The Depiction of Home in Attia Hosain's Sunlight on a Broken Column

The idea of home is important, not only concerning itself with the physical aspect but also as far as the sense of belongingness is concerned. The Indian nationalist agenda during the Freedom Movement turned home into a sacred site that was ‘meant’ to safeguard the native values from the corrupt Western ideology, which led to the segregation of public versus private. But does this segregation happen or increase the possibility of a cause-and-effect relationship? Within the nationalist discourse, the home gained tremendous significance in terms of nation-building ideology where it became the site that protected, nurtured, and upheld the fundamental values of India. Home then also becomes a regulatory side of the assertion of patriarchy instigating familiar commercial cycles and religious codes which makes it a claustrophobic space for its female inhabitants, as Laila claims, “Zahra and I felt our girlhood a heavy burden”.

The idea of home being an archive can be understood by Antionette Burton’s argument in her book Dwelling in the Archive where she talks about women’s archives. As there is an absence of women archives in the early 20th Century, the literature produced by women can be looked upon as archives/ history/ social documents. Hussain’s use of the word ‘house’ is to counter various discourses regarding Partition, as the home is a polyphony for ideological confrontation about Partition (about Congress, marriage, migration to Pakistan, etc.). The private space related to home is not anew to the changes which were happening in the society. Therefore, a ‘change’ in perspective/ideologies is imminent, which connects the domestic and public spheres. As Laila notes, “No one seems to talk anymore, everyone argued,” and “every meal at home had become an ordeal as peaceful as a volcanic eruption” (Hossain 230). Similarly, Aijaz Ahmad’s essay, In the Mirror of Urdu, Recompositions of Nations and Society, substantiates how the space of home becomes a space of binaries, such as the drama between tradition and modernity. Women’s domestic fiction, such as this, discusses the drama of the everyday and instigates questions regarding sexuality, love, different ideas of families, etc. Therefore, authors function as the native informers of a culture.

The house Aashiana symbolizes space where its changing appearance and significance can also indicate the changing patterns of tradition and of political relationship. In Part I, the house is divided into the ‘zenana’ and ‘mardana’, a division that is set aside during Baba John’s illness as Aunt Abida moves to the front of the house (indication of change). This division is a multi-layered space, debating the idea of gender. It is a house where everyone is welcome. When we come to Part IV of the text, the house is empty and desolate, and the family is dispersed. Baba John and his two sons are dead, and their well-maintained garden is in a state of wilderness. Aunt Abida is also dead and Salim has gone to Pakistan. Some of the servants are dead, others have been sent away except one. The house has lost its former grandeur as ugly apartments and refugee colonies now surround it. This is synonymous with a divided country (which it was) in which the past has been emptied like the house. It is a house of memories. For partition survivors, the process of creating a place for memory involves reconstructing a place from memory. In Part II and III, the house no longer excludes the earlier warmth and unity. It is often thought of as a piece of property. It is merely a place where people live and the young move away in search of other pursuits. Likewise, in Nawan Ghar, a Punjabi short story, Kartar Singh Duggal looks at the idea of home as a problematic space associated with horror, trauma, and discomfort.

Home is also a place where negotiation between classes happens. Although the servants are of mixed casts, they are not fully a part of the family. The presence of servants in the house also serves as a warning to family women as the servants remind them of their class privilege. As with Janaki Majumdar’s Family History, the entire narrative depends on our glimpses of the interiors of the house, the connection to one another, the kinds of constraints they place on Laila’s mobility, and her vexed relationship to a certain version of domesticity. Inside this, women are colonized two times, one by the changing public ideologies, and the other by patriarchal norms within. Then by being the so-called ‘rulers’ of this domestic space, they are also expected to become cultural translators and pass the ‘right’ perceptions onto the next generation. Laila being an orphan child, Ashiana then, serves as a maternal figure to her, which she eventually rejects by choosing her husband and leaving the place. Alongside everything that it stood for. Therefore, a narration of the personal life of a Muslim woman brings forth the excluded voices from the margins by the process of retailing the event of the partition of India through the private sphere of the home, a space that much like women, is usually neglected and narratives of nation building allegory.

Bibliography

1. Bose, Pablo. “Dilemmas of Diaspora: Partition, Refugees, and the Politics of ‘Home.’” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, vol. 23, no. 1, Centre for Refugee Studies, York University, 2006, pp. 58–68.
2. Taylor, Helen. “REFUGEES, THE STATE AND THE CONCEPT OF HOME.” Refugee Survey Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 2, Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 130–52.
3. Dey, Arunima. “DOMESTIC SPHERE IN ATTIA HOSAIN’S SUNLIGHT ON A BROKEN COLUMN (1961): THE HOME MIRRORS THE WORLD.” The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies 23 (2016).
4. Burton, Antoinette M. Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.