Conceptualising the Holocaust of Partition: A Non-Partisan Perspective

Abstract The partition of Indian sub-continent and the holocaust, the ?migration?, the up-rootedness, the identity crisis and the turmoil that followed it, has proved to be a topic of projection of history in various fictional and non-fictional works since its happening by different writers not only belonging to the Indian Sub-Continent but by also those living abroad. The paper attempts to analyse and interpret the work of Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy Man (1988), renamed as Cracking India in 1991 to make its wider perspective at world level, as the triple marginalized identity of Bapsi Sidhwa as Pakistani, Parsi and a woman writer gives us a chance to read the partition fiction from a non-partisan writer’s perspective, who does not belong to any of the two communities which perpetrated death & destruction for each other.The paper also tries to delineate the fact that, Sidhwa, who herself belongs to a minority community has sensitised the readers about the psychological impacts of partition on minorities and marginalised people, who were otherwise almost neglected by all other novelists. A detailed analysis is also being done in the paper to show that although the Parsis were non-partisan during the mayhem of partition but they were also human beings and indirectly they were also affected by the happenings. The study also critiques the important historical role played by Parsi community during partition; which clearly shows that the mass migration of that period put a major impact on their minds too which forced them to think that survival was the primary concerns for all humans at that time. This novel by Bapsi Sidhwa has really acquired an important place in the history of partition fiction because it foregrounds the marginal voice of a Parsi in the world dominated primarily by Hindus and Muslims