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Indian Writings in Literature

Notes The book has two sub-sections: Going Away and Coming home. Both phrases indicate the queer
sense of home and homelessness that the Partition victims have experienced that allows them
to dispense with a fixed point that signifies a point of departure.
4. Theme of Partition in the Novel
“At the origin of India and Pakistan lies the national trauma of Partition, a trauma that freezes
fear into silence, and for which The Shadow Lines seeks to find a language, a process of
mourning, and perhaps even a memorial.” The year 1947 spelt for India a heightened
consciousness of the very idea of a nation. Not only was freedom from the colonial rule ushered
in and a long cherished desire of a free country made available to the Indians, it also meant that
the arrival of freedom signalled a virtual dislocation for a big fraction of the population: The
birth of the free nation was accompanied by excruciating labour pains of the event of Partition.
Histories of both sides portray this event in passing as a misfortune that arose out of the power
interests of the ‘other’ side. In the history textbooks the struggle for Independence is seen to
have concluded successfully, it was hailed as a model of the practice of the new philosophy of
ahimsa. It can however legitimately be called non-violent only if we chose to gloss over the very
existence of the event of Partition that accompanied the midnight decree of freedom- the biggest
migration of human population that the sub-continent or perhaps the world has ever witnessed.
It entailed loss of human life on both sides. In its magnitude it was one of the most important
events in the Indian history and it affected the life patterns of thousands of families who
travelled in caravans, horses, carts and cattle from West Punjab and in homemade boats from
East Bengal. How does history talk of these migrants? How does history justify this act of the
state at that time? Urvashi Butalia in her book The Other Side of Silence says that the state has
strangely made no memorials to mark this momentous event. However the memory of Partition
has very well been preserved by the communities in the confines of their homes through stories
and anecdotes told by the way of mouth and passed through one generation to the other. Of
late this interest in the documentation of the private experience of Partition has been performed
by our Literature. Indian Writing in English has seen a spurt in the publication of Partition
related Literature. The Shadow Lines is, among other issues, a book about the Bengal Partition.
The experiences of Tha’mma through the trope of the divided house (as discussed earlier)
clearly bring out her side of the story about the event. The story of the old uncle Jethamoshai
captures the poignant side of the human experience of Partition and of course the depiction of
the penury and destitution of Tha’mma’s poor relatives capture the economic effects of Partition.
5. Community and Communal Strife
The Shadow Lines takes up the issue of Partition (1947) and the author presents through it an
elaborate critique of the whole idea of a nation as it emerged in the circumstances. Community
as a condition prior to Partition is seen as an ideal state and the narratives that the community
produces are seen as being more representative of their experience than history. The natural
community in the Indian subcontinent across Punjab and Bengal got split into two nations
following the call for Partition. What followed was the physical dislocation of 15 million people
from the places that their communities had traditionally called home. Those who crossed over
to the Indian side arrived landless, clueless and resourceless to be a part of the rejoicing in
Delhi on the eve of country’s Independence. The Partition had thus disrupted the existence of
‘natural communities’. A classification about natural and interest oriented communities is used
by Sudipta Kaviraj to draw up an elaborate case about the difference between nation and
community. He draws heavily on the work of the sociologist Toennies to discuss two kinds of
communities: gemeinschaften which is the primary, traditional group, and which according to
Kaviraj ‘one does not make an interest actuated decision to belong.’ On the other hand is
gesselschaften, similar to modern nations, which are based on the convergence of political and
economic interests. The Partition necessitates the disruption of gemeinschaften embodied by
the old communities in Bengal and Punjab in order to create gesselschaftens: India and Pakistan.
Further, ‘these imagined communities can place their boundaries in time and space anywhere
they like.’…unlike the former which have ‘naturally limited contours.’ So whereas the former
state reflects a cultural bonding, the latter is based on political interest. To these groups are also

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