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47 pages 1 hour read

Bapsi Sidhwa

Cracking India

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1988

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Themes

The Subjectivity of Narrative

The novel’s impressionistic form and narrative style evoke the way memory preserves some things and disposes of others, or the way an incorrect memory can feel very real. Since the narrator a very young child, the story is disjointed, skipping in time and missing pieces; the characters bear Lenny’s childish nicknames rather than their own names; and dates and ages are sparse. There are bits of historical context that Lenny remembers hearing, but many things remain unexplained, like the cause of Mother’s fight with Father, Oldhusband’s reference to stabbing eyes, and the circumstances of Masseur’s death.

Still, while Lenny’s imperfect memory can be frustrating at times, the novel implies that her version of the story may be more psychologically honest than ideologically biased historical accounts, especially when they describe contentious events like the partitioning of India. The violence comes from all sides, and all parties see their side’s actions as righteous responses to the other side’s atrocities. For instance, after Ice-candy-man sees the train full of murdered Muslims, he begins leading the violent mobs seeking retribution. His version of events would begin with this train vision—and would conveniently leave out his raping and terrorizing zookeeper’s family, for example. So when Lenny remembers the fires in Lahore as lasting (impossibly) for months, this is factually inaccurate but conveys the fire and destruction better than accounts filled with one-sided rage. 

Religious Differences

The fight over control of India in the 1940s fell along religious lines. Muslims and Hindus both feared a theocracy that would force them to live by the rules of the other’s religion. Part of Lenny’s maturation process is learning to read these differences in the people around her.

At first, these differences simply add nuance to the multicultural melting pot of Lahore. Over time, however, religious identity becomes the sole defining feature of a person. For instance, Ayah's many suitors are of all different religions, but are united in their admiration of her—and none cares about her own religious background. The fact that Ayah is Hindu becomes very important when and a mob eager to persecute Hindus shows up to kidnap her. In another example, what initially seemed like a game—grabbing the Hindu Hari’s loincloth—becomes cruel, violent, and driven by prejudice. Eager to fit in with the majority, Lenny joins in the violence against Hari.

The inter-religious fighting and violence also shows the power of nationalism. And ultimately, religious identity determines nationality after the partitioning. For instance, when Colonel Bharucha treats the malnourished baby near the beginning of the narrative, he criticizes the Muslim father, framing his ostensible irresponsibility as a parent as proof that Muslims aren’t responsible enough to control India. Both Hari and Papoo’s family convert to Islam and Christianity respectively in order to conform to the nationality they prefer, changing their names and even, in Hari’s case, going through the painful process of circumcision. The practice of religion becomes more about performance to prove legitimacy than faith or spirituality.

The severe divisions along religious lines are a method of dehumanization. Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus commit atrocities against one another because they believe member of other religions are less than human. This means that they are not simply trying to exterminate each other to win a war for control of the country, but are taking pleasure in brutalizing innocents. This depersonalization also categorizes those perpetuating the violence attack: The mob absorbs that kidnaps Ayah is an amorphous mass, without identity and therefore without personal responsibility. ­­

Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls

The novel highlights women’s activism in the face of violence against women and girls.

Patriarchal restrictions and misogyny are deeply ingrained in Lenny’s life. Though her Parsee faith carries less emphasis on female modesty and chastity, Lenny doesn’t receive a proper education—seen as unnecessary for women. Lenny’s Cousin feels no compunctions about his borderline sexual assault on her body—ostensibly childish experimentation that comes into clarity Cousin promises to demonstrate to Lenny what rape is. At all times, Lenny is responsible for developing her own boundaries with her body and resisting Cousin’s advances—there is never even a thought that an adult would intervene on her behalf in the situation.

Within families, violence against women and girls is sanctioned and acceptable. Even ostensibly loving couples feature domestic violence that goes unmarked. Father, who by all accounts has a warm relationship with Mother, beats her for arguing with him until there are visible bruises on her body. Families that have no warm emotional foundation are even more horrific. One particularly tragic figure is Papoo, a young girl abused by her mother for daring to have a mind of her own. Her parents marry her off at age 11 or 12 to a cruel-looking middle-aged man, drugging her into compliance on her wedding day. Finally, women without family are subject to wildly abusive scenarios with no recourse. In order to marry Ayah, Ice-candy-man brings a mob to kidnap and rape her for several months so that no other suitors will want her; after marrying her, he forces her into prostitution.

Broadening out from Lenny’s world, we see that religion is a tool for gendered violence. Raping women is a weapon that relies on the fact that conservative religion defines women’s value as sexual purity. In this climate, raped women aren’t victims to be pitied or worthy of revenge—instead, they lose value to their husbands and families, a fate that places the blame for the rape squarely on the shoulders of those attacked rather than their attackers. When Ice-candy-man and his friends expose themselves to the zookeeper’s Muslim women tenants, they use ingrained beliefs about female chastity against them. Later, Ice-candy-man ups the ante to sexual assault against the women of the zookeeper’s family. Male Muslims on the train are murdered, but women are dismembered in a particularly gendered way—the sack full of severed breasts indicates female-centered violence that relies on the religious shame of nakedness and the defiling of women’s bodies. In Pir Pindo, the women are willing to burn themselves alive rather than be raped—a decision that underscores how conditionally valuable women’s lives are in the culture.

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By Bapsi Sidhwa