RECONSTRUCTING THE CONTESTED PAST

Abstract

Qurratulain Hyder's River of Fire (originally ‘Aag Ka Darya’) is an astounding work spanning over 2,500 years of Indian history through a plethora of multifarious characters. While the work has been hailed as one of the best novels not only in Urdu but also in the entire gamut of South Asian literature, surprisingly it has received very minimal critical attention. However, it generated controversy in Pakistan for its highlighting of the composite Indo-Muslim culture of pre-Partition India, which was not in sync with the ideologies of theocratic nationalism. In this essay I look at the various methods Hyder uses to construct a synthesized past based on an alternative historiography that can be read as challenging the narratives of fragmentation not only in the discourse of Partition but also in the 1990s upsurge of anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement for a pure Hindu India. The novel has immense pertinence in the context of modern India in its potential to challenge the sectarian hindutva discourses in India and the rhetoric of a separatist history through the tropes of alternative political history, cultural synthesis and subaltern pasts.