THEME-13

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UNDERSTANDING PARTITION

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POLITICS, MEMORIES, EXPERIENCES

Understanding Partition

• We know that the joy of our country’s independence from colonial rule in 1947 was tarnished by the violence and brutality of Partition.
• The Partition of British India into the sovereign states of India and Pakistan (with its western and eastern wings) led to many sudden developments.
• Thousands of lives were snuffed out, many others changed dramatically, cities changed, India changed, a new country was born, and there was unprecedented genocidal violence and migration.

Partition or holocaust?

• The researchers just presented point to the brutal violence that

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characterised Partition.

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• Several thousand people were killed and innumerable women raped and abducted. Millions were transformed into refugees in alien lands.

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• It is impossible to arrive at any accurate estimate of casualties

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• : guesses of death vary from 200,000 to 500,000 people.

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• Thousand were rendered homeless, having suddenly lost

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their immovable property and most of their movable assets

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separated from many of their relatives and friends as well.

Partition or holocaust?

• Speaking of the killings, rape, arson, and loot that constituted Partition, contemporary observers and scholars have sometimes used the expression “holocaust” as well, primarily meaning destruction or slaughter on a mass scale.
• Is this usage appropriate?

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• We have heard about the German Holocaust under the

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• Nazis. It was a state sponsored programme.
• But the “ethnic cleansing” that characterised the partition of India was carried out by self-styled representatives of religious communities rather than by state agencies.

The Influence of Unchanging Ideas

• India-haters in Pakistan and Pakistan-haters in India are both products

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of Partition

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• Some people mistakenly believe that the loyalties of Indian Muslims lie

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with Pakistan, Muslims are cruel, bigoted, unclean, descendants of

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invaders, while Hindus are kind, liberal, pure, children of the invaded.

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• On the otherhand some Pakistanis feel that Muslims are fair, brave,

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monotheists and meat-eaters, while Hindus are dark, cowardly,

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polytheists and vegetarian.

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• Partition generated memories, hatreds and identities that still continue

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to shape the history of people on both sides of the border.

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• These hatreds have strengthened during communal conflicts and kept

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alive the memories of past violence.

The Influence of Unchanging Ideas

• Stories of Partition violence are repeated by communal groups to deepen the divide between communities: creating in people’s minds feelings of suspicion and distrust and creating the most reactionary idea that Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims are communities with sharply defined boundaries, and fundamentally opposed interests.

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• The relationship between Pakistan and

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• India has been profoundly shaped by this

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• legacy of Partition.

Why and How did Partition Happen…..?

• Some scholars see Partition as a culmination of a communal politics that started developing in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
• They suggest that separate electorates for Muslims, created by the colonial government in 1909 (Minto-Morley Reforms) and expanded in 1919 (Montegu-Chelmsford Reofrms), crucially shaped the nature of communal politics.
• During the 1920s and early 1930s tension grew around a number of issues. Muslims were angered by “music-before-mosque”, by the cow protection movement, and by the efforts of the Arya Samaj to bring back to the Hindu fold (shuddhi ) those who had recently converted to Islam.

Why and How did Partition Happen…..?

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Hindus were angered by the rapid growth of tabligh

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(propaganda) and tanzim (organisation) after 1923.

• In 1937, elections to the provincial legislatures were held for the first time. The Congress did well in the elections in general seats but did badly in the constituencies reserved for Muslims, but the Muslim League also fared poorly, acquired only 4.4 per cent of the total polled Muslim votes.
• The League failed to win a single seat in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and could capture only two out of 84 reserved constituencies in the Punjab and three out of 33 in Sind.

Why and How did Partition Happen…..?

• In the United Provinces, the Muslim League wanted to form a joint

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• government with the Congress. The Congress had won an absolute

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• majority in the province, so it rejected the offer.

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• Some scholars argue that this rejection convinced the League that if

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• India remained united, then Muslims would find it difficult to gain

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• political power because they would remain a minority.
• The League assumed, of course, that only a Muslim party could represent Muslim interests, and that the Congress was essentially a Hindu party.
• Even in Sind it failed to form a government. It was from this point onwards that the League doubled its efforts at expanding its social support by abusing communal feelings.

Why and How did Partition Happen…..?

• The attitude of INC was also contributed much for communal

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• polarization.
• Maulana Azad, an important Congress leader, pointed out in 1937 that members of the Congress were not allowed to join the League, yet Congressmen were active in the Hindu Mahasabha and Arya Samaj.

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• Incidentally, this was also the period when the Hindu Mahasabha

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• and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were gaining

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• strength.
• By 1940, the RSS had over 1,00,000 trained and highly disciplined cadres all over India pledged to an ideology of Hindu nationalism, convinced that India was a land of the Hindus.

Why and How did Partition Happen…..?

The “Pakistan” Resolution

• The Pakistan demand was formalised gradually

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• On 23 March 1940, the League moved a resolution

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• demanding a measure of autonomy for the Muslim

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• majority areas of the subcontinent.
• The origins of the Pakistan demand have also been traced back to the Urdu poet Mohammad Iqbal, the writer of “Sare Jahan Se Achha Hindustan Hamara”. In his presidential address to the Muslim League in 1930, the poet spoke of a need for a “North-West Indian Muslim state”.

The suddenness of Partition

• We have seen that the League itself was vague about its demand in 1940. There was a very short time – just seven years – between the first formal articulation of the demand for a measure of autonomy for the Muslim-majority areas of the subcontinent and Partition.
• No one knew what the creation of Pakistan meant, and how it might shape people’s lives in the future. Many who migrated from their homelands in 1947 thought they would return as soon as peace prevailed again.

The suddenness of Partition

• The pressure of the Second World War on the British delayed negotiations for independence for some time. It was the massive Quit India Movement which started in 1942, that brought the British Raj to its knees and compelled its officials to open a dialogue with Indian parties regarding a possible transfer of power.
• Post War Developments
• Negotiations were begun again in l945. Discussions about the transfer of power broke down due to Jinnah’s adamant attitude.

Post War Developments

• Provincial elections were again held in 1946. The

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• Congress swept the general constituencies, capturing

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91.3 per cent of the non-Muslim vote.

• The League’s success in the seats reserved for Muslims was equally spectacular: it won all 30 reserved constituencies in the Centre with 86.6 per cent of the Muslim vote and 442 out of 509 seats in the provinces.
• The League establish itself as the dominant party among Muslim voters, seeking to vindicate its claim to be the “sole spokesman” of India’s Muslims.

Post War Developments

• The Cabinet Mission of March 1946 started negotiations with Indian leaders but failed in all respects. Neither the League nor the Congress agreed to the Cabinet Mission’s proposal.
• By this time the partition became inevitable, with most of the Congress leaders agreeing to it, seeing it as tragic but unavoidable. Only Mahatma Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan of the NWFP continued to firmly oppose the idea of partition.

Towards Partition

• After the failure of the Cabinet Mission plan, the Muslim League decided on “Direct Action” for winning its Pakistan demand.
• It announced 16 August 1946 as “Direct Action Day”. On this day, riots broke out in Calcutta, lasting several days and leaving several thousand people dead.

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• By March 1947 violence spread to

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• many parts of northern India.

Towards Partition

• It was in March 1947 that the Congress high command voted for dividing the Punjab into two halves, one with Muslim majority and the other with Hindu/Sikh majority; and it asked for the application of a similar principle to Bengal.
• By this time many Sikh leaders and Congressmen in the Punjab were convinced that Partition was a necessary evil, otherwise they would be swamped by Muslim majorities and Muslim leaders would dictate terms.

The destruction of law and order

• The blood bath continued for about a year from March 1947 onwards. One

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• main reason for this was the collapse of the institutions of governance.

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• The police failed to fire even a single shot when arson and killings were

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• taking place in Amritsar in March 1947.
• British officials did not know how to handle the situation: they were unwilling to take decisions. When panic-stricken people appealed for help, British officials asked them to contact Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Patel or M.A. Jinnah.
• Nobody knew who could exercise authority and power. The top leadership of the Indian parties, except Mahatma Gandhi, were involved in negotiations regarding independence while many Indian civil servants in the affected provinces feared for their own lives and property.
• The British were busy preparing to quit India.

The destruction of law and order

• Problems were more worsened because Indian soldiers and policemen came to act as Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs.

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• As communal tension mounted

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• , the professional commitment of

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• those in uniform could not be relied

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• upon.

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• In many places not only did

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• policemen help their co-religionists

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• but they also attacked members of

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• other communities.

The One-man Army

• Amidst all this turmoil, one man’s valiant efforts at restoring communal

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• harmony bore fruit.
• The 77-year-old Gandhiji moved from the villages of Noakhali in East Bengal (present-day Bangladesh) to the villages of Bihar and then to the riot-torn slums of Calcutta and Delhi, in a heroic effort to stop Hindus and Muslims kill each other, careful everywhere to reassure the minority community.

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• In October 1946, Muslims in East Bengal targeted Hindus. Gandhiji

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• visited the area, toured the villages on foot, and persuaded the local

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• Muslims to guarantee the safety of Hindus.

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• Similarly, in other places such as Delhi he tried to build a spirit of

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• mutual trust and confidence between the two communities.

The One-man Army

• On 28 November 1947, on the occasion of Guru Nanak’s birthday, when Gandhiji went to address a meeting of Sikhs at Gurdwara Sisganj, he noticed that there was no Muslim on the Chandni Chowk road, the heart of old Delhi.
• “What could be more shameful for us,” he asked during a speech that evening, “than the fact that not a single Muslim could be found in Chandni Chowk?”
• Gandhiji continued to be in Delhi, fighting the mentality of those who wished to drive out every Muslim from the city, seeing them as Pakistani. When he began a fast to bring about a change of heart, amazingly, many Hindu and Sikh migrants fasted with him.

The One-man Army

• The effect of the fast was “electric”, wrote Maulana Azad. People began realising the folly of the organized killing they had unleashed on the city’s Muslims but it was only Gandhiji’s martyrdom that finally ended this horrible acts of violence.

• Scholars have written about the harrowing experiences of women in those

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violent times. Women were raped, abducted, sold, often many times over

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forced to settle down to a new life with strangers in unknown

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circumstances

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• In this crucial time some began to develop new family bonds in their

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changed circumstances. But the Indian and Pakistani governments were

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insensitive to the complexities of human relationships

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Believing the women to be on the wrong side of the border, they now tore

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them away from their new relatives, and sent them back to their earlier

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families or locations. They did not consult the concerned women

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undermining their right to take decisions regarding their own lives

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• According to one estimate, 30,000 women were “recovered”. (22,000

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• Muslim women in India and 8000 Hindu and Sikh women in Pakistan, in

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an operation that ended as late as 1954)

Preserving “honour”

• In North Indian peasant societies when the men feared that “their” women

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– wives, daughters, sisters – would be violated by the “enemy”, they killed

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the women themselves.

• Urvashi Butalia in her book, The Other Side of Silence, narrates one such gruesome incident in the village of Thoa Khalsa, Rawalpindi district. During Partition, in this Sikh village, ninety women are said to have “voluntarily” jumped into a well rather than fall into “enemy” hands.

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• he migrant refugees from this village still commemorate the event at a

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• Gurudwara in Delhi, referring to the deaths as martyrdom, not suicide.

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• On 13 March every year, when their “martyrdom” is celebrated to

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• remember the sacrifice and bravery of their sisters

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• Such rituals do not seek to remember, however, are the stories of all those

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• who did not wish to die, and had to end their lives against their will.

Regional Variations

• While riots occurred in Calcutta and Noakhali in 1946, the Partition

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• was most bloody and destructive in the Punjab

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• The near-total displacement of Hindus and Sikhs eastwards into

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• India from West Punjab and of almost all Punjabi-speaking

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• Muslims to Pakistan happened in a relatively short period of two

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• years between 1946 and 1948.
• Many Muslim families of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh continued to migrate to Pakistan through the 1950s and early 1960s, although many chose to remain in India.

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• Most of these Urdu-speaking people, known as muhajirs (migrants)

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• in Pakistan moved to the Karachi- Hyderabad region in Sind.

Regional

• In Bengal the migration process was very slow. Many Bengali Hindus remained in East Pakistan while many Bengali Muslims continued to live in West Bengal.

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• Finally, Bengali Muslims (East Pakistanis) rejected Jinnah’s two-nation

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• theory through political action, breaking away from Pakistan and

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• creating Bangladesh in 1971-72.
• There is, however, a huge similarity between the Punjab and Bengal experiences. In both these states, women and girls became prime targets of persecution.
• Attackers treated women’s bodies as territory to be conquered. Dishonouring women of a community was seen as dishonouring the community itself, and a mode of taking revenge.

Help,

• Along with the violence and pain the partition has a great history of help, humanity and harmony. Historians have discovered numerous stories of how people helped each other during the Partition period, stories of caring and sharing.
• For instance, the work of Khushdeva Singh, a Sikh doctor specialising in the treatment of tuberculosis, posted at Dharampur in present day Himachal Pradesh. Immersing himself in his work day and night, the doctor provided that rare healing touch, food, shelter, love and security to numerous migrants, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu alike.

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• The residents of Dharampur developed the kind of faith and

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• confidence in his humanity and generosity that the Delhi Muslims and

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• others had in Gandhiji.

Help, Humanity, Harmony

• We know about the relief work of this doctor from a memoir he entitled Love is Stronger than Hate: A Remembrance of 1947.
• He speaks most warmly of two short visits to Karachi in 1949. Old friends and those whom he had helped at Dharampur spent a few memorable hours with him at Karachi airport.

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• Six police constables, earlier acquaintances, walked him

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• to the plane, saluting him as he entered it. “I

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• acknowledged (the salute) with folded hands and tears

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• in my eyes.”

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• Oral narratives, memoirs, diaries, family histories, first-hand written

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• accounts – all these help us understand the trials and tribulations of

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• ordinary people during the partition of the country.

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• For the victims, it was no Mere a political event or constitutional division

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• or just the party politics of the Muslim League, Congress and others.

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• For them, it meant the unexpected alterations in life as it unfolded

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• between 1946 and 1950 and beyond, requiring psychological, emotional

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• and social adjustments.

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• Memories and experiences shape the reality of an event.
• Different types of sources have to be tapped for answering different types of questions. Government reports, for instance, will tell us of the number of “recovered” women exchanged by the Indian and Pakistani states but it is the women who will tell us about their suffering.

The End of Partition…….