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Silence and Mediation: Narrative Form in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India

Abstract This essay considers the role of narrative silence in postcolonial literature, particularly the literary techniques of Bapsi Sidhwa in Cracking India. Engaging with historiographical debates on how we represent marginalized groups, this article argues that Sidhwa’s careful narrative structure impels readers to engage with subaltern figures to better understand the violence women experienced during the Partition. While some scholars have criticized Sidhwa, suggesting she (a Parsi woman) appropriates the suffering of Hindu women during the Partition, I suggest that Sidhwa uses multiple narrators and timeframes to raise a historical consciousness about gaps in historical records, allowing readers to identify with Hindu women while at the same time recognizing “loss as loss” within the first instance – to borrow a phrase from Jill Didur. In other words, this article builds on narratologists such as Paul Ricoeur to demonstrate that Sidhwa destabilizes overarching historical narratives that claim to stand-in for those who cannot speak for themselves. Communicating the ways literature may supplement the historical record of the Partition, Sidhwa’s Cracking India encourages a dynamic and heterogeneous method for better representing the past.