Banned Books Week: Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa

Normally, I don’t read a book just because it was banned or challenged. I carouse titles and skim through books and if I see something I like, I make a note of it. However, for one of my classes I had to read Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India. (If I was to personally leaf through it, in all honesty I would have just set the book aside and kept looking.) But while reading the book for class, I found out that it was a “banned book” in 2006; this is what eventually piqued my interest.

Cracking India is about story that’s focused on the polio-stricken narrator, 8 year-old Lenny, and the events that she witnesses in Lahore during the 1947 partition of India. There are some heartfelt moments scattered within the text; Lenny is not only coming of age in a dreadful time period, but practically during a time of social unrest and you can sympathize, laugh, and cry with her as she experiences new emotions for the first time. But truth be told, there are lots of explicit details regarding sex, violence, and the monstrosities surrounding the dividing of the British Indian subcontinent into India & Pakistan. Almost close to 12.5 million people were displaced and there was a lot of religious-fueled genocide that is described in the book. Overall, it’s not a book for the weak-hearted.

The book was challenged because “a parent objected to atwo-page scene in which the narrator brushes off an older cousin's attempt totrick her into performing oral sex”.

I was wondering to myself after reading the book, “Really? This is the only reason why they wanted the book banned?” I found it not surprising that the book was challenged, but why the book was challenged. The parents did not contest to the religious violence that was expanded upon, nor about the blatant abuse towards women specifically. To me, it seemed that there were so many other issues that could have been brought up, but this one seemed so unnecessary.

I really want to recommend this book: yes, it is especially taxing because it deals with a historical event that most of us in the Western world really cannot comprehend or even begin to understand; but the main point is that it’s challenging. It brings a lot of important issues to light: violence against women, one’s perspective, colonialism, etc. – the list is endless. (I caught myself wondering about humanity in general; how could someone give in to such violence, etc.) And isn’t the point of so-called “banned books” supposed to challenge us how we think? Sometimes I think we don’t challenge ourselves enough.

-Judy