The novel, Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry is set in the city of Mumbai, India, during the year 1971. The book explores the journey of a Parsi man named Gustad Noble and his relationships with others as he goes through the difficult times in his life. The book is not just about Gustad’s personal life journey but it also explores the political background during that time. The battle between India and West Pakistan during the Bangladeshi Liberation War that helped East Pakistan form their own sovereign state, Indira Gandhi's socialist and corrupt government and Shiv Sena's fascist regime led by their ethnocentric leader, Bal Thackeray influenced the background of the novel.
There were growing tensions between East Pakistan and West Pakistan during 1971. After winning the 1970 elections, East Pakistan wanted to establish their own country and separate from Pakistan. West Pakistan answered this with “Operation Searchlight” which started the Bangladeshi Liberation War (Malieckal,77). Operation Searchlight’s purpose was the extermination of all Bengalis. Dinshawji comments on this genocide when he says, “Bloody butchers, slaughtering left and right” (76). 3 million Bengalis died and 10 million decided to take refuge in India (Malieckal, 75-76). To pay for all these refugees, India introduced refugee relief tax which made the lives of the people harder. India joined the war after the bombing by West Pakistan's military aircraft. In the novel, Gustad covers his windows with black paper and builds an air-raid shelter under his bed to keep his family safe during the war (347). After 13 days of fighting, the Indo-Pakistani war came to an end with Pakistan surrendering and the Bengalis establishing their own nation.
In 1971, the ...
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... Pakistan to surrender during the Indo-Pakistani War helped the Bengalis establish a sovereign state for themselves. The distribution of the racist pamphlets against the minorities showed Shiv Sena's chauvinistic and fascist regime. Indira Gandhi's corrupt government, socialist regime and her controversial scandals such as giving her son's company government money and the 1971 Nagarwala scandal were also revealed. All of these political events influenced the background of the novel and the characters’ everyday lives. .
Works Cited
Malieckal, Bindu. THE BANGLADESHI GENOCIDE IN ROHINTON MISTRY'S SUCH A LONG JOURNEY 28.2 (2008): 75-88. Dec. 2008. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
Mistry, Rohinton. Such a Long Journey. New York: Knopf, 1991. Print.
Rajagopal, Krishnadas. "Nagarwala Case: Mystery Returns after Three Decades." - Indian Express. N.p., 21 Dec. 2008. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
Sharlach, Lisa. “Rape as Genocide: Bangladesh, the Former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda.” New Political Science. 22:1 (2000): 89-102. Google Scholar. Web. 28 April 2014.
The Partition of India led to millions of people displaced and marked as one of the largest mass migration ever over the world. August 15, 1947 was a very significant day for Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and many others. It marked the day of the British partition of India, and India won its freedom from colonial rule, ending nearly 200 years of British rule. This successful attainment of independence from colonial rule defined a narrative of religious nationalism, but also has led to displacement and violence between the two nation states of India and Pakistan. Once a peaceful union of Muslims and Hindus had become separated, whereas Muslims got Pakistan and Hindus got an independent India (Best et al, 2008). “The Other Side of Silence” (Butalia, 2000, pp.264-300) the oral testimony of a Punjabi woman Maya Rani, who was a child living in Pakistan during the Partition. Her testimony was crucial to understand the historiography of the event, because she was a witness of the impact of the Partition, but she was not directly involved in the violence that the emergence and independence of India that has brought.
The many factors that lead to the escalation of conflict, and ultimately to the brutal violence, and mass displacement in 1947, were hard for me to wrap my head around. I realized that the partition of India...
"The Killing Fields: The Genocide in Cambodia." Do Something. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2014.
The main conflict in this story is a personal conflict of Jayanti trying to convince herself that America is still a great place, ignoring her uncle saying "Things here aren't as perfect as people at home like to think." She tries to stay open minded to how great America is going to be, until her conflict with the boys in the streets. The boys throw nasty slush at Jayanti and her aunt, but Jayanti doesn't seem to want to accept that fact boys that young are so disrespectful in America unlike at home for her. Another conflict she experiences is having her uncle hit her aunt in front of her, but having no idea how to react to the situation because her aunt forgives her uncle almost instantly after getting hit. I would find it very confusing if
Genetsch, Martin. The Texture of Identity: The Fiction of MG Vassanji, Neil Bisoondath, and Rohinton Mistry.Toronto:TSAR
Narayanan, Gomathi. “British Fathers and Indian Sons: Guilt and Pride for the Indian Freedom Movement in the Post-independence Indian Novel in English: The Art of "Scapegoating"” Journal of South Asian Literature 17. 1(1982): 207-24. Print.
Nemoto, K. (n.d) 'The Rohingya Issue: A Thorny Obstacle between Burma (Myanmar) and Bangladesh.', p. 5.
In sum, through their dichotomies of the British and Indian relationship during the emergence of India to independence, Forster and Scott allow the reader to free themselves of their prejudices and open up to their views on historical culture. Forster ‘attaches to India through extravagant metaphorical meanings and anthropomorphisms’ whilst Orwell stated that he ‘didn’t do prophecy’ and that he would not ‘put anything into it that human societies have not already done.’
In the book Train to Pakistan, author Khushwant Singh recalls the brutal and unfortunate times when Muslims were being forced out of Mano Majra. They, along with the Hindu and Sikh population, were living in relative peace. But when there had to be change, chaos ensued. There were several key individuals that shared the total responsibility of the expulsion of Muslims from Mano Majra; Even though some had purer motives than others, they all took stock in the unfortunate process.
Two of these massacres, one in Delhi, followed by another a few days later in Sarhupurreceived widespread publicity. The killers, who were Thakur Rajputs, had just one message to send through murder — the untouchable Jatav cobblers had to learn their place in society and the caste hierarchy. This is also the message that Mistry’s Thakur Dharamsi wished to send to the Untouchable Chamar families who had sought democratic equality in defiance of caste hierarchy. What is evident here is a conflict between the terms of nationhood and those of caste stratification, which have their roots in Hinduism. The casualty in the conflict is the principle of democracy upon which equality of citizenship depends. Mistry’s fictional and Akbar’s documentary accounts of caste violence may be usefully situated within the broader context of “caste wars” that have dominated parts of Tamilnadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Bihar. Most of the violence against the Dalits comes from landowning caste Hindus, who are equipped with militias and private armies that have been recruited and trained with government assistance and cooperation, initially for the purpose of combating Maoist-style uprisings from tenants and landless
His novels grows out with the chronological sequence of time with the synthesis of time and values. In the novel Train To Pakistan ,it expresses creatively as how the movement of trains use to set the tone of the village , signalling the time for action, rest and sleep, became a symbol of despair, darkness and destruction. This technique of contrast is very suggestive.
Clear Light of Day highlights how a war affects a family and a nation. In the novel, parental absence escalates sibling conflict, which leads to the characters escapement, ultimately resulting in Bim’s anger. While some readers may think that Clear Light of Day just represents a single family’s struggle, the novel clearly represents India’s struggle as well. India’s independence from Britain consequently leads to the formation of Pakistan and continual religious and political conflict. This novel is an allegory that explains political combat in an accessible way because everyone is part of a family. This novel not only models the reasons for conflict in India but for other nations and even families as well. Clear Light of Day shows how understanding family dynamics and creating strong familial bonds can help reduce conflict and promote peace throughout the world.
Lawrence Auster wrote an eye-opening blog excerpt titled India and Pakistan: Why the Mass Killing Occurred. The content of this excerpt explore the fundamental issues of identity and religion that led to the violence in 1947. The author makes his point by utilizing current event such as the train massacre in 2002, in which 50 Hindu women and children were burned alive. The blog is for an audience with some prior knowledge on the topic and continues to expand upon that knowledge. The blog is a secondary source because it introduces its own unique ideas regarding the issue and was written after the time of the event. It was very helpful to my research because it simplifies the wordy information often found on scholarly sites and condenses it into something comprehensible and relatable to the reader.
Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children employs strategies which engage in an exploration of History, Nationalism and Hybridity. This essay will examine three passages from the novel which demonstrate these issues. Furthermore, it will explore why each passage is a good demonstration of these issues, how these issues apply to India in the novel, and how the novel critiques these concepts.