Abstract
It is not merely out of sheer coincidence that Ishtiaq Ahmed’s tome Punjab Bloodied… comes out a year before the centenary of Saadat Hassan Manto, the great Urdu writer, starts. Ahmed’s painstaking work that goes in this volume resonates very much the literary narrative weaved by Manto, which makes people sit up.
Describing how 32 days demolished the vibrant Punjabi legacy of pluralism and composite-hood of 500 years affecting even the grassroots level is a story re-woven and told with scientific precision. This story is recorded blow-by-blow in this well-researched work. This makes this voluminous work one of the most informative–discursive resource for yesteryears as well as today and indeed for tomorrow. The division of Punjab which saw this gory episode of history is a combination of ethnic cleansing, genocide and a veritable war where masses were left hapless by the political parties, some of whom ignited this fire which made classes, communities and common masses catapult into a frenzy and calumny unprecedented in the history of the subcontinent. The very opening sentence clears the haze around the scourge of savage in Punjab as it announces in unequivocal terms, ‘The partition of Punjab took place as part of an overall agreement to partition India. The demand for partition of Punjab was made by the Sikh leaders in reaction to the demand by the leaders of the Muslim League for a separate Muslim-majority Pakistan that would include Punjab as well’ (2011, p. xxxii).
Admittedly, the decision to partition Punjab was not taken by the Punjabi masses whose social history is replete with inclusive socio-religious movements from the spread of Sufi as well as Bhakti movement right from Baba Farid, Bulle Shah to Guru Nanak. An inclusive mode of life had lent to an ambience which had less of a visibility in rest of northern India. The moot question that arises at this juncture—How did this tempest of hate spread like wildfire in the dusty alleyways of Punjab villages and cities which were not at all bereft of the robust Punjabi spirit making it a very distinct community in the sunburnt subcontinent?
Was it merely sleight of hand of the empire or willingness and part-acquiescing/part-succumbing to the trap of an empire? The author emphasises: ‘It must be stressed that the decision to partition the Punjab was taken not by the Punjabi masses or even their elite, but at the central level by the colonial government at Delhi and high command of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League; only the Sikhs from Punjab were consulted by the Viceroy’ (p. xxxv).
Going little behind we can easily discern the incipient forces of ‘othering’ and communalism not necessarily vested in their later day agencies only but in the structure itself. Echoing Ishtiaq, Romila Thapar points out: ‘In the precolonial period the recognition of a religious community was more limited since language, ethnicity, caste and region are more apparent bonds. Religious hostilities were more localised’ (1990, 17–18).
As a matter of fact, appearance of a homogenous religious consciousness and consequential politicization grew over a period and it in turn produced as well as offered emerging political agencies an agenda of divisive communalism. This explains why the land of Nanak and Baba Farid turned suddenly into a fractured conundrum. The visible and invisible hands of the empire are a given fact, but even institutions which had acquired centrality as the very logo of the game changer in hands of mass movement and parties did contribute to making of an over-sweeping communal politics. It was the 1937 elections and the dismal performance of the Muslim League at the hustings that begot the teleology of the two-nation theory ultimately and sowed the seeds of partition. Adoption and rapid expansion of means of communication as well as emerging competitive parliamentary polity and jockeying for power made the communal chasm even wider. Though Punjab’s history from the 1930s had a well-established repertoire of inclusive politics under the benign patronage of Sir Sikandar Hayyat Khan and Sir Chhotu Ram, which apart from being the coalition of landed proprietary and rural masses—had its lineage drawn from the medieval cultural movements of Sufis and offshoots of the Bhakti movement which gets a distinct foothold in Punjab in form of Sikhism as well as a liberal Sufi ambience in rural areas.
The involvement of technology and bout of competitive politics even though at the very lower end of civic bodies by the end of the nineteenth century on one hand lent to the spread of education, facilitating new institutions of governance albeit colonial and an emerging industrial initiative though woefully constricted due to various institutions and organisations spread out in the very centre of empire particularly in Manchester, pressurising the India office as well as lobbying for concessions to sustain its edge over rising competition from Bombay and Madras cotton textile mills in the House of Commons, ultimately gave birth to a varied form of response. Whereas one was in the shape of budding nationalist consciousness, nonetheless the other was emboldening of communal consciousness graduating from its diffused, sporadic, transient profile drawn in a localised set-up, drawing from small townlets (qasbas) and emerging towns particularly in the vast swathe of northern India.
Communalism from ‘localised imagined artefact’ moves on to become a banner headline in the peninsular affairs in days to come; Ishtiaq Ahmed’s narrative starts from this locale. Ishtiaq’s vast canvas of study is an enormously detailed venture to understand the tragedy of partition particularly in Punjab. How quickly vague sporadic bouts of intra-religious strife which shares otherwise a space with other contradictions like caste conflicts, class chasms and sulking poor peasantry in the hands of money-lenders and conflict within and without communities, occupational castes facing extinction, the classical unity of cottage scale industry and agriculture breaking down under the pressure of colonial hegemony and political governance, thus, demolishing whatever was left of the partial village republicanism built on Jajmani system—acquires ultimately a ghastly persona in the shape of communalism. But at one point the localised, stray, sporadic events of communal strife do not remain anymore an ‘imagined artifact’ but acquire a body of their own.
The political agencies that developed in modern India could not simply skirt these events, artefacts and colloquial cultural blocks. Communication has developed as a potent instrumentality in shaping societies and opinions but its expansion can bring havoc; on the other hand it can bring enlightenment too in its wake. The Amritsar press and Lahore press had a substantial role in building the superstructure of the communal divide. Quick absorption by Punjab’s Arya Samaj movement in the field of mass communication is a pointer to what print technology can wring from the innocent masses. Print capitalism as Benedict Andersson claims is an instrument of turning imagined communities into new artefacts. In the case of communalism, the print technology brought about fast breeding of a collective consciousness in spite of it being ultimately ‘false consciousness’ as defined by Bipan Chandra. ‘Concept of false consciousness can play a crucial role in our understanding of communalism. All objective reality is grasped through its cognition by the human mind. But not all human thought, consciousness or ideology are equally valid reflections of cognition of reality’ (Chandra 1996/1984).
The outstanding feature that this book presents lies in its use of an extensive repertoire of oral history, thus making a difference; this ultimately makes it a masterpiece. Routine narratives till now have hovered around the archives with largely records relating to various agencies of pre-colonial and post-colonial state in India and Pakistan, but this text makes a departure. Thus, it breaks new ground from the relatively jaundiced repertoire of history which suffers from subjectivity and bias as well as relies more on unkempt official records with an inbuilt weakness of perspective. An intimate and, at times, almost emotional interface with sufferers, witnesses, and keen observation as well as emotional outbursts and body language, and non-verbal and verbal communication with the author make this study a treat for those who are groping for a deeper observation to be hauled up on the agenda of history. The methodology that the author has applied through oral interviews brings not only a holistic picture but also presents a challenge before many historians and social scientists as well, to remould and refurbish their instruments. This study is a singularly credible contribution to historiography. The narrative offered by the author blurs the distances between Saadat Hassan Manto as a sensitive literary observer of partition, the violence and the trauma that it begets in Urdu literature and Ishtiaq Ahmed in his offering to the world of history and social sciences. The author has of course lamented that he could not get women witnesses but that offers an opportunity to a vast number of women scholars to bring out more intimate, deeper layers of this story of a bleeding history. Besides it goes to the credit of the author that he could get an enormous number of people replying and narrating their story. This was possible because a fair number of people, who are still surviving, were able to remember those gory days and nightmarish nights.
This monumental work of the author becomes a significant contribution to the knowledge store of mainstream history as well as subaltern history, as it has been richly blended with the rarest of oral narratives drawn from both sides of the Punjab touching the very populace who made that quiet yet robust inclusive culture of Punjab, settled in small qasbas (townlets) and cities. The stories of residents of Lahore’s elite quarters and the barnyards of Punjabi peasantry mingle, making the study a credible contribution to our understanding of those very unfortunate days, as well as the dialectics and dynamics behind them. The wide use of oral history having acquired a centrality in contemporary history also helps the discipline of oral history to unfold as this branch of historiography is still in the making. Thus, the author has contributed both to the historiography of the sub-continental story of partition as well as the honing of oral history as a distinct instrumentality.
The quick dissolution of the political alliance between the two sets of gentry who commanded vast swathe of Punjabi farmers along with the mercantile community largely consisting of Hindu merchants based in the cities provided the opportunity to forces of communalism. The two factors of crumbling coalition of peaceful coexistence blended with composite-hood after the death of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan and the Land Alienation Act of 1901 had an overarching effect on the communal dividing line, as well as the rural–urban divide which consequently turned into the Hindu–Muslim divide. This muted the political agencies of composite-hood with which Punjab was comfortable for last two decades, as it sank down to the stage of insecurity, thus imaginary communalism taking over the robust inclusive Punjabiat.
The author, while delving on conceptualisation of ethnic cleansing, ponders over the quick metamorphosis to a holocaustian paradigm graduating from the idyllic laid-back world of the Punjabi farmer and the elite in a very articulate way. ‘We start with a situation in which uncertainty, anxiety, fear and suspicion begin to have adverse effects on relations between communities conscious of their differences despite common cultural traits’ (p. 16).
This state of affairs incapacitates the old order of composite-hood and peaceful existence of reproducing itself. This assertion of the author explains the mystery of quick metamorphosis from idyllic peace to raw violence.
It was not only the shrill tone of the Muslim League but also the demise of the old idyllic world of a patronising gentry and sajjadanashins at the numerous khankahs and impending drum of the freedom struggle as well as exit of the British as patron as well as arbitrator in the complex plural, diversified, multi-religious world of India that brought a sense of insecurity that hastened the demise of the old order, which crumbled like a house of cards. Increasingly, the insecure elite from the minority community got increasingly jittery with the approaching drum beats of the freedom struggle touching the vast peninsular world along with the fear of the exit of the British who were natural allies of the elite, as well as entrenched feudatories. This of course spanned both communities irrespective of their religious affiliations. The classical old ally of the empire after the failed rebellion of 1857, the feudatories and native apparatchiki of the Raj were watching this fast-moving drama culminating in the midnight exit in the second week of August 1947 with alarm and unease. There you find even an acerbic centenarian author like Nirad Choudhary lamenting the British for the power handover to the local elite and political agencies demanding freedom who, at any rate, were held by the acerbic author in extreme contempt.
Ishtiaq Ahmed has taken note of the rising crescendo of the ethno-nationalist rhetoric; he observes, ‘Most ethno-nationalist rhetoric and ideology given vent to by political entrepreneurs can impact upon the collective anxiety and neurosis of group members, thus galvanizing them into action against perceived threat.’ He further adds: ‘In extreme situations, a release of collective psychosis can take the shape of systematic and organized killing and other atrocities. Gut reaction takes over and as part of a crowd or a gang, individuals feel obliged to act together against the enemy.’
The ethno-nationalist rhetoric was the mainstay of the Muslim League evolving out of the basic discourse introduced in 1906 in a representation by the League led by Sir Aga Khan to Lord Minto, for creating appropriate checks and balances in a representational democracy patterned on the Westminster model to the ‘demand of self-determination’ on the basis that Hindus and Muslims were two mutually exclusive nationalities sulking under the hegemony of an ‘imagined nation’.
The protection by the empire to the disadvantaged minority becomes the main basis for a functional democracy with some iota of justice in it, but the 1937 election results upset the applecart of democracy in a multi-religious ambience for the Muslim League. In its rout in the elections, the Muslim League saw the long hand of Hindu Raj taking over; it was further exacerbated by Nehru’s bold initiative for Muslim mass contact by Congress rank and file. This fear galvanised the massification of Muslim League politics. It is however a fact of history that sub-continental history twice saw the mass mobilisation of Muslim masses—first in the 1857 rebellion, where peasants, elites and disenchanted sepoys built an extraordinary momentum of resistance against Company rule irrespective of caste, class, privileged and underprivileged status and religion on a vast scale. The second exclusive mass mobilisation of Muslims came during the Khilaphat movement in the 1920s; this too had an underlining of resistance against the imperial intervention in the world of Umma and Khilaphat as well as a bold attempt to build Hindu–Muslim unity in India as a coalition of resistance against the Raj. The demand for Pakistan however did not have the perspective of the preceding two Muslim mass mobilisations. Thus, the demand for self-determination was somewhat teleologically directed towards ethnic cleansing on both sides.
The Left of course had a less than marginal place in this vast canvas to build up an alternative to division, destabilisation and destruction; but in hindsight one can surmise that the Left, with hard work amongst the village poor and urban poor, could bring more stability to the composite-hood which was so well ingrained in Punjabiyat, but the Left sectarianism and the shadow of hegemonic Stalinism prevented it from making big overtures to push the juggernaut of political sovereignty and socio-economic justice. The laid-back politics of the gentry, rich farmer parties and its formidable majority and machinery collapsed after the death of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan and Sir Chhotu Ram, followed by the weak leadership of Sir Khizr Hayat Khan Tiawna. Politics of the Left failed to come out of its shell of narrow class approach; in India the task cut out for the Left in the 1930s was rather to build up Hindu–Muslim unity as the major fulcrum of secular inclusive nationalism—perhaps Muslim mass contact was a forum for that but it rather ironically opted out for a very mechanical notion of self-determination, thus, vetting the politics of Muslim League.
The voluminous work built on elaborate interviews, narratives point out the role of native states in Punjab who were left with no qualms whatsoever in presiding over butchering of the religious minority in their fiefdom, though erstwhile British India was no better but it still had some modicum of law and order, though very much dormant and ineffective.
The long queue of testimonies offered by a procession of people right from the ex-Prime Minister of India, Inder Gujral, to the almost anonymous villager and qasba dweller in the deeper terrain of West Punjab which forms the kernel of the Pakistani state as well as society, along with an equally painstaking collection of narratives from East Punjab tells the story of savagery during those few months as a traumatic experience; yet it also dwells upon the reminiscences about the old idyllic, laid-back world of peaceful coexistence in Punjab.
Partition literature has not yet attracted micro-studies of districts, qasbas, villages and cities on such a large canvas. The author has indeed paved a path for future studies on the issue with an extraordinary benchmark of objectivity accompanied by the passion with which he dug into the grass-root details. This indeed is a massively contributory initiative in adopting the instrumentality of oral history, an honest as well as painstaking venture and the courage to paint a huge canvas of most unfortunate events in sub-continental history lest we forget the ruin that it brought in its wake.