NATION, NATIONALISM and the PARTITION of INDIA: PARTITION the NATION, and NATIONALISM , De Manzoor Ehtesham
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NATION, NATIONALISM AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA: TWO MOMENTS FROM HINDI FICTION* Bodh Prakash Ambedkar University, Delhi Abstract This paper traces the trajectory of Muslims in India over roughly four decades after Independ- ence through a study of two Hindi novels, Rahi Masoom Reza’s Adha Gaon and Manzoor Ehtesham’s Sookha Bargad. It explores the centrality of Partition to issues of Muslim identity, their commitment to the Indian nation, and how a resurgent Hindu communal discourse particularly from the 1980s onwards “otherizes” a community that not only rejected the idea of Pakistan as the homeland for Muslims, but was also critical to the construction of a secular Indian nation. Keywords: Manzoor Ehtesham, Partition in Hindi literature, Rahi Masoom. Resumen Este artículo estudia la presencia del Islam en India en las cuatro décadas siguientes a la Independencia, según dos novelas en hindi, Adha Gaon, de Rahi Masoom Reza y Sookha Bargad, de Manzoor Ehtesham. En ambas la Partición es el eje central de la identidad mu- sulmana, que en todo caso mantiene su fidelidad a la nación india. Sin embargo, el discurso del fundamentalismo hindú desde la década de 1980 ha ido alienando a esta comunidad, 77 que no solo rechazó la idea de Paquistán como patria de los musulmanes, sino que fue fundamental para mantener la neutralidad religiosa del estado en India. Palabras clave: Manzoor Ehtesham, Partición en literatura hindi, Rahi Masoom. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25145/j.recaesin.2018.76.06 Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 76; April 2018, pp. 77-89; ISSN: e-2530-8335 REVISTA CANARIA 77-89 DE ESTUDIOS PP. INGLESES, 2018, 76; The Indian anti-colonial struggle culminated in the birth of not one but two independent nations in August 1947 —India and Pakistan. The rationale for Partition was the two-nation theory, premised on the idea that religious communities constituted nations. Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League argued that Muslim interests (or the Muslim nation) could not be safeguarded in an undivided Hindu —majority India. The Congress disagreed, but several factors, including rapidly escalating communal violence, forced the issue and the British government decided to carve out Pakistan by dividing Punjab and Bengal and other contigu- ous Muslim majority areas. It led to a massive migration of people across the newly created borders both voluntary and involuntary, but mostly the latter. While the Muslim League had fought for and succeeded in creating what it perceived as a Muslim nation, there were innumerable Muslims who did not buy the argument and stayed behind in India. Their faith in a secular and democratic Indian nation was the strongest challenge to the two-nation theory whose proponents were not just the Leaguers but also those who belonged to Hindu communal parties like the Hindu Mahasabha. Like their counterparts in the Muslim League, they argued for a Hindu rashtra, in which the interests of the Hindu majority would be supreme. While the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by Hindu communalists was a major blow to communal forces, they have continued to persist and witnessed a revival and consolidation in the last three decades. At the heart of Hindu communal politics espoused by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its affiliates is the vision of a Hinduised Indian nation, in which all minorities, particularly the Muslims, are not accepted as full citizens and constantly hounded on account of their allegedly extra-territorial loyalties. This is in sharp contrast to the vision of a secular India espoused by the founding fathers and sought to be 78 preserved by secular, liberal and progressive Indians. More than any other community or group, the position of Muslims in India, how they are perceived and their self perception, can provide a fair measure of the success or failure of the secular project in post-colonial times. While all mi- norities, including Christians, Dalits, women and gays are the target of regressive Hindu communal formations, Muslims are singled out as the principal enemy and obstacle to the achievement of the goal of a Hindu rashtra. This is mainly due to the primacy of Partition in the Hindu communal discourse on Indian nationalism from 1947 onwards. For Muslims in India1 the journey from 1947 when they acknowledged their faith in a secular nation to the nineteen-eighties, when the foundations of that faith began to shake, has been a mixed experience. If 1947 was a moment of reckoning when many refused to be swayed by divisive politics and asserted their right to be * Some parts of this essay are based upon my earlier work, Writing Partition: Aesthetics and Ideology in Hindi and Urdu Literature (Pearson, 2009). 1 The more commonly used terms, Indian Muslims or Nationalist Muslims, are problematic. One rarely comes across the corresponding terms, Indian Hindus or Nationalist Hindus, the underly- REVISTA CANARIA 77-89 DE ESTUDIOS PP. INGLESES, 2018, 76; ing assumption being that while Hindus are axiomatically Indian and nationalist, Muslims are not. counted as equal partners in the nation-building project, the nineteen-eighties were a second moment when a resurgence of communal forces challenged the belief of secular Muslims in the same nation. Two Hindi novels located in these two mo- ments narrate the seminal role of Muslims in defining the scope and limits of Indian secular nationalism. By studying the two novels together, one can understand how the trajectory of the Indian nation and the minorities continues to be, in some ways, impacted by the Partition and its construction in the post-colonial period. Rahi Masoom Raza’s Adha Gaon2, written in the 1960s, explores the Par- tition of 1947 from the perspective of the residents of a Muslim Shia-dominated village, Gangauli, located in the heart of the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). Manzoor Ahtesham’s Sookha Bargad, written in 1986, is set in Bhopal (a city in state of Madhya Pradesh), against the backdrop of the first 1965 war with Pakistan, and narrates the transition of an educated, progressive and liberal Muslim family (the first generation of independent India) to one that becomes insular and narrow- minded as communal propaganda gains traction. While Muslim characters in the two novels belong to different social classes, there is nevertheless a continuity that can be traced at many other levels. Both authors are a part of the progressive realist tradition in Hindi literature; both come from progressive Muslim backgrounds and both write in Hindi, a language that has been claimed by Hindu communalists as the exclusive property of Hindus.3 Both of them also belong to regions from where numerous Muslims migrated to Pakistan resulting in families getting divided across ideological and national divides. Hence studying the two novels together can provide us an insight into how the Muslim minority attempts to define itself within the larger space of the Indian nation. Adha Gaon literally means half a village or a divided village and the novel plays on this idea in a variety of ways. In the translator’s introduction, Gillian Wright 79 states that the half village in the title refers to the author, Reza’s half —the Dakkhin Patti— to which his family belongs. The village Gangauli is actually split between two groups or families of Shia Muslims who reside in two geographically opposed locations, Uttar Patti and Dakkin Patti. Both sides prepare throughout the year to compete for the honor of being the one whose tazias are bigger and more ornate, whose marsias and nohas are more soulful and more evocatively rendered and the one whose expression of pain or karb is more dramatic and cathartic than the others, on the occasion of Muharram. An annual ritual observed by Shia Muslims, Muharram commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the grandson of Prophet Moham- mad at the Battle of Karbala. Spread over ten days during which Shias remain in 2 Rahi Masoom Reza, Adha Gaon, translated into English by Gillian Wright as The Feuding Families of Village Gangauli (Penguin, 1994 [1966]). All references are from the translated version. Page numbers follow quoted passages in the text. 3 Languages too have religious identities, according to communalists. The association of Urdu with the Perso-Arabic script and hence Muslims as well as the association of Hindi with the Devnagri script and hence Hindus was clearly the work of communal minded people from about the second half of the nineteenth century. REVISTA CANARIA 77-89 DE ESTUDIOS PP. INGLESES, 2018, 76; a state of mourning, the tenth day, called Ashura, witnesses a re-enactment of the battle when Imam Husayn and his children were killed by the forces of Yazid, the tyrannical ruler. But the split that divides Gangauli in pre-Partition times is innocent and culturally meaningful for the inhabitants when compared to the divisions that emerge after the Partition. Half the village leaves for Pakistan, leaving the other half which remains committed to the homeland. The village gets divided not in a simple way on the basis of ideology, but because communalism creates an environment in which some people succumb to the lure of a better life in Pakistan while others are reluctant and refuse to abandon their land and graves. Ghazipur and Gangauli function as a template for the nation, with different castes and classes living together, and identifying primarily with their village. Con- quests by Muslim princes or their generals have not changed the inter-community relationships. According to local belief, its original name was Gadipuri, which was changed to Ghazipur, when it was taken over by Syed Masood Ghazi, a chieftain of the ruler Mohammad Bin Tughlaq. But names mean little, according to the author/ narrator.