The sixth river
Subtitle: a journal from the partition of India
By: Fikr Taunsvi ; translated by Maaz Bin Bilal
Contributors: Bilal, Maaz Bin, translator
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Published: 2019
Place of publication: New Delhi
Language: eng
Number of pages: 178
ISBN-13: 9789389231151; 9789389231175
Copyright date: 2019
Subjects: Diaries; History; Histoire
Other titles: 6th river
Work titles: Chhaṭā daryā
Description: "The Partition of India in 1947 left millions displaced amidst indiscriminate murders, rapes and looting. The Sixth River, originally published as Chhata Darya, is an extraordinary first-person account of that violent time. Born Ram Lal Bhatia in the town of Taunsa Sharif, then in the Punjab, Fikr Taunsvi left for the cosmopolitan city of Lahore in the 1930s. Here he worked with various newspapers, wrote poetry and articles, and became a part of the intellectual circle. But when independence was announced, Fikr was faced with a new reality--of being a Hindu in his beloved city, now in Pakistan. The Sixth River is the journal Fikr wrote from August to November 1947 as Lahore disintegrated around him. Fikr is angry at the shortsightedness and ineptness of Radcliffe, Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah. In the company of likeminded friends such as Sahir Ludhianvi, he mourns the loss of the art and culture of Lahore in the bloodlust and deluded euphoria of freedom; and derides the newly converted, who adopted stereotypical religious symbols. He is bewildered when old friends suddenly turn staunch nationalists and advise him to either convert or leave the country. And the deep, unspeakable trauma millions faced during Partition reaches Fikr's doorstep when his neighbour murders his daughter, and when he is eventually forced to migrate to Amritsar in India. Powerful, ironic and deeply harrowing, The Sixth River is an invaluable account of the Partition. This brilliant translation by Maaz Bin Bilal makes the classic available in English for the first time."--Back cover.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.

Translated from the Urdu.
Table of contents: title: Note on the translation; title: Author's note: this diary; title: Mobbed by darkness; title: What place is this?; title: Come, let us look for the dawn again.