Name :- Manoj kumar

Course:- B.A (Hons), 3rd year

Paper:- Partition Literature
Roll n.:- 753

Assignment Question:-
Discuss with close reference to Intizar Husain's Basti, how the narrative meanders back
and forth to articulate themes of nostalgia, displacement, and destabilization in its
depiction of Pakistan.

Answer:- Intizar Hussain's Novel Basti published in 1979. The history of Pakistan and the
subcontinent is the setting of this novel. This is a novel centered on an individual who goes
through the partition of India in 1947, lives in Pakistan thereafter and witnesses the second
partition in 1971. Nostalgia about a golden, almost pastoral pre-partition age, displacement
and migration in the hope of a new, better world and finally a loss of hope culminating in
disaster: these are the fundamental themes in Basti. The novel Basti broadly deals with the
retrieval of the past through the remembrance of a community’s pluralistic culture prior to
Partition. The text offers deep insight into the psychological and emotional aspects of the
partition event and its’ impact on human life through the mental journey of its protagonist
Zakir's migration.

Memory, Nostalgia, and loss: Quest for Identity for home:- 

Memories surged along like waves, and I swam among them (Basti 73).
When he could see nothing ahead of him, he set off backward. Again the same long journey
through the thicket of memories ( Basti 29)
The more the turmoil increases outside, the more I sink into myself. Memories of so many times
come to me. Ancient and long-ago stories lost and scattered thoughts. Memories one after
another, entangled in each other, like a forest to walk through. My memories are my forest. So
where does the forest begin? No, where do I begin? (…) He wanted to arrive at the moment when
his consciousness had first opened its eyes. But he couldn’t grasp the moment. When he put his
memory, dense crowds of memories drifted along its train ( Basti 6 ).

The aforementioned quotes make it clear that the novel Basti is deeply grounded in memories
and redolent with nostalgia. It is unique in its use of the tool of memory.  The central
protagonist, Zakir, develops an obsessive preoccupation with his past, recalled against the
backdrop of Lahore during the war for Bangladeshi independence in 1971. The novel revolves
around the life of Zakir feeling alienated and nostalgic about his village lost during the
partition.
Zakir’s nostalgia can be viewed as an attempt at creating cultural continuity and incorporating
the cultural memory of the past into the present. Basti's strength is just this evocation of the
depopulated, confusing landscape and how Husain leverages it to depict Zakir's struggles to
make sense of the newly formed Pakistan. Such images of Zakir's alienation contrast sharply
with an earlier scene where he, just arrived in Pakistan, manages to find some semblance of
 t a ea e sce e e e e, just a ed a sta , a ages to d so e se b a ce o
home. Searching for the familiar neem tree, which he fondly recalls from his youth, Zakir must
settle for a foreign banyan. Husain's description of the moment speaks volumes about the
human experience behind the historical details of the partition: "To say anything against the
banyan just then would have been the height of ingratitude. Its shade was thick and cool. The
grass spread out beneath it, all green and soft … I was remembering my lost trees. Lost trees,
lost birds, lost faces. Zakir remembers many moments of his life in Rupnagar. Rupnagar with it
dust laden roads, trees, birds and simple men and women is his idea of happiness. He never
forgets this idyllic place. 
Paradoxically, his new home in the neighborhood of Shyamnagar a basti, as the name implies,
of darkening shadows- Shyam, meaning both evening and black, has neither a sanctified place
for worship and a consecrated ground for burial. And he feels betrayed by his fellow Muslims
realizing that Shyamnagar is not the dreamland he had been promised. It is, instead, a place,
where 'the days are filled with misfortune and the nights with ill-omen', and the earth seems
more 'soiled and dirty'.
When Ammi and Abba remember Rupnagar they lost in the memories: they remembered their
storeroom and the things they preserved there. For Ammi time doesn’t matter but the keys of
their ancestral home are valuable. The older generation remained rooted and attached to their
homeland. Zaki's parents crossed the boundaries but their minds have remained with their
family heirlooms lying locked in the storeroom of their home in Roopnagar. Many years 
after the partition, Zakir, who is still tormented by the past painful memories. ,

Displacement and Destabilization: A failed Hijarat:- 

India experienced one of the world’s largest population displacements in 1947 at the time of
partition of British India. The magnitude and repercussions of calamity were neither
anticipated by the policymakers and administrators of the time nor could they pre-empt it
through their will. Near about ten million people faced the dilemma of displacement and one
million were massacred. Migration was not only the crossing of geographical boundaries but
also the transfer of memories, culture and age-old traditions. Historiography on partition has
not much focused on the cultural and psychological implications of the migration. However,
novel and fiction writing has contributed to exploring the human dimension of partition. Basti
is a unique novel in its concerns in the sense that it does not deal with, like other novels, with
the causes of the partition or the extremity of violence it unleashed but depicts the mental
anguish of a migrant who feels disillusionment at the further segmentation of Pakistan. At the
initial stage, Intizar Hussain saw the migration of Muslims from India to Pakistan in a larger
historical and cultural context of Islam as the Hijrat of Prophet Mohammad from Mecca to
Madina. However, his views changed later on after post-partition socio-political conditions in
Pakistan.
Jakir ‘s first displacement begins when he along with his Abba Jan and other family members
shift to Vyaspur after his old mother Bi Amma dies. There are rallies and processions on the
roads. There are sounds of gunshots. In Vyaspur from the terrace of their house, one could see
the burning ghat. When the country is partitioned Zakir faces second migration and shifts to
Lahore along with his parents. Henceforth, Lahore becomes Zakir’s scene of action. Nearly all
events take place elsewhere; Zakir, along with many of the city’s other residents, understands
what is happening mainly through varied fragmented pieces of information he receives in
cafés,  On the streets, and from family members. Their days are interrupted by dreams,
memories, and worries. After their migration people were not able to adjust to the new land.
Zakir, his, mother, and his friend Afzal wonder why the Landscape and seasons of the country
to which they have migrated fail to capture their moral and creative imagination even though
the trees, birds, and rain are similar to that they have left behind. 
t e t ees, b ds, a d a a es a to t at t ey a e e t be d. 
In the new nature no longer seems to be so richly woven into the very texture of their being as
to produce in them the same 'bliss of Nirvana''' as it once had in Rupnagar, the basti that was
once their home. At 'home' in Rupnagar, every object in nature had radiated with meaning and
was available to them without any self-conscious attempt to search for it. Zakir is aware that it
is not easy to find the same meaning and purpose of life in Pakistan where everything seems
strange and unfamiliar. After migrating to the newly formed Pakistan, Zakir wonders why the
landscape and seasons of the new country fail to capture his imagination as it did back in
Roopnagar. 
Zakir's father, who goes to Pakistan, finds himself continually worrying about his death and
burial. For him the burial ground and the shroud, (brought from Holy Karbala) left behind in
Rupnagar, is a loss that can never be retrieved. His faith and identity in Rupnagar are well
established through this reminiscence of his past life and his craving for the ancestral grave.
He had even made all arrangements for his burial there, a shroud and a place for the grave. He
is worried that in Pakistan all arrangements will have to be made as they neither have a place
nor any property. 
The partition had created a spiritual and social vacuum in the lives of the dislocated
personages. After migrating to a new place, Zakir is unable to accommodate himself morally,
physically, or imaginatively to the needs of new political and religious identity. He like other
migrants does not feel an attachment to the new place or people. He has failed to develop any
connection in Pakistan even after a long period of his stay. The whole atmosphere around him
is filled with a sense of bewilderment.

Conclusion:-
Displacement to the other land couldn’t fulfill the dreams of those persons who were expecting
a good life from the new nation. Partition was not only the geographical shifting; it was a
transfer of ideas, culture, and histories. The new location became a site for internal as well as
an external conflict between the old and new spaces. The novel Basti by foregrounding the
sufferings and disillusionment of people like Jakir, his Abba, his friends in the wake of
partition of Pakistan in 1971 interrogates the very idea of the formation of Pakistan and
declares it as a failed narrative.