The discourse on literature about partition in India and Pakistan is likely to take a new perspective now that Yashpal’s masterpiece Jhootha Sach, hailed by The Journal of South Asian Studies as ‘the most significant novel about the partition of India’ in any language has been published in English as This Is Not That Dawn. The inspiration for the title was drawn from Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s heart-wrenching poem ‘Yeh woh sahar tau nahin…’.

The well-known critic Harish Trivedi has said that talking about literature on the partition without mentioning Jhootha Sach was, ‘like talking about Hamlet without the prince of Denmark.’ Well, Hamlet with the prince of Denmark is now available in Anand’s ‘eminently readable’ translation which amazingly retains the spirit and flow of the original.

Yashpal had received a life sentence as a comrade of Bhagat Singh. Until his arrest in 1931, Lahore had been the hub of his revolutionary activities. He was forbidden to visit Punjab after his release from Lucknow Jail in 1938 and made only two or three short incognito visits to Lahore before 1947. The idea for writing the book came to him in 1955 when he made a stopover in Lahore on his way to the former USSR and found the city without its pre-1947 glory and joie de vivre. In the book he sought to relive the Lahore which had been the centre of his dreams and political activities as a young man.

The novel begins in Lahore immediately after the Quit India movement of 1942 and ends in New Delhi after the second general elections in independent India in 1957. The first half of the book is titled ‘Homeland and Nation’ (watan aur desh) and is about how these two synonymous terms were split apart by the philosophy of partition. It is this artificially created dichotomy that lies at the heart of the novel as one of the characters observes that ‘The countries of human beings are being turned into nations by religion. Those that God had created as one have been torn apart by distrust of others, and all in the name of God.’

This portion of the book is mostly concerned with pre-1947 Lahore. The sights as well as customs, rites and rituals, both Hindu and Muslim (the novel opens with a syapa ceremony), cries of vendors and tongawallahs, Punjabi boliyan and tappey all come magically to life as readers follow the story through Anarkali Bazaar, Mall Road, Gwal Mandi, Neela Gumbad, Nisbet Road, Model Town, and the Shah Alami, Bhati and Lohari gates of the old walled city. It is a fascinating mesh of history and fiction in which one never overshadowing the other.

Yashpal does not assign responsibility for the partition to the British alone, but traces it to the long history of unequal distribution of wealth between Hindus and Muslims in the Punjab, and one community treating the other as ‘unclean’. He maintains a remarkably balanced approach in describing the reasons for the division of the subcontinent and the atrocities committed by the two communities on each other in the name of religion.

The author has a keen eye for detail. The comings and goings, the neighbourly chit chats and the occasional tiff in the galis of old Lahore make the characters of This Is Not The Dawn appear full-blooded and living. while the description of Bhola Pande Gali, and the Hindu gali biradri is as vivid and rings as true as that of Teetarvali Gali in the Muslim neighbourhood of Bhati Darwaza.

Descriptions of the celebrations in newly independent India and Pakistan, the blow-by-blow account of political maneuverings that followed the fall of the Khizr government and the events that led to the creation of Pakistan, as well as the uncertainty created by the Radcliffe Commission combine to make the novel read like a taut thriller. Indeed the depiction of the riots and killings that broke out in Punjab is graphic enough to be spine-chilling.

Yashpal is foremost amongst writers who challenged the outdated definitions of family, marriage and gender equality. In the novel he mercilessly examines the issue of ‘being a woman’ whether Hindu or Muslim, in pre- and post partition India. The women characters, Tara, Kanak, Sheelo, and Urmila, are from different social classes and backgrounds. They lose their watan in the turmoil, fall victim to the patriarchal authority and its myths of ‘purity’ and ‘honour’ and are exploited in the name of religion and politics. Yet somehow they succeed in carving out independent lives for themselves. ‘A woman,’ Tara muses, ‘is not born inferior to man; she becomes that through social pressure.’ It is social pressure that induces Banti (who is considered ‘polluted’ because she was left behind in Pakistan by her fleeing family) to kill herself to uphold the so-called family honour.

The second half titled ‘Future of the Nation’ describes the trauma of India being forced into becoming a nation in a new environment. Jaidev Puri, the idealist writer and journalist in the first half and one of the main protagonists, ends up compromising his principles in exchange for the political patronage of the self-serving Congress leader Sood.

Yashpal paints a credible picture of people who took to wearing homespun khadi but later switched their loyalties to become supporters of the Congress government. This was true for not just a few but for a whole generation of post-independence Indians. The disillusionment set in almost immediately: yes, it is true (sach) that we got independence, but it turned out to be a false (jhootha) freedom that we achieved.

The novel ends with the moving declaration that ‘the voice of the people can’t be  silenced for all time. It’s the people, not politicians and government ministers, who hold the country’s future in their hands.’

This Is Not That Dawn (TRANSLATION) By Yashpal Penguin Books, India ISBN 9780143103134 1,152pp. Indian Rs599