This Is Not That Dawn/ Jhootha Sach
This Is Not That Dawn
Jhoota Sach has been described (here) as the War and Peace of Indian literature. In her essay, Rockwell goes on to explain how the comparison breaks down because Yashpal himself had a history that Tolstoy didn’t.
Why does Jhoota Sach matter?
Jhoota Sach is the work which meticulously documents the horrors of partition and the extremely weak foundations that the great Indian leaders laid for the modern Indian republic. I am sick of talking to my brown sahib colleagues (among them quite a few native Hindi speakers) who will insist that the Brits were the first to “unite India”, and that Hindi has no literature—and who haven’t heard of either Jhoota Sach or Kitne Pakistan.
Running through multiple threads, across decades, with finely developed characters, Jhoota Sach documents the trauma surrounding Indian independence and the decay of the decades after it. The style is almost journalistic. The horrors that befall Tara, one of the leading characters of the novel, are told (in Volume I) in a direct and matter-of-fact style that makes her story all the more heart-breaking. It takes decades for her wounds to heal.
A particularly interesting touch is Yashpal’s merciless treatment of politicians and the glitterati of society, and his portrayal of changing fortunes of the “refugees”. Yashpal himself was a communist, but he was quite harsh in his depiction of the Communist Party as a tyrannical outfit obsessed with controlling the personal lives of its members. An interesting line in Volume II is his note that all the characters in the novel are fictitious, including the Prime Minister. I am guessing that very few dispassionate readers of Jhootha Sach will reach the end of the book with hugely positive feelings for the late first Prime Minister of India. And that is not because of any tirade against Nehru, or sly sarcasm. The treatment of Nehru’s foibles is very matter-of-fact, and Yashpal takes care to acknowledge some of Nehru’s good moments as well.
Critics have written about Yashpal’s very modern, ahead-of-his-times feminist views. That is not surprising for a person who fought for independence along with Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad.
Among the many qualities of Yashpal’s work is the credibility of his characters. One expects the idealistic journalist, Puri, to develop into an epic hero, but as one reads on, one realises Yashpal has a few surprises in store for the reader expecting a soap opera. No one is perfect; even Tara, the only one who has a bit of a halo about her, has a flaw or two.
I heard of Jhoota Sach, and read it in Hindi, after I turned forty and realised how much I was missing by not reading Hindi literature. I ended up reading Volume II about a year after I read Volume I. When I bought Volume I, I didn’t know that I was only picking up half of the work. By the time I travelled back to India to look for Volume II, the shop I used to head to (Landmark in Gurgaon) had closed. I finally ordered it online. So my journey to the last page turned out to be as long as it was rewarding.
I usually read or listen to an audio book for a couple of hours a day. Jhoota Sach will remain one of the books that stood out above the hundreds of others I read before and after it, and changed the way I think about an important slice of Indian history and society. If we were a progressive society, we would have revered a work like this.
Jhoota Sach has been described (here) as the War and Peace of Indian literature. In her essay, Rockwell goes on to explain how the comparison breaks down because Yashpal himself had a history that Tolstoy didn’t.
Why does Jhoota Sach matter?
Jhoota Sach is the work which meticulously documents the horrors of partition and the extremely weak foundations that the great Indian leaders laid for the modern Indian republic. I am sick of talking to my brown sahib colleagues (among them quite a few native Hindi speakers) who will insist that the Brits were the first to “unite India”, and that Hindi has no literature—and who haven’t heard of either Jhoota Sach or Kitne Pakistan.
Running through multiple threads, across decades, with finely developed characters, Jhoota Sach documents the trauma surrounding Indian independence and the decay of the decades after it. The style is almost journalistic. The horrors that befall Tara, one of the leading characters of the novel, are told (in Volume I) in a direct and matter-of-fact style that makes her story all the more heart-breaking. It takes decades for her wounds to heal.
A particularly interesting touch is Yashpal’s merciless treatment of politicians and the glitterati of society, and his portrayal of changing fortunes of the “refugees”. Yashpal himself was a communist, but he was quite harsh in his depiction of the Communist Party as a tyrannical outfit obsessed with controlling the personal lives of its members. An interesting line in Volume II is his note that all the characters in the novel are fictitious, including the Prime Minister. I am guessing that very few dispassionate readers of Jhootha Sach will reach the end of the book with hugely positive feelings for the late first Prime Minister of India. And that is not because of any tirade against Nehru, or sly sarcasm. The treatment of Nehru’s foibles is very matter-of-fact, and Yashpal takes care to acknowledge some of Nehru’s good moments as well.
Critics have written about Yashpal’s very modern, ahead-of-his-times feminist views. That is not surprising for a person who fought for independence along with Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad.
Among the many qualities of Yashpal’s work is the credibility of his characters. One expects the idealistic journalist, Puri, to develop into an epic hero, but as one reads on, one realises Yashpal has a few surprises in store for the reader expecting a soap opera. No one is perfect; even Tara, the only one who has a bit of a halo about her, has a flaw or two.
I heard of Jhoota Sach, and read it in Hindi, after I turned forty and realised how much I was missing by not reading Hindi literature. I ended up reading Volume II about a year after I read Volume I. When I bought Volume I, I didn’t know that I was only picking up half of the work. By the time I travelled back to India to look for Volume II, the shop I used to head to (Landmark in Gurgaon) had closed. I finally ordered it online. So my journey to the last page turned out to be as long as it was rewarding.
I usually read or listen to an audio book for a couple of hours a day. Jhoota Sach will remain one of the books that stood out above the hundreds of others I read before and after it, and changed the way I think about an important slice of Indian history and society. If we were a progressive society, we would have revered a work like this.
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