Cracking India, Bapsi Sidhwa

       Perhaps more important than the chosen identity of a nation is the feeling of that nation—the traditions, histories, cultures, and religious identities of a nation become that nation, and together form a consensus of identity among its people.  Because a nation is indeed fabricated and constructed by all of these things, it becomes a true community only when its identity is, for the most part, agreed upon. When the feeling of a nation is in conflict with itself, the nation as a whole will shift until its identity is more stable; we see this in the novel by the ways in which characters come to demonize friends and neighbors they have known for years for the sake of the new nation's identity.  In Cracking India, while the violence and protests are growing over whom and what ideals will create India/Pakistan, the characters begin to feel the tension from political leaders and government officials trickle down to their individual communities.  These tensions stem from the individuals’ pride in their own identities, self-defense against criticisms, and confusion over what will happen to their home as it was before.  The cause of these tensions are most represented in Cracking India by the religions of the characters, and we can see this when Lenny “becomes aware of religious differences” (100).  They were not important to her before, not only because she was a young child but also because the community all shared the feeling of the same community—their political and government leaders were not at odds with each other.  The characters in the novel only become divided into categories when the possibility of the split of the nation becomes a reality, as Lenny takes note when she claims “One day everybody is themselves—and the next day they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian.  People shrink, dwindling into symbols”  (100). The confusion over the feeling of the imagined community begins not only to weaken the community itself, but also its inhabitants.  We see, as the confusion mounts, each character beginning to cling more and more to their personal identities as Muslim, Hindu, etc., and in doing so, clinging to the traditions and beliefs each feel should be important to the nation they belong to.  In asking “What is God?” in reference to these religious identities and behaviors, Lenny seems to also be asking what will the nation decide on—who will have the ultimate “right” answer (101).  The feelings of the individuals as well as the different religious groups represented in the novel play an important role in not only shaping the future nations, but also in how those nations develop and come to separate.  Indeed, one can think that if not for the tensions pressed upon these individuals by the leaders of their religions and peoples, the nation as Lenny saw it may never have cracked at all. 

Lahore and Amristar

  
Cracking India takes place in Lahore before the border of India and Pakistan is created; Lenny explains that "the Radcliff Commission deals out Indian cities like a pack of cards. Lahore is dealt to Pakistan, Amristar to India... I am Pakistani. In a snap. Just like that" (146). Identity, in this novel, is explained through the eyes of a child which allows the reader to feel the division from the point of view of a person with the least amount of control in the situation.  It is also expressed, increasingly as the novel develops, through the sense of being from and living in a particular place, and how this sense or feeling of a community affects the people who live there. 
After partition in 1947, the state of Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan, and the cities of Lahore and Amristar--just a distance of 31 miles from each other--became the main cities of conflict and riot during partition. An excerpt from Arnold J. Toynbee's East to West provides an explanation of what it meant for the state to be divided as it was, from the perspective of a Sikh/Muslim division that we are not clearly shown in Cracking India.  Both cities, before partition, carried a very heavy weight for people of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu religions, and were considered a "common capital" for the Sikh and Muslim people. However, after partition Lahore became the capital of the new nation of Pakistan, which was now under the control of an Islamic leader, and Amristar became a city of India, remaining a central area of the Sikh religion. Partition not only physically divided the "twin cities", as Toynbee refers to them, but separated the peoples who depended on these cities to function together, as well. Suddenly Sikhs were not welcome in a city they formerly thought of as a home for their people. Life suddenly changed when a new border was drawn, and the identity associated with each place was altered dramatically. 

The Overland Mail, Rudyard Kipling

          The depiction of the Indian landscape in Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Overland Mail" gives a clear distinction between natural India and colonizing England by comparing the Indian jungle with the systematic and civilized British mail system. This binary distinction in turn creates a division between the colonized and colonizers. Much in the style of traditional and unchallenged Orientalism, the poem makes its point not by true comparison (as in, a depiction of both English and Indian settlements side by side), but of a one-sided representation of the native land as a means of subtly making a statement about the colonizing empire. For the purpose of disparaging natural India, and providing reason for its colonization, the narrator sets the Indian landscape against the British mail system as an obstacle.  The narrator states "Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim./Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff." and continues with "The service admits not a "but" or an "if" (McLeod, 259).  By allowing the landscape to threaten the British colonial system, the narrator furthers the notion of India as wild, destructive, and savage, and shows England as structured and civilized--in it's uncolonized state it is only represented as a threat to the colonial system. There is no room for allowing the landscape to interfere with the British mail system, however; this suggests that despite difficulties with natural India, England will still overcome these obstacles for their purpose of the colonial Empire. The landscape only becomes less dangerous as the mail is delivered to the British.
           It is also significant to note that as the runner carries the mail, he is climbing in elevation--"up, up through the night goes the Overland Mail" (260). This "ascent" can be interpreted as England sitting (both physically and imperially) higher than the native Indians.  The fact that this poem happens in the course of one night is also of importance. The traversing of the Indian jungle is shrouded not only in physical but metaphorical darkness. The landscape is dangerous and wild, and the darkness seems to suggest a sort of primitive society attached to that landscape--it is empty of other people and remains in the dark until the runner reaches the exiles, and the lack of light suggests formidable and ominous conditions.
          At the same time, the darkness also enshrouds the colonial mail system: not only is the jungle encased in darkness, but a crucial system developed by the colonizers that assists the missions of the colonizers happens in the dark of night.  This suggests not only an obvious distinction between colonized as savage and colonizers as proper, but also that one of the underlying systems of the whole colonial empire comes out of and works in the same darkness that owns the natural landscape.  The landscape of India in Kipling's poem is meant to portray the two supposedly very opposite cultures placed next to one another--wild and dangerous India working for the elevated and structured British Empire--but at the same time it shows a bit of ambivalence in that landscape itself.

Location, in Kipling's poem, is central and of overt importance. The runner moves into the jungle, through darkness and harm's way, and into the sunlight of the day to deliver the mail; on the surface, the differences between the English land and native land could not be clearer.  Digging a little deeper, however, we run into some questions. It is not expressed to the reader, for example, where this runner lives, how he came to work for the mail system, or where the robber comes from and who he is.  We are not shown how this space is divided between the savage and the civilized, only that it is so. For some reference on the landscape that Kipling is describing in his poem, I have included a map (with link to larger image here) that shows the division of land in India by the British as of a certain year.  In an attempt to discover how a settlement like the one Kipling describes might be divided in colonial times, I have also included a map of Calcutta in 1842, found at the American Geographical Society Library's Digital Map Collection.  The mapmakers have included below the map of the city a list of references to public buildings.  Note that the list of buildings does not include any sort of reference to residential areas (inhabited by either the British or the natives), and it does not list any sort of pre-colonial structure as a public building.  The only building that even somewhat makes note of the native population is the listing of the "Native Hospital", but not even servant's barracks are listed. This is presumably because these have been done away with and are no longer in the control of the natives, or if there do remain one or two they are not considered of importance.  In fact, the only hint a user of this map might find of the native people of Indian is in an image set at the bottom right-hand corner of the page.  Here we see Esplanade Row, which in the sketch seems to depict an almost plantation-style farm being worked by the otherwise invisible natives in the foreground of an image of the city.  Still, this image does not show where these natives live in the city, and this lack of information speaks for the colonial attitude towards the natives.