1. Tell us a bit about the essay you wrote for JNT.
Our essay, Narrating the Vivisection of India: The Girl Child Narrator in Two Partition
Novels, explores how the traumatic history of the Partition of India is narrated through the lens of girl child protagonists in Ice-Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa and The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani. Unlike many other Partition novels that either employ adult narrators or retrospective narrative voices, these two texts stand out for consistently maintaining a child’s point of view. We argue that this narrative choice allows for a more intimate, emotionally resonant, and gendered portrayal of the Partition, one that disrupts dominant historical narratives and offers a textured reimagining of the event through personal and sensory experience. In other words, we examine how the girl child narrators not only shape the narrative discourse but also interrogate and reframe the historical understanding of the Partition. Through their storytelling, we see a version of history that becomes less authoritative and more open to interpretation.
2. What inspired you to research this topic?
Our interest was sparked by the realization that despite the vast body of Partition literature, the child’s voice, especially that of the girl child, remains surprisingly underexplored as a central narrative force. We were particularly intrigued by how the trauma of Partition, a highly masculinized historical event, transforms when filtered through the eyes of a young girl. The innocence, confusion, and raw honesty in such narrations seemed to offer a powerful counterpoint to the cold, strategic language often used in political and historical discourse around 1947.
3. What was the most exciting thing about this project for you?
The most exciting aspect was uncovering how narrative form itself becomes a site of
resistance. Tracing how these girl child narrators reclaim a violent history not through grand ideological arguments but through everyday sensory details, emotional observations, and deeply personal reflections was both moving and intellectually rewarding. The interplay between innocence and insight, and how it challenges adult interpretations of history, gave us a deeper appreciation of narrative voice as a literary and political tool. Another noteworthy finding is that the innocence in the child’s narrative becomes a critique of the thinking adults’ doing without being critical in the adult way.
4. Did you get exclusive access to any new or hard-to-find sources?
While we didn’t access physical archives, we did engage deeply with under-discussed critical material and less mainstream interpretations of these novels, especially focusing on works by South Asian women scholars and Partition survivors. We also sought out historical speeches and letters, such as Gandhi’s and Nehru’s visceral imagery, to better understand the rhetorical context that informed these literary portrayals.
5. Has your research on this topic changed the way you see the world today?
Yes, profoundly so. This research made us deeply aware of how historical trauma lives on in families, stories, and silences, especially through women’s narratives that are often overshadowed or dismissed. It challenged us to consider how events like Partition are not just national or historical occurrences, but intimate, embodied experiences passed down through generations. It also made us more attentive to the ways children, often seen as passive
witnesses, can be powerful storytellers.
6. What’s next for you?
I hope to continue researching narrative voice and gender in postcolonial literature,
particularly focusing on how child narrators function in other contexts of political violence or displacement. I am also interested in expanding this essay into a broader study on the aesthetics of memory and trauma in South Asian women’s writing, possibly as part of a larger academic project or monograph.
