Comparative · PDF fileFirst novel we chose was, Water: a Novel by Bapsi Sidhwa which talks...

Comparative Analysis

Lajja and Water: Social Novels

English Project

Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala

Submitted to: - Submitted by:-

Dr. Tanya Mander Group XII

Jaspreet Singh 542

Jatin Garg 552

Shaili Kailasia 562

Harendar Neel 572

Acknowledgement

We like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the people who have helped us throughout to

complete this project.

We are very grateful to our lecturer Dr. Tanya Mander, who lent us continuous support and

encouragement throughout the project. It would have been impossible to come up with this

project without her advice. We thank the library staff and IT department for their valuable

contributions. We also thank the University authorities for giving us the opportunity to work on

this project.

We also appreciate the continuous support given to us by our friends and boosted our

confidence. Sincere regards to those who helped us with this project directly or indirectly, it

would have been impossible to come up with such a work without their help.

Jaspreet Singh

Jatin Garg

Shaili Kailasia

Harendar Neel

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Introduction……………………………………………………...4

Chapter 2

Background………………………………………………………5

Chapter 3

Characters………………………………………………………11

Chapter 4

Themes…………………………………………………………..16

Chapter 5

Conclusion………………………………………………………19

Bibliography…………………………………………………….22

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

For the project we were asked to compare two novels written in context of India or by Indian

authors. First novel we chose was, Water: a Novel by Bapsi Sidhwa which talks about the ill-

treatment of widows in pre-partitioned India. We have tried to compare it with Taslima

Nasreen’s Lajja which throws light on the effects of demolition of Babri Masjid in India, in

Bangladesh.

We have tried to compare the Background, Characters, Authors and their writing style. Both the

books were thoroughly read and equivalent amount of research was done to throw light on the

things not in the book. We have tried to know as much about the authors before starting for the

project so that we could relate to them. We read various articles, interviews and critic comments

on them. Their various auto-biographical works were also read to accustom us to their own

thoughts.

The experience of doing this project has been wonderful. It has enlightened our knowledge and

given us insights to good literature. We hope our work enlightens the readers as well, and gives

them the same satisfaction we got while making it.

CHAPTER 2

BACKGROUND

Bapsi Sidhwa was born in 1938 in undivided India. She was born in Karachi, raised up in Lahore

and now lives in Houston, Texas, USA. She is best known for her collaborative work with film

maker Deepa Mehta. She wrote a novel, Cracking India in 1991 which was made into a film

Earth in 1998 by Deepa Mehta. Later she wrote Water: A Novel in 2006 bases on the movie

Water released in 2005 by Deepa Mehta. She has three more novels to her name, namely An

American Brat, The Pakistani Bride and The Crow Eaters.

She got married at the age of 19, when she moved to Mumbai. She lived there for five years

before getting divorced. She best describes herself as Punjabi-Parsi-Indian-Pakistani. She writes

about women's issues of the Indian subcontinent and strives to get them into public discussion.

Most of her books have been female centric, with Cracking India being her own experience

during the time of partition. Sidhwa travels frequently to Pakistan in her capacities as a women's

rights activist. Sidhwa works with women to help foster an awareness of their rights, including

the organization of large-scale awareness-raising public protests. She also utilizes her position as

an acclaimed writer to make numerous public statements in the Pakistani media aimed against

repressive measures that harm women and minority communities.

Bapsi Sidhwa is currently working on a collection of short stories. In her most recently

published essay, for Time Magazine, she reflects on the Partition's victims of rape. What legacy

have these women left us? It is believed that their spirit animate all those women that have

bloomed into judges, journalists, ngo official, filmmakers, doctors and writers-- women who

today are shaping opinions and challenging stereotypes.

Taslima Nasreen was born on 25th August 1962, in Mymensingh, Bangladesh. She is a Bengali,

Bangladeshi ex-doctor turned author who has been living in exile since 1994. She works to build

support for secular humanism, freedom of thought, equality for women, and human rights by

publishing, lecturing, and campaigning.

From a modest literary profile in the late 1980s, she rose to global fame by the end of the 20th

century owing to her feminist views and her criticism of Islam in particular and of religion in

general. Since fleeing Bangladesh in 1994 she has lived in many countries, and currently lives in

Sweden after expulsion from India in 2008 where she was denounced by the Muslim clergy and

received death threats from Islamic fundamentalists.

Early in her literary career, she wrote mainly poetry, and published half a dozen collections of

poetry between 1986 and 1993, often with female oppression as a theme, and often containing

very graphic language. She started publishing prose in the early 1990s, and produced three

collections of essays and four novels before the publication of her 1993 novel Lajja, or Shame, in

which a Hindu family is persecuted by Muslims. This publication changed her life and career

dramatically.

Following the publication of Lajja, Nasrin suffered a number of physical and other attacks. In

October 1993, an Islamic fundamentalist group called the Council of Islamic Soldiers offered a

bounty for her death. In August 1994 she was brought up on charges of making inflammatory

statements, and faced death threats from Islamic fundamentalists. A hundred thousand

demonstrators called her an apostate appointed by imperial forces to vilify Islam; a militant

faction threatened to lose thousands of poisonous snakes in the capital unless she was executed.

After spending two months in hiding, at the end of 1994 she escaped to Sweden. One of the

results of her exile was that she did not get to practice medicine anymore; she became a full-time

writer and activist.

Deepa Mehta adapted Sidhwa’s Cracking India into a critically acclaimed movie, Earth. The two

veterans joined hands again for another project called Water. Water was made in 2005, and

Bapsi Sidhwa according to the wishes of the producers was asked to write a novel, Water, which

was to be released with the movie. Her writing style is commendable which took the story to

another level. In a span of four months, she gave more background to some of the characters,

including the child widow. Sidhwa says she began to read extensively about the widow system in

India and various related customs and traditions. She was able to explain the background of

many rituals and customs that the film, given its running time, could not.

6th

December 1992 is marked as a black day in post independent India. It is the day which has

changed Hindu-Muslim relations for the worse. Ever since the incident, Muslims feel themselves

exploited in the land of Hindus. This thinking and event led to riots in India. To revenge the ill

treatment of Muslims in India, Hindu population was targeted in Bangladesh. Communal riots

began in Bangladesh and the minority of Hindus was severely persecuted.

Taslima Nasreen as a person detested this fundamentalism and communalism. This was the

reason she wrote Lajja. She found it disgraceful that the Hindus were hunted by Muslims in her

country. She felt humiliated and defeated at the hands of Communalism. Lajja is a document of

this defeat.

Water, set in 1938, is a story of a child named Chuyia, Little Mouse, who is betrothed at age 6

and widowed at age 8. According to Hindu traditions, she is discarded to a widow-ashram, her

head shorn, and her life given over to penitence. The story revolves around orthodox Indian

customs, with the backdrop of Indian freedom struggle at its peak. Chuyia befriends Kalyani who

is forced into prostitution to support the ashram, Shakuntala, one of the widows, and Narayan, a

young and charming upper-class follower of Gandhism. The book tells us about her struggle in

the ashram and society and the problems a widow faced in pre-partitioned India.

Lajja, set in 1992, is based on the aftermath of Babri Masjid demolition in Bangladesh. Lajja is a

savage indictment of religious extremism and man s inhumanity to man. The Duttas Sudhamoy,

Kironmoyee, and their two children, Suranjan and Maya have lived in Bangladesh all their lives.

Despite being part of the country s small Hindu community that is terrorized at every opportunity

by Muslim fundamentalists they refuse to leave their country, as most of their friends and

relatives have done. Sudhamoy, an atheist, believes with a naive mix of optimism and idealism

that his motherland will not let him down. The world condemns the incident, but its fallout is felt

most acutely in Bangladesh, where Muslim mobs begin to seek out and attack the Hindus. The

nightmare inevitably arrives at the Duttas doorstep and their world begins to fall apart. The novel

exposes the mindless bloodthirstiness of fundamentalism and brilliantly captures the insanity of

violence in our time.

Water is set during the period of the British Raj in the year 1938, when India was still under

colonial rule by the British. Following Hindu tradition during that period, the marriage of young

girls to older men was commonplace in certain parts of India. When a man from a Brahmin

Hindu family died, his young widow would be forced to spend the rest of her life in a widow's

ashram in order to make amends for the sins from her previous life which supposedly caused her

husband's death.

Chuyia is yet another victim of a widow’s sorrowful life. A girl married at the age of 6, who

never met her husband till he is alive, is forced to renunciation of her life, just because the

society thinks her to be a bad omen. The book tells us of the ill practices prevalent in pre-

partitioned India. It depicts the time of change, when Mahatma Gandhi was at his peak of

political and social career. His ideology distinguishes certain characters and their behavior to the

widow section of the society.

The widows are expected to shave their heads, give up all their material possessions and clothe

themselves in a plain white cotton sari without the benefit of even a blouse. They live on just one

meal a day. On festivals days they are given paltry alms by temple-goers and on regular days

they are given a cup of rice and a fistful of lentils for every 8-hour session of singing and

dancing in temple. For many widows, this was their only means of sustenance. On those days

when a widow was too sick to perform, she starved.

As a widow, Chuiya is not allowed to touch non-widows; she has to take care that even her

shadow doesn't fall on them because she and her shadow are considered polluted. She is

expected to spend most of her time inside the ashram; praying or fasting in atonement for

whatever sins caused her husband's death (the Hindus believed that widowhood was the direct

consequence of a sinful past life). As widows were not allowed to remarry, 8-year old Chuiya

could very well expect to spend her entire life confined to the ashram.

Why widows were treated this way in India of the 1930's? In Brahminanical tradition, a woman

is recognised as a person only when she is one with her husband. Outside of marriage the wife

has no recognised existence, so, when her husband dies, she should cease to exist. The same

thinking is responsible for the barbaric act of Sati (the self-immolation of a wife on her husband's

funeral pyre), which fortunately was outlawed by the British.

The same thing didn’t hold true for the men, however. Men were allowed to remarry, keep

mistresses or visit prostitutes. As one Brahmin man in the book justifies it that our holy texts say

Brahmins can sleep with whomever they want, and the women they sleep with are blessed.

The novel exposes the hypocrisy and double standards of Indian society in the 1930's, especially

where it concerned women, in particular unfortunate widows.

The story is of the time when Babri Masjid was demolished in India by our so called communal

forces, no need to mention by whom, on 6th December 1992. The story is a work of fiction and

is made up of thirteen days just after the demolition of the Masjid. Although one would think of

leaving the book half read, in between as the story is not that gripping, but considering the fact

that the writer has written it in only 7 seven days, she deserves a lot of appreciation and credit for

the work. One also comes to know of all the incidents that have happened in Bangladesh after

independence in 1947.

The story is of a struggle of a Hindu family living in Bangladesh during those days. There are

four main characters belonging to same family, Duttas:

1. Sudhamoy- the father.

2. Kironmoyee- the mother.

3. Suranajan- the son and,

4. Maya- the daughter.

All through the pages of the book, there is a mention of all the incidents that has happened

during those days, like the killing of Hindus, the ruining and destroying of Mandirs, the

abduction and rapes of Hindu women etc. The list goes on. There were more than 200 Mandirs

were destroyed and more than 1000 Hindus were looted and rendered homeless. All most all the

relatives and friends of the family leaves the country and moves on to live in India but, The

family hates the idea of leaving their own country in any circumstances, Sudhamoy, the

father, is a man of high ideals and don’t want to leave the country of his origin. He had fought

for his country during all movements like Language movement and independence struggle in the

hope that when Pakistanis would be out of his country Hindus will be able to have a happy and

prosperous life there. However, the scene comes out to be different. The son also had the same

ideology as his father; he treats everyone as a human being, rather than a Hindu or Muslim. But

now its break their hearts to see that Hindus in their country are treated wrongly at the hands of

Muslims for the wrong doings of some Hindus that too in another country, India! One day a

group of Muslim rioters ruins their house too and take away their daughter Maya too, before

their eyes. Suranjan tries his best to locate his sister but all in vain and then there is hell lot of

emotions and crying.

The book as such does not contain much of the author’s life. She rather throws light on what the

community suffered. She relates to the pain of the widows and sympathizes with them in their

writing. In one of her interviews with a TV channel, Sidhwa recounts the post partition days,

when she helped refugees out of her wits and against her religion. As such she might be related

to the character of a woman who helps Chuyia and Shakuntala out in the latter half of the book,

which is my own assumption. Nothing more can be related to Sidhwa as such from the book

because of the characters being of different religion and place.

Lajja has been influenced by Taslima’s very staunch feminist views, but it does not contain

much of her life. The incidents expressed in the book are the ones she has witnessed, but has not

gone through herself. She has expressed her views against her own religion which can be

accounted as a dislike she has had for her religion from childhood, as in one of her interviews

she said she did not like the way Islam has been preached or is being preached. The flaws of

Islam have been brought up in this book, which are solely based on the thinking of the author

itself.

CHAPTER 3

CHARACTERS

Talking of characters, the first few characters that come in the mind are the protagonist and

antagonists. Most of the story revolves around these characters, so these are the characters an

author basically stresses upon.

Water is a very touching story, and while you finish the book you have sympathy for the

characters. The characters are real; one can easily imagine them in that time period. Our history

makes us aware about the plight of widows in pre-partition era and Bapsi Sidhwa has added

more to that knowledge. The protagonist in this story is Chuiya while the antagonist is

Madhumati.

The book opens with Chuiya at her parent’s home, a kid who knows nothing more than dolls and

games she plays with her brothers. She has a fascination for everything she sees and hears. Free

like a bird she wanders in the forests for fruits and rescues a pup stuck in a ditch. When she is

married, she is happy just because of the food she gets to eat while the marriage ceremony hardly

matter. She is lost in her own world, hardly aware of her surroundings. Her husband dies and she

is left in an ashram for renunciation. She does not want to stay there, as it does not feel like a

home to her, she wants to go back home and like any other kid hopes her mother will come to

her rescue. She is alien to most of the things happening around her in the ashram. When certain

things do not appeal to her she wants to change them according to her. She does not want to beg

like other widows do, does not like to fast, does not like to pray all the time but when she is

offered things in return she readily does them. She asks questions, which sometimes are not

considered to be answered by the adults. Chuiya defines innocence in this story, her innocence

makes you feel like a kid and rejoice with her when she does. Her sadness makes you cry when

she does. Sidhwa does complete justice to the character of this widow and makes you sympathize

with her apathy.

Madhumati is the eldest of the widows of the ashram. She assumes herself to be the head of the

ashram and takes all the decisions. All these years of widowhood have made her cunning. She is

variously compared to a beached whale and a satiated sea-lion. She is hated by some of the

widows and flattered by others because of the power she had over them. She is friends with

Gulabi, a eunuch who acts as a pimp for ashram widows. Madhumati and Gulabi had forced

Kalyani into prostitution, which though was against their traditions and culture, but as

Madhumati says that we have to exist, and even God cannot question that. Her contradictory

character to the plight of widows does not go down well with widows. They are all illusion by

the sense of duty she has instilled in them and nobody questions her.

The only person in the ashram that can challenge Madhumati authority is Shakuntala. Shakuntala

is a widow in her early 40’s and is perhaps the most enigmatic of the widows. She is attractive,

witty, sharp, dark person with black-brown eyes. She is also one of the few widows who can

read. She exudes enough anger that even Madhumati leaves her alone. Quiet and reserved,

Shakuntala is caught between her hatred of being a widow and her fear of not being a sincere,

dedicated widow. Shakuntala is a very devout Hindu who seeks the counsel of Sadananda, a

gentle-looking priest in his late forties who recites the scriptures to the pilgrims who throng the

Ghats of the holy city. It is he who makes Shakuntala aware of her situation, eventually giving

her the necessary intellectual input to separate true faith from the hypocrisy and superstition that

makes her and the other widows' lives a misery.

In Contrast to these widow characters, there is character of Kalyani. One of the youngest

widows, Kalyani is forced into prostitution by Madhumati, and it is by her earnings that the

ashram exists; still she is disgraced by other widows. She does not follow the rules other widows

have to follow just because of prostitution and none in the society objects to it because of

Kalyanis use. When Kalyani meets Narayan, a young man of her age, they fall in love with each

other. But what comes in between them is society. She asks him not to talk to her as it is a sin to

talk to a widow. This loves soon breaks her out of this cage. She begins to refuse to oblige her

clients and dreams for her remarriage. Kalyani’s character is entangled between two thoughts,

one is the society and other her own. She listens to both, and does what her conscience tells her

to. She is mature, innocent and after being friends with Chuiya, she feels her childhood has

returned again.

Narayan is a man of new principles; he defines the new thought process India will give after the

independence. He is an ardent follower of Gandhism and wishes to go by his principles. He does

not hold the orthodox views of the society. He is independent and takes his own decisions. It

does not matter to him if Kalyani is a widow, and it still did not matter when he came to know

she was a prostitute as well. He is ready to fight against the society, even his orthodox mother, to

marry Kalyani. He even plans to adopt Chuiya after he marries Kalyani. His character portrays

the change Indian society was going through at that point of time. He was an educated man,

resented the British Raj, and wanted to recite Keats poetry as an independent man.

Bapsi Sidhwa defines her characters very well. One cannot help but sympathize with these

widows at the end of the book. She defines the characters in such an excellent manner that it’s

not that hard to visualize them. Their feelings, thoughts and actions have been created in a very

eloquent style. One can feel them building up and can feel the same tension the character feels.

Bapsi Sidhwa prefers telling negative stories in a positive way; as such she has not kept a black

character in the story. Even the antagonist can be accounted as a grey character. Even

Madhumati felt love for and sympathy for Chuiya, but such were the circumstances she could not

be good to her. Her actions were against her will, and she knew what she did was wrong. To her

the survival was superior to their Dharma and even God cannot question it.

The best part about Water is its characters. More than the story it’s the characters that hold you

to the text. Today’s generation is completely ignorant of the past that these characters have gone

through, hence their strength fascinates you, your own problems feel so small in front of theirs

and makes you feel blessed and realize that we have a much better life.

In Lajja, Taslima Nasreen fails to impress with her characterization. Throughout the novel, when

one finally starts relating to the character, there is a dramatic change in the same. The personality

of the characters is somewhat dubious. Their behavior changes from time to time throughout the

plot which may be accounted for chaotic social situation; however, the characters do not do

justice to that chaos.

The stage is set in Bangladesh and the story revolves around an extremely patriotic Hindu

family. Taslima in her tale buttresses her fiction with facts. Her attempt in this book is not to

malign any religion, it is an earnest beseech to the human race to embrace humanity and shun

fanatism. The story is partially gripping and extremely poignant.

Sudhamoy Dutta is an atheist Hindu, he had seen many disputes and riots in his lifetime. From

the Partition of 1947, to the relatively recent Independence of Bangladesh in the 70s, he had

lived and participated through every kind of struggle that his country had to endure. His

fundamental ideology in life was that why he should left his homeland and went somewhere else.

If he lives, it will be on this soil and if he dies, it will be in the very same place. Sudhamoy

Dutta’s ideas were courageous and blatantly patriotic. His belief was that a he was Bengali first

and a Hindu later. Unfortunately, the system in which he lived did not allow such ideals to

flourish and repeatedly he was reminded of his minority status in society, whether in the matters

of career or personal life. His fight for survival, literally, put him on stake many times. His

decisions and choices are what lead his family into an unfair trial, which forms the crux of the

plot.

Suranjan Dutta, the son in the family and the young blood of the nation, Suranjan had ideals

similar to his father’s but only stronger ten-fold. For him, his country, the way he’d always seen

it, was what it was. Religion was the last thing he considered during his daily endeavors and he

believed himself to be no different from any of his Muslim friends and acquaintances. He refused

to even acknowledge the fact that he had less of access to his fundamental rights just because his

religion was not in majority in the country. How his ideas come crashing down like pack of cards

and put his family into danger is the high point of the narrative.

Nilanjana Dutta aka Maya is Sudhamoy’s daughter and Suranjan’s sister, she was an independent

young girl who chose to go with the system rather than defy it. As the sole breadwinner of the

house, she was concerned about her family’s safety and disappointed with her brother for being

unable to protect her family in a time when her family’s religion had become their biggest

enemy. With hopes and dreams for a better life ahead, she preferred to follow the path of safety,

than a fight for righteousness.

Kironmoyee Dutta, the homemaker, the mother, the glue in the family of incoherent pieces of

strong individuals. She lives for her family and for that only. Her wishes and dreams are only for

the betterment of her family.

The feminist in Taslima Nasrin made sure that the leading male characters in the story are

irresponsible and selfish, projecting the two female characters as good souls. He made hardly

any contribution to the family and yet he expected a lot from them. The damage control ordered

by the doctor later was not affective where this irresponsibility assigned on the male characters

took away the chance to create sympathy for them. There is one place the author goes to the

extent of saying that it is the daughter who always looks after her parents in their old age. Sons

always move out with their wives to live separately; but daughters…they even forsake their

husband’s homes to look after their parents. Here one could not stop laughing where the daughter

in law of one is definitely a daughter in the first place. If all daughters in laws behave like that, it

is equal to say that all daughters don’t care about the parents of their husbands and don’t permit

their husbands to go away to their own parents. One knows this is not a general rule, but a

different perspective. Woman after all were like commodities, and therefore stolen just like gold

and silver. Yes, there is a point in her view as well.

Also the characters portrayed in the novel are strange and unique, very unlike a common man. In

case of a riot, a common man will focus more on its safety, rather than his principles or with the

concept of right or wrong. Sudhamoy on the other hand is adamant to keep his principles intact

and in the end loses his family because of his principles. The whole story was based upon this

thought and whole family got destroyed because of it. Also, the reaction of the brother after his

sister is abducted by the hooligans leaves a lot to be desired. No matter how big a riot is, no

brother is going to sit and brood about his ideologies.

CHAPTER 4

THEMES

“A Widow should be long suffering until death, self restrained and chaste.”1

“A Virtuous wife who remains chaste when her husband has died goes to heaven.”

“A Woman who is unfaithful to her husband is reborn in the womb of a Jackal.”2

The novel is based on widows and their survival in the society. It deals with their day to day life

and their hardships. How they suffer because of the act (of killing their husband) which they

never committed. The life of the widows is hard but they have to oblige to the rules of the

society. They sometimes question their fate, luck, holy books, even their past life to seek the

answers of the agony they suffer everyday in their life. But they have taken everything in their

stride.

Bapsi Sidhwa as a writer is very versatile. She writes with all her passion, bringing out both sides

of the coin of the given situation. When Chuiya reaches the ashram, she was asked various

questions by the intrigued people of the ashram. For example, she was asked a question by a

random source that when our husband dies, the wives also half die. So how can a poor half dead

woman feel any pain? Therefore, to this question Chuiya replied that it is because she is half

alive.

Sidhwa's humor and compassion glow in Water. The brightly dressed eunuch Gulabi declares

that this Gandhi is going to sink India. Yet Gulabi realizes that if Gandhi believes the

untouchables (such as widows) might be children of God, then eunuchs are his step-children. If

Gandhi is passing out redemption pie, Gulabi is going to take a slice.

1Retrieved from, http://www.bapsisidhwa.com/interviews.html, at 11:13 on Oct 25, 2010.

2Retrieved from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taslima_Nasrin,at 14:51 on Oct 26, 2010.

One of Sidhwa’s strengths is the ability to make a point without underlining it. She does over-

stress the irony in a couple of places – for instance when Madhumati, the ashram head who has

forced Kalyani into prostitution, says, “We must live in purity, to die in purity.”3 But the overall

restraint with which the story is told helps strengthen the impact of the more disturbing moments.

By drifting almost unnoticeably from the commonplace to the horrific, Water implicates the

reader: when the widows celebrate Holi, for instance, one is temporarily lulled into thinking that

they have their own self-sustaining little community, that maybe their lives aren’t so bad after

all. But then something happens to demonstrate the spuriousness of this thinking and remind us

that circumstances have forced them into a life of compromise.

Sidhwa gives us fine details of most of the situations in her novel. One does not have to make

much of the guesses about the story, it moves swiftly like a river with one part of the story

moving into the other.

Lajja belongs to the genre of journalistic fiction, and tells the tale of the family of a Hindu doctor

who chose to live in Dhaka, Bangladesh, even after the partition. Through this family's story,

Taslima Nasreen tries to portray the picture of the changing political climate in Bangladesh, a

nation that moved away from the heady idealism of the 1971 Bangladesh war to the age of

growing religious intolerance and extremism. Ms. Nasreen laments the decline of the country's

Bengali identity, and its gradual replacement with a more pan-Islamic Arabic oriented culture as

is evidenced in names given to people. It also shows how the winds of hate blowing from the

actions of the Hindu extremists in India and the destruction of the Babri Masjid by Hindu

extremists were used as a weapon for the oppression and the ethnic cleansing of Bangladesh's

Hindu minority. Nasreen juxtaposes the tale of the plight of the Hindu family with actual news

reports of attacks on Hindus and Hindu places of worship in response to the demolition of the

Babri Masjid. She is unequivocal in her condemnation of religious extremism of all kinds, but is

more verbose in her condemnation of Islamic extremism in Bangladesh. It is obvious that she is

deeply pained at the erosion of the character and values of the Bangladeshi nation from the time

of the independence struggle to the present day. Lajja is above all a political book that serves to

warn its readers about the dangers of religious extremism and how it can, like a cancer, gradually

destroy the ethos of a peaceful nation.

3Retrieved from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bapsi_Sidhwa, at 23:03 on Nov 1, 2010.

Taslima depicts brilliantly the agony and pain of being a woman when hatred spreads or the virus

of communalism rears its ugly visage. It’s the women who suffer the most and who more often

than not are victims to gruesome acts of cruelty in the name of religion and God. She is assaulted

not only physically but also emotionally and her very motherhood becomes a target for the mob.

They would molest her and in the name of being the self-proclaimed votaries of religion they

would force themselves upon her so that the next generation is born to their religion. The story of

the Hindu girl in this novel talks about this same hatred, Lajja or shame. One can draw a parallel

between the girls of Taslima’s novel to that of the main protagonist, again a girl in Sadat Hasan

Manto’s Kali Sarwar, the latter being set during partition times when communal frenzy was at its

peak.

The gruesome depiction of communal hatred in both Manto and Taslima’s book through the

medium of the exploitation of the women is indeed telling and painful. Every time the girl is

molested she is per force converted to the religion that the perpetrators of the crime belong to,

who feel they have fulfilled their moral responsibility by doing so. In the end the poor girl is just

reduced to a bundle of flesh. The story is numbing and makes one abhorrent of what had

happened then and now in the name of the pious religions we all swear allegiance to.

CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

Water is a story of a six year old widow in the pre-partitioned India. A very emotional and

touching story throws light on the status of women in that era, that through the eye of a child.

With a very moving story line and her exceptional talent of storytelling, Sidhwa makes you cry

at the end of the novel. One cannot help but sympathize with the characters. In 21st century, a

person cannot imagine such tragedies of life and after reading this book, one realizes how better

has the Indian society has become. We have travelled a long way from our Independence and it

can be said, women today have a much better place in the society.

Where Bapsi Sidhwa errs in my opinion, is in her failure to frame the plight of the widows in its

right context. In presenting selected texts from the Manusmrti, they fail to also point out that the

Manu tradition descends largely from Brahmanical circles and that lower caste Hindus reject it

altogether. Though the rules governing the life of the widows were indeed severe, the practice

was followed primarily by Brahmin widows from poorer backgrounds. Widows from the

wealthier Brahmin families were provided for with monies sent by their families.

Furthermore, not all widows were forced to leave. Some left their homes of their own volition,

driven by the belief that a widow whose husband died young was guilty of husband murder in

one of her previous incarnations, and in a quest to attain self-liberation through a life of austerity

with devotion and service to God.

There were also some questions left unanswered in my mind. For one, the book does not explain

ambiguities in the practice followed by these widows .Why was it acceptable for a widow

(Shakuntala) to fetch holy Water for Sadananda, but only so long as she stayed clear of the path

of a bride lest her shadow touch the bride? Why was it acceptable for the widows to celebrate the

festive and colorful Holi? Why the book was titled Water? It was unclear to me what bearing

Water, which represents the omnipresence of God and creative elements, has on the life of

widows. In the absence of any clear answer to this question, one might conclude that its choice

was in keeping with Deepa Mehta's vision of a trilogy, the other two natural elements being Fire

and Earth, has less to do with what the scriptures say about widowhood. And last but not least,

the choice of Narayana as the name for the male protagonist. This choice is presumably one that

was consciously made, and it is an interesting one worthy of some attention. Narayana derives

from Nara (Water) and Ayana (moving) and depicts Vishnu, the all-pervasive preserver of the

Universe. In the novel, Narayana is a Gandhian and also a rationalist who questions the archaic

laws laid down in the Manusmrti and the later Vriddha Hirata. By exposing Kalyani to modern

thought (which thereby also influences Shakuntala and Chuyia) and to the new reforms in the

early 20th century regarding widow-remarriage, he in effect, changes Chuyia’s fate forever. But

is he really the all pervasive preserver in that sense?

Finally, one must take into account that Bapsi Sidhwa had to novelize a film script within a

stringent schedule to time its completion with the release of the film itself. Where the book lacks

in placing the practice of the archaic laws in the right socio-economic context, and where it

misses on developing the religious conversations between Shakuntala and Sadananda, it makes

up for in its simply presented style which is easy to read in a narrative that flows well and one

that conforms to the film script, the latter being an important objective as Sidhwa mentions in the

acknowledgements section of the book.

Lajja talks about the impact any religion has on minds of people irrespective of their countries or

geographical boundaries. A Hindu in a country relates with a Hindu in any other country. A

Muslim in a country relates with a Muslim in any other country. But the same cannot be said

about a Hindu and a Muslim in the same country. Why? What makes them hate each other? Is

the base of something known as a religion enough for someone to hate or even think of hatred

about a fellow being?

This is a topic which won’t ever end till our human race doesn’t end killing each other in the

name of religions.

Coward human beings under the mask of Hinduism shamelessly marched to a holy place and

demolished it to pieces. The base being, once a temple of a Hindu deity Lord Rama stood there,

which was demolished to build a mosque. So for the past which is a mixture of some facts, some

factors and some beliefs, which is deep lost in the history, people are ready to give up their

present tense.

A Babri Masjid gets demolished in India and some other coward human being under the mask of

Islam all over the world reacts violently to the event. So what is the importance of geographical

borders or countries that we have defined calling each other by name? If an unknown person

staying in the Far East can relate to an unknown person staying in Far East, why can’t two

people staying in the same country relate to each other?

Something seems terrible wrong.

A question, one would ponder upon:

Does the almighty follow any religion?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Retrieved from, http://www.bapsisidhwa.com/interviews.html, at 11:13 on Oct 25, 2010.

2. Retrieved from, http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/sidhwa_bapsi.php, at 14:51 on Oct

26, 2010.

3. Retrieved from, http://www.bapsisidhwa.com/about.html, at 19:31 on Oct 28, 2010.

4. Retrieved from, http://taslimanasrin.com/, at 21:13 on Oct 29, 2010.

5. Retrieved from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taslima_Nasrin, at 11:12 on Oct 30, 2010.

6. Retrieved from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bapsi_Sidhwa, at 23:03 on Nov 1, 2010.

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