REVISITING PARTITION OF PAKISTAN: A NEW HISTORICIST STUDY OF THE TRAUMA OF 1971 IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Abstract

 This article tries to analyzes the cataclysmic event, ‘the Fall of Dacca, from new historicist point of view. The worst political conditions, failure of negotiations among Bhutto, Mujib and Yahya derailed the country into civil strife. Communal riots between Bengalis and non-Bengalis increased, resulted in mass killings and rapes. Bengali rebellion on the name of the Liberation War, gained momentum, that finally with Indian assistance dismembered the country into halves, i.e. Pakistan and Bangladesh. New Historicist analysis of the texts shows that a literary text is a cultural artifact and is mirror of the time that produced it. The concerned texts embodied the time of their creation. History of separation of East Pakistan is ambiguous.  In New Historicist point of view historical accounts are not real rather reality is constructed, and this reality is constructed by writers’ mode of representation. These histories are fabricated histories and there is always a doctrine behind every historical account. Being a tool in the hands of historians, historical accounts are used to propagate their ideologies and present the desired image of their respective countries before the world. They have distorted the reality of what was actually happened. The reality is hidden. No one exactly knows what had happened and who was responsible for the breakup of Pakistan. This study uses Louis Montrose concept of ‘textulity of history’ for the analysis of Blood and Tear and other dominant narratives of that time.