has its master and slave. The British, for example, are masters
and we are the slaves in this country.”
• Communal ideas began to flourish in the politics through the vested quarter of politicians.
• All the stalwarts of the then political firmament such as Shyama- Huq, Zinnah,
Nehru, Suhrawardy, Gandhi, Patel- became known to the uneducated and
half-educated, let alone the educated class.

6. The unnamed lady narrator of the novel : the
symbol of conscience
• The narrator of the novel is utterly doubtful about the movement of
separate Muslim country
• “Ladke-lange? Where will be that Pakistan?”…….a
question asked by the narrator
• “this Zinnah…..who did not go to jail for a
single day, did not starve for a single day like
Gandhi. His clothing was also like that of Sahib.
Now he has become the leader of the Muslims.
Now he wears sherwani and cap of his own
style.” → the narrator’s observation about the leader of the separate
Muslim state

7. The outbreak of Communal Riot:
An infectious and lethal disease
• Peace of communal co-existence destroyed
• Air is filled with fear and suspicion
• Drains of Calcutta were full of BLOOD. This drain became the symbol of their
lost unity
• “where the sun and moon arise silently
and set silently, where paddy, wheat grow
silently, where fruits and figs ripe silently
and fall silently, where our children are
born silently, grow and die silently.” (193)

8. NO ONE LEFT:NOW I AM ALL ALONE: THE LAST CHAPTER OF THE NOVEL
• Decision of leaving the birthplace taken by other family
members
• The lady’s determination not to leave vexes other family
members
• She just rigid to her decision
• “Same country, same type of people,
same type of language. Only religion is
different and this is the very reason for
which a place has become a different
state. How is it possible? Single and
undivided soil, a mango tree and a palm
tree at this side and at the same time a
mango tree and a palm tree at the other
side. Have they become the property of
two different states?”(222)

9. Partition and Partition Literature
• Partition: the single most traumatic event of the 20th century for the people
of this sub-continent and a total collapse of the Indian Civilization as a
whole.
• The anguish of that trauma rekindles the writers still now like before.
• In short story-----Saadat Hassan Manto , K.S Duggal
etc.
• In novel----------- Khushwant Singh, Amitav Ghosh, Salman
Rushdie, K.A Abbas
Qurratulain Hyder and Hasan Azizul Huq is the latest member in
this hall of fame.
* In poetry----- Nazrul and Faiz are noteworthy.

10. Manto’s Bishan Singh of Toba Tek Singh and
our Narrator of Agunpakhi
"There, behind barbed wire, was Hindustan. Here, behind
the same kind of barbed wire, was Pakistan. In between, on
that, lay Toba Tek Singh.“…….. The ending of the satirical short story.
*though a lunatic, he is completely unwilling to leave his motherland

11. Uncle of Tha’mma in Shadow Lines and our
Narrator of Agunpakhi
• Amitav Ghosh’s Shadow Lines : a masterpiece of partition literature
• Here we see that Tha’mma’s uncle living in Dhaka after the partition rejects the proposal of his
niece to leave the country for safety
• Rather he says: Once you start moving you never stop. That’s what I
told my sons when they took the trains. I said: I don’t believe in
this India-Shindhia. It’s all very well, you are going away now,
but suppose when you get there they decide to draw another
line somewhere? What will you do then? Where will you move
to? No one will ever have you anywhere. As for me, I was born
here and I’ll die here. (215)

12. The decision of staying back alone : A strong
female character in Bangla literature
as well as in total Partition Literature
• She sticks to her decision not to leave her motherland with a false dream or as a forced migrant
• All of the family members leave her behind
• She murmurs with tearful eyes: “ I will rise again staring at the sun’s rays”.
• She doesn’t leave her root and she has had to pay a high price for that.

13. The Narrator: the mouthpiece of Hasan Azizul Huq
• Hasan himself is a forced migrant.
• He knows the anguish very well as he had to leave his root in 1955.
• In an interview with Ahmed Mostofa Kamal Hasan says:
“What a matter of deep anguish it is to
be cut off from the root”
( শেকড় শেকক বিবিন্ন হকে আসা শে কী ককের!)
• The severe anguish is the firsthand experience of Hasan and
this anguish is the ever flowing springof Agunpakhi.