Rohini Hensman: Identities And Borders In South Asia: A View From The Left
Introduction
From the partition of British India to the civil war in Sri Lanka, the attempt to impose national borders in accordance with ethnic, linguistic or religious identities in South Asia has spawned civil wars and crimes against humanity, resulting in almost unimaginable suffering and bloodshed. This is all the more preposterous in a region where migration and the mixing of peoples and cultures have been occurring from time immemorial. The Left potentially has a conceptual and theoretical framework which would allow it to propose solutions to these conflicts, yet flawed interpretations of ‘the right to self-determination’ have led many on the Left to compound the problems instead. A different interpretation suggests that the key goals should be less violence and more democracy, and taking down barriers between peoples rather than erecting more and more of them.
From the partition of British India to the civil war in Sri Lanka, the attempt to impose national borders in accordance with ethnic, linguistic or religious identities in South Asia has spawned civil wars and crimes against humanity, resulting in almost unimaginable suffering and bloodshed. This is all the more preposterous in a region where migration and the mixing of peoples and cultures have been occurring from time immemorial. The Left potentially has a conceptual and theoretical framework which would allow it to propose solutions to these conflicts, yet flawed interpretations of ‘the right to self-determination’ have led many on the Left to compound the problems instead. A different interpretation suggests that the key goals should be less violence and more democracy, and taking down barriers between peoples rather than erecting more and more of them.
The birth of India and Pakistan
It is surely a paradox that a non-violent movement in India for independence from the British Empire should have ended in such horrific violence and massive transfer of populations that the trauma of partition persists to this day. ‘By the time the exodus was finally over, about eight to ten million people had crossed over from Punjab and Bengal – the largest peace-time mass migration in history – and about 500,000-1,000,000 had perished’.[i] The rape, mutilation and abduction of thousands of women and girls and the murder of many by their own families, either because they had already been ‘dishonoured’ or in order to avert such a fate, tells us something about the patriarchal attitudes that made partition doubly traumatic for women. And while it is easy to blame Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Muslim League, and their ‘two-nation theory’ for the carnage, it is important to remember that V.D. Savarkar and the Hindu nationalists also believed that Hindus and Muslims were separate nations, and were equally responsible for the atrocities committed during partition.
It is surely a paradox that a non-violent movement in India for independence from the British Empire should have ended in such horrific violence and massive transfer of populations that the trauma of partition persists to this day. ‘By the time the exodus was finally over, about eight to ten million people had crossed over from Punjab and Bengal – the largest peace-time mass migration in history – and about 500,000-1,000,000 had perished’.[i] The rape, mutilation and abduction of thousands of women and girls and the murder of many by their own families, either because they had already been ‘dishonoured’ or in order to avert such a fate, tells us something about the patriarchal attitudes that made partition doubly traumatic for women. And while it is easy to blame Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Muslim League, and their ‘two-nation theory’ for the carnage, it is important to remember that V.D. Savarkar and the Hindu nationalists also believed that Hindus and Muslims were separate nations, and were equally responsible for the atrocities committed during partition.
Millions had no choice about leaving their homes, but millions more were bewildered by the necessity to choose between two countries, both of which had been their home. The bizarre nature of their predicament is captured graphically in Saadat Hasan Manto’s brilliant satirical short story, Toba Tek Singh, in which the governments of India and Pakistan decide to exchange their lunatics. ‘The Muslim lunatics in India were to be sent over to Pakistan and the Hindu and Sikh lunatics in Pakistani asylums were to be handed over to India.’ One of them, Bishan Singh, is so obsessed with the question of whether his home town Toba Tek Singh is in India or Pakistan that everyone calls him ‘Toba Tek Singh’. No one seems to know where his town is, so he refuses to participate in the exchange. In the end, he lets out a terrible scream and falls face-forward on the ground at the border. ‘On one side, behind barbed wire, stood together the lunatics of India and on the other side, behind more barbed wire, stood the lunatics of Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had no name, lay Toba Tek Singh’.
Manto was not alone in his view if partition. ‘Popular sentiment and perception, at least as reflected in Partition literature particularly in Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi, almost without exception registered the fact of Partition with despair or anger and profound unhappiness…The futility and tragedy of demarcating boundaries, and the impossibility of dividing homes and hearts are the the theme of story after story, as is the terrible violence that accompanied forced migration. Nowhere in the thousands of pages of fiction and poetry do we find even a glimmer of endorsement for the price paid for freedom, or admission that this “qurbani” (sacrifice) was necessary for the birth of two nations. Rather, a requiem for lost humanity, for the love between two communities, for shared joys and sorrows, a shared past.’[ii] The distinct and mutually exclusive identities that drove the politics of the two-nation ideologues found little resonance at a popular level. And yet the reality of separation and lack of contact, and the continuing cold war that periodically erupts into military conflict, have helped to create a divide that now consciously has to be bridged by those who seek to undo the damage.
The creation of Bangladesh
India remained at least constitutionally a secular republic, despite continuing efforts by Hindu nationalists to undermine its secular character, but Pakistan had to confront the contradiction between its citizens’ aspirations for democracy and its formal status as an Islamic state. Something had to give, and that is exactly what happened in 1971..
India remained at least constitutionally a secular republic, despite continuing efforts by Hindu nationalists to undermine its secular character, but Pakistan had to confront the contradiction between its citizens’ aspirations for democracy and its formal status as an Islamic state. Something had to give, and that is exactly what happened in 1971..
