July 2019
2278 0742
English Literature Denunciation of the After-Effects of Partition Violence in Contemporary India in Meena Arora Nayak‘s About Daddy Anju Gupta
Abstract This paper argues that Meena Arora Nayak‘s About Daddy (2000), the time period of which is the decade of the 1990s, looks at a Muslim woman‘s rape at the hands of five Indian policemen as a legacy of the partition violence of 1947. Through a critical analysis of the novel, the paper also makes the point Nayak upon the post-Ayodhya communal politics in India as the continuing presence of the partition bitterness. The critique of the legacy affecting the second generation comes from the feminist perspective of the novel‘s female protagonist whose agency in seeking justice for hapless Sultana looks like strong feminist calls for justice for rape victims in recent years. Keywords: Meena Arora Nayak, About Daddy, rape, legacy of partition, feminist perspective, feminist calls for justice for rape victims
Here the protagonist, Simran Mehta, has come to India to scatter her father‘s ashes on the Wagah border according to her dying father‘s wish, which he sees as a form of atonement for the partition he felt he caused. The scattering of his ashes would be a kind of expiation for his sin of killing innocent Muslims before partition. The first person narration reveals Simran‘s father‘s life in a series of flashbacks. On her journey to fulfill her father‘s last wish, she remembers her daddy saying to her: ―I just want you to promise me something. Promise me, that after I die, you will take my ashes to India and scatter them on the border of India and Pakistan‖ (Nayak 196). Simran attempts to take a photograph at the Wagah border when she eventually lands up in jail. She is released only through the intercession of her American fiancé, Scott Ferrier. On her futile attempt to capture her father‘s restive place after death through taking a click, she is taken into arrest of her ‗suspicious activity‘ on the border without permission. Volume 8 Issue 2
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Meena Arora Nayak‘s About Daddy (2000) is a different kind of a partition novel by a woman. It deals with partition and its continuing presence in post-Ayodhya communal politics in India. It projects its female protagonist as not being cribbed and cabined within the four walls of the house but a mobile subject whose agency and intervention come up with a convincing evidence of her father‘s guilt in Sultana‘s rape by five policemen: the despicable act comes out as a legacy of the partition violence of 1947.