India and Britain Inside and Outside Sakku Bai and Jackson: The Narrator and the Anglo-Indian Family in Ismat Chughtai’s “Quit India” (“Hindustan Chod Do”)

Abstract

Ismat Chughtai’s short story “Quit India” (“Hindustan Chod Do” in Urdu, 1953) represents the relationship between Indians and British colonists and Anglo-Indian Indians by examining the life of Eric William Jackson, a British official in pre-Independence India and an unemployed outcast and displaced person following Independence who lives with his working-class lover Sakku bai, and the narrator’s outlook towards the family. The ex-British official Jackson’s attempt to “Indianize” himself perhaps fails after Independence because he does not seek the desire of the new Indian state in the spaces of business and government like he does in the domestic space of Sakku Bai’s lodgings and in his relationship with her and perhaps also because the narrator and the other citizens of the new Indian state ignore those who are powerless such as the charwoman Sakku bai and the unemployed Jackson. The narrator’s focus on Jackson and Sakku bai’s family seems to indicate, at least partly, a desire to look outside the domestic sphere for mental and spiritual stimulation even though she appears to be a typical domestic goddess. This could be related to the women’s movement’s need for a greater role for women outside the house in pre-Independence and Independent India.