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South Asian Diaspora

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Religion, partition, identity and diaspora: a study of Bapsi Sidhwa's IceCandy-Man

Paromita Deb
a a

Kharagpur, West Bengal, India Published online: 24 Jun 2011.

To cite this article: Paromita Deb (2011): Religion, partition, identity and diaspora: a study of Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice-Candy-Man , South Asian Diaspora, 3:2, 215-230 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2011.579459

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South Asian Diaspora Vol. 3, No. 2, September 2011, 215 230

Religion, partition, identity and diaspora: a study of Bapsi Sidhwas Ice-Candy-Man

Paromita Deb
Kharagpur, West Bengal, India This paper intends to study the Partition history through the subaltern eyes of a young girl narrator belonging to the Parsi diaspora in colonial Lahore, Pakistan, in Bapsi Sidhwas novel, Ice-Candy-Man. By suggesting a holistic approach towards Partition, which is inclusive of analysis and integration, at multiple levels, of ofcial history books, excerpts from survivor accounts and critical evaluation of partition novels like Sidhwas text, the study approaches the enormity of the experience of Partition with immediacy and sensitivity. It discusses how diasporas create dilemmas for the traditional nation-states and for those caught between the battle-lines. The paper discusses how the text portrays Partitions role in not only destroying the sub-continents communal life, but also in the reconstruction of multiple identities. By highlighting the plight of abducted women, the novel can also be interpreted as a gendered narrative of displacement and dispossession caused by the dismemberment of the subcontinent. Keywords: partition studies; gender narratives; Parsi diaspora; subaltern studies; religion; history; identity

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Introduction The Partition of the Indian sub-continent is a dening moment in South Asian history. This massive event signicantly changed the map of the Indian subcontinent and its repercussions are still being felt even after 60 years. It led to the birth of Pakistan in 1947 and later to that of Bangladesh in 1971. Undoubtedly, Partition is a subject as harrowing as the Holocaust. Religion played the key role in these particular historical disasters, and partition history invariably entails the horrors and stark drama of numerous religious riots and massacres. Pakistan, comprising some of the territories of erstwhile British India, prioritized the claim of separate nationhood by the Muslims of the sub-continent. The Muslim homeland itself underwent ruptures as its eastern half, catapulting on a linguistic and cultural nationalism, shunned all its association with a solely religion-dened national identity. Nevertheless, postliberation, religion has appeared to dene the nationhood of the Bangladeshi populace. Altogether, between 1947 and 1971, about 14.5 million people crossed borders, more than 7 million Muslims, and 7 million Hindus and Sikhs were uprooted in this largest and most terrible exchange of population in Indian history. Quite surprisingly, we do not nd substantial writing about Partition of India in 1947. Few survivor accounts of Partition are available in English. This can be linked

Email: paromita00@rediffmail.com

ISSN 1943-8192 print/ISSN 1943-8184 online # 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/19438192.2011.579459 http://www.informaworld.com

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to their refusal to speak loss, or, their inability to distance themselves from the brutality and objectively speak or write their experience. There is very little literature in English, especially ction: Khushwant Singhs Train to Pakistan (1956), Chaman Nahals Aazadi (1975), more recently, by younger authors, like Mukul Kesavans Looking Through Glass (1994), and Shauna Singh Baldwins What the Body Remembers (2001), offer brilliant historical perspectives of partition. However, there is a rich body of ctional work in the other popular sub-continental languages, especially those used by the victims of Partition, Punjabi, like Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. Masoom Reza Rahis Aadha Gaon offers a vivid and powerful portrayal of a fragmented and wounded society in the context of the plight of migrants and divided families. Krishna Sobtis Hindi texts on Partition Sikka Badal Gaya and Jindaginama too represent the grim contemporary reality without siding with a particular religion or community. Again, distinguished Urdu writer, Shorish Kashmiri in Boo-i gul Naala-i dil Doodi-i Chirag-i Mehl, challenges the monolithic world-vie about Muslim communities and foregrounds the apparently marginal voices among Muslims, particularly the Nationalist Muslims, during this cataclysmic event. Nasm Hijazis historical novel Khak aur Khoon describes the sacrices of Muslims of the sub-continent during the crisis.The famous Punjabi writer, Amrita Pritam, in her poignant Pinjar (The Skeleton) (1950), expresses her deep-felt anguish over massacres during the partition of India, while depicting Puro as an epitome of violence against women, loss of humanity and ultimate surrender to existential fate. Urvashi Butalia in her book The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (1998), narrates the real-life story of how the marriage of a Sikh boy, Buta Singh, and a riotabandoned Muslim girl, Zainab, turns into tragedy as the latter is reclaimed by the Pakistani authorities. Bengali Partition literature, especially ction, is extensive, even though Bengali literature in sharp contrast to the literature originating from Punjab, took some time in registering the event and its aftermath. The rst well-known novel on 1947 Partition is Nayantara Sanyals Balmik in 1955. It was followed by a spat of novels in the 1960s and 1970s such as Jyotirmoyee Devis Epar Ganga Opar Ganga (1967), Prafulla Roys Keya Patar Nouko (1970), Sunil Gangulys Arjun (1971) and Atin Banerjees Nilkontho Pakhir Khonje (1971). As partition texts present an interface between literature and history, a broader socio-political and historical framework is required to understand and appreciate them. Sidhwas third novel, Ice-Candy-Man (1989), has carved its niche as the rst Partition story from the unique perspective of a Parsi child. A short synopsis of the story is hereby placed to understand the immediate context of the paper. Here, we see the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan through the innocent eyes of a girlchild, Lenny, who is not Hindu, Muslim or Sikh, but a minority Parsi. On account of being physically handicapped by polio, Lenny always accompanies her Hindu Ayah, Shanta, the central character in the novel, who has access to all strata of society. The latter is young and vivacious, and, has many admirers, the popsicle vendor icecandy-man, the cook Imam Din and the masseur, to name a few. Lenny visits her Parsi godmothers house each day after her tuition classes at Mrs Pens house. Communal riots between Muslims and Sikhs spread from towns to small villages as in Imam Dins home in Pir Pindo, amid which Lennys friend Ranna miraculously escapes as a wounded and shocked lone survivor. Announcements on All India Radio about the division of districts into India and Pakistan become popular. Eventually, a Muslim mob stops outside Lennys house and enquire about its Hindu servants, especially about the Hindu Ayah Shanta but the cook tells them about her fake departure.

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Out of innocence, Lenny discloses about her hiding to the title character. The angry Muslims drag her out of Lennys house and later as Lenny discovers the opportunist takes her to Hira Mandi while the latter is forced to prostitution. However, later the godmother rescues Shanta, now renamed as Mumtaz, sending her to the recovered womens camp, and through Lennys mothers negotiations is ultimately restored to her family in Amritsar. Lenny learns to live with her new ayah, Hamida, who was one of the abducted women victims of Partition and lived in the well-guarded womens jail, or camp beside Lennys house. Here, I would like to provide a brief outline of the research methodology used in this study as that would enhance ones understanding of it. There are broadly four different sources of Partition history: historical records, gender narratives, personal memoirs and literature. The majority of historiographical English sources focus on the political causes of Partition, like Muhammad Ali Chaudhuris The Emergence of Pakistan (1967) and ideological differences between Congress and Muslim Nationalists, such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azads India Wins Freedom (1988). Gender narratives such as Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasins Borders and Boundaries (1998) and Urvashi Butalias The Other Side of Silence (1998) are perfect examples of history from below, as they give voice to previously marginalized groups, such as dalits, women and children. Oral sources including personal memoirs, like Nonica Dattas Partition Memories (2001), deal with personal losses and family traumas. To enrich this study on IceCandy-Man as a unique Partition text, I wish to use all of these available resources on the topic. On one hand, history, dealing primarily with elite national politics and being agenda-driven, cannot have the emotional touch of gender narratives, personal memories, or literature. On the other hand, personalized oral interviews, despite their plurality, are also biased and sometimes factually inaccurate and thus, they cannot substitute archival research. As Talbot and Tatla explain, While history is concerned with causes, the memory of pain can result in a sense of events as irrational aberrations (2006, p. 13). My aim is not to diminish existing historical documentations stressing the high politics of constitutional decision-making (Jalal 1985, Mahajan 2000). The sensitivity and human aspect of Partition literature and interviews too are carefully not ignored. I therefore suggest a holistic approach towards Partition, which is inclusive of analysis and integration, at multiple levels, of all these genres of knowledge. Thus, I have punctuated my study of the novel often with accounts of ofcial history books and also, with excerpts from survivor accounts Sidhwa, the novelist herself, being one of them. It is through such a wider approach that we can assimilate the enormity of Lennys experience of the vivisection of the Indian subcontinent. This study intends to juxtapose the story of forced migration of countless Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, and the story of how a diaspora Parsi family copes with such an event. The huge impact of such large-scale international migration challenges the idea of the nation-state, calling into question whether nations can ever achieve sovereignty in a homeland only for people who belong to their imagined community or religion. The rst part of this paper tries to explore how both the Parsi diaspora, rst in undivided India, and later in Lahore, Pakistan, exemplied by Lenny and her family, survived the HinduMuslimSikh communal strife in the prelude to and the aftermath of 1947 Partition. The migration of Parsis centuries ago is likewise centred on religion and like those of contemporary Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs entailed loss of homes, national territory and necessitated resettlement. The second part of this paper investigates how this unique Partition narrative by a diasporan examines and critiques key concepts such as history, representation and cartography. The third part studies

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Lennys evaluation of identity in the novel as well as the trauma and dislocation of women. In the fourth part, I intend to argue how the novel critiques common perceptions of religion as the central part of ones identity and also the use of religion as a sensitive ideological weapon in the hands of the powerful. Lenny exposes the myopia in such an estimation of the signicance of religion as she evaluates critically that although religion should elevate one spiritually and away from material things, it can at times bind us even more narrowly to our plot of land. In the Conclusion, I discuss how diasporas and victims of Partition create dilemmas for the traditional nation-states and for those caught between the battle-lines. Unlike many survivor accounts based on personal loss and trauma, as well as history books that fuel the political debate by shifting the blame on a particular community or a national leader, Ice-Candy-Man, I propose, attempts for a reconciliation while downplaying the animosity and highlighting the afrmation of humanity through rehabilitation and recovery.
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1. Parsi diaspora and partition To study the dynamics of the socio-political and religious change that the Partition brought, it is necessary to examine the contemporary historical and political background of both the Indian sub-continent as well as the miniscule and liminal Parsi diaspora in India. The Parsi diaspora predates European civilization and is a direct result of the tyranny of the new Islamic masters of Iran, in the rst century CE. India forms a vital part of the earliest Parsi diaspora, by virtue of over 1000 years of history, during which the Zoroastrians of Iran, that is the Parsis, settled here. Quite uniquely, Parsis are in diverse diasporas that often run concurrently: the pre-colonial Indian diaspora; the Partition diaspora where the division of the sub-continent into India and Pakistan in 1947 found the Parsis on both sides of the new border; and the postcolonial/Western diaspora, in which the Parsis have left India or, Pakistan to live in Britain, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand (Bharucha 2000, pp. 55 61). Bapsi Sidhwa, who was born in Lahore in undivided India, writes out of a diaspora that is not just double but triple. As a Parsi born in colonial India, she belongs to an Indian diaspora. Again, as a young Parsi who lived in Pakistan, after 1947, she was in a diaspora generated by the partitioning of India. Further, as someone who presently spends much of her time in the USA, she is also, at least partly, in a Western diaspora. Based on her real-life experiences, to some extent, her award-winning novel, IceCandy-Man is concerned almost entirely with the anguish of this silent minority who were apparently invisible to national Partition politics. In this diaspora, the Parsis had to tread very carefully so as to avoid antagonizing either their Hindu or, Muslim hosts. The revisioning and retelling of Partition history from a multiple marginalized standpoint is what makes the novel so specic. In an interview with Julie Rajan, Sidhwa confesses, As a child in Pakistan it was very like Lennys life . . . . Like Lenny, I had polio as a child and spent a lot of time with the servants . . ., and wasnt sent to school. I didnt have an extended family and this resulted in my being a little isolated (www.monsoonmag.com/interviews/i3inter_sidhwa.html). Interestingly, Lenny, her mouth-piece character in her novel, Ice-Candy-Man, too is triply marginalized. Like her author, she too belongs to the minority Parsi community, initially as an Indian and later as a Pakistani. There is physical separation from the second homeland, India, as there was from the original homeland, Iran, in the history of Parsi diaspora. Further, seen from a womans point of view, she gives a distinctly marginalized viewpoint in both the patriarchal pre- and post-colonial worlds. Finally, since

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Lenny is also crippled by polio, she is triply dispossessed. The marginalized status of the narrator enables her to have the privilege of detachment: she gives us the whole story of Partition, instead of in fragments. The authorial voice, in this novel, therefore, is a powerful voice of hindsight. Lenny is neither merely an Indian, nor a Pakistani, she is much more versatile, like her character. One of Colonel Bharuchas pronouncements, which Lenny hears on an earlier visit to his clinic, impresses itself powerfully on Lennys consciousness: We must hunt with the hounds and run with the hare (Sidhwa 1989, p. 26). This double position that the Parsis felt they must occupy gives them a unique perspective. Their extreme vulnerability and lack of power paradoxically afforded them access to all the contending groups. Intelligently, they projected their neutrality by underscoring their small population size. The Parsis were astute enough to recognize their vulnerability and simultaneously to grab advantage out of their nonaligned status. A full understanding of Lennys version of the Partition of India and Pakistan therefore demands a similar neutral subject position from us as readers for fair assessments. Through the rst-person account of an eight-year old girl, Lenny, in Sidhwas work, we feel the unease and insecurity experienced by this ethnic and religious minority group the Parsis. Such quintessential diasporic discourses can be explained as, the social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, in Homi Bhabhas terms (Bhabha 1994, p. 2). In spite of the detailing of racial and religious characteristics, as the references to the Ahura Mazda and Tower of Death, Sidhwas protagonist, as in contrast with most of her familiar characters of other communities, is not a prisoner of her ethnicity or religion. Lenny, instead, tries to move beyond these constructs to wider spaces free of the pressures exerted by the dominant groups in colonial India. As diasporic Parsis, Lenny and her family, thereby, seem to be endeavouring to perfect the art of existing in a state of liminality, partaking of different cultures, yet ultimately retaining for themselves the refuge of their formative ethnoreligious identity. On account of their diasporic status as well as by being part of the smallest minority in pre- and post-Partition India, they adopt a discreet and politically na ve prole, (Sidhwa 1989, p. 26) in order to survive the religious antimonies in the wake of the Partition of India in 1947. The use of the Parsi child narrator, as the novelist herself explained to interviewer David Montenegro, brought objectivity to the narrative as her participation in events is not so involved (1990, pp. 513533). Therefore, she continues, Lenny is more free to record them, not being an actor immediately involved. However, despite being an outsider in a predominantly Muslim, Hindu and Sikh society, she is protected and loved by it. Moreover, she does not possess the prejudices that will later destroy the community. Importantly, seen through her subaltern eyes, her critique of the formation of the two nation-states does not have the tendency to generalize and push the blame on the basis of the actions of few nationalists, Gandhi, Nehru or Jinnah. The novel does prescribe nation to a Parsi-specic rendition, as we see a humanized picture of both Gandhi and Jinnah, though in glances. They are not seen as symbols or national icons, rather as normal esh and blood individuals with their own vulnerabilities. The neutrality maintained by the Parsi diaspora during the partition is thereby subtly reected in Lennys understanding of partition politics. Thus, this text acquires considerable signicance as it foregrounds the marginal voice of a Parsi who rewrites the histories of partition, communalism and nationalism challenging the partly monolithic world-view of Hindu and Muslim communities. Or, in other words, here, the subaltern voice of the narrator gives testimony to the oppressed other the abducted

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Hindu Ayah, the relatively liberal Muslim masseur as well as Hamida living in the refugee camp. Finally, it can be argued that perhaps owing to her diaspora status, Sidhwas/Lennys story of partition of India and Pakistan emphasizes more of repair of the trauma and coping up with life after partition in her particular locality, Lahore, than rupture and loss incurred during the event. Thus, Lennys account of Partition has a sense of detachment as well as a balanced view of dehumanizing effects of communalism, without a trace of protestation, preaching and histrionics. 2. Lennys understanding of history Authoritative readings on the genesis and development of the idea of Partition and the attendant problems of nationalism are generally biased, in terms of the historians nationality. On one hand, many Indian ofcial historical narratives of nationalism in India squarely blamed the British for Partition for instance, Ashok Mehta and Achyut Patwardhans The Communal Triangle in India (1947), provide us a classic Indian nationalist account of the event and attributes Muslim separatist demands to Machiavellian British divide and rule policies. On the other hand, Pakistani historians concentrate on the central role of Jinnah and the importance of the ideology of Pakistan, in their analysis of Partition. S.R. Khairi in Jinnah Reinterpreted (1995) argues that Nehru, rather than Jinnah, destroyed the unity of India by his rejection of 1946 Cabinet Mission proposals. So, both contemporary Indian nationalism and Muslim nationalism, and the tragic denouement, have been interpreted in India and Pakistan in ways that have often failed to include the many diversities in Partition. The treatment of themes like human suffering, women, rape and abduction, honour killings, children and refugee resettlement is usually very slender in these elementary history books. Literature and oral sources highlighting local specicities and personal traumas are, therefore, indispensable in the assessment of the human emotion of the 1947 massacre. Sidhwas novel Ice-Candy-Man is an important part of this whole picture of Partition. It sensitizes us to alternative discourses on the tragedy of 1947 within the overwhelming presence of dominant intellectual debates on Partitions impact on the individual and collective psyche of the two nations. In Ice-Candy-Man we get a glimpse of Sidhwas ability of addressing grim historical realities in an unbiased manner with both precision and affection. As Lennys world is torn apart by the horror of the partitioning of India, she voices serious questions about key diasporic concepts such as, home, nationality and exile. She prudently states Playing British Gods under the ceiling fans of the Faletis Hotel . . . the Radcliff Commission deals out Indian cities like a pack of cards. Lahore is dealt to Pakistan, Amritsar to India. I am Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that (Sidhwa 1989, p. 140). As Sidhwa similarly describes in Pakistani Bride: Hysteria mounted when the fertile, hot lands of the Punjab were suddenly ripped into two territories Hindu and Muslim, India and Pakistan. Until the last moment no one was sure how the land would be divided. Lahore, which everyone expected to go to India because so many wealthy Hindus lived in it, went instead to Pakistan. Jullundur, a Sikh stronghold, was allocated to India . . . . (2000, p. 4). As Lenny matures, she confronts a world increasingly reduced into categories and labels. Thus, on a sociological level, Sidhwas work is crucial to an understanding of the cultural complexities of the ambiguities of nation building, post-Independence Pakistani cultures and the diaspora they have occasioned.

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The childs fallibility and the fragmentary nature of her vision bring out a new version of history. As she is not yet an adult therefore she cannot have the knowledge about every detail in the birth of a nation. The novelist however seems to suggest very subtly that so does national history it too has its censorships and omissions. The turmoil and the atrocities are captured in the memory of the young girl with great tragic power and that is why she lingers on particular scenes for greater lengths of time. Lenny recalls: How long does Mozang Chowk burn . . . ? Mozang Chowk burns for months . . . and months . . . . Despite its brick and mortar construction: . . . the buildings could not have burned for months. Despite the residue of passion and regret, and loss of those who have in panic ed the re could not have burned for . . . months and months . . . . (Sidhwa 1989, p. 139). Lenny herself justies immediately But in my memory it is branded over an inordinate length of time: memory demands poetic license. In terms of the historical accuracy of the book, facts are moved around. Gandhis march, for example, is actually 15 years off, owing to poetic license and ction where one can manipulate events to arrive at the larger truth. The childs memory also gives us the license for such factual discrepancies. Lennys naivety and limited resources of knowledge makes her account more powerful. Only the signicant details are harvested and revealed in an imaginative way. From this perspective, such representation of history is more candid. Above all, Lenny seems to be largely troubled by the pointless brutality in the sociopolitical scenario during the Partition. Like the celebrated contemporary novel, Midnights Children (Rushdie 1981), Ice-Candy-Man too, in a way, exposes the ctionality and pain of all the metaphors implied in the national history of the Indian sub-continent. One of the central metaphors in Rushdies novel the birth of a nation is associated with the accompanying pangs and screams. Similarly, in the other text the cruelty of Partition is aptly represented by the grim trope of the pulling apart of the legs of Lennys life-like doll by herself (Sidhwa 1989, pp. 138139). Political acts like that of partitioning a country is likened to a childs play where histories are being made on the basis of whims of a select few. The available historiography of Partition is invariably informed by political ideology. G. Pandey in Remembering Partition argues that while ofcial histories view Partition merely as constitutional political arrangement, survivors memories suggest that it amounted to a sundering, a whole new beginning and thus, a radical reconstitution of community and history (Pandey 2001, p. 7). Thus, one can discern a battle between two forms of history in Sidhwas novel the standard, authorized and hyped one and the personal and passionate one. Each one challenges the truth of the other. On her eighth birthday, Lenny and her cousin listen to the celebrations of the birth of the new nation, Pakistan, on the radio, as Jinnah declares: You are free. You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques. . . . You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the State . . . Pakistan Zindabad! (Sidhwa 1989, p. 144). The irony is clear. Such inclusions while blandly imparting information, ofcial facts and speeches, stand out starkly amid the ethos of imaginative excess in the novel. Thus, the standard historical extracts as in this instance form a kind of jarring interruption in the narrative. Also, another facet that is commonly obscured in ofcial historical records of the 1947 riots the role of many outstanding private individuals, irrespective of their community or state, in refugee rehabilitation is highlighted in Sidhwas work. The fact that Hamida, initially sheltered in a refugee camp for fallen women, gets employed

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in the narrators household, is therefore signicant. Furthermore, Lennys own mother and Parsi godmother rescue many such abducted women in Lahore, Shanta being on of them. So, the role of somewhat heroic private individuals in rehabilitation of the victims of the Partition riots is again what distinguishes the private stories of Hamida or, the Ayah from the generality of the Partition that exists publicly in history books. Importantly, Lennys history from the other perspective is also a discourse on power by one who is powerless. The novel, thereby, gives us an alternate and subaltern version of history as well as power, though both as intrinsically interlinked. In the process, the narrative destabilizes the centrality and certainty of the ofcial version. Such sub-versions of power also critique the one ofciating them. The novelists spotlight is not on locating the heroes/villains of Partition. Sidhwas stress seems rather on the specically historical nature of problems encountered by a diaspora the minority Parsi diaspora, the Hindu religious diaspora in the Muslim state of Pakistan, as well as the female diaspora constituting the raped victims of ravaged Hindu, Sikh and Muslim families in the new states in the process of acquiring new nationality and citizenship. Again, this formally sophisticated novel also uses narrative modes of fantasy, allegory and fragmentation of time and space to depict the young Parsi narrators view of the Partition holocaust. Lennys worst fear of her house being broken with the dismemberment of the country comes out to be true in a metaphorical level. It does break her home, like many other homes, as she loses many of her Hindu, Muslim and Sikh friends. The story gives an insightful portrayal of the ensuing traumatic deconstruction of perceptions and ideas as Partition upon her little space. Thus, Sidhwas novel points out the fallacy in viewing Partition as merely a singular historical event of August 1947. She rather emphasizes how it was a part of a much longer and painful historical process that changed common peoples perceptions of friends, neighbours, beliefs and humanity at large. Moving away from the metanarratives of nationalism and communalism, Ice-Candy-Man gives voice to the displaced ordinary people and their existential reality. What lends greater credibility to the novel, then, is its ability to unfold certain critically important dimensions, like the human suffering of the innocent, without using religion as the principle point of reference. 3. Lennys evaluation of identity Partition not only destroyed the sub-continents communal life, it also altered and reconstructed identities. Sidhwas text becomes more indispensable in contemporary research on Partition when read alongside signicant studies on the plights and rehabilitation of raped and abducted women in 1947, like the narratives of Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasins Borders and Boundaries (1998) and Urvashi Butalias The Other Side of Silence (1998). As the dening features of identity include community, religion and nationality, in this section, I would like to deal with two particular aspects in Lennys understanding of identity as a concept. First, her own diasporic status plays a major role in the shaping of her own identity within contemporary socio-political scenario. Second, her awareness of her feminine status illuminates her perception of the identities of the other female characters surrounding her. The second point becomes vital when we note that Lenny is mostly inuenced by and looks up to the female matriarchal gures in her life, as her references to godmother, her own mother, Shanta and later Hamida,

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prove. More specically, in this part of the paper, I intend to study how the narrator is troubled by the apparent xity of these dening features of identity. The Parsi diaspora, as discussed earlier, had perfected the art of existing in a state of liminality, partaking of different cultures, yet ultimately retaining their formative ethnoreligious identity. Lennys identity therefore has various traces: she befriends Sikhs like Ranna, she adores Hindus like her Ayah and is also sympathetic towards Muslims like the masseur. Yet, these varying facets about her inclinations towards people belonging to rival religious communities do not make her identity dissonant. Rather, her compassion and understanding towards certain members of each religion becomes a language itself communicating between three diverse religions and two separate nations. Sidhwa, herself, too feels the same, as she reveals in her interview: I would describe myself as a Punjabi-Pakistani-Parsi woman, because all three societies inuenced me. I guess I actually have a whole medley of identities. And thats wonderful because this combination made me the writer I am (www.monsoonmag.com/ interviews/i3inter_sidhwa.html). In fact, the new title of the novel, Cracking India, by which it was published later in the USA in 1991, refers to the image of India as a riddle with so many cultures. It is particularly betting as a title because the novel elucidates that while the complex mix of religions and the interwoven fabric of family and community life in India can be confounding to the uninitiated reader, to some like the Parsi diasporan it is ubiquitous and humanizing. In her presentation of multiple positions in the culture wars and religious conicts during Partition, Lenny suggests a continuum of perspective: we are acclimatized to both extreme positions as well as intermediate points along the spectrum. We are offered the extremist views of the butcher and the ice-candy-man side by side with those with moderate ideas like Imam Din and the masseur. She vividly portrays the rampant lootings, meaningless cycles of reprisals and revenge killings the murder of refugees and the trainloads of corpses as referred to by the ice-candy-man. Sidhwa thus gives us a glance of both carefully planned attacks like the latter, as well as individual acts of violence, like the killing of the masseur, which was seemingly fuelled by personal jealousy on part of the title character. The celebration of hybridity of Lennys identity can also be seen in the language of the text. The syntax and diction of Sidhwas use of language in this novel is distinctive in its incorporation of many Hindustani, Urdu and Sikh words in her vocabulary like, chachi, mian and granthi, respectively. She evokes the plurality of the Indian subcontinent for which no single language seems adequate. The multi-lingual texture of life in the sub-continent is woven into the narrators concern in the novel for the other communities and is negotiated on various levels. Further, language can be seen as a metaphor for the rich profusion of Indias diverse culture, which prior to Partition formed an asset, while post-Partition turned into a problem. The Parsi diaspora, however, smartly appropriates Hindu, Muslim as well as Sikh words in their vocabulary throughout the novel owing to their particular character. While celebrating uidity and multiplicity in her use and representation of language, Lenny/Sidhwa thus resist such articial territorial divisions. The diasporic position is best exploited by the Parsi godmother whose name, as she is referred to by Lenny, itself is symbolic. Having an inuential and dignied personality, she is respected by Hindus and Muslims alike. She effectively mediates between antagonistic communities and single-handedly rescues the Hindu Ayah from the clutches of the malicious opportunist, the ice-candy-man, while verbally chastising the latter. Again, it is she who informs Lenny about her strong Parsi heritage. Despite

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being part of a tiny minority, she faces contemporary religious conict with wisdom and practicality. The question of belonging, integral to expatriate living and expatriate writing, acquires an additional urgency in case of women characters and women writers. In case of female migrants the issue of self-denition can hardly be dissociated from that of gender. As C. Vijayasree argues, Women are born into an expatriate state, and they are expatriated in patria; hence their writing in exile is necessarily different from that of their male writers (Vijayasree 2000, p. 124). She adds, a woman is always an outsider and the effects of elsewhereness, which is termed alibi as in Latin, is felt most painfully in her own native setting. Her point about the perpetual sense of elsewhereness being articulated in the works of Indian writers of the West can easily be appropriated in the case of Sidhwa. The author is candid about the internalized exile that she had born within in her interviews, as referred earlier. Thus, we nd a perfect externalization of this feeling in Lennys narrative in Ice-Candy-Man, as she contrasts her physical exile with the universal psychological exile. Again, it is this feeling that enables the narrator to connect with the post-Partition exile of her two ayahs, Hamida and the Shanta. Their plights in this novel epitomize the terrible consequences of the gendering of the nation and the emphasis on manhood involving protection of the nation and its women. The female approximation of displacement and its literary representation in women diaspora writing displays few identiable patterns, as has been pointed out by Vijayasree (2000, pp. 124126). Carrying on with her argument, one can add that Sidhwa ts in the line of female diaspora writers as Bharati Mukherjee and Kamala Markandaya, as she focuses on the essential estrangement of women in a man-made world while voicing the angst of alienation. Besides, all of them are strongly preoccupied with female body and sexuality. Sidhwa maps Lennys female sexuality from a womans point of view. This aspect of female sexual awakening seems particularly subversive when considered in the context of the authors as well as the narrators constrictive and rigid patriarchal background. Like Mukherjees novel Jasmine (1989), Ice-Candy-Man breaks the silence of womans physical reality. As Lennys references to my burgeoning breasts and the projected girth and wiggle of my future bottom suggests, the novel depicts her slow awaking to sexuality and physicality (Sidhwa 1989, p. 220). Thus, the female protagonists body can be read as a text, while the narrative brilliantly fuses the physical and semantic aspects of her growing up experience. Further, Lenny sees her sexual awakening in the patriarchal Lahore society as one which is burdened by ambivalences and contradictions. As she encounters veiled Muslim women in the park segregated from the Hindus and Christians, like the readers of this text, she also participates in the retreat into traditional taboos that monitor the revealing of the female body. Woman should fulll the individual male psychic need for scopic/sexual gratication and yet guarded by censors in national culture. She further explores the contradictions in womans position as spectacle in contemporary Lahore: the drugging of the child-bride Papoo, the segregation and torture of the kidnapped women in the jailhouse for women, and most of all, the treacherous use of the Ayah as a prostitute in Hira Mandi. In each case, the body of the woman becomes a focus for the symbolisms of cultural and religious reaction. We are reminded of the fact that our gender perceptions are deeply embedded in the dynamics of social change. The identity of the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh women characters in the novel changes as their bodies are reconstructed as sites of difference. The use of the female body, in voyeuristic terms, as a prized territory, meant to be conquered and controlled by enemy

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camps, is quite common in any warfare. The narrative of Kartar Kaur suggests the poignancy of the issue of using women as political scapegoats in honour killings (2006, p. 129). In this novel, this can be alluded to the poor fate-smitten women like Hamida (Sidhwa 1989, p. 212). Further, the central character, Shanta, becomes a classic symbol of India itself a possession to be fought for, and ultimately ravaged by Hindu and Muslim men alike (Innes 2007, p. 57). As Klaus Theweleit has said, woman is an innite untrodden territory of desire which at every stage of historical deterritorialization, men in search of material for utopias have inundated with their desires (1987, p. 294). He further adds that it is the lure of a freer existence that marks this territory of desire and is most often indulged in by men in search of power rather than those already dominant (Theweleit 1987, p. 294). As women are treated as collective scapegoats, it is particularly apt that Lenny stages her mock-Partition/act of dismemberment on the body of a doll/female. Throughout the text, the body and morality of woman and national events cannot be separated. Talk of the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru is invariably qualied by gossip about his scandalous relationship with Lady Mountbatten. Jinnahs personality is also tarnished by references to his unhappy marriage with a beautiful young Parsi girl. Such gossip about these national characters constitutes a major popular discourse. Importantly, womans shame is the cornerstone of Islamic fundamentalism. The status of woman as a sign constantly subordinated to male dictated contexts is demonstrated in the transformation of the Ayahs dress code once she becomes the wife of the ice-candy-man in newly formed Pakistan. Lennys story of the fate of Ayah after her abduction by a gang of Muslim fanatics exposes the male-oriented rhetoric of the nation. As the ice-candy-man defends himself when godmother confronts him: I saved her . . . . They wouldve . . . killed her . . . I married her! (Sidhwa 1989, p. 249), he justies the national desire that women are the electorate to be wooed by those in power. In the unpartitioned, comparatively secular world of Lahore, the Ayahs exuberance was irrepressible. In post-Partition, fundamentalist Lahore/Pakistan, she is captive to the Pakistani nationalist rhetoric and its view of women. From being an abducted Hindu, the Ayah is converted to a Muslim prostitute, to be later recovered and sent back as a Hindu refugee, her identity is in a continual state of construction and reconstruction. From this standpoint, the story of 1947, therefore, can be interpreted as a gendered narrative of displacement and dispossession. 4. Lennys critique of religion Notably, eminent contemporary historian Mushirul Hasan in Indias Partition (1993) unravelled the ethical failure the Partition played out. Earlier historians like Ian Talbot in Punjab and the Raj, 18491947 (1988) and David Gilmartin in Empire and Islam (1998) while drawing attention to factional alignments and wartime contingencies in the making of Pakistan apparently ignored the human consequences of Partition. The role of religion in the cataclysmic event is more often critiqued in oral narratives of survivor accounts and Partition literature. In Ice-Candy-Man it is through the eyes of the young Parsi that we comprehend how the Indian freedom struggle took the guise of a religious crusade resulting in the birth of a theological Muslim state, Pakistan. The creating of such national margins actually marginalized countless innocent lives whose hopes and homes were erased because of an act of political will of the powerful. The lives of Hindus and Sikhs in Lahore/ Pakistan after Partition, therefore, posed an awful dilemma.

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According to the author, though there are many interesting layers and insightful interdependent issues in this novel, the main theme is identity: I was just attempting to write the story of what religious hatred and violence can do to people and how close evil is to the nature of man (www.monsoonmag.com/interviews/i3inter_ sidhwa.html). Sidhwa draws our attention to the debate regarding how far can the term diaspora be used and extended to describe religious migration arising out of specic geo-political crisis. Lenny is thrown into a psychological battle as she desperately tries to grasp an understanding of the rapidly changing world around her. The identities of ordinary people are increasingly fragmented and fractured. As Sidhwa alarmingly recounts in her novel, Pakistani Bride (2000, p. 16):
Mola Singh stands quite still. The men look away despite the dark. Their indignation ares into rage. God give our arms strength, one of them shouts, and in a sudden movement, knives glimmer. Their cry, Bole so Nihal, Sat Sri Akal, swells into the ferocious chant: Vengeance! Vengeance! Vengeance! The old Sikh sinks to his knees.

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Just prior to Partition, as her familiar characters turn into token religious nomenclatures, Ayah as a Hindu, Imam Din and the popsicle vendor as Muslim, Hari and Moti the untouchables, and godmother and her nuclear family, Parsis, the narrator naively puts up the most vital question What is God? (Sidhwa 1989, p. 94). With Partition, the discourse of secular rationalism and intimacy that reared Lenny nally becomes discredited and consigned to the ames. As the HinduMuslim conict gathers momentum, Lenny confesses that her perception of people changed (Sidhwa 1989, p. 94). Gradually, with the brutal killing of the innocent masseur and the abduction of her Ayah, she understands that her world has been broken and she will have to work with the fragments she is left with. Thus, she strives to envision and articulate new allegiances that can carry her forward, contending realities and forms of knowledge. Lennys relationship with Hamida, as her new Ayah, postPartition, makes her more self-conscious and understanding. She continues her task of envisioning and re-visioning individuals and communities in such times of crisis. She narrates the story of Partition victims in multiple voices thus, we see Hamida from the perspective of the Muslim cook Himat Ali, her Parsi mother who has given her work and the Sikh guard of the womens jail. Thus, Ice-Candy-Man critiques generalized versions of Partition history by giving us not one but a series of perspectives, through the various characters in Lennys world, which counter one another. As readers we interrogate each characters version of Partition Rannas story, Hamidas story, for instance and the contexts which inuenced them. The power of allegiance to any religious ideology to mask human cruelties is explicated by the ice-candy-mans role in the novel. The effects of historical disaster are perhaps brought in most meaningful and human terms in the abuse of the Hindu Ayah in the hands of the title character, the ice-candy-man. This complex and layered character reads Urdu newspapers, the Urdu Digest, and even English dailies like Civil and Military Gazette. He informs the Ayah and her group of friends about national and world news. Occasionally, he drops a few insightful remarks like: If we want India back we must take pride in our customs, our clothes, our languages . . . (Sidhwa 1989, pp. 2829) Signicantly, he falls short of mentioning the word religion here. As the other characters in the text dwindle into religious symbols, the Muslim vendor succumbs to religious fanaticism and intolerance. His parentage too

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is important in this context his father is a puppeteer, while his mother a prostitute. His paternity or, more accurately, his family lineage is in dispute and so is his ability to tell about his wife. It is interesting to note here that while India is often gured as the motherland, Pakistan, on the contrary, is neither mother nor fatherland, but was inspired by the poet Iqbals vision of Muslim brotherhood. This metaphor is partly literalized as he abducts and forcibly shames and ruins Ayahs dignity and justies himself by citing amorous romantic poets such as Faiz, Mir and Ghalib. His defending argument when confronted by the godmother that otherwise the Muslim zealots would have killed her is a grotesque approximation of Jinnahs famous historical words on religious tolerance on the day of the birth of Pakistan. Lenny thus hints at the human fallacies of the national gure heads and demysties them Gandhi in the case of India and Jinnah in the case of Pakistan. The narrator/author thereby also critique the relationship between lie, ction and history. The most disturbing aspect of the novel is the ice-candy-mans lie about taking good care of the Ayah while he turned her into a prostitute that troubles Lenny throughout her life. The lie which is actually synonymous to the betrayal of the trust of others jars the sanctity of many preconceived ideas and notions about humans and their behaviour in the young psyche of the child. Partition is interestingly placed around the middle of the story of the girls awakening to life and history. So, in a way Partition seems to asunder her world of dreams, fantasies and fables while suddenly jolting her out into a rude, nightmarish and grim reality. Notably, in his essay, In God We Trust Rushdie had opined that Pakistan had been insufciently imagined (1991, p. 387). Thus, in other words, the lie of the title character takes away, at least partly, the all-important meaning from not only Lennys and the Ayahs life, but also the conception and idealization of Pakistan in the eyes of the readers. The novel therefore points out the fact that liberal freedom is a perilous balance between the need for freedom from tyranny and the need for a centre that can withstand the threat of disintegration. Lennys narrative of the birth of Pakistan shows us how liberal freedom is under threat from forces of anarchy, in the guise of religious rioters and overzealous mobs. As a subaltern, the narrator/author hints toward a much needed subtle balance between freedom and tyranny. The invention of diaspora politics, as Monika Fludernik (2003) rightly argues, takes a step in the direction of preserving the celebratory tenets of hybridity, and of couching hybridity in the language of identity politics rather than that of individual self-fulllment (Introduction, xxiv). The text thus can be seen as a plea for liberal values for human rights and civil and religious freedoms. Conclusion Quite evidently, a study of Ice-Candy-Man as an integral part of Partition discourses raises more questions than it manages to answer. The text sensitizes us to the need to reexamine the partition debate afresh, transcending populist notions, particular ideologies, misconceptions and national stereotypes. Without being investigative about the causes of this strategic political event, Sidhwa makes us feel its immediacy in the lives of the victims. The alternative agenda of this Parsi diaspora narrative is to expose the ways in which Partition redened religious, socio-cultural and territorial boundaries. The politics of nationalism and Partition reduced people of all the warring communities to tokens rather than complex human beings. Rather than a mere sub-text, religion

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forms a text in itself in this novel. Partition violence deed the basic moral values of Hinduism, Islam as well as Sikh faith. The helplessness of Lennys mother and Imam Din in counter-foiling the abduction of the Hindu Ayah by the treacherous title character accompanied by a mob of Muslim fanatics proves how societal forces went beyond the control of an individual or a family. Moreover, we learn how Partition also becomes a parameter to study the dynamics of social change and gender perception. Sidhwa sees Partition as a male narrative by highlighting the indiscriminate violence on women sufferers and survivors. Importantly, as a womans narrative, the embodying of the perspective of the Other and voicing the experience of an entire female community of homeless victims of Partition form powerful allegories. The sympathetic portrayal raped and abducted women characters, like Shanta, Hamida and Noni Chachi, complicates our notions about home, patriarchy, state, community, human rights and history. Lennys accumulation of female sexual awakening helps her articulate formerly suppressed voices with greater sensitivity. As the ofcial and popular narratives imagining nation lead to the engendering of nation as male through their representation of the female body, Sidhwas/ Lennys story seen through the subaltern eyes seems to challenge such representations of nation and the female body by exposing the inadequacies and terrible consequences involved in national patriarchal agencies protecting their women. Partition, in other words, did not solve the problem about Muslim identity or, a secular Hindu national identity rather, it presented more acute dilemmas of identity. In this text, we learn with Lenny that religious identities are not eternally xed rather, in Stuart Halls words, are subject to the continuous play of history, culture and power (2003, p. 234). Our identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by and within the narratives of the past. To, some extent then, cultural identity is a social performance, not unlike Judith Butlers ideas about performing gender. Both gender and identity are continuous, social constructions (Butler 1999, pp. 176180). The role of state, society, gender and community in reshaping ones post-Partition identity as explored in this text therefore turns out to be complex. Like the novelist herself, the narrator does not have a single identity or a single awareness, but a composite of identities and afliations. Lennys being engaged in a constant ritual of accommodation and assimilation does not allow her to be at home with any one religion. Her intellectual engagement and disengagement creates a sense of perspective that is both incisive and analytical. In the absence of a real geographical motherland, she creates a home on a metaphorical level. This enables her to assert the sameness between the Hindu Ayah and the Muslim masseur, the untouchable Papoo with herself more than their religious differences she is keen to explore the possible factors that connect them. Lenny critiques the extreme religious frenzy of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs around her during the crisis of Partition. As an archetypal diasporan, she displays and believes in moderation rather than extremism of religious fanatics. At times her outlook towards religion seems to be far more mature than that of her Hindu and Muslim hosts. She nds no reason in celebrating and externalizing religious differences in the wake of Partition as she continues to see through their hearts and minds, though their exteriors superimpose a new set of distracting impressions (Sidhwa 1989, p. 94). She questions the utility of ones blindly following religious traditions as, Haris displaying his bodhi: Just because his grandfathers shaved their heads and grew stupid tails is no reason why Hari should (Sidhwa 1989, p. 95). If religion is centred on our concept of God, she puts up the most imposing question in the novel What is God? Characteristically, she never tries to solve this riddle, nor does

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she deliberate on the answer of this intriguing question, rather she leaves it for us as readers to speculate. The process of searching for an adaptive strategy on the part of a diasporan becomes the attempt to distinguish what is essential in the religion and what is not. Above all, Ice-Candy-Man suggests the density of the concepts of nationality and diasporas. Post-partition, Lennys hybrid realization of her own diasporic status, and her awareness of being between cultures, makes her understand the fact that our religious identity as a production, which is always in process rather than being an established fact. Her story narrates her act of individuating, which later leads her to know who she is and what she believes. Dislocation from a familiar world can also lead to connections with newer/other ones. Further, she points out both the possibilities and malaise of independence. Partition resulted in geographical, cultural, religious and above all, psychological dislocations. Like the Parsi diasporans, post-colonial Indians and Pakistanis too must embody their impulse to reinvent themselves and to create their own morality, as otherwise independence can become purposelessness. While assimilating the enormity of the experience from a study of this text and few oral sources of Partition memories, the most interesting point that emerges is that the Partition violence was not merely a communal conict, rather it was fuelled by the human desire to ethnically cleanse minority populations. This is exactly what Sidhwa critiques and denounces in her novel. Thus, this assessment of Ice-CandyMan, along with the parallel texts of standard history texts and personal survivor interviews, advocates the necessity of interpreting and re-interpreting the event and memory of vivisection of the country in 1947.

Notes on contributor
Dr Paromita Deb received her PhD in English literature from Calcutta University in 2008. She served as a Guest Lecturer of English in the Post Graduate Correspondence School, Gauhati University. She was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata for pursuing research on short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. Her research areas include body studies, early modern literature, Shakespeare, Indian diaspora, Indian writing in English and American literature. She has published papers on these areas in various journals.

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