Bapsi Sidhwa is a Parsee descent author of Cracking
India (1988). She is a significant post-partition Pakistani novelist,
who deals with the themes of social, religious, and political instability
during the Indo-Pak partition in 1947.
The novel Cracking India opens with the epigraph, verse
of Iqbal from his poem 'Complaint to God'
Shall I hear the lament of the nightingale, submissively lending my ear?
Am I the rose to suffer its cry in silence year after year?
(Iqbal: Complaint to God)
Allama Mohammad
Iqbal recited this poem in 1909. The poem was released at the time
when the Muslims in India had lost their identity and their condition had left
a profound effect on Iqbal. He has penned his grievance in the poem.
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Complaint to God is an outstanding composition, beautifully highlighting Islamic
traditions and values, touching even the hardest of hearts. The poem invokes
considerable soul searching and along with questions our views on why we are,
where we are?
Why must I forever lose, forever forgo profit that is my due,
Sunk in the gloom of evenings past, no plans for the morrow pursue.
Why must I all attentive be to the nightingale's lament,
Friend, am I as dumb as a flower? Must I remain silent?
Sidhwa has taken many verses from Iqbal's poetry throughout the
novel, Cracking India. The verse from Complaint
to God, as the
epigraph of the novel, presents different themes such as partition, identity
crises, hopelessness, and loss of belief along with the newly growing dreams of
Ranna and Ayah. Sidhwa, through Iqbal's words, wants to present the emptiness
of soul and the deception of human trust that not only fills the streets of
Lahore but the whole subcontinent. Iqbal's verses presented in the novel
revolve around the theme of partition that severely wounded the people of the
region.
İt seems that Sidhwa is trying to complain that why the women,
who were treated brutally during the partition, have not been discussed yet.
Am I the rose to suffer its cry in silence year after year?
She dares to write about the women of
partition when
there was a great silence over this issue. She uses Iqbal's verse as her
mouthpiece to say
With dust in my mouth, I am abject: to God, I make my complaint.
Taking Iqbal's verse as an epigraph she sweeps into a
historically significant event of the division of the nation. With her artistic
vision, she is not only lamenting the cracking but also on the loss of humanity. Shashi Tharoor
comments in the New York Times (1991) that Sidhwa has attempted to
address a child's loss of innocence, the sufferings of servants, and the
negligibility of the artists during the period of separation.
Sidhwa takes Iqbal's verses from Saqi Nama in chapter thirteen
too.
The time has changed; the world has changed its mind.
The European's mystery is erased.
The secret of his conjuring tricks is known;
The Frankish wizard stands and looks amazed.
In this chapter, we see how the world around Lenny is rapidly
changing. Lenny is portrayed as a very intelligent character and she notices
that how the mutilated death of Inspector General of Police, Mr. Roger, who was
once their guest and was treated with high respect, becomes the source of
happiness for the slave sister. The people who were imitated once, as they were
supposed to be most civilized, now are been hated. Slavesister says:
"All Englishmen will burn in hell"
It is revealed that the English are now going to tear Punjab and this news brings anger in the slave
sister's tone.
The next scene in the same chapter, that shows the changing
scenario around Lenny is when a Brahmin Pundit sees Lenny and Yousuf and
instantly shows fear and gets up to leave while they were going through the
Lawrence Garden. Here Lenny states that:
"Now I know surely, one man's religion is another man's poison"
In the same chapter Ice Candy Man's obsession with Ayah and how
frightened she is by him is revealed. Before this scene, Ice Candy Man was
presented as a loving person. He was in love with the ayah, but now:
The secret of his conjuring tricks is known;
And now Lenny is astonished over these accelerated transitions
and Bapsi takes again Iqbal's voice to express this astonishment
The Frankish wizard stands and looks amazed.
Chapter thirty-two opens with Iqbal's poetry. And here, in this
chapter, she wraps up the same concern that she had at the beginning of the
novel, in the form of an epigraph.
In the beginning, it seems that she is complaining but in the
last chapter, it seems that she is asking God for power and strength. She again
uses Iqbal's words to express her thoughts:
Give me the (mastic) wine that burns all veils,
The wine by which life's secret is revealed,
The wine whose essence is eternity,
The wine which opens mysteries concealed.
In an interview in Massachusetts Review, 1990 Sidhwa states about
Cracking India that the Western see south Asian people as primitive and
fundamentalist but it is not true because people in the subcontinent have a
rich mixture of culture and their lives are as worthy as westerns' lives.
We see that through this novel she paints all levels of society,
and provides a variegated account of life in the homes and on the streets of
Lahore.
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She is asking for strength because she is the first one who
dared to pen down that how acts of abduction and rape use women's sexuality as
a tool to articulate religious/national enmity. Moreover, she presents how Ayah
was punished for her lack of adherence to cultural norms, which was expected
from women during the partition period, thereby highlighting that women’s
bodies were (and continue to be) under patriarchal surveillance and regulation,
and those who fail to abide by societal rules were inevitably discarded. In
Iqbal's words:
Lift up the curtain, give me the power to talk.
And make the sparrow struggle with the hawk
She compares sparrows with the women of the society and hawk
with men. The men are portrayed as hawks who are always around the women to
hunt them and how these hawks after hunting them by their gender and call them "fallen
women".
It was Bapsi who wrote on a serious topic that was never had
touched before. She knew that she will highly be criticized when she would
describe the brutal evolution with chilling veracity and it happened. Cracking
India was been banned in a few countries as being having pornographic
elements in it.
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To conclude, as the epigraph of the novel Iqbal's poetry tells about the theme of the novel, and chapter thirteen foreshadows the changing scenario of India. Moreover, in the last chapter, Iqbal's poetry signifies that how daring is the act of writing about the women who actually suffered during partition.
This comparative article is produced by Tabassum Shahzad, one of the writers at the SOL Commuinty.
