“A Tryst with Destiny”: Reflections on the Partition of India

Posted on Categories India, Pakistan, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global SouthTags , , , , , , , 50 Comments on “A Tryst with Destiny”: Reflections on the Partition of India

This theater review was originally published on The South Asian Idea in May 2012. I am posting it here because Partition remains an ever-relevant topic on BP. Secondly, it may help give a better sense of my center-left Pakistani perspective.

As the lights come up at the beginning of “A Tryst with Destiny”, a screen projects news footage of communal riots in India. We see clips from the 2002 carnage in Gujarat, protests in Indian-administered Kashmir, and an interview with Jaswant Singh in which he lays the major responsibility for the Partition of British India on Nehru and the Indian National Congress. As these news clips fade out, Gandhi and Nehru step on stage and begin discussing their roles in Partition. From the outset, the play asks the audience to reflect on the question: Was the Partition of India worth the bloodshed that accompanied it? What price did India have to pay for Independence?

“A Tryst with Destiny”, performed at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre in Washington DC, was written by Amita Deepak Jha, a locally-based psychiatrist and medical researcher. The play was Jha’s first venture into playwriting as well as direction. In her “Director’s Note”, Jha notes that her decision to write the play came out of her psychiatric work. She writes: “As a psychiatrist, I help people make sense of their history and how it impacts their present. I deeply believe we as humans carry not only our individual history but also our social, political, cultural, the history of our communities and nationalities in us. It is important that we think and question our biases, prejudices, and deeply righteous beliefs of others and their motives and actions, before we embark on the blame game, creating conflicts and making wars.” As reflected in this vision, “Tryst” is an ambitious attempt to present a balanced account of more than two decades of negotiations and struggles that led to the freedom of India and the division of the subcontinent.

Partition is a deeply emotional issue for South Asians and different groups will have different interpretations of what led to it and whether it was a positive or negative outcome. “Tryst” does an excellent job of demonstrating that Partition was far from inevitable. On the contrary, there were multiple times over two decades where opportunities for compromise were squandered, sometimes by the Congress and other times by the Muslim League. Chief among these missed opportunities was the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, which was perhaps  the last chance for an agreement that would have led to freedom for a united India. Continue reading “A Tryst with Destiny”: Reflections on the Partition of India

Did the Muslim League and RSS Want the Same Thing?

Posted on Categories History, Partition, Postcolonialism & the Global South, Politics, X.T.MTags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 26 Comments on Did the Muslim League and RSS Want the Same Thing?

Let’s just ask it plainly: if the Muslim League got what it wanted—a Muslim-majority Pakistan—then what, exactly, is the problem with the RSS wanting a Hindu-majority India? This isn’t a provocation. It’s a genuine question.

The Muslim League, by the end, wasn’t fighting for shared rule. It wanted partition. It wanted sovereignty. It wanted to exit the Hindu-majority consensus that the Congress represented. And it succeeded—through law, politics, and eventually blood.

The RSS, for its part, never pretended to want pluralism. It’s been consistent for nearly a century: it wants India to have a Hindu character, spine, and center. If the League could ask for a state that reflects Muslim political interests, why is it unthinkable for the RSS to want the same, flipped?

This is where I struggle with a certain kind of liberal-istan logic—found across both India and Pakistan. You’ll hear:

“India must stay secular! Modi is destroying Nehru’s dream!”

But what was Q.E.A-Jinnah’s dream? Was Pakistan built as a pluralist utopia? Or was it built—openly, unapologetically—as a Muslim homeland?

If Pakistan’s existence is predicated on Muslim majoritarianism, then India’s tilt toward Hindu majoritarianism isn’t an anomaly. It’s symmetry. Maybe even inevitability.

So either we all agree that majoritarianism won in the subcontinent—and everyone adjusts accordingly. Or we all agree that the Congress secular ideal was the better one—and try, equally, to hold both India and Pakistan to it.

But it can’t be:

  • Muslim nationalism is liberation

  • Hindu nationalism is fascism

That math doesn’t work. And yes, the Muslim League had more polish. Jinnah smoked, drank, defended pork eaters in court. The RSS wore khaki and read Manu Smriti. But don’t be fooled by aesthetics. At the core, both movements rejected the idea of a shared national project. They just took different exits off the same imperial highway.

So pick one: Either Nehru and Gandhi were right—and so was Maulana Azad. Or everyone else was right—and we all now live in our chosen majorities. But don’t demand secularism from Delhi while praying for Muslim unity in Lahore. That’s not secularism. That’s selective memory.

The North-West Frontier in 1947

Posted on Categories India, Iran, Islam & the Middle EastTags , , , , , , 49 Comments on The North-West Frontier in 1947

A piece from military historian Dr Hamid Hussain. It includes some details (including the role played by Governor George Cunningham, a Scotsman and an “old frontier hand”) about the mobilization of Pakhtun tribesmen to attack Kashmir in 1947, an invasion covered in greater detail in a recent detailed Brownpundits article about the Kashmir war. 

Following piece is outcome of several related questions about frontier policy at the time of independence in 1947, order of battle, question of British officers staying in Pakistan etc.  It was linked with Kashmir incursion; a fact not noticed by most historians.

Regards,

Hamid

Frontier in 1947

Hamid Hussain

Sir George Cunningham, Governor of the NWFP

In August 1947, British departed from India after partitioning the country into two independent states.  Two pillars of stability; Indian Civil Service (ICS) and Indian army were divided between two countries.  Pakistan inherited the north-western frontier of India and its associated tribal question.

A tribal territory under British protection separated Indian administrative border from Afghanistan that in turn served as a buffer state between British India and Tsarist Russia; later Communist Soviet Union.  East India Company encountered these tribes after the demise of Sikh Durbar in 1849 when Punjab was annexed. In the next four decades, this relationship evolved over various stages.  By 1890s, Afghanistan’s borders were stabilized with demarcation of boundaries with Persia, Russia and British India.

Continue reading The North-West Frontier in 1947

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