The novel Tamas, on the communal violence of 1947, was written in which language?
- A.Urdu
- B.Punjabi
- C.Hindi
- D.Bengali
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is C, Hindi. Tamas, meaning darkness, is Bhisham Sahni's Hindi novel on the days of killing in a town of western Punjab, and it won him the Sahitya Akademi Award; a well known television serial was made from it. Option A is wrong because the great Urdu writing of Partition is the short story, above all Saadat Hasan Manto's Toba Tek Singh and Thanda Gosht, along with Intizar Husain's novel Basti. Option B is wrong because the famous Punjabi novel of Partition is Amrita Pritam's Pinjar. Option D is wrong because the Bengali experience of the division belongs to a separate body of writing and not to Tamas. Grouping the novels by language is the surest way through this topic, because the language itself is asked as often as the author.
Read the full article: Books on Partition and Independence: Author-wise List
Practice Questions
View allThe novel Train to Pakistan was written by:
- A.Khushwant Singh
- B.Bhisham Sahni
- C.Manohar Malgonkar
- D.Chaman Nahal
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Train to Pakistan, published in 1956, is set in the imaginary border village of Mano Majra and follows what a trainload of bodies does to a village where Sikhs and Muslims had lived together; it is the best known English novel of Partition.
Read the full explanation →Pinjar, the Punjabi novel later filmed under the same name, was written by:
- A.Amrita Pritam
- B.Krishna Sobti
- C.Ismat Chughtai
- D.Attia Hosain
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Pinjar, in English The Skeleton, tells the story of Puro, a woman abducted at the time of the division, and is the central Punjabi novel of Partition; Amrita Pritam's poem addressed to Waris Shah is the other work of hers always cited on this theme.
Read the full explanation →The book Freedom at Midnight was written by:
- A.Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
- B.Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
- C.Henry Vincent Hodson
- D.Narendra Singh Sarila
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The two journalists, one American and one French, wrote Freedom at Midnight as a narrative account of the last year of British rule, the division of the country and the killing of Gandhi, drawing on interviews with Mountbatten.
Read the full explanation →India Wins Freedom is the autobiographical account of:
- A.Jawaharlal Nehru
- B.Rajendra Prasad
- C.Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
- D.Vallabhbhai Patel
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Azad, who was president of the Congress through the Quit India years, gave his account of the negotiations leading to Partition in India Wins Freedom, written in Urdu and rendered into English with the help of Humayun Kabir; a portion of it was withheld from publication for thirty years.
Read the full explanation →The Urdu short story Toba Tek Singh, set at the exchange of asylum inmates between India and Pakistan, was written by:
- A.Rajinder Singh Bedi
- B.Saadat Hasan Manto
- C.Intizar Husain
- D.Qurratulain Hyder
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Toba Tek Singh, in which an inmate refuses either country and dies on the strip of land between the two borders, is the most quoted single piece of Partition writing; Manto's other work on these years includes the story Thanda Gosht and the collection of one-line sketches Siyah Hashiye.
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