Analysis Of Sunlight On A Broken Column

Sunlight on a Broken Column takes us back in time, a time that bears on the pre-partition imaginary of a nation and underline harmony among different religious groups on the basis of shared history and shared cultural experience.

Impact of Communal Riots on the Characters: In the novel, Baba Jan, the Muslim patriarch has friends among other communities and religious groups. Thakur Balbir Singh, Raja Hasan Ahmed of Amirpur, Mr. Freemantle this friendship emphasizes the social bonding that existed among persons of different faiths. From the pre-partition harmony the novel moves towards communal drift, riots and final partition of the country that also signals the end of British Raj in India. Partition becomes the terminal event in the life of the characters. There is a remarkable strength in Attia Hosain’s art of characterization. The novel begins with Baba Jan on his deathbed. There is anxiety in the air for what will happen to the family of three generations living under the same

As there are many similarities between Hosain’s life and the narrator- protagonist Laila’s story. The novel is a first person narration by Laila of her life from the age of fifteen to mid-thirties Laila, a young girl who has lost both her parents, lives in the household of her grandfather, along with her father’s sisters Abida and Majida and, Majida’s seventeen year old daughter Zahra. She is brought up by her orthodox but principled Aunt Abida. According to the wishes of her father, had the benefit of western education, she took keeps purdah like her aunts. However death of her grandfather makes uncle Hamid, her father’s elder brother, head of the family and her new guardian. Uncle Hamid, a man of ‘Liberal’ ideas, is never the less an autocratic guardian. No longer in purdah Laila starts attending college. Her University friends as well as her distant cousin Asad become involved in antigovernment