By Sangita Jha
Soumitra Banerji in his debut book, Liminal Tides, has revisited the partition tales of India. Dr Narendra Nath Bandhopadhyay holds his book together. Dr Narendra Nath Bandhopadhyay is a doctor from Meerut, who is held in high-esteem by the British, as well as the Congress leaders.
The book is a fictional account of India’s history between 1942-47. With fictional characters, Banerji takes back readers to those tumultuous times when a nation was knifed to unsettle the people and send them onto unknown journeys.
Dr Narendra Nath Bandhopadhyay witnesses the scars of partition even while he guards his family and assets without diluting his commitment to the nation-building. Soumitra Banerji gives accounts of fortunes of two other families, of Rawat from Garhwal and Khanna from Sialkot, finding redemption in farsightedness and large heartedness of Dr Narendra Nath Bandhopadhyay.
Soumitra Banerji has woven a gripping tale of Bengali, Pahadi, and Punjabi families sharing stages, homes, wealth, and even joys as they come together to join hands in rebuilding India after the ravages of the partition.
Soumitra Banerji has retraced the footsteps of the people who escaped the fury of the communal carnage in the wake of the partition from the western and the eastern parts of India, which were knifed away to create Pakistan.
The book helps the cause in helping the younger generations to relate to the painful past of India. Muhammed Jinnah’s ‘Two Nation Theory’ is vividly captured in its consequences by Soumitra Banerji in his debut novel.
Sir Redcliff had run his surgical knife on the landmass of India with contempt for the volcanic eruptions of misfortunes that befell onto the people.
Dr Narendra Nath Bandhopadhyay towers against the upheavals of the partition with his mountain like resolve to rebuild the nation. smoothens the liminal tides caused by the politics of Jinnah and his Muslim League, as well as the partition of India.
Thakur Pran Singh Rawat, Gram Pradhan of the Gawana village in Garhwal, falls to the bullets of the British police. He was leading a protest rally against the British. Rawat led his companions in a march against the British raising taxes to fund the World War II efforts. That was the time when the Quit India Movement was at its peak. In his death, Rawat became a rallying icon for the freedom fighters in the Himalayan region.
Mulk Raj Khanna was crestfallen as his flourishing sports business in Sialkot fell to the communal crescendo emerging out of the maddening communal riots in days leading to the partition of India.
Banerji gives graphic details of his escape from Sialkot. The landmass will soon be part of Pakistan. Khanna to his horror finds that his cousin, Sanjay Kapoor, was lynched to death to merely terrorise him to sell his business and assets at a throwaway price.
The British unleashed chaos and fury onto the people with an unabashed appeasement of Jinnah.
Banerji lucidly retraced agonies of the people who were brutalised by India’s partition.
Indeed, several books have been written to give accounts of the people slaughtered in buses and trains. The people stuck in hostile landscape sought to leave places for safer cities.
But there was no safe place in that time zone. Khanna’s family in Kud near Jammu faced the communal frenzy as arsonists bunt down dwelling units amid maddening passion kicked off by the partition of India. His family faced an imminent threat from rampaging Muslims in Kud and that would send them to join a caravan for Amritsar. It will be in the backdrop of the Harmandir Sahib or the Golden Temple that the Khannas will eventually be united.
“The days leading to August 1947 were turbulent and confusing. Sometimes, one felt safe, and sometimes equally vulnerable. People with vision and gut feelings were moving to safer regions according to their religions,” Banerji writes in the chapter ‘The Road to Kud’.
He adds: “On the other hand, there were those afflicted by a sense of denial and continued to stay in their perceived comfort zones, delaying destiny bit by bit on utter chaos among the people in days leading to the partition of India.”
Banerji comes out as a seasoned writer as Liminal Tides rightly deserve to be called a page-turner in the true sense. The book should appeal the youngsters in particular. Published by The Browser, the book is an easy read with no jargons thrown by the author, while it has been craftily edited.
