Article Text

Studies in Indian Place Names
(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
Vol-40-Issue-56-March -2020
P a g e | 2072 Copyright ⓒ 2020 Authors
Ascertaining Partition as Historical Truth in Indian English Literature: an Exploration
Dr. Shakila Bhanu Sk, Associate Professor of English, VFSTR (deemed to be) University,
Vadlamudi.
Abstract
Accepting the fact that literature reflects contemporary society, this paper examines
the corroboration of historical aspects as memes in Indian English Literature. Overview of
Indian Writing in English discovers the expanding journey of IWE from the late eighteenth
century to the date. In this journey, IWE permeated with many historical incidents in it and
among all, the partition is the one that claimed greater attention of all varieties of genres.
Keywords: IWE, history in literature, partition of subcontinent
***
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are
universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong. - F. Scott
Fitzgerald
Introduction
It is true that literature reflects contemporary society; fiction imitates reality; reality
replicates fiction. Literature, mainly fiction conveys the meaning and purpose of events
happened in its depiction. In the literature, the reader finds characters living in the
contemporary social, cultural and political conditions that were created by fiction makers. As
quoted above by F. Scott Fitzgerald, by studying literature one could find their experiences,
dreams, hopes and despairs are not different from others.
British colonial rule in India paved the path for introducing the English language. The
English language is immediately accepted and supported by many authors and poets who
wanted to reach many readers. In the inception, writers like Kashiprosad Ghose, Maikel
Modhushudan Datto, Romesh Chunder Dutt etc., infused Indian classics in their works. Later
on, Indian Writing in English discerned with matured and contemporary themes in works.

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
History into Literature
The relation between literature and history should be reconsidered, as literature
always reflects the history of contemporary society. There is no fixed and predetermined
'history' which can be treated as the 'background' against which literature can be fortified. The
whole history is a subject matter to produced literary work. 'History' is nothing but a matter of
telling a story about the past, using other texts as our inter texts. Now, we should accept the
great literary works as reflections of outer world in which one is living than the privileged
'inner' world of 'great authors. Thus history made its way into literary works and became
great subject matter of fiction writers.
Ashis Nandy discussed the difference between history and ahistory in his article. He
argued that history is the experiences of people who're living in the particular history and
ahistory is the experiences of people those who're living outside that history. Telling all
fables of any land or morality tales is the course of moralizing its beholder. These
moralizations involve in the refusal of individual remembrance, for this, it is often important
not remembering the past, objectively, clearly, or entirely.
Ashis and Nandy also added that historical consciousness rejects principles and
formulations in contrast with historical sensitivity. Human beings cannot remember
everything and unnecessary memories are reasonably forgotten both by individuals and
societies. Forgetting will help the people to live in the world peacefully. Sometimes it has
been observed human adopt forgetfulness in order to discord non-essential memories.(46)
History as an Aspect in Literature
Literature is a representation of human feeling and emotions, joys and suffering.
Literature is a human universal, never been depended and limited by language; and good
literature is never outdated and never confined by physical boundaries. It attracts readers
across the world with its fundamental features like history, sociology, psychology etc.

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
History is a unique feature depicted in all literary composing. Since Waverley (1814) by
Scott, many authors like Jozef, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Leo Tolstoy produced a lot of literature
on history. Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace became very popular in this genre. And it was very
natural that novel, an evolving genre instantly espoused the historical aspects in it.
In Contemporary Indian Writing in English: Critical Perceptions, N. D. R. Chandra said that
many historical writers, in general, collect some facts and incorporate them in their
imaginative reconstructions. But, a good historical novelist researches and studies thoroughly
and vigorously endeavors so that the imaginative works appear a reality. The main aim of a
historical novel is to show the human character and their lives of a bygone age. He also added
that such novels are truer than history because it recreates the spirit of the time. Historical
novel constitute numerous characters in it and the golden rule of good historical novelist is to
give subordinate role to real historical figure and events and to allot main place to imaginary
character and created situations. (103).
Many scholars established history as a subject matter of many prominent novelists. In
Transcultural Memory and Globalised Modernity in Contemporary Indo-English, Nadia Butt
argued that in the subcontinent before partition, many prominent novelists like Rasipuram
Krishnaswami Iyer Narayanaswami, Raja Rao or Ahmed Ali treated historical memory in
their narratives apart from the cultural disparities of Indians. She also added that Meenakshi
Mukherjee, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and Vinel Kirpal noticed the evolution of Indian
English novel different.
Meenakshi Mukherjee's classification of the Indian novel in English gives us an
overview of historical developments in the genre of the novel in English on the Indian
subcontinent. (.....) the phases of the historical novel (1920-1930s), the socio-political novel
(1930-1940s) and novel of self-identity including the 'psychological novel' (1950s and 160s)
(Mukherjee 1971,21). (4)
Nadia Butt holds it truly in her work above that the development of the Indian English
novel stated by Mukherjee was noticed by many scholars and critics in their works. Indian
English novel from the 1920s has passed through different which are parallel to the historical
novel, socio-political novel and novel of self- identity.

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
Reflections of History in Indian Writing in English
Being young among all kinds of the literature of world Indian Writing in English
demands a wide range of reading. Many authors from different regions of India contributed
profoundly to IWE, still, all shared a common thread of Indianism. There were many
movements and 'isms' found room in Indian Writing in English. All variety of regional
literature directly or indirectly got affected by colonial rule, freedom-fighting followed by
Partition and postcolonial state of affairs.
In the early twentieth century, Indian Writing in English especially novel had been
influenced and charged by Gandhian ideology, Colonialism and Nationalism. After the
conclusion of colonial rule, tragic partition provided the novelists with new themes and
created novel contexts to portray their creative work. Many novelists made the plight and
suffering of parted people as their plot and produced an enormous quantity of literature.
Many authors devised the mimesis of partition in their writings and created a form of
literature namely Partition Literature. In Indian English and the Fiction of National
Literature Rosemary Marangoly George aptly holds it as "The literary details of individual
works in this category of "partition fiction" make it a transnational genre which undercuts
fiercely policed political boundaries between India and Pakistan (174)". She also added that
the vast amount of literature on the theme of South Asian Partition has been studied within
the framework of national building and archetypal national literature that mirrored the birth
pains of the nation(s). It is reflected that in the creation of every new nation the chaos and
disorderliness would crop up but the holocaust happened at the time of two partitions of India
was worth remembering.
In the introduction of Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India,
Urvashi Butalia mirrored the real veneer of partition. In this book she said, the generality of
Partition exits publicly in history books. The particular is harder to discover; it exists
privately in the stories told and retold inside so many households in India and Pakistan.
The tragic reality of Partition was that it suddenly put end to centuries of communal
harmony that had been build in the course of a long time. The relation between Hindu and

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
Muslims were though not completely harmonious but they accepted the co-existence as a way
of life. No doubt, for many times conflicts and clashes shot out were violent and even led to
murder or massacre at both side but get to normalcy in a short time. Despite one rejecting the
other group's habits and practices, one followed many practices and rituals; for instance the
Hindu paying homage to Dargahs; the Muslim participating in Hindu festivals. If there had
indeed been a history of irreversible hatred between two communities, certainly it would have
been brought into literary representations and certainly taken into some folk tales or songs.
But such few were observed in the course of history till partition impacted wildly and
severely the communal and cultural balance. Unprecedented, barbaric, brutal and unpredicted
violence unleashed after partition was provoked by darkish actions of a few, followed by the
payback practice of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs broken down on one another.
Partition Literature in Indian Writing in English
History of the sub-continent is incomplete without mentioning Partition. It gave a
great jolt and permanently transformed the political and social dimensions of the Indian sub-
continent. Apart from the literature produced about partition theme in vernacular languages,
Indian Writing in English has a great corpus of literature written about it. Many Indian
novelists represented the plight of people across the borders during and after partition these
all depictions manifested as Partition Literature. The novels written on the theme of Partition
are partition novels.
In Indian Writing in English, which had taken birth in the colonial period, discussion
of politics was inevitable and conspicuous. Early stages of Indian Writing in English had
been celebrated with almost all genres of literature like poetry, drama, monologue etc., but
the new genre, novel grown along with the sense and development of nationalism. Hence,
many writers took the new tool to present their hopes and ideas before the world. It was the
time in India, everything was gelled with the feeling of attaining freedom; so many novelists
constructed their plots around nationalism and freedom movement. In India, historical novel
progressed along with the event happened from national movement to the Partition and
assassination of Gandhi and then to wars with Pakistan and China and later Emergency. Then

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
after, Partition, the holocaust followed after the independence, had caught the attention of
many fiction makers.
The ugly face of partition invoked many authors to put their emotions in writings,
moreover some of the authors directly connected to and suffered from the partition. Many
novels have been written in the Indian sub-continent have been written on the theme of the
Partition of India. This unforgettable historical moment has been captured as horrifying by
the novelists like Khushwant Singh in Train to Pakistan (1956), A Bend in the Ganges (1964)
by Manohar Malgaonkar, Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), Rajan's The
Dark Dancer, Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man, Chaman Nahal's Azadi and Bhisham Sahni's
Tamas. In the article, "The Partition Literature and Popati Hiranandani's Writing on
Partition", Kousik Adhikari said that, "We can also broadly classify the partition literature
into basically two categories. The one which deals with the scenes of carnage, violence,
tremor, (. . .) and the other that tries to catch the fleeting moments of humanity, the humanity
at large and what effects the partition has unto them." According to him, Partition literature
could be classified into two categories one the experiences of both communities, and other
transitory moments of humanity where both communities slaughtered each other.
Partition literature in Indian writing in English, a new form of the genre, (which had
emerged after partition) can be studied in light of literary theory New Historicism. Partition,
being a conspicuous fact and unacceptable reality and truth, made its way into literature with
many perspectives and vistas. A novelist always looks at history for his subject matter for
better discovery of human attitude and philosophy. However, the novelist's depiction would
get limited, when it related to his circumstances. But, a good novelist observes the ideas and
patterns and confines them to his art of work. The holocaust of the partition has been a
recurring theme in the writing of many other post-colonial authors in Indian writing in
English. Rakhshanda Jalil in her article entitled "What is 'Partition Literature?" in The Friday
Times, the first independent weekly paper in Pakistan opined about Partition as:
While there is a general agreement that the murder and mayhem that accompanied the
partition was a human tragedy of epic proportions, there is far more ambivalence in the ways
of dealing or accepting the consequences of partition. While the majority of writers made a

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
conscious effort to hold up the tattered fabric of secularism in the face of communalism,
bitter and painful memories also find expression, especially in a range of first-person
accounts, diaries, etc. It seems difficult to discern a commonality of concerns, or any
coherence and unity of thought, save the obvious assertion that countless innocent lives were
lost due to the political decisions of a mere handful". (10)
Rakhshanda Jalil said that many writers consciously wrote about the disarray and
catastrophe followed the partition in which countless lives were lost. She also added, in the
literature, many writers represented the spoiled secularism in the cruel face of communalism.
Jala felt that it is difficult to distinguish the thoughts and emotions of people and at the same
time to draw the common thought about this unavoidable holocaust. Such notions about
literary text could be justified through the study of it in the light of New Historicism.
The entire fiction produced in Eastern India whether in English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi,
Bengali, has a flare of political and historical discourse in it. Till today, the legacy of
Independence and Partition has its great impact on almost all artistic forms of representation.
Ayesha Jalal and Sugata Bose acceptably argued in their most celebrated work, Modern south
Asia History, Culture, Political Economy, that "The colossal human tragedy of the partition
and its continuing aftermath has been better conveyed by sensitive creative writers and artists
for example in Saadat Hasan Manto's short stories and Ritwik Ghatak's films than by
historians"(198).
A lot of literature in India concentrated on the national movement and how India
restored its freedom and position as a democratic country, but a few literary works portrayed
the other side of Independence. Nearly, three fourth of Indian population was unaware of the
happening of Partition because of lack of means of communication in those days. Suvir Kaul
aptly viewed in The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India that a great
deal of study done on the great political profiles of those days like Nehru, Jinnah,
Mountbatten and Radcliff but none noticed the plight of a common man. The author holds in
this context as:
The wealth of writing on the political aspects of Partition, however, hides other
aspects of its history on which historians and others have long remained silent. There are the

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
experiences of people women, children, men, people differentiated by caste and class, by
religion-who lived through the time. . . . Rather, it is, to my mind, a silence because Partition
represents for historians as well as other, a trauma of such deep dimensions, that it has needed
nearly a half-century for Indians to acquire some distance, and being the process of coming to
terms with it. (209)
Suvir Kaul felt that many historians were remained silent on real events happened
during partition. There were bitter experiences of women, children, men and people and
everyone's experience is different from others. And it would take a lot of time to restore their
lives to normalcy, and for some, it would have taken their life-time. It is also added that till
now, a little was known to the world about partition because people who lived through it
restarted their lives and deliberately maintained silence. The author called this silence as
'underside' which holds hidden histories of people who lived through the tragedy of partition.
Freedom from British reign accompanied with partition, changed the face of India physically
and emotionally giving her never-ending issues till the date. Partition of India is considered
as one of the ten greatest tragedies in human history. At the time of its (partition)
materialization, even the two countries (India and Pakistan) did not have their clear
boundaries that caused great chaos and turmoil resulting into revulsion and hatred in the
minds of divided communities. It became more a deciding factor of India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh's destiny than a historical reality and gathered the attention of many
contemporary authors.
Many skilful authors in their writing ascertain both the categories stated above. Many
short stories like Toba Tek Singh (1955) by Saadat Hassan Manto, Urdu, poems such as
Subh-e-Azadi (Freedom's Dawn, 1947) by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Bhisham Sahni's Tamas (1974)
are prominently looked in. And equally noteworthy are Manohar Malgonkar's A Bend in the
Ganges (1965), and Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candyman (1988), and Salman Rushdie's Midnight
Children (1980) which crafted on the children born with magical powers at midnight of 14th
August 1947. History, however elusive it may be creative writers try their crafy hands on it
and produce their magnificent works.
Conclusion

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
History comprises social, cultural and political situations in given time zone. The
focus of this study is mainly, how the social, political and cultural impressions were depicted
in literature. Many authors took Partition theme for their writings and history made its way
into Indian Writing in English. Many scholars studied partition literature produced by many
eminent writers.
References:
Adhikari, Kousik. The Partition Literature and Popati Hiranandani’s Writing on Partition.
Literary Yard, Nov 29,2013.
Bhatt, Nadia. Transcultural Memory and Globalised Modernity in Contemporary Indo-
English Novels. Berlin:Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2015. Print.
Butalia, Urvashi, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, penguin
India,
2017.
George, Rosemary Marangoly. Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature,
Cambridge University Press, 2013. Print.
Kaul, Suvir, ed. The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India. Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2001. Print.
Mukherjee, Meenakshi, ed. Early Novels in India. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2002.
Print.
---. The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English. Oxford University Press,
2002. Print.
Nandy, Ashis. “History's Forgotten Doubles.” History and Theory, vol. 34, No.2 Theme
Issue 34: World Historians and Their Critics. (May,1995): 44-66.

(UGC Care Journal)
ISSN: 2394-3114
N.D.R. Chandra. Modern Indian Writing in English: Critical Perceptions.Vol.2, New Delhi:
Sarup and Sons, 2004. Print.
Zaidi, Nishat. “Qurratulain Hyder as an Icon of Urdu Fiction” Rev. of Qurratulain Hyder
and The River of Fire: The Meaning, Scope and Significance of her Legacy,
Rakhshanda Jalil. Indian Literature, Vol. 55, No. 3 (263). (2011): 270-272.

Article Text

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Article Text

Similar to Article Text (20)

More from Tina Gabel

More from Tina Gabel (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Article Text