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PAPER ID:IJIM/V.2(III)/75-78/10
AUTHOR: Swati Punia
TITLE :GHOULISH ASPECTS OF THE SUB-CONTINENTAL ECCENTRICITY IN THE INDIAN PARTITION FICTION
ABSTRACT:A heavenly bliss, communal harmony is the basis of any society, especially as diverse as the Indian society. It is evident from human history that fear, hatred, greed and lechery have always resulted in crumbling of any society, and the Indian Subcontinent saw the worst phase of these traits put together during partition in 1947 that caused mass instability and ethnic violence. In partition fiction, writers gave gruesome detailed accounts of the times when the world saw inhumanity of one man towards another. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs had lived together, followed and celebrated each- others’ festivals and customs since ages but the ‘divide- and- rule’ policy of the British destroyed the brotherhood and love of centuries. Writers like Khushwant Singh, Saddat Hassan Manto, H.S. Gill, Bapsi Sidwa, Manohar Malgonkar, Chaman Nahal and many more gave vivid accounts of the violence and mass destruction caused during the frenzy while others like Amrita Pritam, Attia Hossain, etc. focused on the plight of women and children who had to suffer because of the insanity of the menfolk. Uncountable number of people were stripped off all their belongings and had to migrate from the land that they grew up on and called their home to the far off places that they had never known. Interestingly, be it novels, short stories, drama or any other genre, writers go against the commonly perceived perception of religious differences being the root cause of the violence and trace the culprit in the power-hungry politicians and irresponsible citizens and agencies. K.S. Duggal and Bala Chandra Rajan present their fury at the newspapers that rather than acting as harbingers of peace added to the ongoing slaughter by reporting news from a biased points of view where they not only praised their own religion, or defamed the other but also incited people for conducting killing and arson. The gorge created by the incomprensible hatred that people had mustered against each other still continues to widen. The present paper reflects the impermanence of stability created by the gory event and questions the percepts and ethics that we live by today.
KEYWORDS:Indian Subcontinent, Partition, Violence, Arson, Hatred, Migration, Harmony