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Home , Direct Action Day, Hadali, Khushwant Singh, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan Zindabad, Partition Museum

THE OF MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN, MIDNIGHT’S FURIES

India was the first to undertake in and Africa following World War Two An estimated 15 million people were displaced during the Partition saw the largest migration of humans in the , outside war and famine Approximately 83,000 women were kidnapped on both sides of the newly-created border The death toll remains disputed, 1 – 2 million Less than 12 men decided the future of 400 million people 1 Wednesday October 3rd 2018 Christopher Tidyman – Loreto Kirribilli, Sydney EXTENSION AND MODERN HISTORY

History Extension key questions

Who are the historians? What is the purpose of history? How has history been constructed, recorded and presented over time? Why have approaches to history changed over time?

Year 11 Shaping of the Modern World: The End of Empire

A study of the causes, nature and outcomes of decolonisation in ONE country

Year 12 National Studies

India 1942 - 1984

2 HISTORY EXTENSION PA R T I T I O N OF INDIA SYLLABUS DOT POINTS:

CONTENT FOCUS:

S T U D E N T S INVESTIGATE C H A N G I N G INTERPRETATIONS OF THE PARTITION OF INDIA

Students examine the historians and approaches to history which have contributed to historical debate in the areas of: - the causes of the Partition - the role of individuals - the effects and consequences of the Partition of India

Aims for this presentation: - Introduce teachers to a new History topic - Outline important shifts in Partition historiography - Provide an opportunity to discuss resources and materials

- Have teachers consider the possibilities for teaching these topics 3 SHIFTING HISTORIOGRAPHY WHO ARE THE HISTORIANS? WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF HISTORY?

F I E R C E CONTROVERSY HAS RAGED OVER THE CAUSES OF PARTITION. PARTITION HISTORIOGRAPHY HAS BEEN CHARACTERIZED B Y S H I F T I N G HISTORICAL FOCUS, NEW PURPOSES, NEW CONSTRUCTIONS, N E W APPROACHES. SEVEN STAGES CAN BE IDENTIFIED:

1. The High Politics of Partition or Great Men History Shorthand for national-level constitutional negotiations between Indian leaders – Ali Jinnah, , – and Louis Mountbatten, the last of India. Centred on intransience, Congress insensitivities, British governmental failure. Indian historians argue that the Muslim League rejected Congress’s blueprint for a diverse, secular and plural state. In contrast, Pakistani historians view Partition as the triumphant vision of Jinnah, the outcome of a pre-ordained . Rarely escapes being labelled “Made in India” or Made in Pakistan” writes . High Politics is a Blame Game. Loss, Victimhood. 2. Provincial High Politics During the early 1970s the High Politics approach began to move from national concerns to incorporate North Indian regional and localised studies, the Cambridge School of Indian History. For example, Francis Robinson (1974) investigated the politics of and emerging identity politics among Indian in the United Provinces, looking to ways in which Muslim elites utilised historical symbols to mobilize support, often at the cost of communal harmony and the creation of religious-political identities and community formation processes. 3. The Historiography of the Human Dimension of Partition By the early 1980s the Subaltern Studies Group under the leadership of Ranajit Guha provided a necessary corrective to state-centric and High Politics perspectives which had dominated Partition historiography since 1947. This important sea-change saw one question come to replace all others – what happened to ordinary people and why during Partition? Subaltern historians sought out the experiences of witnesses through personal accounts, memoirs, collective memories and testimony. People’s history characterised this new historiographical direction.

4 SHIFTING HISTORIOGRAPHY CONTINUED

4. Partition Violence Alive to the influence of this emerging Subaltern Studies group, the traditional reading of Partition violence as ‘temporary madness’, ‘religious irrationality’ has come under scrutiny. 1997 - the 50th anniversary of Partition – was timely for spotlighting such violence. Women’s experiences were singled out during this shift in historical interest. 5. Looking Eastwards From 1947 dominated Partition historiography – traditional images of kafilas - bullock carts, refugees, train roofs, compartments crammed with refugees. During the past 20 years, however, interest has looked eastwards to , which experienced severe social, economic and political dislocation in the years 1943 – 1947. Historians have also revisited 1905 - 1911 and looked to Pakistan’s own partition and the creation of in 1971. 6. Partition and the sharing of stories The 21st Century has seen further recalibrating in Partition Historiography as Subaltern interests have informed historical narratives constructed around Partition. Those impacted by Partition have been sought out and avenues created for sharing stories - web-based initiatives, interactive museums, art works, artefact collections, film and television programs dedicated to varied personal Partition experiences. 7. Partition as global human experience Partition was not a stand-alone South Asian event. Civil War, , Forced Migration, Mass Killings, Family Separation, Displacement, Refugee Resettlement, Kidnappings, Religious Rivalry, , Holocaust, Legacy - a 21st Century glossary of Partition historiography. 5 AS A CAUSE OF PARTITION

Punjab 1947 6 WAYS OF DEFINING COMMUNALISM

Communalism in can be approached through three elements • A belief that people who follow the same religion have common secular interests - the same political, economic and social interests.

• In multi-religious societies common secular interests of one religion are dissimilar from the interests of followers of another religion.

• The interests of different religions or of different ‘communities’ are seen to be incompatible, antagonist and hostile.

Three traditional views of Communalism

• Primordial view – ethnic violence is rational because ethnicity is fixed and stable – /race/religion informs identity - divides people

• Essential view – Indian and Muslims are irreconcilably antagonistic towards each other by nature of their religious practice

• Instrumental view – that political leaders find it advantageous to organise and mobilize along ethnic or communal lines and that the instigated this social organisation through a deliberate policy of

Questions

Is communalism specific to South Asia? Should it be termed ‘ethnic violence’? Is communalism a product of British rule? Why does it bring violence? 7 THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITIES DURI NG THE POST - INDIAN PERIOD

T H E 1857- 58 INDIAN MUTINY HAD BEEN A BLOOD - LETTING EXERCISE CENTRED ON QUESTIONS OF RELIGIOUS AND C U LT U R A L IDENTITY, BELIEFS, RITES AND PRACTICES. THE NEW BRITISH R A J L O O K E D TO FIRMLY ESTABLISH ITS COLONIAL PRESENCE ON THE SUBCONTINENT. IN RESPONSE, MODERNIZED POLITICIZED ENTITIES – T H E 1885 ESTABLISHMENT OF THE IN BOMBAY AND IN DACCA (1906) THE CREATION OF THE ALL - I NDIA MUSLIM LEAGUE – R E F L E C T E D B R I T I S H P O L I C Y O F IDENTIFYING PEOPLE BY CULTURE (ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE, CUSTOM) AND HISTORY (ORIGIN AND COLLECTIVE STORIES ) .

C O N G R E S S AND MUSLIM LEAGUE LEADERS BEGAN TO TAP INTO LOCALIZED, POPULAR F ORCES, LOOKING TO BUILD NATION - W I D E MOVEMENTS, CREATING HISTORICAL NARRATIVES OF OTHERNESS, OF IMAGINED COMMUNITIES. A DRAMATIC RISE IN COMMUNALIST AGITATION DURING THE INTERWAR YEARS FOLLOWED.

‘When the British started to define communities based on religious identity and attach political representation to them, many Indians stopped accepting the diversity of their own thoughts and began to ask themselves in which of the boxes they belonged’ - Alex von Tunzelmann – Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire 8 THE BRITISH RAJ AND DIVIDE ET IMPERA AS A CAUSE OF THE PARTITION OF INDIA

He explained his importance as a Pillar of the Empire. ‘Most properly.’ I yawned openly. ‘Strict supervision, and play them off one against the other,’ said The Mussuck, shoveling down his ice by tureenfuls, I assure you. ‘That, Mrs Hauksbee, is the secret of our Government.’ - ‘The Education of Otis Yeere’ published in The Week’s News, 10 and 17 March 1888.

Below: A Dance of Death – this World War II Japanese leaflet shows Churchill as a fight promoter encouraging two Indians (a Hindu and a Muslim) to fight to the death. There are at least six dead Indians on the ground of the enclosure where the fight takes place. It points out how the British have set Indian against Indian to weaken them and make them easier to subjugate. The text says: Stop dancing to the English tune and come together forgetting religious differences for the sake of .

9 IN 1859 THE GOVERNOR OF BOMBAY LORD ELPHINSTONE, REFLECTING ON THE M U T I N Y , A D V I S E D THAT ‘DIVIDE ET IMPERA ’ (DIVIDE AND RULE) - A ROMAN IMPERIAL MAXIM - W A S ESSENTIAL TO THE BRITISH POLITICAL POSITION IN INDIA .

CENSUS UNDERMINE CONCENSUS ! T H E INTRODUCTION OF AN INDIAN ETHNOGRAPHIC CENSUS IN 1 8 7 2 . T H E BRITISH CAME TO CLASSIFY PEOPLE BY THEIR RELIGION, OR TRIB E, BASED ON CENSUS COMMISSION QUESTIONS. HUMANLY C R E A T E D CATEGORIES REPLACED IMPRECISE PRE - C O L O N I A L BOUNDARIES IN RELATION TO CASTE, RELIGIOUS I D E N T I T Y , SKIN COLOUR AND RACE.

H E R B E R T RISLEY , CENSUS COMMISSIONER, PUBLISHED ‘THE PEOPLE OF INDIA’ IN 1 9 0 1 . RISLEY ADMITTED FRANKLY THAT ‘ONE OF OUR MAIN OBJECTS IS TO SPLIT UP AN D THEREBY WEAKEN A SOLID BODY OF OPPONENTS TO OUR RULE’. HINDU - MUSLIM HISTORICAL CL EAVAGES WERE HIGHLIGHTED AND F O M E N T E D . INDIAN SUFFRAGE SOON BECAME ANCHORED TO RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION. A HINDU - MUSLIM DIVIDE WAS WIDENING .

ROMILA THAPAR : IN THE PRE - BRITISH RAJ ERA THERE EXISTED A SYNCRET I C RELIGIOUS AND ARTS CULTURE IN WHICH PRACTICES MELDED AND AN ACCE P T A N C E O F DIFFERENCE PREVAILED - HINDUS ATTENDED MUSLIM SUFI SHRINES ACROS S NORTH INDIA AND IN SOUTH INDIA PILGRIMS WORSHIPPED AT THE SABARIMALA HILL TOP SHRINE OF LORD AYYAPPA AND HIS MUSLIM DEVOTEE VAVAR S W A M I .

TRAGICALLY ‘ D I V I D E E T IMPERA ’ HAD WORKED TOO WELL. A DEVICE TO MAINTAIN THE INTEGRITY OF BRITISH INDIA HAD MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THAT INTEG RITY TO BE MAINTAINED WITHOUT THE BRITISH …….… THE HORRORS OF PARTITION WERE THE DIRECT RESULT OF THE DELIBERATE BRITISH POLICY OF COMMUNAL DIVISION THAT FOMEN TED RELIGIOUS ANTAGONISMS … . . ITS GREATEST FAILURE ….. CUTTING AND RUNNING FROM THE LAND THEY HAD CLAIMED TO RULE FOR ITS BETTERMENT ……. (LEAVING) THE FLAMES OF COMMUNAL HATRED BLAZING HOTLY ACROSS THE RAVAGED LAND.’

Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India - Chapter 4 - Divide et Impera: Shashi Tharoor 10 BHARAT MATA MOTHER INDIA

Bharat Mata in shackles. Bharat Mata from Bankim Chatterji’s (The Abbey of Bliss). Bengal 1882. Circa late -early . Swami Dayananda established the first Gaurakshini Sabha – Cow Protection Society - in the Punjab in 1882, aimed to mobilize public support for government prohibition of beef butchers, almost all of whom were Muslims. Wandering cows were reclaimed and kept in gaushalas (cow refuges). Saraswati, (Secular Congress) Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi by Ravi Raja Varma. Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge, music, arts, wisdom and learning.

11 Swami Dayananda created the in 1875, and seven years the first Gaurakshini Sabha – Cow Protection Society - in the Punjab, aimed to mobilize IN THE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE 1857 INDIAN MUTINY INDIAN LEADERS MADE SELF - CONSCIOUS DECISIONS TO public support for a government prohibition of beef butchers, almost all of INSTITUTIONALIZE ‘IMAGINED’ COLLECTIVES OF COMMUNITY AND NATION, REFLECTING BRITISH PERSPECTIVES ON CASTE whom were Muslims. The organization rescued wandering cows and reclaimed AND RELIGION. THE POLITICAL NUMBERS GAME PLAYED OUT them in places called gaushalas (cow refuges). In Gokarunanidhi (Ocean of T H R O U G H M A J O R I T Y A N D MINORITY POLITICAL REPRESENTATION IN THE EARLY 20 TH C E N T U R Y CRANKED UP mercy to the cow) (1881) he equated the killing of cows to an anti-Hindu act. HINDU - M U S L I M RIVALRY . Violence often ensued against Muslims who slaughtered cows. In response, WITHIN THE MAJORITY HINDU POPULATION INDIVIDUALS Muslim merchants sought to display their piety more grandly by sacrificing W O R K E D T O REJUVENATE COMMUNITIES CENTRED ON cows rather than goats for their ritual feasts during Eid festivities. In the TRADITIONAL BELIEFS AND PRACTICES. COMMUNITIES CAME TO DEFINE THEMSELVES AS NOT BEING MUSLIM, RECLAIMING THE tally of cows being killed went up from around 25 cows per year in the 1870s RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE FROM THE M U G H A L INVADERS . to 450 in 1886. In 1893 cow riots spreads across the north of India. CAUSES OF PARTITION – HINDU INDIA

Vinayak Samodar Savarkar published the book (a guide to Hindu-ness and by turns Indian-ness) in 1923, a radical new vision of Hindu social and political consciousness. He described "Hindu" as a patriotic inhabitant of Bharatavarsha (India), emphasising social unity for all Hindu communities. Savarkar outlined his vision of a Hindu Nation as United India. He argued that the holiest sites of were in the Middle East, not India, questioning Muslim allegiance to India. Savarkar later established the . During the 1920s and 1930s the Hindu Mahasabha carried out reconversion campaigns aimed at lower caste Indians who had converted to Islam. The Mahasabha had connections to Congress, a political sore point with the Muslim League. As president during the Second World War, Savarkar advanced the slogan ’Hinduize all Politics and Militarize Hindudom’. He died in 1966.

Swami Dayananda and Vinayak Samodar Savarkar 12 I N T H E SOLE SPOKESPERSON: JINNAH, THE MUSLIM LEAGUE AND THE DEMAND FOR PAKISTAN (1985) AYESHA JALAL ARGUES THAT THE CREATION OF PAKISTAN WAS NOT INEVITABLE, THE PRODUCT OF JINNAH’S POLITICAL WILL. SHE ARGUES THAT PARTITION HI STORIOGRAPHY NEEDS TO BE ENRICHED BY INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN C OMMUNITIES AND POLITICS AT THE LOCAL, REGIONAL AND NATIONAL LEVELS DURING THE P RE- 1947 PERIOD .

IN A 2017 INTERVIEW WITH JOURNALIST ALI USMAN QASMI IN HER HOMETOWN OF L A H O R E J A L A L REITERATES HER THESIS AT THE HEART OF SOLE SPOKESPERSON. PAKISTA N WA S A POLITICAL MOVEMENT NOT AN ISLAMIC STATE, JINNAH WANTED TO CREATE AREAS TO PROTECT MUSLIM INTERESTS. HE DID NOT WANT PARTITION, HE WANTED TO CONSOL IDATE THE MUSLIM MAJORITY AREAS OF PUNJAB AND BENGAL.

S H E AGREES THAT THERE WERE MANY MUSLIM GRIEVANCES DURING THE PRE - 1947 P E R I O D LOCATED IN MANY PLACES CENTRED ON CULTURAL PRACTICES, POLITICAL REPRESENTATION AND C O N G R E S S ANTIPATHY TOWARDS MUSLIM CONCERNS. J I N N A H DID NOT WANT PAKISTAN, DID NOT WANT PARTITION AND THAT TOO MUCH IS MADE OF THE HISTORY JINN AH MADE AND TOO LITTLE OF THE CONTEXT THAT MADE JINNAH.

PARTITION IS “THE CENTRAL HISTORICAL EVENT IN TWENTIETH CENTURY SOUTH ASIA – A DEFINING MOMENT THAT IS NEITHER BEGINNING NOR END. PARTITION CONTINUES TO INFLUENCE HOW THE PEOPLES AND STATES OF POSTCOLONIAL SOUTH ASIA ENVISAGE THEIR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.” NEHRU, GANDHI, CONGRESS TO BLAME?

AYASHA JALAL SAYS THAT EVEN IF YOU DON’T AGREE WITH IT YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT I T.

The role of individuals – did Jinnah really want Pakistan?

On : Ayesha Jalal 13 FROM MARCH 22 TO MARCH 24 1940 THE ALL- INDIA MUSLIM LEAGUE HELD ITS ANNUAL SESSION AT MINTO PARK, . JINNAH’S SPEECH ELECTRIFIED MUSLIMS ACROSS I NDIA

‘ HINDUS AND THE MUSLIMS BELONG T O TWO DIFFERENT RELIGIONS , PHILOSOPHIES, SOCIAL CUSTOMS AND LITERATURE. THEY NEITHER INTER - MARRY NOR INTER - D I N E A N D, INDEED , THEY BELONG TO TWO DIFFERENT CIVILIZATIONS T H AT A R E BASED MAINLY ON CONFLICTING IDEAS AND CONCEPTIONS. THEIR CONCEPT S ON LIFE AND OF LIFE ARE DIFFERENT. IT IS QUITE CLEAR THAT HINDUS AND MUSLIMS DERIVE THEIR INSPIRATION FRO M DIFFERENT SOURCES OF HISTORY. THEY HAVE DIFFERENT EPICS, DIFFERENT HEROES AND DIFFERENT EPISODES. VERY O FTEN THE HERO OF ONE IS A FOE OF THE OTHER, AND LIKEWISE, THEIR VICTORIES AND DEFEATS OVERLAP. TO YOKE TOGET HER TWO SUCH UNDER A SINGLE STATE, ONE AS A NUMERICAL MINORITY AND THE OTHER AS A MAJORITY, MUST LEAD TO GROWING DISCONTENT AND FINAL DESTRUCTION OF ANY FABRIC THAT MAY BE SO BUILT UP FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF SUCH A STATE…….. MUSSALMANS ARE A NATION ACCORDING TO ANY DEFINITION OF NATION . WE WISH OUR PEOPLE TO DEVELOP TO THE FULLEST SPIRITUAL, CULTURAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN A WAY THAT WE THINK BEST AND IN CONSONANCE WITH OUR OWN IDEALS AND ACCORDING TO THE GENIUS OF OU R PEOPLE’

14 A NEW APPROACH: THE SUBALTERN STUDIES GROUP

Ranajit Guha was born in 1923, son to prosperous landowners in . At Calcutta University in the 1940s he became caught up in left-wing politics. He emigrated to England in 1959, studying at the University of Manchester then the in the 1970s. Guha came under the influence of British historians Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill and E P Thompson. The Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci also impacted heavily Guha’s understanding of Indian realities. The Subaltern Studies Group (reflecting the term subaltern, defined as a person or group of inferior rank or station based on race, class, gender or ethnicity) or in Guha’s words: ‘the demographic difference between the total Indian population and all those whom we have described as the elite’ was founded, aimed to restore history and agency to such non-elite groups.

Gyanendra Pandey – Professor of Anthropology and History at John Hopkins University – Subaltern academic - has written extensively on Partition and the systemic violence which he believes was embedded in the structures and of the British colonial state. Pandey writes in the introduction to Remembering Partition: Violence, and History in India (Cambridge University Press 2001)

‘This book focuses on the moment of rupture and genocidal violence, marking the termination of one regime and the inauguration of two new ones. It seeks to investigate what that moment of rupture is and the violent founding of new states who claimed the legitimacy of nation-statehood, it tells about the procedures of nationhood, history and particular forms of sociality. And ways in which Partition has been remembered, forgotten and represented.’ (rupture – moment of breakage, burst suddenly, a breach of harmonious relationships)

Pandey even looks to the Random House Dictionary (1987) definition of ‘holocaust’ – a great or complete devestation in or destruction, especially by fire, this is entirely appropriate’, believing that something of the original term ‘holocaust’ can be recaptured, shaped and reappropriated by Partition history to move the terms of discussion in new directions, away from a Partition history which has been subsumed by nationalist historiographical imperatives and constructions – Made in India or Made in Pakistan. 15 VIOLENCE IN THE NORTH OF INDIA 1947

British Major T J Monaghan (at left) and Private H Farabrother of the Inniskilling Regiment of Northern Ireland, walk through wreckage after riots destroyed parts of , India in March1947. See Pathe film. 16 Though characterised as lunacy, the mayhem was a madness with method. EXPLAINING PARTITION VIOLENCE There was often a pattern, writes John Keay – Midnight’s Descendants - pamplets, partisan press reports, pronouncements from political and religious leaders. Keay cites Penderel Moon, a British official, advisor to the Nawab of , a state about to join Pakistan in . Moon would later write ‘Divide and Quit’ about his experiences in north India at this time: ‘This was not haphazard, frantic killing but, at its worst, routine, timetabled and systematic ethnic cleansing. Large groups of men, with their own codes of honour and often with a sense of warlike righteousness, set out day after day in August and September to eliminate the other.’

March 1947 in district, according to the official Report on the Disturbances in the Punjab: ‘Secret meetings were held in Mosques under the leadership of army and police officers. Jihad was declared. Volunteers were collected from the nearby countryside. Tommy guns, pistols, rifles, hatchets, petrol tins were sourced. Muslim Punjabi police aided and abetted group actions.’ The Report writer concluded that ‘these were not riots but deliberately organised military campaigns.’ Rawalpindi survivor testimonies speak of Javed Aleem (cited in Pandey: Remembering Partition) suggests that Muslim mobs sweeping through the district’s villages, with some Sikh Partition were indulged in: ‘By people at a moment of loss of family heads executing their own female kin for fear of family reputation, judgement, of a sense of proportion, at a moment of frenzy’ which of family honour. Others permitted or encourage their womenfolk to cannot be rationally explained. This ‘irrationality’ seems close to falling commit suicide by jumping into wells. into orientalist-speak (See Edward Said), portraying inherently irrational Indians undertaking unexplainable acts of violence. Aleem also states that ‘no involvement of large organisations or the state as the 17 instrument of mass killings’. RAGHAVAN WRITES THAT BY THE END OF HOSTILITIES THERE EXISTED A 2.5 MILLI ON STRONG – R A I S E D, TRAINED AND DEPLOYED – THIS WAS THE LARGEST VOLUNTEER ARMY IN HI STORY. THE HUMAN TOLL ON THE INDIAN HOMEFRONT MUST BE COUNTED IN MILLIONS.

T H E RAPID AND ENORMOUS ESCALATION OF COMMUNAL VIOLENCE DURING PARTIT ION CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD WITHOUT TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE IMPACT OF THE SECOND WORLD WA R .

S T U D I E S SHOW THAT PUNJAB DISTRICTS WHICH HAD HIGHER NUMBERS OF MEN WITH WAR COMBAT EXPERIENCE WITNESSED SIGNIFICANTLY HIGHER LEVELS OF ETHNIC CLEANSING .

WORLD WAR II ACCELERATED INDIAN URBANISATION THROUGH WARTIME ECO NOMIC MOBILIZATION – FOR EXAMPLE IN 1941 THERE WERE ONLY 4 INDIAN CITIES WITH POPULATIONS BETWEEN 40 0 , 0 0 0 – 1 MILLION BUT BY 1944 THERE WERE 13 CITIES.

S U C H RAPID URBANISATION RESULTED IN A WEAKENED SOCIAL FABRIC, POST - WAR ECONOMIC STRAINS, COMPETITIVE POLITICAL MOBILIZATIONS – MOST FREQUENTLY ALONG RELIGIOUS AND CA S T E L I N E S – AND THE NEAR COLLAPSE OF CIVIC ORDER AND CIVIL SOCIETY IN MANY INDIAN CITIES. CALCUTTA, B ENGAL WAS A SIGNIFICANT CASE IN POINT.

India’s War: The Making of Modern South Asia (1939-1945) Srinath Raghavan Senior Research Fellow at the India Institute, Kings College London

World War II as a contextual cause of Partition 18 WOMEN AND PARTITION VIOLENCE

Women were the chief sufferers of 1947 – Mahatma Gandhi 19 THE GREAT PARTITION: THE MAKING OF INDIA AND PAKISTAN

‘By August 1947 all the ingredients were in place for ethnic cleansing in Punjab: a feeble and polarised police force, the steady withdrawal of British troops and their substitution with the limited and undermanned Punjab Boundary Force, and a petrified, well-armed population. The violence which preceded Partition was grave, widespread and lethal. After August 15th 1947 it took on a new ferocity, intensiveness and callousness. Many were complicit - communities against communities, neighbours against neighbours, partisan police and military, grass roots communal politicians. During this period entire populations of villages were summarily executed. Amritsar and Lahore became de-facto war zones. There was a diversity of killings, a buoyant tide of killing-induced euphoria. It could be haphazard and frantic, but at worst routine, timetabled and systematic.’ – Yasmin Khan.

Khan cites Das : Critical Events – An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India – 1995) - looked to “the political programming of creating the two nations of India and Pakistan, and ways in which this inscribed upon the bodies of women’. Woman’s bodies were often marked and branded with slogans of freedom. ‘’ and ‘Jai Hind’ were carved into women’s breasts and faces. According to Das I in 3 ‘women’ recovered in the aftermath of Partition were girls under the age of 12 years old. 20 WOMEN AND PARTITION T H E OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE: VOICES FROM THE PARTITION OF INDIA (1988) - U R VA S H I BUTALIA

URVASHI BUTALIA’S BOOK CONSISTS OF INTERVIEWS WITH VICTIMS, INTERWOVEN WITH REFLE CTIONS ON THEIR STORIES, FURTHER ENCOURAGING EXPLORATIONS IN THE WRITIN G OF HISTORY, THE STRUCTURE OF MEMORY AND WHY AND HOW EVENTS ARE RECALLED.

A BESTSELLER IN INDIA, THE BOOK HIGHLIGHTS WAYS IN WHICH DIFFERE NT GROUPS WERE TREATED DURING THIS PERIOD. WOMEN, BY THEIR OWN COUNTRYMEN AND BY THEIR OWN COMMUNITIES, HAD TO BE REMOVED FROM NON-ACCEPTABLE FAMILIES AND RELOCATED INTO ‘REAL ONES’.

Testimony of Bir Bahadur - March 1947 - in Thoa Village, Rawalpindi

‘In Gulub Singh’s house twenty-six girls had been set aside. First of all my father Sant Raja Singh, when he brought his daughter, he brought her into the courtyard to kill her, first of all he prayed ….. then there was one man who caught my father’s feet and he said, bhapaji, first you kill me because my knees are swollen and I won’t be able to run away and the Mussalmans will catch me and make me into a Mussalman. So my father immediately hit him with his (short sword). Then my sister came and sat in front of my father …. with her own hand she removed her plait and pulled it forward, and my father …swung the kirpan and her head …rolled off and fell … I crept downstairs, weeping and sobbing and all the while I could hear the regular swing and hit of the …. in all, twenty-five girls were killed, cut.’ 21 PARTITION VIOLENCE, WOMEN AND THE OTHER

Professor KS Bhat and Marja-Liisa Wallenius Gyanendra Pandey has also written of this sense of otherness. In The Prose of Otherness (in Subaltern Studies VIII) he writes that historians Department of English Goa University (Taleigao Goa India) appear singularly uninterested in the popular construction of Partition as The Concept of ‘Otherness’ in Partition Narratives of Finland and India the partition or separation of linguistic communities, villages, houses, families, and the trauma it produced, the transformation that it wrought, or in its legacy of narrowness and bitterness, and the stereotyping, the memories and the sharp divisions between ‘others’ - Hindus, Muslims and Bhat and Wallenius write that the concept of ‘other ness’ refers to setting - that it left behind. Pandey wants to relocate Partition boundaries of acceptability – relationships different groups have with each historiography from its place in ‘the story of the in India’ other, and ways in which individuals and groups define themselves by how and the establishment of the Indian nation-state, referencing the notion they view others around them. Setting boundaries of acceptability in of nationalist historiographies to the ways in which Partition marginalised society – the other is whatever the self is not. They reference the French the subaltern, created the ‘other’ and left a legacy of otherness in both nation-states, India and Pakistan. philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) - ‘Self cannot exist, cannot have a concept of itself as self, without the other. Lévinas claimed that the Other is ‘infinitely transcendent, infinitely foreign’—one’s relations are infinity.

Otherness has also been associated predominantly with marginalized people, those who by virtue of their difference from the dominant group, have been disempowered, robbed of a voice in the social, religious, and political world. The Indian binary of Otherness during Partition was derived more from a quickening development and shoring up of religious identities during the period 1939 – 1947 than the drive to unite against the British Raj. 22 BENGAL

Calcutta August 16th 1946 23 In 1904 Viceroy Lord Curzon announced that Bengal would be partitioned – a Muslim-majority East Bengal and and Hindu-majority .

Opposition was widespread. Congress president resolved to condemn partition and support Swadeshi (self-reliance).

Matchbox production (see left) became a key cottage industry in Bengali villages. Calls to boycott British goods took hold. Matchbox labels became swadeshi and were used to burn imported British cloth.

Swadeshi was promoted at melas (fairs). Literate volunteered to read Swadeshi newspaper stories to their illiterate brothers and sisters.

By 1908 imports of British cotton goods were down 25% from 1904. Muslim merchants in Calcutta complained they could not ‘give it away’. Bengalis marched with standing on the dead body of a British mill owner.

Lord Curzon, hoping to gain Muslim support, advanced the Nawab of Dacca a private governmental loan of 100,000 pounds, promising that partition would ‘invest the Mohammedans of Eastern Bengal with a unity which they had not enjoyed since the days of the old Mussulman viceroys and kings’. LOOKING TO THE ROOTS OF PARTITION COMMUNITY VIOLENCE By 1911 partition was abandoned. Bengali protest methodologies, EARLY BENGAL POLITICAL AGITATION messaging and associated symbols of mobilization, however, became a A LO N G U E - DUREE (LONGER TERM) EXPLANATION guidepost. Calcutta remained scarred from such agitation, compounded by the creation of the All-India Muslim League in 1906 in Dacca. 1904 - 1911 24 BENGAL: FAMINE, WAR AND COMMUNITY VIOLENCE 1943 - 1947

What socio-economic factors were at play? Why this course of events? Why was violence so persuasive? Janam Mukherjee grew up in the US and in 1999 travelled to Calcutta as part of his PhD research centred on the Bengal famine and the extent to which starvation, and its accompanying dislocations impacted social structures, political formations and collective action in Bengal. 2-3million dead from famine. His Bengali family was impacted by WW2. By 1946 Bengal represented a society in which any idea of ‘moral duty’ had been so attenuated by the ravages of famine and uncertainties of war. Religious identities hardened, cementing affiliations of community, class and caste. Calcutta became a city of intransients – taxi drivers, slum dwellers, day labourers, market watchmen, beggars – who now lived in a city not their own. Depression, food shortages, rising costs of living and war had created communities with nothing in common but precarious livings and membership of a religious community. Between August 16th and 19th 4000 - 6000 people died in Calcutta, the result of Jinnah’s Direct Action Day on August 16th 1946 in support of Pakistan. In October 1946 in East Bengal (modern day Bangladesh) 320 kms from Calcutta – 350 villages were heavily impacted by violence in two districts - Noakhali and . Houses were burnt on a mass scale, hundreds of villagers burnt to death, with hundreds of Hindu girls forcibly married to Moslems and abducted. Massacres continued day and evening. Across Noakhali and Tripura Hindu temples and images were desecrated. Public conversion ceremonies to Islam were established. Hindus were forced to eat beef, cows were sacrificed in public spaces. A political was organised by Golam Sarwar, an elected politician and his henchmen. Members of the Muslim League National Guard were caught up in the protracted violence. In the end 2,500 troops and police were deployed, some 2,000 shops and houses destroyed, uncountable bazaars gutted. About 5,000 Hindus were killed during this time, according to police reports. See Tharoor on Churchill, Responsibility and the Bengal Famine: Tharoor 25 THE PARTITION OF INDIA SHARING STORIES

How has history been constructed, recorded and presented over time?

Why have approaches to history changed over time? 26 THE AMRITSAR PUNJAB INDIA

IN EARLY 2015, A SMALL DEDICATED GROUP OF PEOPLE ‘HISTORY IS NOT THE PREROGATIVE OF THE HISTORIAN … IT LED BY CHAIRPERSON LADY KISHWAR DESAI CAME IS, RATHER, THE WORK IN A GIVEN INSTANCE OF A TOGETHER. A TRUST (THE ARTS AND CULTURAL HERITAGE THOUSAND DIFFERENT HANDS, A SOCIAL FORM OF TRUST) WAS REGISTERED IN WITH THE GOAL KNOWLEDGE’ OF SETTING UP THE WORLD’S FIRST PARTITION MUSEUM – RAPHAEL SAMUEL: THEATRES OF MEMORY AND MEMORIAL. CONSULTATIONS WERE HELD WITH SCHOLARS AND RESEARCHERS, FILMMAKERS, AUTHORS, QUOTED IN PUBLIC HISTORY AND HERITAGE TODAY: PEOPLE AND THEIR PASTS – PAUL ASHTON AND HILDA KEAN. ARTISTS, JOURNALISTS AND PARTITION SURVIVORS. THE TRUST INTENSIFIED ITS OUTREACH WORK AND STARTED TO BUILD A COLLECTION, SHOWCASED IN EXHIBITIONS ACROSS INDIA IN 2015 AND 2016. MORE AND MORE PARTITION FAMILIES JOINED THIS PEOPLE’S EFFORT TO CREATE A PEOPLE’S MUSEUM. IN OCTOBER 2016 THE PARTITION MUSEUM WAS OPENED IN THE TOWN HALL IN AMRITSAR. HOWEVER, ALL FOURTEEN GALLERIES WERE ONLY OPENED ON AUGUST 17TH 2017, MARKING THE DAY THAT THE RADCLIFFE AWARD WAS ANNOUNCED. CHIEF MINISTER OF PUNJAB SHRI DEDICATED THE PARTITION MUSEUM TO THE NATION. PARTITION REMEMBRANCE DAY (AUG 17TH) WAS ANNOUNCED IN TRIBUTE TO THOSE IMPACTED BY 1947. The Partition Museum - a small history see also: BBC Partition 70 years on 27 MISSION THE 1947 PARTITION ARCHIVE I S A N O N - P R O F I T N O N - GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATION DEDICATED TO INSTITUTIONALIZING THE PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF PARTITION THROUGH:

1) DOCUMENTING, PRESERVING AND SHARING EYE WITNESS ACCOUNTS FROM ALL ETHNIC, RELIGIOUS AND ECONOMIC COMMUNITIES AFFECTED BY THE PARTITION. A DIGITAL PLATFORM CREATED FOR ANYONE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD TO COLLECT, ARCHIVE AND DISPLAY ORAL THAT DOCUMENT PARTITION , PRE - PA R T I T I O N LIFE AND CULTURE AS WELL AS POST - PA R T I T I O N MIGRATIONS AND LIFE CHANGES.

2) COLLECTING, PRESERVING AND SHARING PERSONAL ITEMS AND ARTEFACTS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PEOPLE'S MEMORY OF THE 1947 PARTITION, ENSURING THAT MEMORY AND HISTORY ARE PROTECTED AND CELEBRATED .

3) BRINGING KNOWLEDGE OF PARTITION T O PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS A) CREATIVE AND SCHOLARLY EXPRESSION B) PROACTIVE WORLD - WIDE PRIMARY EDUCATION CURRICULA, C ) TRAVELING EXHIBITS AND PHYSICAL ' CENTERS ’ F O R LEARNING

How was the decision made to flee? What was life like on the journey? How were the refugee camps experienced? How did families resist being separated? How was violence perpetrated? 28 ART AND REPRESENTATIONS OF PARTITION (HUSAIN)

Maqbool Fida Husain - M. F. Husain - (17th September 1915 – 9th June 2011) was a founding member of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group in 1947, inspired by the ‘new’ post-Partition India. Bharat Mata – Mother India (2004) forced him into exile in 2005. 29 EARTH (1998) – A F I L M BY DEEPA MEHTA MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN – A 1995 BOOK BY GANDHI (1982) – A FILM BY THE VICEROY’S HOUSE – A F I L M BY (2017) – A 1 9 5 6 N O V E L BY (ADAPTED INTO FILM IN 1998) PA R T I T I O N – A 2007 CANADIAN PRODUCED FILM BY VIC SARIN

The summer of 1947 was not like other Indian summers. Even the weather had a different feel in India that year. But Partition does not mean much to the Sikhs and Muslims of Mano Majra, a village of three brick buildings and a mixed population of Sikhs and Muslims – 70 families, on the border of India and Pakistan, ½ a mile from the River. The local Mullah calls Mano Majra’s Muslim population to prayer each morning, while the priest at the Sikh temple lies in bed until the call is finished. All villagers venerate one object – a three foot slab of sandstone that stands upright under a keeker tree beside the pond. It is the local deity – the deo – to which all the villagers - Hindu, Muslim Sikh - repair secretly when they are in special need of blessing. One day, a local money-lender - the one village Hindu Lala Ram Lal - is murdered. Suspicion falls on Juggut Singh, the village gangster who is in love with a Muslim girl. When a train arrives in Mano Majrah carrying the bodies of Sikhs slaughtered as they fled Pakistan, some local Sikhs, hoping to use the chaos for their own ends, plan a revenge attack on a train packed with Muslim families fleeing to Pakistan. Train to Pakistan’s inclusion of the Sikh community adds historical accuracy and complexity to a conflict often painted as largely Hindu versus Muslim. The novel also reminds its readers the role played by railways and trains during Partition. Journalist and writer, Khushwant Singh was born February 2nd 1915 in (present-day Pakistan) and died at the age of 99 on March 20th 2014. 30 PARTITION AS A GLOBAL EXPERIENCE: YASMIN KHAN

Preface to the 2017 edition of The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan – four points: Syrian Alan Kurdi – red t-shirt and shorts - Sept 2nd 2015 – he, his mother and brother drowned in the Mediterranean – refugee’s individual stories and through collective stories, the photograph of the lifeless child reminds us that powerful images can evoke both personal and collective histories. In the period since the first edition (2007) refugees and displacement have regularly made the front pages of newspapers and elicited much political discourse. While different to Partition, it is more important than ever to connect Partition to the world we live in now, to try and use its lessons and stories to inform a more humanistic understanding of displacement. To ask questions - Why does it happen? What sort of lasting change do mass refugee movements bring? How can the Partition of India be placed within this wider world history? Partition historians do not look sideways to other cases – there is a regional myopia. During the 1940s refugees were being created by and left in the wake of the Second World War. Partition was part of the global nature of displacement at this time, part of a whole world being made anew as nations and continents recovered and rebuilt after the end of war. Displacement was one of the defining features of the period across the globe. People moved in response to violence or the threat of violence, through planned transfers of whole populations. Partition did not happen without being inspired by emergent notions of what the future world was going to look like; at a time when empires were being hammered into nation-states, not only in South Asia but globally this surely provided a context in which political calls for Pakistan can be seen. Partition came at a time when people were engaged in creating the new state of , or debated federations in Southeast Asia. This is vital in grasping Partition’s true place in global history. 31 HISTORIANS ON THE PARTITION OF INDIA: AFTERMATH

Sunil Khilnani - The Idea of India A partition between a Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan was intended finally to resolve all contests over who had authority to rule the territory of British India ….. but this partition did not resolve these contests. Rather, it became a recurring motif in the subsequent history of the subcontinent and never died away: simultaneously a fearful spectre in the cultural memory and a perpetual challenge to the territorial authority of the successor states. See BBC Mark Tully story on the Babri mosque in Ayodhya.

Nisid Hajari - Midnight’s Furies Pakistan-India rivalry is getting more, rather than less, dangerous: the two countries nuclear arsenals are growing, militant groups are becoming more capable and rabid media outlets on both sides are shrinking the scope for moderate voices. It is well past time that the heirs to Nehru and Jinnah finally put 1947’s furies to rest.

Jeff Kingston – Nationalism in Asia: A history since 1945 National Traumas – chosen or unchosen - play an important role in shaping national identity. Shared catastrophes and collective suffering constitute a powerful anvil on which to hammer out a useful national identity for those in power. India’s chosen trauma is Partition, a deeply scarring trauma, which has cast a long shadow over Independence and poisoned communal and bilateral relations, a nightmare that has entered into popular imagination, a gory narrative of victimization, one that sharpens the sectarian divide. India Pakistan Attari Border Closing – Flags Lowering Ceremony (Sanjeev Bhaskar - The Longest Road). 32 DISCUSSION PEOPLE P0WER PERSPECTIVES

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