Dr. Tariq Rahman

Book Review

Chaman Nahal, Azadi First published, 1975. This edition (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2001), pp.327.

Chaman Nahal’s book is an established classic in the canon of Partition literature. When it was first published in 1975 it was considered a welcome addition to works in the English language---such as Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan---about the catastrophic communal riots of 1947.

The novel starts off with a domestic scene of normalcy and peace in the family of Lala Kanshi Ram, a prosperous grain merchant of Sialkot. The scene is symbolically significant because it impresses upon us how many peaceful and ordinary lives were disrupted by the partition of British India. Here is Kanshi Ram in his own house with his loving wife Prabha Rani. His college-going son, Arun, is in love with Nur, a Muslim girl and daughter of Chaudhry Barkat Ali, a friend of Kanshi Lal. His daughter Madhu is married and lives away from the family. Kanshi Lal is satisfied. He is safe and respected. Not for one moment does he suspect that he would be forced to leave his shop, his city, the land of his birth, and become a refugee in far off Delhi. However, the announcement that India would be partitioned shatters his life and, of course, the lives of all other non-Muslims in Sialkot.

The rest of the novel deals with riots, displacement, violence and the anguish and anger born out of these traumatic events. The Muslims, probably inflamed by stories of massacres in India, attack the Hindu localities in Sialkot. Lala Kanshi Ram is helped out by a British sergeant, a friend of his son. He is also supported by his Muslim friend Chaudhry Barkat Ali who takes him to a refugee camp in the army cantonment. From this camp they move towards the border but are attacked in the way. A beautiful woman, a neighbour of Arun’s family, is raped by a Muslim captain who was once in the same college as Arun. Eventually, after many losses and harrowing experiences, they reach India.

In India the refugees find that what the Muslims had done to them in Pakistan the Sikhs and Hindus are doing to the Muslims. One of the most powerfully touching scenes in the novels is the parade of naked Hindu and Sikh women in Sialkot. In the Indian Punjab Muslim women are paraded in exactly the same manner. Kanshi Ram says to his embittered wife:

‘We have sinned as much. We need their forgiveness’ (p-300). His wife does not understand this but it is at the very heart of the novel. Essentially, all communities are guilty of atrocities just as all communities had people who transcended hatred and remained humane throughout.

The last scenes are equally moving. Lala Kanshi Ram expects understanding and sympathy. He meets with callous bureaucratic indifference and corruption. He has to move from office to office to apply for evacuee property but nobody pays any heed to him. The last scene, however, ends on hope. In the very last paragraph Kanshi Ram comes home, almost defeated by bureaucratic callousness, to find the sewing machine whirring. Work and life go together. There is work to be done and life will go on.

The novel is profoundly moving and the characters are rounded and lifelike. People’s unpredictable reactions, like Arun’s desire for Chandni just after his sister’s murder, are very much a part of life. They prevent the characters from becoming stereotypes. From the literary point of view the work is unblemished.

The author, however, has a political thesis to prove. Of course, he might be genuinely and sincerely convinced of it but, nevertheless, it gives a tendentious character to the work. The thesis is that the Partition was totally unnecessary and, indeed, the greatest evil which could befall South Asia. There might be a counter argument that friction between Muslim and non-Muslim might have created perpetual misery if there had been no Partition. Even with the Partition, if migration had been organized and leaders as well as the government had ensured that there would be no killing, such a catastrophe could have been avoided. However, the denial of the necessity of Partition is a political thesis which is not acceptable to everybody.

One’s political differences from the author do not, however, detract from one’s enjoyment of the book. It is, indeed, a great work of fiction which has the power to move us even after half a century. Penguin (India) should be congratulated for having made this work available in paperback to the reading public once again.

Dr. Tariq Rahman