Nashwa S's Reviews > Cracking India

I don’t know why I’ve been sleeping on Bapsi Sidhwa’s writing but I think it may be because I’ve always been intimidated by her. As kids, we weren’t “allowed” to read her books because of the mature content. And usually, I really shy away from reading about the Pakistan-India partition because I hated how it was taught in schools, and all I can remember from those classes were the Simla conference, the Jinnah-Gandhi talks and the Radcliffe commission.

What this book did for me was that it humanised the partition - we see the process from the perspective of a child of Parsee faith, who seemingly has no stake in the violence going on. Sidhwa shows a sense of community in this, a harmony between faiths and then the slow disintegration of groups, their assumption of religious identities and the brutal violence that ensues. In a way, the story comes full circle and as sad as it made me, the ending was very satisfying.

One of the most striking aspects of this book was the fairness with which the story is told, the lack of bias, which really added to the experience. The characters are nuanced, they do morally questionable things but nobody is saying that the Muslims are pure and free of violence and spite, a perspective that was shared by many of our Urdu and Pakistan Studies growing up.