tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/india-partition-41839/articles
India partition – The Conversation
2024-01-31T13:35:44Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/220786
2024-01-31T13:35:44Z
2024-01-31T13:35:44Z
This course examines how conflicts arise over borders
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571637/original/file-20240126-19-g1hl2y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C1718%2C1144&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Border conflicts, spanning different time periods and places, are behind many of the big international disputes today</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/december-2023-israel-an-israeli-tank-driving-along-the-news-photo/1878801578?adppopup=true">picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Text saying: Uncommon Courses, from The Conversation" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499014/original/file-20221205-17-kcwec8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/uncommon-courses-130908">Uncommon Courses</a> is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.</em> </p>
<h2>Title of course:</h2>
<p>Borders and Battles: The Historical Roots of Geopolitical Conflict</p>
<h2>What prompted the idea for the course?</h2>
<p>I got the idea for the course when I noticed that all of the other history courses I taught – on India, the Middle East and the British Empire – featured major border conflicts. These conflicts arose from a variety of issues, whether the borders were historically <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/changing-times-and-irish-border">ill-conceived</a>, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/kashmir-the-roads-ahead/">politically disputed</a> or cut across <a href="https://www.dnaindia.com/explainer/report-dna-explainer-what-is-the-water-dispute-between-india-and-bangladesh-know-purpose-of-kushiyara-river-pact-2983049">contested resources</a>.</p>
<p>As all of these <a href="https://www.thequint.com/news/world/britain-7-present-day-conflicts-world-communalism-israel-palestine-rohingyas-cyprus-shashi-tharoor-era-of-darkness">borders were drawn by the British</a> in the closing days of the empire, they reflect a critical aspect of decolonization. So I decided to abandon the conventional geographical focus of the history course and instead design a course that examines the theme of embattled borders, across different time periods and places. </p>
<h2>What does the course explore?</h2>
<p>The course encourages students to look at how borders impact people’s everyday lives.</p>
<p>For instance, we discuss how, along the U.S. southern border, the U.S. uses <a href="https://www.hsdl.org/c/view?docid=721845">death as a deterrent</a> to migrant border crossing. In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Border Patrol began <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/homesec/RL33659.pdf">systematically funneling migrants away from urban areas</a> and into the Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona. There, many <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-06-770.pdf">succumb to the harsh elements</a>, including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/magazine/border-crossing.html#:%7E:text=According%20to%20the%20Border%20Patrol,of%20the%20last%2022%20years.">temperatures</a> that routinely hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius), a scarcity of water, and predatory wildlife. </p>
<p>In Israel-Palestine, we examine how the borders between Israel and the occupied territories evolved, why they are contested or enforced and whether they should be redrawn.</p>
<p>The course also explores the <a href="https://exhibits.stanford.edu/1947-partition/about/1947-partition-of-india-pakistan">1947 Partition of India</a>, which led to the creation of Pakistan. We talk about the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-between-india-and-pakistan">many wars</a> fought between these two nuclear-armed nations, as well as the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-great-divide-books-dalrymple">interpersonal violence and animosity</a> fueled by Partition. </p>
<p>Finally, students investigate the <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9105/#:%7E:text=The%20Northern%20Ireland%20border%20came,Government%20of%20Ireland%20Act%201920.">1921 separation of Northern Ireland from Ireland</a> and how it led to a cycle of violence. </p>
<p>We discuss both <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/ira-irish-republican-army-and-changing-tactics-terrorism">IRA terrorism</a> against British civilians and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-47433319">atrocities committed by the British army</a> in Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>For each border conflict, we pay close attention to the imperial and expansionist policies that fueled the formation of borders. Students consider how borders represent historical and imperial legacies. </p>
<h2>Why is this course relevant now?</h2>
<p>Borders and Battles was first offered during the height of the <a href="https://www.americanoversight.org/a-timeline-of-the-trump-administrations-family-separation-policy">Trump administration’s family separation policy</a>. This policy separated families trying to enter at the U.S. southern border. Parents were held in federal prisons or deported, while children were placed under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services.</p>
<p>I am now teaching the course against the backdrop of war in Israel-Palestine. Students come to understand how and why border disputes like these developed, how they were aggravated or resolved, and how they affect both individuals and wider society.</p>
<p>I find that students are eager to discuss these issues; they do not need to be sold on their relevance. Many students actually tell me how the course helped them make sense of contemporary conflicts.</p>
<h2>What’s a critical lesson from the course?</h2>
<p>The most critical takeaway from the course is the dehumanization of the “enemy,” each side by the other. It’s common to all border disputes, no matter where, or when, or why they occur. </p>
<p>This process often involves the politicization of religious, racial and class-based differences. Government officials cast those who defy borders as subhuman, and state policy consistently reflects this bias. Israel’s defense minister, for example, explained that it was necessary to cut off all supplies to Gaza because <a href="https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2023/10/358170/israel-defense-minister-calls-palestinians-human-animals-amid-israeli-aggression">Palestinians are “human animals</a>.”</p>
<h2>What materials does the course feature?</h2>
<p>The course material purposefully draws on a variety of formats.</p>
<p>We begin with a book, Jason De Leon’s “<a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/1368216769">The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail</a>.” De Leon chronicles the journeys of migrants across the U.S. southern border.</p>
<p>We also play an interactive game, <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/1304814039">Defining a Nation: India on the Eve of Independence, 1945</a>. This game requires students to reenact the partition of the subcontinent. The outcome can be – and usually is – different than the actual historical outcome.</p>
<p>The course ends with a film, “<a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/945634441">In the Name of the Father</a>,” which looks at the IRA bombing of army pubs in Guildford, England, and the wrongful conviction of the “Guildford Four.” </p>
<h2>What will the course prepare students to do?</h2>
<p>Many former students have stated that the course better enabled them to understand news broadcasts and keep up with current events.</p>
<p>The course also prepares students for international travel. Some students took the course before traveling to Israel or the Palestinian territories.</p>
<p>The course material has even inspired students to become involved in causes related to border disputes. As a direct result of knowledge gained from the course, a handful of students have joined organizations assisting refugees at the U.S. southern border.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220786/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nita Prasad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Religious, racial and class-based differences often get politicized.
Nita Prasad, Professor of History, Quinnipiac University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/213524
2023-09-27T12:27:58Z
2023-09-27T12:27:58Z
Why some Indians want to change the country’s name to ‘Bharat’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550340/original/file-20230926-15-ivocio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C23%2C7774%2C5171&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes delegates to the G20 leaders summit in front of a placard reading 'Bharat,' the Hindi word for 'India.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/british-prime-minister-rishi-sunak-and-us-president-joe-news-photo/1669134258?adppopup=true">Dan Kitwood/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When India invited delegates attending the G20 summit in September 2023 to dinner with “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66716541">the President of Bharat</a>,” rather than “the President of India,” it may have looked to the world like a simple case of postcolonial course correction. </p>
<p>The word “India” is, after all, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-turkey-want-other-countries-to-start-spelling-its-name-turkiye-199390">an exonym</a> – a placename given by outsiders. In this case, the name came from the British, who ruled the subcontinent from 1858 to 1947, <a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-in-india-was-traumatic-including-for-some-of-the-british-officials-who-ruled-the-raj-77068">a violent period of colonialism</a> that later came to be called “the British Raj.” </p>
<p>“Bharat,” on the other hand, is the word for “India” in Hindi, by far <a href="https://www.forbesindia.com/article/news-by-numbers/hindi-day-2020-indias-mostspoken-languages-are/62577/1">the most spoken language in the nation</a>. Alongside English, Hindi is one of two languages used in <a href="https://qz.com/india/1712711/indias-constitution-is-over-30-times-as-long-as-the-us">the Indian Constitution</a>, with versions written in each language.</p>
<p>“Bharat” may, therefore, look like a well-reasoned and uncontroversial replacement for a term anointed long ago by outsiders – something akin to how <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43821512">Eswatini</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1980/08/26/archives/zimbabwe-is-welcomed-into-un-independence-achieved-in-april.html">Zimbabwe</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13072774">Burkina Faso</a> updated their countries’ names from the colonial designations “Swaziland,” “Rhodesia” and “Upper Volta,” respectively. </p>
<p>But the use of “Bharat” has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/6/india-or-bharat-whats-behind-the-dispute-over-the-countrys-name">elicited outcry</a> from the political opposition, some Muslims, and Hindu conservatives in the south, reflecting ongoing tensions in India between language, religion and politics. </p>
<h2>Two different language families</h2>
<p>My book with fellow linguist <a href="https://julietetelandresen.com/">Julie Tetel Andresen</a>, “<a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Languages+In+The+World%3A+How+History%2C+Culture%2C+and+Politics+Shape+Language+-p-9781118531280">Languages in the World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language</a>,” covers the language history and politics of India.</p>
<p>Hindi is the most-spoken language in India, but its use is largely relegated to a part of the country that linguists refer to as “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hindi-language">the Hindi belt</a>,” a massive region in northern, central and eastern India where Hindi is the official or primary language.</p>
<p>Around 1500 B.C.E., a group of outsiders from Central Asia – known now as the <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/society/history-and-culture/theres-no-confusion-the-new-reports-clearly-confirm-arya-migration-into-india/article61986135.ece">Indo-Aryans</a> – began migrating and settling in what is now northern India. They spoke a language that would eventually become <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sanskrit-language">Sanskrit</a>. As groups of these speakers separated from one another and spread out over northern India, their spoken Sanskrit changed over time, becoming distinctive.</p>
<p>Most of the languages spoken in northern India today – Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujarati, among many others – derive from this history. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550428/original/file-20230926-21-ur64w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of India highlighting predominant languages spoken in various regions." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550428/original/file-20230926-21-ur64w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550428/original/file-20230926-21-ur64w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550428/original/file-20230926-21-ur64w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550428/original/file-20230926-21-ur64w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550428/original/file-20230926-21-ur64w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550428/original/file-20230926-21-ur64w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550428/original/file-20230926-21-ur64w0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Different languages are predominantly spoken in different parts of India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/indian-map-with-official-languages-of-indian-royalty-free-illustration/1490281073?phrase=map+of+indian+languages&adppopup=true">Venkatesh Selvarajan/iStock via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But the Aryans were not the first group to inhabit the Indian subcontinent. Another group, the Dravidians, was already living in the region at the time of the Aryan migrations. They may have been <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00868-w">the original inhabitants of the Indus-Valley Civilization in northern India</a>. Over the millennia, the Dravidians migrated to the southern part of the subcontinent, while the Aryans fanned out across the north. </p>
<p>Today, Dravidians number <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Dravidian_peoples">about 250 million people</a>. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dravidian-languages">Dravidian languages</a>, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tamil-language">Tamil</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Telugu-language">Telugu</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Malayalam-language">Malayalam</a>, have no historical relationship and virtually no linguistic similarities to the Indo-Aryan languages of the north. </p>
<h2>Dravidians spurn Hindi</h2>
<p>By the time the Raj ended in 1947, English had been established as the language of the elites and was used in education and government. As the new nation of India took shape, Mahatma Gandhi advocated for a single Indian language to unite the diverse regions and for many years championed Hindi, <a href="https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/fact-check-did-gandhi-want-hindi-as-national-language/cid/1705408">which was already widely spoken in the north</a>.</p>
<p>But after independence, opposition to Hindi grew in the Dravidian-speaking south, where English was the favored lingua franca. For Tamils and other Dravidian groups, Hindi was associated with the Brahmin caste, whom many felt <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/why-periyar-is-still-an-influencer-in-the-political-landscape-of-tamil-nadu/periyars-movements/slideshow/63215382.cms">marginalized Dravidian languages and culture</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Portrait of a woman smiling, wearing a blue and white shawl." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550332/original/file-20230926-21-sf77gr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550332/original/file-20230926-21-sf77gr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550332/original/file-20230926-21-sf77gr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550332/original/file-20230926-21-sf77gr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=826&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550332/original/file-20230926-21-sf77gr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550332/original/file-20230926-21-sf77gr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550332/original/file-20230926-21-sf77gr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1039&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Indira Gandhi pushed to codify English, alongside Hindi, as an official language in the constitution.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/indian-politician-indira-gandhi-news-photo/639614209?adppopup=true">Henri Bureau/Sygma/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>For many people in the south, Hindi came to be seen as a language as foreign as English. To keep tensions from spilling over, the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, supported verbiage in the constitution adopted in 1950 <a href="https://www.uottawa.ca/clmc/language-provisions-constitution-indian-union#:%7E:text=The%20Constitution%20adopted%20in%201950,official%20language%20of%20the%20Union.">allowing for the continued use of English in government</a> for a limited period.</p>
<p>Violence nevertheless continued in the south for years around what was seen as the <a href="https://www.thenewsminute.com/tamil-nadu/history-anti-hindi-imposition-movements-tamil-nadu-102983">unfair promotion of Hindi</a>. It abated only when Indira Gandhi – Nehru’s daughter and the third prime minister of India – <a href="https://www.impriindia.com/insights/linguistic-diversity-language-policy/">pushed to codify English</a>, alongside Hindi, as an official language in the constitution.</p>
<p>Today, the Indian Constitution <a href="https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/EighthSchedule_19052017.pdf">recognizes 22 official languages</a>.</p>
<h2>Nationalists push for one official language</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/75-years-ago-britains-plan-for-pakistani-and-indian-independence-left-unresolved-conflicts-on-both-sides-especially-when-it-comes-to-kashmir-185932">The Partition of India in 1947</a> – corresponding to the dissolution of the Raj – led to the creation of Pakistan, which was set up to aggregate the majority Muslim regions from the colonial state. An independent India was set up to include the majority non-Muslim regions. </p>
<p>Today, roughly <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/sites/default/files/2023-05/Pakistan.pdf">97% of Pakistan’s population is Muslim</a>. In India, Hindus make up about 80% of the population, while <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-58595040">Muslims make up about 14%</a> – more than 200 million people.</p>
<p>This is where modern domestic politics come into play. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/20/what-is-hindu-nationalism-and-who-are-the-rss">Hindutva</a>” is a brand of far-right Hindu nationalism that emerged in the 20th century in response to colonial rule but gained its biggest following under the leadership of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Narendra-Modi">Prime Minister Narendra Modi</a> and his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bharatiya-Janata-Party">Bharatiya Janta Party</a>, or the BJP. </p>
<p>As a political ideology, Hindu nationalism should be distinguished from Hinduism, a religion. It advances policies that seek to promote Hindu supremacy and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/11/modi-india-muslims-hatred-incitement/">are widely considered anti-Muslim</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/25/threat-unity-anger-over-push-make-hindi-national-language-of-india">One such policy</a> is the promotion of Hindi as the sole official language of India. Speaking in 2022 at a Parliamentary Official Language Committee meeting, <a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/linguistic-imperialism-bjp-pronouncements-on-promoting-hindi-spark-outrage/article38492154.ece">BJP Home Minister Amit Shah said</a>, “When citizens of states speak other languages, communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India.”</p>
<p>To Shah, the “language of India” and Hindi were one and the same.</p>
<h2>Suppressing Urdu</h2>
<p>Muslims in India speak the languages of their communities – Hindi among them – as do Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Christians. </p>
<p>However, making Hindi the national language could be viewed as one part of a broader political project that can be characterized as anti-Muslim. That’s why the political opposition is against using “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/6/india-or-bharat-whats-behind-the-dispute-over-the-countrys-name">Bharat</a>,” even though many Muslims are themselves Hindi speakers. </p>
<p>These politics become even clearer in the context of the BJP’s attempts <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Urdu-language">to limit the use of Urdu</a> – a language with a high degree of <a href="https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/%7Eharoldfs/540/langdial/node2.html">mutual intelligibility</a> to Hindi – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-61199753">in Indian public life</a>. </p>
<p>Although Urdu and Hindi are remarkably similar, their differences take on outsized religious and national significance. </p>
<p>Whereas Hindi is written in the Devanagari script, which has strong cultural associations with Hinduism, Urdu is written in the Perso-Arabic script, which has strong associations with Islam. Whereas Hindi draws on Sanskrit for new words, Urdu draws on Persian and Arabic, again emphasizing associations to Islam. And whereas Hindi predominates in India, <a href="https://www.sprachcaffe.com/english/magazine-article/what-language-is-spoken-in-pakistan.htm">Urdu is the official language of Pakistan</a>, along with English. </p>
<p>Thus the appearance of “Bharat” in official government correspondence may reopen old wounds for Muslims – and even for conservative Hindus in the Dravidian-speaking south who might otherwise support Modi and the BJP. </p>
<p>Although an official name change is unlikely in the immediate future, “Bharat” will likely continue to serve as a rallying cry for right-wing nationalists. </p>
<p>To them, the conciliatory language politics of Nehru and Indira Gandhi <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/15/india-nehru-history-myths-modi-bjp-politics-review/">are a thing of the past</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213524/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip M. Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The government’s use of the Hindi word for ‘India’ revives debates over whether Hindi should be the national language – and reopens some old wounds.
Phillip M. Carter, Professor of Linguistics and English, Florida International University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188692
2022-09-07T12:22:16Z
2022-09-07T12:22:16Z
Wounded souls: 75 years after India’s Partition, survivors’ trauma has still not been recognized
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479973/original/file-20220818-164-vhl26n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C4%2C1020%2C754&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A refugee family that fled to Pakistan after the Partition of British India.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/famille-r%C3%A9fugi%C3%A9e-dans-un-camp-apr%C3%A8s-la-partition-de-linde-news-photo/833364734?adppopup=true">Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his poignant, much-acclaimed short story “<a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/newlits/manto_toba_tek_singh.pdf">Toba Tek Singh</a>,” Pakistani playwright <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/11/saadat-hasan-manto-short-stories-partition-pakistan">Saadat Hasan Manto</a> describes the plight of Bishan Singh, an inmate of the asylum in Lahore. In the story, set in a post-Partition era, the governments of India and Pakistan decide to exchange inmates: the Muslims among them are to stay in Pakistan, while Hindus and Sikhs are to go to India. </p>
<p>Singh, whose native town Toba Tek Singh now lies in Pakistan, is asked to go to India, as he is a Sikh. Unable to comprehend the new realities of home and belonging, Singh struggles with a crisis of identity. In the end, the “madman” dies at the no man’s land on the newly carved India-Pakistan border.</p>
<h2>The ‘insanity’ of dividing the mentally ill</h2>
<p>The no man’s land in “Toba Tek Singh” could be symbolic of the space that the mentally ill spend their lives in – between institutions that feel burdened by them and a community where they are seldom welcome. </p>
<p>But the division of the mentally ill was hardly symbolic. The farce described in Manto’s story, where governments exchange inmates, did actually take place. After the division, the largest asylum in northern India fell in Pakistan. There were no asylums under the government in Delhi. Patients and their bodies became assets to be divided between the two nations. Lists were drawn up, and <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9789353280703">hundreds of patients were exchanged</a> – a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268630418_Partition_and_the_mentally_ill">history</a> that my fellow researcher Alok Sarin and <a href="https://adbsnimhans.org/index.php/prof-sanjeev-jain/">I</a> have recorded in our work on Partition. </p>
<p>Non-Muslim patients were sent to India. The state of Punjab was divided between the two countries, and those who arrived from the area of the state that lay in Pakistan were housed in buildings and tents in the city of Amritsar in Indian Punjab. Others were sent as far away as central India, as no provincial government wanted to take responsibility of the new “others.” Several Muslim patients were sent to Pakistan from hospitals in India. </p>
<p>It is unclear how these persons were identified. Perhaps it was a bureaucratic response to make sure the burden was equally distributed. Thus attempts were made to arrive at somewhat equal numbers of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh patients to be shared across the new nations. Clearly, the new governments had not imagined the possibility that care might be delivered in a nonsectarian manner. </p>
<h2>The unacknowledged trauma of Partition</h2>
<p>The year leading up to Aug. 15, 1947, the day India gained independence, was perhaps one of the most violent in world history. Millions were forcibly moved, and at least a million killed or injured, because of the unimaginable atrocities that were perpetrated and experienced. </p>
<p>Before the Partition, in the late 1920s, a doctor conducting post-mortems on those killed in a communal riot noted that <a href="https://www.scienceopen.com/document_file/069ea416-9ea8-47c4-8633-1fd4eaaeef67/PubMedCentral/069ea416-9ea8-47c4-8633-1fd4eaaeef67.pdf">most injuries were on the victims’ backs</a>, suggesting that the perpetrators’ sense of guilt made them avoid the victims’ eyes. By 1946, this sense of guilt had disappeared. </p>
<p>Doctors were shot dead at their clinics or on the road, a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-62499647">prominent hospital in Lahore</a> was attacked, patients were killed inside hospital wards because of their identity, and more. This destroyed the idea of the hospital as a safe, secure, nonsectarian space. </p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=L5w5AQAAIAAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&ots=y_KIJxwbQN&sig=SRtGyeO5k-naCeGs8c3tB3b8-84&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">Politicians on both sides of the border</a> described the violence <a href="https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.191999">as “madness</a>.” Eminent jurist N.H. Vakeel described the attempts at carving up the country and its people as the “<a href="https://www.indianculture.gov.in/ebooks/political-insanity-india">political insanity of India</a>.” </p>
<p>Doctors of the time felt that though the physical wounds could be treated, the “abyss in the soul” of the perpetrators would <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9789353280703.n5">take decades to heal, if at all</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A black and white photograph shows a street of buildings turned to rubble." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479974/original/file-20220818-20345-6nv5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479974/original/file-20220818-20345-6nv5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479974/original/file-20220818-20345-6nv5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479974/original/file-20220818-20345-6nv5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479974/original/file-20220818-20345-6nv5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479974/original/file-20220818-20345-6nv5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479974/original/file-20220818-20345-6nv5bh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=744&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Burned-out and ruined buildings in Amritsar, India, after violence during Partition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/burned-out-and-ruined-buildings-in-the-katra-jaimal-singh-news-photo/722142447?adppopup=true">Keystone Features/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As early as the 1940s, historians such as Beni Prasad in India had warned that an undue emphasis on national identity tied up with religion boded ill for the <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.71639/page/n13/mode/2up">future</a>. This is similar to the <a href="https://scroll.in/article/876700/this-book-asks-why-psychiatrists-have-been-so-silent-about-the-trauma-of-the-partition">critique of the Holocaust</a>. Psychologist <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1965/introduction.htm">Erich Fromm</a>, political philosopher <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739192870/The-Political-Humanism-of-Hannah-Arendt">Hannah Arendt</a> and psychiatrist and political philosopher <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1997-43665-002">Karl Jaspers</a> advocated universal humanism as a counter to the dangers posed by a national identity tied up in religion or myths of superiority. Universal humanism emphasizes the value of shared human experience.</p>
<p>Post-Partition, D Satyanand, the first professor of psychiatry at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, <a href="https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.171838">wrote about</a> the impact of the “low state of political, social and economic integration” on the mental health of its citizens. </p>
<p>However, he was optimistic that things could change if the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.171838">feeling of belongingness (that) is most essential</a>” for positive mental health were nurtured. However, recurrent efforts to carve the nation along linguistic and political lines – more so after its independence – show the <a href="https://pen.org/india-at-75/">warnings have gone unheeded</a>. A sense of belongingness and selfhood has suffered as <a href="https://pen.org/india-at-75/">sectarian and communitarian identities became commonplace</a>. </p>
<h2>The silences of psychiatry in South Asia</h2>
<p>In India, formal attempts to study psychiatry began in the late 19th century, not too long after they did in the rest of the world. Most psychiatrists working in India, though British born or trained, were quite sure that there was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X14530815">no difference in the nature of insanity</a> between the two societies. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A nurse holds one child while another child with a bandaged head stands next to her." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479975/original/file-20220818-17379-4n33ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479975/original/file-20220818-17379-4n33ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479975/original/file-20220818-17379-4n33ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479975/original/file-20220818-17379-4n33ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=588&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479975/original/file-20220818-17379-4n33ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479975/original/file-20220818-17379-4n33ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479975/original/file-20220818-17379-4n33ms.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=739&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A nurse in Amritsar, India, with two children whose mother was stabbed to death during riots after Partition.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nurse-with-two-child-victims-of-communal-violence-in-news-photo/722142427?adppopup=true">Keystone Features/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Psychiatry in India fell short of assessing the events of the Partition. The experiences of hundreds of thousands who died or were displaced were met with a stony silence. There were only a handful of psychiatrists, and even <a href="https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/psychiatry-in-india-historical-roots-development-as-a-discipline-">fewer psychologists, in South Asia</a>. </p>
<p>When we shared first-person accounts of the trauma experienced during Partition with mental health experts as part of a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269689258_Bad_Times_and_Sad_Moods">research project</a>, almost all of them recognized the emotional and behavioral symptoms that would benefit from therapy, and perhaps even medication. </p>
<p>However, none of these remedies were available at the time, and issues were swept under the carpet. Psychiatrists know from other situations that a transgenerational transmission of trauma has significant effects on the psychological and even the biological health of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269689258_Bad_Times_and_Sad_Moods">subsequent generations</a>.</p>
<p>By the mid-20th century, medical services – and thus, psychiatry – were thought of as an essential and fundamental need in the subcontinent. Before India became independent in 1947, the colonial Indian Medical Service supervised health care from the Suez to Singapore. Post-independence, though, this was the only imperial service that was specifically disbanded even as the police and administrative and defense structures <a href="https://www.epw.in/journal/2013/10/notes/international-advisers-bhore-committee.html">were broadly left in place</a>. By the mid-1940s, a national health plan had been envisioned for India, but its execution was watered down in the name of provincial autonomy – reflecting the attitude of early colonial rule, which centralized revenue but distributed responsibility. </p>
<p>The transfer of power did not really change matters, as the burden of caring for the mentally ill and addressing the trauma of the Partition proved too onerous for the newly independent nations. The consequences of this denial of care and the silences over the survivors’ trauma are being felt even today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188692/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanjeev Jain received funding from Wellcome Trust 'Turning the Pages' (096493/Z/11/Z).
Prof. Sanjeev Jain DPM,MD
Department of Psychiatry
National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences,
New Mental Hospital Road (Hosur Road)
Bangalore 560029, INDIA
tel: **91 80 26 99 52 62/63</span></em></p>
Effects of violence and forced migration on survivors’ mental health have not been acknowledged, despite the trauma being passed down generations.
Sanjeev Jain, Professor of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru, India
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/187131
2022-08-12T09:58:06Z
2022-08-12T09:58:06Z
Five myths about the partition of British India – and what really happened
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475503/original/file-20220721-11250-g20nag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lord Mountbatten, then viceroy of India, meets Nehru Jinnah and other leaders to plan partition of India.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lord_Mountbatten_meets_Nehru,_Jinnah_and_other_Leaders_to_plan_Partition_of_India.jpg">Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This August marks 75 years since the partition of the Indian subcontinent. British withdrawal from the region prompted the creation of two new states, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1947/08/15/archives/india-and-pakistan-become-nations-clashes-continue-ceremonies-at.html">India and Pakistan</a>. </p>
<p>The process of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/india-pakistan-partition-imperial-britain.html">transferring power</a>
grossly simplified diverse societies to make it seem like dividing social groups and drawing new borders was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08865655.2019.1669483">logical and even possible</a>. This decision unleashed one of the biggest human migrations of <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1294846">the 20th century</a> when more than ten million people fled across borders seeking safe refuge. </p>
<p>Anniversaries can be a critical moment to pause and reflect on the passage of time, and reexamine history. Partition is widely seen as the outcome of seemingly irreconcilable differences and inherent religious tension <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3022582">in south Asia</a>. Three-quarters of a century later it’s time to reassess some of the established historical accounts. </p>
<p>Myths have been established around this history based on false assumptions. Here we examine five of them: </p>
<h2>Myth 1: The main aim was to resolve religious differences</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/independence-and-partition-1947">Popular accounts</a> of partition reproduce the British colonial state’s simplistic view of south Asian society just in terms of religious categories – with Hindu and Muslim identities as the biggest groups. Over the decades <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43553642">scholarship</a> has shown that religious difference <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/05/partition-70-years-on-india-pakistan-denial">doesn’t explain partition</a>. </p>
<p>Simplistic religious categories in most analyses of partition <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Beyond-Hindu-and-Muslim%3A-Multiple-Identity-in-from-Gottschalk/a8772920cd39b808c6a00bde53a2cf4d41d71e29">fail to sufficiently understand</a> complex social and political issues that shape south Asian societies. Partition pushed people to identify as a particular religion, and even to migrate, based on that identity.</p>
<p>Greater focus on <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23610424?searchText=1947+partition+oral+histories+virdee&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3D1947%2Bpartition%2Boral%2Bhistories%2Bvirdee%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2FSYC-6451%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A09b881ee0ef17d6401bfdc940af72224#metadata_info_tab_contents">oral histories and personal experiences</a> of partition have highlighted how this action did less to provide a political solution than to impose new divides around national and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4399640">religious lines</a>. </p>
<p>It ignores huge variation of practices and identities within and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Beyond_Religion_in_India_and_Pakistan.html?id=Uq-1DwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y">across</a> different groups in British India by assuming there was conflict based on religion. Shared cultures based on common language, literature, music and regional and local traditions challenge this. </p>
<p>The tendency to frame partition in binary Hindu vs Muslim terms has helped to shape the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26916350">rise of religious majoritarianism</a> in post-colonial south Asia, which is based on a constructed, even mythical idea of a majority which makes the rules for everyone, and which can most overtly be seen in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/8/24/the-making-of-a-hindu-india">the vision of a Hindu nation</a> being advanced by the current government in India.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yfkHdttQSYM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Refugees fleeing after partition.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Myth 2: Partition violence was spontaneous</h2>
<p>British officials and nationalist leaders saw the violence of this period as the response of an irrational, religious society to complex <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/indian-independence/evaluating-partition/">political negotiations</a>. But there is substantial evidence to show that the violence of partition <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00856401.2019.1554739">was not spontaneous</a>. The violence of 1947 was deeply shaped by earlier colonial policies <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40400043">emphasising separate religious communities</a> and cultivating some groups over others.</p>
<p>One example of this was the idea of “<a href="https://www.lehigh.edu/%7Eamsp/2006/12/myth-of-martial-races.html">martial races</a>” who were recruited for the police and army and given land allocations in return for <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2018/08/02/the-punjab-partition-when-protectors-become-perpetrators/">their loyalty</a> to the British Raj. The idea of the martial races was developed after the uprising of 1857 to identify certain certain communities who were considered ideal for <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24494199">military recruitment</a> based on their <a href="https://gwonline.unc.edu/node/1597">ethnicity and hypermasculinity</a> and, above all, loyalty to the British state. Sikhs, Jats, Punjabi Muslims and Gurkhas were all celebrated “<a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/martial_races_theory_of">martial races</a>”. </p>
<p>The violence of 1947 saw men attack one another and also women. Women of other communities were raped and killed and some men killed their own <a href="https://thewire.in/history/gendered-violence-and-the-horrors-of-partition-the-price-paid-by-women">female relatives </a> in the name of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p034m6n0">“purity” and “honour”</a>, especially in Punjab which was home to many “martial races”. Described by scholars as “<a href="https://faculty.washington.edu/brass/Partition.pdf">genocidal</a>”, the violence in Punjab was shaped by similar notions of racial purity and aggressive masculinity that had underpinned imperial recruiting policies for years.</p>
<h2>Myth 3: Partition was the outcome of long-term planning</h2>
<p>Calls for the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/312289">creation of separate states</a>, which came to the fore in 1947, had mixed and uneven support, including within the Muslim political leadership. But these <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_jinnah_lahore_1940.html">ideas</a> did not set out how, or when, such states would be created or where their borders would be drawn. Up until late 1946 the British government was very reluctant to support division of the subcontinent.</p>
<p>The British had planned to transfer power in 1948 but in February 1947 it was announced that <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24418393">Louis Mountbatten</a> would replace Lord Archibald Wavell as viceroy, the British government’s representative in India, and would transfer power by August 1947. On June 3 1947 <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-british-royals-monumental-errors-made-indias-partition-more-painful-81657">Mountbatten</a>, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru (the respective leaders of the two main pre-independence political parties, the Muslim League and Indian National Congress), announced that the subcontinent would be divided just <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zql3XEhZHkg">nine weeks later</a>. </p>
<p>Between June and August <a href="https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/reviews/22207/michael-chester-borders-and-conflicts-south-asia-radcliffe-boundary">political leaders and their lawyers</a> jockeyed to establish borders that ran through the provinces of Punjab and Bengal. These discussions were overseen by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-40788079">Cyril Radcliffe</a>, a British lawyer who had never visited India. He was given only five weeks to decide the border. While calls for the creation of a new Muslim state had been framed around religious representation, the legal negotiations of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Boundary-Commission">the Boundary Commission</a> focused heavily on securing natural resources and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/313155">ensuring state security</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/8/17/how-were-the-india-pakistan-partition-borders-drawn">final borders</a> of the new states of India and Pakistan were announced on August 17 1947 – two days after independence. Much of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/70-years-later-survivors-recall-the-horrors-of-india-pakistan-partition/2017/08/14/3b8c58e4-7de9-11e7-9026-4a0a64977c92_story.html">violence</a> is attributed to the haphazard communication of the high politics of partition to wider society, and the <a href="https://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2016/10/a-high-iron-railing-plans-to-implement-partition-in-the-palestine-mandate-and-british-india/">unnecessary speed</a> with which the process was carried out. </p>
<h2>Myth 4: All of India was under British rule</h2>
<p>One-third of India was never under formal British rule but comprised more than 550 princely states. The British government had different constitutional and diplomatic arrangements with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1947/06/22/archives/princely-states-pose-another-india-problem-end-of-british-rule.html">these states</a>, all of which required legal negotiation when the British ceded power. </p>
<p>Kashmir was one of these princely states. The maharaja, Sir Hari Singh, signed an Instrument of Accession to place the state under Indian government rule in October 1947 even though the <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/111955/?ln=en">UN Security Council called for a referendum in 1948</a>. This has never been held – and Kashmir’s status and sovereignty in relation to India and Pakistan has been a source of conflict and unrest ever since.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A map of India prior to 1947" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476056/original/file-20220726-14-iw7z2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476056/original/file-20220726-14-iw7z2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476056/original/file-20220726-14-iw7z2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476056/original/file-20220726-14-iw7z2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476056/original/file-20220726-14-iw7z2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476056/original/file-20220726-14-iw7z2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476056/original/file-20220726-14-iw7z2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map of greater India before 1947.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kartick dutta artist/Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The western coastal areas of Goa, Daman and Diu were under Portuguese <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/11/india-goa-portuguese-legacy-colonial-history">control until 1961</a> and the south Indian region of <a href="https://puducherry-dt.gov.in/history/">Pondicherry/Puducherry</a> was under French colonial rule until 1954.</p>
<h2>Myth 5: Partition had purely regional repercussions</h2>
<p>Estimates of people who migrated across the borders created in 1947 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/india-pakistan-partition-imperial-britain.html">range</a> between <a href="https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/publications/big-march-migratory-flows-after-partition-india">10 million and 17.5 million</a>. Many people from areas directly affected by partition violence, and the insecurities that followed from it, have also migrated beyond south Asia to other parts of the world. </p>
<p>Communities from <a href="https://www.striking-women.org/module/map-major-south-asian-migration-flows/post-1947-migration-uk-india-bangladesh-pakistan-and">Punjab</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00856401.2016.1244752?needAccess=true">Sindh</a>, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203167144-20/kashmiri-diaspora-influences-kashmir-patricia-ellis-zafar-khan">Kashmir</a>, and <a href="https://beyondbanglatown.org.uk/globe/independence-partition-post-1947-migrations/">Sylhet</a> form sizeable and significant <a href="https://d-nb.info/1219147117/34">communities in the UK,</a> <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YWB0GmmoOSMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Canada</a>, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/asian-american-literature-in-transition-19301965/1947-partition-war-and-internment/C418A125401F104C6CEF47D1A3C1845E">the US</a>, and beyond. This is another reminder of the ongoing repercussions and legacies of colonialism. In spite of the divisions of partition, diaspora communities can be found living <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/136">alongside one another</a> in different parts of the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Navtej K Purewal receives funding from the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Newbigin receives funding from the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) </span></em></p>
Seventy-five years after the partition of India, it’s time to dispel some commonly held misconceptions.
Navtej K Purewal, Professor of Political Sociology and Development Studies, SOAS University of London, SOAS, University of London
Eleanor Newbigin, Senior lecturer in the history of modern South Asia, SOAS, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/153846
2021-03-12T13:42:53Z
2021-03-12T13:42:53Z
Bangladesh at 50: A nation created in violence and still bearing scars of a troubled birth
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388314/original/file-20210308-13-un5d1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C0%2C3789%2C2578&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bangladeshi children at the Independence Day celebrations in Dhaka in 2012. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/BangladeshIndependenceDay/e95ff3b23ec544a79d357a1b802b8b81/photo?Query=Bangladesh%20AND%20independence&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=753&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Pavel Rahman</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>March 26 marks 50 years since the start of Bangladesh’s liberation war, a bloody nine-month campaign that culminated in the nation’s independence on Dec. 16, 1971. </p>
<p>It was a violent birth, with some of its roots in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/70-years-later-survivors-recall-the-horrors-of-india-pakistan-partition/2017/08/14/3b8c58e4-7de9-11e7-9026-4a0a64977c92_story.html">1947 partition of India</a> – when Pakistan was created as a separate nation. </p>
<p>As the British Empire left the subcontinent, an estimated <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/india-partition/">200,000 to 1.5 million people were killed</a> in sectarian violence associated with the partition and <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/india-partition/">10 million</a> to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-40874496">15 million</a> were forcibly displaced.</p>
<p>Newly independent Pakistan comprised two separate geographical areas separated by over a thousand miles of Indian terrain. While both regions included significant Muslim populations, West Pakistan was made up largely of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10576109608436002">Punjabi, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Baloch and other smaller ethnic groups</a>. In contrast, the population of <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Land_of_Two_Rivers/kVSh_TyJ0YoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor:%22Nitish+K.+Sengupta%22&printsec=frontcover">East Pakistan</a>, which became modern-day Bangladesh, was predominantly ethnically Bengali, as the territory was formerly part of the Indian region of Bengal. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.american.edu/sis/faculty/sajjad.cfm">scholar</a> of conflict, I argue that each of these factors – particularly the differences in language and political and economic inequities – laid the groundwork for Bangladesh’s independence struggle. This history continues to have an impact today.</p>
<h2>Deepening fault lines</h2>
<p>From early on, the issue of language was a difficult one. In 1948, the founding leader of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, <a href="https://soundcloud.com/farazc21/muhammad-ali-jinnah-speech-at">emphasized</a> that only Urdu, spoken by Muslims in the north and northwest in British India, should be the state language of the country. Bangla, <a href="https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/when-bangladesh-went-to-war-over-language/85912/">spoken overwhelmingly</a> by East Pakistanis, was considered by West Pakistani leadership as a <a href="https://thewire.in/external-affairs/looking-back-geopolitics-behind-pakistans-genocide-1971">“non-Muslim” language</a>.</p>
<p>The Urdu-only policy aimed to create a single identity out of two culturally distinct regions united by a common religion – Islam. More broadly, it aimed to consolidate the national identity of the recently independent Pakistan. </p>
<p>In East Pakistan, the declaration was followed by the <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/256407/pdf">banning of Bengali books, songs and poetry</a> by Bengali Nobel laureate <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1913/tagore/biographical/">Rabindranath Tagore</a>. Bangla language as the medium of education and primary mode of instruction was also banned.</p>
<p>All <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/pakistanis-demand-their-government-recognize-bengali-official-language-1947-1952">currency and official documents, including postal stamps and railway tickets,</a> were printed in Urdu.</p>
<p>The language ban deepened tensions that had already emerged between West and East Pakistan. A major reason for this was significant <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/1513/The_struggle_in_Bangladesh.pdf?1615485722">economic</a> disparities between the two regions. West Pakistan <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2056443">controlled the country’s industry and commerce</a> while East Pakistan was predominantly the supplier for raw materials, setting up a situation of unequal exchange.</p>
<p>In 1959-60 the per capita income in West Pakistan was 32% higher than in East Pakistan. By 1969-70, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317414881_DEVELOPMENT_OF_UNDERDEVELOPMENT_THE_CASE_OF_EAST_PAKISTAN_1947-1969">it was 81% higher in West Pakistan</a>. Investment policies including in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23339851">educational infrastructure</a> consistently favored West Pakistan. </p>
<p>East Pakistanis had <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2613440">little access to the central government</a>, which was located in the West Pakistani city of Islamabad. They were severely <a href="https://www.efsas.org/publications/research-dossiers/1971-liberation-war,-birth-of-bangladesh-and-comparison-with-present-day-pakistan/">underrepresented in politics</a>. West Pakistani political leadership did not see Bengalis as <a href="http://www.uplbooks.com/book/friends-not-masters-political-autobiography">“real” Muslims</a>. Both in political circles and socially, Bengali cultural practices were considered of a <a href="https://thewire.in/external-affairs/looking-back-geopolitics-behind-pakistans-genocide-1971">lower social status</a>. </p>
<h2>Mass uprising</h2>
<p>The efforts to “Islamize” East Pakistanis through Urdu and “purify” <a href="http://niyogibooksindia.com/books/bengali-culture-over-a-thousand-years">Bengali culture</a> from “Hindu influences” resulted in massive nonviolent demonstrations and strikes. </p>
<p>On Feb. 21, 1952, students and other activists launched a language movement called the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00472339180000311">Bhasha Andolon</a>,” which demanded Bangla be recognized as the state language for East Pakistan. Thousands of school and college students protested, defying <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/about/what-is-section-144">Section 144</a> of the Criminal Procedural Code, which prohibited assembly of five or more people and holding of public meetings.</p>
<p>The crackdown that followed <a href="https://opinion.bdnews24.com/2019/02/20/how-many-were-martyred-in-1952-language-movement/">claimed several lives</a>. From 1950 to 1969 it also galvanized a growing movement for autonomy across East Pakistan. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://southasiajournal.net/the-1969-mass-uprising-in-east-pakistan-as-i-saw-it/">mass uprising in 1969</a> was <a href="https://scroll.in/article/950493/51-years-ago-the-death-of-a-student-leader-sparked-a-mass-upsurge-in-former-east-pakistan">brutally put down by police</a> and led to the imposition of martial law.</p>
<p>In 1970, a <a href="https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/2019-05-01-deadliest-tropical-cyclone-bhola-cyclone-bay-of-bengal-bangladesh">devastating cyclone called “Bhola”</a> in East Pakistan claimed 300,000 to 500,000 lives. The <a href="https://www.ids.ac.uk/download.php?file=files/dmfile/Naomi_Hossain_Bhola_Cyclone_2017.pdf">indifferent response</a> of the West Pakistan government further inflamed tensions. </p>
<p>A big turning point came the same year when the <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/straight-line/news/71-years-awami-league-1918781">sole majority political party</a> in East Pakistan, led by Bengali politician Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, won a <a href="https://thewire.in/south-asia/elections-that-broke-pakistan-1970-history">landslide victory</a> in national elections. The Pakistani leadership was reluctant to accept the results because it did not want an East Pakistani political party heading the federal government.</p>
<p>This resulted in the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3549805">start of a civil disobedience movement</a> in East Pakistan. </p>
<p>As the demand for Bengali autonomy grew, the Pakistani government launched <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/perspective/news/remembering-the-barbarities-operation-searchlight-1719859">Operation Searchlight</a>,“ a military operation to crush the emerging movement. According to journalist Robert Payne, it killed at least <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/the-black-night-still-haunts-the-nation-1199260">7,000 Bengali civilians</a> – both Hindus and Muslims – in a single night.</p>
<p>On March 26, Bangladesh was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IdCJTs4VwE">declared</a> independent and the liberation war began.</p>
<h2>The violent birth of Bangladesh</h2>
<p>The liberation war was fought mostly by civilians – men and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343671906_The_Participation_of_women_in_the_Liberation_War_of_Bangladesh_in_1971_A_Historical_Analysis">women</a>, Muslims, Hindus and <a href="https://dailyasianage.com/news/104201/role-of-indigenous-people-in-bangladesh-liberation-war">non-Bengali Indigenous people</a>.</p>
<p>Bangladesh’s independence struggle took place in the broader context of the Cold War, which meant external actors were involved in the conflict. During the Cold War, India allied with the Soviet Union, while the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00856409408723198">U.S. allied with Pakistan</a> to counter Soviet influence in South Asia and to protect its geostrategic interests vis-a-vis <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674728646">Afghanistan and China</a>. </p>
<p>When the Pakistani military intensified its campaign to quell the independence movement, it did so with the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/212279/the-blood-telegram-by-gary-j-bass/">knowledge</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/002088170504300104">support of the Nixon administration</a>.</p>
<p>The Pakistani military and its local collaborators specifically targeted Hindus, who in the <a href="https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Pakistan_Census">1961 census</a> represented 18% of East Pakistan’s population of 50 million.</p>
<p>An estimated <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/publications/sowr/4a4c754a9/state-worlds-refugees-2000-fifty-years-humanitarian-action.html">10 million Bengalis became refugees in India</a>. A further <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/unbound/refugees-relief-and-revolution">20 million were internally displaced</a>. An estimated <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Nationbuilding-Gender-and-War-Crimes-in-South-Asia/DCosta/p/book/9780415704847">200,000 to 400,000 Bengali women were systematically raped</a>. </p>
<p>Independent research estimates
<a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/bangladesh-war-of-liberation/">500,000</a> to <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230337633_2">1 million people</a> were killed in the <a href="https://www.ucanews.com/news/un-to-raise-global-awareness-of-1971-bangladesh-genocide/84825">genocidal campaign</a>. The Bangladesh government maintains that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Sociology-Genocide-Analyses-Studies/dp/0300044461">3 million Bengalis were killed in the war</a>.</p>
<p>On Dec. 3, India officially entered the war <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41719989">on the side of Bangladesh</a>. </p>
<p>Ten days later, in one of the last military operations, over 300 Bengali academics, doctors, engineers, journalists, artists and teachers – Hindus and Muslims alike – <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/supplements/martyred-intellectuals-day-2017/news/why-were-they-targeted-1672987">were massacred</a> by Pakistani soldiers and their local collaborators. </p>
<p>On Dec. 16, 1971, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/17/archives/the-surrender-document.html">Pakistani military surrendered to the Indian Army</a>, marking it as Bangladesh’s Victory Day. </p>
<h2>Challenges today</h2>
<p>Soon after its independence, in a meeting between officials of the United States Agency for International Development and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Bangladesh was labeled a <a href="https://opinion.bdnews24.com/2010/10/06/the-myth-of-%E2%80%9Cinternational-basket-case%E2%80%9D/">"basket case.”</a> Years of economic inequities, the 1970 cyclone and the war had left over <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333918204_Poverty_Reduction_during_1971-2013_Periods_Success_and_its_Recent_Trends_in_Bangladesh">70% of its population living below the poverty line</a>. </p>
<p>However, in the 50 years since its independence, Bangladesh has made some significant strides. It has aggressively tackled <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/02/25/587692950/how-one-country-drastically-cut-its-newborn-death-rate">infant mortality</a>,<a href="https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2019/12/17/wef-report-bangladesh-top-in-gender-parity-in-south-asian-region">gender inequity</a> and <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-aid-lab-9780198785507?cc=us&lang=en&">economic development</a>. Today, with a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/bangladesh-is-becoming-south-asias-economic-bull-case-11614763213">booming economy</a>, it is on <a href="https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news20_e/rese_08may20_e.pdf">track</a> to graduate from the <a href="https://unohrlls.org/about-ldcs/">United Nation’s least developed country</a> category. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Bangladesh still faces enormous challenges. <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/10/29/i-sleep-my-own-deathbed/violence-against-women-and-girls-bangladesh-barriers">Violence against women and girls</a>, <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/interviews/news/corruption-has-spread-over-the-whole-society-2008101">corruption</a> and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339485716_Re-Conceptualizing_Safety_of_Journalists_in_Bangladesh">lack of press freedoms</a> remain serious concerns. </p>
<p><a href="http://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/act-367.html">Founded</a> <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0262728017745383">on the principles of secularism</a>, the country today faces a <a href="https://theconversation.com/conservative-islamic-views-are-gaining-ground-in-secular-bangladesh-and-curbing-freedom-of-expression-128692">rise of Islamists</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716218817280">divide between</a> those who participated in the independence struggle and those who collaborated with the Pakistani military continues to shape Bangladesh’s political landscape today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tazreena Sajjad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Pakistan, created during the 1947 partition, comprised two geographical areas, separated by over a thousand miles. The fault lines between the two regions resulted in the birth of Bangladesh.
Tazreena Sajjad, Senior Professorial Lecturer, American University School of International Service
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/128692
2020-02-18T13:55:22Z
2020-02-18T13:55:22Z
Conservative Islamic views are gaining ground in secular Bangladesh and curbing freedom of expression
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314539/original/file-20200210-109930-9nehfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this 2013 photo, Bangladeshi mourners carry the coffin containing the body of blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider for funeral.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Bangladesh-Bloggers-Murder/6f51046dcd5b4f948ed5303b5acf79b6/17/0">AP Photo/Pavel Rahman, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bangladesh has seen an <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-religion/article/who-supports-suicide-terrorism-in-bangladesh-what-the-data-say/F2A83C327946BBA345752E09A7A64DFE">increase in terrorist activity</a> in recent years, including attacks on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/11/bangladesh-murders-bloggers-foreigners-religion">foreigners, activists and religious minorities</a>. </p>
<p>Perpetrators of these attacks have included <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-07-05/bangladesh-attackers-privileged-backgrounds-represent-new-kind-threat">people from privileged backgrounds</a>. News <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia/36137665">reports indicate</a> they were all motivated by the idea that Islam is under attack by secularists and must be defended. </p>
<p>This is significant in a country that was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07329113.2017.1341479">founded in 1971 on principles of secularism</a> following an independence war with neighboring Pakistan. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-d--tV4AAAAJ&hl=en">research on Islamist social movements</a> has taken me to Bangladesh regularly for the past seven years. Over that time, I have found, conservative Islamic views have come to play a more central place in Bangladesh’s politics and society.</p>
<h2>The birth of Bangladesh</h2>
<p>When the Indian subcontinent gained independence from the British Empire in 1947, it was <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-partition-of-india-happened-and-why-its-effects-are-still-felt-today-81766">partitioned into two states</a>, creating Pakistan out of the Muslim-majority regions of British India. The newly formed Muslim country was split in two parts, West and East Pakistan, separated by the vast landmass of northern India. </p>
<p>While these two parts of Pakistan shared a common faith, Islam, there were significant cultural, linguistic and political differences between them. The population in the eastern region – predominantly ethnically Bengali and speaking their own language, Bangla – was <a href="https://www.dhakatribune.com/magazine/arts-letters/2017/02/23/pakistan-language-movement">politically marginalized by the western region</a>.</p>
<p>In 1971, the people of East Pakistan launched a <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hwj/article-abstract/58/1/275/580827?redirectedFrom=fulltext">war for independence</a> and founded the “Land of Bangla” – Bangladesh. </p>
<p>While language and culture was at the core of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09584939308719703">Bangladeshi national identity</a>, most people still identified as religious. In other words, it was a secular country founded by people of faith. “Secularism” in Bangladesh did not imply absence of religion, but rather that <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/7/3/37">the state be neutral toward religion</a>. </p>
<h2>Islamists and political power</h2>
<p>Since then, <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/afb7/7bd6ed65bc5dea7bcbb40c4cd7966ab2e51d.pdf">my research shows</a>, Islam has come to be a prominent political force in the country. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308873/original/file-20200107-123403-1pqxpmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308873/original/file-20200107-123403-1pqxpmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308873/original/file-20200107-123403-1pqxpmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308873/original/file-20200107-123403-1pqxpmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308873/original/file-20200107-123403-1pqxpmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308873/original/file-20200107-123403-1pqxpmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308873/original/file-20200107-123403-1pqxpmp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A banner put up by a local organization in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack in Dhaka in 2016, condemning killings in the name of religion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Anders C. Hardig</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Islamists, a broad label that covers political parties, preachers and militant groups, among others, actively promote a more conservative version of Islam. </p>
<p>The most influential Islamist <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323681904578641530401992180">party</a> is Jamaat-e-Islami, whose name means “Islamic gathering.” Though it has never won many parliamentary seats, Jamaat-e-Islami has come to exert considerable influence in government.</p>
<p>Bangladesh’s parliamentary system requires mainstream parties to ally with smaller ones to gain the majority necessary to form a government. Because of this, major political parties in Bangladesh have at different times <a href="https://www.economist.com/asia/2006/08/10/an-ugly-alliance">relied on</a> <a href="https://www.economist.com/asia/2006/08/10/an-ugly-alliance">alliances with Jamaat</a> to secure a parliamentary majority. </p>
<h2>Mobilization against secularism</h2>
<p>Other Islamists use “street power” to promote their agenda.</p>
<p>In February 2013, a high-ranking official with Jamaat-e-Islami received a life sentence for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/feb/13/shahbag-protest-bangladesh-quader-mollah">war crimes committed during the 1971 independence struggle</a>. This was considered by some as too light a sentence. A few days later, protesters began rallying in the streets to demand the death penalty for this official. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314535/original/file-20200210-109896-m7kwkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314535/original/file-20200210-109896-m7kwkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314535/original/file-20200210-109896-m7kwkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314535/original/file-20200210-109896-m7kwkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314535/original/file-20200210-109896-m7kwkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314535/original/file-20200210-109896-m7kwkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314535/original/file-20200210-109896-m7kwkp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Moderate activists in Bangladesh protesting at a Dhaka intersection demanding harsh punishment for those accused of crimes during the 1971 independence war from Pakistan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Bangladesh-War-Crimes/213aca2908054060ac664c39187d5a6f/16/0">AP Photo/Pavel Rahman</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These secular-minded supporters of the war tribunal wanted local collaborators of the Pakistani army to be punished for atrocities they committed against Bengalis and religious minorities.</p>
<p>Most of those being tried by the tribunal came from the ranks of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami.</p>
<p>The protesters wanted local collaborators of the Pakistani army to be punished for atrocities they committed against Bengalis and religious minorities. They demanded that <a href="https://themuslimtimes.info/2013/02/08/shahbagh-grand-rally-demands-ban-on-jamaat/">Jamaat-e-Islami be banned</a> and their financial interests, including Islamic banks, be dismantled. </p>
<p>This mobilization, however, was soon met with a coordinated counterprotest led by a movement known as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/30/bangladesh-hefazat-e-islam-shah-ahmad-shafi">Hefazat</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/30/bangladesh-hefazat-e-islam-shah-ahmad-shafi">As many as 500,000 people</a> shut down major roads to the capital and interpreted the protesters demands as defaming Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/news/hefajat-demands">13-point list</a>, the Hefazat demanded the death penalty for blasphemy. The group also asked for an end to Bangladesh’s <a href="https://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2013/04/bangladesh-pm-rejects-muslim-demand-for-blasphemy-law/">education policy</a>, which, in its view, prioritized “secular” subjects like science and math over religious studies. The group also wanted compulsory Islamic education.</p>
<h2>Islam under threat</h2>
<p>To appease Islamist interests, the government agreed to meet some of the demands.</p>
<p>One major concession was <a href="https://www.icj.org/bangladesh-information-and-communication-technology-act-draconian-assault-on-free-expression/">expanding the government’s ability to crack down</a> on those who “hurt religious beliefs” and for “acts of defamation.” </p>
<p>Under this revised law, called the Information and Communication Technology Act, Bangladesh has arrested <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/05/09/no-place-criticism/bangladesh-crackdown-social-media-commentary">at least eight bloggers</a> since 2013. The alleged crimes of these bloggers include writing articles critical of the Saudi government and posting derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammed online. </p>
<p>Police have used the defamation clause of the Information and Communication Technology Act and its replacement, the Digital Security Act of 2018, to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/19/bangladeshs-draconian-internet-law-treats-peaceful-critics-criminals/">silence criticism</a> of the government. Over <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/05/09/no-place-criticism/bangladesh-crackdown-social-media-commentary">1,200 people have been charged under this law between 2013 and 2018</a>. </p>
<p>Educational policy too has shifted toward <a href="https://international.la-croix.com/news/dismay-over-the-islamization-of-education-in-bangladesh/4609">Islamic education</a>. </p>
<h2>The Islamic revival</h2>
<p>Hefazat did not see all their demands met, but my research shows it moved Bangladesh away from its <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09546553.2015.1127807">secularist ideals</a>.</p>
<p>In truth, the shift in Islam’s role in politics and society really began as early as 1975 when Bangladesh’s founder and first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated in a military coup. </p>
<p>After that, Bangladesh experienced considerable political instability and was ruled by successive military governments until 1990, when a nonviolent mobilization ushered in a <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/inline_images/Bangladesh.pdf">return to democracy</a>. </p>
<p>During the dictatorship years, however, military rulers began to gradually open up politics to Islamists. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opensecurity/global-political-islam-in-bangladesh-past-present-and-future/">ban on Islamist political parties was lifted in 1975</a>, which allowed Jamaat-e-Islami to run candidates for office and establish itself as a legitimate Bangladeshi political party. </p>
<p>In 1979, the commitment to secularism was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07329113.2017.1341479">removed from the preamble of Bangladesh’s constitution</a>. In 1988, Islam was made the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/bangladeshi-court-keeps-islam-as-state-religion/a-19148093">official state religion</a>. </p>
<p>The number of religious schools – madrasas – <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/hardigsajjadpaperfinal.pdf">increased exponentially</a>, from <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=kUIEAQAAQBAJ&q=1980#v=snippet&q=1980&f=false">1,830 in 1975 to 5,793 in 1990</a>. And that’s just government-sanctioned Islamic schools following a state-approved curriculum.</p>
<p>Reliable data is missing for the vast majority of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02185377.2015.1040039?casa_token=Ij0n2TJfZboAAAAA%3A2ofbeMj9rXHunRjgijKYk7ZAdlKtKjpiwDeC_vpjl5zNHumSK0Fbo2aPiGSvyANip3OpCuhXNHTftA">private madrasas in Bangladesh</a>, which operate without any curricular control from the state. </p>
<h2>Changes in society</h2>
<p>In today’s Bangladesh there is another influential group: preachers who aspire to shape society according to their interpretations of what constitutes “pure” Islam.</p>
<p>Popular <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137264817_1">Islamic televangelists</a> reach millions across the Muslim world, spreading the notion that Islam in the Indian subcontinent must be “purified” of non-Arab elements. They believe Arabic is God’s language and to be properly pure, Muslims should use Arab practices and the language whenever possible. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314552/original/file-20200210-109943-khjdfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314552/original/file-20200210-109943-khjdfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314552/original/file-20200210-109943-khjdfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314552/original/file-20200210-109943-khjdfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314552/original/file-20200210-109943-khjdfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314552/original/file-20200210-109943-khjdfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314552/original/file-20200210-109943-khjdfa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/India-Islamic-Preacher/da1c943b0806444389ffaa5c869207e7/2/0">AP Photo/ Rajanish Kakade</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For example, Muslims in South Asia commonly say “Khuda Hafiz” when parting, a phrase derived from Persian, meaning “God be your protector.” Now, a popular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYKUt-Vut9I">Islamic televangelist, Zakir Naik</a>, has revived an old argument that emerged in the 1980s in Pakistan, saying that “true Muslims” should use the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/apr/17/pakistan-goodbye-allah-hafiz">Arabic version “Allah Hafiz” instead</a>.</p>
<p>Similarly, as several Bangladeshis have told me, it is not uncommon in today’s Bangladesh to be corrected when using the Persian “Ramzan,” when referencing the Muslim holy month. The Arabic is “Ramadan.”</p>
<p>These may seem like minor semantic changes, but they are representative of a broader “corrective movement” that seeks to “purify” Islam of perceived “un-Islamic” tendencies.</p>
<p>In my view, Bangladesh’s secularism, a constitutional concept meant to guarantee the separation of religion and state, has become so vilified by Islamists that it has come to mean something akin to “atheistic” or “anti-Islamic.”</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128692/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anders C. Hardig does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In recent years Bangladesh has seen an increase in attacks on religious minorities. A scholar explains how certain extreme views on how Islam is to be followed are taking center stage in the country.
Anders C. Hardig, Professorial Lecturer, American University School of International Service
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/122889
2019-10-07T12:06:26Z
2019-10-07T12:06:26Z
Where Kashmir fits within India’s national memory – and what impact removing its special status could have
<p>A few years ago, the Jammu and Kashmir state tourism department took out an advert called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYnHwzMTwqo">Kashmir: The Warmest Place on Earth</a>. The advert showed an Indian couple honeymooning in Kashmir who mistake an elderly Kashmiri man as their designated driver for the day. </p>
<p>The Kashmiri gentleman happily plays along and spends the day driving the couple around for sightseeing, doubling up as their photographer and feeding them home-cooked Kashmiri food. At the end, when the case of mistaken identity is uncovered, the man says he only wanted to be a good host to the visitors and show them his “home” in all its glory. In the background a lilting Kashmiri melody plays. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QYnHwzMTwqo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>Soon after its release, the advert <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/09/26/watch-this-viral-ad-on-kashmir-proves-that-its-the-warmest-place-on-earth_a_23222928/">went viral</a> and it was praised as a step towards <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/the-new-jammu-and-kashmir-ad-campaign-goes-beyond-tourism/story-7Sk90Wr07kbNkWWSRHkqgP.html">changing the narrative around Kashmir</a> as a violent, dangerous and remote place, to one that is warm, welcoming and accessible. But soon enough, the advert also invited <a href="https://kashmirobserver.net/2017/feature/kashmir-warmest-yet-coldest-place-earth-24281">pointed criticism</a> for pushing a sanitised, forcibly “normalised” picture of a place that has been living in limbo for decades. </p>
<p>Kashmir is a veritable militarised fortress against a backdrop of breathtaking beauty – even more so since India revoked Article 370 of its constitution in August, <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-the-protests-in-kashmir-121833">taking away the special status</a> accorded to the part of Kashmir it has controlled since 1954.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-colossal-blunder-in-kashmir-121657">India’s colossal blunder in Kashmir</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Contested reality</h2>
<p>In many ways, the advert and the reactions to it are indicative of the uncomfortable place that Kashmir occupies in India’s collective national consciousness. It’s simultaneously a faraway land evocative of heaven on Earth as well as a territory that is an integral part of the Indian union. It’s a place peopled by kind, benevolent residents such as that embodied by the driver from the advert, but also one torn asunder by militant separatists gunning for an independent Kashmir.</p>
<p>It has aspirations to be an outward looking tourist attraction but is perceived as an isolated conflict zone. In the figure of the Kashmiri man – happy to play along as the driver to the tourist couple – is reflected the ideal version of a Kashmiri for the rest of India: acquiescent, unquestioning and at the service of outsiders. </p>
<p>These alternating, contesting perceptions of Kashmir have become even more relevant in the current crisis the valley finds itself after the Indian government removed Kashmir’s special status in August. Three months later, the former state <a href="https://scroll.in/article/939269/this-is-what-kashmir-looks-like-after-61-days-of-normalcy">remains blocked and cut off</a> from the rest of the country and the world. </p>
<p>The Indian government maintains that <a href="https://time.com/5659671/kashmir-indian-government/">things are fine</a> in the Kashmir valley and that the blocking of internet and phone lines is a necessary precautionary measure that shall be lifted soon. But straining under a heavy security deployment and with its major political leadership under house arrest, a return to “normalcy” seems distant.</p>
<p>The images and reports emerging from the valley present a picture of a place still bursting at the seams with <a href="https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/kashmir-lockdown-50-days-and-counting/cid/1707086">tension</a>. Amid all the chest thumping and grandstanding emanating from the corridors of power in New Delhi, I’ve been thinking about what place the revocation of Kashmir’s special status will hold in India’s national memory in the years to come.</p>
<h2>1947, 1971, 2019</h2>
<p>To a large extent, the history of post-colonial South Asia is punctuated by two monumental moments of rupture: the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-partition-of-india-happened-and-why-its-effects-are-still-felt-today-81766">partition of the subcontinent in 1947</a> into India and Pakistan and the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, which led to the creation of Bangladesh. Both events, the memory of which is the focus of my own ongoing research, involved a massive redrawing of borders, were marked by large scale violence and <a href="https://www.1947partitionarchive.org">displacement</a> and have left behind a legacy of unresolved trauma in the region. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/three-families-stories-of-new-beginnings-after-the-horror-of-indian-partition-82393">Three families' stories of new beginnings after the horror of Indian partition</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The unfolding of events in 1947 and 1971 and the ways in which they continue to linger in the present has led to a complex relationship with national memories in both India and Bangladesh. </p>
<p>In India, while the state commemorates and remembers the independence struggle, no memorial exists for the partition that came with freedom from colonial rule. In Bangladesh, on the other hand, the Liberation War lies at the core of the national memory, with several <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/perspective/monument-bangladesh-and-the-world-1332946">memorials</a> and a <a href="https://www.liberationwarmuseumbd.org">museum</a> dedicated to it. However, even here the act of remembering is not devoid of its inherent <a href="https://www.thedailystar.net/news/war-crimes-justice-and-the-politics-of-memory">politics</a>, which is reflected in the tension of who gets included and erased from the national memory.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295766/original/file-20191007-121092-17cqz1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/295766/original/file-20191007-121092-17cqz1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295766/original/file-20191007-121092-17cqz1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295766/original/file-20191007-121092-17cqz1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295766/original/file-20191007-121092-17cqz1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295766/original/file-20191007-121092-17cqz1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/295766/original/file-20191007-121092-17cqz1h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The National Martyrs’ Monument at Savar, Bangladesh, built to commemorate those who died in the 1971 war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/savar-bangladesh-march-26-2014-national-330632468?src=LYkTB8LzDK2J6vsi_L34FQ-1-15">Sohel Parvez Haque/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fabric of national memory in both India and Bangladesh is in fact a patchwork of utterances and silences. Both countries are caught between presenting a story of triumph celebrating independence, freedom from colonial, oppressive regimes and the sacrifice that went into this, while simultaneously distancing themselves from the legacy of violence, trauma, secrecy and shame.</p>
<p>The Indian responses to the abrogation of Article 370 in high decibel prime-time debates, op-eds, sound bites and social media have similarities with the way triumph and trauma are both used simultaneously to reference 1947 and 1971. This has been at play in the predominantly <a href="https://theprint.in/plugged-in/art-370-express-says-its-history-hindu-calls-it-surgical-strike-arnab-sees-justice-done/272873/">celebratory</a> tenor of the reactions to the government’s move. </p>
<p>The removal of Kashmir’s special status <a href="http://newsonair.nic.in/Main-News-Details.aspx?id=369681">has been hailed</a> as a historic step towards true integration of the region with the rest of the Indian nation and heralded as the harbinger of “development” to the valley. This narrative of celebration, hope and aspirations for a better future is evocative of a similar discourse of rupture and reconstruction embodied in the story of Indian independence and the birth of Bangladesh.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the impact of the decision on the lives of ordinary citizens in Kashmir <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/life-after-370-is-a-silent-crisis-simmering-in-kashmir/articleshow/70622668.cms?from=mdr">remains contested and shrouded in uncertainty</a>. This again bears parallels with the ways in which the trauma of 1947 and 1971 continues to haunt the lives of people whose lives were disrupted by geopolitical decisions and forces beyond their control. </p>
<p>The revocation of Kashmir’s special status does not involve an actual refashioning of borders. Nonetheless, it is a colossal renegotiation of the ideas of “belonging to Kashmir” and “Kashmir belonging to India”. The writing has been on the wall for a while, but it remains to be seen what place this 2019 moment of rupture finds in the patchwork of Indian national memory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122889/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Isha Dueby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
How will future generations of Indians view Kashmir’s contested history?
Isha Dueby, Post-doctoral Fellow, Lund University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/91292
2018-02-26T10:02:55Z
2018-02-26T10:02:55Z
India and Pakistan’s rivalry isn’t territorial or ideological – it’s psychological
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207528/original/file-20180222-152363-1re023n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sibling rivalry.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/flags-india-pakistan-painted-on-cracked-422767222?src=IpM4hITO_T3fTupoKun7sA-1-8">danielo via Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ever since their birth as two separate countries in 1947, India and Pakistan have been psychologically obsessed with their assorted mutual conflicts. They have fought four conventional wars, and regularly display their <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-bomb-has-kept-the-peace-between-india-and-pakistan-45839">nuclear capability</a> to outpace and undermine each other. From the outside, it resembles nothing so much as a family feud – and psychologically speaking, it’s a very apt analogy.</p>
<p>Across the subcontinent, family and lineage are the most influential institutions in people’s lives, and people tend to transpose the psychological moral structure of their kinship relations into every other institution in the outside world. Respecting your seniors and expecting care and nurture is the norm, and it holds sway in various forms across every sphere of life. </p>
<p>As one famous South Indian proverb puts it, after living together for six months, “they” become “we” and “we” become “they”; neighbours should be treated like family members. It is the violation of this norm that underpins the modern India-Pakistan (or Hindu-Muslim) rivalry.</p>
<p>By the time of partition, the two sides had lived together in one society for more than a millennium. South Asian Hindus and Muslims shared not just a cultural gene pool and biological ties, but common kinship institutions: the extended family group joined by marriage, which is called <em>Khandan</em> in Pakistan and <em>Pariwar</em> in India, or the lineage group with common descendants, known as <em>Biradari</em> in Pakistan and <em>Jati</em> in India.</p>
<p>The rupture between the two can be traced to what happened within India’s predominantly Hindu Congress party, which represented both communities against the British Raj in the years before the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-partition-of-india-happened-and-why-its-effects-are-still-felt-today-81766">partition of India and Pakistan</a> in 1947. As partition neared, the reservations of Muslims were not properly considered, and their demands were thus not met. The Muslim minority was excluded from most decisions, which created in them a fear of “not mattering at all”. The Muslims, suddenly the “junior” family members, felt neglected – and as younger siblings oftentimes do, they became extra-competitive.</p>
<h2>Them and us</h2>
<p>Viewed this way, the India-Pakistan conflict owes more to historical and psychological “nearness” than to mere competition for resources or territory. And that much is clear in the language they use to talk about each other. </p>
<p>In many parts of India and Pakistan, especially in both Punjabs, the word used for the 1947 <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-road-to-indias-partition-82432">Partition of India</a> is “batwara”, which literally means “the distribution of ancestral land” between brothers or patrilineal cousins. The word comes with resonances that the English word “partition” simply doesn’t carry: harmonious family, painful division, cousin rivalry, love-hate competition.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207273/original/file-20180221-132677-187xt6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207273/original/file-20180221-132677-187xt6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207273/original/file-20180221-132677-187xt6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207273/original/file-20180221-132677-187xt6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207273/original/file-20180221-132677-187xt6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207273/original/file-20180221-132677-187xt6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/207273/original/file-20180221-132677-187xt6v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Before batwara: Pakistan’s M. A. Jinnah and India’s Mohandas Gandhi in 1944.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jinnah_and_Gandhi.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These are the psychological dynamics that play out in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-kashmir-is-still-ensnared-in-conflict-after-70-years-85202">dispute over Kashmir</a>. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir as if it were their ancestral property, and people on both sides feel a deep emotional attachment to it. In the subcontinent, to give up a claim to one’s ancestral property brings “dishonour” to one’s family and group, and is considered a weakness.</p>
<p>For Pakistanis, the rivalry against Indians is driven by a deep sense of being “wronged” at the time of partition, the corollary being a “desire” to compete with and trump Indians at any cost. It’s this bitterly competitive urge that drives Pakistan’s leaders, army officers and populace to defy India’s obvious demographic, economic and military supremacy, and to do so with such intensity. </p>
<p>As William Blake <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/235/329.html">said</a>, “it is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend”. Whoever we are, it seems we can all feel a special kind of enmity for the enemies we most resemble – whether a sibling or a neighbour, we simply cannot accept “them” as “us” despite our obvious similarities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91292/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jawad Kadir does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Ever since partition in 1947, South Asia’s two biggest players have been locked in sibling rivalry.
Jawad Kadir, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86885
2017-11-10T10:56:03Z
2017-11-10T10:56:03Z
Why remembrance of Indian soldiers who fought for the British in World War II is so political
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193782/original/file-20171108-14221-23ll6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C194%2C796%2C594&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian forces in North Africa during World War II. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Imperial War Museums © IWM (E 5330) </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, an Indian lieutenant wrote a letter to his beloved. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here I am penning this to you in the middle of one of the biggest nights in the history of this war. Love, I am sure by the time you receive this letter you will guess correctly as to where I am. I bet you, you wouldn’t like to stay here a single minute… Oh! it is terrible. Yet in the midst of this commotion, I sit here, on my own kit-bag and scribble these few lines to my love for I do not really know when I will get the next opportunity to write to you.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lieutenant formed part of the largest volunteer army in the world, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/23/the-raj-war-peoples-history-second-world-war-yasmin-khan-review">2.5m men</a> from undivided India – what is today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – who served the British during World War II. They were fighting for Britain at a time when the struggle for India’s freedom from British rule was at its most incendiary.</p>
<p>The two world wars will be remembered on November 12 in the UK by two minutes’ of silence, church services and the laying of poppy wreaths. Such commemorative practices are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/find-out-how-you-can-join-the-commemorations-on-sunday-12-november">directed towards</a> “the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women”. But the use of the term “Commonwealth” glosses over the imperial legacy intertwined in this war effort.</p>
<p>The British memory of World War II, with its <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war">60m dead</a> on all sides, is framed through several broad narratives: personal and familial loss, the battle against fascism and the UK’s refusal to capitulate, and the war’s transformative impact on European geopolitics. But there are rich seams of forgotten stories beyond these Eurocentric points of reference: this was a world war, and experiences under British colonialism and Empire are intricately woven through its fabric. As historian Yasmin Khan has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/23/the-raj-war-peoples-history-second-world-war-yasmin-khan-review">pointed out</a>: “Britain did not fight the Second World War, the British Empire did.” Today’s remembrance services avoid interrogating this colonial past and the range of Indian war experiences that ensued. </p>
<h2>A time of resistance</h2>
<p>Indian participation in the war began with four mule companies being sent off to France to assist the <a href="http://www.britishmilitaryhistory.co.uk/documents.php?aid=24&nid=4&start=0">British Expeditionary Forces</a> in September 1939. The then-viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/17/book-review-inidas-war-world-war-ii-and-the-making/">did not consult</a> the burgeoning Indian political leadership before doing so. This undemocratic inclusion in World War II led to Mahatma Gandhi launching the <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/1942-quit-india-movement">1942 Quit India movement</a> – mass agitations against 200 years of British rule – which was suppressed, in turn, by a brutal use of force, including <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/videos/in-numbers-75-years-of-the-quit-india-movement/article19451392.ece">firing on civilians and public floggings</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193783/original/file-20171108-14167-1e46zpn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An Indian soldier guarding an Anglo Iranian Oil Company refinery in Persia in September 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Imperial War Museums - © IWM (E 5330)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1940s India, unlike Britain, conscription was never introduced. Enlisting was therefore voluntary – and new recruits were ostensibly granted the power to choose whether to sign up to go to war. The British Empire, however, needed men urgently, and requirements for entry were considerably relaxed, including <a href="https://www.academia.edu/3010524/State_And_Class_In_India_19391945">the acceptance of underweight and anaemic applicants</a> – those most desperate for a steady income. </p>
<p>Indian responses to the war were wide-ranging and complex, as soldiers’ letters connecting battlefield to the home-front reveal. While many letters were deferential to the British Empire as economic provider, others revealed an awareness of soaring rates of wartime inflation in India, with ordinary people being priced out of food and essential items. </p>
<p>A “havildar clerk” or sergeant from the Royal Indian Army Service Corps wrote back home in May 1943:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Everything has gone high in price in our homeland. They have written that no cloth is available for less than one rupee per yard. We being earning <em>[sic]</em> can pull on somehow or other but the poor have to suffer much. But what can be done? What power have we got to do anything.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The letter, which is kept in the British Library archives which I am researching, highlights the soldier’s psychological despair of being a hapless spectator from an overseas battlefront to hunger and want in his homeland. More than <a href="http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/15-the-prime-minister-and-the-prof">3m people died</a> in the <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198284632.001.0001/acprof-9780198284635-chapter-6">man-made Bengal Famine of 1943</a>, through a combination of starvation and the associated diseases of cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=921&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/193781/original/file-20171108-14205-18so2xb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Representation of a family struck by the Bengal Famine of by Bangladeshi artist Zoinul Abedin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© British Museum 2012, 3027.1</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The famine could have been prevented had large-scale exports of food from India not been sent to war theatres and had <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/10/how_churchill_starved_india.html">aid arrived in time.</a></p>
<p>World War II also became an opportunity for armed resistance to British rule in India, spearheaded by the charismatic <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674065963">Subhas Chandra Bose</a>. The <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3684288.stm">Indian Legion</a> in Germany and the <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/12254/forgotten_army">Indian National Army</a> in Japanese-controlled East Asia, formed from prisoners-of-war belonging to the imperial Indian Army and expatriate Indian communities, were persuaded to fight against the British to secure independence. They lost the war, but were hailed <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Forgotten_Army.html?id=ysA8RNT224oC&redir_esc=y">by the Indian public as heroes</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hbKO-C-kZ8A?wmode=transparent&start=17" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>A complex legacy</h2>
<p>The history of Indian participation in World War II has left a difficult, sometimes fraught legacy, both in the UK and the Indian subcontinent. Current UK commemorations do not capture this complexity or encourage us to <a href="https://theconversation.com/official-world-war-i-memorial-rituals-could-create-a-generation-uncritical-of-the-conflict-60384">think critically</a> about established narratives about war. </p>
<p>In India, official remembrance for World War II remains a controversial subject, as it is a reminder of the colonial past, although <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-36801602">efforts are being made</a> to change this lack of public commemoration. In my interviews with survivors and their family members in India, I have found that many have kept remembering the war in private, through old uniforms, battlefield objects, dusty photographs and conversation.</p>
<p>The letters I am studying, too, evoke the varied and personal experiences of colonial troops: homesickness and longing, life in the desert, entertainment provided by mobile Indian cinemas, the joys of eating a <em>bada khana</em> (enormous feast) and the annoying lack of cigarettes. These words document the immediacy of their war experience. More than silences and wreaths, they bring forgotten Indian soldiers back into the narrative of World War II and deepen our understanding of a global history of terrible violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86885/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diya Gupta receives funding from the charity "British Federation of Women Graduates' for her final-year PhD research work. She is a student member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>
Letters home reveal what is was like to be an Indian soldier in World War II.
Diya Gupta, PhD Researcher, Department of English, King's College London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82393
2017-08-14T12:46:35Z
2017-08-14T12:46:35Z
Three families’ stories of new beginnings after the horror of Indian partition
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181947/original/file-20170814-23252-1nzhlai.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Saad Mohammad Al-Husainy, a student in Birmingham, marries Colette O'Neill in 1954.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph courtesy of Sùna Al-Husainy</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-partition-of-india-happened-and-why-its-effects-are-still-felt-today-81766?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2010%202017&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20August%2010%202017+CID_e009fc9f250328683a4f34f1bb89851f&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=How%20the%20Partition%20of%20India%20happened%20%20and%20why%20its%20effects%20are%20still%20felt%20today">partition of the Indian subcontinent</a> was catastrophic for the over 10m people caught up in the turmoil of new borders, displacement and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/butalia-silence.html">horrors</a> that plagued those on their way to new homes. But there were a few silver linings.</p>
<p>In 2016, I researched <a href="https://www.academia.edu/34217729/Skipping_Memories_on_Partition_and_the_Intersensory_Field_in_Subcontinental_Britain">Britain Asian recollections of partition</a> to write a play, <a href="https://www.sohayavisions.com/our-story">Silent Sisters</a>. The play is being <a href="https://www.richmix.org.uk/">performed</a> again in <a href="https://www.parkwoodtheatres.co.uk/The-Hawth">November</a> to mark 70 years since partition in August 1947.</p>
<p>I spoke to 52 people in workshops and individual interviews. It became evident that the pain, loss and restlessness of forced movement to either Pakistan or elsewhere in India played a big part in families’ decision to <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpsubject/history/history/asiansinbritain/histoutline/briefhist.html">migrate overseas</a>. The turbulence also spurred female survivors from conservative families to pursue educational and vocational careers that they would never have otherwise entertained.</p>
<h2>Restless spirits</h2>
<p>Community artist and activist, Sùna Al-Husainy, talked about her father, Saad Mahmood Al-Husainy, who passed away in London in 2012. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181865/original/file-20170813-21897-1nt1vwy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181865/original/file-20170813-21897-1nt1vwy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181865/original/file-20170813-21897-1nt1vwy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181865/original/file-20170813-21897-1nt1vwy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=794&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181865/original/file-20170813-21897-1nt1vwy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181865/original/file-20170813-21897-1nt1vwy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181865/original/file-20170813-21897-1nt1vwy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sùna Al-Husainy as a baby with her family, circa 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph courtesy of Sùna Al-Husainy</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a young man, he had escorted the future premier of Pakistan, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/jinnah_mohammad_ali.shtml">Mohammad Ali Jinnah</a>, to a meeting with India’s leader, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/nehru_jawaharlal.shtml">Jawaharlal Nehru</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/mountbatten_lord_louis.shtml">Viceroy Louis Mountbatten</a> and the man tasked with drawing the lines of partition, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-40788079/cyril-radcliffe-the-man-who-drew-the-partition-line">Cyril Radcliffe</a>. </p>
<p>She told me that partition went right through her father’s village in the Gurdaspur district of India’s Punjab province. “When I approached my father about it, he found it very difficult to talk about it,” she said. “But he did manage to bring out a full poster size photograph of the palace he grew up in.”</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181863/original/file-20170813-13476-c7e29e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181863/original/file-20170813-13476-c7e29e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181863/original/file-20170813-13476-c7e29e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181863/original/file-20170813-13476-c7e29e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181863/original/file-20170813-13476-c7e29e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181863/original/file-20170813-13476-c7e29e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181863/original/file-20170813-13476-c7e29e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Saad Mahmood Al-Husainy’s palace in India (no longer present), circa 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph courtesy of Sùna Al-Husainy</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sùna Al-Husainy’s paternal family were Muslims, descendants of a 13th-century Sufi saint, <a href="http://wwwnfiecomblogspotcom.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/hazrat-syed-imam-ali-shah-ra.html">Hazrat Imam Ali Shah Sahib</a>. His shrine is the <a href="https://dairamuhammadi.wordpress.com/biography/hazrat-syed-imam-ali-shah/">Makkan Sahrif</a>, now looked after by a Sikh octogenarian, <a href="http://makansharief-rattarchattar.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/history-why-mela-is-celebrated-mela_28.html">Gurcharan Singh</a>, in India. </p>
<p>After partition, Saad Mahmood Al-Husainy moved to Lahore in Pakistan. As the eldest of six, he was expected to take the role of a <a href="https://www.revolvy.com/topic/Pir%20(Sufism)&item_type=topic">Sufi <em>pir</em></a> or master. Instead, in a bid to escape his sense of political despair and memories of the atrocities that he had witnessed, including the beheading of his household servants, he made the decision to leave for Britain. </p>
<p>He enrolled at the University of Birmingham in the late 1940s to study medicine. There, at a poetry recital of the Sufi saint, <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/jalal-al-din-rumi%5D">Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi</a>, he met an Irish woman, Colette O'Neill, who was training to be a teacher. They fell for each other, not least due to their love of poetry, and within three months, had got married. </p>
<h2>Creative impulses</h2>
<p>Siraj-Ud-Din was the maternal uncle of Javed Khan, one of the actors in <a href="https://en-gb.facebook.com/SilentSisterstheplay/">Silent Sisters</a>. He was a photographer living in the north-eastern Indian state of Bihar. In 1947, photographs were among his few belongings as he abandoned his home to sail with his extended family to the new nation of Pakistan. One of Siraj-Ud-Din’s pre-partition photographs was of female relatives in their former home in Bihar. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181845/original/file-20170812-13451-8ud7a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181845/original/file-20170812-13451-8ud7a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181845/original/file-20170812-13451-8ud7a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181845/original/file-20170812-13451-8ud7a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181845/original/file-20170812-13451-8ud7a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181845/original/file-20170812-13451-8ud7a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181845/original/file-20170812-13451-8ud7a2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Javed Khan’s maternal family with his grandmother in centre and mother on bottom right, taken in India, circa 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph courtesy of Javed Khan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another was taken around 1949 in their new home in the Punjab province of Pakistan.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181848/original/file-20170812-21897-15yuc71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181848/original/file-20170812-21897-15yuc71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181848/original/file-20170812-21897-15yuc71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181848/original/file-20170812-21897-15yuc71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181848/original/file-20170812-21897-15yuc71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181848/original/file-20170812-21897-15yuc71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181848/original/file-20170812-21897-15yuc71.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Javed Khan’s maternal relatives in Pakistan with grandfather in centre and mother on bottom left, circa 1949.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph courtesy of Javed Khan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such photographs showing the resilience of ordinary refugees were a rarity. Khan reflected:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were lucky to have these pics. Mamu [uncle] ended up having a photo studio in Karachi. I remember it – where he did portraits and 10x8 lobby pics for cinemas. My dad helped him with hand-colouring them among several other jobs. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181851/original/file-20170812-13490-1x8kpyy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181851/original/file-20170812-13490-1x8kpyy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181851/original/file-20170812-13490-1x8kpyy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181851/original/file-20170812-13490-1x8kpyy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181851/original/file-20170812-13490-1x8kpyy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181851/original/file-20170812-13490-1x8kpyy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181851/original/file-20170812-13490-1x8kpyy.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=690&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Javed’s father, Wali Mohammed with his brothers, Fakhru and Shah Zaman (left to right) in Liverpool, circa 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph courtesy of Javed Khan</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Born in Karachi in 1955, Khan travelled with his father to Liverpool on the now decommissioned <a href="http://iancoombe.tripod.com/id29.html">RMS Caledonia</a>. They met with his uncles who had moved to Britain in the 1950s. While Siraj-ud-Din stayed put in Karachi, Khan’s mother, Suriya Begum, joined them a year later.</p>
<p>Packed with hopes of having a better life in the former colonial heartland than in Pakistan itself, Khan’s family went to live in Yorkshire. In 1977, inspired by the artistic talents of his maternal relatives, Khan headed south to pursue a career in fine art prior to acting.</p>
<h2>New horizons for women</h2>
<p>Kaunain Rahman, a postgraduate student who attended one of the workshops for <a href="https://twitter.com/SohayaV">Silent Sisters</a>, attributed her studying at the University of Sussex to fateful decisions made by her female ancestors. During the turmoil of partition, her great grandparents refused to move from Delhi. <a href="http://www.1947partitionarchive.org/">Like many other minorities who had befriended their neighbours</a>, they were under the belief that they would be protected from any communalist attacks. But this was not to be. One night, marauders arrived <em>en masse</em> at their gates:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My great grandfather had his hunting rifle ready. And he had six daughters. If the mob breaks through, then he was ready to shoot and kill his daughters because he didn’t want them to be raped and then killed. It was only because my great grandmother’s brother-in-law had connections with politicians that they were airlifted out in the nick of time. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>After their spectacular escape, they moved to Calcutta (Kolkata) with hardly anything to their name. Still, it spurred <a href="http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/book-review-ritu-menon-and-kamla-bhasins-borders-and-boundaries/1/264073.html">a new lease of life particularly for the women</a>. She told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m sitting here today because of the decisions my great grandmother had made at that time. She had a few gold bangles. She sold all of them. And instead of keeping them for her daughter’s dowry or for food or for shelter, she put her daughters into schools. And those daughters went on to become successful women in their own respective fields. And then their daughters, and their daughters, well, one of them is me! </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And so out of great devastation came incredible courage and new beginnings as partition survivors spread their wings far and wide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raminder Kaur has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and as artistic director of Sohaya Visions, from Arts Council England.</span></em></p>
For some, the forced movement and brutalities of partition in 1947 led to new opportunities for women and migration to Britain.
Raminder Kaur, Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81515
2017-08-14T11:58:46Z
2017-08-14T11:58:46Z
India’s torture record is dire – but Britain has little to crow about
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181362/original/file-20170808-28189-1vk0a37.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tcitp_d277_detachment_of_indian_police.jpg">Indian Imperial Police, 1908.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On this 70th anniversary of its independence from British rule, India is being subjected to the sort of assessment that all post-colonial nation-states are forced to undergo on such occasions. How “far” have they come since the end of what their European colonisers liked to view not as a lengthy period of forced occupation, exploitation and violence, but rather of “tutelage” in the values and virtues of European civilisation? Invariably, they are found wanting.</p>
<p>Nowhere is such a perceived lack greater, perhaps, than in the realm of human rights. Post-colonial states are routinely critiqued by Western governments and human rights NGOs for their failure to uphold what are declared to be universal values. Such critiques are often spurred by, and help to reinforce, underlying assumptions about the incivility of racial “others”.</p>
<p>This is not to say that such critiques should not be made. Nor that human rights abuses or attempts to deny them should not be challenged and fought vociferously against. </p>
<p>Take Indian Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi’s <a href="https://scroll.in/article/836872/attorney-general-mukul-rohatgi-says-torture-is-alien-to-indian-culture-is-he-right">recent claim</a>, at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, that “torture is completely alien to Indian culture”. No less than <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/cutting-both-ways-debate-on-anti-torture-law-rages-on/articleshow/58901442.cms">591 people died in police custody</a> in India between 2012 and 2015. Torture, sexual violence and disappearances have been practised <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/09/mass-graves-of-kashmir">on a horrific scale</a> by the Indian armed services. The <a href="http://iheu.org/india-turning-into-nightmare-for-minorities/">torture and mistreatment of minorities</a> by public vigilante groups, often in collusion with the police and other officials, has become <a href="http://en.southlive.in/india/2017/06/30/torture-of-minorities-new-normal-in-india-modi-govt-must-stop-its-nationalist-policing-says-asian-human-rights-commission">ubiquitous</a> since the rise to power of Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party three years ago. Given all this, such a claim is clearly grotesque.</p>
<h2>Western torture</h2>
<p>But there is something disconcerting about the Western move to denounce the human rights records of post-colonial states. After all, similar assertions about the purported lack of civility of non-Western peoples were central to the justifications made by European colonial states for their conquest and colonisation of vast swathes of the planet. And since then, <a href="http://isrf.org/about/fellows-and-projects/martin-thomas/#project70bf-a2a8190f-35b9">innumerable “interventions” have been made</a> in formerly colonised regions of the world in the name of humanitarianism and human rights. </p>
<p>Given this, current critiques need to be placed in a broader historical and geographical context. The West’s record is not as rosy as is generally made out.</p>
<p>Torture is generally regarded as a barbaric remnant of the history of the West, long since abandoned, with its contemporary use confined to non-democratic or non-Western states. In reality, it simply came to assume different forms. </p>
<p>When torture as a public spectacle and a means of demonstrating and enforcing state sovereignty began to disappear in the Western world in the 17th century, it became increasingly privatised, assuming new forms. And torture as public spectacle by no means completely vanished. As the history of lynching in the United States or, more recently, the torture of prisoners by American troops at <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/media-abu_ghraib/article_2149.jsp">Abu Ghraib</a> reveal, the public torturing and display of violated non-white bodies has continued to be employed as a means of manufacturing and maintaining white racial superiority.</p>
<p>Torture of one kind or another <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8490.html">was</a> and <a href="https://nyupress.org/books/9780814752791/">remains</a> central to the operation of modern democratic states, as well as to the management of racial others. And so it should come as little surprise that it was ubiquitous in states that were occupied, despotic, exploitative, and organised according to a strict racial hierarchy, in which the rulers had little sympathy with, or understanding of, the ruled – namely in European colonies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181360/original/file-20170808-22938-1tmyzip.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181360/original/file-20170808-22938-1tmyzip.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181360/original/file-20170808-22938-1tmyzip.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181360/original/file-20170808-22938-1tmyzip.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181360/original/file-20170808-22938-1tmyzip.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181360/original/file-20170808-22938-1tmyzip.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181360/original/file-20170808-22938-1tmyzip.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181360/original/file-20170808-22938-1tmyzip.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">World empires and colonies in 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Colonial torture</h2>
<p>In the case of colonial India, torture was a standard means of extorting confessions by indigenous police officers who, at the lowest ranks, were often illiterate, and so poorly paid that they were forced to resort to extortion to avoid an existence of permanent semi-starvation. It was also widely used <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2iUlDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=torture+revenue+collection&source=bl&ots=r6lUccHzAA&sig=6p2l8mtIHIYwiH5KZnjetDptfHE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAuKGb-czVAhUsKsAKHTsNB34Q6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=torture%20revenue%20collection&f=false">in revenue collection</a> to extract high revenue demands from impoverished peasants.</p>
<p>While officials in both India and Britain claimed to be shocked when torture <a href="https://www.academia.edu/24632445/_Bureaucracy_Power_and_Violence_in_Colonial_India_in_Peter_Crooks_and_Tim_Parsons_ed._Empires_and_Bureaucracy_from_Late_Antiquity_to_the_Modern_World_Cambridge_University_Press_forthcoming_">erupted into scandal</a>, as it did in the mid-19th century and again in the early 20th, its role in the construction and maintenance of British colonial rule was well known from the late 18th century. Although there were innumerable commissions, reports, investigations and parliamentary enquiries dealing with torture in India, the colonial regime ultimately did little to eradicate it.</p>
<p>This is because the colonial regime largely benefited from torture. Torture made the police “a terror to well disposed and peaceable people”, as a deponent to the 1854 Madras Torture Commission <a href="https://library.soas.ac.uk/Record/570240">observed</a>. This was undoubtedly advantageous for an alien regime that was ultimately dependent on force to maintain its sovereignty. It also enabled the colonisers to displace the blame for torture from their own system of administration to the colonised, in particular to the purported “rapacity, cruelty and tyranny” <a href="https://library.soas.ac.uk/Record/570240">inherent in Indian “character”</a>.</p>
<p>Of course we should condemn India’s appalling human rights record when it comes to torture, as well as its ongoing failure to ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/cutting-both-ways-debate-on-anti-torture-law-rages-on/articleshow/58901442.cms">20 years after becoming a signatory to it</a>. But this should not be done without acknowledging the history of torture perpetrated by Western democratic states, including in contexts such as colonial India. To do so is not only to ignore the genesis of such modern torture regimes, but to perpetuate the racial assumptions that made colonialism possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81515/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deana Heath's research on torture in colonial India is being funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation.</span></em></p>
There is something disconcerting about the Western move to denounce the human rights records of post-colonial states.
Deana Heath, Senior Lecturer in Indian and Colonial History, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77068
2017-08-11T13:47:17Z
2017-08-11T13:47:17Z
Colonialism in India was traumatic – including for some of the British officials who ruled the Raj
<p>When India gained independence from Britain on August 15 1947, the majority of Anglo-Indians had either left or would leave soon after. Many within the Indian Civil Service would write of the trauma that they experienced from witnessing the violence of the years leading up to the end of British rule and the bloodbath that would follow as the lines of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-partition-of-india-happened-and-why-its-effects-are-still-felt-today-81766">partition</a> were revealed.</p>
<p>Colonialism was certainly a far more traumatising experience for colonial subjects than their colonisers. They suffered poverty, malnutrition, disease, cultural upheaval, economic exploitation, political disadvantage, and systematic programmes aimed at creating a sense of social and racial inferiority. While some may argue that any suffering on the part of the British colonialists ought to be met with little sympathy, this is not a reason to obscure it from history. </p>
<p>It was the very notion that Indian civil service servicemen were usurpers, full of privilege, in a foreign land that led to the sapped sense of humanity that many wrestled with – both during and after their India careers. </p>
<p>As my own forthcoming book details, some shut themselves off from the day-to-day lives of Indians, unless forced to engage for work purposes. Others escaped through drowning themselves in alcohol, opium or other drugs. Some convinced themselves of the intellectual superiority of the white man and his right to rule over “lesser races”, while a number found solace in Christianity. Several came to see their role as being a peacekeeper between various ethnic and religious groups, despite the irony of the British having encouraged and exploited the categorisation of colonial subjects on these grounds in the first place. </p>
<p>Underneath all of this sits a trauma that the coloniser had to either deal with – or resign their post and go home.</p>
<h2>Serving the Raj</h2>
<p>One serviceman of the late Raj who I have focused on in my research is an example of the coping mechanisms that British officials deployed. Andrew Clow entered the Indian Civil Service in 1912 at the age of 22 and would remain a civil servant until 1947 when he reached the mandatory retirement ceiling of 35 years. His most notable portfolios were as secretary of the Indian Labour Bureau in the late 1930s, followed by minister for communications and then governor of Assam from 1942 to 1947. </p>
<p>Clow, and his one thousand or so colleagues at any one time, effectively ruled India during the late Raj. This was a time of declining British prestige, and declining public and political opinion of colonialism as an acceptable social, economic and political practice. The <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781349024391">rise</a> of the Indian independence movement with Mohandas Gandhi as its nominal leader, coincided with the anti-British international propaganda concerning its empire that came from the Soviet Union and its sympathisers. </p>
<h2>Doubt and self-loathing</h2>
<p>In the early 1920s, the Indian independence movement grew in prominence and received a significant level of sympathy at home and abroad. In 1919, the <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-amritsar-massacre">Amritsar Massacre</a> of unarmed protesters by British and Gurka troops received much public criticism. A year later, two of Clow’s civil service intake year group were assassinated in a market in Midnapore, West Bengal. From letters Clow wrote to a friend, we know he considered resigning on several occasions during the early 1920s. This period of reflection led him to fundamentally question his role within the colonial system, but he ultimately decided to continue his career.</p>
<p>Clow was a devout Christian and his life in India would develop into a religious cocoon of sorts where he used his relationship with God to suppress his trauma at being a colonial usurper.</p>
<p>As he became more senior within the administration he increasingly distanced himself from Indians, Indian culture and expressed little sympathy for the plight of people who suffered from British exploitation. He spent the vast majority of his time with other Europeans and his holidays at his house at the British hill station of Simla. His diaries throughout the 1930s and 1940s became almost entirely written prayers requesting salvation punctuated by private comments of self-loathing, written in confidence between himself and God. </p>
<h2>Defender of British colonialism</h2>
<p>Upon his retirement from the Indian Civil Service in 1947, Clow returned to Scotland and became chairman of the newly-created Scottish Gas Board. His private time was spent largely in the pursuit of the preservation of the legacy of British India. He voraciously read memoirs and other reflections by his former colleagues, and would lambast any critique of the British, even if those criticisms were rather sparse. </p>
<p>Clow’s failure to concede publicly that colonialism was an exploitative practice is indicative of a complex reaction to his trauma at being a key part of a system of suppression. His heightened religiosity was a key part of his way of dealing with this. In many ways he “used” God to negate his discomfort at being one of the main figures of the British colonial enterprise.</p>
<p>Clow was typical of many within the Indian Civil Service who became troubled by their roles facilitating the exploitation of the Indian subcontinent for the British Empire. Yet, rather than resign his post and become a critic of colonial practices, Clow built a number of internal mechanisms so that he could carry on. Reactions like Clow’s go some way to explain the romance that many within British society have had for the age of empire. But today, 70 years on from the end of the Raj, public bodies and the British media are willing to engage in a much more robust critique.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
How one member of the Indian Civil Service coped with being a colonial usurper.
Colin Alexander, Principal Lecturer in Political Communications, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80302
2017-08-10T10:37:47Z
2017-08-10T10:37:47Z
The gift of civilisation: how imperial Britons saw their mission in India
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181528/original/file-20170809-26031-rksntj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">By Simpson, William (1823-1899) via Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The politician and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay imagined, in 1840, the fall of a great empire. He <a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/macaulay/ranke1.html">conjured a future</a> “when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul’s”. </p>
<p>This was a nod by Macaulay to Edward Gibbon’s hope 60 years previously – expressed in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/05/07/reviews/000507.07breent.html">Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</a> – that great scholars might eventually arise from the Maori population as a result of the civilising influence of British colonial rule. Book-ending 1780 and 1840, therefore, are reflections on the rise and fall of empires and civilisations, metaphorically and literally illustrated by their successors – travellers who sit among the crumbling ruins recording the ultimate failing of even mankind’s greatest achievements.</p>
<p>The loss of America, the French revolution, Napoleonic adventuring and a radical climate in which the middle classes were alarmed at the sight of Chartist crowds marching in the streets, also suggested disquieting visions of the future for British elites. The Greco-Roman empires had fallen, Hindu culture and Mogul power had declined in India. Was the British Empire inevitably destined to crumble, like <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias">Shelley’s Ozymandias</a>?</p>
<p>Linking these concerns was British self-identification as successors of Greco-Roman antiquity – as having inherited the mantle of the “cradle of civilisation”. In their <a href="https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/31454/6/Rogers%20and%20Hingley%20-%20Gibbon%20paper.pdf">2010 paper on Gibbon</a>, British academics Adam Rogers and Richard Hingley note how: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The British drew upon the classical past through an interactive mutual relationship between classical texts, scholarship, and politics; through this approach they developed intellectual discourses about both cultural superiority and decline.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>During the <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1833/jul/10/east-india-companys-charter">1833 East India Bill debate</a>, Macaulay described Britain’s appropriation of the glory of ancient empires. Britain was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The most renowned of Western Conquerors … beyond the point where the phalanx of Alexander refused to proceed … a territory larger and more populous than France, Spain, Italy and Germany put together … the world has seen nothing similar.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181531/original/file-20170809-26048-g2u7nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181531/original/file-20170809-26048-g2u7nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181531/original/file-20170809-26048-g2u7nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181531/original/file-20170809-26048-g2u7nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181531/original/file-20170809-26048-g2u7nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181531/original/file-20170809-26048-g2u7nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181531/original/file-20170809-26048-g2u7nw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=547&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A civilising influence: British officials take two Indian princelings hostage in 1793.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert Home, National Army Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Indian elephant in the rooms of the British cabinet and the East India Company was the insecurity of their eastern empire. A colonial administrator in India, Samuel Sneade Brown, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BeUWLhTsJrUC&pg=PA191&lpg=PA191&dq=our+dangers+lie+in+the+vast+mass+of+people+whom+we+have+subjected+to+our+rule+in+this+country&source=bl&ots=DeUf0y9d4J&sig=klMLScPkVBSgS70gaDBMrSXjWXk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwixkaqO-MnVAhWMKMAKHa_FCj4Q6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=our%20dangers%20lie%20in%20the%20vast%20mass%20of%20people%20whom%20we%20have%20subjected%20to%20our%20rule%20in%20this%20country&f=false">wrote home to his mother</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our dangers lie in the vast mass of people whom we have subjected to our rule in this country, and who would gladly rise and shake off the yoke of the ‘feringees’ [foreigners]. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Equally thorny, was the ambivalence of continental conquest by a nation committed to representative government. In justification, the British drew parallels with their own relationship with the Roman empire. The colonial administrator <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/trevelyan_charles.shtml">Charles Trevelyan</a> <a href="https://archive.org/stream/ontheeducationof015100mbp#page/n39/mode/2up/search/domestic">described Rome’s conquest</a> of Britain – “[how] the acquisitions made by superiority in war, were consolidated by superiority in the arts of peace; and the remembrance of the original violence was lost in that of the benefits which resulted from it.” Imposition “from without” was, <a href="https://archive.org/stream/ontheeducationof015100mbp#page/n39/mode/2up/search/domestic">he wrote</a>, necessary because “the instances in which nations have worked their way to a high degree of civilisation from domestic resources only are extremely rare”.</p>
<p>Trevelyan boldly hoped that “the Indians will … soon stand in the same position toward us in which we once stood towards the Romans … from being obstinate enemies, the Britons soon became attached and confiding friends”.</p>
<p>Thus the British equated contemporary Indians with their pre-Roman selves – and their contemporary selves with the Romans. As the Romans had civilised and befriended the British, the British would do the same for India, justifying imperial imposition and allaying fears of being “swept off the face of Upper India like chaff”.</p>
<h2>In Britain’s image</h2>
<p>The Romans had offered a sense of inclusion and common purpose – and the British envisaged assimilating India in their own image. “The past history of the world authorises us to believe that the movement which is taking place in India,” <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=HWUEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=trevelyan+decided+change+for+the+better+in+the+character+of+the+people&source=bl&ots=d5LU8hsheO&sig=BACpl6cHBOOqoi8xSqLotQiwA1I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAoMyQhcrVAhUpDMAKHR7EDrIQ6AEILDAC#v=onepage&q=trevelyan%20decided%20change%20for%20the%20better%20in%20the%20character%20of%20the%20people&f=false">Trevelyan wrote</a>, suggested a “decided change for the better in the character of the people”. </p>
<p>The Romans had adopted Greek tastes, and Britain was acculturated by the Romans – now the Anglicist policy of educating India in the English language would create, as <a href="https://archive.org/stream/Minutes_201311/MinutesNew#page/n5/mode/2up">Macaulay famously put it</a>: “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181534/original/file-20170809-26006-1mv2hps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181534/original/file-20170809-26006-1mv2hps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181534/original/file-20170809-26006-1mv2hps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181534/original/file-20170809-26006-1mv2hps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181534/original/file-20170809-26006-1mv2hps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181534/original/file-20170809-26006-1mv2hps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181534/original/file-20170809-26006-1mv2hps.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Glory of empire: the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joydeep via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Classical discourse thus informed imperial policy. But it was also part of metropolitan debate advocating political reform, which aimed for middle-class inclusion rather than universal suffrage. Trevelyan noted how the Romano-British civilising precedent began among the upper and middle-classes – the rich, the learned, the men of business. Indian reform would lead to “a national representative assembly” but, like back home, comprising the middle and upper-classes. </p>
<p>Equally, British working-class education was developed <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085149700000025">largely on the Indian model</a>, associating the British lower-classes with colonial natives, justifying patriarchal oversight and political exclusion. Thus, images of empire are also visions of home.</p>
<h2>Decline and fall</h2>
<p>Finally, returning to civilisational decline, <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1833/jul/10/east-india-companys-charter">Macaulay conceded</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sceptre may pass away from us … There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The message here is the same as the New Zealander at St Pauls. In the far future, Britain has continued the cycle of European superiority. The Greco-Roman torch of Western civilisation – which was once passed to the British – has migrated to the newly civilised southern hemisphere. In Macaulay’s future, Britain has completed its “civilising mission”. </p>
<p>In such a vision, Macaulay employs classical discourse to give value to Britain’s Indian empire and soothe fears of civilisational decline. As Macaulay <a href="https://archive.org/details/lifeandlettersof002360mbp">said of his major work</a>, the History of England: “I have had the year 2000, and often the year 3000, often in my mind.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80302/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Robinson receives funding from Midland 3 Cities, for PhD research</span></em></p>
Intellectuals of the time saw the British Empire as the heir to the civilising influence of ancient Rome.
David Robinson, PhD researcher, 19th century British travel literature on India and Italy, University of Nottingham
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81766
2017-08-10T10:21:00Z
2017-08-10T10:21:00Z
How the Partition of India happened – and why its effects are still felt today
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181415/original/file-20170808-22982-ikgy1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mahatma Gandhi with Lord and Lady Mountbatten, 1947.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMountbattens_with_Gandhi_(IND_5298).jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Partition” – the division of British India into the two separate states of India and Pakistan on August 14-15, 1947 – was the “last-minute” mechanism by which the British were able to secure agreement over <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00maplinks/modern/maps1947/maps1947.html">how independence would take place</a>. At the time, few people understood what Partition would entail or what its results would be, and the migration on the enormous scale that followed took the vast majority of contemporaries <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/chronology/index.html">by surprise</a>.</p>
<p>The main vehicle for nationalist activity was the Indian National Congress, whose best-known leaders included <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/people/gandhi_1.shtml">Mahatma Gandhi</a> and <a href="http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/former_pm/shri-jawaharlal-nehru/">Jawaharlal Nehru</a>. Even before the 1940s, it had long argued for <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/indian-national-congress">a unitary state with a strong centre</a>; even though Congress was ostensibly secular in its objectives, organisations representing minority interests increasingly viewed this idea with suspicion, believing that it would entrench the political dominance of Hindus, who made up about 80% of the population.</p>
<p>At around 25% of its population, Muslims were British India’s largest religious minority. Under imperial rule, they had grown accustomed to having their minority status protected by a system of reserved legislative seats and separate electorates. The British system of political control hinged on identifying interest groups willing to collaborate, a governing style <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40400043">often described</a> as “divide and rule”.</p>
<p>The prospect of losing this protection as independence drew closer worried more and more Muslims, first in parts of northern India, and then, after World War II, in the influential Muslim-majority provinces of Bengal and Punjab. In 1945-6, the <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1310662">All-India Muslim League</a>, led by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/12/jinnah-founder-pakistan-independence-partition-1947-archive">Muhammad Ali Jinnah</a>, won a majority of Muslim votes in provincial elections. This strengthened the party’s claim to speak for a substantial proportion of, but never all, the subcontinent’s Muslims.</p>
<p>Then came World War II – and suddenly, the political stakes in India were considerably higher. </p>
<h2>The end of the Raj</h2>
<p>When Britain took India into the war without consultation in 1939, Congress opposed it; large nationalist protests ensued, culminating in the 1942 <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/1942-quit-india-movement">Quit India</a> movement, a mass movement against British rule. For their part in it, Gandhi and Nehru and thousands of Congress workers were imprisoned until 1945. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the British wartime need for local allies gave the Muslim League an opening to offer its cooperation in exchange for future political safeguards. In March 1940, the Muslim League’s “Pakistan” resolution called for the creation of “separate states” – plural, not singular – to accommodate Indian Muslims, whom it argued were a separate “nation”.</p>
<p>Historians <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/26/arts/taking-on-pakistan-s-hero-then-taking-the-heat.html">are still divided</a> on whether this rather vague demand was purely a bargaining counter or a firm objective. But while it may have been intended to solve the minority issue, it ended up aggravating it instead.</p>
<p>After the war, Attlee’s Labour government in London recognised that Britain’s devastated economy could not cope with the cost of the over-extended empire. A <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/transfer/transfer2/">Cabinet Mission</a> was dispatched to India in early 1946, and Attlee described its mission in ambitious terms:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My colleagues are going to India with the intention of using their utmost endeavours to help her to attain her freedom as speedily and fully as possible. What form of government is to replace the present regime is for India to decide; but our desire is to help her to set up forthwith the machinery for making that decision.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>An act of parliament proposed June 1948 as the deadline for the transfer of power. But the Mission failed to secure agreement over its proposed constitutional scheme, which recommended a loose federation; the idea was rejected by both Congress and the Muslim League, which vowed to agitate for “Pakistan” <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/transfer/transfer2/index.html">by any means possible</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XLnNZcQDsGE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>All the while, communal violence was escalating. In August 1946, the <a href="http://time.com/3879963/vultures-of-calcutta-the-gruesome-aftermath-of-indias-1946-hindu-muslim-riots/">Great Calcutta Killing</a> left some 4,000 people dead and a further 100,000 homeless.</p>
<p>By March 1947, a new viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, arrived in Delhi with a mandate to find a speedy way of <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/indiapakistan/partition4/index.html">bringing the British Raj</a> <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/transfer/transfer5/index.html">to an end</a>. On June 3, he announced that independence would be brought forward to August that year, presenting politicians with an ultimatum that gave them little alternative but to agree to the creation of two separate states. </p>
<p>Pakistan – its eastern and western wings separated by around 1,700 kilometres of Indian territory – <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1751044.stm">celebrated independence</a> on August 14 that year; India did so the following day. The new borders, which split the key provinces of the Punjab and Bengal in two, were officially approved on August 17. They had been drawn up by a Boundary Commission, led by British lawyer <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-40788079/cyril-radcliffe-the-man-who-drew-the-partition-line">Cyril Radcliffe</a>, who later <a href="http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelpregion/asia/india/indianindependence/indiapakistan/partition9/index.html">admitted</a> that he had relied on out-of-date maps and census materials.</p>
<h2>Torn apart</h2>
<p>Partition <a href="http://time.com/4421746/margaret-bourke-white-great-migration/">triggered</a> riots, mass casualties, and a colossal wave of migration. Millions of people moved to what they hoped would be safer territory, with Muslims heading towards Pakistan, and Hindus and Sikhs in the direction of India. As many as 14-16m people may have been eventually displaced, travelling on foot, in bullock carts and by train. </p>
<p>Estimates of the death toll post-Partition range from 200,000 to two million. Many were killed by members of other communities and sometimes their own families, as well as by the contagious diseases which swept through <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/the-road-to-partition/communal-disturbances/">refugee camps</a>. Women were often targeted as symbols of community honour, with up to 100,000 raped or abducted. </p>
<p>What can explain this intensely violent reaction? Many of the people concerned were very deeply attached not just to religious identity, but to territory, and Britain was reluctant to use its troops to maintain law and order. The situation was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/23/the-raj-war-peoples-history-second-world-war-yasmin-khan-review">especially dangerous</a> in Punjab, where weapons and demobilised soldiers were abundant.</p>
<p>Another unforeseen consequence of Partition was that Pakistan’s population ended up more religiously homogeneous than originally anticipated. The Muslim League’s leaders had assumed that Pakistan would contain a sizeable non-Muslim population, whose presence would safeguard the position of Muslims remaining in India – but in West Pakistan, non-Muslim minorities comprised only 1.6% of the population by 1951, compared with 22% in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). </p>
<p>And even though Pakistan was ostensibly created as a “homeland” for India’s Muslim minority, not all Muslims even supported its formation, never mind migrated there: Muslims remained the largest minority group in independent India, making up around 10% of the population in 1951. Gandhi himself was <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/mahatma-gandhi-shot">assassinated in January 1948</a> by a Hindu nationalist extremist who blamed him for being too supportive of Muslims at the time of Partition.</p>
<p>Both states subsequently faced huge problems accommodating and rehabilitating post-Partition refugees, whose numbers swelled when the two states <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/south_asia/2002/india_pakistan/timeline/1947_48.stm">went to war</a> over the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947-8. Later bouts of communal tension generated further movement, with a trickle of people still migrating as late as the 1960s. </p>
<p>Today, the two countries’ relationship is far from healthy. <a href="https://theconversation.com/kashmir-flare-up-puts-india-under-new-pressure-to-deal-with-pakistan-65741">Kashmir remains a flashpoint</a>; both countries are <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-did-the-idea-of-an-islamic-bomb-come-from-69385">nuclear-armed</a>. Indian Muslims are frequently suspected of harbouring loyalties towards Pakistan; non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan are increasingly vulnerable thanks to the so-called <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/pakistans-islamization-before-and-after-dictator-zia-ul-haq/a-19480315">Islamisation</a> of life there since the 1980s. Seven decades on, well over a billion people still live in the shadow of Partition.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-a-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-episode-guide-114654">India Tomorrow</a> is a seven-part podcast series from The Conversation, taking an in-depth look at the big issues facing India ahead of the 2019 Indian elections.</em></p>
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<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/india-tomorrow-podcast-series-from-the-anthill-trailer-114641?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=AnthillHeaderBanner2114648">Click here to listen to the India Tomorrow trailer from The Anthill</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81766/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Ansari has previously received funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to explore the impact of Independence and Partition on life in India and Pakistan. </span></em></p>
As the British Empire became an unaffordable burden, planning for India’s independence quickly ran into trouble.
Sarah Ansari, Professor of History, Head of Department, Royal Holloway University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.