Cracking India

Bapsi Sidhwa’s historical fiction novel Cracking India, first published in India in 1988 as Ice-Candy-Man, was translated into English under its current title in 1991.

The 1947 partition of India that created the majority-Muslim country of Pakistan shapes the events of the novel. The novel begins in 1942, when India was an English colony. When Britain declared war on behalf of India during World War II, the move galvanized long-standing Indian independence movements until India ceased being a colony and finally got home rule. The withdrawal of the British Raj left the three major Indian religions—Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu—fighting for control. The solution was to partition India, drawing a line to create the majority-Muslim country of Pakistan, with brutal results. Millions of displaced people were forced to relocate to whichever country aligned with their religion or face devastating violence. Despite promises of religious freedom, Muslims in Pakistan and Sikhs and Hindus in India attacked and killed whichever was the religious minority or drove them out. In the year following the partition, a million people were murdered before India and Pakistan agreed to stop fighting.

Sidhwa models her protagonist Lenny on herself. Like Lenny, Sidhwa was a young Parsee girl in Lahore during the partition; also like Lenny, Sidhwa had polio as a young child and was denied a formal education.