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The study of the traumatic event of the Bengal partition through the mnemonic
narrative of the women in Qurratulain Hyders Fireflies in the Mist

I merely wished to say that we could work together for unity instead of partition.1

This is one of the striking lines which takes place in Arjumand Manzil between the
Nawab and one of the key protagonists in Qurratulaine Hyders Fireflies in the Mist
(1994). Hyders novel is mostly set in Dhaka, Bangladesh,with occasional instances in
Germany, England, and Trinidad around the years just before and during Second World
War. The time-line in which the novel is set extends from 1939 to 1979, through Indias
Partition, and finally into Partition from Pakistan to form an independent country called
Bangladesh. Interesting is the fact that, how convincingly Hyder writes of a land she
never really belonged to. The picture she gives of the boatmen on the river Padma,
along with the pastoral beauty of East Bengal is nothing but poetic.

Jasodhara Bagchi, in one of her articles on partition wrote, Womens chronicle in this
man-made uprooting (read partition) by and large remains untold2. History shows that
womens voice has always been silenced, and their stories pushed aside, but what is
striking in Qurratulain Hyders Fireflies in the Mist, is how Hyder binds the narratives of
women in the book and allow us to get a glimpse of this traumatic mass violence through
their perspective. Hyders approach is to make us care through paralleling the countrys
history through the mnemonic narrative of various female protagonists, who are
connected with each other. The novel focuses on four generations of Bengali families,
highlighting the life of Deepali Sarkar, and three of her childhood friend- Rosie
Bannerjee, Jehan Ara, and Yasmin Majid. These women are in their late teens or early
twenties,who are later bound to spread all over the world after the Partition after
surviving the time of turmoil. Hyder shifts between the stories of these women, along
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with some other characters.What becomes crucial to analyze in the novel is these
womens agency during the event of the mass violence- Partition.

The novel is multi-centered, even though the prime focus is laid on the trajectory of
Deepali Sarkar, a young Hindu girl attracted to the extreme Left wing of the nationalist
movement. She is made familiar with the life of the deprived by Rehan Ahmed, a Muslim
radical of Marxist inclinations. Deepalis constant endorsement that the Hindu and the
Muslim share the same cultural identity is one of the major themes in the novel. In the
course of the novel, this content comes up, when Deepali confronts the Nawab. He is
agitated that slowly the Muslims of East Bengal had become marginalised. He asks
Deepali, Did your community ever admit the fact that the folk music and folk literature
of Bengal are largely the contribution of the Muslims? By Bengali culture you only
mean Hindu culture.(pg 147) This thought of segregation that is made by the Nawab is
quickly overlapped by Deepalis continuous effort to convince that both are same, that
she, as do the others, are products of the amalgamation of both the cultures, thus making
it one. This active stand by women to be a part of the historical discourse of Partition has
generally been out of focus. I wont say Hyder is making an exception, because this is
how any narrative, in this case, a narrative dealing with such a traumatic event ought to
be shaped.

Literature on Partition demands a psychological probing, and what Hyder does in this
novel is exactly that. She punctuates the narrative with the voices of multiple women
showcasing the feminist angle in the whole issue. She employs these voices to bring
about the various predicaments.

The novel creates a triadic structure comprising of the issue of gender, trauma, and
memory. If we take a look at the mainstream novels on Partition, we will see that most of
the novels are written by male authors, who tell the story keeping in mind male
protagonists in their stories. According to Gerda Lerner, Women have been left out of
history not because of the evil conspiracies of men in general or male historians in
particular, but because we have considered history only in male-centered terms.[...] To
rectify this, and to light up areas of historical darkness we must, for a time, focus on
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women-centered enquiry, considering the possibility of existence of a female culture

within the general culture shared by men and women.3

And this is exactly what Hyder does in her novel. She departs for the mainstream andro-
centric Partition texts, and gives us important female characters who are crucial in telling
the story of this mass violence. And we, the readers get to observe the trauma, along with
other underpinnings of Partition from the perspective of these women. The sequence of
events oscillate between the personal and the political seamlessly, and the attitudes of this
women protagonists are integrated chaos and turmoil generated by this grand event of the
Partition. Portrayal of strong self sufficient women are generally left out in novels written
by male authors, but Hyder (along with many others like Shauna Singh Baldwin, Anita
Rau Badami) pens the characters of Deepali and Rosie as spokespersons for all the other
women confined within this traumatic maze of the Partition. They guide us through their
psyche, and their experience,of shared and individual stories. Hyder, while depicting the
various aspects of gender in the novel, mostly focus on the experience of women as both
victims and survivors of the violence. Generally literature on trauma gave us pictures of
women as mere objects upon which communal politics functioned, but here, Deepali
engages in radical politics in hope for an undivided Bengal. In Indias patriarchal society,
womens place have always been confined within the domestic sphere, and their roles in
novels on Partition have invariably focused on their anguish of leaving the home, but
Hyder gives a different picture, where Deepali, Rosie actively take part in this traumatic
ordeal, sharing each others experience along with the others. There is no doubt that
irrespective of gender, everyone shared a collective memory of the pathos of the
Partition, but it also cant be overlooked that womens experiences varied from that of
mens.

There are plots and sub-plots which divide the narrative into a binary, on one part of the
spectrum we have the nationalist movement led by Rehan which draws into its fold not
only Deepali, but also Rosie, the daughter of a pastor, and others. And on the other end of
the spectrum is the world of Jehan Ara, a traditional Muslim woman who would not dare
to defy her father on anything, and her siblings and friends.
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The chasm between these two extremes of the spectrum is reflected more explicitly when
Deepali gets into an argument with the Nawab on the creation of Pakistan. At the end of it
he tells her patronisingly: I didnt realize you had become so learned. It worries me.
Girls shouldnt become too clever. It complicates life for them. They become unhappy. I
wouldnt want Jehan Ara to join the university. Too much knowledge would unsettle her.
Now run along and help her stitch the wedding dresses. (pg 148). This statement,
irrespective of the context, defines how women are subjugated and silenced. The idea that
education could be a disadvantage for girls was rather prevalent in the late 19 th and early
20th century India. As a complete contrast to Jehan Ara, Deepali is always in pursuit of
knowledge, and an active member of a political group. She cannot relate with Jehan Ara
and the likes, and expresses in a rather dismayed tone, All these women seemed nearly
unconcerned about the fate of the country or humanity (pg 152). The ignorance of
course lies in how these girls have been conditioned into not thinking about the country
and humanity. Deepali was able to break the stereotype, but not many others. It would be
wrong to just consider Deepali to be a revolutionary, Yasmin Majid too is someone who
speaks her mind, even though she cannot be synonymous with Deepalis mode of action.
Rosie, Deepalis friend, is another woman who is completely aware of the female
revolutionaries and what the role they play. Rosies revolutionary activity is not narrated
by Hyder directly, but we get to know of it from her fathers reaction when he visit Mr
Barlows house.

In Fireflies in the Mist Hyder shows the un-traditional side of women during Partition.
She manages to employ various roles of women in her narrative, giving a glimpse that
women were just not sidelined during the Partition, but also actively took part in it.
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1
Hyder, Qurratulain. Fireflies in the Mist.Women Unlimited. 2008. Pg 147.
2
Bagchi, Jasodhara. Freedom in an Idiom of Loss. http://www.india-
seminar.com/2002/510/510%20jasodhara%20bagchi.htm

3
Lerner, Greda.The Challenge of Womens History, the Majority Finds is Past: Placing Women in
History. Oxford University Press. New York. 1979.