Partition

Abstract

The early taste of freedom was a bitter one, washed down by the blood of half a million newly-free Indians and Pakistanis. The violence of the time could not be ignored by anyone writing about the period, and thus Paul Scott includes scenes of communal violence in the final volume of his Raj Quartet, notably an attack on a train, in which one of the protagonists, Ahmed Kasim, is murdered along with hundreds of others. This brief period of history has interested mainly Indian and Pakistani writers. Bapsi Sidhwa’s novel The Bride (1983), though not a ‘partition novel’, does describe the violence of this period, which is the starting point for the later events of the novel. Similarly, Balachandra Rajan’s The Dark Dancer (1959), although again not a ‘partition novel’, includes an horrific attack on a refugee train, as does Manohar Malgonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges (1964). Indeed attacks on refugee trains are so common in the literature of Partition that they almost become a leitmotif for the period.

Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped. ¹