Reflection on tamas: Tamas depicts a darkness engulfing the indian subcontinent around the time of freedom.

What i found striking was the ways Sahni uses irony to make this darkness even more effective. Through his narrative style, Sahni juxtaposes the incidents happening at different places and creates a dramatic irony. On the other hand, he also uses verbal irony. During the group discussion in the class, various such episodes came to notice which highligheted this use of dramatic irony. The scene in which Nathu is trying to kill the pig is immediately followed by the congress memebres assmebeling for the prabhat pheri, which is intended to give the party a better credibility among the muslims. On the other hand, the very scene of prabhat pheri was ironical because all the party members were criticising each other and there was a complete absence of idealism which was the popular image of congress. Whle talking about the character of Nathu, it came ot my notice how the author uses nathus guilt stricken conscience to make the character of murad ali and the whole outcome to the riot ironical. On the other hand, the author also uses two characters who share similar names : devdatta and dev vrata. However, one character corrupts the innocent minds in order to turn them to the path of communal hatred and violence while the other tries to prevent the violence. I could not stop noticing how Sahni shows the dedicated effort by the communist comrades, under the leadership of devdatt, endangering their very lives in order to prevent the riot from spreading further and controlling the damage. in the earlier part of the novel we are intoroduced to the suspicion that the congress members held for the communists. When the riot spread, both the congress and muslim league members are unwilling to come out of their houses to hold a meeting while the communist the exposing himself to all the dangers in order to bring them together and prevent the riots. Relation between Richard, the deputy commissioner, and his wife liza also persents many instaces of irony. I found that lizas innocence about indian culture and richards knowledge of the indian history and society becomes very ironical towards the end. While liza is concerned about the losses and sufferings of the innocent masses during the riots, all that Richard cares about is projecting himself as an efficient administrative officer who can take care of his subjects. I loved the style of sahnis writing style becuse of this biting ironical tone and nature of the narrative. this ironical tone was most apparent to me when i reached the closing page where Richard is sharing his desire of spending some more time and studying the local history. Tamas shows the irony of indian politics and how the innocent masses fall victim to it.