Asking New Questions about the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent

© Blackwell Publishing 2004

History Compass 2 (2004) AS 090, 1–10

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKHICOHistory Compass1478-0542© Blackwell Publishing 2004XXX The Partition of the Indian SubcontinentThe Partition of the Indian Subcontinent

Asking New Questions about the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent

Yasmin

Khan

St. Antony’s College, Oxford

Abstract

Fierce historical controversy has raged over the causes of the partition of India,ever since Pakistan was created in 1947. This article briefly analyses these debates,but here the major focus is upon the consequences of partition and the new waveof historiography which has emerged in recent years, especially since the fiftiethanniversary of partition in 1997. These new histories have centred upon theexperience of ordinary people, and have emphasised the trauma caused bywidespread violence and mass migration. This article questions why these historiesof violence have struggled to find their place in a more comprehensive andintegrated narrative of the events of 1947, and why a gulf still separates the ‘popular’

and the ‘political’ in partition histories.

If Nehru or Jinnah had lived to see the new developments which haverecently characterised partition historiography they would have beentruly surprised. Old truisms about the fracture of the subcontinent alongreligious lines in 1947, and the creation of Pakistan as a homeland forIndian Muslims, have been turned on their head. In addition, the focusof attention has finally shifted from the great men of history and con-stitutional wrangles in New Delhi, to the unprecedented experience ofviolence and migration in 1947; it is now accepted that perhaps fifteenmillion people were uprooted, one million were killed and unknowablenumbers of women experienced sexual savagery for the sake of indep-endence, and in the marking out of the new nation states of India andPakistan. Terms such as ethnic cleansing and even holocaust have beennewly applied to the events.

It is little wonder that the complex and tense negotiations overthe constitutional settlement which would be bequeathed to the colonisedafter the British departed, have attracted so much attention. The story ispeopled by some of the most intriguing characters of twentieth centuryhistory – Nehru, Jinnah, Gandhi and Mountbatten – and there is a wealthof documentary material available in the comfort of the India OfficeLibrary. More importantly, the imperatives of nationalist historiographyhave led to very different readings of events and a certain apportioning

2 The Partition of the Indian Subcontinent

© Blackwell Publishing 2004 History Compass 2 (2004) AS 090, 1–10

of blame between the British, Indians and Pakistanis for the violencethat followed.

To simplify, Pakistani and Indian nationalist agendas required, respec-tively, a founding myth and a justification for partition. The Pakistani‘two-nation theory’ perceived the Muslim and Hindu communities asfundamentally different and Pakistan’s creation to be preordained. It wasJinnah’s cunning political manoeuvres that then brought the state intoexistence. In this reading, a timeless quality was given to the animositybetween the two communities, and Pakistan was the logical outcomeof irreconcilable differences between them. Yet the price paid for thiswas the human cost of partition, and the immediate events of 1947 weredepicted with less certainty. Some Pakistanis saw the violence and painof migration as part of the triumphant, but difficult, birth of the state,but others were more hesitant. The ambiguity towards partition feltby Pakistani historians was exacerbated because the South Asian Muslimcommunity was now divided, with large numbers of Muslims remainingin India. This nationalist historiography was dealt another blow bythe creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Indian historians, on the other hand,were more likely to describe the way in which Pakistan had acceded; theneighbouring state was fundamentally flawed because it rejected Congress’secularism and sacrificed national unity on the altar of religion. This wasbased on the assumption that the Muslim League had manipulatedreligious sensibilities for political gains. The violence which occurred in1947 was the bitter cost of a glorious freedom struggle. British narratives,meanwhile, tended to see partition as the bloody by-product of decolo-nisation, and the failure of the colonial state to fully modernise and civiliseits subjects. These histories, although often written in opposition to oneanother, were based on the shared premise that Pakistan was a plannedand self-conscious creation of Muslim separatism as spelt out in theLahore resolution of 1940, and brought into being by Jinnah and the effortsof the Muslim League.

1

New questions have been asked about these constitutional debates inrecent years. Later studies added some sophisticated nuances and shiftedthe emphasis away solely from the League. Ayesha Jalal reminded us thatJinnah demanded a Muslim nation but this may not have been the samething as actually wanting a clearly defined sovereign state. She reinterpretedthe demand for Pakistan as a bargaining-chip in the complex calculationsover the constitutional settlement which would prevail in India after theBritish left.

2

The Congress’ desire for a strong central state, and reluctanceto opt for a loose federal structure, in which Nehru’s ambitious socialand economic plans would be thwarted, was as much to blame for partition.The intentions of a number of key-players at the time, in particular,Mountbatten, have also been interrogated.

3

Taking the long view, the reason for Pakistan’s emergence has beenexplored in fine detail; numerous studies have aimed to explain Muslim


The Partition of the Indian Subcontinent 3

separatism and the growth of inter religious conflict at the local level.The source of Muslim grievance could be located in many places: inpublic realms, in Congress’ employment and cultural policies, or in theexploitation of language and religious symbolism by Machiavellian Leaguepoliticians. The British could be blamed for their social engineering,for example, in the creation of separate electorates, and the encourage-ment of politicisation along religious lines.

4

Others argued that perhaps thecause of separatism was to be found in Islamic ideals of community anddifference as articulated at the time.

5

In this vein, recent studies have alsoemphasised the communalism within the Congress party itself, and theypoint out that at the grass roots level many Congress leaders were involvedin the Hindu Mahasabha and other exclusive religious organisations, orat least exploited Hindu religious idioms in their political activity, whilethe Congress high command failed to reach out in any meaningful way toMuslim constituencies.

6

These accounts have added insight to our under-standing of the increased incidence of Hindu-Muslim riots from the1920s onwards and the reasons for the emergence of politicised religiousidentities.

7

Another important development has been the recognition of the needto differentiate

within

the communities themselves. South Asian Muslimshave often been imagined as a unified bloc, when in reality they have alwaysbeen divided along lines of class, region, language and sect. MushirulHasan who has been at the forefront of new work on partition has madegreat inroads into this perception, by stressing the role of ‘nationalist’and Congress Muslims in the Congress organisation, emphasising theLeague’s limited franchise and scope of representation, and highlightingthe plight of the large numbers of Indian Muslims who remained inIndia after 1947. All Muslims could not automatically be equated withthe demand for Pakistan.

8

Yet there are two major problems with these different sets of workon partition: firstly, as David Gilmartin has contended, none of the worksaddress the problem of upward pressures upon the political leaders in1947. In the short-term, during the actual months preceding partition,we still have a fuzzy picture about the way in which high politics waslinked to everyday life. For instance, how did the threat of violencecondition the decisions of politicians at the centre? In particular, this‘bottom-up’ view is needed to understand how the idea of Pakistan tookon meaning in the lives of ordinary Muslims and why they were preparedto support Pakistan, if, indeed, this support was widespread.

9

This alsoneeds to be based on a greater understanding of the social and economicchanges that occurred in North Indian society during the 1940s.

10

Secondly, none of these studies could really escape the inbuilt problemof teleology, and the impression that Indian history had been buildingup to the climactic events of 1947, after which history appeared to end,and give way to social science. More staggeringly, none of these works



described the violence of 1947 in any great length or focused upon theexperience of ordinary people during partition. These absences wererealised in the 1980s and 1990s and the great sea change in partitionhistoriography occurred as one question replaced all others; what happenedto ordinary people during partition?

11

Why did historians start asking this new question at all? The fiftiethanniversary of independence and partition in 1997 was an importantprompt to reflection and publication by a new generation. This generationhad been raised on a diet of social and economic history and was alive tothe influence of the subaltern studies school. More importantly, disillu-sionment with the nation-state and disappointment in the unfulfilleddreams of the nationalist movement, enabled a critical space to open up,where the privileging of independence over partition no longer seemedreasonable. 1947 could no longer represent the triumphant pinnacle ofnationalism, with partition as the supreme sacrifice tacked into a footnote.More menacingly, the violence of partition may have been accepted bythe state as the price paid for independence and myth-made into aninitiation ritual into statehood; ‘Partition emerges as a rite of passage thattwelve million people . . . underwent in which the ‘stable state’ was culturallyrecognized in the global order.’

12

If earlier history books did mention the ways in which ordinary peoplehad been affected by partition, they tended to draw on generalised andstereotyped images of packed trains, long columns of desolate peopleand overcrowded refugee camps. The new work has disaggregated thesegeneralisations and investigated the specifics; for instance, how were theeconomies of some cities stimulated by the arrival of incoming refugees?How did relief and rehabilitation programmes operate on the ground?The ambiguous relationship between South Asian Muslims, in Indiaand Pakistan, has also produced interesting readings on the experienceof divided families, separated by an artificial border drawn in haste by aBritish judge. In tandem with this, criticism emerged of the amnesia ofthe state which had no public rituals, monuments or text-books thatreally acknowledged the human cost of partition.

13

Reflections upon inter-religious violence have also been importantbecause of contemporary concerns; Urvashi Butalia writes, for instance,how witnessing the violence against Sikhs in New Delhi in 1984 triggeredan interest in partition victims.

14

As the Hindu right has emerged as apowerful force in Indian politics (approximately two thousand Muslimswere killed in retribution for the Godhra train arson attack on Hindusin Gujarat in 2002) nationalism and modernity have proved to be quitecompatible with the hardening of religious identities and inter-religiousviolence, and there is a new urgency in understanding the cause of thesecrises.

Yet, as researchers quickly found out, among Indians and Pakistanis atthe popular level, memories of partition had been kept alive. Perhaps the



need for an investigation and an exposure of partition was reflectedby the fact that Urvashi Butalia’s book, which consists of interviewswith partition victims, interwoven with reflections on their stories, toppedthe best-seller list in India. This has encouraged some explorations in thewriting of history, the structure of memory, and how and why events arerecalled in certain ways.

15

Partition has also been continually well repre-sented in literature and the arts in both English and the vernaculars. Awelcome development in recent years has been the publication of anumber of anthologies of accessible translations of partition literature froma variety of Indian languages, which in their descriptions, use of languageand ability to evoke the time, frequently surpass the efforts of historians.

16

Initial work on the popular partition experience often reflected uponthemes and ideas which were already present in partition literature. Byverifying these stories with archival material, or by recording oral-historyinterviews, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and a more completedepiction of massacres, rapes, attacks and migration became available. Thiswas detailed and shocking material, and has been particularly alive to theexperience of women. How was the decision made to flee? What was lifelike on the journey from one place to another, and how were the refugeecamps experienced? How did families resist being separated? How wasviolence perpetrated, and how were militias such as the Muslim NationalGuards organised?

The belated attention to the experience of women, victims of a double-oppression, has been a valuable corrective to the picture of partition.Empirical experience has been documented about the violence, abduc-tion, rape and trauma which thousands of women suffered; for instanceit is now estimated that over 35,000 women alone were recovered fromone state and taken to another in the wake of partition. Many of theseended up in hostels or widows homes or could not be reunited with theirfamilies. This has also been matched with an analysis of the meaning andsymbolism of this violence against women. The power to protect womenagainst dishonour played a vital role in the tensions preceding violence,and was part of the rhetoric and rumour which fuelled partition violence.Veena Das has explored the symbolism of political tattoos and markingsinflicted on victims, concluding that, ‘the political programme of creatingthe two nations of India and Pakistan was inscribed upon the bodies ofwomen.’

17

To the newly independent states the reclamation of ‘their’women became an important project, and abducted women kept in thehome of their captor were often forcibly removed and returned to theircountry of origin against their wishes by state officials; it seems that lifewith their attacker was sometimes preferable to the shame or uncertaintyof returning to the former husband, a detail which was overlooked in thedesire of the state to reclaim its own.

18

From ‘recovery’ of experience in this way, the trend has been, inkeeping with the more recent preoccupations of the subaltern studies



school, towards post-structural analysis which locates these human storiesin a wider critique of the way in which partition narratives have beenconstructed. This has added a new dimension which fiction alone couldnot supply. The key theme in all of this has been ‘the “decentring” ofthe nationalist struggle.’

19

Gyanendra Pandey has been at the forefront ofthis analysis. He articulates the way in which partition history has beensubsumed by nationalist historiographical imperatives and the way inwhich parititon stories have been transmitted and re-worked, to defer tothe nationalist struggle. He describes this process as the ‘making of thePartitioned subject in the subcontinent.’

20

However, if this shift away from constitutional matters, towards concernfor the popular experience of partition, has restored voices and agency toa wide array of non-elite Indians and Pakistanis, it has also provoked somedisturbing conclusions. Studying ‘victimhood’ is all well and good, but forevery victim there was a perpetrator, and unlike other notable examplesof mass violence in the twentieth century an all-powerful nation state wasnot directly implicated in partition. Of course, in more indirect ways, therole of grass-root politicians, or the complicity of partisan police and themilitary was vital, to say nothing of the

failure

of the incumbent colonialregime to protect people at the time. Yet, the fact remains that the violencewas carried out by communities against communities, neighbours againstneighbours.

21

The problem has been to explain violence and apparent ‘irrationality’without falling into orientalist-speak and portraying inherently irrationalIndians. It is right to turn attention to the social changes caused by theSecond World War and the post-war context of partition. One importanthistorical contribution has been the increased emphasis on the role ofparamilitary groups, volunteer units, and demobilised soldiers recruitedinto private forces, armed even with machine guns.

22

Yet, this aspect doesnot detract from the reality that many ordinary local people were involvedin the killings. How this occurred is at the nub of the historical problembut is still unanswered. Perhaps history is ill-equipped to even tackle thisquestion, and the answers rest in human behaviour and psychology. Thework of the anthropologist, Veena Das, has been very influential in thisrespect. Comparisons with other moments of inter-religious violence inthe modern Indian state also prove useful.

23

The pendulum is perhaps swinging back in another direction asother historians call for greater integration between the ‘political’ and the‘popular’ dimensions of partition history. The dichotomy between the twocan be overplayed, and as the pain, violence and ‘fragments’ of ordinarylives are pushed to the forefront, the risk of neglecting the political causesand consequences of partition is high. The subaltern viewpoint can alsorisk masking the multiple layers of oppression and exploitation whichoccurred during partition; for example, how did the middle class insome areas do much better than others when they arrived in their new



homelands? How did women fare compared to men? Within the state itselfthere were all kinds of actors and politicians ranging from Mountbattento local constables. Ayesha Jalal has suggested that partition historiographyneeds to be enriched by investigations of the relationship between com-munities and politics at the local, regional and national levels.

24

DavidGilmartin also laments that, ‘the place of the violence in the largerhistorical narrative has continued to prove elusive’ and hopes for historieswhich view partition as ‘a key moment in a much longer and ongoinghistory linking the state and arenas of everyday conflict.’

25

Certainly, some recent studies which attempt to link partition withwider questions about state formation, and which contrast the experienceof one region with another, have been very successful. A collection ofarticles edited by D. A. Low and H. Brasted points towards new avenuesof research and new methodologies. For instance, Sarah Ansari hasanalysed the response of the state at the provincial level in Sind to incoming

Muhajirs

(Muslim Partition migrants from North India) and the ambiguousresponse of the provincial state to these arrivals. This article links theexperience of refugees with the formation of Pakistani identity.

26

Anothercritique which has linked state, region and migration has been the differ-entiation between the experience of Bengali refugees in the east of thestate and that of those on the Punjabi side on the west.

It is clear that the experience of Bengali refugees was very different;the violence on the eastern border was far more limited than in thePunjab, but migration was drawn out over a longer period from EastBengal to Calcutta. Also there was not the same exchange of population,which meant that Bengali refugees were forced onto the streets ofCalcutta, causing a crisis in the city. By 1958, 800,000 people were livingin camps in West Bengal, which had only been set up as a temporarymeasure in 1947. Moreover, the relief and rehabilitation schemes imple-mented by the Indian government in Bengal have been categoricallyshown to have discriminated against Bengalis. Less was spent on therehousing and rehabilitation of Bengalis than on Punjabis, and a varietyof reasons have been suggested to explain this. It is possible that racialprejudice towards the Bengalis was to blame, or that the emergency onthe western border, which directly affected Delhi, was a more pressingconcern for politicians.

27

So far, with one important exception, there has also been little synthesisof the new work that has emerged.

28

Above all, historians are aware thatfor partition histories to truly transcend the power of nationalist histori-ographies, and to unleash the transformative potential which this mighthold for Indian and Pakistani relations, they need to be written on bothsides of the border. They should draw on archives in both Delhi andIslamabad or compare stories between communities in Sindi and Rajas-thani villages. Unfortunately, ‘even non-partisan scholarship rarely escapesbeing labelled “made in India” or “made in Pakistan.”’

29

Bangladesh must



also be included in the picture. While current travel, visa and researchrestrictions apply between the countries, however, this is another problemfor historians to negotiate. Partition historiography has taken great stridesforward in recent years but more work remains to be done if a fullyrounded, integrated history of partition is to take its proper place in SouthAsia’s story of decolonisation.

Notes

1

C. H. Philips and M. D. Wainwright (eds.),

The Partition of India. Policies and Perspectives,1935–1947

(London, 1947); I. Talbot, ‘Pakistan’s emergence’, in

The Oxford History of the BritishEmpire V: Historiography

, ed. R. W. Winks (Oxford, 1999), pp. 253–63.

2

A. Jalal,

The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan

(Cambridge,1985).

3

A. Roy, ‘The high politics of India’s partition’,

Modern Asian Studies

, 24 (2), 1990, pp. 385–415.

4

F. Robinson,

Separatism

among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces’ Muslims,1860–1923

(London, 1974); D. Page,

Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the ImperialSystem of Control

(Delhi, 1982).

5

F. Shaikh,

Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860–1947

(Cambridge, 1989).

6

G. Pandey,

The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India

(Delhi, 1990); J. Chatterji,

Bengal Divided. Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947

(Cambridge, 1995).

7

S. Das,

Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905–1947

(Delhi, 1991).

8

M. Hasan (ed.),

India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization

(Delhi, 1993); M. Hasan,

Legacy of a Divided Nation: India’s Muslims since Independence

(London, 1997).

9

D. Gilmartin, ‘Partition, Pakistan, and South Asian history: In search of a narrative’,

TheJournal of Asian Studies

, 57 (4), 1998, pp. 1068–95.

10

D. A. Low, ‘Digging deeper: Northern India in the 1940s’, in

Freedom, Trauma, Continuities:Northern India and Independence

, eds. D. A. Low and H. Brasted (Delhi, 1998), pp. 1–15.

11

M. Hasan (ed.),

Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India

(Delhi, 2000);I. Talbot,

Freedom’s Cry. The Popular Dimension in the Pakistan Movement and the Partition ofthe Subcontinent

(Karachi, 1999);

Seminar

‘Partition’ number (August 1994); S. Kaul (ed.),

ThePartitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India

(Delhi, 2001).

12

V. Fazila-Yacoobali, ‘A rite of passage: The partition of history and the dawn of Pakistan’,

Interventions

, 1 (2), 1999, pp. 183–200.

13

U. Butalia,

The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India

(London, 2000).

14

Ibid., p. 4.

15

D. Chakrabarty, ‘Representations of Hindu-Bengali memories in the aftermath of partition’,in

Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence

, eds. D. A. Low and H. Brasted(Delhi, 1998), pp. 133–52; M. Banerjee, ‘Partition and the north west frontier: Memories ofsome Khudai Khidmatgars’, in

The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India

, ed.S. Kaul (Delhi, 2001), pp. 30–73.

16

A. Bhalla (ed.), Stories About the Partition of India (Delhi, 1994); M. Hasan (ed.) IndiaPartitioned: The Other Face of Freedom (Delhi, 1995).17 V. Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (Delhi, 1995), p. 56.18 A. Major, ‘The chief sufferers’: Abduction of women during the partition of the Punjab’, inFreedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence, eds. D. A. Low and H. Brasted(Delhi, 1998), pp. 57–73; R. Menon and K. Bhasin (eds.), Borders and Boundaries: Women inIndia’s Partition (Delhi, 1998).19 R. Menon, ‘Editorial’, Interventions, 1 (2), 1999, p. 158. S. Mayaram, ‘Speech, Silence andthe Making of Partition Violence in Mewat’ Subaltern Studies IX, pp. 128–161.20 G. Pandey, Remembering Partition (Cambridge, 2001), p. 20.21 M. Mazower, ‘Violence and the state in the twentieth century’, American Historical Review,107 (4), 2002, p. 1166.



22 I. Copland, ‘The Further Sheres of Partition: Ethic Cleansing in Rajasthan, 1947’ Past andPresent, 160, 1998, pp. 203–39 and I. Kamtekar, ‘A Different War Dance: State and Class inIndia, 1939–45’ Past and Present, 176, 2002, pp. 187–221.23 Das, Critical Events.24 A. Jalal, ‘Secularists, subalterns and the stigma of ‘communalism’: partition historiographyrevisited’, Modern Asian Studies, 30 (3), 1996, pp. 681–736.25 Gilmartin, ‘Partition,’ pp. 1071 and 1092.26 S. Ansari, ‘Partition, migration and refugees: responses to the arrival of the Muhajirs in Sind’South Asia, 18, 1995, pp. 95–108.27 J. Chatterji, ‘Right or charity? Relief and rehabilitation in West Bengal’, in The Partitionsof Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India, ed. S. Kaul (Delhi, 2001), pp. 74–111;P. K. Chakrabarti, The Marginal Men – The Refugees and the Left: Political Experiment in WestBengal (Calcutta, 1990), p. 249.28 The exception is T. Y. Tan and G. Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London,2001).29 Jalal, ‘Secularists’, p. 681.

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Asking New Questions about the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent