A Close Study of ‘Tomb Of Sand’ by Geetanjali Shree: Border, Partition, and Migration
The red glow of the sunset spreads over the frontier like words flowing from a pen.
The frontier, which is the border of another border, beyond the border.
Geetanjali shree’s novel Ret samadhi, has been translated into English by Daisy Rockwell. Well, its no surprise that it has won the International Booker Prize, 2022. From Amma’s powerful monologue on ‘border’ to animating a distinct Toba Tek Singh narrative, amidst the 1947 Partition, we have experienced it all. The separation has been more than the word ‘bloodshed’, the event turned out to be the most contested digressive area of South Asian historiography. Ayesha Jalal, being a revisionist, pointed out ‘’’how did a Pakistan come about which fitted the interests of most Muslims so poorly?’’ On the other hand, Akbar Ahmed claimed that the concept of Pakistan was irresistible and widespread among the Muslims. Bipin Chandra has launched his leftist view and elaborated that the Partition took place because of the ‘’surging waves of Muslim Communalism’’. While, Subaltern historian, Gyanendra Pandey argued that the we should turn our historical gaze away from the ‘causes’ and delve more into the meaning, trauma, and violence surrounding the Partition. The list could go on and on. But the sheer amount of literature produced during the timeframe was staggering, to say the least.
Geetanjali Shree has embedded Partition literature in this book, so beautifully. She has created an abstract scene, as if its borrowed from a play. At Wagah, imagination and the Partition literature meets at a point. Dissects at a point. Krishna Sobti drawing lines with her uncapped pen, wearing a brilliant purple garara and kurta. Intizar Hussain writing basti. Khushwant Singh leaping like a tiger into a no-man’s land. Rahi Masoom Raza conversing with an actor in Punjabi. Manto’s Bhishan Singh throwing laal salam. Bhishan Sahni reading from his own book, Tamas. There’s chaos everywhere. There’s a border. There’s violence. There’s guards. There’s flags. There’s also thisawaythataway.
India and Pakistan became independent on 15th and 14th of August, 1947, respectively. The ‘transfer of power' led to the detachment and finally they formed two new dominions. It was in June, 1946, the Congress and the Muslim League were ready to negotiate and come to a conclusion, regarding the infamous Cabinet Mission Plan. Both the sides quickly recognized the need of an Interim Government (controlled by representative Indians) and a Constituent Assembly (elected by the legislators returned in the 1946 elections). As a result, on ‘Direct Action Day’, 16th of August 1946, violence broke out in Calcutta. Hindus killed Muslims and Muslims killed Hindus. Slowly and steadily, the nightmare unfurled in Punjab, Sindh and East Bengal. Little did they know the nightmare was just a beginning.
A border is a character in this story. The place is depicted to be a region where ‘’they gaze out at the sky that canopies both sides’’ and cannot detect the border itself. We witness a section where Toba Tek Singh shouts ‘’har har mahadev’’ from the pakistan zindabad contigent and then slips to the other side of the border. Later, he yells ‘’aab-e-zamzam rutba shah’’ from the bharatmata ki jai contigent. Hilarious! This shows that the concept of border is so arbitrary. Also, Amma has elucidated ‘border’ so well.
A border is something that surrounds an existence, it is a person’s perimeter. No matter how large, no matter how small. The edge of a handkerchief, the border of a tablecloth, the embroidery around my shawl. The edges of the sky. The beds of flowers in this yard. The borders of fields. The parapet around this roof. A picture frame. Everything has a border.
Amma went on. She did not cease. She carried on with her speech and we could not stop reading. She demonstrated that a border does not enclose, it opens out, it creates a shape. A border is a bridge between two connected parts. A border is a horizon, where two worlds meet. A border is love, a line of meeting. Indeed a lovely one. A border is a game. A border is a place to sing songs, recite poetry and dance. One should flow like air through the thorny border. One should become electricity, if there are electrical wires. She cited the example of Joginder Pal’s Maulvi saab. When he arrived in Karachi, border was void for him, so he continued to believe he was residing in his cherished Lucknow. We have created a border in our mind, we changed the names, but the places and the people remained the same.
Amma did not fear. She remarked ‘’Do not accept the border. Do not break yourself into bits with the border’’. Again, Amma did not fear. Our politicians don’t. Why would she?
A research paper titled as ‘’The Partition of 1947: Demographics consequences’’ written by Prashant Bhardwaj, Asim Khwaja, and Atif Mian, show that the district of Karachi received a large influx of migrants, in 1951, and almost 28% of the population was migrant. They also evaluate an outflow of around 15% for the Karachi district. They are of the opinion that in Pakistan, partition-related flows had huge compositional effects within religious groups. In fact, the partition of 1947 resulted in one of the mammoth and most swift population exchanges in human history. There was a sort of polarization of Hindus and Muslims, where Muslims shifted to the West and the East Pakistan, while the Hindus moved towards the opposite direction. At the same time more than fifteen million people have been uprooted, causing a human genocide.
Migration and resettlement have been vividly exhibited in the novel. We are very well aware of the fact that how trauma and violence go hand- in-hand with the Great Divide. Amma narrates the scene and we visualize a horror show, throughout her journey. There were houses burning, people running, people dying to eat half a piece of roti, people searching people everywhere. Bullets flying. An old man, amidst all the murder and mayhem, praying in the middle of the road, with the road. Mothers asking their daughters to wear two salwars. A crushed skull tossed against a wall like a watermelon. Glasses and earrings found, demolished. Screams all around. An open graveyard.
Her विभाजन chronicle continued.
Half a piece of toast. Sometimes some food and water. Sometimes only food. Sometimes only water. Some dates. Some chana. Four anna’s worth of qeema, one anna’s worth of chapati. She hears of riots. Of refugees. Thoughts shutting down. Speech shutting down.
Amma had her own migration tale as well.
The rioters were after the girls. Few masked men were distributing whistles, to keep a track on each other. RUN SEPARATELY, they instructed. Amma neither left her buddha statue, nor that little girl’s hand. Both of them reached the Thar. Sand everywhere. Far and near. Basically, it was a sea of sand. Huffing and puffing, most of them had sunk. Soon, Amma could not hear any whistles anymore. There was a whole army thundering towards them. Barbarous murderous creatures galloping in the sand, corpses, all over the map. Amma had a narrow escape, she ended up in a hospital. I guess we’ll never know about the little girl.
Alas! a border has been drawn. A Partition has been declared.
Tomb of Sand also lies at the crossroads of memory and history. Shree delves into highlighting how recollection and history can produce a fictional memoir walking us through human movement across time and space. Amma and Beti arrive at the gate, the gate between Hindustan and Pakistan. Some take the bus, some continue by foot. The heat becomes a burden, they rest and they walk again. Individuals are treated as cattle. Just then, Amma exclaim ‘’What is a border? Do they belong to this or that side?’’ She wanted to take a look at everything she could possibly remember. Between Lahore Gate to Badshahi mosque, we took a glimpse of everything through Amma’s eyes and Rosie’s memory. Old-tumble down homes, the bazaar, electric wires hanging, dhabas, and gali walls. Gali walls that remind us of time. Gali walls that tells us stories, once touched. Amma and Rosie were unfolding memory, together.
Ending with a delightful segment from the book:
Echoes and reverberations of melodies cross every border. Melodies change, music remains. Death comes, life goes on. A story is created, changes, flows. Free, from this side to that.
References
- Bandyopādhyāẏa Śekhara. (2014). From plassey to partition a history of modern India. Orient BlackSwan.
- Bharadwaj, P., Khwaja, A. I., & Mian, A. R. (2009). The partition of India: Demographic consequences. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1294846
- Pandey, G. (2001). Remembering partition. Cambridge University Press.
- Shree, G., & Rockwell, D. (2022). Tomb of sand. Penguin Random House India.
