Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India demonstrates women’s representation during the Partition when bureaucracy only valued women as a source for reproduction and servitude; A body made for the males uncontrollable “appetite for sex” (Das 27). Even in the case of women being abducted and raped by Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh fanatics during the Partition of 1947, the governments involved still held women responsible or simply forgot about them. Sidhwa ventures into these androcentric ideals in Cracking India by exploring the different ways women, especially lower-class women, experienced sexual and class oppression during and after the Partition. As well as the brewing complexity of violence that slowly develops the “us” versus “them” mentality generationally persevered between Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus.
Sidhwa’s novel is told by Lenny, a child affected with polio, about her family and Shanta, her Ayah in Lahore before the Partition. Throughout this first part of the novel, Lenny sexually develops through her nanny, Ayah. She enjoys watching Ayah get attention for being a “beautiful Hindu woman” (Basu 12); she lives vicariously through her because she cannot do so herself due to her age, disease, and class. Through Lenny’s voyeurism, we see her absorbing all aspects of Ayah’s sexual encounters, including the abduction scene. Unknowingly betraying Ayah by revealing her position to Ice-Candy-Man and watching her fall victim to the ethnic violence of the Partition caused her to become a “passive spectator of violence” (Basu 18). She and her mother were only able to watch as the Muslim crowd led by Ice-Candy-Man, take Ayah away. Ultimately, Lenny started to break her dolls as a way to cope with the horrors of her betrayal, falling victim to the collective violence as a bystander during the Partition (Sidhwa 148).
Veena Das’ “The Figure of the Abducted Woman” illustrated the system’s ineptitude towards protecting the female body. The bureaucracy valued only the woman’s figure as a source for reproduction and servitude; A body made for the male’s uncontrollable “appetite for sex” (Das 27). In the case of a woman being abducted and raped by Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh fanatics during the Partition, the individual governments held the women responsibly. During these hypermasculine times, the opposing sides wanted to “spoil” their women, which brought dishonor to their communities and nations. In the case of Ayah, Ice-Candy-Man used the Hindu Muslim conflicts to get revenge on Ayah for rejecting him for Masseur. The government responded by launching a recovery operation for women and children abducted by the opposing sides and return them to their families. Considering this, many of these women were not arriving at a family with open arms; they returned to a family that saw them as spoiled. Women in these situations had a few options: stay with their abductors and start a family, get married to any man that would take her, fall victim to honor killings, or remain with the abductor as a prostitute.
Sidhwa’s novel unravels how female autonomy is non-existing, especially towards those of a lower class like Ayah. The female body’s connection to the purity of a nation views an attack on the female body as an exemplification of the “intimate connection” of sexuality in the construction of nationalism’ (Basu 7). Nehru and Gandhi were for the restoration of the female body to their respective homes and their social reintegration. Ketu Katrak points to Gandhi’s complicated relationship with gender and nation. While he considered the women’s suffering heroic, he equated “‘sexual abstinence with nobility’ (399)” (Basu 9). The female body’s connection to nationalism perpetuates this idea of possession and obligation to restore honor by collecting women from opposite sides. To facilitate the recovery plan, the government passed a bill delineating “what constituted an abducted woman?” This bill allowed the police and social workers to remove and cohere women who fit the abducted women’s description and sent them back to their families, even if that woman did not want to be recovered, restored, or returned. On the condition of a woman breaking their roles as sexed objects of reproduction, the government forcibly removed them to stop them from effectively bringing down the patriarchy. According to Das, the female autonomy threatened the social structures uplifting the male supremacy (Das 36).
Lopamudra Basu mentions in “The repetition of silence: Partition, rape, and female labor in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India,” the communal element’s quite descending into full-on ethnic violence (Basu 21). The cultural difference in Ayah’s social circle was, for the most part, respected and accepted, and this often reflected upon the neighboring villages of Lahore. They live harmoniously among each other, which Basu calls the utopian aspect that Sidhwa was attempting to invoke. Nevertheless, as the political and social climate began to shift, so did allegiance and morality. Soon what used to be a joke snowballed into communal violence and tensions. For example, earlier in the novel, Hari was teased about his dhoti, and as soon as Lenny becomes aware of the fragility of religious and ethnic differences; what used to be considered horseplay is now Hari standing “in the bleak center” of violence, undressed by the community he called home (Sidhwa 126). This points to the often-overlooked brewing of communal violence, waiting for the social and political okay to insight and act upon those violent acts.
From the beginning of the novel, the audience was aware of Ayah’s sexual appeal. She was always described as “round and plump…Full-blown cheeks, pouting mouth…a rolling bouncy walk that agitates the globules of her buttocks.” (Sidhwa 13). The constant sexualization of Ayah by Lenny and, on some occasions, her mother can also serve as a trope for gender roles among the classes. In “The repetition of silence: Partition, rape, and female labor in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India,” Lopamudra Basu points to the “satiric humor” (Basu 18) that occurs in the novel in the co-existing between master and servant. Mother is often described with an “exuberant quality of her innocence” with “a jaw as delicately oval as an egg,” an object of prestige and class (Sidhwa 50). At the same time, Ayah is given all the sex appeal and attention. An object of desire that has brought material goods from her suitors trying to get her attention like the Chinaman, which Basu uses a foreshadow to Ayah’s prostitution.
Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India explores the different ways women experienced oppression during the Partition. Women like Shanta and Hamida lived in servitude as ayahs for privileged children like Lenny. They are women who fell victim to classism and the violence of the Partition. as an abducted woman, Shanta went from a woman who was “eighteen years old and round and plump” (Sidhwa 13) and admired by many to a “fallen woman” with a “royal pimp” (Sidhwa 260) of a husband who raped her. Das explains their governments were interested in delegating their agenda in maintaining a patriarchal society. Inasmuch as if a child was born out of this situation, the father (abductor) still had rights over the child, if not more, even if that child was a product of rape under colonial courts. If the child was a product of rape or the child of the abductor’s concubine (victim), it would be considered illegitimate and shut out of society. In fear of building a new country upon “counterfeit children,” they illegitimatized them for serving as a reminder of the violent and unpure past of their country (Das 35). With this intention, the government criminalized the women who bore them, regarding the men as modeled citizens with natural urges. The government’s main concern with their recovery plan was to restore “purity” within their nation’s reputation and uplift male supremacy by squashing any autonomy source for women.
Women like Shanta were dominated by men like Ice-Candy-Man and the women like upper-class women like Godmother, who decide on every aspect of her life. Godmother was a woman who made everything her business and had the privilege of speaking to anyone as she wanted to; she was the exception because of her socio-economic status. Her class and economic status allow her to speak down on men like Ice-Candy-Man questioning his manliness and motives, something someone like Shanta or Hamida could never do. Lenny, mother and Godmother have the luxury to watch and not risk their chastity. Even in the abduction scene, they stood and watched while the mob took her away. This shield protected them from the ethnic violence imposed on Ayah as a Hindu woman with “no familial network of support” and lower socio-economic status, which left her exposed to sexual violence and objectification during the Partition (Basu 16).
They decide whom she dances for and whether she should be restored to her family. Coming from a bourgeois class, Godmother and mother assumed the role of savior for the abducted women. They were allowed to offer Hamida a job as an ayah for Lenny because she was not allowed to see her children, and they were able to remove Shanta from her marriage to Ice-Candy-Man and send her to her pre-partition family. One of the ugly realities is that these women are not going back to a family with open arms; they are going back to a family that sees them as spoiled. Women then have three options, stay with their abductors and start families, get married to any man that would take her, or be victims of honor killings (Rajiva 54). In both of these instances, the voice of the victim is not essential. The savior complex is played by members of a higher class than Shanta and Hamida; they know what is best for them and the country. Their governments ignore their needs and wants while drowning them with fault and unacceptance. They never decide in a woman’s best interest; they only want to further their agenda in maintaining a patriarchal society. Had a child been born out of this situation, the father(abductor) still had rights over that child, even if that child was a product of rape. That child would be considered illegitimate and would be shunned by Hindu society.
Sukeshi Kamra’s “Engaging Traumatic Histories: The 1947 Partition of India in Collective Memory” redefined the violence that occurred during the Partition as “situational violence,” as a way to explain how “normally peaceful citizens” turn to violence (Kamra 165). A form of separating the Partition from the Indian social order, containing the violence to a certain point when the people affected who became perpetrators, were under “extreme fear and panic.” This reconfiguration of the partition violence can be seen as a way for perpetrators to justify their actions after the fact, to insight empathy. Notably, when Ice-Candy-Man returns sometime after the riots, he is completely transformed and could pass as a cultured man (Sidhwa 262). During this brief visit, Ice-Candy-Man returns because he does not want people, especially Godmother, who he admired, to “misjudge him” after the abductions. However, in his attempt to level with Godmother, she strikes him for letting Ayah “be raped by butchers, drunks, and goondas and says she has to no harm?” (Sidhwa260). His reasoning is solely based on the idea that he “saved” Ayah by marrying her when no one would have her. In categorizing the type of violence, are we normalizing the hideous acts the perpetrators took part in? In accepting this situational violence, are we giving perpetrators like Ice-Candy-Man a get-out-of-jail card? Alternatively, are we limiting the Partition as an event in 1947 and disregarding the effects and traumas still prevalent in India?
All things considered, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India is a novel that discusses the relationship between social contract and sexual contract. For Das, these contracts signified the relationship between man’s political and social order, further elucidating to the disorder that occurs within the nation when the woman’s figure is attacked—in this case, being lower-class women like Hamida and Shanta’s figure being “consigned to a state of abjectness” (Basu 22), forgotten, and largely ignored by their governments and societies. The nonexistent agency of women, especially those of a lower-class, who were victims of the partition violence worked as a fuel for the heteropatriarchal government to exude control over the female body and reinstate purity to the nation.
Works Cited
Butalia, Urvashi. “Beginnings.” The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, Duke University Press, 2000, pp. 3–20.
“The Figure of the Abducted Woman: The Citizen as Sexed.” Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, by Veena Das and Stanley, University of California Press, 2006, pp. 18–37.
Kamra, Sukeshi. “Engaging Traumatic Histories: The 1947 Partition of India in Collective Memory.” Partition the Long Shadow, edited by Urvashi Butalia, Zubaan, 2015, pp. 155–177.
Rajiva, Jay. POSTCOLONIAL PARABOLA: Literature, Tactility, and the Ethics of Representing Trauma. BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC USA, 2017.
Sidhwa, Bapsi. Cracking India: A Novel. Milkweed Ed., 2008.
