78 pages • 2 hours read
Veera HiranandaniThe Night Diary
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Religious and Cultural Identities and Defining the Self
Identity is a central theme in The Night Diary, and is seen as having the ability to bring people together and tear them apart. Although people have multiple identities, those ideas about who someone is exist in a hierarchy and one identity is elevated above the others. Some identities are temporary and fluid, but others are enduring and lead people to hold steadfast to them, allowing identity to define important aspects of one’s existence. For most people living in British India at the time of India’s independence, religious identity surpassed the previously shared sense of identity as British Colonial Indian that had enabled a peaceful coexistence of diverse populations. The elevation of religious identity over all other identities is what necessitated the partition and created separate countries for Muslims and Hindus. It turned the groups into enemies, created over ten million displaced people, and resulted in the deaths of somewhere between several hundred thousand and two million formerly Indian citizens.
Nisha, in the absence of her Muslim mother, identifies as Hindu, not because she is religious but because that is what her father and grandmother are. Papa, a doctor and a secular, or cultural Hindu, believes all people are the same on the inside and does not hold his identity as Hindu above that of Indian citizen, father, or son. Dadi, Nisha’s grandmother, is of an earlier generation whose identity is more strongly tied to religion, but she shows no bias against other groups. Given her age, it is likely Dadi’s only education had been religious in nature, which explains why she is unable to read but sings, prays, and tells stories from memory. It also speaks to her stronger connection to her Hindu identity: “Papa doesn’t like to go to temple. [They] only go on [their] birthdays and on Diwali because Dadi begs [them] to go. Sometimes Papa walks her there and waits outside” (7). Nisha, who is still young, goes to temple on her birthday as part of her tradition, but her openness to all people and the insouciance with which she combines Muslim and Hindu prayers show does not know enough about either of the religious traditions to base her primary identity strictly on doctrine or non-secular Hindu ritual.
Prior to independence, Nisha’s identity is that of a 12-year-old girl living in Mirpur Khas, whose mother died in childbirth, who is a twin to Amil, and a person who fears making herself heard. Nisha is Indian and loosely Hindu. It is upon learning of India’s independence and simultaneous partition that she considers what it means to identify as something. Having always identified as Hindu means that when Muslims become the supposed enemy, Nisha is troubled and curious about what it means to be half Muslim. She seeks to understand not only her own identity, but that of everyone around her. She begins cataloguing friends, teachers, and anyone she can think of into religious identity groups and ruminates over who will stay and who will have to leave. Nisha realizes that not only might she have been separated from her mother if she were alive, but that she will soon lose connection with all of the Muslims in her life, most lamentably, Kazi.
Spirituality Versus Religion
People, many would argue, are born with an innate sense of wonder about who they are and where they come from. Nisha, in acknowledging her faith, reveals her own wonder. Her focus is not on the kind of religion or house of worship, but on the connection it makes her feel:
[She] always looks forward to going [to temple] […] the smoky smell of the lamps burning […] the soft sounds of the prayers being chanted and sung make [her] feel loved, like [Mama is] there, watching. But maybe a Hindu temple is the last place [she’d] be (7).
Though her mother would never worship in a Hindu temple, Nisha’s spirituality is not defined by the building she is in, but by what happens to her when she is there. Nisha does not focus on the type of religion she practices, the place where she finds spiritual solace, or to whom she sends her prayers. She feels spiritual connection in a Hindu house of worship but doesn’t think or believe it’s to the exclusion of Mama.
Nisha’s connection to the spiritual in favor of the dogmatic, manifests again when she is on the desert path going one direction with Hindus and sees a path crowded with Muslims travelling the other direction. Upon hearing the Azan, the Muslim call to prayer, Nisha stands, physically and metaphorically, between the two groups, praying a combination of the Hindu and Muslim prayers she’s learned watching Dadi and Kazi. Her spirituality transcends religion and honors the traditions of those she most loves and to whom she feels a strong connection.
The Negative Effects of Displacement
Through the voice of a child, Hiranandani brings attention to the problem of human displacement. The Indian Partition was responsible for the largest human migration of all time. Upon India’s independence, when the country was split in two, it is said that fourteen million people woke up in the wrong country. Due to complicated and long-standing political and religious disagreements between two distinct, and frequently antagonistic, ways of life, there was frustration and anger among people of different religions who each wanted their own country. The Hindu and Muslim rhetoric fueled hatred between the groups.
While there were places in India, like where Nisha and her family live, where all types of people got along and lived peacefully, when the Muslim people were able to break away and have their own country, the tension had become so high, that violence broke out. People like Nisha’s family were forced to leave, and for Nisha, the reasons are inexplicable. Showing displacement through a child who harbors no bias brings extra ugliness to the event.
The number of people who, like Nisha, have been forcibly displaced, is contemporarily at an all-time high. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that in 2019, there were 70.8 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. The number is comprised of refugees, people fleeing conflict or persecution, asylum seekers, stateless people who have no nationality and struggle to realize their human rights, and internally displaced people, or those who seek safety in another part of their own country (UNHCR. Figures at a Glance. 2019).
It is a phenomenon that is hard to imagine for someone living in the developed world. Nisha is a child, but she symbolizes the naivete of people who are privileged to live in less turbulent countries or times. Nisha and her family are moderate, accepting of others, and peace loving, and because they could not conceive of something like the displacement and violence of partition happening, let alone to them, they did not see it coming. Nisha and her family are reminders of the unwarranted confidence and trust people place in their institutions, as well as the misguided belief that life will always carry on as it is. In that light, The Night Diary is piece of historical fiction that can be read as a cautionary tale.
Courage in Vulnerability
The theme of courage runs throughout The Night Diaries. It is seen in acts of bravery and humanity, and without it, the family could not have gotten to Jodhpur. A seemingly less-valiant, but more-vulnerable form of courage manifests differently in each of the characters. Nisha, Amil, Papa, and Dadi all exhibit the courage to hope against hope, making themselves vulnerable to disappointment in exchange for momentary hope. Nisha imagines she can stay at Rashid Uncle’s, be friends with Hafa, and all the parents “will see that [they’re] just two lonely girls who want to be friends” (217). Nisha knows befriending Hafa is forbidden, not only by Papa, but by the political climate, yet she momentarily suppresses this knowledge and allows herself to taste the fruit of forbidden friendship. Amil, too, hopes against hope in wanting unconditional acceptance from Papa, and Dadi does also when she works toward a reunion with Kazi in Jodhpur. The odds are heavily against each of these hopes coming to fruition, yet rather than accept the alternative, each character lets themselves believe the near-impossible can occur.
