(response essay to Attia Hossain's Sunlight in a Broken Column)

Sunlight on a Broken Column is a close account of the dynamics of a relatively small community of people. Laila, the narrator, revisits her childhood home and tells her story as she recalls various events from her past. To the readers, the narrative appears as having been constructed out of memory. The narrative that results is subjective, but is also one that illustrates the overlapping of individual and national realities.

Sunlight on a Broken Column provides glimpses of a community that simultaneously anticipates and is apprehensive about changes. Once caught in the middle of a communal riot that has been growing more frequent in the face of necessary independence, Asad witnesses an old man being knifed. Laila, recounting the episode, speaks of a “desperate mob whose cruelty (is) the twisted sum of each individual’s fear” (78). In the event of a riot where two communal groups are pitted against each other, individual identities are obliterated and substituted by communal ones. Such a landscape, as the story of the old man suggests, exhausts any possibility of moderation.

While not as brutal, the small world of Laila and her acquaintances has its own vocabulary of violence. Sita, fearing social censure, shrinks from the possibility of having an open relationship with Kemal.

“He asked you to marry him. You chose to refuse.”
“Could I do otherwise? I, Sita, loved him, Kemal, and still do. Two individual human beings. But it would have been the daughter of my father and mother marrying the son of his parents, with
different backgrounds and different religions, two small cogs in a huge social machine.
…I’m not a saint, Laila. I’m not a martyr. I react to criticism and hatred even if I do not show it.
Let me keep my love intact. I cannot expose it to the judgment of others like a criminal waiting
for their verdict.” (Hosain 215-216)

Laila’s little community is not as crude in its expressions of segregation as they are articulated in the riot. Echoing the violence in the riot however, the terms of violence in Laila’s immediate community is anchored in the need for self-preservation. Presumably Laila is right to identify fear as the motivation of the rioting mobs. In this case, the formation of a communal identity is almost like an anticipatory gesture against the possibility of being delineated as an unremarkable minority. Should things take such a turn, the emphasis on difference is suddenly critical. If nothing else, an emphasis on difference works as a pretext for violence and confrontation.

Pressured by uncertain changes that Independence may bring about, individuals seek out assurances of security in a commonality of (aspects of) identity. As different communal identities are formed, differences are sharpened, often leaving no space for expressions of liberalism. In a community that has been coerced into playing up differences, the relationship of Sita and Kemal is an offense. Such a relationship translates into a blurring of differences and, if circuitously, lowers the potency of communal resistance.

In like manner, the relationships between Saleem, Ranjit, Joan and Laila are almost affronts. In the inevitable segregations that the events of Independence and Partition entail, such relationships must occupy recesses that do not belong in standardized compartments. They are the little narratives that are subservient to the more prominent narratives of the nation that document Independence and Partition.

Besides being Laila’s story, Sunlight on a Broken Column is also a story of a family. As a storyteller, Laila remembers and recollects occurrences that demarcate important moments in her household. For the narrating voice, memory is a mechanism that selects life episodes in order to create a personal narrative. Laila’s narrative is distinct from the narrative of national history because of this selective process. Events of Independence, Partition and the occurrences surrounding it are recounted through dialogues and interactions that take place in Laila’s circle of family and friends.

“We Taluqdars have ancient rights and privileges, given by a special charter, which we have to
safeguard. “
“What do those privileges amount to today?” Saleem said with a touch of derision. “They were
given by the British as the price of loyalty, and as people become more politically educated they
must question such rights. They must fight them.”
…”They cannot take what belongs to us. The land is ours,” protested Aunt Saira. It was as simple as that to her. (Hosain 231-232)

As the prospect of Independence grows more certain, Laila’s family faces the possibility of losing their land. Under the new Government of independent India, the family’s land will be considered public property. Saleem, not an advocate of the feudal way of thinking, appreciates this new policy.

On the other hand there are uncle Hamid and his wife who are a part of a generation that grows up with the assurance that they are a part of a tradition that allows them ‘ancient rights’ and privileges that come with an inherited social position. Independence will require them to give up the prerogatives they have grown accustomed to. The matter is complicated with the fact that, over the years, the family has taken to bring in its income from the land that is about to be taken away from them. In the stories of Kemal, Sita, and Saleem and his parents, the national narrative of Independence is shown to consist of many, at times conflicting, personal narratives.

When Laila returns to the Ashiana that now belongs to another family, she remembers the months immediately before Partition. Saleem, convinced that Pakistan offers him better security and prospects, decides to relocate to Karachi. Kemal chooses to remain in India. The decision to stay and remain is largely motivated by individual fears and beliefs. “I had learned too well the futility of arguments which involved beliefs,” Laila remarks (Hosain 288). Aside from individual convictions, there really is not much else to rely on when one is faced with limited alternatives and uncertain consequences. One understands, then, that often, individual choices and stories are tied to the stories of the nation.

As a selective tool, memory is partial and subjective. It recalls things that it most identifies with. Laila’s story consequently does not offer a record of Partition, but of the splitting up of her family in the Ashiana. When there are narratives like Sunlight on a Broken Column, any attempt to pin down an event like Partition as the narrative of the nation will seem an oversimplification. As narratives move away from the public, they complicate the idea of national histories. A narrative like Hosain’s suggests that national histories are nothing less than a congeries of individual memories that endlessly work to create personal narratives out of experiences of the past.