Nation, Reason and Religion Punjab's Role in the Partition of India

8/12/2019 Nation, Reason and Religion Punjab's Role in the Partition of India

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Nation, Reason ndReligionPunjab s Rolein thePartitionofIndia

Ayesha JalalThe pre-eminent view of Indian nationalism has been that of an inclusionary, accommodative, consensual

popular anti-colonial struggle. This has entailed denigrating the exclusive affinities of religion ascommunal in an imagined hierarchy of collectivities crowned by the ideal of a nation unsullied by

bigoted, then certainlythan identifications with the nation , Indian nationalism comes dangerously close to trampling

coat-tails. The cultural roots of Indian nationalism owed far more to religious ideals,d and reconfigured in imaginative fashion, than has been acknowledged.

Continued recourse to the colonial privileging of religious distinctions thwarted many well-meaningdifferences within a broad framework of Indian nationalism. So long as the

tainted by notions of religious majoritarianisin and minoritarianismbe no hard and fast separation between nationalism and communalism . Far from being an

ng side-show, the inversion of the all-India majority and minority equation in Punjab was at the

it not be forgotten', theBengaliNRoyhadwrittenin1926. "thatis thecentreofthe Hindu-Moslems that radiate from thereto allotherof India".'The second halfof thesawsocialandpolitical currentsin the ideal of an any unbending kindofexclusionaryhadencouragedonehistoriantodepictthedecadea"preludetopartition"2.YetPunjabcanjustaseasilybeseen of

of onenation andundividedby theC ongress.The pre-eminent viewofIndian nationa- has been that of an inclusionary,andpopularhasentailed the exclusive affinities of as 'communal' in an imaginedofcollectivities crownedby theof a 'nation* unsulliedbynarrow-d bigotry. By implying that religiousifnot necessarily bigoted,

ons withthenatio n'. Indian nationa-es dangerously close to tramplingits owncoat tails.Thecultural rootsfarmoreto and re- in imaginative fashion, than towhotakestheculturalby certain Bengali totheconsciousnessofthe Indianas a whole, religion providedtheforresisting and negotiating

the inherent materialityof both westernmodernityandBritish rule. While givingmore respectability to religious sentimentsand symbols than they have tended toenjoy in the past, Chatterjee doesso byinvokinga dichotomy betweenanauto-nomous inner spiritualand adom inatedouter material domain.3Thisis aninge-niousway ofskirting aroundtheproblemof dismantling the binary oppositionbetween 'secularnationalism' and religiouscommunalismonwhichsomuchof theideological edifice of the post-colonialIndian nation-state hasrested.

Engrossed withtheconstructionof thenationalist hegemony, Chatterjee glossesover the unresolved tensions and conti nuedcontestations that marked theterrainofboth region and religion. Althoughconceding that the real difficulty waswith IslaminIndia" which gave "risetoalternative hegemonic efforts thanthe onebased onth e evocationofa classical Hindupast",he stops shortof consideringthesubstanceof these alternatives.4Suchaninvestigation of the cultural rootsofnationalism leaves unexamined the myriadsubaltern contestations of an emergingmainstream nationalism which likeitsadversary, colonialism, may well have onlyachieved dominance without hegemony.To name this dominance hegemonyisto confuse theclaimsof one strandofnationalist discourse with its ability toensure cultural,not tomention, politicalacquiescence. It also underplays theexclusionary aspect of this nationalism

which only succeeded in elicitingastrongerreaction fromitsskepticsandcritics. Thiswas particularly trueofthe Indian Muslimsengaged in redefining their religiously

informed cultural identity in thefaceofa modernity underwrittenby thefactofBritish sovereignty. Continued recourseto the colonial privileging of religiousdistinctions thwarted many w ell-meaningattempts at accommodating differenceswithin a broad framework of Indiannationalism.Solongas thedominantdis-course among Indians was taintedbynotionsof religious majoritarianismandminoritarianism there couldbe nohardand fast separation between 'nationalism'and 'communalism'.Far frorri beinganirritating side-show,theinversionof theall-India majority and minority equationinPunjab wasatthe centre-stageofthe strug-gle between nationalismandimperialism.

REGIONAL, RELIGIOUSORNATIONALRIGHTS?

The landofthe five riverswas thelocusof someof themore interesting ideasonhow therightsofreligious communitiesmightbereconciled withtheimperativesof Indian unity.In 1924 thesolutiontothe problemof contested sovereigntyinPunjab proposedbyLala LajpatRai, thepre-eminent Hindu nationalist of thatregion, was to partition the province in orderto make the principleofmajority rule effec-tive.This mightin turn openthe way toa possible federationofautonomous Hinduand Muslim statesinBengal. R ai'spro-posal foradivision ofthetwo mainMuslim-dominated provinces wasnot apreludetoa partition of India; it was a labouredattemptto forestall suchan eventuality.A partitioned PunjabandBengal weretoremain partof anundivided India underHindu majority rule.

Championing the regional rights ot andPolitical Weekly August 8. 1998 2183


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t of a H indu majority at the all-India

onal rights of the Hinduyet Lajpat Rai,

st venturing forth as anationalist, w ho held that the onlygious requirement of the Muslims w as

y parameters of the debate by rejecting

According to Iqbal, the spiritual and theam since "the nature of the act, howevers import, is determined by thetude of mind w ith w hich the agent does

tual and temporal as "twoirmed both the "un ity ofman"and Islame unanalysable reality" in whichous and political aspects dependedionally specific observations. Theng idea" of 'tauhid',thebinding prin-

ty and freedom". Itamic point of view "to endeavour to trans-5"It was in this alone", the leading intel-

e in Islam is a theocracy". Th is wasive of God on earth...screening

6 Giving a wholly different

s of its being". There was "no suchThe over-zealousness of Turkish

e bordered on profanity. "Such a thing

beginning a civil soc iety, having receivedfrom the Quran a set of simple legalprinciples which, like the 12 tables of theRomans, carried...great potentialities ofexpansion and development by inter-pretation". The principle of 'ijtihad' orindependent judgment allowed Muslimsto constantly adjust to the imperatives ofsocial change without abandoning theIslamic path. Contrary to the view of thereligious scholars, Iqbal believed that sincethe institution of the 'khalifa' had ceasedto exist the right of 'ijtihad' should bevested in an elected Muslim assemblywhich was the "only possible form Ijmac[ould] take in modern times".7In optingfor the republican form of government andcollective 'ijtihad' by the Grand NationalAssembly, the Turks alone among theMuslims had asserted the right ofintellectual freedom conferred by Islam.8

Yet on the separation of church and statethey had gone too far. Iqbal alerted Muslimsto the dangers of becoming overawed bythe currents of western liberalism. As heput it:

Khara na kar sakamujh jalwa danish-i-farangSoorma hai meri ankhoon ka khak-i-Madina wa NajfThe light of foreign wisdom does notdazzle meThe kohl lining my eyelids is the dust ofMecca andNajf.9Iqbal's principal critique of westernenlightenment philosophy was that it hadtaken the freedom of free thinking to suchextreme limits as to deny that "all humanlife is spiritual". Islam on the other handwas "an emotional system of unification"which "recognises the worth of theindividual" and "rejects blood-relationshipas a basis of human unity" and "demandsloyalty to God, not to thrones".10 It fol-lowed that 'ijtihad' was meaningless ifdenuded of religious spirit. What Iqbal'sphilosophical reconstructions of Islamicthought made plain was the gaping chasm

between a view of Indian nationalism basedon keeping religion out of politics and thenormative Muslim conception of treatingthe spiritual and temporal domains in non-ppositional terms.What then was the precise significanceof religion in the politics of colonial India?The separation of religion and politicsexpounded by Congress nationalists andrejected by those branded 'commu nalists'took on very different connotations atthe regional and the a ll-India lev els.Religiously informed cultural differenceswere emphasised to claim regional rightsbut deemed illegitimate if insisted uponby a geographically disparate numerical

minority as the criteria for the distributionof national righ ts. It was this contradictorylogic which gave religion the handle thatit came to enjoy in the politics of latecolonial India. As region interacted withan emerging conception of the nation,variously appropriated by the votaries ofthe majoritarian community, those reducedto minority status by virtue of their religiousaffiliation had reasonable grounds forapprehension. Emphatic assertions of aninclusionary nationalism based on theseparation ofthespiritual from the material,the religious from the political and theemotional from the rational seemed tomarginalise the problem of cultural differ-ence rather than give it the centrality it hadcome to occupy in the discourse and politicsof communitarianism. If fragments of themajority community could pose theirdemand for regional rights in the languageof religiously informed cultural differen-ces, then the members of a 'national'minority could hardly be expected to dootherwise. By clinging more obstinatelyto the politics of cultural difference, astatutory minority might at least extract.,some safegua rds. After a ll, "the respect forcultural diversity and different ways oflife finds it impossible to articulate itselfin the unitary rationalism of the languageof rig hts "." But it had to do so on a collec-tive basis in order to get a hearing fromthe colonial state whose tinted spectaclessaw India in terms of essentialised but notadequately existentialised religious blocs.

Playing notes borrowed from liberaldemocratic theory in the communitariankey, Lajpat Rai had issued an ultimatumto Muslim Punjab that separation mayhave to be the price for majority rulepremised on religion. He was perfectlycorrect that separate electorates for Mus-lims and the matching 'commu nalisation'of government through religiously definedquotas were a devastating blow to thehomogenising claims of an inclusionarynationalism. But it was his equallyimpassioned defence of the rights ofPunjabi Hindus which betrayed to manyMuslims the hollowness of the nationalistdiscourse. The bait of equal citizenship inan independent India carried the price tagof singularity and homogeneity which wasrudely at odds with narratives dipped inthe language of cultural difference. Tomake matters worse, they were expectedto rally to the call of a unified and un-contested sovereignty which conferredupon them minority status with no prospectof reliefinthe fact of their regional majority.Inequality in the terms of representationcould hardly be expected to produce theconditions for equality of citizenship.

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Even if the issue of cultural difference

was no guaranteeing that Hindu-ty rule would not try and efface the12 Imbued with the wonderwith the

rsha' was dramatically at odds

e initially at least to occupy

It had the added advantage of being's political and intel-egacies than adiscourse on nationa-y Europ e's history of the for-

f his 'zarifana' or humorous verses:We eastern innocents have entangled ourhearts with a westWhere there are crystal chalices and hereonly an old earthen potAll will perish in this era except the oneWho is established in way and firm inconvictionOh Sheikh and Brahman, do you hearwhat the scriptural sayFrom what high heavens nations havefallenHere it is either conferences on mutuallove: the ways of love were establishedOr disputes over Urdu and Hindi, cowsacrifice and 'jhatka'.13

BETWEEN REGION AND NATION: THEMISSING CENTRE

After the late 1920s, the legitimisingy of Cong ress's inclusionary nationa-

is incapableing cultural difference. Appro -

nationalism holding out the promise ofequal citizenship rights, irrespective ofcommunity, caste or class. It is preciselybecause they had not given up thinkingof themselves as part of an Indian wholethat the idea of majoritarianism seized theimaginations of Hindus and Muslims alike.Punjab reveals in stark fashion theimportanceofmajoritiesclaimingregional,religious and national rights. The con-nections between region and nation whichLajpatRai had mapped out in his argumentson rights were entirely in accord with hisreligiously informed sense of culturalidentity. Since Hindus were fortuitouslyin a 'majority' in India, a Punjabi Hinduof Lajpat Rai's ambitions could live withthe idea of separating the religious and thetemporal realms. This was a formulationflatly rejected by Muslims who agreedthat their communitarian rights had to besafeguarded in any future constitutionalagreement. The principal obstacle toMuslim support for a future constitutionwas not separate electorates but the issueof provincial majorities. Having pro-claimed the 'secular' to be sacred to thecore,Muhamm ad Iqbal upon entering theformal arena of politics in Punjab declaredthat "agreement on only religious matterswould not eliminate all the differences". ' 4The 'mantra' of rights being chanted bythe Hindus, and echoed variously by theSikhs, touched on temporal issues thatimpinged on the exercise of 'secular' stateauthority. W hile focusing on the rights ofMuslim s, and those of Punjab especially,Iqbal continued emphasising the com-patibi lity between an Indian and an Islamicidentity. It was "completely wrong", heasserted, to say that "the Muslim psychewas devoid of any spirit of love for the home-land". Besides love of the homeland, Mu s-lims felt passionately about Islam. It wasthis passion that could bring together thedisparate individuals of the com mu nity. l5

Iqbal's 1930 presidential address to theAll-India Muslim League is a key tounderstanding the Muslim discourse onidentity, sovereignty and citizenship inlate colonial India. Was it possible "toretain Islam as an ethical ideal and...rejectit as a polity" in order to embrace the ideaof "national polities" in which religionplayed no part? It was 'unthinkable' forMuslim s to subscribe to the "constructionof a polity on national lines" by abandon ing"the Islamic principle of solidarity".Referring to Ernest Renan's definition ofa nation as the expression of a collective"moral consciousn ess", Iqbal o bservedthat the affinities of caste and religion inIndia had resisted "sinkfing] their res-pective individualities in a larger whole".

Whatever their own internal divisionsvarious groupings in India were unwillingto pay the price of fashioning a commonnational moral consciousness if it meantthe extinction of their cultural distinctive-ness.It was impera tive to "recognise fac ts"and "not assume the existence of a stateof things which does not exist".16Yet Iqbal's call for a Muslim state innorth-western India did not envisage aseverance of all ties with Hindustan. Incontesting the ir part in relation to the wholeof India, Muslims quite as m uch as otherreligious groupings were asserting rightsto territories based on religiously informedcultural identities. But they were stillmainly challenging the Cong ress's right toindivisible sovereignty, not rejecting anysort of identification with India. Muslimschemes seeking to align notions of reli-giously informed cultural difference withpolitical claims of territorial sovereigntywere trying to keep alive the idea if notthe reality of an India extending from theKhyber Pass in the north-western marcherregions to the Bay of Bengal in the east,and from the city of exquisite monumentsto keep alive the spirit and memory of theSultanate and the great Mughals to thesouthern-most tip of Kanyakumari.

MUSLIM COMMUNITY-TURNED-NATION:THE DEMAND FOR PAKISTAN

Conceding territorial sovereignty to aheterogeneous community turned homo-geneous 'nation' was a more vexed issuethan has been generally acknowledged bythose charting the course to separatestatehood by India's Muslims. In puttingforward a claim to nationhood in 1940,Indian Muslims w ere decidedly revoltingagainst minoritarianism, caricatured as'religious communalism'. As MohammedAli Jinnah confessed, the idea of being aminority had been around for so long that"we have got used to it...these settlednotions sometimes are very difficult toremove". But the time had come to unsettlethe notion since the "word 'Nationalist'has now become the play of conjurers inpoli t ics" .nN o less a conjurer than LajpatRai,Jinnah came away from the L eague'sLahore session with a mixed bag of tricks.

While the insistence on national statusfor Indian Muslims was absolute, thedemand for a separate and sovereign stateand its relationship with a Hindustancontaining almost as many Muslimsremained open to negotiation until the latesummer of 1946. The claim that Muslimsconstituteda 'nation' was not incompatiblewith a federal o r confederal state structurecovering the whole of India. But for thefederal idea to be acceptable, the logic of

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tarianism and m inoritarianism had

h the better part of Ind ia's history, theed sovereignty enunciatedthe besting the dilemma posed by the

straddling states, the boundaries

y opposed to a partitionb and Bengal along religious lines

Nudged on by the provincial Hindutan'demand is of crucial significance

his combination held a key

in such an adm inistrative unit against. Contestations over sovereignty

m-majority rule in Punjab, Muslims

that 'Pakistan ' had become a familiar

nciple to 'Pakistan ', however defined,nd Bharat' or an undivided India.s under Master Tara Sin gh 's direction

ing hand. Exclusively basedd m inorities, these na rratives of commu-ian identity and notions of sovereigntyy lacked a careful spelling out ofAttributing this to 'com munalism' wouldy simplify the issue. The prospectndependent India where numericalties w ould shape the apportionment

of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs alikeconfounded spirit and matter, the religiousand the secular. Shades of bigotry informedmost versions of the narratives ofcommunitarian identity and rights. Butthere was also a great deal in them w hichsheds light on the problem of equitablecitizenship rights in a historical contextrequiring accommodation of culturaldifferences. To dismiss both bigotry andcultural difference in the same breath as'communalism' may serve the purposesof historical short hand. It cannot go veryfar in explaining why an inclusionarynationalism failed to excite the imaginingsof so many in Punjab.The Muslim trickle to the League's'Pakistan' was partly a reaction to theactivities of the Hindu Mahasabha andits para-military wing, the RS S. TheMahasabha's charge that Congress was"unrepresentative of Hindu opinion" wasnot a rejection of the nationalist organi-

sation.1* There was a constant overlapbetween the Congress and the Mahasabhain Punjab where it was often the sameindividuals who voiced the Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan slogan most loudly. After theannouncement of Rajagopalachari 'spartition formula of 1944, what collapsedall ends of the Hindu political spectrumwas the discovery that, all said and done,even the apex decision-making body ofthe all-India Mahasabha did not reallyoppose Rajagopalachari's conception ofa 'P akis tan'. This was the second instancewithin a span of 20 years that PunjabiHindus had shown a willingness to concedeMuslim-majority rule at the price of sepa-rating the non-Muslim-majority districtsi nthe eastern parts oftheprovince.'9Therewas no room here for negotiating with theLeague's demand for 'Pakistan'.

The significance ofthe1945-46 electionswas not lost on the key players or thebystanders in the political arenas of BritishIndia. Only a privileged 12.5 per cent ofthe total population and a mere 11 per centof Muslims had the actual right of politicalchoice.20This does not diminish the roleo|t he informal arenas of politics in Punjab,especially the popular press and itsnetworks of information and propaganda.There had been extensive debates in thepress on the merits and demerits of an'Akhand Hindustan', a 'Pakistan', an'AzadPu njab' and 'Kh alistan', to mentiononly the larger conceptions of territorialsovereignty in the province. A possibledivision of India w ith or w ithout a partitionof Punjab had entered the realm of publicdiscussions. Jinnah and the League weredemanding the whole of Punjab for'Pakistan' - a prospect bitterly opposed

by Hindus and Sikhs. Jawaharlal Nehru,who visited Punjab in the early fall of1945,stated categorically that "federationswere better than partitions".21Looking togalvanise electoral support, Nehru seizedupon the INA issue. Paying rich tributesto Subhas Chandra Bose, he demanded"sympathetic treatment" for the "mis-guided patriots" of the Azad HindFauj.22The vast majority of Bose's army werefrom Punjab. There was much sympathywith the INA in Punjab cutting acrosscommunitarian lines. This gave theCongress a temporary reprieve in a pro-vince that was vital to the constitutionalnegotiations at the centre.Beyond the contradiction of anirreligious party demanding a Muslim stateand most ofthereligious guardians rallyingbehind a nationalist party comm itted to a'secular' vision, little is known of whatthe uses of religion conveyed to the votersof Punjab. Religion was deployed by all

parties. Signing its own death warrantamong Muslim voters, the Congress leftthe anti-imperialist cause on the sturdyshoulders of the Ahrars and the Jamiat-ul-Hind ulema whose forked tongues hadbitten into many raw nerves in MuslimPunjab. But "cas tigatin g] Jinnah and otherLeague leaders for their religious short-comings" no longer had a spellbindingeffect.23 The rout of Congress's Muslimsupporters in Punjab should not distractfrom the impact they made at the level ofpolitical discourse. Putting the fear of Godinto the hearts and minds of Leaguers wasno mean achievement. Aided by a teamof mostly Barelvi ulema, hurriedly broughtunder a freshly created Jam iat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, Bunjabi Leaguers tried surpassingtheir temporal calling by appropriatingIslamic idioms. The induction of hell fireby 'p irs' and maulvis for the greater causeof religion bore no resemblance to Iqbal'stranslation of 'tauh id' as "equality, justiceand freedom", the founding principles ofany state in Islam.

Although the largest single party in thenew provincial assembly, the MuslimLeague found itself locked out of Punjabministry headed by Khizar HayatTiwana.This made it more difficult to preventPunjabis from striking at theirownjugular.Blaming the failure on religious zeal, ofwhatever combination, can only satisfythose impatient with Punjab and its historyof short and intense warfare followed byprotracted, if uneasy, compromises. Theelections of 1945-46, pitting Muslimagainst Muslim, and the politicallysignificant aftermath of a Congress,Unionist and Akali coalition ministry hadadvertised the impossibility of exclusively

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ge the balance ofisfy non-M uslims that

cal divisions among M uslim s, anderences with non-Mu slims, made this

ing maximum demand s did not meanation. Muslim Leag uers had nott

khs made up their mind on w hethery w anted a separate state of 'Kh alistan'Cong ress. Hoping to replace

Union Jack over the Lahore F ort withdeparting raj. Go verno r Jenkins w arned

ously obstruct any agreed arrangemen t2 4 On the fault line of region and

2 5 The chances

6 formally acceptedl-India federation. Even as late as

2 6 N e h r u ' s

Con gress had 'not met with

2 7

for the p rota go nist s of a "Unitedt w as comi ng to pre vai just when

r o u g h t b y a c o n f l u e n c e o felopm ents at the centre, the region and

pound. Jenkins ' grand gesture to parl ia-mentary propriety and a delicate comm uni-tarian balance -t h e formation of the coali-tion ministry - had done less for unity thandivision. Despite a succession of oppor-tunities, Punjabi Leaguers more obsessedwith ousting the ministry failed to takeiidvahtageofSikhdoubts about Uie'wisdomof an outright al l iance with the Congr^s,Anypne with,an iota'of setiije could seethe "danger, ever present in Punjab, of acom petent riposte to Leag ue disorder fromthe turbulent Sikh minority" .28 The passageof well over six months before the Sikhserupted to avenge their marginalisation isof critical importance in an evaluation ofthe options open to Punjabis in the finalfew months of colonial rule. During thesecond half of 1946 an uneasy armed truceprevailed in Punjab until the crumbling ofthe adm inistrativeedifice turn ed the swordarm of India into its biggest killing field.Religion did play a part as a marker of

social distinction. But religion as identityowed no t h i ng t o re l i g i on a s fa i t h .Confusing the two, as a historiographyoperating in a binary mode is wont to do,has ended up essentialising religion and,worse still , blurring the myriad texturesof localised social vio lenc eun derth e grandrubric of 'com mu nalism'. The preparationsfor civil war and actual outbreaks ofviolence highlight the precarious balancebetween the individual and the comm unityquite as often as the supposed triumph ofthe community over the individual .The League's 'direct act ion' movementagai nst the coalition m inistry drew popu larMuslim support, but seriously offendednon-M uslims. Yet remarkable as it seems,the decisive refusal of Punjabi H indu s andSikhs to accept a League ministry or'Pakistan' did not make the partition ofthe province any more acceptable to thevast majority of Punjabis. This was trueeven after March 3,1947 when the premierbuckl ed unde r League pre s sure andresigned. In a statement on March 8, a

number of Sikh and Hindu leaders ,including three former ministers, made itknown they were "opposed to Pakistan inany shape or form".2 9 If this was theoverture, the all-India Congress workingcom mittee provided the finale on the sameday by resolving to demand the partitionof Punjab. Hindus and Sikhs hailed the, decisio n. M uslim s created history byunanimously condemning the Co ngress ' smove which did more to "widen. . . thecleavage between the communit ies" thanthe violence itself.30The old and tired portrait of Punjab inthe gr ips of an a l l pervas ive fever ,exclusively pitting Hindu against Muslim

and Muslim against Sikh is accurate onlyto a point. Th e vision of religiously definedcomm unit ies banding together in absoluteunison explodes amidst harsh cri t icismsof the provincial and all-India leadership,as Swell as an ge r and ho rro r at thebankruptcy and collapse of their politicalwill.1Pun jabis may h ave been especiallyUnwill ing. to tnake concessions to rivalcomffrunities,; but the vast majority wereequally av erse to apar tition of the provinceon purely religious lines. The impositionof an all-India solution on Punjab and theresponse it generated in a society pulverisedby colonial constructions is a tragic taleof woe. N o one put i t more poignantly thanTalukchand M ahroom , Punjabi Hindu poetof Urdu w ho in March 1947 bemo aned thedestruction of a regional ethos of whichhe had once been proud:

Tearing the clothing off human superiorityThis frenzied dance in the joy of nudityis destructiveYou have shown such barbarity in yourachievementsReducing to dust the honour of humanityFrom the high heavens the call will comenight and dayAlas Punjab, pi ty on you and yourculture -1'

SEPARATING AT CLOSE QUARTERS:PUNJAB PARTITIONED

Th e redesignin g of the spatial landscapeof India by the British, the Congress andthe Muslim League was accompanied bypitched battles for social space in thelocalities that were fought m ainly, but notexclusively, along the lines of religiouscom mu nity. Violence intensified comm u-nitarian feelings, but was rarely perpetratedby collect ivi ties as a whole. D emob il isedsoldiers were more often than not in theforefront of violence committed in thename of communit ies. Individuals, evenwhen grouped in armed militias, couldsettle personal scores in the process ofpromoting and protect ing m embers of theircomm unity. K eeping an eye on the balancebetween the individual and the communityoffers far more penetrating insights intothe human dimension of social violencethan permit ted by overarching categoriesl ike Muslim, Hindu and Sikh. Barbari tyattributed to entire comm unities has effacedthe role of individ uals and given far greaterlegi t imacy to the social violence thataccompanied the partition of Punjab thanis warranted by the evidence. 3 2

The localised and personalised natureof the battles for social spac e in a provincefacing an impending division on the basisof re l igious enumera t ion shaped thefrequency, intensity and thrust of the

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an dimension of the killings,possibility of

conveniences of" the term int Hasan M anto in 'Parhiya K alima',

f a Hindu woman killing off herion that he he lp her dispense

urbed conditions and breaking thefew, the new paramour placed the corpsege dump outside a m osque. That

er surviving a murderous assault by thelover, them ends up stabbing his replacements he explains in the story,

tla Ma li ilia Allah,he tells the Muslimworst an act of self-defence.

33

ing battles for control

oned on the basis of religious affili-

ng m ajorities against m inorities withw to ejecting them through fear, terrors. Religion, if it wasations. The banding of individuals

g to the discourse and politics ofBut it was so variously interpreted

category of 'comm unal violence'n which each local incident has tended

mpending divisionhe spatio-temporal domain to advance

s could not have been crueller.unitarian identities w ere through-

differences. The Congress's call for apartition of Punjab had brought out thedifficulties of reconciling religiouslyinformed identities with imaginings ofterritorial sovereignty. If Muslims ineas tern'P unja b, ; were pbtrified,: at theprospect of their;.' homes being parcelledout to the non-Muslim areas, Hindus inwestern and central Punjab were quite asaverse to losing their properties to'Pakistan'. Sikhs with commercial andindustrial interests plumped in favour ofa partition, leading to the creation of a newprovince consisting of the Ambala andJullundur divisions as well as Delhi. ButSikh landed interests, represented by G ianiKartar Singh's group, wanted the territorybetween Chenab and Sutlej where theyowned large estates. Punjabi Hindus andSikhs had conceded a partition with nointention of parting with the choicest partsof the province.3*

By the time the June 3 plan wasannounced, there was organised and sem i-organised incendiarism, stabbings andbomb blasts in both Lahore and Am ritsar.In an indication of the speed with whichsocial space was falling vacant in theprovince, an estimated 70 to 80 thousandhad fled the two cities.35A rising graphof violence doomed such chances as existedfor an agreed solution to the problem ofpower-sharing in Punjab. Yet no lesssignificant was the relative balancebetween centre and region in the finalnegotiations which produced the June 3partition plan. The Punjab governorthought it was 'ludicrous' for 'so-calledLeague leaders...to take orders fromBombay from a person entirely ignorantof Punjab conditions'.36He was equallyopposed to the Congress high comm and'smeddling in Punjabi affairs. By wieldingthe partitioner's axe to placate theCongress, the British would have "reducedwhat might be a powerful country to twopetty states". "Partition solve[d] noproblem andd[id]not really make sense".37The Punjab League leadership had, inConjunction with the larger imperatives ofj\nnahand the Congress high command,"already fooled away a kingdom". Anyconception of India's future requiring thepicture at the centre to emerge beforeetching one for Punjab was completely"topsy-turvy". The "right course", surely,was to "determine the future of the unitsin a way acceptable to their inhabitantsand then to sketch the all-India pictu re".38

It was arrangements at the centre, notthe problem of individuals and com-munities inhabiting contested space in theregions, which allowed Mountbatten todictate the terms of the all-India settlement

to Jinnah and the Congress leadership.There w as "a complete absence of enthu-siasm for the partition plan" in Punjab,"nobody seemjed] pleased and nobody...want[ed] to get on w ith the job" . Yet thepolitical parties for very different reasonswere ready to 'acquiesce' to the plan.Muslim Leaguers thought it was "a master-stroke by Jinnah" in the vain hope that hewould ultimately "get them all they want".Congressmen, for their part, thought theplan was "a master-stroke by Patel, who,having pushed the Muslims into a corner(or into two corners)" would "destroy thembefore very long". As for the Sikhs, theywere on red alert in districts they consideredvital. Until the boundary line had beenannounced, they "refused to go very farwith partition".39

Later reactions to the partition proposalreflected sub-regional and class consider-ations even more powerfully than commu-nitarian ones. Even after the AIM L' s formalacceptance of partition, Punjabis cuttingacross communitarian divisions werejealously guarding their claims to socialspaces, embodying both the material andthe spiritual aspects of their individual andcollective identities. The resistance todisplacement was most pronounced amongSikhs and Muslims, neither of whom w ere"showing any sign of being willing eitherto give up their present abode, or to submitlightly to any kind of domination by theother".40 Unreconciled to the loss ofLahore, Hindus were relying on RSS cadresin battles for social spaces in the wardsand mohallas of Lahore.41The RSS wasalso strengthening its organisation inJammu and Kashmir in anticipation of aMuslim bid for power.

Although the MLNG had not been nearlyas conspicuous as the R SS, it was "signi-ficant that 70 per cent of the new firesin Lahore. . .occurred in non-Muslimhouses" .4 2 Banded individuals were"creating havoc with the tacit approval ofthe local .Muslim League leaders". Afterlegislators from the eastern districts of theprovincial assembly formally voted onJune 23 to dissolve the administrative unityof Punjab, the League seemed more"earnest in its apparent endeavour to re-create a sense oflawand order" in Pakistan'sterritories. Assurances of fair treatment tominorities in western Punjab w ere lookedupon with suspicion by Hindus, most ofwhom were planning to m igrate. Yet thosewho migrated were also the first ones toreaffirm the bond of familiar social spaceby returning hom e. In one of those deliciousironies, Muslims in western Punjab whohad "suffered inconvenience on accountof the absence of their 'b ani as'" were seen

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to be capable of "cherish[ing] them moreif they...[came] back".4-1If it was to be administratively viable,not "a nightmare tapestry of futuristdesign", Pakistan had to have a "workable"and "practicable" boundary, "not...a crazyline running backwards and forwards" inand out of villages in several districts.44It was impossible for the boundarycommission to satisfy wildly clashingclaims to territories in Punjab. A ttacks onMuslims in Amritsar by early Augustalarmed Sikhs and Hindus in westernPunjab who feared reprisals. Exhortationsby Hindu and Sikh leaders to non-Muslimminorities to remain in the districts towhich they belonged and promises byMuslim League leaders of "protection andequal treatment" did nothing to "dispel thepanic". Gandhi, paying a courtesy visit toPunjab on his way back from Kashmir,was greeted with posters "asking him toretire from politics".45

The disregard of the human dimensionin the political bargaining at the all-Indialevel was coming to haunt the nationalleadership with a vengeance. SardarShaukat Hayat has recalled his shock andhorror at the pai nful discovery that Muslimmen in Amritsar had abandoned theirwomen and children *for the safety ofLahore. Callousness was matched bycowardice in one village where Muslimmen hid in the sugarcane fields while aband of Sikhs carried away young girlsand set fire to a house where they hadpushed all the old women and children.In one instance, a terrified young womanleft her child on the road side when toldby the driver of a bus full of M uslims thatthere was space for only one person.46Collective memories of violence in socialspaces, embodying some of the strongestidentities of individuals and collectivities,have woven a dark shroud over the corpseof undivided Punjab. A scrupulous siftingof the threads, however, confirms thepersonalised and localised nature of theviolence as well as the singular victimi-sation of women Muslim, Hindu andSikh - by men purportedly battling tosafeguard their communitarian interests.

An analysis of the vio lence , perptetratedas well as suffered in Punjab, offer* quiteastonishing insights into the social attitudeswhich marked the birth of independentcitizenship in south Asia. The sacredrapidly turned profane in the process ofadvancing the battle for sovereignty indifferent tehsils and districts. The awardof Punjab boundary commission, whoseannouncement was postponed to allow forthe transfer of power ceremonies toproceed, predictably "caused much dis-

appointment".47 Muslim suspicions ofBritish bad faith and the influx of refugeesfrom eastern Punjab spelt the end for non-Muslims in the western districts. The finalphase of the violence saw clashingidentities and contested sovereigntiesripping apart the moral and the spatiallandscape of Punjab. Refugees fromAmritsar incited some Muslims in WestPunjab to commit arson, looting andstabbing against non1Muslims. Signi-ficantly, while the people of Lahore w anted"a quick return to normal conditions, themalevolent element from the East Punjab[we]re exploiting the discontent andadvocating] retaliation".48One way to m inimise social dislocationswas to offer allegiance to the new state.In Rawalpindi, Hindu refugees participatedin the heisting of the Pakistan flag. InChakwal and Jhelum, Sikh comm issionedofficers presented arms to the nationalflag. Non-Muslims in Jhelum madedonations to Muslim refugees' funds and

appealed to their co-religionists in easternPunjab to put a stop to the lawlessness."Sober-minded Muslims" were "en-deavouring to persuade non-Muslims tostay on in West Punjab". But the generalclearing of social spaces had begun in thelocalities and districts of Punjab. Armedthugs, frequently assisted by the localMLNG, and even elements in the policeand the army, carried out a systematiccampaign of loot.49The nexus of citizen-ship in Pakistan and, by extension, India,as the Congress insisted Hindustan beknown, had a bloody baptism that cannotbe ascribed to religion by any stretch ofimagination.

Muslim excesses against their Hinduand Sikh neighbours in western Punjabassumed appalling proportions which noamount of nationalist self justification canwash away. This was not to be the idealstate of Islam of which the poet-phi losopherof Punjabi Muslims had spoken in hisreconstruction lectures. Far from providingany basis for the realisation of the spiritualin each individual, far less the collectivity,in temporal activity, this was a state bornof the purely material greed which thechaos of the British departure let loose inPunjab.

The situation was much the same inIndia. Muslims in Delhi were attacked andtheir property seized. This had catalyticeffects in western Punjab. There were casesof conversion, both voluntary and involun-tary, especially in Jhelum, Gujarat andSargodha.50 Even an unsympatheticcommentator like G D Khosla believesthat it was "not religious emotion oraggressive chauvinism...but the prospect

of personal gain" which prompted Muslimoutrages against Hindus and Sikhs inJhelum.51By late August a mere 60 mem-bers of the RSS remained in the district.52When it came to the crunch, volunteercorps did more to shed innocent bloodthan protect the lives and property of co-religionists. Escaping to areas where nume-rical strength was on their side, the RSSquite as much as the MLNG preferred theoffensive rather than the defensive path.The material benefits of the battles forsocial space in both parts of Punjab accruedto individuals, not local com munities. Andthere can certainly be no vindication ofcriminal actions in pursuit of "zar' and'zamin', or wealth and property which,together with zan or women were the threeconstitutive elements of material culturein the north-western areas constituting theterritories of Pakistan. Banded individualswere amassing wealth and property at otherpeoples ' expense. InCampbellpur,Pathansfrom Mianwali and the NWFP, "out for

loot, more on criminal than communall ines", did not spare local Muslimresidents.53 If the quest for 'zar' and'zam in' had led to unpardonable offensesagainst members of all three communities,the debasement of 'zan' assumednightmarish proportions. Maulvi MaulaBakhsh. the 'khatib' of the Juma masjidin Rawalpindi told a congregation of 3,000Muslims that 25,000 Muslim girls hadbeen abducted by Sikhs in easternPunjab.54 The situation in Kashmir was"a permanent menace to Muslims.".55Dogra raids on Sialkot and the abductionof Muslim women m erely served to confirmthe paranoia. The image of Kashmir as apowerless woman enslaved by Dogra rulershad never failed to excite Punjabi M uslims.Yet the decorum of wanting to rescue thesymbol of a ravished woman marriedawkwardly with attitudes towards theliving and the real. Unidentified Muslimmen, operating as local gangs, had beenabducting and raping non-Muslim women.There was nevertheless anguish uponhearing that a column of M uslim evacueeson its way to Pakistan had been m ercilesslyattacked by Sikh 'jathas' in Ferozepurdistrict.56 But if there were only a fewcharacters like Khushwant Singh's Jaggain the Sikh community, there were menof the Muslim community, as Manto hasdepicted in his classic story 'Khol Do',for whom Sirajuddin's daughter Sakinawas the first and foremost woman asprostitute, not ornament, irrespective ofher religious identity as a Muslim.57

All said and done, the commonality ofmasculinity was stronger than the bond ofreligion. Men of all three communities

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f these citizens of newly inde-

omen may have accomplished

the religious community

f theirown interests were vividly

decisively than the affective affinitiesreligious community. In the memorable

rita Pritam invoicing the spiritthe author of the legendary 'qisa' or

1 call upon Waris Shah

hter of Punjab had cried

you, the sympathiser of the broken hearted,ies are cramming the forests

d that water has spread all over the land.58Notes

G M Trevelyan Seminar, University of 27, 1997.]M N Roy, Punjab Money-lenders' Bill'inSibnarayan Ray (ed), Selected Works ofMNRoy, 1923-1927, vol H.D elhi, 1988,p439.See David Page, Prelude to Partition:TheIndian Muslimsand the Imperial SystemofControl 1920-1932.Oxford University Press,Delhi, 1982, 1987,passim. The Nation and ItsFragments: Colonial and PostcolonialHistories, Delhi, 1994. p 74. pp73-74. The Reconstruction ofReligious Thought in Islam, edited andannotated by M Saeed Sheikh, Iqbal A cademy,(second edition), 1989, p 122. pp 122-23. p 138.p 124. inKulliyat-i-Iqbal,Karachi (nodate), p 34. The Reconstruction of ReligiousThought in Islam, p 116.Partha Chatterjee, 'Secularisman dToleration'in Economic and Political Weekly, July 9,1994,p 1773. Yet thenotion of a blendofindividualandcollective rightswasavailableintherealmof Muslim political philosophywhich had reached beyond the rigid boundariesof a unitary colonial rationality.

Theattack on Urdu - asymbol of Muslim

adaptationto itsIndian setting- hadbeenoneofthe cruellest cuts inflicted by therhetoricof Hindu, Hindi and Hindustan.13Hummashriqkaimaskeenonka dilmaghribmainja atkahaiWahan kantar sab buloori hain yuan aikpurana matkahaiIss duor mainsabmitt jain ghai, ha an b aqiwo rahejai ghaJo qaim apnirah pai hai aurpaka apnihatka haihie SheikhoBrahman Suntayhokiyaahl-i-baserat kahte hainGarden naikitne bulandi saayoonqaumoondai patkahaiYa baham piyar kaijalse thay; das toor-i-muhabat qaim thaYa bahis main Urdu-Hindihai, yaqurbaniya jatka hai.(Iqbal, 'Bang-i-Dara' in Kulliyat-i-Iqbal,p234 . )14 Statementon theSimon Commission. FromInqilab,November 12,1927. CitedinAfzal,Guftar-e-Iqbal, p 51.15 Inqilab, September 10, 1929 in ibid, p 91.16 Iqbal's presidential addressto theAIMLinDecember 1930 in Sharifuddin Pirzada(ed),Foundations of Pakistan, Lahore, 1970,vol l l .p p 156-57.17 Jinnah's presidential addressto theAIMLinMarch 1940,ibid, p 335.18 Secret Punjab Police Abstract of Intelligence,NCHCR, May 20, 1944, vol'lxvi, no 21*Lahore, Islamabad, p 291.19 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, November 18,1944,vollxvi,no 47,Lahore, Islamabad, p 639.20 Ayesha Jalal, TheSole Spokesm an: Jinnah,the Muslim League and the Demand forPakistan, 1985, p 149,Cambridge, fn 99.21 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, September1,1945,vollxvii,no 32,Lahore, Islamabad, p 292.22 Ibid, p 291.23 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, January 5, 1947, vol lxix,no 1,Lahore, Islamabad, p 4.24 'JenkinstoW avell ',TP,July3 and 4, 1946,vol viii, pp 2 and 8-9.25 Ibid.26 See'JenkinstoWavell', ibid, July 15, 1946,p60.27 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, August24,1946,vollxviii,no 33,Lahore, Islamabad, p 409.28 Intelligence Bureau (Home Dep artment),TP,September 23, 1946, volviii, p 577.29 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, March 8, 1947, vol lxix, no 10,Lahore, Islamabad, p 102.30 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, March 15, 1947, vollxix, no 11,Lahore, Islamabad, pp 113-114.31 Admiyat ke libas-i-bartari kophaarkeShauq-i-Aaron mein ye racks-i-janoonheyfitnagar| Too ne apni bartari kedekhae wohunurKhak mein jin sey mili tauqir-i-insan sarbasurAsmanon seysoda aiyeghi yesham-wa-sahrHeifahPunjab, tuj pey aurteri teh?ibpey.(In M uzaffar Abb as,Urdu Mein Qaumi Shairi,Lahore, 1978, pp 205-06.)32 Both Veena Das and Gyanendra Pandeycommit thefallacy of notdeconstuctingthe'community' in their accounts of partitionviolence. Consequently they fail topinpointthe pain of v io l ence and d i s loca t ionexpe r i enced by bo th ind iv idua l s andcommunities during theholocaust of 1947.(See Veena Das, Critical Events: AnAnthropological Perspective on Contem-porary India, Oxford, Delhi, 1996,chapter

3 and Gyanendra Pand ey,' ProseofOtherness'in David ArnoldandDavid Hardiman (eds),Subaltern Studies VIII:EssaysinHonourofRanajit Guha, Oxford, Delhi, 1994.)33 Sadaat Hasan Manto, 'Parhiya Kalima' inManto Nama, Sang-e-Meel, Laho re,1990,pp 259-67. For an English translation see'Nothing but the Truth ' in Hamid Jalal,Blackmilk, Alkitab, Lahore, 1956;reprintedSang-e-Meel, Lahore,1997.34 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, May 19, 1947, vol lxix, no 19,Lahore, Islamabad, pp 233-34.35 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, May 31, 1947, vol lxix, no 22,Lahore, Islamabad, p 277.36 'NotebyJenkins' ,TP,March20. 1947, ix.p997.37 Enclosure to ' Jenkins to W avel l ' . ibid,March7, 1947, p 881.38 'NotebyJenkins', ibid, March 20,19 47,p997.39 Fo rtnigh t ly repor t f rom Jenk ins toMountbatten, June 15, 1947 inThePartitionof Punjab: A Compilation of OfficialDocuments,vol 1, (second edition), Sang-e-Meel, Lahore, 1993, pp41-42.40 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence.NCHCR, June 21, 1947, vol lxix, no 25,Lahore, Islamabad, pp 325-26.41 Ibid, p 330.

42 Ibid.43 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, June 2% ,1947, vol lxix, no 26,Lahore, Islamabad, p 339.44 See the Muslim League's memorandum toPunjab boundary comm ission inThe Partitionof Punjab, vol 1, pp 283-84 and287-89.45 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, August 9, 1947, vol lxix, no 32,Lahore, Islamabad, p 407.46 Shaukat Hayat Khan, TheNation that LostIts Soul: Memoirs of Sirdar Shaukat HyatKhan,Jang Publishers.'Lahore, 1995,pp184-86.47 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, August 23, 1947, vollxix,no 34,Lahore, Islamabad, p 419.48 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,(signed by Anwar Ali,deputy inspectorofpolice, CID, Punjab) NCHCR, August 23, 1947,vol lxix, no 34, Lahore, Islamabad, p 41949 Khosla, Stern Reckoning, pp 120-216.50 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence.NCHCR, September20,1947,vollxix,no 39.Lahore, Islamabad, p 45751 GopalDasKhosla, Stern Reckoning,p 198.52 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, August23, 1947, vollxix,no 35,Lahore, Islamabad, p 423.53 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, September 20, 1947, vollxix,no39 , Lahore, Islamabad, p 461.54 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,

NCHCR, September6,1947,vollxix,no 37,Lahore, Islamabad, p 441.55 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, September 13,1947,vollxix,no 48,Lahore, Islamabad, p 452.56 Secret Punjab Police AbstractofIntelligence,NCHCR, September 20,1947 ,vollxix,no 39,Lahore, Islamabad, p 457.57 See Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan,Grove Press, New York, 1961 and SadaatHasan Ma nto ' s 'Sak ina ' in Blackmilk,pp 43-46.58 Amrita Pretam ,' Aaj Aakhan Waris Shah No o'(my translation) cited withoutthefinal linesin Hanif Ramay, Punjab ka Muqadammah,Jang Publishers, Lahore, (fourth edition),1988, pp 25-26. For a different Englisht rans l a t ion of the whole poem seeSerebryakov, 1 Punjabi Literature: A BriefOutline, Progressive Books, Lahore,1975,P'07.

Nation, Reason and Religion Punjab's Role in the Partition of India

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Transcript of Nation, Reason and Religion Punjab's Role in the Partition of India