Horrors Remembered

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“In a sense, 1947 has yet to come to an end”, wrote the historian William Dalrymple in 2015 on the Partition. This is probably truer for India than for Pakistan, for though I have witnessed much resentment against it in India, it has never been so grotesquely referred to as by the Indian PM, Narendar Modi, when he recently declared commemorating August 14 as “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day”. His cabinet colleagues may have advised him to do so and many of his ilk might follow this instruction, but it is doubtful if the saner elements of Indian society would agree.

The whys and whos of Partition have been conveniently laid at the door of Mr. Jinnah, who has been cast as the villain of the piece in India. People do not realise that both Gandhi and Nehru played an important role in the division. In 2009, Jaswant Singh, a BJP leader, wrote that Jawahar Lal Nehru was primarily responsible for Partition and that India had demonised Jinnah for political gains. Singh paid the price for telling the truth by being expelled from his party and his book erased from the collective memory of the people. Since then, much more has been written about the circumstances that led to Jinnah’s demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims. In Pakistan, Jinnah is portrayed as a devout Muslim who founded Pakistan on the basis of Islam, an idea far from reality. Both countries have successfully, but tragically, developed their respective narratives around opposing and totally false depictions of their founding fathers.

According to the Hindi writer, Krishna Sobti, Partition is difficult to forget but dangerous to remember. The memories, seen, heard and read, are seared onto our minds, and the danger has multiplied. The tragedy is not that it happened, but how it happened. It is cited as one of the bloodiest and most violent events in world history, with over 15m people displaced and between 1m-2m killed, raped and maimed. Perpetrators and victims belonged to Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, the carnage being particularly severe in Punjab and Bengal. Many were excessively violent and still others were tremendously kind and gracious. People were so brutal that one historian has suggested the event was more cataclysmic than the Holocaust. Even after seven decades, objective research has eluded generations of Indians and Pakistanis, whose views of what happened remain clouded by emotions, painful stories and nationalist narratives that have increasingly painted “the other side” as the devil who was solely responsible for the horror. It is these often one-sided stories of what transpired during the fateful days of August that fester in our minds.

Partition is also unique in that it was the first time that two communities that had lived in relative harmony for centuries (although rifts had been created by the British after the War of Independence in 1857, an “uprising” blamed upon Muslims) turned upon each other with ferocity while the colonial rulers left after looting the country. There are no similar examples to learn from.

Now imagine a scenario when two countries would decide that the past is only meant to not repeat mistakes and the future must be built on mutual recognition, respect and collaboration. But first, truth has to be unearthed, faced and accepted. Joint teams would conduct research on historic and heritage issues and religious, cultural and other festivals are celebrated together.

This was not to be.

The hatred that stoked the fires of violence has been deliberately and consistently nurtured and given new leases of life throughout the 74 years of independence. The Kashmir issue, cited as the most contentious between the two neighbours, could have been resolved during earlier years, had both sides shown political wisdom and savvy. Instead, communalism and the religious divide have shaped lives in phenomenal measure, much to the detriment of social and economic well being. Muslims have been sidelined since 1947 and seen the highest level of discrimination and violence to their existence in India since 2014 when PM Modi came into power. Pakistan, where the population of minorities has declined substantively, has faced consistent sectarian and religious intolerance over the last two decades.

Under these circumstances, for Mr. Modi to declare August 14 (a day of celebration for Pakistanis) as a day to celebrate their independence, to remember the horrors of Partition is nothing less than rubbing salt on the wounds of all who experienced the brutalities, whether in Pakistan or India, and a taunt to Muslims on both sides of the border.

If the logic of Mr. Modi is to be followed, Muslims might very well commemorate August 17, 1947, when Radcliffe finalised dividing a country he had never visited before; they might choose to remember the days in January, 1948, when Muslim majority Jammu was converted into a Hindu majority by killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of Muslims. They might commemorate another day in 2002 when Mr. Modi presided as CM over butchering and rape of more than 2000 Muslims in Gujrat: these were horrors no less, inflicted upon the Muslim minority.

But it benefits no one to commemorate a day of independence of one country as one of horrors by anotherm especially when both were victims of each other. The only way to commemorate sacrifices of people is to use this time as one of introspection and try to comprehend the anatomy of violence that had gripped them in its claws and still does. A day of such remembrance would bring people from both countries (and a third one: Bangladesh) to truthful readings of shared and individual history, however painful it might be. Only then our nations may move towards reconciliation. We might accept finally that we too are culpable and others too are honourable and kind.

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Horrors Remembered

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