No abstract

This paper traces the sources of power that Majeed, the protagonist of Syed Waliullah’s Tree Without Roots (1967), manipulates to claim his influential position in Mahabbatpur – a fictional village in the then East Pakistan. Tree without Roots is Waliullah’s own transcreation of his novel Lal Shalu (1948). While “lal shalu” literally means “red cloth,” the significant change in the title of the transcreation – with its recurrent use of images of roots, rootlessness and uprooting – reflects the author’s added emphasis on Majeed’s obsession with power. Exploiting social and cultural elements, such as religion, superstition, gender inequality and class structure, Majeed creates an atmosphere of fear to rule over Mahabbatpur. He becomes economically and socially powerful, for a time dominating the entire village with his narrative before any hint of resistance. This paper comparatively analyses the original novel and its transcreation, examining the works in the context of the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, a division based on religion – the chief of source of Majeed’s power. The paper interprets Majeed’s vulnerability and eventual downfall as an allegory of the futility of separate nation states based on religion.

Violence is pervasive in Linda Hogan’s first novel, Mean Sprit (1990). The Native American characters in the novel are traumatized by historical processes of injustice imposed upon them, such as uprooting from land, relocation, religious and cultural conversion, separation of children from parents, murder, and so on. Nola, a representative indigenous character, develops negative coping strategies—eventually killing her white husband as a consequence of her generalized anxiety disorder and phobia of white people. Hogan’s second novel Solar Storms (1995) is considered significant for its representation of the journey from trauma to healing. Though the protagonist, Angel, is severely traumatized at the beginning of the novel, she experiences healing on returning to her indigenous community and participating with her people in a movement to protect their land and rivers. In this paper, I point to the connection between environmental injustice and trauma, and the reverse correlation of restoration of justice and healing. I further reveal that despite the widespread trauma depicted in Mean Spirit, it is in this novel that Hogan introduces her model of healing—a pattern replicated in her later work. This model comprises reconnecting with ancestors and ancestral practices, and participation in grassroots movements to ensure environmental justice.