Discuss the quality of innocence in the narrator of Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India.

Lenny's innocence is significant because it represents the key aspect of her characterization as well as symbolically representing how Partition destroyed the innocence in the nation of India.

Lenny is unaware of the implications of Partition.  Lenny's world is innocent and consists of she, her Ayah, and the immediate world around them.  In this way, in having an innocent and small personal world, she is like the millions of Indians who lived in one country...

Lenny's innocence is significant because it represents the key aspect of her characterization as well as symbolically representing how Partition destroyed the innocence in the nation of India.

Lenny is unaware of the implications of Partition.  Lenny's world is innocent and consists of she, her Ayah, and the immediate world around them.  In this way, in having an innocent and small personal world, she is like the millions of Indians who lived in one country until geographic lines were drawn to divide--to partition--it and them.  She is akin to the Pre-Partition Indians who were concerned with their own innocent interests. 

When Partition hits India, Lenny is forced to pay attention to the violence that consumes her world.  Lenny becomes aware of the cruelty and savagery that is newly a part of the world around her.  Her innocence is replaced with horrifying awareness about what human beings can do to one another.  She is similar to the Indians who are divided into groups of "Hindus" and "Muslims" and who commit atrocities on both sides.  The innocence that once made these people see themselves as "Indians" is supplanted by a sectarian and divisive condition in which many sought to eliminate a group of people.

Seeing that Lenny's narration takes place when she is an adult, she is able to fully process her own involvement in this sad chapter of history.  She is able to understand that she was the victim of manipulation.  Her innocence prevented her from seeing that people like the Ice-Candy Man were skillfully manipulating others for their own benefit.  Ice-Candy Man is able to masterfully develop from one who has no power to one who is a leader who extracts information for his own benefit.  Lenny's awakening realization is similar to that of the Hindus and Muslims who are able to look back on Partition and see how their leaders were skilled at exacerbating tensions in order to reinforce their own political position.  This shows a further comparison between Lenny's innocence and the original innocence of Indians before Partition.