Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
The Partition
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, and then as farce.” This famous quote by Karl Marx could be a one line summary of Bhisham Sahni’s 1979 award winning novel, Tamas, a dark satire on the terrible riots that bubbled up, seemingly spontaneously, during the bloodiest period of the Indian subcontinent’s history – its partitioning into the sovereign nations of India and Pakistan when the British abandoned the Raj they had presided over for almost 200 years.
The fact that a book published in 1979 can seem so relevant today is not surprising if one considers the span of human history. Civilizations have risen and fallen over millennia, World Wars have devastated cities and countries, but the same issues, the same hubris, greed, and manipulation, and the same brutal formula for stoking communal passions, reappear again and again, in different guises.
Given the current political milieu in India and America, Tamas reads like a primer in “How Easily Awful Things Start.” It’s reprint by Penguin Classics has been translated by Daisy Rockwell with an excellent introduction that includes Bhisham Sahni’s motives for writing Tamas, 30 years after he had experienced the murderous riots of partition.
How easily awful things start
Tamas is about the gestation of a communal riot in a small town in Northern India, in the months leading up to the partition. It begins with a killing—however, it’s a hog being butchered, not a human. As the book evolves, the reader begins to sense that events unfolding in the novel bear an uncanny similarity to what we see happening across the world today; the cynical manipulation of religious and communal loyalties by those in power who stand to gain enormously when communities turn on one another.
The novel doesn’t have a main character to thread the narrative together. Characters swiftly come and go, and slowly it begins to dawn on the reader that the chief protagonist in the novel isn’t a person at all – it is the riot itself, and its horrific, mind-bending creation out of seemingly innocuous circumstances, like a tornado forming against a clear sky.
“Sahni wrote the novel in the first place because he saw the cycle of hate he had lived through during partition repeating in communal riots in Independent India, Rockwell writes in her introduction. “The unseen hands may change, the location may change, the match that lights the tinder may change, but the formula remains chillingly familiar. His novel has much to teach the world about the fallacy of the notion that a riot is a spontaneous conflagration. Whether it is in Lahore or in Washington, DC, or Baltimore, Maryland, a riot has deep roots and reflects decades of institutional violence—everything from city planning to policing techniques to political manipulation that attempts to distract from real issues of social injustice.”
The charmar & other characters
The first chapter begins with Nathu, a local chamar, being given the task of butchering a hog. The money is considerable, and Nathu feels he can’t refuse this windfall. But he is a chamar, a skinner of animal hides, not a butcher, and he has never killed before. Despite the gory subject, Sahni manages to inject some grisly humor into his portrayal of Nathu trapped in a small hut, struggling with an ugly, prickly pig, as the pig struggles for its life. Eventually, the odious task is completed; however, its fallout is just beginning for Nathu and the rest of the town.
Sahni’s brilliance as a writer sprinkles lightness and satire into the dark shadows of the novel, engaging the reader without overwhelming him with gloom. His characters are alive and interesting, even when they are running for their lives. He dives in and out the psyches of the actors involved on this revolving stage: the British administrator of the area, the sly and manipulative Richard; his driven- to- alcoholism- by- boredom- wife, Lisa; members of the local Congress Committee who organize regular marches around the town to do what they call “community work”; representatives of the Muslim League who challenge the marching members of the Congress Committee to admit that Congress is an unabashedly Hindu party; the Communist party volunteer Deb, who scuttles between the two feuding sides, and is beaten up for his efforts to bring peace as he tries to convince both factions of rioters that they are being distracted from the real issues; the Farishta in human form, Shah Nawaz, who drives through the riot torn city to rescue his Hindu friend Raghunath, and then goes back for Raghunath’s wife’s jewelry, and turns out to not be a Farishta after all; and the elderly couple Harnam Singh and Banto, who are forced to flee the village where they have run a teashop for decades, and where they know almost everyone, and throw themselves on the mercy of strangers belonging to the same religion which is hunting them.
Crumbling friendships
Ironically, everyone has lived together in this town with reasonably amicable tolerance for decades. They are neighbors and trading partners who have exchanged favors and shown up at each other’s festivities. Decades of friendship crumble easily before the toxicity of ugly rumors and disinformation, which are fanned by suspicion and lies. The build-up to partition already has both the Hindu and Muslim communities on edge, as each side accuses the other of bad faith in the final drawing of boundaries, while the British administrators play along to their advantage. In that tense atmosphere, no more than a spark is needed for an explosion.
The ending, which deals with the aftermath of the riots, is a farcical and masterful parody of human nature despite the darkness of the subject. Sahni makes one laugh out loud at the handy hypocrisies people use to cover up guilt and erase memory.
In an era where institutional attempts are being made to rewrite history, books like Tamas, which explain how easily the riot could be ignited and extinguished, need to be read more than ever before.
TAMAS
By Bhisham Sahni
Translated with an Introduction by Daisy Rockwell
Foreword by Siddhartha Deb
Penguin Classics Trade Paperback (July 15, 2025)
ISBN: 9780143138051
Bhisham Sahni received a Sahitya Kala Academy award for his book in 1975. It was also produced as a multi-episode series on India’s government-run television platform, Doordarshan. Tamas, the television series, transfixed audiences across India, but especially in the North, which had experienced the worst of the bloody division.
The series, produced and directed by Govind Nihalani, and starring Om Puri as Nathu the Chamar, was later released as a 4-hour-long feature film, which can be viewed on YouTube.