Abstract
This paper examines Bindu Bhatt’s Akhe Patar (The Inexhaustible Begging Bowl, 1999), the first Gujarati novel on the theme of the partition, awarded by Sahitya Akademi, Delhi, in 2003. The novel is read from a gendered perspective, exploring how a woman protagonist’s viewpoint shapes the partition narrative. The narrative unfolds retrospectively through Kanchan ba’s memory of the past, exploring themes of displacement, dislocation, communal violence, and gender consciousness within the context of India’s traumatic partition of 1947.
Keywords: partition, gender, Gujarati novel, memory, trauma, displacement
The partition is a traumatic event in the history of Indian subcontinent. Akhe Patar (The inexhaustible begging bowl) (1999) is the first Gujarati novel on the theme of the partition. A huge corpus of partition literature has been written responding to the traumatic partition of India in 1947, including works by Khushwant Singh, Saadat Hasan Manto, Bhishma Sahani, Bapsi Sidhwa, and many others.
Akhe Patar does describe the cruelty of the religious communities, but explores more its aftermath in the context of close relationships. The story unfolds itself retrospectively through Kanchan ba’s memory of the past during her coming back to the native place Jashapar. Kanchan’s father Jeshtaram leaves for Karachi after quarrelling with his father. Kanchan eventually marries Amrut, Devshankar’s son. The communal riots compel Kanchan to leave Karachi, losing her younger son Gautam and her mentally unstable father-in-law Devshankar during the journey. While looking for Devshankar’s dead body on the sea beach she is raped by the guard at the port.
The narrative adopts the mode of memory, with its necessary strategies. As Dipesh Chakrabarty notes, there are two aspects to this memory: the sentiment of nostalgia and the sense of trauma, and their contradictory relationship to the question of the past.
Since it is the memory of a woman protagonist in a novel by a woman novelist, gender consciousness operates in the narrative. A feminist voice is heard in its critique of the feudal, patriarchal life style. Aruna’s decision to remain an independent woman, Jaya’s decision to be known as Zarina, and Kanchan ba’s courage to live alone with dignity point out a woman’s discovery of her rich self, enough to live on without patriarchal support.
Kanchan ba’s remembering, a non-historical, mythical, subjective process reaches out to Krishna’s gift of a begging bowl to Pandavas. Her act of remembering the partition experience and its aftermath turns the inexhaustible begging bowl of sorrows into that of insight into history and fate.
Works Cited
- Bhatt, Bindu. Akhe Patar. Ahmedabad: R. R. Sheth & Co., 1999.
- Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “Remembered Villages: Representations of Hindu-Bengali Memories in the Aftermath of the Partition.” Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India. Mushirul Hasan (ed). rpt. 2000. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. 318-37.
- Das, Sisir Kumar. “Triumph and Tragedy.” A History of Indian Literature 1911-1956: Struggle for Freedom: Triumph and Tragedy. rpt. 1995. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2010.
- Khan, Yasmin. The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. “Introduction: the Plan.” New Delhi: Penguin, Viking, 2007. 1-10.
- Pandey, Gyanendra. “By way of introduction.” Remembering Partition. 2nd ed. 2001. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 1-20.
- Pandey, Gyanendra. “Constructing community.” Remembering Partition. 2nd ed. 2001. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 175-205.