Partition: A painful inheritance of loss

By Indranil Banerjie

The Asia Age: october 3, 2009

For some people in India and Pakistan, Partition is destined to remain an obsession. This is particularly true of Punjabis, who witnessed some of the worst horrors of that event. In contrast, Partition was not quite so brutal in Bengal and perhaps this is why it is not nearly as emotive an issue in that part of the country. For most Punjabis, however, the dismemberment of the subcontinent remains a huge historical event that cannot be easily forgotten. Not surprisingly, the Partition has spawned a large body of literature, both fiction and historical. Many a scholar and writer have made their careers by writing on this event. Humanity Amidst Insanity: Hope During and After the Indo-Pak Partition purports to be different in that it talks about "humanity’s triumph over our angry, violent inner nature". The foreword by Professor Akbar Ahmed of the American University in Washington DC, claims that the book is essential reading for South Asians. "The Partition of India showed us some of the worst sides of humanity but even in those dark days, the human spirit of compassion remained resilient," writes Ahmed, commending the authors Tridivesh Singh Maini, Tahir Malik and Ali Farooq Malik for providing an invaluable resource that could "help bridge the growing gaps between cultures and religions in the world today".

The core of the book is composed of two chapters that comprise interviews with people in Pakistan and India who survived and remember the Partition. The entire book is based on roughly two dozen interviews — 12 in the Indian Punjab and 11 in Pakistan. Although the book purports to be on the Partition, there is no mention of the Partition of Bengal. It is as if that part of the Partition is historically inconsequential. After the reading the book, one cannot escape the impression that the book is really about the division of Punjab and how tribal, ethnic and linguistic ties have survived at some level despite the political Partition along religious lines.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the twelve Indians interviewed in the book hail from Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Kurukshetra. Eleven of them are Punjabis and one Haryanvi.

The stories are touching even at times extraordinary. One story, for instance, is about Muhammad Yahsin, a former captain of the British Indian Volleyball team, who during the Partition safely carried away the daughters of his Sikh friend from Amritsar to Lahore and then returned them to their father in India once the disturbances eased. Yahsin’s son, Awais Sheikh, has become an ardent advocate of Indo-Pak peace and has written the book titled Samjhota Express. Eighty seven year old Taj Bibi of Faislabad, Pakistam, recalls how she and her 4-year-old daughter were attacked by murderous Sikhs while they were fleeing to Pakistan. She abandoned her baby daughter in the fields thinking her dead and was hiding in the fields when she was rescued by a Sikh landlord who eventually sent her to safety across the border. Miraculously, her baby daughter was found and rescued by an Indian Christian priest. The girl was sent to Pakistan and eventually united with her mother. A host of other Pakistanis, including Chutal Khan, a 70-year old farmer, Rana Ameer Khan, the 67-year-old assistant advocate General of Pakistan, Prof. Rafique Muhammad, an 80-year-old professor of Lahore, and Umer Farooq Malik, a 74-year-old retired accountant, recount how they were saved by non-Muslims and managed to flee to Pakistan safely.

In the Indian interviews chapter too there are a number of stories about non-Muslims helping Muslims escape and vice versa. Historian Raghuvendra Tanwar, for instance, recounts how the Rajputs of Kurukhshetra did not want the local Muslims to migrate to Pakistan. However, displaced persons from Pakistan housed at a near by refugee camp, were determined to massacre the local Muslims. The Rajputs guarded the Muslims of the area till the Army sent a detachment to escort them to a convoy of Muslim refugees going to Pakistan. Most of the interviews are of a similar nature — and in the end all tragic.

The message of the book that some people managed to remain honourable and humane during those terrible times is unexceptional. So is the underlying message that relations between the divided people should improve and that past hatred should be buried. The authors, all of them journalists, do need to be commended for having their heart in the right place. The problem is that their book, in the ultimate analysis, does not say very much that is new or remarkable. The proposition that not all Punjabis, whether Muslim or Sikh or Hindu, were communal murderers is extremely reassuring but not exactly novel.

Not every person in horrendous times is a monster. Even Nazi Germany had its Schindlers. However, that should not detract from the essential historical recollection of the Partition as a period of carnage and unfettered brutality. With little new to offer, the book is ultimately a somewhat tedious contribution to the pile of Partition literature.