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STRAIGHT LINE

Pangs of Partition

MUHAMMAD NURUL HUDA
THE partition of India in 1947 was thought to be a way out of the rapidly deteriorating communal conflagration, particularly in Punjab. On June 3, 1947, Viceroy Lord Mountbatten announced his new plan and proposed to advance the date of transfer of power from June 1948 to August 15, 1947. The plan, amongst others, provided for the partition of Bengal and Punjab. Pundit Nehru, Jinnah, and Sardar Baldev Singh on behalf of the Sikhs endorsed the plan the following day and thus began the fast March to
transfer of power.
The end of the British Raj in 1947 brought about the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, along with an orgy of unprecedented violence that took hundreds of thousands of lives. Fifteen million people became refugees. Thereafter, in 1971, 'Pakistan itself originally conceived as the foundation of Muslims as a separate nation', broke into Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The question that still troubles many discerning minds is whether the so-called peaceful transfer of power in 1947 has not actually turned the subcontinent into a region where peace has been abandoned. The birth of Pakistan on the basis of separate nationhood has been rejected through the violent emergence of the Peoples' Republic of Bangladesh. One could ask as why the partition of India on the basis of faith, Hindu and Muslim, did not resolve the communal discord and usher in an era of lasting peace as hoped by some idealistic leaders. The reality is that instead of being left with unending peace, the subcontinent got endowed with constant tension and conflicts. The great divide could simply not bring any peace in its wake. Initially, it compartmentalised and then tightly sealed Hindu-Muslim animosities, cementing festering grudges into near permanent hostilities. The Hindu-Muslim factor became international, India-Pakistan. The domestic disagreements acquired a global dimension. Hostility towards a neighbour became a principal State policy. Pakistan became aggressively Islamic, out of a fear of getting swamped by the all-pervasiveembrace of India. This premonition continues to haunt the psyche of Pakistani leaders.
Pakistan, founded on the notion of separateness, was compelled to adopt the identity of being an Islamic republic. This evolution from Muslims as a separate nation, to Pakistan as 'Islamic state' has impeded Pakistan's coming into its ownand evolving into a modern functioning State. A rational and credible national identity eludes it. This is despite the fact the Pakistan was created to obtain greater political role for the Muslims of India so that they could become arbiters of their own political and social destiny, instead of leaving it in the political hands of an unreliable Hindu Congress. The tragedy is that Pakistan is now accused of being the epicenter of global terrorism.
The Muslims who remain or have been left behind in India now find themselves as almost abandoned, bereft of a sense of kinship in their relationship with the rest. This deprives them of the essence of psychological security. The remaining Hindus suffer in Pakistan and Bangladesh, even as they are slowly, silently but continuously driven out. One might say that the partition has left us with no peace and it has not left behind any settled peace in the separated portions either. Is it because the central problem of relations between Hindus and Muslims remains and that the fact of partition has created a permanent divide? In addition to accepting the partition of land is there an agreement to a simultaneous cutting up of human societies too?
A demeaning, perhaps unintended, consequence of the partition has been the de-facto creation of a different category of citizens, howsoever unpalatable it may sound. In effect, 'some people are just mere people' than the others. Then there is recourse to a whole variety of short term palliatives that at best work for a while but only as empty, placatory gestures. Those are not needed solutions. Behind those gestures there is no honesty of purpose and as such they are not accompanied by the needed efficiency of delivery, and thus finally come to a halt. The result is the sealing of societal divisions into water-tight compartments in a vote-obsessed polity.
In India, after adoption of the constitution, the granting of special rights started. Muslims in India being equal citizens, at least in theory, have also eventually begun demanding a share in the special rights that are being granted selectively. The taunting question there is: Special rights? Still? Even after Pakistan? Why? The difficulty is how to satisfactorily address the grievances of the minority in a democracy when the break-up of the country on the basis of faith has rendered them so complex and so infinitely intimidating.
It is not clear what issues have been satisfactorily resolved by the momentous episode of partition. The minority syndrome has given rise to new vicious sectarian designs in Pakistan. One could only hope that the leaders in the subcontinent would not be under any promise to travel permanently in combative compartments of separateness.
The writer is a columnist of The Daily Star.