48 • “Wall of Force” Channels 2022 The Influence of India and Pakistan’s Partition on Rushdie and the Text König rightly identifies othering in the text, but she relates it to the colonizer’s relationship with colonized countries; however, the partition between India and Pakistan, supported by the two-nation theory, caused a societal othering that may have influenced Rushdie’s writing. In 1947, India was divided into two separate countries: India and Pakistan. Politicians and leaders partially based their decision to split on the twonation theory, which argues that radically different origins and “bents of mind” prevented Hindus and Muslims from coexisting (Ghosh and Singh 923924). “Anarchy, bloodshed, rapes, robbery, and ruthless violence” resulted from the partition (924), and its supporters interpreted the violence as a justification “that Hindus and Muslims were indeed so different that they could never live together peacefully in a nation” (932). Once this narrative had been established, “it was an easy task to validate the partition as a requirement to end the civilizational conflicts” (932). Pakistanis many Pakistanis have “developed strong overtones of real or imagined fears of Indian domination” (Talbot and Singh 155). Similarly, many Indians disparaged Pakistanis by believing the countries separated based on exclusivist Islamic ideas and described “the Pakistani state as ‘feudal,’ ‘obscurantist’ and a ‘theocratic’ project which failed to capture the imagination of most South Asian Muslims” (155). The governments on either side built hatred and distrust through pushing twisted ideologies in education to provide a one-sided view of history (Kumar 205). Though neither country colonized the other, the mutual hostility created a similar atmosphere to the relationship between the colonizer and colonized since both sides established stereotypes of the Other. These stereotypes relate to Said’s concept of the Other and inform how Rushdie constructed Gup and Chup. Rushdie’s Views on the Partition Rushdie’s personal experiences in India and Pakistan after the partition and his public criticism of the separation encourage critics to evaluate Haroun through a historical and biographical lens. Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, India in the same year as the split between India and Pakistan. Although he grew up in a Muslim family, Rushdie remained in India because his immediate family refused to join the Muslim exodus to Pakistan (Dingwaney 347). His extended family did move to Pakistan, and he visited them many times during his childhood, gaining important knowledge of both sides of the border (Newslaundry). In 1967, Rushdie’s parents moved to Pakistan, and Rushdie lived in the country for a short period (Dingwaney 347). His experiences in both countries after the partition influenced his political views and his writing in later years. He called the partition an “avoidable thing” that “would have been preferable to have been avoided” (Meer). He describes Pakistan as “an invented space and badly invented, bad
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