Incongruity of Community, Traumatized Lives: Re-reading Jadein and Ravi Paar

Abstract

The collective existence that society provides which incentivises community by dispersing consequence into endurable packets. The unity that was witnessed in Partition was responsible for both, the chaos and the calm. The stories taken in this discourse speak of family, homeland and the inevitability of one's belongingness to the greater part, be it family, community and/or religion. Jadein, a story that speaks of homeland adhering to, Benedict Anderson’s concept of Imagined Communities would be analysed through the story.  Ravi Paar, a narrative  that tells the struggle of a quotidian Sikh family to survive through the riots. Highlighting the solaced lives that one individual enslaves themselves with; grounded with bonds of family and society, highlight the ambivalence of community amid the times of Partition. Analysis of these works by breaking each aspect with the theory of Deconstruction, Orientalists perspectives on the events narrated, realising the devotion towards the communities by Communalism and contrasting the identity of  women in both of these works by the concept of Différance by Saussure. The sense of belonging to one's homeland, shattered along with the Partition would be associated with “trauma theory” by Sigmund Freud.