What are the main themes in Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India?

In Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India, the adult protagonist, Lenny, narrates her childhood, which was defined by bouts with polio that left her leg deformed. Lenny also describes her life as a member of a wealthy family during a time of political unrest in India which saw the rise of Mahatma Gandhi and ultimately led her father to move their family to Pakistan. This narrative takes place with the backdrop of British imperialism present.

Two key themes through the narrative are religious tension and domestic violence.

Lenny’s family is accustomed to religious diversity and lives among Parsee, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and Christians. Lenny is young, so she doesn’t fully understand the increasingly hostile tensions between the different religious groups, but her family moves from their neighborhood because they no longer feel safe there. As Gandhi’s rise attracted more supporters, the Christian-dominated Brits tried to maintain their imperialist grasp. Ultimately, the partition of India in 1947 separated British India into the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan, largely based on Hindu and Muslim religious lines.

While Lenny is treated well by her family, their housekeeper routinely beats her eight-year-old son, Papoo, which Lenny’s family look down upon. Furthermore, Ayah runs off with the Ice-Candy-Man, and later in the narrative, Lenny and her mother see the damaging effects of the Ice-Candy-Man’s violence toward Ayah: Ayah feels trapped in her marriage and helpless to improve her condition.

One of the main themes in this novel is the absurd way in which the Partition of India was carried out in 1947 to create India and Pakistan. The main character, Lenny, lives a privileged life in Lahore, so she finds herself suddenly becoming Pakistani as India is divided into India and Pakistan. The Partition process is accompanied by ethnic violence, and ethnic and religious strife is also one of the themes of the book.

Another main theme is the treatment of women and the intersection of gender and class. Ayah, Lenny's beloved nanny with whom Lenny spends most of her days, is a seductive lower-class woman who exercises a great deal of sexual power in a society that often demeans women. In fact, Ayah's suitors are Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh, showing the power of her seduction to smooth over ethnic divides. It is through Ayah that Lenny, from a wealthy family, learns about the ways in which women in other classes live. Ayah is abducted and raped, and she is forced to marry a man she does not love as a result. Pappoo, a girl from a poor background who is beaten by her mother, is also forced into a loveless marriage, and her story is a contrast with that of the cosseted Lenny. Women in the lower classes live very differently than Lenny does. 

What is the post-colonial perspective in Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India?

The premise of the novel is one in which Postcolonialism is highly evident.  On one hand, there is the element of how the layers of subjugation and social marginalization are not immediately dissipated with the removal of the Colonial power.  Sidhwa is astute enough to dissect the condition of Partition in exploring how the same behaviors and attitudes of disrespect and intolerance were, in many ways, transferred from the British to the indigenous people.  Sidhwa almost suggests that this was a "parting gift" from rulers to the ruled.  In the proposal of Partition, a Western approach to an Easter problem was posed and Sidhwa's Postcolonial analysis suggests the awkwardness intrinsic in such a condition.  As an author, Sidhwa, herself, engages in a Postcolonial task of reconstructing reality as alternate to what is standard in established history.  The idea of Partition being seen as a historically accepted solution fails to acknowledge the narratives of struggle that took place within it.  In this void, Sidhwa wishes to give voice, representing both a thematic condition of Postcolonialism, but also the role of the Postcolonial author.  The notion of Postcolonial identity is also relevant in this analysis.  Issues of gender and race converge in Lenny, representative of the modern India, unsure of either reality in a world where the oppressive tendency of the British ended up unearthing tensions and revealing latent hostilities.  Lenny's own betrayal of her Ayah to the Ice- Candy Man helps to illuminate how the issues of social and political identity are so very difficult for the modern Indian state, forced to live in the imposed world of Partition without a sense of clarity ore understanding about each.  In this, a dominant Postcolonial narrative is evident, a realm where honor, betrayal, hope and despair all converge into one amorphous and complex mass.