Mapping Perpetrator’s Trauma and National Allegory in Moni Mohsin’s The End of Innocence

Abstract

The unstable political rift between India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh is a crucial point of discussion in many of the literary expressions in South Asian Anglophone Writings. The periodic disasters such as forced expulsion, migration, refugee crises, and trauma of the partition build up the South Asian history frequently. One such humanitarian crisis is the 1971 partition event, that led to the formation of Bangladesh. These events become the site of traumatization for the subjects of its country. The fiction of Bangladesh deals vehemently with their occupation as victimhood. The long-surviving silence in the anglophone writing of Pakistan writers in the 1971 partition is opened up by writers like Kamila Shamsie, Moni Mohsin, and Sorraya Khan. The trauma of the perpetrator and bystander is often neglected due to the contentious scholarship that can become an exculpation and distort the bifurcation between victimhood and perpetrator. This study expounds on the trauma of perpetrator in Moni Mohsin’s The End of Innocence (2006), explores the complexities in the psychological scarring and its belated outcome as well as throws insights upon the nuanced use of allegories by the author upon the theme of 1971 partition.