Shuhban Ali Siyal

‘Train to Pakistan’ is a historical novel written by renowned Indian journalist and author Khushwant Singh. The roots of the novel are linked to Indo-Pak partition 1947, when the subcontinent was divided into two states, India and Pakistan. The story takes place in a fictional village called Mano Majra located at the border between the two countries. The village has a mix of Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh residents who have lived together peacefully for centuries. As the partition announced, tensions and hate rise and violence erupts throughout the region.

The novel is not just a story but carries a powerful message about the consequences of division. Through the narrative, we are inspired to reflect on how hatred and prejudice can tear communities apart.

The art of writing is beautifully used by author that incarcerate reader to read it complete. The reader may find out realistic injustice in the novel. Having crossed, half book reading, reader may find that the author mentions trains full of dead bodies sent by Pakistan mainly, but by Indian side rarely any train returns to Pakistan with dead bodies, while the fact is that the people were killed, shot, stabbed, clubbed, tortured, and raped on both sides.

The art of writing is beautifully used by author that incarcerate reader to read it complete

The story begins with the murder of a Hindu man named Lala Ram Lal in Mano Majra by a gang of Malli and the blame is put on Juggut Singh, (hero of novel, a local youth who initially has a questionable character but later shows good qualities) involved in a romantic relationship with Nooran, the daughter of Molvi Imam Baksh.

Malli and his gang try to pin the crime on Jugga, which results in the arrests of both Iqbal (revolutionary social worker) and Jugga due to local suspicions. They are arrested due to the orders of Hukum Chand, the regional magistrate, a corrupted person, having guilt and detest to Muslims, try to spread rioting in Mano Majra. Hukum Chand, illegally prison them and assume Iqbal Singh as Muhammad Iqbal in arrest warrants, to increase misconception and hate between Muslims and Sikhs.

The fact is that the people were killed, shot, stabbed, clubbed, tortured, and raped on both sides

Conflict starts in Mano Majra when a train full of corpses is brought to town, sent by Pakistan. The villagers become angry and harbor resentment towards the Muslim population. A group of Sikhs suggests that the Muslims should be sent to a refugee camp until the situation in controlled. Imam Baksh informs Nooran that they must leave, even though she refuses to go to Pakistan. But if they do not leave willingly, they will be thrown out. Nooran goes to Jugga’s home mentions to his mother that she is two-month pregnant of Jugga’s child. Juggut’s mother says that, when Jugga gets out of jail, she will ensure that he reunites with Nooran.

After Muslims’ evacuating, a group of local Sikhs arrives in Mano Majra with the intention of inciting anti-Muslim sentiment and subverting the train carrying the refugees to Pakistan. As they plan for revenge attack, Hukam Chand comes to know that Sikhs are going to attack refugee train, he became happy, but suddenly he was informed that his beloved Hasseena was also in the train. He is puzzled and releases both Iqbal and Jugga to stop the killing. Jugga, climbs the steel span of the bridge, pulls out a small Kirpan and slashes the rope. A person from attacker raises his rifle and shoots. The rope is in shreds, but a tough strand remains. Jugga snaps it with his teeth. A volley of shots then rings out, sending Jugga to the ground. The rope snaps and falls with him. The train goes over his body, towards Pakistan. Jugga however saved is beloved Nooran at the cost of his life.

Two countries were created at the cost of massacre of millions of innocent people.

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Shuhban Ali Siyal, studies in language and literature at Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University, Shaheed, Benazirabad (Nawabshah) Sindh

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By Farooque Chowdhury | Dhaka

Sketch of a jab and resistance

The mainstream abstains from discussing two aspects of the partition, a dagger-act: the harm to people’s struggle for a democratic, dignified life free from injustice and exploitation, and resistance by and suffering of the Communist Party, the political party standing for the exploited, to the dagger-job. Years back, it was told in detail in Frontier, the famous independent socialist weekly from Kolkata.

It’s known that subverting people’s struggle is a fundamental loss to people striving for building up an advanced democratic society.

Considering the hardship born and sacrifice made by people to build up their organizations and struggles help perceive the extent of loss they face with the negative effect on these. Moreover, overwhelming an environment of struggle with an atmosphere of hatred along a sectarian line is a bigger loss, as the atmosphere of hatred makes organizing struggles more difficult. The pre- and post-partition East Bengal, now Bangladesh, is a burning example of the injury to people’s struggle and the Communist Party’s resistance and suffering. Igniting the communal fire in the period was a blitzkrieg by the exploiters. The people and the political party upholding their interests — the Communist Party — were not politically and organizationally equipped to counter the full throttled campaign by the dominating interests. The jab was made in 1946, and the job continued in post-’47 East Bengal. The dagger-job carried all marks of reaction – an onslaught by reaction with the face of sectarianism.

Instead of going into detail, following is a very brief description of the impact of the exploiting classes’ political move on the people, on the people’s struggle in Bengal. Veteran Communist leaders/organizers/activists from East Bengal, now Bangladesh, write in their autobiographies/memoirs/history books:

Fears: Fears gripped the situation. There were assaults and murders in many parts of the province (then Bengal). Properties were taken away. A collective consciousness of vulnerable minority status occupied a part of the population.

Liaquat Ali Khan, then-the prime minister of Pakistan also took part in this propaganda campaign

Political activities: Political activities were affected. It diminished. Organizational strength was weakened; number of members/activists decreased; and income of the party, contributions from the common people, diminished drastically. Mass organizations and trade unions went to oblivion or lost activity. Mass movements and class movements were harmed or thwarted. Many union activists were terminated from their jobs. Many activists were put behind bars. Many leaders and activists lost homes. Many union activists who were employed were tortured. Even, torture and killing were carried out within prisons. Many activists with progressive politics left the eastern part. Persistent and widespread anti-Communist Party propaganda and lies were carried out by the political parties and a section of media representing the exploiting interests, and the state machine. Liaquat Ali Khan, then-the prime minister of Pakistan also took part in this propaganda campaign. Assault by class enemies including the state machine were carried out. Communist Party’s isolation from people began. Labor, whatever was there in the part, was terrorized. An overwhelming atmosphere of sectarian/communal hatred was created; and it turned difficult to organize the public in the face of terror and adverse propaganda. The ruling politics organized a section of the workers with retrogressive ideas along sectarian line against rest of the workers trying to organize labor’s struggle. The part under the sway of retrogressive ideas broke meetings of/assaulted the progressive part of the labor. The Communist Party with its already dwindled strength was failing to organize public against sectarian riots despite repeated efforts in the urban and rural areas under its influence. The Communist Party was the target; and the party felt negative impact.

It was a class war against the exploited, the working classes. It was a class war by the exploiters, with imperialism at the helm

The full descriptions reveal the anti-people, anti-working class, and reactionary character of the sectarian politics that is associated with the partition/bifurcation.

The working classes, their politics and organizations, their solidarity/fraternity in other parts of the subcontinent had more or less similar experiences.

It was a class war against the exploited, the working classes. It was a class war by the exploiters, with imperialism at the helm.

Resistance: However, there were incidents of resistance, and those are examples of possibilities the working people could have done. Nitish Sengupta writes: “Even when communal violence was rampant in Calcutta and Noakhali, the Muslim and Hindu peasants of the Tebhaga movement [a movement by the share croppers] in predominantly Muslim Rangpur and Dinajpur were fighting […] and opposing Partition.”

Also in other areas in the eastern part of Bengal, Communist activists carried on publicity work in villages for months. They organized meetings in villages, and made people aware of the curse of communalism. The efforts kept the area free from communal riot.

The Communist Party organized committees to maintain peace in some areas; defying Section 144, Hindu and Moslem workers brought out peace processions in a town. They defied Section 144 to march in the processions, which decreased mutual mistrust between the two communities in the town to some extent. The student activists of the Communist Party in the Dhaka University organized a peace procession, which was joined by thousands of citizens, about 15,000, like a deluge, irrespective of religious identity, but the police obstructed the procession at a stage. However, they marched ahead, and within a day the situation in the town returned to normal.

The people’s political destiny was appropriated by a reactionary clique with its political power and the coercive power of state; and the people faced persecution, torture, deprivation

Armed struggle: There are instances of organizing people’s struggles including armed struggle in a number of parts of the eastern part of Bengal, which were joined by hundreds of thousands of peasants. But it was not possible to extend support to these movements from urban areas due to the prevailing atmosphere of communal violence. However, these movements saved a number of rural areas from fratricidal riot to much extent. Many branches of the Communist Party in the northern and eastern parts of East Bengal got strengthened as a result of these movements. In areas, the Party could encourage a significant part of a community to refrain from migrating to the western part of Bengal. But, at last, the dominating classes’ and a section of government machine’s ultra-communal activities prevailed, and an environment of fear spread among the Hindus. In Dhaka, many militant processions by laborers and students were organized. In areas in the eastern part, the common people opposed efforts to organize riots by the reactionary forces. As a result, riots could not be organized. In one area, the Communist Party’s volunteer force resisted rioters.

Thus, it’s found, in brief, the working people’s struggle subverted by a jab of the exploiting interests while the working people tried to resist the dagger-job.

A comparison

A comparison can be made.

Almost at the same time, peoples in two lands in the same continent – Asia – were waging their wars for liberation. One was in Vietnam, and the other was in China. Peoples in both of these lands were pushing away or throwing out imperialism. Vietnam threw away two imperialist powers, and the imperialist powers couldn’t play the trick of any sectarian divide that could push one part of people against another. China had the same trajectory – no division among the people in opposing imperialism, in attaining liberation.

Obviously, this subcontinent and those two lands were not the same in many terms that include historical development, state of economy and politics of that time, political power structure, people’s organizations, mobilization and force, classes – class composition, class alignment, development of classes, class power, etc.

Despite these differences, neither in Vietnam nor in China, no communal or fratricidal feud created obstacles to the people’s journey forward. Moreover, in Vietnam, the people continued with their fight to reunify their country that was politically, not along sectarian line, divided into two parts by the imperialists. In China, imperialism could do no such or of any other type of division.

Can this comparison be put as a question? Can this comparison, if it comes up as a question, help find out an answer to the failure in aborting exploiting interests’ trick of sectarian divide that pushes people into warring camps and chokes people’s journey towards a life without masters of exploitation?

Why the working people?

It may be questioned: Why this article focuses on the working people’s struggles?

The single question carries many answers:

Based on these arguments, today, the issue discussed in this article has focused on the working people.

While people are divided along sectarian line, people are robbed of awareness and organization, robbed of sense of solidarity and fraternity. Awareness and organization of people are people’s resources that they build up slowly, with much struggle and sacrifice. Organizations are much needed resources of people.

These resources were robbed by the masters in command of the situation as part of the class war it was conducting in this subcontinent, and the people’s political destiny was appropriated by a reactionary clique with its political power and the coercive power of state; and the people faced persecution, torture, deprivation. The exploiting classes, like a band of robbers, joined together to rob the people – snatched away people’s struggle for a dignified, democratic and prosperous life. [Concludes]

[This is a modified part of a lecture delivered on an occasion organized by the Vivekananda Chair, Mahatma Gandhi University, India, on April 27, 2023, and based on an essay, “Class War in East Bengal, 1946 and Communist Party”, published in the Autumn Number, 2015 of Frontier, Kolkata.]

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Courtesy: Counter Currents (Posted on 29/06/2023)

The post The Partition of the Sub-continent and the Bifurcation of Bengal (Part-V) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

By Farooque Chowdhury | Dhaka

The Part Told Least: Uncontrolled dominion

V P Menon, as he told about himself in The Transfer of Power in India, “In one capacity or other, from 1917 […] was continuously associated with the constitutional development in India. From 1942 till the transfer of power in August 1947 [he] was the Constitutional Adviser to the Governor-General.”

V P Menon cites an article by W. E. Gladstone in 1878. The article was published in the Patriot of the veteran Indian journalist, Kristo Das Pal. In the article Gladstone wrote:

“Here is tutelage unexampled in history. It embraces from one-fifth to one-sixth of the human race: the latest German reckonings of the population of the globe carrying it beyond fourteen hundred millions. Over this population and the vast territory it inhabits, we hold a dominion entirely uncontrolled, […] This dominion is de jure in the hands of a nation whose numbers as compared with those of its Indian subjects are one to seven, and whose seat is at the other end of the world; de facto, it is wielded by a handful of their agents, military and civil, who are not as one to three thousand of the peoples spread, as an ocean, in passive obedience around them [….] At home still less provision is made for the adequate discharge of a gigantic duty. It depends upon a Cabinet which dreads nothing so much as the mention of an Indian question at its meetings; on a minister who knows that the less his colleagues hear of his proceedings, the better they will be pleased; on a Council, which is not allowed to enter into his highest deliberations; and on a Parliament, supreme over them all, which cannot in its two Houses jointly muster one single score of persons, who have either a practical experience in the government of India or a tolerable knowledge of its people or its history [….] The truth as to India cannot too soon be understood. There are two policies, fundamentally different; and it is the wrong one that is now in favor. One of them treats India as a child treats a doll, and defends it against other children; the other places all its hopes for the permanence of our Indian rule in our good government of India. [….] [Let them feel that we are there to give more than we receive; that their interests are not traversed and frustrated by selfish aims of ours; that, if we are defending ourselves upon the line of the Hindoo Coosh, it is them and their interests that we are defending even more and far more than our own. Unless we can produce this conviction in the mind of India, in vain shall we lavish our thoughts and our resources upon a merely material defence [….]”

Gladstone’s statement tells a fact: A vast land was ruled for exploitation with an easy imperial trick! To the British imperialism, the vast land was a comfortable seat. However, the comfort was not permanent.

Many studies/estimates are available now that show the resources the colonial power robbed from this subcontinent

Imperialism follows the same trick today: Let the commoners of the land “feel that” imperialism is present “to give more than” imperialism receives; that the people’s “interests are not traversed and frustrated by selfish aims of” imperialism; and “it is” the people’s interests that imperialism is “defending even more and far more than” of imperialism.

In the next century, Churchill told another fact. Churchill in a speech on July 8, 1933 said: “India is vital to the well-being of Britain [….] If we add the loss of India […] then problems will arise […] incomparably more grave then any we have known. You will have a surplus population here which it may be beyond the Government to provide effectively.”

The colony’s – this subcontinent – importance to the Empire is well articulated by the imperialist politician.

Three years earlier than Churchill’s statement, Lord Rothermere said the same. According to a report by the Daily Mail on May 16, 1930, Lord Rothermere said: [M]any authorities estimate that the proportion of the vital trading, banking and shipping business of Britain directly dependent upon our connection with India is 20 per cent. […] India is the lynchpin of the British Empire. If we lose India, the Empire must collapse – first, economically, and then politically.”

The imperialist power had to give up such a land, which was lynchpin of the empire

These observations show importance of the subcontinent to the imperialist power. Many studies/estimates are available now that show the resources the colonial power robbed from this subcontinent. Those are not repeated here. The imperialist power had to give up such a land, which was lynchpin of the empire.

This subcontinent’s geostrategic importance to the colonial masters is also told by V P Menon. He writes:

“When, in 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps announced His Majesty’s Government’s policy, the opinion was widely expressed that the British were bent upon the division of the country; that they wanted to create a Middle Eastern sphere of influence, and in pursuance of that policy wished to bring about the creation of a separate Pakistan. This would accord with their traditional liking for Muslims, with their policy of protecting the Straits and the Suez Canal from Russian influence, and with their new but overwhelming interest in the oil of Iran, Iraq and Arabia.”

The imperial masters had to leave behind such a land – resourceful, and vital to its interest in terms of geostrategy and geoeconomy. So, the 1947-partition was an imperialist deal, not a fair handover of power. It was tricky, tricky to the extent that ensures its interest.

That fact is told by E W R Lumby in The Transfer of Power in India, 1945-7:  “[Those to whom Britain handed over power were members of the educated middle class. If she had not acted promptly, and if she had in consequence become involved in a war against the forces of nationalism, the outcome might well have been a rapid transition to the third phase. In other words, the victor in the struggle might have been neither of the ostensible protagonists, but the coalition of educated fanaticism and uneducated discontent which is comprehensively designated Communism. As it was, however, the new Governments of India and Pakistan were composed of men whose political philosophy had much in common with the liberal and social democracy of the West. British policy had therefore ensured that the leaders of the two new States should be men who would talk to her in her own political language; but who, on the other hand, would be able to meet the formidable challenge of Communism in Asia in a way in which she herself could never had done.”

So, it’s found the motive behind the transfer of power – a threat of “communism”, actually communism was not the issue, as in then-subcontinent, there was no possibility of communism. The issue was a society free from exploitation, which the British historian has expressed as “communism”, as he used the terms “educated fanaticism” and “uneducated discontent”, which mean radical political force, or a class force standing for equality and equity. [To be continued]

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Courtesy: Counter Currents (Published on June 26, 2023)

The post The Partition of the Sub-continent and the Bifurcation of Bengal (Part-II) first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Nazarul Islam

The Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1946 created two separate, independent and sovereign states of Pakistan and India. Prior to this, the subcontinent existed as British India, ruled by the Queen of England. This was a magical land of local Maharajas, Princely States, and dominions which owed loyalty to the Crown. The real India did not exist before independence in 1947; today it appears that everything that had happened in the region involved another, far distant, country.

I am inclined to think of two reasons that could be attributed for this. Firstly, the subcontinent was overshadowed by a form of Islam that eventually exported itself to Pakistan and Bangladesh. And secondly, it was part of the Raj, and thus tainted by Britain. It is politically unbecoming, then, to equate a sense of Indian-hood with what Marxist historians in the West and Hindu nationalists in India tell us was India’s slave status.

The subcontinent was overshadowed by a form of Islam that eventually exported itself to Pakistan and Bangladesh

I have encountered this view repeatedly. And not just in India; to be fair, it is equally rampant in the UK, especially in parts of academia. But it is hardly logical. In fact, it is deeply unhelpful.

The problem is that the post-colonial interpretation makes slaves of Indians, regardless of religion or beliefs. It argues that they had no personal control of their destiny because their government was in the hands of others. When the British declared war, India became an unwilling participant. This argument, simply stated, is that the colonial government, together with its systems, structures, cultures and attitudes, were deeply and inherently exploitative, such that it cannot properly be argued that colonial intentions were anything other than unfair and abusive.

In this view, Indian men fought and strived against their will, even though they weren’t fully aware of it, as cultural coercion blinded them to the reality that they were fighting a British war against Britain’s enemies. The absurdity of this argument suggests, to give but one example, that the efforts of Claude Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, to raise the pay of Indian Commissioned Officers to the levels of their British colleagues in 1943 and 1944 were for the purpose of buying their loyalty rather than of giving them equality with their peers.

Millions of men became mercenaries of the British, subject to intense and relentless propaganda which bound their minds and wills

It is also seriously suggested in some quarters that the offer of money likewise persuaded millions of otherwise impoverished Indians to sign up for war work during the industrial expansion of India. According to this narrative, illiterate peasants knew no better than to take the financial bribes offered in exchange for their labor. It is argued that others were forced by convention and the belief that family and personal honor depended on a military career.

Millions of men thus became mercenaries of the British, subject to intense and relentless propaganda which bound their minds and wills in an unprecedented and highly successful, coercive, manipulation.

Rather than being taken as fact, these assertions must be recognized for what they are: exaggerations and political point-scoring, with the purpose of proving that the Raj was evil and that the Indians who willingly fought against fascism and totalitarianism weren’t doing so for India, but because they were forced against their conscious will to do so.

It needn’t matter that there is no evidence that 2.5 million men joined the Indian Army between 1939-45 as the result of what one leading historian described as a “propaganda offensive” by the British government which “secured the partial allegiance or at least acquiescence of part of the population”.

This argument fails to explain why the men thus recruited were prepared to die for this compulsion, and why Indian soldiers went on to win 22 of the 34 Victoria and George Crosses awarded, for example, during the Burma Campaign.

Instead, it seems rational to conclude that most Indians who joined the armed forces did so because they had weighed up the options and assessed the nature of the sacrifice they were willing to make for the sake of the government in India, regardless of its political color. In this sense, their decision was made on the basis of a conception of India much larger than the framework of politics as it existed within Indian polity at the time.

Even before 1947, the threat to their conception of what India was and could be therefore far outweighed the rights and wrongs in their minds of colonialism, if the issue or argument ever surfaced at all.

The truth is that reality trumped ideology in the face of the imminent and existential danger to the Indian state by the Japanese. Most Indians accepted that the Raj was, rightly or wrongly, or for the time being, the legally constituted Government of India. Like all governments, it had supporters and opponents. Few who opposed it on nationalistic or self-governance grounds questioned its legitimacy, as that would have invalidated their own claim to be its successor in due course. Likewise, the Indian Army was India’s army, not Britain’s.

As Professor Roger Beaumont has observed, “it is most interesting to weigh the charges that the Raj built its army in India as an oppressive instrument against what one sees in how lovingly and energetically the Indians have retained the model”.

Rather, the evidence suggests that the theory of “prosaic oppression” and its common language of “unconscious bias and systemic structures of power” is a fabricated political construct that does not relate to everyday human experience in colonial India. The facts are being squeezed to fit within a fixed and unbending theoretical, political and ideological model.

It was true that India did not have political independence, but in every other sense the freedom to make social, economic and political choices within this environment cannot be said to have been constrained by such oppression that human agency was so deviously manipulated to suit ruling British interests.

Young Indian men and young Britons both joined the Indian Army for the same purpose in times of peace; for adventure, employment, the lure of military glory, the age-old attraction of the sword.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, therefore, have every right to recover the history of the pre-1947 period, for it was then that the foundations of modern India were established

Indians were no more victims of their polity than were Britons, both of whom were, of course, victims of the fascist militarism that dragged the world into a second great slaughter of world war. The tyranny to which some refer, if it relates to anything, can only do so to the prosaic constraints of ordinary civic society — such as obeying the law, as can be seen during the Quit India protests in 1942 — rather than that of an unbending and devious oppression.

Looking back at the imperial period through the lens of victimhood is therefore deeply problematic both historically and philosophically. It ensures that we never see the 350 million Indians of the time as they saw themselves, collectively or individually: as a people with acute political agency (as evidenced by the burgeoning nationalist movement), on a journey to self-rule.

Likewise, it treats every Briton in India at the time, every level of power exercised and every action undertaken in response to a decision by London or Delhi, as oppressive. It also forgets that agency in imperial power relationships is never one-sided; for instance, it ignores the importance of Indian political, social and economic agency in the Twenties and Thirties (combined with Japan’s pricking of the imperial bubble) in enabling India to achieve independence in 1947.

The Japanese in Assam and Manipur in 1944 and in Burma in 1945 were defeated by an Army that was 87% Indian

Our sense today of the size of the nationalist protest against colonial rule has almost certainly exaggerated its impact on ordinary people. This is not to underestimate its ultimate importance, rather the influence it had on the behavior of men considering joining the armed forces, and the impact it had on those who had already enlisted. History remembers the noisy minority, whose views tend to be over-represented in any analysis of the past, while generally neglecting those without a voice.

Fortunately, nationalism and respect for the Government’s legitimate role in defending India (even a colonial one) were not mutually exclusive in 1942, or the ranks of the Armed Forces might have remained empty, and India’s door opened for the Japanese to march in. Perhaps it is precisely because the ranks of the army were so large between 1942 and 1945 that so much effort is generated today in post-colonial studies in explaining away why these men joined in such numbers and with such alacrity.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, therefore, have every right to recover the history of the pre-1947 period, for it was then that the foundations of modern India were established. The Japanese in Assam and Manipur in 1944 and in Burma in 1945 were defeated by an Army that was 87% Indian. Victory in Asia could never have taken place without Indians coming forward in large numbers, and of their own volition, to serve their country.

And that is surely something in which India and Pakistan and Bangladesh today, can take great pride.

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The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his articles.

[The views expressed by the author are his personal and do not reflect the editorial policy of Sindh Courier] 

The post Visiting the Pre-partition realms of our subcontinent first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Hindi

Jhootha Sach (Two Volumes) by Yashpal: It is novel of epic dimensions because it is a work of literature and political sociology rolled into one. By creating a complex web of characters, Yashpal, who was a close comrade of Bhagat Singh and later turned into a Marxist, has brought out in sharp relief what went wrong that made the Partition happen and depicts the political generation that set in in the post-Partition India.

Like Yashpal, Bhisham Sahni too was a Punjabi who was uprooted from his comfortable existence in Rawalpindi and had experienced the horrors of Partition first hand. Little wonder that the Bhiwandi riots of 1973 deeply affected him and he was inspired to write this novel which is a subtle, sensitive and moving account of the Partition.

Aadha Gaanv by Rahi Masoom Raza: In contrast to most other Partition novels, Aadhaa Gaanv was written by Rahi Masoom Raza, a Muslim who deeply felt his rootedness in his village in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district and did not have to migrate but who was a helpless witness to the way Pakistani ideology easily gripped the youth even in a remote village.

Gujarat Pakistan Se Gujarat Hindustan by Krishna Sobti: Krishna Sobti published this novel in 2017 when she was in her early 90s. This novel deals, in a creative manner, with her experiences of getting uprooted from Gujarat in West Pakistan, arriving in Delhi as a “refugee”, and taking up an assignment as a governess in the ruling family of the erstwhile princely state of Sirohi in Gujarat in India.

Punjabi

Nanak Singh: Nanak Singh is really the benign banyan in the world of Punjabi letters. Born in 1897 in Chak Hameed, Peshawar, in the present-day Pakistan, he lived through the cataclysmic event of Partition. Inspired by the Singh Sabha movement in his initial years and later by Munshi Prem Chand and the Progressives, he exhibits a developed humanist streak in his writings. His novels Khun de Sohile (1949) (Hymns in Blood) and Agg di Khed (1948) (The Game of Fire) are replete with anguish around the hitherto unimagined violence that Punjab witnessed during Partition.

Kartar Singh Duggal: Nahun te Maas (Nails and Flesh) 1950 delineates the composite communities that flourished in towns and villages before Partition and how they were forced to separate along artificially created boundaries. Partition constitutes a rupture in the land of Punjab that had been known for its syncretic spirit and was a nursery of Sikhism and Sufism. Man Pardesi (Heart is a Traveler) and Ab Na Baso Eh Gaon (No More Will I Live in This Village) reveal the many ruptures in the private lives of people who lived in harmony before Partition.

Surinder Singh Narula: Din Duniya depicts the commercial, social and cultural life of the city of Lahore on the eve of Partition and what transpires as a consequence of the division. Dil Dariya (Ocean of Heart), situated in Delhi, similarly explores Gandhian socialism as a possible solution to the extreme violence unleashed on the streets during Partition.

Amrita Pritam: In Pinjar (1950), Pritam presents a woman-centric view of Partition. It highlights the plight of a woman who is kidnapped and later, when she is able to reunite with her family with much struggle, is ironically rejected by them because of the ‘dishonor she has brought to the family’.

Sohan Singh Sital: Sital is connected to the dhadi style of devotional singing, apart from being one of the veteran voices in the world of letters. Tutan Wala Khoo, literally The Well Amidst Mulberry Trees, set in Kasur, is a story of a village where the syncretic bonds between Hindu-Muslim communities are real and thriving, and Partition causes a disruption in their everyday harmonious coexistence.

Niranjan Singh Tasneem: Jadon Saver Hoi is set in the tumultuous decades of the 1940s and explores the complexities of love across communities in a deeply divisive time.

English

Train to Pakistan, Khushwant Singh: Set in the fictional border town of Mano Manjra, in which people have lived together peacefully for ages until rumours of Partition, and then the actual event of Partition itself, tears the community apart.

Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie: The novel famously starts with its narrator being born at the stroke of the midnight hour, and thus “handcuffed to history” – so it’s not strictly speaking a “Partition novel”. But it does circle back to his grandparents and parents in pre-Independent India, touching upon the effects of Partition and the riots that followed. One character, who rails against Partition, points to the half-an-hour time difference between the new nations: “Those Leaguers plan to abscond with a whole thirty minutes!”

The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh: Set in London, Dhaka and Kolkata, and not primarily about Partition per se, but the event casts a long shadow in the remembrances of a fractured family and their friends.

Clear Light of Day, Anita Desai: Set in Old Delhi, ranging between the past (the time of Partition) and the present, covering fissures and misunderstandings in the lives of a family over the years. Supposed to be at least partly autobiographical.

Ice Candy Man, Bapsi Sidhwa: Set in Lahore during the mid-1940s onwards, and thus directly dealing with the events of Partition, through the prism of the coming of age of a young Parsi girl.

Sunlight on a Broken Column, Attia Hossain: Again semi-autobiographical, and with actual Partition not making up a bulk of the narrative, but about a woman finding her voice and agency in the years leading up to 1947 and then after. This was a part of the 70 titles of The Big Jubilee Read chosen to commemorate the reign of Queen Elizabeth earlier this year.

Apart from the above five, some others that come to mind are: Looking Through Glass, Mukul Kesavan; What the Body Remembers, Shauna Singh Baldwin; A Bend in the Ganges, Manohar Malgonkar; and Difficult Daughter, Manju Kapoor.

Urdu

Aag Ka Darya by Qurratulain Hyder: This historical novel by the Sahitya Akademi Award winning writer is one of the most important Urdu novels covering partition of the Indian subcontinent. The author not only details the trauma of the partition but also provides a detailed context of it. Hyder deals with the socio-cultural history of the subcontinent, spanning over two thousand years and ending with the partition and its impact. Originally published in 1959, in English it is available as River of Fire.

Aangan by Khadija Mastoor: Like Aag ka Darya, it is also a historical, set in 1940s. However, it is very different from most of the ‘Partition literature’. According to literary critic Asif Farrukhi, “Aangan remains low-key, perhaps deliberately so, focusing on girls and women and, of course, men as well, chronicling the disturbances and havoc created in their lives by political events.” Originally published in 1962, in English it is available as The Women’s Courtyard.

Ghaddaar by Krishan Chander: Set in August-September 1947, this is one of the lesser known but a very significant novels detailing the partition. Literary critic Rakhshanda Jalil who translated it in English in 2017 says it is certainly the most compact yet moving piece of writing in his oeuvre. Originally published in 1962, in English it is available as Traitor.

Udaas Naslein by Abdullah Hussein: It is considered one of the best novels in written Urdu, which also touches upon the theme of partition. It is known for its realistic portrayal of modern and contemporary sensitivity, apart from wonderfully capturing the tragedy of rural Punjab.

Social scientist-translator Raza Naim, who has written the introduction to the reissued English edition (2016) of the novel, says it “may be read on three levels”.

Apart from the above novels, there are dozens of short stories which deal with the tragedy of partition. Several writers such as Saadat Hasan Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ismat Chughtai, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, Intizar Hussain, Hayataullah Ansari, Qurratulain Hyder and others have written about it. Some of the most striking short stories about partition and its fall out are by Manto. He has extensively written about it. His short stories such as Thanda Gosht, Toba Tek Singh, Khol Do, Yazeed, Anjaam Bakhair, Khuda Ki Qasam, Harnaam Kaur are considered as must read as far as partition literature is considered. In Intizar Hussain’s writings also, one finds pain of the partition.

Bengali

Agunpakhi (The Firebird) by Hasan Azizul Huq, translated in English by Arunava Sinha

Dayamoyeer Katha (A Life Long Ago) by Sunanda Sikdar, translated to English by Anchita Ghatak

The two texts of Hasan Azizul Huq and Sunanda Sikdar which were published almost back to back, the first in 2006 and the other in 2008 trace the history of Partition from the period before 1947 to what happened after. It maps the dislocation, relocation, acculturation and adjustments of women who suddenly found themselves caught up in the political-social-economic upheaval that changed relationships of family, caste, class and gender.

In Agunpakhi, the nameless woman suddenly finds herself in a vortex of violence and the clamour surrounding it – Lorke Lenge Pakistan. Her response is “what will you do with it once you win it? Do you even know where Pakistan will be?” She discovers that after marriage, “Once I joined the drudgery, there was to be no end to it. If they said right, I had to go right. If they said left, I had to go left. …Am I a person or a person’s shadow? And even then, is that my own shadow?”

In Dayamoyeer Katha, the dislocation, relocation, acculturation and adjustment is an elegy of movement from Dighpait, a village in East Bengal of “ripuchis” (refugees) Muslim families that crossed into the newly created East Pakistan and the Hindu families that left for West Bengal. Dayamoyee’s transformation begins with her renaming as Sunanda. When she relocates to the metropolis as part of the flood of refugees, she says “For many years, I felt compelled to deny the profound truth of my life. Instead I rushed to become a part of the city and its life, so that people around me thought I was normal and comfortable. In truth, it wasn’t easy.”

Khwabnama (Saga of Dreams) by Akhtaruzzaman Elias

Elias has created an extraordinary tale of magical realism, blending memory with reality, a legend with history and the struggle of marginalised people with the stories of their ancestors. It is a deeply political novel, presenting a series of vignettes from undivided Bengal/India of the 1940s to Partition, Independence and after. While most novels depend upon the development and struggles of individuals to tell their stories, Khwabnama relies on the shared experience of people to tell a story about Partition.

The plot is woven around the Tebhaga peasant rebellion, in which sharecroppers demanded a larger share of the farm produce. Against this background, Elias unfolds the story of the fisherman-farmer Tamiz, whose life is one of crushing poverty, hunger and injustice. He embodies all that is painfully real among the underprivileged. Running through this grimness is a thin thread of the magical. The ghosts of a long-dead sepoy called Munshi and a wandering fakir called Cherag Ali flit in and out of the plot, pulling readers into mystical spaces where fish turn to sheep, waterbodies form and uniform whimsically, and music takes unlikely shapes.

Epaar Ganga Opaar Ganga by Jyotirmoyee Devi

This is a complex history of dislocation and relocation, of rupture that is best described. “Thus, in the Hindu city of Calcutta, Hindu Sutara who was first displaced and then saved by Muslims experiences another form of exile, rupture and violence. This is not a direct stab-wound from which the blood gushes out but a kind of internal haemorrhage leaving the person lonely and agonized. Compared to this state, her refuge in Tamijkaka’s house was better because there she was at least a part of a web of human ties. She was not (to quote the author): “A nuisance, a Pakistani refugee-nuisance.” Sutara loses her parents in the violence of Partition in Noakahli district and is rescued by a Muslim family, who help her recover and then help her join the rest of her family in Kolkata. There she is an outcast, a woman defiled by her association with her Muslim rescuers.

Puraba Paschim (East West) by Sunil Gangopadhyay

This is about the middle class, principally Hindu, reaction to Partition, across time and boundaries. The river Padma is a divider and a connector between the East and the West and symbolizes the flow of events and time. The notion of “home,” before and after Partition is a powerful signifier of dislocation, relocation, dispossession and impoverishment. The novel spans the years preceding Partition to 1971, when Bengalis in East Pakistan liberated themselves from the dominance of West Pakistan, to establish Bangladesh as a separate State where the inhabitants could express their pride in their identity, culture and language.

Sindhi books

Pakhiara Valarakhan Vichriyaa (Birds Separated From Their Flock) by Gobind Malhi

This 1953 book written by Gobind Malhi fresh from his own Partition experience, has hero Sanwal refusing to leave Sindh even when all his family and friends do. The book describes the situation of Partition vividly, and through Sanwal’s dogged determination not to succumb to a political categorization of religion, the author conveys the Sindhi Sufi ethos which puts humanity above all. Translated into English as The Anguish of Separation by Sindhishaan and published by Shobha Chandnani in 2014.

Yerwada jailajyu kahaaniyoon by Rita Shahani

Written in 1999, Shahani drew on the bedtime stories her husband Vishnu would tell their children about his life as a freedom fighter. This book uses different voices with different perspectives to present an all-round view of the Indian freedom struggle, the RSS, the bitterness at the loss of Sindh – on 15 August 1947, Vishnu ripped up the flag in anguish – and some changes that took place after Independence. Translated into English as Tales from Yerwada Jail by Saaz Aggarwal with the author in 2014.

One of the most prolific, original and vibrant Sindhi writers of recent times, a feminist role model, was Popati Hiranandani. Her autobiography and selected stories, The Pages of My Life, was translated from Sindhi by Jyoti Panjwani in 2010. Popati writes about her life in Hyderabad as a young girl, and her mother’s struggles to take care of the family after her father died. She describes the escape from violence and the traumatic resettlement, followed by her life as a writer in independent India. The stories are a fictionalised extension of the autobiography and their main themes are gender, Partition and social injustice.

Sindhi novels about Partition are few, but there was a huge outpouring of short stories and poetry in the anguished aftermath of separation, loss and struggle. Unbordered Memories, a collection of short stories, was translated by Rita Kothari in 2009. Freedom and Fissures, an anthology of Sindhi Partition poetry was translated by Anju Makhija and Menka Shivdasani with the poet Arjan ‘Shad’ Mirchandani in 1998.

Hem’s father is the mukhi of Tharushah. Away at Shantiniketan when Partition takes place, he becomes a successful and well-paid journalist in independent India. However, the feeling of being lost and not fitting in persists. This book is about his anguish, his conviction that he needs Sindh as much as Sindh needs him. He wanders through Kachchh, crosses the salt desert towards the border, and is never seen again. Tarandara Badal (clouds transgress borders) was written in the late 1990s by Krishin Khatwani, himself a student at Shantiniketan when Partition took place.

______________________

Contributions by Kuldeep Kumar, Sakoon Singh, Mahtab Alam, Sanjay Sipahimalani, Shikha Mukherjee and Saaz Agarwal.

Saaz Aggarwal is an independent researcher, writer and artist based in Pune, India. Her body of writing includes biographies, translations, critical reviews and humor columns. Her books are in university libraries around the world, and much of her research contribution in the field of Sindh studies is easily accessible online. Her 2012 Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland is an acknowledged classic. With an MSc from Mumbai University in 1982, Saaz taught undergraduate Mathematics at Ruparel College, Mumbai, for three years. She was appointed features editor at Times of India, Mumbai, in 1989.

Courtesy: Saaz Aggarwal/ The Wire

The post The Pain of Partition, as Seen in the Literature of Many Languages first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Benita Fernando

Lalchand Nalandas sailed to Bhaucha Dhakka, as Ferry Wharf is called, in 1947 as his family escaped the violent effects of the Partition. Nalandas was six then, and barely remembers the ship they arrived in to safer havens in Bombay, but vividly recalls the many sweet shops that his family owned and the temple dedicated to Sitladevi near their home in Karachi, the capital of the province of Sindh. Nalandas runs a wedding card printing business from a dimly-lit room in the Old Barracks of Chembur Camp, where he has been living for 68 years. He rarely thinks about Karachi, where home once was. “What will we get by thinking about it?” he says, his rickety voice hardly betraying any nostalgia or longing. Speaking in Sindhi, his wife warns him that there is much work to be done and he better get on with his day.

At a posh high-rise in the annex of Tata Institute of Social Sciences’ campus in Deonar, lives Roshanlal Sabharwal, 84, another former Karachi boy. He landed on the shores of Okha, Gujarat, well before the Partition. His father, an iron and steel broker named Bhagwandas, who was doing good business across Bombay and Karachi, had heard whispers of the Partition and thought it was best to make an early exit from what is now Pakistan. First settling down in Kurla, the Sabharwals now live in Chembur, where there are more Punjabi families like theirs from Sindh. “We never saw any tough times in Mumbai and life has been good to us,” says Sabharwal.

Nalandas’ and Roshanlal’s lives are worlds apart but they share the common story of a homeland left behind in the wake of what turned out to be a life-altering and bloody phase in the subcontinent’s history. Their parents, spouses and children may have traversed different parts of India, but they are united in one thing – it was Karachi then, and it’s Mumbai – specifically, Chembur – now.

Several stories similar to theirs have made it into Echoes of Sindh, an audio archive that is looking at the Partition story as it unfolded right here in Chembur. The project was initiated in 2016 by four architecture students who were in the third year of their undergrad course at the School of Environment and Architecture (SEA) in Borivli. From August 4 to 6, 2017, this audio archive was played at Remembering Partition: Museum of Memories, hosted by Godrej India Culture Lab at their Vikhroli base to mark the 70th year of Independent India.

Scouting for Sindh

Vibhavari Sarangan, Dannah DeSouza, Foram Desai and Astrid Fernandes, the team that has made Echoes of Sindh, trudged around Chembur Camp last year as part of their college project on migration and displacement in the city. They were mentored by faculty members Rupali Gupte (also a co-founder of SEA) and Anuj Daga. “Initially, we wanted to collect souvenirs from the refugees to tell the story of the Partition. However, the families in the camp didn’t have any as they had left their homes in a hurry. We realised that all they had were their voices. What could be a better way to showcase their stories?” says Sarangan, when we meet them at SEA.

At Sindhi Camp – as the area is known more after the region the refugees originated from and less after a particular community, – the team interviewed residents, many of whom were either born post-Partition or were too young to remember it. “They said that they didn’t know their own history and that they couldn’t understand our questions. Their parents hadn’t shared their memories with them,” says Desai. Eventually, the team turned to the older lot, few and far between, spread across the barracks, the cooperative housing societies that came in the 1950s, and the more posh Sindhi Society. “It was a history of forgetting rather than remembering,” says Sarangan.

The resulting 15-minute-long audio clip condenses conversations to some choice statements that give an overall picture of the refugees. How they have been Mumbaikars for 70 years now. How they left their havelis and their belongings to live in the barracks. How Sindh is hardly missed.

Finding refuge

Walking around Chembur Camp, especially in a muck-ridden monsoon, proves to be an arduous task. On one side of the dividing Kolwada Borla Road are the barracks, old and new, with addresses on shops that proudly wear misspellings of the word ‘barrack’ (‘barack’ and ‘barak’ are routine). These hold little memory of their original mid-20th century look; residents have built over and refurbished the interiors for housing that is deceptively decrepit on the outside but highly modernised inside. Temples dedicated to Jhulelal, the Sindhi Hindu god, are tucked in between shops. There is one that is as old as 1952, built soon after Independence, where Jhulelal shares altar space ungrudgingly with other major Hindu gods. “The Sindh refugees blended well with society here,” observes Sarangan, drawing an allusion to the refugee crisis and xenophobia of recent times.

As much as they sought refuge on new shores, including Ulhasnagar and Thane in the city, the Sindh refugees also broke new ground in Chembur. Atul Chemburkar, 78, a noted architect based out of the suburb that lends itself to his surname, says that the occupation of the refugees in this part of town accelerated its growth. In an orderly fashion, he first charts out the hierarchical refugee accommodation that the Indian government provided the Sindhis, Punjabis and Sikhs who arrived here during Partition. Sindhi Camp, a composite of barracks originally meant for the military, housed the working class. These were 100×40 feet structures that housed nearly 40 families each. Privacy was next to non-existent.

The white-collared refu-gees and the more affluent were accommodated in Collectors’ Colony and Sindhi Society respectively. “Two collectors, in Lahore and Bombay, decided that the refugees would be compensated for their loss with a piece of land here,” says Chemburkar.

Chemburkar recalls the cultural milieu of Chembur change post-Independence. “It was only when the refugees came here did we even know what a salwar-kameez or a sleeveless blouse, which invited much criticism, were. Until then, young girls had only worn sarees or the traditional skirt and blouse,” he laughs. The Sindh culture of eating out also resulted in the spurt of eateries in and around Camp. If the Chembur natives loved their usal pav and bhajiya, the Sindhis brought their dal pakwan and chole bhature. Chembur was transforming, and fast. “The business attitude of the Sindh refugees means that you will never see an unemployed person or a beggar among them,” he says.

Again, as part of their course, the SEA student team followed up their audio archive with a study of the space and the manner in which communities and architecture interact with each other. “Chembur Camp, while congested, is nothing like other refugee camps around the world today. Its architecture is refugee-ish – grid-like and dense – but they are fitted with modern amenities. This is a thriving locality where there are residents and businesses,” says Fernandes.

The audio archive by the SEA students thus pays tribute to this very resourcefulness and the entrepreneurial traits of the refugees. “They turned land in the suburbs meant as a refuge area into prime real estate, through educational institutions and hospitals,” says Sarangan.

A people’s history

Echoes of Sindh was earlier showcased as part of the Students’ Biennale at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016. It conveyed that as the lines of the Partition were drawn, some crossed over Chembur. It was time for this suburb to speak up in the Partition story.

It also showed that not every refugee dreams of a homeland or goes through a sense of loss. Like many in the barracks, they move on and life goes on, sometimes for the better. Those who felt the pain of displacement might not be alive anymore, notes the SEA team.

“History is usually political and not from the peoples point of view. It also tends to see things in binaries, as negative and positive. But as people’s history – these stories, what they did and how they lived – is equally important,” says Sarangan.

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Courtesy: Mid-Day

The post Sindhi Colony of Chembur records its partition memory first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Introduction by Rita Kothari

Amar Jaleel, one of Pakistan’s most respected and controversial writers, writes in Sindhi – an official language in both India and Pakistan. He is technically a Muslim. However, his personal creed, spiritual outlook and politics recognize no borders of religion, nation and tradition. A follower of the 17th-century Sufi saint Sachal Sarmast, Jaleel draws radical courage from Sufism and fearlessly critiques any abuse of human dignity in the name of religion and national borders. He mocks the absurdity of containing subcontinental identities within the confines of nations and of equating nations with religions.

He wrote his most controversial story, Sard Lash Jo Safar (The Journey of Cold Corpses), in the face of unrelenting censorship in the Pakistan of Zia ul-Haq. In the story, Jaleel takes us to Kandhkot, a town in interior Sindh, where Hindu families live in a colony called Nanak Mohalla. We are then taken to the house of Gopal, technically a Hindu (his Hinduism as incidental as Jaleel’s Islam). While Gopal is busy reading a Sindhi translation of the Quran, a bunch of religious fanatics are raping his sister Savitri. Unlike most Hindus of Sindh, Gopal had chosen not to leave Pakistan to go to India. Perceiving himself to be an integral part of Sindh, he made his family stay back in the new state of Pakistan. His troubles started not in the 1940s, but three decades later, when religious fanaticism flared up with state support. The story shows how Gopal, an ordinary man from a village, had a sophisticated and unbiased understanding of religion. The rest of the story is much too gruesome and violent to be narrated here. Not surprisingly, the story was banned in Pakistan. In India it remains unknown beyond a tiny circle of Sindhi writers. To my knowledge, this is the only story in the Sindhi language that explicitly addresses Islamic violence against Hindus and, contrary to our expectations, it is not situated during Partition but after, and written not by a Hindu who suffered, but by a member of the majority community in Pakistan who empathized with the suffering.

Does that mean that the Sindhi community did not face violence? Or did not perhaps fulfil the expectations of ‘violence’ of the kind that characterized Partition stories? Both questions need to be answered. The Hindu minority of Sindh migrated to India during Partition and also the subsequent years, amidst immense fear and insecurity. When Punjab was caught in a maelstrom of hatred and hair-raising violence; the Hindus of Sindh were, at best, wary. Unlike the Partition experiences of Punjab or Bihar or, to a lesser extent, Bengal, the case of Sindh represents an exception because violence was not constitutive of the Sindhi experience of Partition. There were remarkably few episodes of physical violence in Sindh. Cases of robbery, hooliganism, and distress sales of property were far more common than bloodshed. Three months after Partition, when Acharya Kripalani (president, Indian National Congress) visited Sindh, he noted that, “There was only a slight exodus of the Hindus and Sikhs from Sindh. It did not suffer from any virulent fanaticism. To whatever faith the Sindhis belonged, they were powerfully influenced by Sufi and Vedantic thoughts. This made for tolerance.” Given today’s context and cynicism, this may seem archaic if not untrue. Frontier regions, and the two that I study – Kutch and Sindh – do diffuse some continuities and strait jacket definitions. Sindh was “a transition zone between ‘India proper’ and the vast region which was often called Khorrassan, in which were included Afghanistan, Baluchistan and southeastern Iran” – Sindh had been only intermittently included in the great Indian empires.

Until the British annexed Sindh in 1843, it remained relatively peripheral from the main centers of power in India. Sindh’s geographical location as a frontier province and its relative isolation from the pan-Indian empires shaped its unique character as a land of immigrants, typified by ebbs and flows of civilization, one that paved the way for eclectic and non-textualized religious practices. The story below (Mohammad Gadiyavaalo) by Ram Panjwani captures the fear, the suspicions, the possibility as well as the absence of violence. The elite Hindu, called Deewan by the Muslims of Sindh, is the one visiting the Karachi club and waiting for his car to pick him up. Mohammed is miskin, a poor man. His innocuous question inspires suspicion, although the episode is one in a series of socio-economic transactions that characterized the Hindu-Muslim relationships. The largest sacrifice made at the altar of Partition was trust; and the subcontinent continues to feel the aftermath of that loss. What restores the narrator’s faith in this story is the shared stories and music; the verses of Shah Abdul Latif that has contributed to the Sindh story of Partition.

In other stories of the same collection Unbordered Memories and also my larger study The Burden of Refuge, we see that some of the most disturbing accounts from the lives of the Sindhi Hindus stem from their life in post-independence India, not Sindh at the time of partition. The alienation, lack of acceptance, a rupture of history and culture in the lives of those who had lost territory as well characterizes the nature of violence among Sindhis. It is not physical, that’s all.

***

An extract from Muhammad, the Coach Driver, a short story written by Ram Panjwani, edited and translated by Rita Kothari

Partition was effected – the migrations had begun. I was still in Karachi. It was 6 January 1948. At 11 in the morning I was returning home from college. After crossing Burns Road, I came to Artillery Road. A coach came up to me. I looked up to see Muhammad’s face. He addressed me gravely, ‘Come on in. Why are you walking today?’

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, surprised.

‘You don’t know, deewan, death is dancing on the streets. There’s daylight robbery and stabbing right next to your house.’

I got into the coach, and on the way I saw the police trying to disperse crowds. Such drastic things were happening in Karachi and I had been so ignorant!

When I reached home, Muhammad said to me, ‘The military forces are arriving. Don’t come out of the house. If they impose martial law and curfew, I’ll come and stay with you. I will be your guard.’

Curfew was imposed. For a day or two, the demons of death walked through the streets. I did not need Muhammad at that time because a driver named Sukhi lived with us and he continued to reassure me. Meanwhile, the military took charge of the situation, terror subsided, and Hindu migration intensified. Those who had been determined to live in Sindh, under any circumstance, were also now desperate to leave.

Every morning, Muhammad would visit me. Willingly, he took me wherever I wanted to go. Once, while I was in his coach, he asked me, ‘Deewan, will you be leaving too?’

‘What do you desire?’ I asked.

‘You would have to go, deewan. Outsiders have come. Their motives are not good.’

‘Whatever He wishes me to do,’ I said.
‘Deewan, do let me know once you decide to leave.’ ‘You want to come to Hindustan with me!’ I joked.

‘If someone, as loving as you, is not valued here how would a poor man like me be valued there? I will not come to India, but I will certainly come up to the border to see you off! Will you go by plane or ship?’

Thinking of my belongings, I replied, ‘By ship.’

‘Use this poor man’s coach to go up to Kiamari docks. I’ll feel reassured if I see you off myself.’

The day of departure did arrive. Muhammad brought me to Kiamari. He took down the belongings from the coach, and offering a salaam, he said, ‘May grace follow your footsteps – May Allah give you a long life.’

I was carrying a sandalwood walking stick with me. I offered it to him, ‘Keep this as my parting gift, its fragrance will keep my memory alive for you.’

Shutting his eyes, he inhaled the fragrance, and said, ‘I’ll never forget you. But, deewan, I have a request to make.’

‘Yes, Muhammad,’ I said.

‘When you reach India and recall the atrocities committed by Muslims, do please remember this poor Muhammad. Deewan, all human beings are not alike. All Muslims are not bad.’

I gathered my poor Muhammad into my arms, ‘My brother Muhammad, you are such a good human being – May Allah keep you safe and happy.’

A full-grown male was sobbing like a child. I could not control myself either.

There were also other friends at the port. I bade farewell to all of them and boarded the ship. The docks were swarming with people, but my eyes were fixed on Muhammad, the poor coach-driver. His face, and his voice, ‘Deewan, all Muslims are not bad,’ reverberated in my ears.

The ship set off. My friends who had come to see me off had left. But Muhammad continued to stand at the port. I waved a kerchief in his direction, while he raised the stick and waved. I heard an inner voice.

Tum zapt ki duniya meri barbad naa karna Main yaad bhi aaun to mujhe yaad na karna Raton ki kabhi tum meri nindiyan na urana Aankhon se kabhi tum mere aansu na churana Bhule se kabhi tum mere sapnon mein na aana Barbad hun barbad ko barbad naa karna

Main yaad bhi aaun to mujhe yaad na karna

Try not to disrupt my little world
Try not to remember me, even when you remember me Try not to ruin my sleep at night
Try not to take away tears from my eyes
Try not to enter into my dreams
Try not to ruin me, for I am ruined already
Try not to remember me, even when you remember me.

Fifteen years have gone by. I miss Sindh, I miss my companions, but most of all I miss poor, humble Muhammad. Surprisingly, I don’t miss my Hindu friends, but the memory of this humble and selfless friend haunts me. How do distances matter in love?

Shah has rightly said:

Ke odha e dor, ke dora bhi oda sipri
Ke samhaljan na kadan, ke a visran moor
Jiyan meenh kandia poor, tiyan dost varako dil sen.

Some are near yet far, some far ones are near, beloved, Some are never in memory, some utterly unforgettable, Like a pot around a buffalo’s neck, friends engulf our heart.

___________________

Ram Panjwani was a towering figure in both the literary and social worlds of the Sindhis. He is remembered especially for making Jhulelal processions a regular part of Sindhi life, a cultural move to consolidate the post-partition and dispersed Sindhi ‘community.’

Rita Kothari is Professor of English at Ashoka University, Delhi. She is one of India’s most distinguished translation scholars and has translated major literary works into English. Rita has worked extensively on borders and communities; Partition and identity especially in the western region of India. She is the author of many books and articles on the Sindhi community.

Courtesy: The Wire

The post After Partition, Trust was the Biggest Loss in Sindh first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Let’s not forget South Asia is a geographical notion, and as such straddles political divides as well cultural ones. The term is also neutral with regard to time and people – South Asia was what it was before any humans lived there (since the Indian subcontinent collided with Asia, that is)

By Nazarul Islam

The largest Continent on our planet credits itself with a disproportionate share of global fame, for countries grouped together to form a noisy neighborhood, known as ‘South Asia’. In school text books, I rarely got to read about North Asia. The ‘typical-neighbors’ identity has rustled many Indians to dislike the expression “South Asia” and the halo projected around it. They feel this has diluted the central role played by India on the subcontinent, both historically and in the present context.

Then again, some people in countries like Pakistan and Nepal are allergic to the overuse of the word “India,” feeling that it indicates India’s overgrown ambitions to dominate the region – both in the present as well as in the past.

One of the best instances of such identity skirmishes are the recurrent discussions between Indians and Nepalese over the birthplace of Buddha. The people of Nepal are often unhappy when somebody claims that Buddha was born “in India.” His birthplace, now called Lumbini, is located in Nepal (even if just a stone’s throw from the border with India). There was no India, they point out – in the sense of a political entity, a sovereign state called India – when Buddha was born, several centuries before Christ.

But this line of argument is a back-and-forth swinging blade that leaves no survivors. The modern state of Nepal also did not exist at the time of Buddha.

If we really need to be precise historically, and if we need to refer to political entities, then Siddhartha Gautama, later titled Buddha, was born in a place called Rumminidei in the territory ruled by the clan of Shakyas (who formed an independent political entity) and the same Rumminidei was identified with Lumbini in the territory of the present-day Republic of Nepal. It is easy to understand why, outside the world of academia, we often cannot afford such lengthy explanations and must resort to simplifications.

But even this is just the starting point of such challenges. Suppose we have thus pin-pointed Buddha’s birthplace in space, time, and in political terms. But given that he spent most of his life in present-day northern India, where he searched for knowledge and salvation, taught, and eventually died, what was the territory he lived in? India? South Asia? We could certainly use the latter term, as it is geographically correct and thus neutral — but it is also very general. It does not tell us anything valuable about the cultural milieu in which he operated.

Buddha’s teachings were a part of Indian philosophy and they built on and referred to (and sometimes rebelled against) earlier Indian thought and religious customs. The Buddhist canon was preserved in Indian languages (mostly in Pali, to some degree also in Sanskrit). If, instead of this, we would say that these were “South Asian philosophy” and “South Asian languages,” such descriptions, even though theoretically correct, would fail to explain anything, to paint any context, to understand linkages.

Is there a good solution to this? It depends on the case, but the above instance of Buddha is as much a review of some naming challenges as an indication of how we can solve them.

Let’s not forget South Asia is a geographical notion, and as such straddles political divides as well cultural ones. The term is also neutral with regard to time and people – South Asia was what it was before any humans lived there (since the Indian subcontinent collided with Asia, that is).

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About the Author

The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America.

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