Imaginings of Pakistan in Mumtaz Shah Nawaz’s The Heart Divided

Abstract

The genre of partition literature in the 1940s amply records the historical role of women in India’s partition as exemplified by The Heart Divided. This dissertation argues that The Heart Divided contains a reflection on women and their relation to partition history in South Asian literature from the 1940s. The novel is an example of an early reflection on women and their relation to colonial Indian history because here one encounters a veritable constellation of women from all ends of the political sphere. The novel begins with the young Mohini and her support for a united India. Then there is Zohra, the communist Rajindar, Sughra and Najma, the woman who ends up marrying Habib. All of these women think and talk about contemporary politics and participate in the political developments of the 1930s and 1940s. This dissertation argues that The Heart Divided deals with the historical agency of women in colonial India in producing India’s partition and that this agency carries educated Muslim’s imaginings of Pakistan. For these women, the partition of India is a utopian vision for Pakistan pro-partition Muslims. That Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, as a woman, shows how young women in colonial India were actively involved in conversations and political activism about the formation of Pakistan is a far cry in partition literature which mostly textualizes the Indo-Pakistani experiencing of the trauma of the partition violence.