I am sharing an excerpt from this piece in the context of Fly Die’s piece on ethnic violence in India. I believe that sometimes Literature provides a different lens on these issues than academic research does.
I was tuning my tanpura for riaz in the morning to sing Khayal Jaunpuri, and one string snapped. Gautam, there’s symbolism for you. Hussain Shah’s tanpura broken into two,’ said Talat ruefully.
— Qurratulain Hyder, River of Fire, pg. 273
In the passage quoted above–from Qurratulain Hyder’s novel River of Fire (her own translation of her Urdu magnum opus Aag Ka Dariya)—the speaker, Talat, is a member of Lucknow’s Muslim elite. She is speaking to a group of friends—both Muslim and Hindu—after the Partition of 1947. Two new nation-states–“India” and “Pakistan”– have been created and the group of friends is splitting up in different directions: Talat’s cousin Amir Reza has already left for Karachi, Talat herself is imminently departing for further studies in England, and Gautam is soon to leave for America. The broken tanpura symbolizes the death of the composite culture, which could not survive the politics of religion and the force of the Two Nation Theory. This theme—the destruction of the Lucknawi way of life—runs through many of Hyder’s novels, particularly through My Temples, Too (Hyder’s translation of her debut novel Mere Bhi Sanam Khane) and the later sections of River of Fire.
In this paper I will examine Hyder’s novels and use them to discuss some arguments about the formation of the composite culture of Lucknow (and of UP generally) and the failure of this culture to prevent the Partition of British India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947. By focusing on Muslim elites who, despite all the odds, chose to retain their belief in a united India, Hyder problematizes the prevailing discourse that sees Hindus and Muslims as inherently opposed and Partition as the inevitable outcome of Independence.
The rest of the essay can be read on Substack. See also my review of Hyder’s novel “Fireflies in the Mist”