Communal Holocaust – Raj Gill’s The Rape

S.S.Gill

Panjab University, Chandigarh

Raj Gill’s The Rape begins in March 1947, the point of time from which Hindu-Muslim-Sikh
relations had got worked upto a stage of tension and communal frenzy. It emphasizes the love affairs
of Dalipjit and Leila amidst the communal holocaust. When the novel opens it finds India already
standing on the edge of the precipice of partition, which results in a bloody strife. The title of the
novel is at once symbolic of the rape of the motherland by the foreign rulers as this novel projects a
father losing his sense of discrimination and raping the beloved of his own son.

The novelist criticizes the ‘Divide and Rule’ policy of the British and blames them for partition and
creating communal hatred between the two communities for their vested interests. Dharm Gopal
accuses, “First it is to divide the sects, communities and regions. But now it is to divide the nation,
the country, to cripple the economy and to cause fissures in the national integrity. I tell you the game
is to make you fight each other till you have drawn enough blood and are sick of death and
destruction1”. Bipan Chandra also shares almost the same views when he says, “the aim of the
British policy of divide and rule was to check the politicization of the Indian people, to crub their
consolidation and unification and to disrupt the process of the Indian nation-in-the making.”2

The main thematic concern of the novelist is to show the perversity of a human mind in a critical
situation created by the vested interests of politicians. It is further commented upon by Mushirual
Hasan who says, “the country’s vivisection was a colossal tragedy, man-made catastrophe brought
about by politicians who lacked the will, imagination and foresight to resolve their disputes over
power sharing and who failed to grasp the grave implications of division along religious lines3”.

The historian, V.N. Dutta gives another dimension to this situation when he feels that there was a
definite but hidden political agenda, but because of the muddled situation the leaders like Nehru and
Jinnah were confused and did not precisely know what to do. To Nehru, “Independence meant the

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appointed time, August 15, when he claimed to use his undying phrase: India redeemed its ‘tryst
with destiny’ – To Jinnah “it was the fulfillment of his dream of a separate homeland, however,
‘motheaten’ or mulitated its might have been”4

Even Mahatma Gandhi has not been spared of criticism. The out burst of Gandhi at a prayer meeting
was baffling. Gandhi said: “Even if the whole of India burns, we shall not concede Pakistan, even if
the Muslim league demanded it at the point of the sword.” (TR 60) Nevertheless, the same Gandhi
accepted the partition proposal of the Viceroy. Dalipjit, the hero of the novel, dislikes Gandhi for
accepting the vivisection of the country. He dreams of shooting him and so later on the news of
Gandhi’s assassination greatly agitates him and he does not believe it. He says:

How could Gandhi be shot dead? He was not living. He had shot Gandhi long back,
years ago. They could not shoot a dead Gandhi. It was nonsense. He chuckled to
himself in his unchallenged superiority over the men around him who were gullible
enough to believe in someone’s claim who just craved the credit that he already held.
He chuckled again and swam around gleefully in this ocean of warmth”. (TR 288)

Dalipjit maintains that the leaders have no sense of involvement with the people. He is upset to think
of the fact of the people entrusted to the care of such irresponsible and unpredictable leaders.
Surprisingly enough the virus of communalism stands infecting the minds of even these national
leaders who at one time were immune to any communal feelings and who now visualize an
unbridgeable difference between the two communities. The dramatic change in Sir Syed Ahmed’s
attitude and opinion is a clear illustration of this point. He had at one time advocated the need for a
peaceful co-existence of all the three communities. But suddenly, he changed his views and came out
with a demand for carving out two nations. See how he changes his views:

Remember that Hindus, Mussalmans are religious words; otherwise, Hindus,

Mussalmans and even Christians who inhibit this country, all constitute one nation.
Now the time is gone when only on account of differences in religion, the inhabitance
of this country should be regarded as two different nations”.5

The novel records the fierce communal riots, the inhuman atrocities, the burning down of the
villages and the massive killing of the people. In Gurgaon communal violence is recorded. The
novelist records the communal frenzy thus:

“Pitched battle in Othian, a Muslim village in Amritsar, two hundred villages raided, 200 killed in
Gurgaon. Troops fire on rioters in Gujranwala. Sir John Bennett, Inspector General of Police,
Punjab, declares Gujranwala a dangerous area; marital law enforced. Gurgaon declared a distributed
area. Curfew in Lahore. Flare up in Lahore outside Mochi Gate, Chunna Mandi, Kutcha Balian”.
(TR 64)

Muslims start perpetrating limitless cruelties on women. The novel relates the horrors of the
chopping off women’s breasts and the shameful scene of nude woman leading the Muslim
procession. Here it would be relevant to quote Moni Chadha who says:

The women with rape, abduction and murder a virtual certainty, would decide
individually how to die. There were two choices. One was to have the local sikh
butcher, who stood at the ready with a helper, to behead them by turn. The other was to
immolate themselves in the Gurudwara. Meanwhile, the women and girls had locked
themselves in it, said their ardas and lit a kerosene fire which rapidly engulfed the
building.”6

Dalipjit does not find anything to celebrate the day of independence. Moreover, his mother expresses
her hurt feelings at these events. She, too, becomes bitter and harsh at the word ‘independence’, and
expresses her contempt for it in piercing and hysterical voice.. “Ashes be on the head of such
independence… they burn your houses, they take your women and they kill your women and they
kill your children, and you call it independence. Making people homeless is independence!” (TR 65)
In west Pakistan also this independence day should not be celebrated Dalipjit expresses the grievous
sentiments of the victims of communal holocaust:

I say, father after all, how do they expect us the Sikhs and the Hindus in Pakistan to
celebrate: by setting fire to our homes by pinning the heads of our children on lances
and sporting them in the streets: by cutting off the breasts of our mothers and sisters”
(TR 66).

The novelist narrates that as the communal riots start breaking out, people of one community use

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vituperative language against another. Kartar Singh has fear that the Muslims will perpetuate all
kinds of brutalities against the Sikh Community. He tells Dalipjit that wickedness has always been a
convenient device for the Muslims. They profess to be the followers of Islam but their actions show
them indulging in all kinds of nefarious activities against their religion. He voices his hatred for the
Muslims and tells they have always been disloyal even to their ancestors. He speaks out that these
Muslims can go to any extent in quenching their communal frenzy, servants among them not sparing
their masters and religious bigots ever ditching their God.

Consequently after the announcement of partition the Sikhs and the Hindus set with vengeance to
search out their Muslim population from east Punjab as a belated vindication of the Hindus and
Sikhs who were massacred in Rawalpindi. The novelist narrates with righteous impartiality the blood
crudling stories of the inhuman atrocities.

He points out the ruthless, inhuman and irrational violence taking place on both sides of the border.
His unprejudiced attitude can be seen when he remarks: “that which happened this side of the
boundary was in no way less ghastly, inhuman, and disgusting than that which had happened across
the border”. (TR 191) On both sides of the border the trains are attacked and passangers are
butchered. It becomes hazardous to travel by train. The author exposes:

There was news of two trainloads of people murdered, one on the Indian side and the
other on the Pakistani side. A trickle of exodus had already started from the western
districts of Punjab. Exodus at a large scale was a foot from the North West frontier. It
could not gain momentum because of this paucity of the trains in the absence of engine
drivers”. (TR 131)

Importantly enough, the monster of communalism infects even the minds of civil and military
personnels. They unhesitatingly shoot those people who belong to their warring communities. Being
all controllers of law and order they should have been impartial at the critical juncture but instead
they become biased and fanned communal hatred. The author asserts:

“The communal virus has definitely entered the Army, not so much as it has the
common man, but it is there. Muslim troops are not going to fire on the members of
their own community ” (TR 193) In the same way the novelist projects that the civil
administration began to collapse and there was no hope for offices to be opened. Trains
were running late and often did not run at all. There was complete chaos and confusion
and no one was ready to stem this communal tide and one officer did not believe the
 other.

So it is needless to doubt that every citizen was caught up in the holocaust. No one could remain
aloof; no one could be trusted to be impartial. The administration, police, even the armed forces,
were caught up in the blaze of hatred. Mobs ruled the streets, burning, looting, killing, dishonoring
women and mutilating children; even animals sacred to the other community become the legitimate
targets of reprisals. “The entire land was being spattered by the blood of its citizens, blistered and
disrupted with the fires of religious hatred, its roads were glutted with enough dead bodies to satisfy
the ghouls of a major war.7

Women become a special target of communalism. It is, indeed, surprising that in India where the
Almighty is worshipped in feminine form as ‘Shakti’, however, the crime against women such as
sadistic torture, rapes, deliberate mutilations, parading naked in streets and processions had become
common during the communal holocaust. The novelist depicts the atrocities on the Muslim women
at the hands of refugees in India. The flight of these women appears to be indescribable because
these innocent young girls and women become an object of amusement to men and are no better than
play toys. In this communal frenzy they are used only to satisfy the sexual perversion of men. The
novelist finds them as, “the playthings of the men” (TR 219) who provided lustful indulgence, and
with whom one could satisfy one’s sexual perversion. These women would be under duress what
they were told to do. They lived confined within the four walls of their houses, enjoying no freedom
at all.

But unlike these bloodthirsty men the hero of the novel, Dalipjit, rescues a Muslims girl, Leila, from
the clutches of the marauders and harbours her in his house. Unfortunately, he is unaware of the fact
that the loss of discriminating faculty of reasons has taken place not only in no case of the mobs
outside but also in that of his own father, Isher Singh, who rapes Leila. But Dalipjit is shown to be
resolute and he stands by the violated girl. This girl appears to be symbolic mother India ravaged by
the senseless mobs of its children. The narrator narrates the helplessness of Leila:

I am not the same Leila, she stammered. He had me, your father. Wednesday night it

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 was. I told him about you being the first. But he wouldn’t listen. He was not even
drunk. He hit me when I said no. He hit me again and again till I did not know where I
was when I came to know he had done it. Right there on the floor. (TR 296)

Dalipjit realizes that people are not normal human beings in any sense of the term. He becomes
completely stunned to know that his father rapes his beloved. He is unable to comprehend the tragic
world all around him, marked by a betrayal of a girl by her lover, of a country by her people and of a
son by his father. It is Amro who explains to him the situation plausible and correctly:

“They are not the same people among whom we were born and brought up… They are
betrayed lot” (TR 269). Amro finds a change to have taken place in these people
making them discard all the human values like honour, integrity and uprightness. They
have now turned into tricksters enjoying fun at the cost of others.

The novel becomes a “brilliant exploration of the theme of partition”.8 The novelist offers us a
positive interpretation of all pervasive human slaughter. He is of the opinion that a man kills a
mother just to live, though all this may look absurd. He says: “The Muslim killed the Hindu and the
Hindus massacred the Muslim in a bid to live and not the die” (TR 296). Besides telling a touching
tale of human predicament, the novel brings history alive before ours eyes. It also unfolds the
novelist’s primitive vision of life. The novelist achieves all this through his beautiful delineation of
the historical and political events. The writer has successfully delineated the pre-partition lull,
communal discord and post-partition visionary utopia. The dehumanized society of those terrible
times and the unforgettable terrible scenes and sights of the tragic historic events have been fully
depicted in The Rape.
 Notes

1. Raj Gill, The Rape (New Delhi : Sterling , 1974) 27. Subsequent references are incorporated
in the text with an abbreviation TR.

2. Bipan Chandra. Communalism in Modern India (New Delhi: Vikas, 1984) 245.

3. Mushirul Hasan. Legacy of a Divided Nation India’s Muslims since Independence (New Delhi
: Oxford 1997) 16.

4. V.N. Datta, ‘Interpreting the Partition’ The Tribune (Sept. 28, 1977).

5. Prabha Dixit. Communalism – A Struggle for Power (New Delhi : Orient, 1974) 146.

6. Moni Chadha. ‘Partition A Surgery Sans Anesthesia’ Hindustan Times (August 31, 1997).

7. M. Shyam Asnani. New Dimensions of Indian English Novel (New Delhi : Doaba House,
1987) 38.

8. K.K. Sharma, “ The1947 upheavals and the Indian English Novel,” in Writers in Explorations
in Modern English Fiction. R.K. Dhawan ed. (New Delhi: Bahri 1982) 47.