TheDaak review

Book : Independence by Chitra  Banerjee Divakaruni, India, 2022, 288 pages, 978-93-5629-458-5,₹ 699

By Jigyasa Sogarwal

Independence as opposed to swaraj, freedom and for that matter, liberty has a historical specificity. The commonsensical mind would go to the event(s) of 1947. The event of the birth of a nation, eulogized by some as India’s destiny and others as her awakening.¹  What is it then that this book does to the narrative of independence? What do we hear there that we had not heard before?

I must admit, this story will not blow your mind away. In fact, in terms of ideas, there is nothing here that an eclectic reader would not find elsewhere. What is interesting and new here however is the sheer ease with which the author has humanized historical events immediately preceding and succeeding the year 1947. While the strength of the book is easy narrative, lucidness, and the capacity to bring characters alive, it has to be most ardently admired for building a world around and from the perspective of women. Women have been subjects, both of critical enquiry as well as of powerful sympathy, but they have hardly ever held the narratives in their hands. In this book, we see the country and its independence from the eyes of these women. It is through their failures and triumphs and their longing and suffering that the nation comes to life. In this book, like the author’s other writings, she has remained committed to how real and believable these women are. How deeply aware one becomes of the hard and real choices that the women located at crossroads of history have to make. How family, love, and responsibility are understood in the larger context of the nation, duty, and sacrifice. How free will is not free at all, and how in the larger scheme of projects of destiny and awakening, women as people tend to pay a lot more and sometimes in silence than everyone else. The beauty of the characters is that not once has the agency been taken away from them. They are not passive recipients of their fate. As active agents of change, Devakaruni’s women are constantly reflecting and engaging with the ever changing and challenging world around them. Such a book should have been written a long time ago. I am grateful to the author that she wrote it.

One of the many interesting things this book does is that it sews together the public and the private. The public life of a transient region and its politics are intricately woven around the stories of three women. These women, until recently, have remained passive sculptures whose stories were carved out outside of them. To have an account of pre-independence, and the transition to a new country through the minds, thoughts and even hearts of women characters is deeply satisfying. Like many other iterations of independence, this story also moves around the events of partition, love, loss. The narrative subtly raises the question of freedom without actually ever uttering the word. When Priya wants a medical degree and is denied admission due to inherent bias in the colonial administration, what is denied to her? When Deepa is in love and struggles to find acceptance in her country of birth, what is denied to her? When Jamini stays back and takes the dutiful domestic role, in the hope of getting a man’s love, what is denied to her?

The narrative develops as a dialectic between the nation and its humans. The human story pans out, becoming writ large nation story. This narrative is created by a creative blend of songs of freedom and motherland. The author ties the themes of aspirational women with that of an aspirational country. The notions of seva and duty are embodied in the characters of Nabhkumar, the dutiful doctor who served humanity, Somnath, the dutiful friend who fulfills his promise to take care of Nabhkumar’s family and remains unwavering in his task, Rashid, whose poverty of income is nothing in comparison to Mamoon’s poverty of character and Raza, who remains committed to both Muslim League and Deepa’s love. Somnath and Amit remain steadfast on their commitments to secularism even when it proves to come at great costs. Through these humans, the author pens the larger story of the country and people called India. It brings the nation out from its abstraction into its reality.

We will take care of each 

 Independence, Devakaruni, Banerjee Chitra., 2022, pp283

Through the narrative, the author has also posed certain interesting questions that could be useful for not only a feminist reading but also for the coexistence of many myriad identities and communities in the idea of India. The author raises the question ‘who shall take care of others and in turn of the nation once the founding moment is long gone?’ The founding moment and founding fathers are beautifully metaphorized in the figure of dying Nabhkumar as the father of three daughters. The sacrificial, truthful and hopeful father leaves them mid-sentence “take care…….” which the surviving parties interpreted till the end as their responsibility to protect others. It is only much later, after much blood is shed, is it to be understood that the country was never once left for one party to save or own. The message always was to “take care of each other”, that as distinct genders, groups, races, and religions, we were supposed to take care of each other. Chitra Banerjee leaves us therefore with much food for thought, and a sublime hope in a politics of taking care of each other.  Stories that revisit the past, through the lens of women and for that matter, those at the margins have a remarkable capacity to help the readers to understand the long-hidden and often forgotten latent histories that have existed all along.

State and archival histories reduce human beings, their sufferings, and joys to either numbers, recalled as events, or as part of museums and catalogs. But the citizens of India in these moments have lived an experience of life the narration of which is often not found in state histories. The number of people dead and missing is just statistics. Stories written such as these bring the lives of people out from mere statistics to become the life and breath of a country. They put flesh and blood into the lives of historical events. One finds oneself pining for homeland with Priya, one shares Deepa’s rootlessness and anxious loss of identity, one understands and even sympathizes with Jamini despite her flawed, jealous self. One is angry and even scared for them. One wants to shake Bina away from her wilful sadness. But as the author thinks aloud through Deepa’s character

“when men go off to be heroes, do they realize what it does to the women they leave behind.”

 Independence, Devakaruni, Banerjee Chitra., 2022, pp30

One is angry at Bina for letting her daughters go. One is angry at the world for Bina’s suffering. Bina is angry at the world for her loss, she is angry at herself for not being able to save her husband. Those who are left behind at home waiting for those who left to be heroes. Those who remain in waiting, who survive the re-inaction of death and loss over and over again. Those who stand up and force themselves to smile, to live through abject poverty of both resources and love, are they not heroes? 

The entire span of the narrative in terms of chronology is not more than two years, but by the time you turn your last page, it would seem that ages have gone by, that nothing has remained as it was when you began. You live that life with Deepa, Priya and Jamini. You feel the deep sense of loss, their loss, a nation’s loss. And yet you know they will be alright, we will be alright, the nation would be alright. They will, as they have themselves. They will take care of each other. We will take care of each other.

Notes:

1. Nehru’s famous tryst with Destiny speech, that finds mention in Divakaruni’s story as well.

©TheDaak2023