Historical fiction such as Cracking India shows us history in miniature, making it far more vivid than mere statistics about the numbers slaughtered during the tragic events of 1947-48.Īlthough the story is set against the backdrop of India independence, it is equally the story of Lenny’s maturation from a four-year-old limping girl to a young woman of growing sexual awareness. We then watch with horror as the people around Lenny divide along racial/religious lines and eventually slaughter one another.

The power of Cracking India stems from Sidwha’s creation of an idyllic picture of Lenny’s childhood, and the relative inter-racial harmony of pre-Independence Lahore. Lenny narrates the events of her family and native Lahore over more than a ten year period, from before World War II to just after Indian independence and the partition. ( From the publisher.Cracking India tells the story of the partition of India through the eyes of young Lenny, a Parsee girl growing up in Lahore. Sidhwa personalizes the history of political unrest in South Asia and the Middle East, an issue as pertinent today as it was in 1980, when the novel was first published. The story depicts the planting of the seeds of religious intolerance and political violence that remains to this day in India and Pakistan, and much of the rest of the Middle East.Ĭracking India provides a timely reminder that contemporary American rhetoric of the “War on Terror” and post-9/11 politics echoes eerily that which is recorded in this novel. Sidhwa humanizes the violence and strife caused by religious intolerance by putting the innocence of a child, an outside narrator due to both her age and her ethnicity, on the line, caught in the crossfire of political unrest. The Ice-Candy-Man, a popsicle vendor and the title character in the British edition, initially the most aggressive of Ayah’s suitors, transforms several times over the course of the novel, symbolically representing the subcontinent's own transformations. As she matures, Lenny begins to identify the differences between the Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs engaging in political arguments all around her.Īs a Parsee, Lenny is separate from these groups and their conflicts, though they play a tremendous role in her life. It is in the company of these working class characters that Lenny learns about religious differences, comes to recognize religious intolerance, and provides a lense into the blossoming genocidal strife on the eve of Partition. Thrilled with the attention that comes with her invalid status, Lenny manipulates the activities of courtship to better spoil herself. Young Lenny is kept out of school because she suffers from polio, and so spends her days with Ayah, her beautiful nanny, visiting with the large group of admirers that Ayah draws.

Cracking india by bapsi sidhwa summary