This document provides context and summaries about Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Cracking India and Deepa Mehta's film adaptation Earth. It discusses the characters and plot of Earth, focusing on the abduction of Ayah. It analyzes themes in the novel like the child narrator, fallen women, masculinity, and the metaphor of India cracking. It also discusses the film adaptation and historical context of violence against women during the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan, including government estimates of abductions.

1. Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India
1947 Partition
Deepa Mehta’s earth (1998)
Characters
Aamir Khan - Dil Navaz, the Ice Candy Man
Nandita Das - Shanta, the Ayah
Rahul Khanna - Hassan, the Masseur
Maia Sethna - Lenny Sethna
Shabana Azmi - older Lenny, narrator
Kitu Gidwani - Bunty Sethna
Arif Zakaria - Rustom Sethna
Kulbhushan Kharbanda - Imam Din
Kumar Rajendra - Refugee Police
Pavan Malhotra - Butcher
IN Deepa Mehta’s words
I wanted desperately to make CRACKING INDIA into a film, a
particular film, EARTH, which would be the second in my
trilogy of the elements of Fire, Earth and Water.
Tracing Bapsi was no easy task but persevere we did and soon I
was talking to Bapsi on the phone, hoping that the film rights to
her book were still available. Two months later, thanks to David
Hamilton's unwavering belief in the project, we owned the
rights, had development funds, and I was sitting at my kitchen
table, writing the screenplay of EARTH.

2. David and Anne Masson and I had worked together on FIRE and
we re-assembled the team to begin the detailed planning of the
production.
During this phase Bapsi became a friend and was exceedingly
generous with information and old photographs. She would talk
with me for hours about what it was like growing up in Lahore
during those times. Lenny, after all, was based on Bapsi. In
fact, Lenny was Bapsi.
The irony of our situation hasn't escaped Bapsi or myself. Bapsi
is from Pakistan and now a US citizen. I'm from India and now
living in Canada. If neither of us had moved from our respective
homelands, the film just wouldn't have been possible. Pakistan
and India, since the Partition of 1947, are sworn enemies. Not
only have they fought three major wars against each other, but
also, as I write this, both countries talk blithely about their
nuclear capabilities and continue their militant aggression
against each other across the still- disputed Kashmir border.
Fallen Women in the novel and film
Abducted women like Ayah and Hamdia, Lenny’s new nanny are
viewed with suspicion from Lenny.
Page 226
“It isn’t a jail, Lenny baby…it’s a camp for fallen women.”
“What are fallen women?”
“Hai! The questions you ask! Your mother won’t like such
talk…Now keep quiet”
“Are you a fallen woman?”
Fallen women – Abducted and raped women
In the aftermath of the 1947 declaration of Indian
independence, the roughly drawn new state boundaries triggered
what may have been the biggest migration in human history.

3. Historical consensus supports a figure of 12 million people
displaced, although the BBC suggests figures as high as 14.5
million people. An undeclared civil war erupted as communities
of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fought one another to establish
their own identities in their redefined homelands. And, in the
process, the Indian government estimates, 83,000 women were
abused and abducted. Others put the number even higher.
“Rather than being raped and abandoned,” Yasmin Khan writes
in The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, “tens
of thousands of women were kept in the ‘other’ country, as
permanent hostages, captives, or forced wives; they became
simply known as ‘the abducted women.’” Why did men “keep
the women they had attacked?” Khan asks. The underlying
reason—whether men forced women into unpaid labor or took
them as forced wives—was the “impulse to consume, transform,
or eradicate the remnants of the other community,” she says.
Menon and Bashin
“the material, symbolic, and political significance of the
abduction of women was not lost either on the women
themselves and their families, on their communities, or on
leaders and governments. As a retaliatory measure, it was
simultaneously an assertion of identity and a humiliation of the
rival community through the appropriation of its women. When
accompanied by forcible conversion and marriage, it could be
counted upon to outrage both, family and community honour
and religious sentiments. The fear of abduction or falling into
heads of the enemy compelled hundreds of women to take their
own lives, equal numbers were killed by their own families and
literally thousands of others to carry packets of poisons on their
persons in the eventuality that they might be captured. Any
many committed suicide after they were released by their
captors for having been thus ‘used’ and polluted” (WS-3)

4. Official estimates
In 1950, Menon and Bhasin write, the “official estimate” for
numbers of abducted women stood at 50,000 Muslims in India
and 33,000 Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. But rehabilitation
workers place these figures higher. Mridula Sarabhai, they
write, a director of rehabilitation projects for abducted women,
believed that as many as 125,000 Hindu and Sikh women were
abducted in Pakistan.
Fallen women
“Mummy and your aunt rescue kidnapped women. When they
find them, they send them back to their families or to the
Recovered Women’s amps. She arranged for Ayah to be sent to
her relatives. She felt you had accepted her absence – you’d
only start fretting again. (251)
252 – question of her current status but no answers
Is she a Christian? Is a prostitute? Is she married to the Ice
Candy Man? (page 258-9) How does he downplay his marriage?
How his community protects their women?
Where is her voice? Her narrative?
Theme of shame and Lenny’s guilt: page 266
Themes in the novel
Child narrator
Female sexuality
Masculinity – Ice Candy Man’s transformation
Critique of colonial power and fickleness of human nature
The metaphor of “cracking” – breaking of a country; division of
communities
The novel creates space for the unraised voices of the females
who had to go through the dual turmoil in the "cracking" of the
nation and the young girl's "breaking" of the patriarchal

5. nationalist code
Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India
1947 Partition
Lecture 3: chapter 23-end
Essay #2 Due 3/31/2017
Essay #2: Film Versus Novel: In 1000-1200 words, compare and
contrast Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India with Deepa Mehta’s
film adaptation, 1947 Earth. You can discuss the themes of
child narrative, war and conflict, gender and violence,
masculinity and violence, and so on.
Times new roman, 12, double space
Please make sure your thesis is present at the beginning of your
essay and clearly states your argument and the supporting
evidence you will be discussing throughout your paper.
Review my comments from your first essay and feel free to ask
questions. I am happy to give a 100 but if its earned: strong,
clear thesis with good supporting evidence, properly formatted
long-in text quotations following MLA 8th edition.
Because of the snow day, we will watch the film today and
Monday. I will introduce the new novel to you on Monday.
Please complete the assigned reading for Monday either way.
We will be reading De Niro’s Game that focuses on the civil
war in Lebanon.
Ayah’s Adbuction
Page 191-195
Lenny’s betrayal: “Something strange happened then. The whole

6. disorderly melee dissolved and consolidated into a single face.
The face, amber eyed, spread before me: hypnotic, reassuring,
blotting out of the ugly frightening crowd. Ice candy’s versatile
face transformed into a savior’s in our hour of need (193)
Ice candy man is crouched before me. “Don’t be scared, Lenny
baby,” he says. “I’m here.” And putting his arms around me he
whispers, so that only I can hear: “I’ll protect Ayah with my
life. You know I will…I know she’s here. Where is she?” (194)
Ayah’s Abduction
They drag Ayah out. They drag her by her arms stretched taut,
and her bare feet – that want to move backwards –are forced
forward instead. Her lips are drawn away from her teeth, and
the resisting curve of her throat opens her mouth like the dead
child’s screamless mouth…the men drag her in grotesque strides
to the cart and their harsh hands, supporting her with careless
intimacy…I am the monkey-man’s preforming monkey…the last
thing I noticed was Ayah, her mouth slack and piteously gaping
her disheveled hair flying into her kidnapper’s faces, staring at
us as if she wanted to leave behind her wide-open and terrified
eyes. (195)
Ayah’s Rape vs. Ranna’s Story
The text's silence about Ayah's story, moreover, has other
ramifications. The rape of Ayah—absent and untold—occurs
structurally at the center of the text, the point from which the
narrative separates Lenny (in every way) from her erstwhile
double. In fact, upon her disappearance, it shifts unexpectedly
to a segment entitled "Ranna's Story." Ranna, a Muslim village
boy and Lenny's cook's great-grandson, arrives suddenly to give
his harrowing account of his escape from the mass violence
perpetrated upon his family by Sikhs. While perhaps the most
graphic section of the novel, it is structurally set aside from the
main narrative. The only part of the novel not told in Lenny's

7. voice, this oddly juxtaposed, artistically awkward device
bespeaks a desire perhaps to bring in the horror in some other
way, but not to bring it too close. Ranna and his lost women
relatives appear briefly only to vanish quickly from the main
narrative, as if their only function was to substitute for what
happened to Ayah, who substitutes for Lenny. Interestingly,
Lenny acquires another "ayah," who is a lower-class peasant
Muslim woman in turn a victim from the other side. While the
narrative's inclusion of Hamida here suggests an impulse to
render equally the violence enacted upon Muslim women too, it
does not attempt to grant her even the agency or centrality given
to Ranna. Moreover, it solidifies the illusion that rape is a
lower-class affair and serves to enhance the rehabilitatory
generosity of the family that takes her in.
Rape and Abduction
It may be said in defense that Sidhwa's effort is precisely to
mark the real silence that still haunts the violence of Partition
and to represent the reality where such women were silent, and
continue to be so. Even survivors' accounts such as those
included by Butalia and Menon and Bhasin describe murder but
do not acknowledge rape. Indeed, many rape victims may not
wish to speak of the rape precisely as a strategy of survival, in
order to put it behind them.3
HonoR: Tamas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwe8-
UM9H5U&list=PLmNDZHM-
lS98sqEbNk_ESS5MK9WVyrJdf&index=4
Pinjar (1998): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvFlSc_OVh0
Silent Waters (2003):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKYq9FZ3pHU

8. Menon and Bashin
“the material, symbolic, and political significance of the
abduction of women was not lost either on the women
themselves and their families, on their communities, or on
leaders and governments. As a retaliatory measure, it was
simultaneously an assertion of identity and a humiliation of the
rival community through the appropriation of its women. When
accompanied by forcible conversion and marriage, it could be
counted upon to outrage both, family and community honour
and religious sentiments. The fear of abduction or falling into
heads of the enemy compelled hundreds of women to take their
own lives, equal numbers were killed by their own families and
literally thousands of others to carry packets of poisons on their
persons in the eventuality that they might be captured. Any
many committed suicide after they were released by their
captors for having been thus ‘used’ and polluted” (WS-3)
Ranna’s Story
Page 223
What is his importance?
Since his presence is to be a foil to Lenny, does his story
enhance the trauma or seem out of place?
Fallen Women
Page 226
“It isn’t a jail, Lenny baby…it’s a camp for fallen women.”
“What are fallen women?”
“Hai! The questions you ask! Your mother won’t like such
talk…Now keep quiet”
“Are you a fallen woman?”

9. Ayah
And suddenly the hunt for Ayah is off. I sense it. So does Adi.
They only pretend to look for her. Mother still takes off in the
Morris but I know it is not to look for Ayah. I can tell by the
car’s wheels flatten on the stones by the determined angle of
Skinny aunt’s chin – that the car’s dicky is loaded with petrol.
They can set fire to the world for all I care – I want my ayah !
(240)
AYAH
243-244
The presence of Ayah – Cousin uses Ayah as a way to tease
Lenny but says that she is all “made up” and looks “like an
actress”
“And then, one late evening, I do see Ayah. It doesn’t register
at once.” (246)
Are these visions of Ayah reflective of Lenny’s guilt? – page
250 “I saw her with my own eyes.” Mini aunty – “sometimes we
only see what we wish to see…”
“It can’t be her. Ayah is with her family in Amritsar!” – is
Godmother telling the truth or trying to appease Lenny?
Ayah
“Mummy and your aunt rescue kidnapped women. When they
find them, they send them back to their families or to the
Recovered Women’s amps. She arranged for Ayah to be sent to
her relatives. She felt you had accepted her absence – you’d
only start fretting again. (251)
252 – question of her current status but no answers
Is she a Christian? Is a prostitute? Is she married to the Ice
Candy Man? (page 258-9) How does he downplay his marriage?
How his community protects their women?
Where is her voice? Her narrative?

10. Theme of shame and Lenny’s guilt: page 266
Page 272 – Ayah/Mumtaz – “ I will not live with him”
‘That was fated, daughter. It can’t be undone. But it can be
forgiven…Worse things are forgiven. Life goes on and the
business of living buries the debris of our pasts. Hurt,
happiness, fade impartially…that’s the way of life” “I’m not
alive” (274)
Deepa Mehta’s 1947 earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEJdS7_RC4Q&t=726s
Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India
1947 Partition
Lecture 2: chapters 9-16
The impact of the trauma from the riots (pp. 148)
I examine the sari-and dhoti-clad Indian dolls…I hold it upside
down and pull its pink leg’s apart. The knees and thighs bend
unnaturally, but the stitching in the center stays intact.
I hold one leg out to Adi. “Here,” I say, “pull it”
“Pull damn it!,” I scream, so close to hysteria that Adi blaches
and hastily gravs the proferred leg...Adi crouches close to me. I
can’t bear the disillusioned and contempuous look in his eyes.
“Why were you so cruel if you couldn’t stand it?” (148)
Cracking India

11. “I am a Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that. A new nation is
born. India has been divided after all. Did they dig a long, long
canal Ayah mentioned? Although it is my birthday no one has
time for me. My questions remained unanswered even by Ayah
(150)
The new pakistan – incorporation of historical events
“I blow out the candles and cut the squashed cake. And then we
sit around the radio listening to the celebrations of the new
Nation. Jinnah’s voice, inaugurating the Constituent Assembly
sessions on August 11 says, “You are free. You are free to go to
your temples. You are free to go to your mosque or any other
place of worship in the state of Pakistan. You may belong to
any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the
business of State…etc,...etc...etc, Pakistan Zindabad!” (154)
The climax – the breaking of Punjab
IceCandy man comes to an abrupt and jolted halt. He is
breathless, reeking of sweat and dust, and his frantic eyes rake
the group. They rest for an instant on the Sikh, and flutter back
to us. “A train from Gurdaspur has just come in,” he announces,
panting. “Everyone in it is dead. Butchered. They are all
Muslim. They are no young women among the dead. Only the
two gunny-bags full of women’s breasts!” (159)
Ice-Candy Man’s Revenge
“What’s it to you, oye?”…”If you must know, I was. I’ll tell
you to your face – I lose my senses when I think of the
mutilated bodies on that train from Gurdaspur…that night I
went mad, I tell you! I lobbed grenades through the windows of

12. Hindus and Sikhs I’ve known all my life. I hated their guts…I
want to kill someone for each one of the breasts they have cut
off the Muslim women…the penises” (166)
Ayah and the Masseur
Ayah is crying softly, “I must get out of here.” She says,
sniffling and wiping her nose on her sari-blouse sleeve. “I have
relatives in Amritsar I can go to.”
“You don’t need to go anywhere, “ says Masseur, so assuredly
possessive that I feel a stab of jealousy, “Why do you worry?
I’m here. No one will touch a hair on your head. I don’t know
why you don’t marry me!” he says, sighing persuasively, “you
know I worship you..” (168)
The aftermath of partition
“Instead, wave upon scruffy wave of Muslim refugees flood
Lahore – and the Punjab west of Lahore. Within three months,
seven million Muslims and five million Hindus and Sikhs are
uprooted in the largest and most terrible exchange of population
known to history. The Punjab has been divided by the icy card-
sharks dealing out the land village by village, city by city,
wheeling and dealing and doling out favours.
For now the tide is turned – and the Hindus are being favored
over the Muslims by remnants of the Raj. Now that it is
objective to divide India is achieved, the British favor Nehru
over Jinnah. Nehru is Kashmiri; they grant him Kashmir.
Spurning logic, ignoring the consequences of bequeathing a
Muslim state to the Hindus, while Jinnah futilely protest:
“Statesmen cannot eat their words.”
Statesmen do. (169)
The masseur’s death
Himmat Ali (Hari), too is uneasy. He pulls back saying: “Stay

13. here. There is something on the other side.” By my fear of the
wall and my congenital curiosity prevail. It is only a bulging
gunny sack. We cross the road.
The swollen gunnysack lies directly in our path. Hari pushes it
with his foot. The sack slowly topples over and Masseur spills
out – half on the dusty sidewalk, half on the gritty tarmac –
dispelling the stiletto reek of violence with the smell of roses.”
(185)
Ayah’s Adbuction
Page 191-195
Lenny’s betrayal: “Something strange happened then. The whole
disorderly melee dissolved and consolidated into a single face.
The face, amber eyed, spread before me: hypnotic, reassuring,
blotting out of the ugly frightening crowd. Ice candy’s versatile
face transformed into a savior’s in our hour of need (193)
Ice candy man is crouched before me. “Don’t be scared, Lenny
baby,” he says. “I’m here.” And putting his arms around me he
whispers, so that only I can hear: “I’ll protect Ayah with my
life. You know I will…I know she’s here. Where is she?” (194)
Ayah’s Abduction
They drag Ayah out. They drag her by her arms stretched taut,
and her bare feet – that want to move backwards –are forced
forward instead. Her lips are drawn away from her teeth, and
the resisting curve of her throat opens her mouth like the dead
child’s screamless mouth…the men drag her in grotesque strides
to the cart and their harsh hands, supporting her with careless
intimacy…I am the monkey-man’s preforming monkey…the last
thing I noticed was Ayah, her mouth slack and piteously gaping
her disheveled hair flying into her kidnapper’s faces, staring at
us as if she wanted to leave behind her wide-open and terrified
eyes. (195)

14. Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India
1947 Partition
Lecture 2: chapters 9-16
The Day India Burned – Class Discussion
1) In the documentary, did you agree with Mountbatten’s
decision to leave India early?
2) Rape and abduction of women was a pretty common
occurrence, so were honor killings. What were your thoughts on
Bir Bahadur Singh’s sister’s decision to willingly accept death
in order to protect her honour?
3) What were your thoughts about the ways in which Cyril
Radcliffe’s precarious position to divide British India?
4) How were the refugees treated during the migration between
India and Pakistan?
5) Do you think the politicians made strong decisions,
especially Nehru, Jinnah, and Gandhi? What were their goals?
What were the consequences of their decisions?
Cracking india
What does The Scarlet Letter reveal about early attitudes toward
Native Americans? Think of Pride and Prejudice and Lord of the
Flies as texts about class and gender roles and expectations.
Similarly, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India is an international
classic that reveals the gender and class politics during the time
of the Partition in India.
Cracking india - themes
The experience of being handicapped

15. the effects of religious racia lconflicts
the subjugation of women (e.g., arranged marriages,
prostitution); sexuality; class and caste prejudice; and political
violence.
The novel also concerns generational differences, and children’s
rights and vulnerabilities. By writing about a child growing up
during this time in India and Pakistan’s history, Sidhwa
confronts many important social, historical, and political issues
with humor and compassion.
The end of colonialism
Page 25 – “Lenny is weak. Some child with only the symptoms
of a severe cold could have passed the virus.” And he roars a
shocking postscript: “If anyone’s to blame, blame the British!
There was no polio in India till they brought it here!” – product
of colonialism? Trauma?
CracKing India –Pg 11-78
“The Goddamn English!” I think, infected by Colonel
Bharucha’s startling verocity at this “dastardly” (one of
Father’s favorite words, just as “plucky” is Mother’s) instance
of British treachery. “They gave us polio!” And not
withstanding the compatible and sanguine nature of my
relationship with my disease. I feel its my first personal
involvement with Indian politics: the Quit-India sentiment that
has fired the imagination of a subject people and wil soon
sweep away the Raj! (page 26)
Quit India movement: civil disobedience movement launched by
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on 8 August 1942, during World
War II, demanding an end to British Rule of India.
Cracking India

16. Far away I hear a siren…into a single German soldier in a
motorcycle (31)
I recal another childhood nightmare from the past. Children lie
in a warehouse. Mother and Ayah move solicitiously.
Godmother sits by my bed smiling indulgently as men in
uniforms quietly slice off a child’s arm here, a leg there. She
strokes my head as they dismember me. I feel no pain. Only an
absymal sense of loss- and a chilling horror that no one is
concerned by what’s happening (31)
Themes: foreshadowing; dismemberment of self/other, siren =
impending violence?
Cracking India
The role of Gandhi – page 41
Suddenly I hear him declare – “Gandhi says, we must stop
buying salt. We should only eat salt manufactured from the
Indian Ocean!”
The colonel pauses, dramatically, and my loafing mind becomes
attentive. The pause, shrewdly timed to permit just that tiny
license so dear to a Parsee audience, is snapped up. “Who does
this Gandhi think he is?” shouts an obliging wag promptly for
somewhere in the middle. “Is it his grandfather’s ocean?” (44)
Cracking India
“When we were kicked out of Persia by the Arabs thirteen
hundred years ago, what did we do? Did we shout and argue?
No!” roars the colonel, and hastily provides his own answer
before anyone can interrupt. “We got into boats and sailed to
India” (page 46)

17. Cracking India
Hari’s character
“spare dark body” (pg 53)
Lower caste/class
Gardener
Fate after the Partition – guesses?
Cracking India
Imam Din: “I’ve not come all this way without a reason.” The
villagers, who are wondering why he is visiting them, look at
him attentively. He rubs his face with both hands; as if it pains
him to state the reason. “I don’t think you know how serious
things are getting in towns. Sly killings; rioting and baton
charges by the police…long marches by the mobs...The
Congresswallahs have started a new stunt...they sit down on the
rail tracks – women and children, too. The police lift them off
the tracks...but one of these days the steam engines will run
over them...Once aroused...the English are savages”
“Then there is the Hindu-Muslim trouble,” he says, after a
pause. “ugly trouble. It is spreading. Sikh Muslim trouble also.”
The villagers, Sikh and Muslim, erupt in protest.
“Brother,” the Sikh granti says when the tumult subsides. “our
villages come from the same racial stock. Muslim or Sikh, we
are basically Jats. How can we fight each other?” (64)
Cracking India
“Rivers of blood will flow all right” General Rogers shouts,
almost as loud as Mr. Singh. “Nehru and the Congress will not
have everything their way! They will have to reckon with the
Muslim league and Jinnah. If we quit India today, old chap,
you’ll bloody fall at each other’s throats!”
“Hindus, Muslims, Sikh: we all want the same thing! We want
independence!”
Inspector General Rogers recovers his imperial phlegm. “My

18. dear man,” he intones, “Don’t you know the Congress wont
agree on a single issue with the Muslim league? The cabinet
mission proposed a federation of the Hindu and Muslim
majority provinces. Jinnah accepted it; Gandhi and Nehru
didn’t! (pg 71)
Cracking India
Sarbat Khan cautions Ayah: “These are bad times-Allah knows
what’s in store. There is big trouble in Calcutta and Delhi:
Hindu-Muslim trouble. The Congresswallah are after Jinah’s
blood…”
What’s it to us if Jinnah, Nehru, and Patel fight? They are
fighting our fight,” says Ayah, lightly. “ (84)
Ayah says, “Funny things are happening inside the old
city...Stabbings...Eiher the police can’t do anything-or they
dont want to. It was discovered this morning becasue of the
smell: a young, good, looking man. Several bodies have been
found in the gutters and gullies of Kashmiri, Lahori, and Bhatti
Gates and Shalmi. They must have been dumped there from
different neighborhood because no one knows who they are.”
“Are they Hindus?” asked Ayah, her carefree mood dispelled
“Hindu, Muslim, Sikh. One can tell they are from prosperous,
eating-drinking households...” (84)
Cracking India
“I was set firmly and relentlessly on the path to truth the day I
broke a Wedgwood plate and, putting a brazen face on my
mischief, nobly confessed all before Mother bent over me,
showering me with the radiance of her approval. “I love you.
You spoke the truth! What’s a broken plate? Break a hundred
plates! “
I broke plates, cups, bowls, dishes. I smashed livers, kidneys,
hearts, eyes…the path to virtue is strewn with broken people
and shattered china.” (94)

19. Cracking India
Gandhijee visits Lahore. He is small, dark, shriveled, old. He
looks just like Hari, our gardener, except he has a disgruntled,
disgusted, and irritable look, and no one’d dare pull of his
dhoti! He wears only the loin cloth and his black and thin torso
is naked.
Gandhijee certainly is ahead of his times. He already knows the
advantages of dieting. He has starved his way into the news and
made headlines all over the world (94).
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamdas Gandhi
He began his activism as an Indian immigrant in South Africa in
the early 1900s, and in the years following World War I became
the leading figure in India’s struggle to gain independence from
Great Britain.
Gandhi was imprisoned several times during his pursuit of non-
cooperation, and undertook a number of hunger strikes to
protest the oppression of India’s poorest classes, among other
injustices.
As part of his nonviolent non-cooperation campaign for home
rule, Gandhi stressed the importance of economic independence
for India. He particularly advocated the manufacture of
khaddar, or homespun cloth, in order to replace imported
textiles from Britain.
Gandhi strongly opposed Partition, but he agreed to it in hopes
that after independence Hindus and Muslims could achieve
peace internally. Amid the massive riots that followed Partition,
Gandhi urged Hindus and Muslims to live peacefully together,
and undertook a hunger strike until riots in Calcutta ceased.

20. On January 30, 12 days after that fast ended, Gandhi was on his
way to an evening prayer meeting in Delhi when he was shot to
death by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic enraged by
Mahatma’s efforts to negotiate with Jinnah and other Muslims.
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru was a leader of India’s nationalist movement
and became India’s first prime minister after its independence.
His father was a renowned lawyer and one of Mahatma Gandhi's
notable lieutenants.
Educated in England, like Gandhi. He eventually practiced law.
In 1919, while traveling on a train, Nehru overheard British
Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer gloating over the Jallianwala
Bagh massacre. The massacre, also known as the Massacre of
Amritsar, was an incident in which 379 people were killed and
at least 1,200 wounded when the British military stationed there
continuously fired for ten minutes on a crowd of unarmed
Indians. Upon hearing Dyer’s words, Nehru vowed to fight the
British. The incident changed the course of his life.
Jawaharlal nehru
After his father's death in 1931, Nehru became more embedded
in the workings of the Congress Party and became closer to
Gandhi, attending the signing of the Gandhi-Irwin pact. Signed
in March 1931 by Gandhi and the British viceroy Lord Irwin,
the pact declared a truce between the British and India's
independence movement. The British agreed to free all political
prisoners and Gandhi agreed to end the civil disobedience
movement he had been coordinating for years.
Unfortunately, the pact did not instantly usher in a peaceful

21. climate in British-controlled India, and both Nehru and Gandhi
were jailed in early 1932 on charges of attempting to mount
another civil disobedience movement. Neither man attended the
third Round Table Conference.
At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, British
viceroy Lord Linlithgow committed India to the war effort
without consulting the now-autonomous provincial ministries.
Nehru's four pillars of domestic policies were democracy,
socialism, unity, and secularism, and he largely succeeded in
maintaining a strong foundation of all four during his tenure as
president.
Mohammad ali Jinnah
Mohammad Ali Jinnah
Jinnah was an Indian politician who successfully campaigned
for an independent Pakistan and became its first leader. He is
known there as 'Quaid-I Azam' or 'Great Leader'.
Jinnah studied at Bombay University and at Lincoln's Inn in
London. He then ran a successful legal practice in Bombay. He
was already a member of the Indian National Congress, which
was working for autonomy from British rule, when he joined the
Muslim League in 1913. The league had formed a few years
earlier to represent the interests of Indian Muslims in a
predominantly Hindu country, and by 1916 he was elected its
president.
During Jinnah’s visits to the House of Commons, he had
developed a growing interest in politics, deeming it a more
glamorous field than law. Now in Bombay, Jinnah began his
foray into politics as a liberal nationalist.
As a member of Congress, Jinnah at first collaborated with
Hindu leaders as their Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity,

22. while working with the Muslim League simultaneously.
Gradually, Jinnah realized that the Hindu leaders of Congress
held a political agenda that was incongruent with his own.
Earlier he had been aligned with their opposition to separate
electorates meant to guarantee a fixed percentage of legislative
representation for Muslims and Hindus. But in 1926, Jinnah
shifted to the opposite view and began supporting separate
electorates. Still, overall, he retained the belief that the rights
of Muslims could be protected in a united India. At that stage of
his political career, Jinnah left Congress and dedicated himself
more fully to the Muslim League.
The Queen’s Park– Gathering place & Brotherhood
The Queen’s Park is packed. Groups of men and women sit in
circles on the grass and children run about them. Ice candy man,
lean as his popsicles and as affable, swarming with children, is
going from group to group doing good business. Masseur, too,
is going from group to group: handsome, reserved, competent,
assured, massaging balding heads, kneading knotty shoulders
and soothing aching limbs. (97)
What was your impression of Ice Candy Man and Massuer?
Cracking India
Page 118 – The Gurkas versus The Refugees
Page 125 – “One man’s religion is another man’s poison”
Page 128 – Ayah and Masseur
Page 131-2- Ayah and Lenny witness a riot themselves
Page 134 – Conflict rises between Ice Candy Man and Masseur
Page 140 – Religion versus politics – Masseur’s take –
significant passages
Page 144 – the violence errupts
Page 145 – dismemberment of the Hindu men – Lenny witnesses

23. the trauma
Page 146-7 – mob mentality, the idea of tamasha or spectacle
One man’s religion is another man’s poison
“Our shadow glides over a Brahmin Pandit. Sitting cross-legged
on the grass he is eating out of a leafbowl. He looks at Yousaf
and at me- and his face expresses a full range of terror, passion,
and pain expected of a violated virgin. Our shadow has violated
his virtue. The Pandit (priest) cringes. His features shrivel into
arid little shrimps and his body retracts…I am a diseased
maggot. I look at Yousaf. His face is drained of joy, bleak,
furious. I know he too feels himself composed of shit, crawling
with maggots.
Now I know surely. One man’s religion is another man’s poison.
(125)
Cracking India
“Gandhi, Nehru, Patel…they have so much influence even in
London.” says the garderner.
The bastards!” says Masseur with histronic fury that conceals a
genuine bitterness. “So they sack Wavell Sahib, a fair man! And
send for a new Lal Sahib will favour the Hindus”
“With all due respect, malijee.” says Ice Candy man, surveying
the gardener through a blue mist of exhaled smoke, “but aren’t
you Hindus expert at just this kind of thing? Twisting tails
behind the scene...and getting someone else to slaughter your
goats?” (99)
Cracking India
“Just the English?” asks Butcher. “Haven’t the Hindus connived
with the Angrez to ignore the Muslim league, and support a
party that win a single seat in the Punjab? It’s just the kind of a

24. thing we fear. They manipulate one or two Muslims against the
interests of the larger community. And now they have
manipulated Master Tara Singh and his bleating herd of Sikhs!”
(100)
Cracking India – can a country be ‘broken’?
There is much disturbing talk. India is going to be broken. Can
one break a country? And what happens if they break it where
our house is? Or crack it further up on Warris Road? How will I
ever get to Godmother’s then?
I ask Ayah. “They’ll dig a canal…”she ventures. “This side for
Hindustan and this side for Pakistan. If they want two countries,
that s what they’ll have to do-crack India with a long, long
canal.” (101)
Lenny Position:
The Sikh women pull me to their laps and asks my name and the
name of my religion. “I’m Parsee.” I say
“O kee? What’s that? They ask: scandalized to discover a
religion they’ve never heard of.
That’s when I realized times have changed. The Sikhs, only
their rowdy little boys running about with their hair piled in
topknots, are keeping mostly to themselves.
Only the group around Ayah remains unchanged. Hindu,
Muslims, Sikh, Parsee, are always unified around her. (105)
Riots and violence in Lahore
“He glances at Yah. Since Ayah appears content to have me
stay, he says: “Well Sher Singh, his brothers Prem and Pratab,
and one or two cousins – all strapping fellows…and I. Armed
with hockey sticks, we went ot their tenants’ house while the
men were at work. We made a bit of hulla-golla (commotion)
outside the building. Waved our hockey sticks and shouted:
’Come to your widows, pretty ladies: don’t hide. We have

25. something to you.” (131)
”
Cracking India – The burning of lahore and the mob
”The terror the mob generates is palpable – like an evil
paralyzing spell…The processionists are milling about two
jeeps back to back. They come to a halt: the men in front of the
procession pulling ahead and the mob behind banked close ip.
There is a quickening in the activity about the jeeps. Mey eyes
focus on an emancipated Banya wearing a white Gandhi cap.
The man is knocked down. His lips are drawn away from
rotting, paan-stained teeth in a scream. The men move back and
in the small clearing I see his legs sticking out of his dhoti right
up to the groin – each thin, brown leg tied to a jeep. Ayeah,
holdign her hands over mey eyes, collapses on to the floor,
pulling me down with her. There is a roar of a hundred throats:
“Allah-o-Akbar” and beneath it the growl of revving motors.”
(145)
Discussion Questions
On page 125, Lenny says, "Now I know surely. One man’s
religion is another man’s poison.” Given the violence that
breaks out and the fact that India is “cracked” along religious
lines, explain Lenny, Ayah, and the other significant characters
who experienced the trauma. What were their psychological,
emotional, and physical repercussions , which were generated
by religious conflict between various groups? How would you
relate it to today?
Chapter 21 takes the reader back into Lenny’s family world,
characterized by humor, joy, and a "regular life." Why do you
think the author shows us Lenny’s family here?
How does Lenny use her handicap? How does she feel about it?
Find examples of her taking advantage of her disabled status as
a polio victim.

26. Describe the hyper masculine tensions in the novel. Think of
Ice-Candy Man, Masseur, and the other men who linger around
the Ayah? How are they different from the other group of men
in Iman Din’s village?
Focusing on pages 144-5, what were your impressions of the
Hindu man being dismembered violently and Ice Candy Man’s
reaction to his death. How is civilian life impacted by political
decisions? It is the desensitization of the violence but also how
violence is responsible for fragmenting the body and the nation.
How would you explain this phenomena? What other countries
have experienced a similar kind of trauma? How can we
reconcile this notion?