Partition 1947 – Learning, Unlearning and Relearning

 India is celebrating its 75 years of freedom from the British rule under the title, “Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav”. Freedom, from the imperialist rule and establishing a system of democratic self-governance is indeed an important achievement in the history of modern India.

But as we know it, Indians got freedom but along with it, came the partition of India, which was a decision of the British rule. As if a person lost its limbs, India lost its parts on the right as well as on the left, as the freedom dawned on us at the midnight, on August 15th 1947.

By June 1946 it was clear that partition of India is unavoidable. Lord Mountbatten announced a plan, the Mountbatten Plan, which was accepted by the Indian nationalist movement as well as the Muslim League. Radcliffe commission drew the boundaries of the two nations. Respective governments of the newly born two nations, which were, effectively three different parts of India under British rule, were left to deal with issues related to partition.

Yes, India was divided into India and Pakistan, which in turn consisted of West Pakistan and East Pakistan. In between these two was, the union of India. Partition caused huge sufferings and lot of human misery.

Looking back all these 75 years one wants to ask a question, “ have we learnt anything from the partition of 1947?”. One obviously wants to find an answer to this question. To my mind answer to this question is not straight. It is complicated.

There are things we learnt soon after partition. Then there are lessons we unlearnt. There are lessons we have never learnt. I shall explain my understanding on each of these.

Lessons we have learnt from Partition

We learnt to include more areas

We did all that we could for accession of Jammu and Kashmir into India, while the partition of India was causing mass migration and huge human misery.

We learnt to merge all the princely states under our rule.

We also helped liberation of Goa from the Portuguese rule and it’s accession to India, in 1961.

We learnt to support creation of Bangladesh, in 1971. It was a gesture of establishing hegemonic politics by way of creating a sense of good will with one of our neighbour.

Our learnings about control of separatist elements

We learnt to control the separatist elements which developed in the post independence India. We tackled the issues of Khalistan movement, though, it came with a price, of our prime minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi's assassination.

We learnt to maintain many separatist elements in the country, from the north east, from Sikkim or the princely states, under our hegemonic governance.

We learnt to meddle with our neighbour, Sri Lanka, who suffered from separatist Tamil Elam. This act of hegemonic medalling again resulted into another of our prime minister’s assassination. Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in an election campaign meeting in Tamilnadu by the LTTE suicide bomber.

Lesson/s we have unlearnt

We have unlearnt over the years the fact that struggle for freedom in India was fought together by all the people who lived in India under British rule.

Reading about partition, we are able to understand that governments of India as well as Pakistan did not ignore the misery caused by the partition. People suffered from many hardships. Those governments learnt, considering their experience with self-government, they learnt pretty quickly. They made sincere attempts to arrange special trains, provide shelters and new homes to those who left home and came to a new country, on either side of the border. Refugees of partition suffered lot of hardships and trauma. But they were able to access help from the systems of the newly formed country. Government and the system cared about not just the refugees of partition, but all the people of princely states who became citizens of India, as and when their princely rulers decided to be part of India.

Caring about people, something we seem to have merrily unlearnt. Can we say we have cared, to not forget to care about our people? The migration of workers from cities to their villages, after the suddenly declared lockdown during COVID 19 pandemic, tells us otherwise.

We have chosen to unlearn that people who are deprived of their livelihood, need to be treated with respect and care, without compromising their dignity. The word with which, workers who were left with no other option than leaving the cities, were described as ‘Palayankartas’, or ‘running away’. Sounds similar to absconding? Perhaps the word palayan kari majdoor was used intentionally. Instead of calling those migrating workers as sthalantar karte majdoor, calling them palayan kari majdoor was the dirtiest display of our insensitivity. We kept looking, at best pitying the migrant workers in crisis, while our ‘System' cared little in its duty to treat it’s people with dignity and respect and provide them care.

Yes, there were many volunteers who provided support. But those were islands of sane humanity, in the midst of complaisant, self-contented masses.

There was near zero presence of state support to the migrating workers. Many lost their lives, and there was news about few who died, as the train overrun on them, while they were fast asleep on the railway track!

Our State, our System, seemed to have unlearnt all the lessons partition taught us, that people in distress need to be treated with care and dignity.

Lessons we have never learnt

We never learnt from Partition that such extraordinary events in history have long term influence, on everyone. But more adversely affected are those who have very little means.

We never learnt that women, Dalits and minorities are subjected to an underprivileged existence, making them to bare greater burdens during any situation of crisis or conflict.

Class, caste and religion blend together to create a systematic subordination of those who are not belonging to the ‘right’ kind of class or caste or gender or religion. This perpetuates injustices. We have made those injustices invisible by pushing them in veiled backyards of our society.

We have never learnt, this mistake we made during partition. We are doing this since then. Mistake or habit?, of keeping the uncomfortable as the invisible, unrecognised, unattended.

Among the numbers of ‘missing since partition’, women and Dalits outnumbered others. They were represented in their being missing, being invisible, in the inability of the state to not be able to trace their existence. Has anyone forgotten the invisibility of official records of deaths due to COVID 19?

More backward the city, state or the village was, the less privileged the person was, their death was unlikely to be even reported. There were too many who lost everything to the extent that they could not give a proper funeral to their dear ones who died during pandemic. Those are the lives lost, perhaps lost even in data. We haven’t learnt anything about consciously making visible, the invisibles, the deprived. We did not learn this from in spite of having seen sufferings of the victims of Partition.

To sum it up, we have yet to learn to treat our people with dignity. We are yet to learn to hold the values of liberty, equality, fraternity and justice, which our constitution holds dear. We are yet to learn that one cannot practice these values unless one accepts, respects, the diversity of different ways in which people live. We have forgotten to value our unity in diversity. Can any society unite, unless there are diverse elements? Unity doesn’t mean accessions of those who do not fit with acceptable, the normal, the powerful. Unity doesn’t mean suppression of diverse expressions.

We have been unable to learn this, which perhaps was the intention of our leaders during freedom movement, before and after the partition. Celebration of 75 years of obtaining independence, is about time enough, we learn to adhere to these values.