Punjab was divided along religious lines in the wake of India’s Partition which exposed all political actors; the Indian National Congress, the All-India Muslim League and above all the British Raj. None could stop a storm of hellish fires unleashed by deep-rooted communal hatred. They didn’t even try; secular Congress didn’t control its supporters and allies who took on the Muslim Punjabis in the eastern part of Punjab, faith-driven League didn’t restrain its followers from rioting against the non-Muslim Punjabis in the western part of Punjab and the British Raj that prided itself on its high-level administrative skills failed abysmally to maintain order and protect the life and property of its so-called subjects whose toils had enriched Britain immensely.

The end result displayed our unprecedented ghoulish fascination with blood and gore; two million killed, about 20 million forced to flee their ancestral homes and cross borders, and thousands of women of all ages raped. This has hitherto been the most shameful chapter in our history since the times of Harappa. And the Punjabis of all religious persuasions who started blindly treating one another as other overnight cannot be absolved of the crimes they committed against their kith and kin.

The legacy of the division of Punjab is a deep sense of shame born of an unforgettable trauma. Writers especially on the eastern side of the borders have been trying to explore, understand, and analyse the dark forces hidden in the psyche of the Punjabis who are united by history, language and culture but divided by faith. Seventy-six years have passed but the wounds the division of Punjab inflicted on our soul seem to have not healed. Whatever might have healed has left scar that hurts.

The book Plays from a Fractured Land edited by Atamjit and published by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, once again scratches the wounds and the scars that we carry. “A collection of plays on the traumatic experience of the Partition of Punjab ostensibly tells the fraught history of communal conflicts in Punjab,” says the blurb. Atamjit, the editor, “is an acclaimed Indian playwright and theatre activist who primarily works in Punjabi language. He has written 34 plays, which have been staged widely in India and abroad -- Atamjit specially focuses on the condition of women in our society. In his understanding, Punjab goes beyond its political borders to include the spirit of this land throbbing in the hearts of diaspora population as well. His plays allow the readers to look at the present critically and re-visit the past afresh.”

The anthology contains four full-length plays, four short plays, four one-act plays and four excerpts and abridged plays. The plays included are by Shahid Nadeem, Atamjit, Sawarajbir, Amir Nawaz, Gursharan Singh, Ajmer Singh Aulakh, Jagdish Sachdeva, Pali Bbupinder Singh, Gurdial Singh Khosla, Kapur Singh Ghuman, Harsarn Singh, Sagar Sarhadi, Davinder Daman, Kewal Dhaliwal, Sahib Singh and Gurpreet Singh Ratol.

The English translations of the plays have been done by Amena Z. Cheema, Rana Nayar, Swaraj Raj and Vivek Sachdeva. The anthology, scholarly and critical, carries a through introduction by Atamjit. It examines the diverse dimensions of the Partition experience as expressed by writers with their distinct worldviews, but what they share is the excruciating pain of the division of their homeland felt at individual and collective levels. What defies explanation is more concerned with what ensued from the division than the division itself. It was far more fiendish than the fires lit by foreign invaders in Bulleh Shah’s times who saw the gates of the hell being flung open in the 18th century.

“The arrangements they (the British rulers) made for the Partition were half-baked. The communal fire that started in West Bengal in the wake of impending Partition took the form of a terrifying conflagration in Punjab…About 75,000 women were raped. Patients admitted to hospitals and mental asylums were set free. These facts are well documented in history, but where these patients went and how, history will perhaps never be able to tell us. It is literature only that narrates their travails. We have no account of women who either committed suicide to save their honour or were killed by their own people. We have no idea how many women were abducted but continued living courageously in a different land and in a different culture and religion,” writes Atamjit.

His introduction not only informs but also illuminates. His is not a mere description of the Partition. He puts it under scrutiny with intense sensitivity. His approach is objective but laced with compassion. Drawing on historical material he gives us his perspective on the Partition. To show the painful multi-dimensionality of the Partition experience he brings in literature that reflects human condition and predicament. Finally he examines the individual plays included in the collection which explore the wide range of experience born of unfettered communal violence and forced migration which resulted in what was unthinkable; faith-based cleansing.

The western part of Punjab was cleansed of Hindu and Sikh Punjabis, and the eastern part was cleansed of Muslim Punjabis. It reminds one of classical poet Hafiz Barkhurdar’s oxymoron; “the river was on fire”. “The Partition violence lacerated the psyche of the Punjabis so much that till date Punjabi authors are writing poems, stories, novels and plays about it,” says Atamjit.

The Punjabis, consciously and subconsciously, carry strong feelings of guilt over what they did to themselves in their communal madness. Marx somewhere says something to the effect that the rational way of getting rid of guilt would be to truly understand the conditions which makes one do what they do that breeds guilt.

Plays from a Fractured Land can help us understand the conditions that pushed us into a collective madness. True atonement would be to understand the historical factors which drove us to massacre our fellow Punjabis in the year 1947 whose painfully lingering effect continues to haunt us like a spectre. Atamjit deserves accolades for bringing us this must-read anthology. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2024