Partition regrets

This book is part personal memoir and part reflections on Partition.

THE partition of India has failed totally in accomplishing any of the objectives its advocate, M.A. Jinnah, so confidently promised to accomplish. The communal problem was not solved, nor are India and Pakistan good neighbours. This was predictable and was, indeed, predicted by all except its advocates. So was the bloodshed. In 1946 there were communal riots in Kolkata, Noakhali, Bihar, the United Provinces and Mumbai. In March 1947, riots erupted in all their fury in Punj ab.

Brigadier Abdul Rahman Siddiqi is a sensitive Mohajir settled in Karachi. After the inevitable initial struggles, he has prospered. His lament is not personal. It is about the tragedy of 1947. He was born and brought up in Old Delhi; rather, the Delhi of old. You can still breathe its ethos if you venture into its narrow lanes for good food: nihari and paya for breakfast and korma, kebabs and biriyani for lunch and dinner. However, Old Delhi is not on speaking terms with its neighbour, New Delhi. The mania for name changing has significantly spared its obsolete name. What is New of it?

This book is part personal memoir and part reflections on Partition. Siddiqi was a devotee of Jinnah and finds it impossible to criticise him for the havoc he wrought. His followers deluded themselves. Our history teacher, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Dr. Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, was quite a political activist, unflinchingly committed to the Pakistan movement, although he saw the emergence of Pakistan neither as a parting of the ways nor exactly as a partition of the country it would be more of a political redefinition of India than anything else. The making of Pakistan was, to his mind, the best way for the two largest communities of the subcontinent, the Hindus and the Muslims, to live in peace and harmony and according to their own rights.

As the implications of Pakistan emerged into the world of reality, Muslims were shocked. On which side of the divide would Delhi be, though? We believed that in all fairness it ought to become the joint capital of both countries, for it was utterly inconceivable to have a Pakistan without Delhi and its Delhiwallas

Faith in Jinnah was as deep as it was misplaced. There was gloom in the office of Dawn, the Muslim Leagues organ, at Daryaganj in Old Delhi when the Partition Plan of June 3, 1947, was announced. The Leagues Council accepted it at a meeting held in the Imperial Hotel at Janpath in New Delhi. The mere thought of leaving the city for good was like a stab in my heart. At the India Coffee House, New Delhi, our daily haunt, I had heated arguments with a group of Hindu friends. Modest and quite on the defensive before the Partition Plan, they were becoming increasingly assertive, even aggressive. They would taunt me, saying, So your Mr. Jinnah had to eat his words and accept his moth-eaten and truncated Pakistan? Why? You just wait and see. Nobody can beat Mr. Jinnah on the political chessboard, I would snap back.

Little did he know that at the very moment in May 1947 when Jinnah publicly said he would not accept the partition of Punjab and Bengal, he was secretly negotiating the terms of reference of the Boundary Commission in these Provinces.

This book is evocative and moving because it is unpretentious. It describes the culture of Old Delhi, the travails of the Mohajirs, their culture shock when confronted with Punjabis, and the politics that have done Pakistan no good. The author is strong on description, weak on analysis.

The hope of projecting 100 million Indian Muslims as one nation under the magic spell of the Pakistan Movement was shattered on first contact with the harsh realities of provincialism. The emergence of the state of Pakistan saw the melting away of incipient nationalism, or nationhood, among Indian Muslims, and what had been a supreme achievement in reality was only a partial success. Was it that even? It is perhaps too much to expect a Pakistani to be critical of Jinnah or the demand for Pakistan. The farthest some go is to criticise the two-nation theory. Siddiqi writes: Through many centuries of co-existence and interaction with the Hindus, the Muslims of the Ganga, Yamuna belt had evolved a cultural, linguistic, and dietary mix which was an exotic patchwork of Hindu-Muslim India. Over the years, the matrix assumed an all-India complexion vis-a-vis the essentially local-provincial cultures and languages. It is this composite culture that suffered the most.