{"id":1236,"date":"2024-09-23T19:21:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T23:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2024-09-23T19:21:52","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T23:21:52","slug":"reformulating-binaries-pinjar-1950-and-wonationman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/09\/23\/reformulating-binaries-pinjar-1950-and-wonationman\/","title":{"rendered":"Reformulating Binaries: Pinjar (1950) and wo[nation]man"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

For the better part of the last year, I\u2019ve spent my time reading every Partition novel focused on the female experience that I could get my hands on. Some context: Partition refers to the division of the British Raj into modern-day India and Pakistan. Overnight, people suddenly had to decide if they were Indian or Pakistani\u2014a choice defined by religion. This single decision to reformulate borders (may I add, borders drawn by a British civil servant who had never<\/em> set foot on the subcontinent) triggered brutal communal violence and the mass migration of around 14 million people (and that\u2019s the lower end of the estimate). Women were especially targeted in the violent aftermath of August 14th-15th, subjected to abduction, rape, torture, forced suicide, and dismemberment. With my senior thesis project, I want to interrogate the presence of women in Partition fiction against the absence of women from the historical archives.

There are numerous binaries inherent to this subject, some of which include:

woman v man
written history v oral history
voice v voiceless
independence v colony
India v Pakistan
Hindu v Muslim
izzat<\/em> (honor) v shame
rape v consent
macrocosm v microcosm<\/strong>

It\u2019s this last binary that particularly interests me. It features over and over again in my reading towards my thesis.

Amrita Pritam\u2019s novel Pinjar<\/em> (1950) chronicles the life of Pooro, a young Hindu girl abducted and forced to marry her captor shortly before the Partition of India; she is involuntarily converted to Islam by her husband, forcibly renamed Hamida, and bears his children. Originally published in Punjabi, Pritam\u2019s work is exceptional for its exploration of violence against women in both the time leading up to Partition and the immediate aftermath. Pinjar (The Skeleton)<\/em> conveys the experience of gendered violence during Partition through binaries\u2014Pritam explores the sharp distinctions between Hindu and Muslim, consumption and nourishment, and shame and honor through the overarching tension between Pooro and her newly named self, Hamida. Ultimately, Pritam\u2019s dichotomies of the split individual emphasize the nature of female survival during Partition as one of self-martyrdom; for the women of Pinjar<\/em>, choosing a distinct communal side becomes necessary to continue living in a moment of post-colonial state formation.

Within the last few scenes of the novel, Pooro and Rashida\u2014Pooro\u2019s husband\u2014devise and carry out a plan to return an abducted Hindu girl named Lajo back to her family. Upon reuniting Lajo with her family, Pooro is given the option to join the band of Hindu refugees and flee to India. She rejects their offer, declaring instead that: \u201cWhen Lajo is welcomed back in her home, then you can take it that Pooro has also returned to you. My home is now in Pakistan\u201d (Pritam 127). Pooro accepts Pakistan as her new homeland, surrendering her past self. Lajo becomes a completion of Pooro\u2019s homegoing arc, leaving Hamida behind to embrace Pakistan. The microcosmic tension between these two identities are mirrored in the larger macrocosmic conflict of India versus Pakistan. This is an instance where a binary is broken; Writing Analytically<\/em> talks about binaries as \u201cnot so separate and opposed after all\u201d but \u201cparts of one complex phenomenon\u201d (Rosenwasser and Stephen 60). Here, the \u201ccomplex phenomenon\u201d is the process of decolonization. One binary (Hamida\/Pooro) complicates another binary (Pakistani\/Indian) in the service of yet another binary (macrocosm\/microcosm). All these identities merge in the restoration of a \u201cwhole\u201d self. Pritam writes this restoration as remedying of the split female self as achieved through picking a distinct nation-state; to survive and move beyond the split self, it is necessary for Pooro to accept her new homeland. In this regard, Pritam\u2019s narrative is a literary project that works to rationalize new borders as a resolution to the dichotomies of communal violence. Pooro\u2019s acceptance of Pakistan is her acceptance of her fragmented self. This constitutes a sort of self-martyrdom:

\u201cWhether one is a Hindu girl or a Muslim one, whoever reaches her
destination, she carries along my soul also,\u201d Pooro said to herself and
made a last vow by closing her eyes\u201d (Pritam 127).

Here, Pooro effectively dies\u2014she establishes that \u201cher soul\u201d follows any woman who successfully returns to her family, and these are her last words. Her decision to remain in Pakistan and to live as Hamida signals a death for Pooro, and Pooro becomes an omnipresent figure guiding young women to safety. She sacrifices her Hindu self to survive in her new surroundings. In reuniting Lajo with her family, Pooro finally exercises her autonomy and acts according to her own wishes; she is not bound to the demands of her husband, her son, or the newly independent state. Her personal choice to act blurs the divides between Hindu and Muslim. In the wake of gender-based violence during Partition, female autonomy is a revolutionary act that works to mend the fragmented dichotomies of self.<\/p>\r\n

Pritam, Amrita. Pinjar: The Skeleton and Other Stories. <\/i>Tara, New Delhi, 2015<\/span><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the better part of the last year, I\u2019ve spent my time reading every Partition novel focused on the female experience that I could get my hands on. Some context: Partition refers to the division of the British Raj into modern-day India and Pakistan. Overnight, people suddenly had to decide if they were Indian or … Continue reading Reformulating Binaries: Pinjar (1950) and wo[nation]man<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}