{"id":78,"date":"2014-05-01T23:51:42","date_gmt":"2014-05-02T03:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/?p=78"},"modified":"2014-05-02T00:11:10","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T04:11:10","slug":"w12-the-partition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/2014\/05\/01\/w12-the-partition\/","title":{"rendered":"W12: The Partition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Partition<\/strong><\/p>\n

A little BOY stands on tiptoes with his back to the audience, hands cupped around his face, which is pressed to a huge stone wall. An older GIRL stands to a side, anxious to leave.<\/em><\/p>\n

GIRL. Let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n

BOY. Hold on.<\/p>\n

GIRL. It\u2019s time to go.<\/p>\n

BOY. Not yet. Come here and look!<\/p>\n

GIRL. I\u2019ve seen it before. Besides, that hole\u2019s not supposed to be there.<\/p>\n

BOY turns fearfully away, back against the wall, drawing in on himself as if hiding from the hole in the wall where his face was.<\/em><\/p>\n

BOY. Are we gonna get in trouble?<\/p>\n

GIRL. No\u2026 don\u2019t worry. The hole\u2019s been there a long time. I used to look through it too.<\/p>\n

BOY. Did you see the same things I was just seeing?<\/p>\n

GIRL. What did you see?<\/p>\n

BOY. Come here and look.<\/p>\n

GIRL. No, I don\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n

BOY. (Slowly<\/em>) You\u2019re afraid.<\/p>\n

GIRL. No\u2026<\/p>\n

BOY. Is it dangerous?<\/p>\n

GIRL. No, it\u2019s fine\u2026 I told you not to worry, remember. What did you see?<\/p>\n

BOY. Lots. (Pause<\/em>) Ladies passing by with their hair uncovered. Uncovered! In the street! Some of them walking by themselves \u2013 not a kid with them. Not a man.<\/p>\n

GIRL. It\u2019s not the same over there.<\/p>\n

BOY. It\u2019s a different world!<\/p>\n

GIRL. Well, it\u2019s a different country.<\/p>\n

BOY pushes himself away from the wall, only to turn and tiptoe and peer through the\u00a0hole again. A pensive silence.<\/em><\/p>\n

BOY. It used not to be.<\/p>\n

GIRL. What?<\/p>\n

BOY. Those people\u2026 are our<\/em> people, aren\u2019t they? Adam told me \u2013 we were just one big country, once.<\/p>\n

GIRL. Yes. Not terribly long ago. (Pause<\/em>) But it\u2019s better this way.<\/p>\n

BOY. Why?<\/p>\n

GIRL. Why what?<\/p>\n

BOY. Why\u2019s it better this way? And why\u2026 why’s\u00a0it this way?<\/p>\n

GIRL. Those aren\u2019t<\/em> our people, really. Our people are here, living with us, believing in what we do \u2013 we can live together because we believe the same thing. (Crossing over to where BOY stands.<\/em>) Those<\/em> people don\u2019t understand us, and we don\u2019t understand them. (Pulling on BOY\u2019s shoulder so he turns away from the hole in the wall, tugging him away by his wrist as she speaks.<\/em>) You can have fun watching them a while, sure, but you\u2019ll put them out of your mind soon enough.<\/p>\n

BOY tries to escape GIRL\u2019s grip, but she tightens her hand around his wrist and\u00a0marches him directly away from the wall. They come to stand downstage centre,\u00a0looking out over the audience.<\/em><\/p>\n

GIRL. You want to look? Look this way. This is your world.<\/p>\n

GIRL and BOY look towards their city in the distance.<\/em><\/p>\n

BOY. (Softly<\/em>) This is our world.<\/p>\n

GIRL. This is where we belong.<\/p>\n

GIRL smiles, softening, and turns to regard BOY by her side. She puts her arm around his shoulders.<\/em><\/p>\n

GIRL. Let\u2019s go home.<\/p>\n

They make their way slowly off.<\/em><\/p>\n

BOY. (As they walk<\/em>) Mira, what did you mean, we believe the same thing? What about the way our city\u2019s divided into the different Quarters \u2013 Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and so on?<\/p>\n

They exit. Though empty, the stage remains lit.<\/em><\/p>\n

GIRL. (Offstage<\/em>) But we all believe that we have to live absolutely according to the Word of God. We believe in the forbidden and the allowed, in Hell and in making sure we go to Heaven. And we believe in making everyone do the same. Don\u2019t you know, silly boy, that\u2019s what Partition did for us? It gave us this land of our own, separate and safe from those stinking moderates.<\/p>\n

Lights down. End of scene.<\/em><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

In the creative response to this week’s readings, two ideas came together to inspire me: first, that of religious extremism and fundamentalism in societies, second, the history of the creation of Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims. Throughout this course, I have been unable to shake the thought that extremists of any religion seem almost to share a more similar mindset than do all members of the nominally same religion. So I tried to depict a world in which, instead of members of the same religion fighting for an independent homeland in which to come together and practice their religion freely, those who believe in living by religious stricture\u00a0and<\/em> imposing these beliefs on others<\/em> (such as Maulana Bijli, whom we saw in the documentary on Salman Ahmad) have fought to live in their own society in which scriptural interpretations must dictate the actions of people. The idea of an inversion, and to present it as a story, was inspired by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s\u00a0Sultana’s Dream<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Within such a society, when the girl says, “that hole’s not supposed to be there”, the boy’s reaction is immediately to be repelled and fearful; in such a society the question of what is Supposed To Be and Not Supposed To Be holds all the power. When the girl explains the separation between the two societies to the boy, it sounds as if she is saying that they have pulled apart on the basis of religious difference – “we can live together because we believe the same thing.” It is only later, at the end, that it is revealed that the societies have pulled apart on the basis of their difference in levels of religious tolerance, and each lives in harmony that way. Would things be easier if the extremists of different religions and the moderates of different religions decide to split up into two different states?\u00a0If dogmatic ideologues and their supporters rule over each other, and those who believe in freedom to practise or not practise one’s religion as one wishes (so dangerously liberal, as Bijli might say) were allowed to uphold their own ways of life, could there be more peace in the world?\u00a0“The Partition” refers to both this fictional historical event, and its embodiment in the Wall that separates, physically and symbolically, two societies and philosophies, the Wall through which the boy peers. The piece is a tiny exploration, a sort of scene-setting, of what it might look like to live in such a world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Partition A little BOY stands on tiptoes with his back to the audience, hands cupped around his face, which is pressed to a huge stone wall. An older GIRL stands to a side, anxious to leave. GIRL. Let\u2019s go. BOY. Hold on. GIRL. It\u2019s time to go. BOY. Not yet. Come here and look! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6293,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6293"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shaoweichewchia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}