ABSTRACT
Qurratulain Hyder’s Urdu novel River of Fire was written in Pakistan where she had migrated after 1947 but the responses it received there were largely negative. The novel is an ode to Hindu-Muslim syncretism and pursues this agenda by trying to chart Indian history from around the 4th century BCE to the post-independence era through a set of characters with similar-sounding names – Gautam Nilamber, Hari Shankar, Kamal, Champa, Nirmala and Cyril Ashley being the key ones. The demarcation of ‘India’ – since it excludes spaces like Myanmar, Tibet and Afghanistan – is based on former British India. A significant aspect of the book is that while there is an equality maintained between the characters named above, they all belong to the privileged classes and there is little sense that the artisanal or working classes participated in syncretic Indian history. There is also hardly any representation of Pakistan after 1947 since those who choose Pakistan over India live in England. This leaves the reader to surmise two things – the fact of hierarchy having become endemic to all in the sub-continent and not only among Hindus, and Pakistan not seen as a stable proposition even by many who had embraced it. Hyder herself moved back to India later and worked as journalist.
