Partition: the human cost. (partition of India)(includes bibliography) Mushirul Hasan. 

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1997 History Today Ltd. (UK) 

The sun had risen fairly high when we reached Amritsar... Everytime I visited Amritsar, I felt captivated. But the city, this time, presented the look of a cremation ghat, eerie and stinking...The silence was so perfect that even the faint hiss of steam from the stationary engine sounded a shriek. Only some Sikhs were hanging about, with unsheathed kirpans which they occasionally brandished... The brief stoppage seemed to have lingered into eternity till the engine whistled and gave a gentle pull...we left Chheharta behind and then Atari and when we entered Wagah and then Harbanspura everyone in the train felt uplifted. A journey through a virtual valley of destruction had ended when finally the train came to a halt at Platform No. 2 - Lahore, the moment was as gratifying as the consummation of a dream. 

Few writers reveal such poignancy and tragedy of nationally-contrived divisions and borders. India's partition cast its shadow over many aspects of state and society. Yet the literature on this major event is mostly inadequate, impressionistic and lacking in scholarly rigour. Even after fifty years of Independence and despite the access to wide-ranging primary source materials, there are no convincing explanations of why and how M.A. Jinnah's `two-nation' theory emerged, and why partition created millions of refugees and resulted in over a million deaths. Similarly, it is still not clear whether partition allowed the fulfillment of legitimate aspirations or represents the mutilation of historic national entities. 

Part of the reason for this flawed frame of reference is the inclination of many writers to draw magisterial conclusions from isolated events and to construct identities along religious lines. As a result, the discussions tend to be based on statements and manifestos of leaders and their negotiations with British officials in Lutyens' Delhi and Whitehall. 

The fiftieth year of liberation from colonial rule is an appropriate moment to question commonly-held assumptions on Muslim politics, to delineate the ideological strands in the Pakistan movement, explore its unities and diversities, and plot its trajectory without preconceived suppositions. Was there intrinsic merit in religious/Islamic appeals? Does one search for clues in British policies (which were tilted in favour of the Muslims to counter the nationalist aspirations) - in the ensuing clash between Hindu and Muslim revivalist movements and in violent contests over religious symbols (a dispute recently played out around the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya)? How and why did the idea of a Muslim nation appeal to the divided and highly stratified Muslim communities, enabling Jinnah and his lieutenants to launch the crusade for a separate Muslim homeland? 

During his tour in 1946-47 the British civil servant Malcolm Darling found, in the tract between the Beas and Sutlej rivers in Punjab, much similarity between Hindus and Muslims. He wondered how Pakistan was to be fitted into these conditions? He was bothered by the same question while passing through the country between the Chenab and Ravi: 

What a hash politics threatens to make 

of this tract, where Hindu, Muslim and 

Sikh are as mixed up as the ingredients 

of a well made pilau... I noted how 

often in a village Muslim and Sikh had 

a common ancestor. it is the same here 

with Hindu and Muslim Rajputs, and 

today we passed a village of Hindu and 

Muslim Gujars. A Hindu Rajput... tells 

me that where he tives in Karnal to the 

south, there are fifty Muslim villages 

converted to Islam in the days of 

Aurangzeb. They belong to the same 

clan as he does, and fifteen years ago 

offered to return to the Hindu fold,.on 

the one condition that their Hindu 

kinsfolk would give them their daughters 

in marriage. The condition was 

refused and they are still Muslim. In 

this area, even where Hindu and Muslim 

belong to different clans, they still 

interchange civilities at marriage, inviting 

mullah or Brahmin, as the case may 

be, to share in the feasting. 

The search for a political explanation of partition must begin with the fluid political climate during and after the First World War, characterised by the drive for power and political leverage that preoccupied all political parties and their followers. This accounts for the swiftness with which the two-nation idea succeeded in becoming actualised; die vocal demand for carving out a Muslim nation summed up the fears of the powerful landed classes and the aspirations of the newly-emergent professional groups in north India and the small but influential industrial magnates of the western and eastern regions. 

The bitter and violent contest over power-sharing reveals a great deal about the three major themes that have dominated South Asian historiography - colonialism, nationalism and communalism. What it does not reveal, however, is how partition affected millions, uprooted from home and field and driven by sheer fear of death to seek safety across a line they had neither drawn nor desired. 

The history books do not record the pain, trauma and sufferings of those who had to part from their kin, friends and neighbours, their deepening nostalgia for places they had lived in for generations, the anguish of devotees removed from their places of worship, and the harrowing experiences of the countless people who boarded trains thinking they would be transported to the realisation of their dreams, but of whom not a man, woman or child survived the journey. 

Most Hindus and Muslims living in harmony and goodwill could not come to terms with the ill-will and hostility that was conveyed through speeches and pamphlets. There were many places in India where the Muslim League's message was received but failed to impress. 

Indeed, most Muslims neither understood nor approved of Pakistan, except as a remote place where they would go, as on a pilgrimage. Some left hoping to secure rapid promotion, but not to set up permanent homes there. It did not really matter to the peasants and the mill-workers whether they were physically located in India' or `Pakistan'. Interestingly, for example, the Muslim employees of the East India Railway in a north Indian city decided to stay put in India after having opted for Pakistan, while 8,000 government servants returned to their homes in March 1948, just a few months after they had left for Pakistan. 

In other words, most people were indifferent to the newly-created geographical entities, and were committed neither to a Hindu homeland, nor to an imaginary world of islam. They were unclear whether Lahore or Gurdaspur; Delhi or Dacca would remain in Gandhi's India or Jinnah's Pakistan. They were caught up in the cross-fire of religious hatred - the hapless victims of a triangular gameplan masterminded by the British, the Congress and the Muslim League. `The English have flung away their Raj like a bundle of old straw', one angry peasant told a British official, `and we have been chopped in pieces like butcher's meat'. This was a telling comment by a 'subaltern' on the meaning attached to the Pakistan movement. 

Saadat Hasan Manto, the famous Urdu writer, captures the mood in `Toba Tek Singh', one of his finest stories: 

As to where Pakistan was located, the 

inmates knew nothing... the mad and 

the partially mad were unable to 

decide whether they were now in India 

or Pakistan. if they were in India where 

on earth was Pakistan?... 

Pakistan, a prized trophy for many Muslims, was won, but people on both sides of the fence were tormented by gruesome killings, by the irreparable loss of lives, and by the scale and magnitude of an epic tragedy. There can be no doubt that from a purely liberal and secular perspective, the birth of Pakistan destroyed Mohammad lqbal's melodious lyric of syncretic nationalism - Naya Shivala (New Temple) - once the ideal of patriots and freedom-fighters. The vivisection of India severed cultural ties, undermined a vibrant, composite intellectual tradition and introduced a discordant note in the civilisational rhythm of Indian society. 

This is not that long-looked-for break 

of day 

Not that clear dawn in quest of which 

those comrades 

Set out, believing that in heaven's wide 

void 

Somewhere must be the star's last halting 

place 

Somewhere the verge of night's 

slow-washing tide, 

Somewhere an anchorage for the ship 

of heartache. 

So, which country did poets like Faiz and writers like Manto belong to? Manto, for one, tried in vain to 'separate india from Pakistan and Pakistan from India. He asked himself: `Will Pakistan literature be different - and if so, how? To whom will now belong what had been written in undivided India? Will that be partitioned too?'. The uppermost question in his mind was: `Were we really free'? 

Manto's anguish and dilemma was shared by the silent majority on both sides of the fence, including those 1,000 persons who, after eighteen months of separation, met at the Husainiwala customs barrier in February 1949. They did not pull out daggers and swords but affectionately embraced one another with tears rolling down their cheeks. Their sentiments were reflected neither in the elegant exchanges between the Viceroy and Secretary of State, nor in the unlovely confabulations between the Congress and the League managers. 

Today the curtain is drawn on the Husainiwala border; small groups from Pakistan and India congregate at Wagah to witness a colourful military parade that is held every evening to mark the closing of the iron gates on both sides of the fence. Their expressions seem to echo the widespread feeling in the subcontinent that never before in its history did so few divide and decide the fate of so many in so short a time. 

`What a world of loneliness lies upon Shabbir (Husain, grandson of the Prophet of Islam) this day!' Everyone who heard these lines in Gangauli village, the setting for the Rahi Masoom Reza's novel Aadha-Gaon (Half-a-village), wept bitterly. They did so to mourn Husain's martyrdom in Karbala centuries ago, but also because `the cut umbilical cord of Pakistan was around their necks like a noose, and they were all suffocating'. Now they knew what 'a world of loneliness' meant. 

Independence and partition brought varied moods of loneliness. Every individual in Gangauli `had found himself suddenly alone'. All of them turned, just as they did every day of their existence, to Husain and his seventy-two companions for strength, confidence and spiritual comfort. `There was a desire to dream, but what was there safe to dream about?' The atmosphere was foul and murky all around. `The blood of one's veins was wandering hopelessly in Pakistan, and the relationships and mutual affections and friendships... were breaking, and in place of confidence, a fear and deep suspicion was growing in people's hearts'. 

Today we saw for ourselves something 

of the stupendous scale of the Punjab 

upheaval. Even our brief bird's-eye 

view must have revealed nearly half a 

million refugees on the roads. At one 

point during our flight Sikhs and 

Moslem refugees were moving almost 

side by side in opposite directions. 

There was no sign of clash. As though 

impelled by some deeper instinct, they 

pushed forward obsessed only with the 

objective beyond the boundary. 

Alan Campbell-Johnson, 

Government House, New Delhi, 

Sunday, September 21st, 1947 

The number of migrants from central and eastern regions was comparatively small, but the proportion of professional emigrants was relatively high. Educational institutions were depleted of students and teachers overnight. Enrolment figures at the famous seminary in the city of Deoband were down from 1,600 to 1,000 in 1947-48. Income dwindled, as large numbers of students and patrons migrated to Pakistan. The Aligarh Muslim University was rudderless without some of its distinguished teachers who searched for greener pastures in Karachi, the eventual homeland of the muhajirin (migrants). 

In Bihar, emigration began in November-december 1946 as a sequel to rioting in many places. Peace was soon restored and the movement stopped just before partition. There was fresh migration after August 1947 mainly for economic reasons and because of the acute food shortage in North Bihar, which had a common frontier with East Pakistan. Migrants totalled 4-500,000, although some returned to their homes during 1950-51. 

The Princely State of Hyderabad had received a continuous migration of Muslims in their thousands, particularly since 1857, from the rest of India. In 1947 the numbers increased to hundreds of thousands. Drawn from both the rural and urban areas, there were traders, artisans, domestic and government servants, agriculturists and labourers. However, the influx came to an abrupt end on September 13th, 1948, the day the armed forces of India moved into the state 'in response to the call of the people'. Almost immediately a reverse movement started: a number of Hyderabadi Muslims left for Pakistan, while others returned to places they had originally come from. 

Elsewhere, nearly 450 Muslims a day continued their trek across the Rajasthan-Sind border. From january to November lst, 1952, 62,467 Muslims went via Khokhropar to Sind in West Pakistan. `Some hundreds go daily and have been going, in varying numbers, for the last three-and-a-half years', Nehru informed his chief ministers. `The fact that they go there itself indicates that the conditions they live in are not agreeable to them and the future they envisage for themselves in India is dark'. But quite a number of established and prosperous professionals from UP, Bihar and the Princely States of Hyderabad, Bhopal and Rampur also left. 

Men in government and the professions from Delhi, UP and Bihar formed the core of muhajirin. The Delhi police was depleted of its rank and file because of `mass desertion'. All the three subordinate judges in the Delhi court rushed to Pakistan. People employed with local and provincial governments also opted for Pakistan, although some changed their minds later and returned to India. Poets and writers, Josh Malihabadi being the most prominent, joined the trek at different times. Some landlords, including Jinnah's lieutenant, Nawab Liaquat Ali Khan, were among the muhajirin. The Raja of Mahmudabad left his family behind in the sprawling Mahmudabad House in Qaiser Bagh, Lucknow, to undertake the mission of creating an Islamic state and society in Pakistan. 

Many prominent Muslims stayed, including those who headed the Muslim League campaign. Landlords like Nawab Ismail, Nawab Jamshed Ali Khan, the Nawab of Chattari and the Rajas of Salempur, Nanpara, Kotwara, Pirpur and Jehangirabad clung to their small estates. Ismail was elected to the vice-chancellorship of Aligarh Muslim University in September 1947, but relinquished the post on November 14th, 1948. Several others retained their public positions, although they had lost face with their supporters. 

Others felt overwhelmed by the climate of hostility, suspicion and distrust. They had a litany of complaints -- recurring Hindu-Muslim riots, discrimination in employment and official neglect of Urdu. Syed Mahmud, Nehru's friend and minister in Bihar, protested that Muslims faced harassment and were treated as 'a body of criminals'. 

Muslim officers on the railways in Kanpur, some of whom had served for more than ten years, faced suspicion and dismissal. Aligarh's district magistrate was severe on university students and teachers who had already incurred the wrath of the local leaders for their involvement in the Pakistan movement. The university, threatened with closure, was eventually saved by Nehru's intervention. Zakir Husain, the newly-appointed vice-chancellor, placed it on a firm footing with the active support of Azad, free India's first education minister. Liberal and socialist teachers staged a rearguard action to combat the influence of communal tendencies. In general, however, Mohanlal Gautam, the leading Congressmen touring UP, found 'an all-pervading sense of fear' among the Muslims. 

The Evacuee Property Laws, which restricted business opportunities and disabled large numbers of Muslims, were most inequitable. Most Muslims could not easily dispose of their property or carry on trade for fear of the long arm of the property law. A number of old Congressmen continued to send small sums of money to their relatives in Pakistan. They were promptly declared evacuees or prospective evacuees. Nehru was personally distressed by all this, as he was by the spate of communal violence in UP: 

People die and the fact of killing, 

though painful, does not upset me. But 

what does upset one is the complete 

degradation of human nature and, 

even more, the attempt to find 

justification for this. 

By contrast, some of Nehru's colleagues were unrepentant. A powerful section retorted, in answer to the criticism of its murky conduct in handling the civil strife, that the strong anti-Muslim sentiments were generated by bitter and painful memories of partition. These responses angered Nehru and his liberal and socialist comrades, and dismayed Muslims. 

The real pinch was felt in Delhi, UP, Bihar and Hyderabad, the area most affected by riots, the exodus to Pakistan and the extensive skimming-off from the professional classes. 'Partition was a total catastrophe for Delhi', observed one of the few surviving members of Delhi's Muslim aristocracy. 'Those who were left behind are in misery. Those who are uprooted are in misery. The peace of Delhi is gone. Now it is all gone'. In UP and Bihar very few Muslims were left in the Defence services, in the police, the universities, the law courts, or the vast Central Secretariat in Delhi. Large-scale immigration of mostly educated upper-caste Hindus in Lucknow -- 70 per cent of the total immigrant figure -- gradually reduced Muslim influence in government, business, trade and the professions. 

In Hyderabad, Muslims constituted 10 per cent of the population before 1947-48. Muslim government servants held, as in UP, a much higher percentage of posts. But their fortunes dwindled following Hyderabad's merger with the Indian Union. Urdu ceased to be the official language. The abolition of jagirdari affected over 11 per cent of the Muslim population, three-quarters of whom inhabited about a dozen urban centres. Smaller jagirdars, in particular, faced a bleak future due to retrenchment in government departments, recession in industry after 1951, and a sharp fall in agricultural prices. The old nobles and the absentee landowners started selling their remaining lands and spacious houses to make ends meet. 

The dissolution of the Princely States impoverished a large percentage, if not the majority, of the upper classes and the bourgeoisie as well as a large number of peasants, artisans and retainers who lost the patronage networks. Nearly half the population of Hyderabad depended on the Nizam for their livelihood, and thus with sources of patronage rapidly drying up this section was worse off. 

The rulers of Rampur, Bhopal and Hyderabad were not turned into paupers overnight; they simply lacked the initiative to convert their wealth into more secure and tangible assets. They squandered their inherited resources to maintain their standard of living and allowed properties to be grabbed by unscupulous land dealers. Their mango orchards, which had yielded vast revenues, were generally converted into uneconomic farm lands. Few ventured into business, trade or industry, or realised which way the wind was blowing. They continued living in their decaying palaces surrounded by a retinue of servants, wives, eunuchs and hangers-on. Wallowing in nostalgia for the bygone era, they cursed the khadi-clad politicians for bringing to an end the angrezi sarkar (British Raj). 

Accustomed to framing their own laws, codes and regulations, they were irked by the presence of local bureaucrats - the district magistrate, superintendent of police and revenue officials -- who were visible symbols of political change. Insulated from the populace and blissfully unaware of the changes that were visibly taking place in urban and rural areas, their public contacts were limited to Id celebrations at the close of a month's fast or Muharram observances when the imambaras were lit up and the mourners turned up at the desolate Nizam's palace in Hyderabad or the Khas Bagh in Rampur. The memory of the suffering of Husain and his companions at Karbala reminded them of their own trials and tribulations. 

The bigger Muslim taluqdars suffered more than their Hindu counterparts also because of families being divided, one branch migrating to Pakistan. Such was the fate of the taluqdari in Mahmudabad. The Raja left behind his estates in Barabanki, Sitapur and Bahraich districts to be looked after by his brother. He may have wished to return to his place of birth, but the India-pakistan war in September 1965 would have thwarted his plans. His huge assets were declared 'enemy property'. 

The Awadh taluqdars, accustomed to supporting themselves from the rental income of their estates, were greatly traumatised by zamindari abolition. Some left for Pakistan, and others retired to anonymity in their villages. Those who stayed found the going hard. "The abolition of zamindari removed our clientele in one fell swoop. All of a sudden the economy changed. And the English customers left. Our shop was "by appointment" to several governors of the province'. 

Some of the smaller zamindars managed to keep their status intact by moving into nearby towns and cities in search of better opportunities. A few families in the Barabanki district, living in close proximity to Lucknow, did well. Some reaped the rewards of being close to the Congress. They obtained private and government contracts, licenses and positions. Mubashir Husain (1898-1959), of Gadia and son of Mushir Husain Kidwai (b. 1878), the pan-Islamic ideologue in the early 1920s, was a judge at the Allahabad High Court until 1948. Begum Aijaz Rasul, the wife of the former taluqdar of Sandila in Hardoi district and mother-in-law of the novelist Attia Hosain, did quite well for herself, being elected to the UP assembly and the Rajya Sabha and holding ministerial positions until 1971. There were other successes too. 

For the zamindars their universe had suddenly collapsed: they had no 'land left equivalent even to the hub of the great wheels which was once their zamindaris'. In just a few moments they collapsed like the tomb of Nuruddin the Martyr, a familiar landmark in Gangauli village. In their prayers they cursed the Congress Party. The Syeds, who for centuries had made Gangauli their home, realised that they no longer had any links with the village they had called their own. Whether Pakistan was created or not had no meaning to them, but the abolition of zamindari shook them to the core. Now it was all the same whether they lived in Ghazipur or in Karachi. 

The zamindars of western UP, on the other hand, were not too badly off. Many switched allegiances to the Congress, and some enjoyed a measure of local goodwill because they had implemented certain provisions of agrarian legislation. Most moved to Aligarh to educate their children. They built or renovated their mansions, developed an interest in local politics and used the university -- which they treated as an extension of their estates -- as a political arena. It satisfied their pride to serve on the university court or the executive council, be involved in the selection of senior office-holders and turn up dutifully at the railway station to greet visiting dignitaries. But when they retired to the privacy of their homes they recounted the harsh encounters in a world that was not their own. 

By the early 1960s some smaller zamindars were still struggling to eke out a living. There were those, who had limited resources to live on; others relied on inherited charitable endowments or even pawned their family jewellry to maintain the facade of high living. Their crumbling houses on Aligarh's Marris Road bear testimony to their steady impoverishment. The luckier ones, such the Chattari clan, moved out of Aligarh in search of professional careers. The sherwani-clad Nawab lost the vigour and determination which he displayed during his extended public life, now that he had to cope with harsh realities. 

Attia Hosain's novel, Sunlight on the Broken Column, describes the faded fortunes of the landed aristocracy and captures the sense of an era having passed once and for all: 

He [the Raja of Amirpur] lived in 

retirement at Amirpur, dignified and aloof, 

bearing the landslide of adversities 

with courage. His palace in the city had 

been requisitioned as a government 

hospital for legislators, and the huge 

rambling house at the outskirts, with its 

ornamental gardens divided into 

building plots, was the centre of the new 

colonies for the refugees. 

The last occasion on which he 

appeared in public was four years after 

independence, when he welcomed the 

President of the Republic to a 

reception given in his honour by the 

Taluqdars. 

There were no illuminations, no 

fireworks, no champagne, no glitter of 

precious gems, orders, silks, brocades and 

ceremonial uniforms. This last 

reception of the Taluqdars was a staid 

tea-party given by hosts who were soon to 

have their 'special class' and 'special 

privileges' abolished. 

Dusty portraits and marble statues of 

stately ex-presidents of their 

Associations, and of Imperial representatives, 

looked down with anachronistic 

grandeur on tea-tables bearing tea 

becoming tepid, cakes tasting stale, and 

Indian savouries growing cold. Guests 

in Khaddar (loin-cloth) outnumbered 

those in more formal attires. 

With grace and courtesy Amirpur 

presided over this swan-song of his 

order, while those who had habitually 

bowed before authority hovered round 

their gentle, dignified guests still 

hoping for manna from Heaven.