The Heart Divided: A Post Colonial Perspective on Partition

Colonial experience, with its serious repercussions for the colonized has been dealt with by many creative postcolonial writers. Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, a Pakistani woman writer, has responded to the colonial experience and the Partition in her novel ‘The Heart Divided’. The present study intended to investigate her portrayal of the colonial experience touching upon the issues, like the colonialist ideology, the link between culture and imperialism, mimicry, hybridity, the celebration of the indigenous and the Hindu-Muslim question. The present study also intended to investigate her portrayal of the different aspects of the Partition and her portrayal of the status of women in the sub-continent in the beginning of the twentieth century. The research methodology for the study was based upon the exhaustive analysis of the novel in the light of postcolonial and feminist theories. The study found that Shah Nawaz has handled the Partition from the perspective of a postcolonial writer. The study also countered the contentions of the critics like Niaz Zaman and especially Tariq Rehman (1991) that Pakistani novel is not politically sophisticated and has not responded either to the politics or the history. The study proved its proposition that politics plays central role in the lives of the people, therefore finds reflection in literature