Soci¡l Scienttst Partition Narratives Author(s): Mushirul Hasan Source: Social Scjentist, Vol. 30, No. 7,/B (lut. - Arg., ZOOZ), pp. 24-53 Published by' Social Scientist Stable URL: https:/ /wutw.ìstor.org/stable/3518150 Accessed: 19-10-2018 14:38 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://¿þ6ut.jstor.org/terms Social Scientr'st is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Socia,l Scientrst Hffi JSTOR This content downloaded from 130.58.75. l4l on Fri, l9 Oct 2018 l4:38:50 UTC Al I use subject to https://aboutjstor.org/tems MUSHIRUL HASAN* Partition Narratiues- Partition was the defining event of modern, independent India and Pakistan, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that partition continues to be the defining event of modern India and Pakisran... Partition [moreover] was and is a profoundly religious evenr for both sides... and most of the agony over religion throughout the South Asian region is to a large extent traceable to it. Partition is at the heart not only of the great regional conflicts... [but] it is also an important component or factor in a whole series of religious-cum-political conflicts reaching down to the present time... To be sure, partition as a defining religious event is not by any means the only event or condition for an appropriate analysis and explanation of [these] great religious conrroversies currently tearing the fabric of India's culrural life, but ...it is, indeed, one of the necessary and central events or conditions for understanding India's current agony over religion. In many ways it is the core plot in the unfolding narrative of modern, independent India. Gerald James Larson, India's Agony Ouer Religion (New Delhi, 79971, pp. 182-3. The Indian History Congress is a premier body of historians. It has repeatedly affirmed its commitment ro a 'scientific'and secular reading of the past and taken the lead in producing a certain temper of mind, a certain way of thinking and feeling about contemporary events and their relation to the past and the future. Moreover, scores of historians, who assemble every year in the month of December, have taken unequivocal positions against the Emergency (19751, the vandalism at Ayodhya on December 6 1.992, and the recenr atrack on rhe Christians. So often in the past they have offered refuge to persecuted * Professor of History at Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi *fPresidentìal Address at the 31st Indian History Congress, Bhopal,28-30 December 2001 Social Seientist, Vol. 30, Nos. 7 - 8, July-August 2002 This content dorvnloaded fronr l-10.-58.7-5. l4l on Fri. l9 Oct 2018 l+:38:-50 Ll'l-C All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/tenns PARTIÏON NARRATIVES ZS colleagues, and accommodated the liberal-lefr srreams of thought. Long years âgo, my father Professor Mohibbul Hasan stood on this platform as President of the Medieval Indian History secion. Toda¡ I salute his memory from the same platform. Educated in Lucknow and London, he was a scholar pør excellence. During his teaching career at the universities of Calcutta, Aligarh, Jamia Millia Islamia and Kashmir, he did pioneering research on Tipu Sultan, on medieval Kashmir, and on the Mughal Emperor, Babur. A quintessential liberal, he shunned reactionary and obscurantist ideas with utmost tenacity and consisrency. Our home in Calcutta- 5 C Sandal Street * offered refuge ro a number of leading lights in the communist movement. I am extremely grateful to the office-bearers of the Indian History Congress for giving me this opportunit6 cherished by scores of historians, to address such a distinguished gathering. I learnt my history at the feet of my teachers ar rhe Aligarh Muslim Universit¡ some present in this hall. I acknowledge my debt ro rhem on rhis occasion. My friends and colleagues ar rhe Jamia Millia Islamia roo, supported me during some of my rurbulenr years in that universiry. I am extremely beholden to rhem. At the beginning of this millennium, the great ideological debates between the proponents of 'secular' and 'Muslim' nationalisms are waning. A sense is abroad rhat rhe Partition stor¡ hitherto dominated by the grand narratives, needs to be told differently. Artention is drawn to comparisons across space and time, to theoretical issues of import well beyond the confines of South Asia, and to partitions restructuring the sources of conflicts around borders, refugees and diasporas. There is even talk of the need for new languages in dealing wirh the historical traumas of the past, of rethinking 'Partition' necessitated by the shift away from the high political histories. According to the French scholar Jean-Luc Nanc¡ the gravest and most painful testimony of the modern world, the one that possibly involves all other tesrimonies to which this epoch must answer, is the testimony of the dissolution, the dislocation, or the conflagration of community. 'Whatever the approach and howsoeyer diverse the interpretations, the fact is that Hindu-Muslim partnerships exploded in the 1940s, and the weakness of the secular ideology - the emblem of the desire to create a world beyond religious divisions - became all too clear to that generation. Their association with majoritarianism and minoritism discredited it, they were badly led and, at the moment of great peril, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh organizations proved more rhan -l'his co¡rtent dorvnloaded fronr 1"30.-58.7-5.141 on Fri. l9 Oct 2018 l4:38:-50 UTC All use subject to https://abour.jsror.org/ternìs 26 SOCIAL SCIENTIST â match for the tepid enthusiasm of Congress' secular wing. The Communist Party of India nor only acknowledged the importance of the national question for politics, but also unequivocally embraced the princíple of national self-determinâtion. The-idea was drummed into the heads of the people without realizing its consequences for the party itself, and the accentuation of the communal process at the level of the masses. Finail¡ the colonial government's conciliatory policy towards the Muslim League bore fruit during the second world war, and stiffened Mohammad Ali Jinnah's resolve to achieve his Muslim homeland. It was the outbreak of war in September 1.939 that saved the League. Even as Linlithgow put federation into cold storâge for the duration of the war, Jinnah set out to exploit the British need for the support of the Indian parties for the war effort. lù7hen the war ended, the engine of communal politics could no longer be put in reverse. This is what happened, in the words of the Urdu writer, Ismat Chughtai (1915-1991): The flood of communal violence came and went with all its evils, but it left a pile of living, dead, and gasping corpses in its wake. It wasn't only that the country was split in two-bodies and minds were also divided. Moral beliefs were tossed aside and humanity was in shreds. Government officers and clerks along with their chairs, pens and inkpots, were distributed like the spoils of war... Those whose bodies were whole had hearts that were splintered. Families were torn apart. One brother was allotted to Hindusran, the other to Pakistan; the mother was in Hindustan, her offspring were in Pakistan; the husband was in Hindustan, his wife was in Pakistan. The bonds of relationship were in tatters, and in the end many souls remained behind in Hindustan while their bodies started off for Pakistan. Pluralism, the bedrock of secular nationalism, could no longer contain hatred, religious intolerance, and other forms of bigotry. Some of the anxieties Indians faced while formulating strategies for political survival reappeared with a force that could not have been anticipated at the turn of the century. They came into sharp focus only a decade or so before the actual transfer of power. The League, the Akali Dal and the Hindu Mahasabha rejected the once seemingly unassailable pluralist paradigm, while religious fundamentalists, who were at any râte wary of the corrosive effects of secular ideologies, turned to the creation of a Hindu stâte or an Islamic theocracy. The outcome was a cataclysmic event - India's bloody vivisection. As the historian of Islam pointed out, 'a few years afrer the extermination camps and incendiary and atomic bombs of the second world war seemed to Thiscontentdorvnloadedfrom l30.5S.T5.l.ll on Fri. l9Oct20l8 l4:18:-50LJTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms PARTIÏON NARRATIVES 27 have confirmed the worst condemnarions Indians had levelled againsr materialistic modern west, modern India, Hindu and Muslim, confronted horrors of its own making'. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was the person most sensirive to this realiry though his reactions scarcely figure in post-modernist narratives on partition. One almost gets a sense, in the writings of many historians, of Gandhi's premature demise well before his assassination on 30 January 1948. That being the case, it is important to recover Gandhi's voice, and attach some importance to his responses in the discussions over pârtition violence. Although the literature covering his last years is rich, it is hard to comprehend how and why a man, having dominated the polirical scene for three decades, could do so little to influence the Congress to take firm and effective steps to contain violence. Even if this fact illustrates Gandhi's diminishing political influence, we can still ask why he became, as he told Louis Fischer, 'a spent bullet', and what turned him into'a back number'.