Syncretic Culture In River Of Fire By Qurratulain Hyder

Abstract:

In her magnum opus River of Fire, Qurratulain Hyder annexes over twenty five centuries of history, tracing the formation, development, evolution and the subsequent partition of culture resulting into the journey of India from a civilisation to nation(s). The integrated vision of India is the one held up by its syncretic culture which transcends history. The wonderful tale that flows through time shows India in its splendour, in its conflict-ridden times as a fabric which absorbed the colours of other cultures that have seeped into it, exposing a design which has been enriched with time. With the task of constructing the amalgamated identity of India, she brings together the history and heritage for her purpose. This paper intends

The integrated vision of India is the one held up by its syncretic culture which transcends history. The wonderful tale that flows through time shows India in its splendour, in its conflict-ridden times as a fabric which absorbed the colours of other cultures that have seeped into it, exposing a design which has been enriched with time. With the task of constructing the amalgamated identity of India, she brings together the history and heritage for her purpose. The paper intends to investigate the cultural inclusiveness of India as explored by Qurratulain Hyder in River of Fire and reaffirm the notion of India as a civilisational society instead of a multicultural nation. It also seeks to challenge the concept of India as a multicultural society and advocate a civilisational one as proposed in the

He describes it as “a continual presence and process of reciprocity, mutual sharing and overlapping of cultural practices, styles of life, values and belief-systems cutting across the divides of space”(195). Though the uneven textual space given to the four stories provides the most emphasis on the Ganga-jamunitehzeeb or the Hindu-Muslim culture of Lucknow(as evident in the third and fourth stories), Hyder’s choice of the setting of first story makes a different point. It begins with GautamNilambar, in 4th Century BC-two hundred years after the death of Gautam Buddha- in the town of Shravasti on the banks of the river Saryu. Even before the advent of Islam, India was a civilisation society, carrying Hindu, Buddhist and Jain philosophy. The recently formed religion, thinks Gautam, “has added yet another philosophy to the vast kingdom of thought, where sixty two systems already flourished” (8). Through his conversation with Hari Shankar, whom he mistakes to be a Yavana or Mlechha, we see the then ongoing cultural, commercial and epistemological traffic in the subcontinent. When Hari Shankar mentions Daryush as an Aryan descendant, Gautam cannot help but comment on the superiority of the people of noble birth:“Iranians and us Aryans” differentiating themselves