Locating India, Pakistan

Last month, South Asia lost some of the great stars who shaped the post-colonial identities of India and Pakistan. The celebrated filmmaker Shyam Benegal and writer Bapsi Sidhwa passed away during the last week of 2024. Former Prime Minister of India and the architect of economic liberalisation, Dr Manmohan Singh, also left this world in December. The outpouring of love and reverence was remarkable. All three were born in colonial India and negotiated the travails of new nation-states, the trauma of Partition and responded with a forward-looking vision of a region that could flourish in peace, deal with the ghosts of the past and improve the societies that had been torn apart due to centuries of colonial plunder.

I grew up in Lahore where Bapsi Sidhwa lived for decades before she left for Houston, Texas, in the United States. Sidhwa, a prominent member of the Parsi community, became the first Pakistani writer in English to achieve global acclaim. Through her fiction, she dealt with complex yet universal issues of migration, violence, identity and family.

Sidhwa’s first novel ‘Crow Eaters’ came out in 1978. It was self-published and in the 1980s, it was republished by international outlets. The novel recounted the tale of relocation and intra-family conflicts set in a fast-changing society. The novel took the readers by surprise for its tenderness, the characters that were loveable and annoying at the same time. Quite unwittingly, Sidhwa was also documenting the lives of a minority in the subcontinent that is infrequently mentioned: the Zoroastrians. In fact, the number of Parsis in both India and Pakistan has been declining.

In Pakistan’s case, it has been slow emigration over the years where the Parsi neighbourhoods of Karachi and Lahore are now tales of the past. The gradual erasure of a minority community is a metaphor for Pakistan’s treatment of its religious minorities. Sidhwa’s portrayal of Parsi characters, therefore, is a record of sorts. It makes her a social historian as well as a storyteller.

Her other important novel was ‘Cracking India’ that was published in the 1980s. It’s a story set amid the traumatic events of 1947 with a central character Lenny, a privileged but infinitely sensitive Parsi girl who witnesses the cracking of a country, relationships and communal amity. Lenny also suffers from polio just like Sidhwa, who contracted it at a young age. It is somewhat telling that in 2025, Pakistan struggles to fight polio as it has resurfaced in many parts of the country.

‘Cracking India’ does not take any sides. It stands out for its unique voice and somewhat detached view of the communal nightmare that resulted in mass killings, expulsions and forced migrations. Another Parsi icon, HM Seervai, the eminent lawyer and writer of Bombay, wrote a monograph on 1947 that was critical of both the Congress and Muslim League while analysing the events of 1947. That monograph remains one of the most critical writings on Partition. When I read Seervai’s view, I couldn’t help wondering why Parsis, the advanced and educated community, were so vital to our societies where religious majoritarianism defines our politics, social interactions and collective identities.

Sidhwa’s novel ‘Water’ dealt with another complex issue: the status of widows in India. Earlier, her novel ‘The Bride’ narrated the life of a young bride Zaitoon, married off into a conservative family. Through these works, Sidhwa’s stories critiqued the patriarchal culture, and the plight of contemporary Pakistani and Indian women.

Once again, her works highlight how the ‘independence’ of 1947 that she witnessed remains an unfinished project, especially when it comes to the lives of women and minorities.

Later, after moving to the US, Sidhwa’s novel ‘An American Brat’, published in the 1990s, examines the life of a young Pakistani Parsi girl as she struggles to adapt to the American culture. Way before the immigrant debate became headlines in the Global North, Sidhwa had shown the world how immigrants see Western countries such as America and that they too have a voice and agency that is often overlooked when patronising or demonising narratives are built around their lives.

As Sidhwa was writing in Pakistan during the 1970s and handling taboo themes, Shyam Benegal was creating the beginnings of a cinematic movement for mass awareness and human liberation in India. The ‘art wave’ or ‘parallel’ cinema that Benegal shaped coincided with the arrival of video-cassette recorders and by early 1980s, most Indian films were available in Pakistan despite the official ban. While the most popular choices remained the commercial cinema blockbusters, there were video shops in the urban centres across Pakistan where Benegal’s films were rented and widely watched and discussed.

Whether it was ‘Nishant’ (‘Night’s End’, 1975), a story of a woman’s abduction at the behest of a landowner, or ‘Manthan’ (‘The Churning’, 1976), the plight of small dairy farmers and other stories, Benegal was equally relevant to Pakistan. The country was now firmly in the grip of martial law where protest was not allowed and ‘dangerous’ themes could get strict disapproval or even punishment.

Benegal’s work was magical in these times, for it was showing the kind of cinema that was possible, but was also a model for many democrats in Pakistan who thought that the empowerment of the marginalised and the poor was central to the prosperity of the nation.

Benegal’s work essentially records the post-colonial quest for inclusion, citizen rights and challenging the oppressive structures. This is why perhaps the best representation of Indian Muslims, especially women, comes through the trilogy of films with the screenwriter Khalid Mohamed: ‘Mammo’ (1994), ‘Sardari Begum’ (1996) and ‘Zubeidaa’ (2001). These three stories are not the usual elegies invoking the ‘oppressed’ Muslim woman stereotype. They place Muslim women and their lives in the context of modern India that navigates colonial legacy and structures of exclusion.

What Sidhwa was doing in prose — locating women in the post-colonial contexts — Benegal deftly achieved through cinema. Of course, Benegal’s canvas was much wider as he delved into historical subjects in much detail during the later part of his illustrious career. But the overlapping themes and the exploration of the individual and the collective is what makes these two artists extraordinary and incomparable.

As the cliche goes, an era may have ended but the rich legacy of Sidhwa and Benegal will inspire hundreds of artists around the globe.

— The Lahore-based writer is a Distinguished Lecturer at City University of New York. He also edits ‘The Friday Times’ and Naya Daur Media