In my search to learn more about the partition of India after it gained independence from the British, Urvashi Butalia was a writer recommended by a Pakistani journalist friend who had done some reporting on this issue. Ten minutes of Google and I was able to find The Persistence of Memory, which ended up being a quick and satisfying read.
Butalia follows Bir Bahadur Singh as he travels to Pakistan in his 70s, eager to return to his home village Thoa Khalsa for a visit after his family were forced to leave for India because of partition. The trip was paid for by a Japanese journalist who was hoping to chronicle Bir Bahadur’s return to his former home. For Butalia — an Indian feminist writer and publisher who has had extensive conversations with Bir Bahadur about that tumultuous period — she appeared to be primarily interested to see how people have come to terms with all the violence committed, particularly towards women.
We are immediately thrust into the horror in the beginning with an account of Maan Kaur, Bir Bahadur’s sister, getting beheaded by his father in 1947, an event that the young Sikh had witnessed with his own eyes. At that time, India was being partitioned, and rape, arson and large-scale violence was happening among the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh populations, so many families decided to kill the women and children as they feared that they would be “abducted, raped, converted, impregnated, polluted by men of the other religion — in this case Muslims.” These killings were called the “martyrdom of women.”
For a book that opens with such a vivid account, it’s surprising how there’s a quietness throughout the entire retelling of Bir Bahadur’s journey back to Pakistan in 2000. Butalia has a very clean, musing voice. She writes a bit like a journalist, capturing in an almost unemotional way the elderly man’s excitement about returning home. She had heard of so many horrific stories from him about Partition that she was worried about the reception they would get. But after crossing the border, Bir Bahadur was immediately telling everyone about where he was trying to go, who he was trying to find, asking strangers about whether they knew a former friend, a former shopkeeper, an old relative.
Butalia was continuously surprised by how helpful and excited everyone was to meet him. The trio had initially planned to go to Thoa Khalsa — not only is it where Bir Bahadur and his family had lived in before they left for modern-day India, it is also where dozens of Sikh women had jumped into a well in a mass suicide event — but Bir Bahadur appeared to have other plans.
He wanted to go to Saintha first, which is where his father had a shop. It seems that he had other motivations for this return — a sort of penance for how he and his family had treated Muslims before Partition, seeing them as untouchables even though they were part of their everyday lives. Butalia struggled to understand this at first. She also can’t help but notice how everyone they encountered as they got closer to Saintha kept asking him about his family, particularly about his sister — a topic he deftly sidesteps while maintaining his excitement over any recognition of his old life.
‘These are tears of joy, beta (a term of endearment), don’t worry,’ he reassured me ever time I looked at him. ‘I am so happy. Did I not tell you we would be welcomed?’
This was a very short read, I would say it counts more like a long article instead of a book. Butalia’s writing is clean and crisp, well-suited given the emotional heft of the subject matter. There is no need to dress up the horror of mass murders, nor add bells and whistles to the joy an old man feels when greeting a childhood friend. I’d recommend it if you want a quick glimpse into Partition, a window into the lives it tore apart followed by the extremely human need to move on, to survive — even if it means flattening out horrific memories so that it’s just a whisper of an imprint in one’s mind.
I also want to add that I initially started this review in June, put it down and promptly forgot about it because of life events (I moved to a new country, started a new job, and I’m just only now able to take a breath). But logging back into Cannonball and reading the first few lines of the review brought me back to my Kindle read as I parsed through my highlighted bits. It reminded me of how single-minded I was about trying to read more stories — fiction and non-fiction, mostly non-fiction — about that period.
And I keep coming back to the same question: How are there a million movies made about D-Day or WWI/II, and yet I struggle to think of any movies made about Partition? (Yes, I understand that racism is a succinct answer.) I really think there needs to be way more movies/tv shows about it — it’s just so incredibly dramatic. That single episode of Ms Marvel where she time travels back is seared in my mind — I remember literally nothing else about that show, just the struggle to get onto the train amidst the chaos of families getting separated. Hollywood writers need to get on it: please put more partition stories in our cultural diet please. No more WWI or II angles, please, there’s too many, I never need to watch another one because loads of really excellent ones have already been made, we’re good.