In recent decades, the fury of communal hatred and violence has resurfaced in more horrendous forms across the subcontinent. Historian Papiya Ghosh (1958-2006) aptly called it “subcontinental majoritarianism”.
How does the novel Zeherkhurani stand out?
One may ask what is so novel about the theme and treatment in this novel Zeherkhurani when there are many fictional books available, written by the tallest names in the Indian literary arena in different languages – particularly in Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi.
In the existing, better known powerful stories (of Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi), we hardly find the plight of Sindhi Hindu migrants who reside on our side of the border. And of course, the contemporary resurgence of hatred, violence and identity-politics, exacerbated much by the media and all pervasive social media is a novelty about the novel, in terms of theme.
At the same time, the treatment of the theme is dexterous. The story has been woven brilliantly. The pains inflicted upon the many tragic characters, mostly women and some men, are something that the readers are bound to feel so very deeply and strongly.
On the communal hatred and violence of our times, some more Hindi novels have been published, such as Gouri Nath’s Karbala Dar Karbala (on the Bhagalpur targeted violence of the 1980s; the making of the pogrom of 1989-1990 and its horrific short-term and long-term fallout), Chandan Pandey’s Hindi novels, Vaidhanik Gulp or Legal Fiction (on the politics of Love Jihad) and Keertigaan (on mob lynching and degenerated media), Yogendra Ahuja’s wonderfully powerful short story, Laffaaz (on a wilful loan defaulter and the political economy of communalisation), a Malyalam novel, Qabr, etc.
But Zeherkhurani still stands out as it provides a narrative in continuity since the 1940s and brings this right up to 2022. The novel, in its later sections, also attempts to suggest possible solutions as to how to resist the contemporary onslaught of communal hatred aided by capital and state power. In this pursuit, creativity might have (or not?) slipped into to propaganda literature.
The territory of Sindh and its Hindu minorities caught in the vortex of Partition
In the notable historical studies on the partition of the subcontinent, Sindh is a provincial territory which remained wholly with Pakistan unlike Punjab and Bengal. The Hindus of Sindh had to suffer either from the subjugation of Muslim majoritarianism or had to migrate to parts which were to fall in India after August 14-15, 1947.
As the garm hawa (hot air) of hatred, violence, rape and plunder blew, they were uprooted. Their journey from Karachi to Bombay and other parts of India, including Central India (Madhya Pradesh) turned out to be quite horrific. They were hardly familiar with places beyond their birthplace Sindh until then, most of them hardly knew the parts of India beyond Sindh.
Their settlement within post 1947 India made them realise that even among their own co-religionists they were mocked, marginalised, discriminated, and they were looked upon with contempt for their distinct language/dialect, accents, culture, appearance, sartorial styles, etc. Their children studying in schools had to suffer from various kinds of segregation and ostracisation. Yet, they rebuilt their lives in trade and education, with hard work, grit and with dignity. The novel could possibly be, in part, autobiographical fiction. It therefore pulls the readers into the emotions articulated in the novel.
Sarah F.D. Ansari’s books on late colonial and post-colonial Sindh
A significant historical study on Sindh is highlighted by Sarah F.D. Ansari in her works. She wrote two books consecutively on late colonial and then on post-colonial period. These are, however, mostly on the Muslims who were (and are) anyway majority in the province.
Ansari’s 1992 book Sufi Saints and State Power: The Pirs of Sind, 1843–1947, examines the system of political control constructed by the British in Sind between 1843 and 1947. She throws light on the local Muslim religious elites cum big landlords, the pirs or hereditary sufi saints, whose participation in the system ensured the politics of vivisecting the Indian subcontinent, in particular.
In her 2005 book, Life After Partition: Migration, Community and Strife in Sindh 1947–1962, she examines the historical background – studying the years following partition – as ethnic politics had come to dominate Sindh by the 1990s with calls for Karachi to become a fifth province in its right. [This is partly depicted in Intezar Husain’s Urdu novel (1998), Aagey Samundar Hai, though confined mainly on the Muslim muhajirin, mostly from Uttar Pradesh].
Zeherkhurani stands out since it attempts to fill specific gaps of fictional articulation while historical exploration of the plight of the Sindhi Hindus among the Hindu majority of India is perhaps still awaited.
A look into the Zeherkhurani story
The central protagonist of the story is an inquisitive and interrogative girl Minali alias Minni, born in 1960, who grows up as a fiercely rational and a believer in pluralist coexistence. She chooses journalism as a profession which gets depressingly sullied by the time Minni and her husband reach their 50s (by the year 2022). Theirs is an almost lonely battle against a highly polarised society. The polarisation is because of many stereotypes against religious communities, fed mostly by a communalised media owned by greedy corporates. Nirmala Bhuradia’s creative oeuvres seem to be particularly fond of the characters with a questioning spirit just as Nachiketa in Hindu mythology. Thus, Minni is a lady Nachiketa for Nirmala.
Minni’s cousin, Manohar, a hoodlum, lumpen, and eve-teaser grows up to become an important cadre of a communalised political party which eventually gets elected to power, riding on the wave of communal polarisation, hatred and violence.
Manufacturing rumours, distorting history, spreading falsehood and concoctions are something his politics thrives on. Remarkably, Nirmala’s handling of the causation of partition is very good. This is one of the rare novels in which the British culpability in India’s partition has been brought out most clearly.
For instance, when the British Governor of Punjab E. M. Jenkins (1896-1985) was frustrated by Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana’s opposition to the partition, Tiwana’s government was toppled and the League’s was installed under the leadership of Iftikhar Husain Khan (1906-1969), Nawab of Mamdot (Punjab). Surprisingly, Allah Bukhsh Sumro (1900-1943) doesn’t come under any focus or conversation in the novel, possibly because 1946-1947 is the major concern of the novel? Allah Bukhsh, the crusader against partition was killed by a fanatic and the colonial state provided all impunity to the killer. Nirmala Bhuradia’s comprehension and articulation of the historiographic nuances of Partition is commendable. The craft of story-telling is, in itself, praiseworthy.
Important aspects highlighted
The story doesn’t shy away from highlighting the radicalisation of Pakistan in the 1970s and 1980s, internecine sectarian violence and absolute derailment of the economic progress, social fabric in tatters, as much as India is also increasingly becoming its mirror-image, transforming its republic into a theocracy. The fictional depiction acts as a reminder of the research essay by V.S. Kalra and Waqas Butt, ‘If I Speak, They Will Kill Me, to Remain Silent Is to Die’: Poetry of resistance in General Zia’s Pakistan (1977–88) (2019). It is like the famous Urdu couplet: kuchh nahīñ bolā to mar jā.egā andar se ‘shujā.a’/ aur agar bolā to phir bāhar se maarā jā.egā [if silent I remain I will suffocate inside / and if I speak I will surely be crucified]. A brief comparison of Zia’s Pakistan and current dispensation of India was made by this writer in a column for the Sabrang India (February 17, 2020).
Incidentally, during the very same decades, India too has been witnessing a consistent rise and expansion of identitarian forces. The resurgence happened, initially, in the name of crusading against the authoritarianism called Emergency. Some of these forces of resistance preferred to call themselves “Smugglers of Truth”, who found lots of support and funds from expatriates.
About the regressiveness and bigotry of the affluent Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), the scholar-journalist Arvind N Das (1949-2000) had once written a column, “Long Distance Nationalism” (Frontline, November 4, 1994). The expression is borrowed from Benedict Anderson’s 1983 book, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. The roles of the “Smugglers of Truth” have been exposed in recent research (MAS, 2018). The rapid communalisation culminated into the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and ever since then, bigotry, hatred, strife and pogroms have become close regular occurrences, part of the socio-political mainstream rather than a margin.
The novel Zeherkhurani possibly attempts to pin hope of a good future on the rationalist-pluralist women (and men) intelligentsia and journalists. This optimism, though not misplaced, needs some quantum of reservation.
The educated middle classes and the affluent ones are not necessarily committed to humanitarianism and justice. Greed for name, fame, pelf and power of these classes across the globe has pushed the world into the vortex of bigotry, fanaticism, hatred and violence. This has aggravated in recent decades even more.
For instance, Byung-Chul Han’s recent book(let), Psychopolitics, “is a fascinating and well-written treatise on subjects that feels beaten to death, and is situated within a radical culture seemingly damned to futility by capitalist realism and one incapable of generating productive, useful strategy or platforms” of resistance and solidarity.
Fiction writers may derive creative insights from such works capturing the harsh realities of our times. Bhuradia is one such fiction writer of our times who is engaged in the pursuit of fictional articulation of contemporary horrors of humans against fellow humans. The patriarchy prevailing among the Hindus and Muslims has been brought out quite clearly. The story somehow appears to be located in Indore, the home-base of the novelist. This raises an expectation from the novelist to have exposed Muslim patriarchy not only through a Bohra Muslim prism but also among the Sunni Hanafi majority of Muslims. The case of Indore’s Shahbano Begum (1916-1992) offers quite an opportunity to bring this out. The biography of Shah Bano is essentially the biography of the nation state of late colonial and post-Independence India. The politically motivated, pa`triarchic and divisive and patently erroneous even from Islamic point of view, Shariat Act of 1937 and 1939 stood exposed when a daughter of the Punjab’s Tiwana family was denied her right to inherit parental landed assets. The storm of the 1980s around the Shah Bano issue is a milestone of India’s shift towards majoritarianism, aggravating menacingly by the second decade of the 21st century. This historical backdrop possibly provided enough context for the novelist to bring the whole episode into the storyline. That however remains absent in Zeherkhurani.
Some critical observations
The last seven chapters of the novel, depicting recent decades, have become a little less creative in terms of artistic finesse. Nonetheless, the novel does hold a mirror before all of us about the way we are, as of now, and what we are likely to become in the near future, if we don’t work towards actively rescuing the pluralist India.
The novel seems to be concerned with depicting only minorities, including the minorities within the minorities. Thus, Sindhi Hindu families on the margins of Hindu majority society, Bohras among the Muslims, with their own regressive cultural practices and subjugation of women, all in the name of a particular version of religion, and the Sikhs find their stories of suffering in this novel. Dalits left in Pakistan, too have found a mention, though quite briefly and inadequately.
The eventual disintegration of the once vivacious Mangal Bhawan and the Fatima Manzil, find a brilliant creative articulation. Intra-community oppressions (and horrific patriarchy perpetuating with growing superstitions) against both rationalists and pluralists are the running themes in the novel.
The state-(and religion-corporate) driven media-aided feeding of communal poison (zehensaazi or brainwash) is a running theme throughout the story and stories within the story of the novel. The administrative apathy and even complicity of the colonial state in the violence in 1946-1947 is exposed too well. The prose uses lots of Urdu words, which needs proper editing in terms of adding points (bindi) to the epiglottal letters of the Urdu words.
The emotional aspect of the novel
The book highlights how polarisation, madness, violence and tremendous brutalities make victims mentally sick. For instance, the character of the child Banta is written in such a manner that it will make readers cry on multiple occasions.
Banta, separated from his parents, is subjected to mutilations and torture several times. Each time the boy is made to change his religious identity, he is face to face with the rioters of a rival identity. Even his part pretension and part reality of having become dumb, or resorting to become luminal, in identitarian terms, (such as chanting Bulley Shah’s poetry: Bulleyh Kih Jaana Main Kaun) doesn’t ensure his safety at the hands of the violent religious orthodoxy of various hues.
Eventually, despite having been circumcised, his Sikh identity gets revealed and he ends up losing even the circumcised organ altogether. With this horrific loss, he does get re-united with his father, who has already abandoned his mother, as she was abducted. The characters of Banta and his mother come out as the most tragic ones, deeply affecting the reader multiple times.
Mental illness has been inflicted upon such victims by the society. With such characters in the story, one is reminded of Michel Focault’s 1961 edition of the book, Madness and Civilization, wherein he says, “Modern man no longer communicates with the madman … There is no common language, or rather, it no longer exists; the constitution of madness as mental illness, at the end of the 18th century, bears witness to a rupture in a dialogue, gives the separation as already enacted, and expels from the memory all those imperfect words, of no fixed syntax, spoken falteringly, in which the exchange, between madness and reason, was carried out.”
Yet, the novel on zehensaazi (brainwashing) is not only about the darker aspects of times, immediate past and present. It doesn’t fail to capture the anecdotes of people rising against the violence and hatred and helping their neighbours and neighbourhood defying the politically foisted religious divides and polarisation. Such characters and anecdotes give a little respite from the horrific sufferings of all the humans that runs through the story. They also offer some hope that such dark phases as those that we are living through shall pass away sooner than later.
Overall, the novel is a diagnosis of and a very damning charge-sheet against the crime of hatred and violence being committed by humans against humans in our times. It exposes the horrific truth of human debasement quite mercilessly. It’s therefore definitely a must-read.
(The author teaches Modern and Contemporary History at Aligarh Muslim University and is the author of Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours.)
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