Class Activity: Learning about Partition through 'Pinjar'

India’s Independence came at a heavy cost. The nation stood divided and so did its people. People who had lived all their lives as neighbours and friends—relations that transcended communal considerations—suddenly turned into bloodthirsty monsters. The largest mass human exodus across borders was marked by blood-curdling stories of horror and violence, of human frailties and the whole social fabric shredded into its lesser self.

It took a while for these stories to be adapted into literature and films. Reality was, in fact stranger and fiercer than anything they would have generated through fiction. Two names have stood out in literature who have written extensively and unmasked the gory details of Partition—Saadat Hasan Manto and Amrita Pritam. Among her other works, Amrita Pritam wrote ‘Pinjar’ (The Skeleton) originally in Punjabi in 1950. It came as an early compilation of the social mores, of the pain of Partition and the aftermath.

The story talks about the nation at the brink of Independence. It revolves around the female protagonist Paro who is betrothed to an individual but gets abducted by a Muslim, Rashid to settle intergenerational scores. The family refuses to accept Paro when she escaped the captivity to uphold “family honour” and the gentle, considerate way in which Rashid treats her despite being the captor pushed into seeking revenge. Partition saw massive caravans walking across “borders”, of women being abducted, villagers overpricing basic necessities for the traversing people and an overall dispossession and loss of belongingness.

‘Pinjar’ tells us how Paro ingenuously helps her sister-in-law escape such a forced marriage. It dwells on how Rashid’s and Paro’s efforts come to fruition when the girl is reunited with her husband (Paro’s brother) and family in a refugee camp. The same family who rejected Paro in the name of family honour have come to terms with the times and accept the daughter-in-law. Rashid, though married to Paro and deeply in love with her, silently wishes to accept her choice if she would want to return to her natal family and the person she was earlier betrothed to. But Paro chooses to remain with Rashid, both characters rising way above the troubled times they were thrown into with little control over the situation.

The book thus came to be considered ahead of its times, radical even. It came to be translated into many languages. The English translation was done by Khushwant Singh while the Denis Matringe translated it into French. The French translation in fact got Amrita Pritam the prestigious French La Route des Indes Literary Prize at the age of 86 years in 2005 for the translated work. By then, Chandra Prakash Dwivedi had brought the Hindi feature film by the original title in 2003. The work came into fresh light with the critical acclaim secured by the film as also the year’s Nargis Dutt (National) Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration and the National Film Award- Special Jury Award/ Special Mention (Feature Film) for Manoj Bajpai’s depiction of Rashid. 

While the film stops at Paro choosing her life with Rashid, the classroom activity was to visualise how the story went thereafter. Having seen the enormous refugee and rehabilitation crisis, torn families and the overall socio-political scenario in the film, the activity aims at making students visualise the times and give their individual versions of the unfolding of the story.