Using fiction as a shaping force in history, Sidhwa tries to redefine the role of Jinnah. She strongly feels that the depiction of Jinnah in history written by the Indians and the British is unfair. She feels he was caricatured “as a very stiff villain of the piece”. Thus she tells David Montenegro: “And I felt in Ice-Candy-Man, I was just redressing, in a small way. a very grievous wrong that has been done to Jinnah and Pakistanis by many Indian and British writers. They’ve dehumanized him, made him a symbol of the sort of person who brought about the Partition of India whereas…. in reality he was the only constitutional man who didn’t sway crowds by rhetoric”. In the novel, a major reference to Jinnah is aptly made in the context of the Parsi family that is the focus of the novel. Lenny comes across the picture of an “astonishingly beautiful woman ” and is told that it is the picture of Jinnah’s wife. A Parsi woman, she married the lovely Muslim Jinnah and risked censure by her wealthy, knighted father and her family. The marriage as history suggests was not very happy and the beautiful wife died of a broken heart. In this context Sidhwa does not completely exonerate Jinnah but she manages to blur the criticism by noting that Jinnah too died of a broken heart in September 1948. She stresses that she is on Jinnah’s side: But didn’t Jinnah too, die of a broken heart? And today, forty years later, in films of Gandhi’s and Mountbatten’s lives, in books by British and Indian scholars, Jinnah who for a decade was known as ‘Ambassador of HinduMuslim Unity’ is caricatured and portrayed as a monster. In this same chapter, there is also a fascinating contrast between Nehru and Jinnah, presented by Lenny. However the observations reflect not only Sidhwa’s views but the gossip about the two leaders that Lenny has overheard from the servants, the retinue of Ayah’s admirers and local people. So it is a type of received history. Nehru is presented as charming, suave, handsome and “with an aura of power and a presence. There is also a touch of scandal. “He bandies words with Lady Mountbatten and is presumed to be her lover. In contrast Jinnah “is incapable of compliments. He is described as austere and deathly ill (reference to the cancer of which he died in September 1948 soon after the formation of Pakistan). The author implies that Nehru was successful with the British and has always received praise as a statesman because he was charming and urbane. Her concern is that Jinnah has not received his due because he was ‘past the prime of his elegant manhood” , sallow and uncompromising. In revealing the image of Jinnah, Sidhwa again d displays the important presence of hindsight in her fiction (“Today, forty years later”). She further justifies her portrayal of Jinnah by using a quotation from the Indian poet and freedom fighter, Sarojini Naidu, which praises the founder of Pakistan’s appearance, manners, idealism, demeanor and wisdom. The novelist has i therefore adopted a historicist approach in her portrayal of Jinnah.
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