Well, one thing is for sure: Laila's life is extremely painful and lonely. She loved her father and his admiration for the Western world, and following the death of her mother, he was her true family. But he died too, leaving her completely orphaned. She finishes her childhood in the house of her grandfather, who also dies. When she falls in love with a poor man named Ameer, she betrays her family's wishes to marry him, and then he dies too.
Laila is beset on all sides by death. Since her young life contains an extra awareness of the horror of human death, she is disinterested by political disagreement. Not only does she not understand it or appreciate it fully, she also resents the fact that humans are willing to live in violent, outspoken competition with one another. That doesn't mean she doesn't think India should be free though, so instead of picking one side or another, she just keeps quiet. Everyone wants her to be political, but she is already too aware of death for anything else to matter.
Her loneliness, trauma, and death awareness lead Laila into a serious depression. Her emotional burdens are enough to scare any person, but without her family's support, without a sense of destiny, her constant tragedies are the entirety of her young adult life. She is like a martyr in this, because her life is a touchstone for her culture, and for the human experience in general.
