Foreword
The extent of pain and trauma that
took place during Partition – the massacres, destruction of families, material
loss, displacement of communities and other ordeals – covered such a wide
spectrum that it took decades for the subject to even be approached. The
process of unravelling and trying to make sense of what happened continues, but
the far-reaching consequences may never be fully comprehended. With the silence
of decades, our understanding will always be based on conjecture or
extrapolation.
It took fifty years for Urvashi
Butalia to begin the process of documenting the experiences women had during
Partition. An entire half of the displaced, denuded and dismembered population
had such a dramatically different story than what had been previously
recorded! The fact that it had been
completely ignored for fifty years carries its own message.
Ten years later, when Nandita
Bhavnani started exploring the Sindh story – so very different from what had
happened in Punjab or Bengal – it was still seen as inconsequential.
Unlike Punjab and Bengal, Sindh was
never partitioned. Hindus were a comfortable minority, well integrated in the
province for centuries. It was believed that this would continue after
Partition. However, 1947 onwards, they faced continuous threats, communal
violence and discrimination. As time passed, the situation deteriorated and the
naively anticipated ‘normal’ became a chimera.
Here was a population that had not
seen dead bodies on the streets. Not too many heaps of them, that is. There
were neither drama nor loud retellings. All they wanted was to resume their
lives of comfort and dignity. And so they worked hard, used their enterprise
and their historical advantages – and quietly integrated.
At first, what was lost was seen as
merely material. What was not seen was that, along with the material loss –
hugely significant material loss – so much else was also lost. Relationships. A
way of life. Familiarity and connection with the land. Families once tightly
connected were abruptly scattered. Elders died of broken hearts. The trauma
which enveloped the community would continue to manifest in different ways for
generations to come. Parents stopped speaking to their children in their mother
tongue. Old customs gave way to new ones. The violent severing caused huge
chunks of history to vanish, especially recent history. To resurrect it would
be a long and perilous task.
The eruptions of Partition caused
sparks to fly and scatter. Amidst the agony and trauma, amazingly, instances of
beauty arose too. There were the personal sacrifices made to protect members of
the other community. There were the sagas of the heroic rebuilding of lives.
There were the remarkable, indomitable, institutions that arose from the
refugee camps. Many Sindhi writers produced outstanding works of
Partition-related literature and some of it has been translated into English by
writers like Rita Kothari, Anju Makhija and Menka Shivdasani.
The case of Sunayna Pal and her delightful
Partition Poetry is unique.
First, she herself is from a
generation quite far removed from Partition. Even her parents were born in the
1950s. She grew up in a Sindhi family, but not immersed in a Sindhi community.
Like very many Sindhis of her generation raised in urban, cosmopolitan India,
Sunayna’s representation of her ethnic identity remained nebulous and sometimes
defensive. “I have played a game all my life,” she says. “When anyone asks me
where I am from, I reply, ‘guess’.” The answers come, naming states of India,
south, east, north. “Further north,” she encourages the smiling questioner to
go on. By the time they conclude that she is Sindhi, the connection to
Pakistan, she observes ruefully, has caused the smile to disappear.
Second, the influences upon her
were limited. Partition was never the focus of specific conversations around
her as she grew up. She did not have continued or intense interactions with her
grandparents. All she knew was that they had escaped from Sindh across the new
border, and found solace in refugee camps set up by the new government of the
newly-independent and newly-severed nation. When an English teacher – Sunayna
was her favourite – mentioned her admiration for the Sindhis who had lost
everything to Partition but worked hard and established themselves, she rushed
home to excitedly share this lovely affirmative observation. Her mother agreed,
but in a noncommittal way.
Sunayna’s father’s eldest brother
took care of Sunayna and her sister when their parents were away at work. Ram
Chacha was their link to the old country, and his reminisces appear to have
awakened a latent poetic talent. When Sunayna’s mother complained of dust in
their Mumbai home, Ram Chacha spoke wistfully of the abundance of sand in his
home in Sindh. When she applied henna on her hands, he described how women in
Sindh plucked henna and rubbed the crushed leaves on their hands. Thirteen
years old when he left his home in Nasarpur for a new home in a new India, he
told Sunayna that he had sat in the ship, petrified that the building on water
would sink. And he occasionally told her of his deep desire to visit his home
in Sindh. As Sunayna grew up, she began to feel like going there too.
Interviews with other Sindhi grandmothers and grandfathers gave Sunayna
glimpses into life in Sindh during Partition. Somehow the fragmented
impressions came together to create in her a visceral reaction which filled her
with the passion to describe the wonders of Sindh to the world.
Third, Sunayna does not have a strong literary background.
She loves to read but doesn’t read much. Her writing uses American spellings
and her structures are grounded in Indian English. Her
verses make an impact even though she is yet to master the range of short
poetic forms. “They came to me,” she says of them; they could be
considered ‘ayat’ – inspired verses (as were those of Shah Abdul Latif). Each
captures, in a few well-chosen words, core, iconic issues of the experience of
Partition. Coming from a third-generation survivor, a young mother who lives in
the US with her scientist non-Sindhi husband and their two little sons,
Sunayna’s verses are uncannily close to the bone. 75 verses, on the 75th
anniversary of Partition, they form a primer for anyone, across generations,
interested in an encounter with syncretic human cultural experience.
Saaz Aggarwal
July 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment