Dethroned

Title: Dethroned – Patel, Menon and the Integration of Princely India

Author: John Zubrzycki

Publisher: Juggernaut, 2023 (First)

ISBN: 9789353451691

Pages: 337

 

“My own personal wish is to abdicate and to serve Islam. I have not amassed a fortune but that does not matter as long as I can serve Islam and Pakistan. I am prepared to serve Pakistan in any capacity”. This excerpt is from a letter written by Hamidullah Khan, the Nawab (king) of Bhopal to Jinnah on Aug 2, 1947, hardly two weeks before freedom dawned on India. A cursory glance at the map would convince any political novice that the Bhopal ruler’s wish to join Pakistan was physically impossible, yet it contained a political dynamite that was sure to wreck the unity of India. There were around 565 native states in undivided India, of which only ten states came inside the geographical boundary of Pakistan which easily acceded to it with the exception of Kalat in Baluchistan. The situation in India was different. All the Muslim rulers and even some of the Hindu rulers did not want to join India for various reasons, most of them religious or selfish. The native states were too dispersed geographically and too interconnected economically with British India for having any chance ever to become truly autonomous. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and V P Menon achieved their integration with India in an astonishingly short time. This book tells the story of India’s native princes from the arrival of Lord Mountbatten as the viceroy in March 1947 until the abolition of the former rulers’ titles, privileges and privy purses in Dec 1971. John Zubrzycki is the author of several books on Indian royalty of the twentieth century. He majored in South Asian history and Hindi at the Australian National University and has a PhD in Indian history. He had worked in India as a diplomat and as foreign correspondent of The Australian newspaper. My review of his earlier book ‘The Last Nizam’ can be read here.

 

The author makes an analysis of how the native states were managed by the rulers. There were large states such as Hyderabad which equalled France in geographical area but most were very small and the titular rulers were practically nothing more than zamindars. Some states – such as Mysore, Travancore and Baroda – were administered better than British India, but most of the others were backward fiefs. Whatever laws existed in many princely states were a jumble of personal decrees, British Indian laws and local customs. Britain, being the paramount power, did not interfere in their administrative affairs in return for cooperation and support of the princes when they needed it. The India Office in London was the final authority on recognizing successions and determining when to hand over powers in the case of minors. The system of gun salutes tied the princes to a feudal hierarchy. Out of the 565-odd states, only 149 were privileged to have gun salutes ranging from 9 to 21. By comparison, the Viceroy was entitled to 31 gun salutes and the King Emperor 101. Personal misrule freely occurred in many states. The proclivity of the princes towards sexual perversions reached gross proportions in some cases. In the summer of 1947, four tons of paper containing correspondence between the local British resident and the political department in Delhi regarding the secret affairs of the princes were clandestinely confined to flames so as not to reach the hands of the leaders of independent India. Congress withdrew its earlier stand-offish stance in the 1938 Haripura AICC session. It declared that the Congress stood for the same political, social and economic freedom in the states as in the rest of India and considered the states as integral parts of India which cannot be separated.

 

The book includes the fabulous intrigues and machinations undertaken by the Congress, Muslim League and the British in the run up to and immediately after independence. Most white officials had no qualms to see India disintegrating into a multitude of small, independent nations. Some of them even cherished the idea, while some others came around to embrace a nationalist outlook later on. Conrad Corfield, the political secretary to the Viceroy, was of the former type and he gave the rulers the assurance that their states would become independent once the British left, as was promised earlier by the Cabinet Mission plan. Mountbatten also toyed with the concept of disintegration at first. He was having a Balkanizing plan for independent India. Eleven provinces of British India would become free along with most of the native states which would negotiate with the provinces regarding accession. Nehru was furious at this callous proposal which would forever put India’s political unification to doom. It was on May 10, 1947 that V P Menon articulated a plan to Mountbatten which eventually materialized. On May 18, Menon and Mountbatten flew to London with the plan and convinced the British cabinet. This established Menon as an irreplaceable factor in the States ministry. An interesting anecdote is told in the book that exemplifies Jinnah’s subterfuges to destabilise India after he got assurance of Pakistan. The Patiala kingdom was reluctant to join India while entertaining hopes for an independent existence. Jinnah quickly seized the opportunity and in May 1947 urged Yadavindra Singh, the ruler of Patiala, to join Pakistan and offered an array of carrots. Singh refused. Undeterred, Jinnah invited him to his residence in Delhi two days later for an informal chat where his sister Fatima ‘made excellent tea’ while Jinnah repeated his offers. Once more, the Maharaja remained unmoved, but Pakistan’s reputation for preparing excellent tea for ‘Indian guests’ (remember Abhinandan Varthaman) appears to be long established.

 

The author covers most of the contentious cases where the rulers had to be forced to see reason and fall in line. It is to be remembered that not a drop of royal blood was spilt in the process. That was why Khrushchev once remarked that ‘India liquidated the princely states without liquidating the princes’. Patel’s powerful personality, which mixed fury with charm and persuasion with coercion complemented Menon’s skills as a tactician. Most rulers held Patel in awe and esteem. Menon cleverly handled this to his advantage. Even a mere hint from him that a point of contention might have to be referred to Sardar was sufficient to bring the rulers around. Menon and Patel thus achieved their wonderful goal of creating a politically cohesive India and of extending responsible, democratically elected government to the people of the states. No longer could the ruling princes run their states like fiefdoms. Rulers surrendered all their governing powers in return for a guaranteed privy purse amounting to ten per cent of the revenue of their states in 1947. This money was tax-free and this was an important concession considering the exorbitant levels of taxation at that time. Princes were allowed to retain their palaces, personal privileges and titles. Integration yielded, in addition to territory and population, cash and investments worth almost Rs. 100 crores, half of which had come from the bonds of just one state – Gwalior. In return, the government of India committed itself to paying privy purses costing around Rs. 4.5 crores in the first year, which would shrink with each succeeding year.

 

This book is unique because of two reasons. One is that it describes how the native states acceded to Pakistan while the same process was going on in India. Fortunately for them, they had to handle only ten states out of the 565. Even then, the accession of Kalat in Baluchistan was a coercive one that totally alienated the sentiments of Baloch nationalists. Pakistan is still paying a bloody price for disregarding the wishes of Baloch people in the form of a thriving freedom movement and militancy. It is interesting to note that Pakistan too revoked the privy purses shortly after India did so. The second noteworthy feature of the book is the clear exposition of Indira Gandhi’s rationale in rescinding the privy purses. After their states were merged to the union and their powers conceded, many rulers had taken to electoral politics cashing in on their immense clout with the local populace. The former rulers had begun to unite on the political front and tried to influence electoral outcomes in many constituencies. Indira Gandhi was not someone who would acquiesce in to such encroachment on territory which she deemed sacrosanct for popular politicians. One thing led to another and with a showdown with judiciary, Indira achieved what she wanted in taking away the incomes of the former princes. Whatever may be the democratic justifications, readers feel that the abrupt cancellation of princely privileges was a breach of promise Nehru and Patel had vowed to them while merging their territories voluntarily with India.

 

While the book is an enjoyable read, it presents the most blatant one-sided and pro-Pakistan outlook coming from a Western author. The accounts of even Pakistani authors such as Ayesha Jalal are much more balanced than this one which has completely gone over the fence as far as neutral readers are concerned. Zubrzycki’s narration is a totally partisan account of atrocities as if the Muslims alone were at the receiving end. He justifies the Pakistani attack on Kashmir in 1947 that propelled its king Hari Singh into the arms of India as a justifiable outrage of Pashtun tribals at the ill-treatment of Muslims in Kashmir. He alleges that Patel sanctioned ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Alwar by the state forces. He again stoops so low as to mimic the Pakistani propaganda piece that the atrocities committed by Razakars in Hyderabad were fake and fabricated by K M Munshi, India’s agent in that state. It is as If this author was asked to prepare an account on the losses of World War II, he would come up with only German losses suffered subsequent to Allied bombings while claiming the Holocaust as ‘fake and fabricated’. This book’s handling of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is terribly off-balance by propping up a biased overview of the alleged violence on Muslims of Kashmir by the Dogra ruler. Plain communal disturbances are portrayed as ‘anti-monarchical protests’. He accuses the minority Kashmiri Pandit community of having 78 per cent representation in state services as a valid justification of the jihadi violence on them. By the same token, we would expect that this author would mention that Muslims cornered 85 per cent of the state services in the Nizam-ruled Hyderabad, but he maintains a stoic silence on this issue. Moreover, atrocities on Hindus are just ‘sectarian violence’ for him (p.222). This book also attempts to whitewash the Bhopal Nawab’s bigoted overtures to join Pakistan with a dubious allegation that the preference of a handful of fellow princes to the Hindu Mahasabha had driven Nawab Hamidullah Khan into the folds of the Muslim League and Pakistan (p.55). This kind of an argument would come only from a hard-line Muslim League supporter and Zubrzycki’s parroting of this line only proves his incompetence and ignorance of Indian politics and society.

 

Since this book is just a Pakistani propaganda piece, it is not recommended for general readers.

 

Rating: 1 Star

Separatism among Indian Muslims

Title: Separatism among Indian Muslims – The Politics of the United Provinces Muslims 1860-1923
Author: Francis Robinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1997 (First published 1993)
ISBN: 9780195631265
Pages: 469

The plain fact that India was partitioned in 1947 on the basis of religion requires researchers to analyse the reasons for fissure among the major communities of Hindus and Muslims and the growth of separatism among the Muslims. Several attempts have been made, emphasizing on the political, social, religious, economic and every conceivable parameter on which you can classify human societies. This book sets out to explain the emergence of Muslim separatism largely in terms of the interactions between colonial elites and the colonial state, set against the broader contexts of Hindu and Muslim revivalism. It narrates the communal story between two important failures of Indian political life – the 1857 Rebellion and the Khilafat agitation of the 1920s. These six decades – it seems obvious now – shaped the destiny of the later political frontiers of the subcontinent. It’s a mixture of governmental patronage favouring a community first and then transferring it to its rival. A major theme of the work is the Muslim petulance at permanently losing the privileges they had enjoyed unopposed over a millennium in India. They had initially hoped that when the British left Indian shores at last, power would be handed back to the Muslim dynasties from whom the British had gained control over India. The 1857 Uprising was in fact staged to hoist the Mughal emperor as the nominal sovereign of the country. However, with constitutional reforms getting progressively wider and more inclusive, it dawned on them that the British wanted to devolve more power to the people and eventually to leave the power in full in their hands in a distant future. In such a scenario, the Hindus who constituted a majority would naturally be able to handle more power. The Muslim reluctance to share power with the Hindus lay at the root of separatism and this book spells out how it grew in the sixty years after the 1857 Rebellion. Francis Robinson is a British historian and academic who specialize in the history of South Asia and Islam. He has been twice the president of the Royal Asiatic Society.

It may seem strange to us now why the author had chosen a province whose post-partition position was never in doubt and which had a large Hindu majority all along. Robinson clears this up with an explainer on why he had selected UP as his field of study. The Muslims in UP (then called United Provinces of Agra and Oudh) were at the heart of Muslim separatism unlike Punjab or Bengal. Except Jinnah, they led the Muslim organizations in Indian politics. The secretaries of the All India Muslim League were from UP in the first two decades of its existence. They also dominated the Central Khilafat Committee that played a supra-provincial role in whipping up communal frenzy that ended up in gruesome communal riots. The region of UP was the traditional centre of Muslim rule and civilization in India. For eight centuries before the British dislodged the Mughals, Muslims had been the dominant group though a minority in numbers. They were not at all backward, as being suggested by some of the Left-Islamist cabal of historians. They were a major landholding group occupying approximately one-fifth of the land in the province. They possessed many of the largest estates running into thousands of acres of prime fertile land. They were able to elect 40 per cent of the members in Oudh district boards. The Muslims constituted 35 per cent of all government jobs while in the judicial services, they formed the majority share of 56 per cent. 54 per cent of the tahsildars were Muslims as also most of the kotwals (town police chiefs). This was while their ratio in population was only 12 per cent!

Consider for an instant the imaginary case of Hindu upper castes who predominated the British-Indian bureaucracy opposing the program of providing reservation for lower castes in government jobs and education. How vociferously would modern society have called their hypocrisy out? A similar situation prevailed in nineteenth century UP when the Muslims who dominated the provincial establishment of Mohammedan rulers grudged the increased participation the British were offering to Hindus. The Muslims demurred to send their children to government schools for fear of ‘mingling with students far below them in social rank’. Their religious obligations compelled them to make their boys learn the Koran before they learned anything else, and by the time they had done this, it was usually too late to learn anything else. Their religious leaders believed western learning to be incompatible with Islam. Robinson also describes the major issues that fused the Muslim elite together. In the 1840s, the policy of teaching Persian was stopped and the government switched over to Urdu (not English, as it is widely believed). This concession was to mollify the Muslims as the Urdu language was to be written in the Persian script only. The Urdu-speaking elite identified four threats to their continued domination: education policy, bureaucratic reforms, elective government and Hindu revivalism. In 1900, the sole use of Persian script was modified by allowing the Nagri script as well. This decision which was in the interest of 90 per cent of the population was deeply resented by the Muslims who dreamed to continue their iron-fisted hegemony till the end of days.

This book strongly rejects ‘Divide and Rule’ as a policy deliberately adopted by the British. The real problem confronting Britain was ‘not how to divide and rule India, but how to rule a divided India’ (p.164). If British policy exacerbated Indian social disharmony, it was ‘more out of ignorance or innocence than malice’. Besides, British public opinion was strongly pro-Muslim. The Times, which really informed and led the mass of newspapers about Indian matters, was a great Muslim partisan (p.169). Robinson identifies fear of Muslims that really formed the bedrock of British policy towards them. To deal with them, government adopted special measures and made special concessions, which was not to set them against Hindus that was only a side effect (p.131-2). What the colonialists feared was fanaticism of a terrible order which British administrators clearly feared. UP Lieutenant Governor Anthony MacDonnell objectively spotted it in Muslim government servants. He was sure that ‘in times of Muslim agitation, they did not pull their weight. This was a danger to security of the establishment and their strong position in government service had to be redressed’. However, the author finds this prudent official to be ‘prejudicial’ (p.43). Robinson again remarks that British policy to Muslims was influenced by ‘the publicists’ pen and the assassin’s dagger’. The Chief Justice of Bengal was killed on the steps of the High Court and Viceroy Mayo himself was stabbed to death by a Muslim convict. A little time before his death, Mayo had advised his subordinates that being constantly on the lookout for disturbances within Muslims was one of the most important duties of every officer, civil or military in India (p.100). The provocation could be anything, even as mild as criticising their religion. Pandit Lekh Ram criticized Islam and appealed them to become Aryas. The author then makes the Muslim attack that followed somewhat respectable with the strange remark that ‘eventually, one Muslim was provoked enough to kill him’ (p.68 footnote).

This book takes a detailed look at the factors that prompted Muslims to demand unreasonable constitutional guarantees for themselves. This is a reflection on the collapse of Muslim power in north India that exercised a suffocating dominance over the Hindus who were not allowed to exercise any position of meaningful power or the free practice of their religion. By the nineteenth century, the Hindus saw their chance and began to use them. The divisional commander of Agra observed: The Hindus here, as elsewhere, have begun to assert themselves, and will not now willingly acquiesce, as they appear formerly to have done, in the superiority of the Mohammedans (p.80). This, in a nutshell, is the real and true cause of Muslim separatism in India. An oppressed majority boldly claiming their just share from the hands of a tyrannical minority elite would be glorified as a victory of social justice a century later but this apt epithet is used in India only after carefully asserting which party is the oppressor. With the progressive widening of self-rule and the flicker of democracy gaining traction in the country, the Muslims feared that their claims would be ignored and discriminated against. They opposed elections and representative government as totally unsuited to India. In fact, Muslim elite opposed competitive exams in the civil service too. The principal of Aligarh college told the government that competitive exams would flood the service with men from lower provinces dispossessing Muslims and upper classes in general, such as the Rajput aristocracy (p.118). Syed Ahmed was even more vociferous who tried to provoke regional animosities among Hindus and commented that ‘Bengalis who crawl under his chair at the sight of a table knife would be placed over Rajputs who have not forgotten the swords of their ancestors’ (p.119). Hindus also showed signs of highhandedness. Municipal authorities dominated by elected Hindu councillors tried to shut down meat shops selling beef. Other than this, no religious discrimination is mentioned in the book. In return, cows were openly killed after Muslims regained power in some municipalities.

Robinson evaluates in detail the contributions of Syed Ahmed Khan and the thrust he had imported to the education and political activity of Muslims. Even with the above disparaging remarks about Bengalis, the Muslims of Bengal continued to support him as they knew in their heart that the comment was only intended to create rift among the majority community. The demand was to get enhanced representation in provincial councils, district boards and municipal bodies on account of their past ‘historical importance’ (p.123). This was a euphemism for demanding a quantum of seats unreasonable to and in far excess of their numerical position. It may also be kept in mind that when Pakistan was actually formed, the minorities in that country were not allowed any of the rights the Muslims enjoyed in undivided India. The Muslim educational conference instituted by Khan covertly played politics and opposed Congress. In 1906 this led to the creation of the Muslim League. The Aligarh college – later university – was the base from which a UP Muslim elite group led a Muslim political party in the province and in India as a whole. The British propped up Syed Ahmed and Aligarh college and indirectly assisted in the birth of Muslim political doctrine and separatism. On the level of the divisive sentiment he generated, Syed Ahmed Khan may be termed the Jinnah of the nineteenth century.

The author correctly identifies the concession of separate electorates as tipping point that vindicated the Muslim sense of exclusiveness and belligerence whose natural conclusion was the division of the country. The British tried at first to deny demands for separate electorates as this very concept was alien to the fundamental principles of democracy. The scheme envisaged two votes for Muslims – one in the separate constituency and the other in the general category – while the Hindus had only one. This was so even in East Bengal where Muslims comprised 53 per cent of the population where this high share ensured that a candidate not favoured by Muslims cannot win even the general seat. Persistent pressure forced the government to allocate double the number of seats earlier promised to Muslims as separate electorates. This was in the face of open threats of the Muslim League that their ‘good behaviour could not be guaranteed if the government did not concede this’ (p.158). After attaining this goal, the UP Muslim party was separated into two groups referred to as ‘Old’ and ‘Young’ parties. The ‘Old’ consisted mainly of aristocrats and landowners while the ‘Young’ included professionals and journalists. The ‘Young’ was fiercely bigoted with a pan-Islamic outlook. Issues of Turkey and other Islamic states were foremost in their concern. The Lucknow Pact with Congress was an attempt by the ‘Young’ to come out in the political mainstream and to restrain the gradual ascent of the ulema in the party. It gained them a lot of other concessions from Congress and again increased the Muslim seats as part of the 1919 Montford reforms.

The most important contribution of this book is a concise narrative on the rise of pan-Islamic sentiment among Muslims and the Khilafat agitation it led to. Pan-Islamic outlook is a basic requirement demanded by the religion and almost all the leaders cherished it in their bosom. Mahomed Ali, who grew to be the tallest leader of that time, was a willing proponent from the early years of public life. He set up an Indo-Ottoman colonization society with the aim of starting an Islamic settlement at Adana in Turkey composed of Indian and Turkish Muslims. However, his taste for modernity and refinement can be gauged from his pithy remark on political adjustments: “Constitutions, like pretty women, are meant to be violated” (p.362). The World War I and related developments in Ottoman Empire radicalised Indian Muslims in an extraordinary way. Even women were agitated to an extent that Harcourt Butler, the lieutenant governor of UP, reported that his priority was to keep Muslim women right as they can force their husbands to do something for Islam and that no government in India can control a combination of Muslim priests and women (p.294). The ulema saw their chance for taking a plunge into mainstream politics. The Young party men provided a guiding hand to them. This alliance of the ulema with secular politicians was marked by the contrast between their ultimate objectives. The secular group wanted a slice of power for themselves, but the ulema wanted nothing less than the eventual enforcement of the sharia in India like what the Taliban practises at present in Afghanistan. Their interest was in protecting traditional Islam and their position in it. The ulema were most active in Khilafat which was an agitation for restoring the territory and title of the Turkish sultan who was defeated in World War I. They had the most to gain from non-cooperation. They made donations to non-cooperation movement a form of zakat making it obligatory for believers. Going a step further, the Muttafiqa fatwa signed by 500 ulema made non-cooperation itself a religious duty. They were very particular that Hindus join them in this struggle and was instrumental in persuading Gandhi to put the final shape to the agitation. The book also includes some curious examples of firebrand ulema developing feet of clay at a mere raid on their premises by law enforcement. Abdul Bari was unnerved by CID men poking around Firangi Mahal. He rushed to Nainital where the lieutenant governor was staying, professed his innocence, declared his loyalty and at the end of the interview broke down completely (p.294).

Robinson illustrates the fanatic spirit that enveloped the Khilafat movement which turned against Hindus who were in fact supporting it. Abdul Bari declared that they are determined to ‘fight the enemy of Islam whether he be in Anatolia or Arabia or Agra or Benares’. The Jamiat ul-Ulema supported the Moplahs who converted Hindus by force in Malabar in 1921 (p.338). The Central Khilafat Committee even offered them financial support. When pressure was applied by indignant Congress leaders, they grudgingly offered a small amount of money for the Hindu victims too. A peculiar feature of Muslim politics was evident then. When the hard-line fanatics took over the reins, the so called ‘secular’ Muslim politicians acted as broker between the Congress and the hardliners instead of opposing the latter on ideological lines. Many Muslims rose to high leadership positions at the central and provincial levels. The Congress itself had only four Muslim presidents from its inception in 1885 to 1920. But between 1921 and 1923, three out of its four presidents were Muslims.

As with other liberal scholars, Robinson also dusts off the old and convenient delusion that Muslim politicians were driven by selfish self-interest rather than religious bigotry. Hard-core Muslims had prepared a migration plan to Afghanistan forsaking the British empire to protest against its cavalier treatment of the Turkish Caliph. This important incident which involved the deaths of thousands of people is not mentioned in the book. The author finally concludes that the Muslims in UP were not a nation by the standards applied to modern Europe as they had no racial homogeneity, little common history and many conflicting interests. The book is noted for its detached perspective and helps to bring in some objectivity when the events considered are still capable of arousing much passion on both sides of the border between India and Pakistan. The author has thoroughly researched population and job data community-wise and has included many informative tables categorizing relevant information. It also incorporates the concise biographies of 61 prominent leaders of the Young Party, 44 from Old Party, 12 ulema and 21 other men of importance. Raja Sivaprasad is the only Hindu who had the good fortune to enter this list. Bibliography of the book is impressively comprehensive.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

India’s Secret War

Title: India’s Secret War – BSF and Nine Months to the Birth of Bangladesh
Author: Ushinor Majumdar
Publisher: Penguin Veer, 2023 (First)
ISBN: 9780143460268
Pages: 289

1971 was a watershed moment in the Indian subcontinent’s history. It negated the raison d’etre of one of the nations in it. Pakistan was formed in 1947 by dividing India on the basis of religion. The Muslim League claimed Muslims of India to be a separate nation and demanded a separate homeland for them. The fallacy of this logic was pointed out then itself by astute observers but Jinnah and his ilk were adamant in realizing their dream. However, problems arose the moment Pakistan was formed. It constituted two disjoined parts separated by 1000 km of Indian territory in between. 55 per cent of the new nation spoke Bengali as their mother tongue but they practically had no representation in the higher cadres of government and military. Urdu was forcefully imposed on the East, by replacing Bengali. People of East Pakistan resented the dominance of the Western territory which itself was dominated by Punjab. 23 years after independence, Pakistan cobbled together a constitution and elections were held to the National Assembly. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, a rising Bengali leader, swept East Pakistan and obtained majority in the federal assembly. West Pakistanis faced the unpalatable situation of swearing in Mujib as the prime minister. Subterfuges operated at all levels and Mujib found himself arrested and lodged in a Pakistani jail rather than administering the country. Bengalis erupted in rebellion and the province wanted to secede. Repressive measures were undertaken by the Pakistan army. Hundreds of thousands of men were tortured and killed while an equal number of women were raped or taken as sex slaves. Ten million people crossed over to India as refugees. India helped them fight against their oppressors by providing men and material for battles against the Pak army. It did this by cleverly employing the services of its young Border Security Force (BSF) which was constituted only in 1965. It also helped India disclaim any official army involvement. In December 1971, India and Pakistan went in for a war in which Pakistan was humiliated by the surrender of 91,000 of its elite troops and secession of the eastern appanage as Bangladesh. This book tells the story of the operations in 1971 orchestrated by BSF. Ushinor Majumdar is an investigative journalist with Outlook magazine since 2015. This is his second book.

The book also includes a brief narrative of the worsening of the relationship between the eastern and western parts of Pakistan. It appears as if the Muslim League had roped in Bengali Muslims only as a ballast to lend credence to their demand for a nation for all Muslims of India. Apart from religion, there was nothing to unite these Muslim provinces together. Linguistic and cultural differences rattled from the very word go. Jinnah visited East Pakistan only once and disdainfully rejected the proposal to make Bengali one of the national languages of Pakistan. This was awkward when the new nation was taken as a whole as 55 per cent of the population spoke Bengali while only 7 per cent spoke Urdu. Pakistan banned the broadcast of Rabindra Sangeet on radio as it was claimed to violate Pakistan’s cultural values. The Bengali Muslims hated Urdu to the core. When hostilities actually began in 1971, the Bengali resistance movement was initially called the Mukti Fauj (means liberation army in Urdu) but its name was soon changed to Mukti Bahini which meant the same but was Bengali in timbre. In 1962, Mujib secretly reached out to Jawaharlal Nehru with a plan to secede from Pakistan. Astonishingly, Nehru declined to back the initiative as he probably did not have the stomach to antagonize Pakistan. Perhaps this was as well in hindsight, because if a war had broken out then, it was likely that Nehru’s leadership would have ensured defeat of the Indian troops like he did against China! On a more serious note, it might have saved the lives and honour of thousands if he had taken the challenge up.

Bengalis constituted only a very minor share of Pakistan’s military which was totally dominated by Punjabis and Pathans. The army was mockingly called ‘Khan Sena’ in East Pakistan hinting at the typical surname of those soldiers. There was an ill-equipped East Pakistan regiment of the army and a border force called East Bengal Rifles which was fully Bengali in makeup. The liberation movement was formed around the nucleus of the defected military personnel of Bengali origin who joined Mujib. Pakistan used local allies called Razakars and mixed them with regular troops to carry out atrocities in Bangladesh and inside India’s borders. These people were Bengalis but their Islamist doctrinaire bound them to the yoke that enslaved their countrymen. The BSF was the nodal agency in coordinating with the rebels and refugees. They provided shelter to politicians and freedom fighters. Top leaders were flown in to meet Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The name of the new nation and a draft constitution was formed in meetings of rebels conducted inside India. A provisional government was set up in land liberated by the combined efforts of the BSF and Mukti Bahini. Full logistics of moving the people and the press across the border was undertaken by BSF. India’s actions were timely and apt for the dismemberment of her arch enemy. Pakistan was training and arming the separatist Mizo National Front of Mizoram in 1971. In fact, they fought on many occasions alongside the Pakistan army against the BSF and Mukti Bahini troops.

Majumdar is successful in presenting the details of the numerous skirmishes between the opponents in a manner interesting to general readers. It’s a bane of war histories written by veteran soldiers to stick to military lingo and infinite detail while explaining the happenings on the battlefield. This sometimes sounds like what is taught in soldier-training sessions. Majumdar is a journalist and it shows in his choice of narratives and simple language. Bengali rebels arranged sabotage of road and rail bridges after crossing the border, sometimes with BSF men supporting them in combat. The book is written from a BSF perspective and the main contributors of data are retired BSF officers and troops who had long retired from service but were eager to share their experiences with the author. The author also makes effective efforts to bring out the atrocities carried out by the Pakistan army on Bangladeshi civilians. On several occasions, he mention finding the gory bodily remains of women inside surrendered of evacuated military camps who were kidnapped from the surrounding areas and then raped inside the Pakistan military camps.

Even though India won the war in the end, the result was not a foregone conclusion. Indian military sorely lacked resources and modernization of weaponry. The Nehruvian socialist system had already taken its toll on Indian economy. The country languished in extreme poverty with practically no foreign currency reserves. When the BSF was formed in 1965, its director general asked for foreign exchange to procure wireless sets and weapons from abroad. This was denied. He then decided to build the radio sets internally and set up a technical wing. They were fruitful in their efforts but the situation was ironic. Here was a border police force assembling and testing radio sets instead of concentrating their attention on guarding the frontier! The 3-inch mortar used by the BSF was obsolete by 1971. The sad fact was that they were using it against a regular army having sophisticated American and European weapons. Pakistan’s advanced arsenal could not be effectively used on the battlefield because of its incompetent ground troops lacking the expertise to do so. Indian victory depended on soldiers’ valour in the face of poor resources. However, better investment on modernization of forces would have averted many unnecessary casualties and many Indian women could have been saved from the unenviable fate of widowhood.

The book is easy to read and effortlessly takes the readers along with the narrative. It essentially covers the eight-month period from end-March 1971 when Mujib was arrested and the pogrom started to early-December 1971 when full-scale war began. A chapter is earmarked for activity on the western front in the war even though that is not directly relevant to the efforts on the eastern front. On the other hand, the actual war for the liberation of Bangladesh and capture of Dacca is condensed to an unsatisfactory few pages. This may be because the whole of the action was taken up by the Indian army and the BSF had had only a minor role to play. The book also provides some glimpses on the religiosity of Indian soldiers and how soldiers of all religions took part in the festivities of the others as a team.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Remnants of a Separation

 

Title: Remnants of a Separation – A History of the Partition through Material History
Author: Aanchal Malhotra
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2017 (First)
ISBN: 9789352770120
Pages: 385

Before I begin: This is my 700th book review here. The journey which started about sixteen years ago still runs smoothly and happily.

The partition of India into two independent countries in 1947 was sordid to begin with but it turned into a disastrous nightmare with each passing week. An estimated one million people were killed, numerous women were raped or abducted and many tens of thousands were forcibly converted to Islam. Several millions had no choice but to migrate to the other side of the border with whatever little they could carry, mostly in their hands. In several instances, they had only a few minutes to prepare for cutting all roots from their native land. This book is about the reminiscences of those people who migrated in 1947. They were lucky to have escaped with their life, but not so fortunate as to be free of first-hand experiences of the carnage that was played out, especially in Punjab. This book does not simply compile the recollections of these octogenarians but makes them relive their past life based on the few material things they could bring along and has assumed a large sentimental value such as a piece of cloth, a utensil, an ornament or a souvenir connected to a prized association. The book carries the memories from a generation receding into the past to a generation advancing into the future, both with great speed. Aanchal Malhotra is an artist and oral historian working with memory and material culture. She is the co-founder of the ‘Museum of Material Memory’, a digital repository of material culture from the Indian subcontinent, tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity. The author is a descendant of migrants on both sides of the family. This is her dissertation thesis for the degree of MFA (Master of Fine Arts).

This book is organized as a collection of conversations with individuals who witnessed and experienced the unforgettable moments in the subcontinent’s history and its partition. Author’s engagement with the most senior members of a family (the partition is already 76 years old), persuade their great-grandchildren to view them in a new light and as a source of inspiration and encouragement. After all, not everyone goes through the tough times as brought down by cataclysmic events related to the partition of a country that was an organic whole for most of recorded history. The importance of material memory is focused on in this book. Not content with learning the individual experiences, Malhotra prompts her subjects to show her any item of interest that they had brought along in the exodus and still holds dear. These small articles of personal attachment suddenly get transformed into a tangible link to the painful past. We also see that younger family members, who had viewed these items with nothing better than indifference, if at all, quickly find them cherishable and priceless. In a sense, it brings out the links to the past as well as strengthens the ties to the future. The author’s remark on memory loss caused by aging is arresting: “memory begins to fade little by little. First the edges soften, eroding away the most recent years and then slowly age gnaws its way till it reaches even the seemingly impenetrable, the nucleus of our lives – our oldest and dearest memories”.

 One similarity that runs through all the people’s experiences in the early stages is the disbelief and skepticism on the viability of partition itself. The sheer fact that a nation can be divided and its people separated did not cross the minds of common people who went about their normal lives while Muslim politicians openly demanded partition. There were indeed a few ‘nationalist’ Muslim leaders high up in the Congress hierarchy who opposed it but their ratio could be expressed in ppm (parts per million) rather than percentages. The author here gives some leeway to the guilty party and gives the nuance that both political sides wanted partition. She had to travel to Pakistan and interview the people who left India that probably made her adopt this ambivalent argument that is designed not to irritate anybody, but at the cost of truth. Lack of clarity on borders made the situation troublesome as Hindu pockets in Pakistan and Muslim pockets in India near the prospective border did not know to which country they would be annexed to by Cyril Radcliffe, the arbiter of the fate of millions. This book suggests that Radcliffe faltered in some cases and succumbed to favours by conceding to the needs of the elite few over the needs of many, much against the mapmaker’s better judgement.

The author claims that one cannot attribute the events that unraveled in 1947 to a single cause or community and hence the notion of singular responsibility is thereby absent (p.33). This is plain wrong and the result of unwillingness to see the elephant in the room. It was the Muslim side which demanded partition right from the partition of Bengal in 1905, also largely on religious lines. The Bengal division was later reversed, but as the Muslim League grew stronger and stronger with each passing year on the base of concessions by the Congress, it could finally run its writ in 1947. The demand for Pakistan was ignored at first and later resisted, but the League then intensified their claim and resorted to horrible violence such as the Direct Action Day of Calcutta in 1946. Pakistan was born with both pre-natal and post-natal bloodshed. Even then, 35 million Muslims chose to stay back in India. The author’s quest to balance the narrative is obviously woven to please their descendants. Malhotra then notes that ‘it is not religion; it is human nature and quest for power that drives madness of violence’. This is so absurd that it is not even wrong. It is what you can call a secularization of bigotry. The violence was aided and abetted by the tenets of a particular religion. When it flared beyond control, others also imitated their methods to pay them back in the same coin. This reluctance to face the intense religious zeal of interlocutors that went in in the creation of Pakistan is exemplified by an incident narrated in the book. Azra, a 90-year old matriarch in Lahore, had migrated from Jalandhar in Indian Punjab. She recalls that she had actively participated in public processions in Jalandhar shouting Hamara dil mein Quran hai (we hold the Quran in our hearts) and Hamein Pakistan chahiye (we want our Pakistan). At this point, our author incredulously ejaculates ‘but did you actually believe them?’ (p.65). She evidently did, but our author was not willing to accept that the old woman sitting in front of her was a fanatic of the first order! This is a classic instance of the typical liberal hare standing stunned motionless against the headlights of fanaticism. We also read about people who so loved the land to which they belonged that they were ready to convert for the simple privilege of being allowed to stay there. Bhoptiyan village in Lahore district was a Sikh majority one. All the Sikhs converted to Islam to remain there. The author also suggests a division of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 as a workable solution to the Kashmir problem which is embarrassingly naïve.

Even though the author has interviewed 19 people from both sides of the border and presented their cases with a heart-warming clarity, she has clearly missed the communal wood for the individual trees. We see that the people who had gone over to Pakistan do not flinch when asked whether they wanted to undo partition. They don’t. One of them says that there is indeed ‘a difference’ between Hindus and Muslims. The author is unnerved by this candid assertion and mumbles farak kya hai (what’s the difference) to which the kind Pakistani replies that ‘even though we considered ourselves equal to the Hindus in every way, there was no denying the inherent differences’ (p.180). Another boasts that ‘it was not money or material prosperity that brought me here to Pakistan but inspiration. I was inspired by the idea of this land and aspired to become something for it’. On the other hand, this book narrates an incident in which a person who had gone to Pakistan coming back a few years later and establishing a Muslim shrine in Samana, Punjab at which place people of all religions pray. Another lady claims to have come from a generation who professes to be secular and open to pluralism and multiculturalism. These facets are seen in action in India alone, while in Pakistan the minorities are either killed off or converted. One only needs to look at the percentages of minority population in both countries in 1947 and compare it to the numbers at present. The author also claims that when she read Jinnah’s Pakistan Address of March 1940, she ‘could not understand the vehemence, perhaps due to my own naivety’ (p.181). Bigotry is incomprehensible to the liberal mind. The unfortunate part is that since she does not understand it she assumes it to be absent.

Aged people are the subject matter of the book, but it is touching and the way the young generation treats the old is just lovely. The insight that has gone into the author’s occasional philosophical remarks such as ‘life is not easy, but it is never supposed to be’ is truly great. Even people who are not in any way connected to the partition would find this book appealing as it provides a pathway to the hearts and minds of their grandparents and to reevaluate them on the face of challenges they had encountered and overcome. A particular thing to note is that the book is biased towards stories of the rich, influential people like zamindars with large havelis, topmost bureaucrats or people who could afford a year-long world tour in 1947. Anyway, the book presents a rich and fulfilling reading experience.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star