The Great Partition was a really well-written book that tells the story of the split of Pakistan and India, focusing on the years 1946-48. I thought it was an especially good book because it was very well-balanced between the political machinations of the elite decision makers, the sociological, broader changes that came about, and also personal anecdotes of people affected. I think that is the mark of a very good history.
One thing that stood out to me as especially interesting is how quickly Pakistan went from an idea to a reality. Khan points out early on that the Indian National Congress changed dramatically, being transformed by Gandhi and elite lawyers from a polite pressure group into a mass nationalist party. The Congress Party was a big-tent party and included people of all religions. The Muslim League, on the other hand, which agitated for Pakistan, was much newer and much smaller by independence. The League was founded in 1909 and only really caught on among the Muslims of south Asia during World War Two, pushing to carve out a separate Muslim homeland. Part of this surge of Muslim nationalism was due to European influence. The British had established more firmly the distinctions between the religions, even going so far as giving separate electorates to different religious communities in 1909.
Part of the problem of the concept of "Pakistan" emerging and gaining popularity just before independence is a critical one- it was never really fleshed out. The League's leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was at some point not even clearly pushing for a separate state, but some kind of federal solution with decentralized power in Muslim hands. Many of the League's supporters similarly did not support any territorial partition. The issue was that there was no clear territorial distinction between Muslims and Hindus. Muslims were mainly clustered in the north of India, but they were diffuse, and even worse, the two biggest Muslim communities were at the Indus Valley in the west and the end of the Ganges in the East, completely separated by territory that would never become Pakistan due to the vast quantities of Hindus in between. But many were misinformed and thought that the whole area would become Pakistan.
As the date of independence got closer, plans were arranged for partition after one last hope to keep India together, the Cabinet Mission, failed. The plan reached was to create "groupings" in India as a decentralized way to keep the country together, while weakening the Hindu center enough that it couldn't oppress the Muslims. But Nehru and Congress rejected it in 1946. On the news of the failure, riots and stabbings increased in frequency. Whereas in the past, riots had resulted in the deaths of tens, usually at religious festivals, now riots were completely unmanageable and random, with far more frequency and far more deaths. Neutrality became impossible, and the late summer of 1946 saw the first massacres of partition. The political result of the failure of the Cabinet Mission would be a territorial partition, most difficult in Punjab and Bengal, where Muslims and Hindus were totally intermingled. The idea ended up being accepted by Congress even though it was worse than what they had gotten before, because although it would lead to a weaker India, it would lead to a stronger Congress, with opposition cordoned off into a separate Pakistan. At the time, it wasn't yet clear that this would be a permanent settlement.
And as the plan was being considered, refugees began flowing over the borders in both directions, anticipating what was to come, especially in the Punjab. Violence escalated dramatically in August and September of 1947, which Khan calls "war by any other name." At this point, it was not haphazard. It was directed by leaders and organized in systematic killings, rapes, and ethnic cleansing, as both radical Hindus and radical Muslims determined that it would be a fight for survival against the other. However, Khan is careful to point out that this violence was not universal, and in fact, the future President of India, Zakir Hussain (a Muslim) had his life saved by the intervention of a Sikh and a Hindu at a railway station where a gang was lynching Muslims. It was unthinkable that so many people would move, but 12 million would end up moving across the "Radcliffe line," with nearly 850 thousand crossing by foot alone in just 42 days in late 1947. Between August and November, 2.3 million crossed by train. The governments at first tried to stop people because the plan imagined that both states would retain ethnic minorities, which would form some basis of peace since neither side would want to harm the other's religious compatriots for fear of reprisals against their own. But by the end of August, both government s gave up on stopping the migrations, and decided to aid the migrants, giving first priority to Punjabi refugees. Foot columns could grow up to 40,000 strong, and Punjabis on the way to India sometimes traveled over 150 miles on foot. By independence, refugees were a third of the population of Delhi and half the population of Lahore.
Gandhi called women the "chief sufferers" of 1947. And most were not even women. Girls under twelve made up one-third of the "women" recovered in the operation to rescue women who were kidnapped to be wives, concubines, or sex slaves during partition. Tens of thousands of women were kept as hostages essentially in the other country after being kidnapped, amounting to 83,000 in total on both sides of the border. The state took on the role for some orphans and widows of partition as a surrogate parent, and India established a "Marriage Bureau" to put displaced men and women in touch with each other.
The full effect of what was happening was still unclear. Nehru declared in Delhi to a group of Muslim laborers that, "As long as I am at the helm of affairs India will not become a Hindu state." Gandhi also advocated the protection of Muslims. But the problem was that now that Pakistan was emerging as a Muslim state, all Hindus in Pakistan were suspect and all Muslims in India were suspect. The situation was even more aggravated by social tensions. For example, in Bengal, most landlords were Hindu and most tenants were Muslims, so Muslims hoped that the fall of the Hindus could be to their gain, and that they would get the land surrendered by Hindus. So it made economic sense to push them out; and in a time of lawlessness, this was often violent. You also had Muslims who had spent their whole lives in the Congress Party, dedicated to a pluralistic India, forced into Pakistan now that they were suspected of dual loyalties and could be feeding information to Muslim gangs. In another case, J.N. Mandal, leader of the dalits ("untouchables") in East Pakistan, was forced to flee to India by 1950 in light of persecution by Muslims. For dalits, there was not much hope since they would either be persecuted for their religion in Pakistan or for their caste in India.
On January 30, 1948, a Hindu nationalist member of the RSS shot and killed Gandhi. The result was a reprieve in the killings as the nation mourned. Gandhi's death was certainly not the end of the violence, but is did help stabilize and enforce more secular feeling. Khan writes that Gandhi's death strengthened Nehru, who became the sole leader of the secular movement. Jinnah would also be dead by the end of the year, of tuberculosis.
The sad thoughts I'm left with at the end of the book is how illegitimate and poorly executed partition was. Even after partition, Khan writes that the publics of both countries expected soft borders and free association with their neighboring country, but the two ended up at war three times in twenty-five years and became intense rivals who only stopped going to war once they got atom bombs.
Miscellaneous Facts:
- 2.5 million Indian soldiers served in WWII. 24,000 were killed and 64,000 were wounded.
- Jinnah declared Urdu the national language of Pakistan, which created a split with those who spoke Bengali, planting seeds for the eventual civil war and secession of Bangladesh in the 1970s.
- There are 123 border enclaves that belong to Bangladesh in India and 74 enclaves in Bangladesh that are legally Indian. These create huge problems for the people living in them who are essentially stateless. They can't travel or do business or get most government services.
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