What, then, was partition all about? - Ayaz Amir in 'Dawn' dated 14 Aug.,

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Srihari <nyayavadi@v...> wrote:

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D A W N W I R E S E R V I C E

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Week Ending : 14 August, 2004 Issue : 10/33

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"So what was the compelling reason for the Muslims to insist on a

separate homeland especially when there was no going around the

uncomfortable fact that, no matter how generously the frontiers of the

new state were drawn, an uncomfortably large number of Muslims would

remain in India?"

 

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Haroon House, Karachi 74200, Pakistan

 

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What, then, was partition all about?

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By Ayaz Amir

 

As another independence day is about to be commemorated with fake

sentiment and false speeches - we having fine-honed the talent of

turning national holidays into the most boring events imaginable - the

toughest question our history throws up can no longer be shirked: if

Pakistan was to be a country dedicated to permanent

dictatorship, what was the point of it all?

 

Did we go through the blood-drenching and mass migration accompanying

partition - more than a million people killed and about 8-10 million

people uprooted from their homes - so that Pakistan should be a

country dedicated to the permanent usurpation

of power?

 

Was Pakistani independence meant to be a synonym for authoritarianism?

 

Harsh questions? Not if you consider the mess our history has been

or, more to the point, if you consider our apparently unshakeable

determination to keep making a mess of it.

 

Pakistan was created for the people of Pakistan. This at least is the

orthodox line turned into cruel myth by the steady march of authority

figures on the Pakistani stage, our consistent specialty, the

extra-constitutional take over. It bears branding into our

collective consciousness that not a single peaceful transition of

power marks the 57 tempestuous years of our history.

 

Yet, and savour the paradox, the bonds of nationhood (the sense of

belonging to a nation) remain strong. Not because of Pakistan's rulers

who constitute a dismal club but because of the Pakistani people, most

of whom, although not all, have nowhere else to go, no place else to

call home.

 

If the flame of patriotism still burns in Pakistani breasts, and it

does, it is a tribute not to blinkered and often downright stupid

leadership but to the resilience and fortitude of the Pakistani people.

 

So, is there still something that we can call the Pakistani dream?

There is but in the minds of the poor and the defenceless, not in the

passions or pocketbooks of the rich and well-placed who long ago made

a virtue of swimming with the tide and, in the process, exchanging the

power of hope and striving for the armour of an all- weather cynicism.

 

But to recap the usual factors held responsible for the founding of

Pakistan, Islam was not in danger in pre-1947 India. Indeed,

considering the sectarian violence and religious bigotry we face

today, it was in better health then.

 

Nor was democracy the issue because even if partition had not

happened, India was getting democracy once the British left. The

Indian Independence Act promised that.

 

So what was the compelling reason for the Muslims to insist on a

separate homeland especially when there was no going around the

uncomfortable fact that, no matter how generously the frontiers of the

new state were drawn, an uncomfortably large number of Muslims would

remain in India?

 

The purpose of Pakistan, transcending anything to do with

safeguarding Islam or promoting democracy, was to create conditions

for the Muslims of India, or those who found themselves in the new

state, to recreate the days of their lost glory.

 

For eight centuries Muslim warriors - lured by tales of India's

wealth and, I daresay, the beauty of its women, and crossing the same

Hindukush passes through which, centuries before, Aryan hordes had

marched - invaded, conquered and ruled India, putting the impress of

their culture and thought upon the land they colonized

and receiving something from that land in return.

 

In the process, both invader and invaded were transformed. After

eight centuries of intermingling and assimilation the Muslim in India,

however hard he clung to his historical memories, was no longer a

Turk, a Persian or an Arab but something else: an Indian Muslim. The

land was transformed too, post-Muslim India not being

the same as pre-Muslim India.

 

With the coming of the British, however, another transformation was

also underway. Muslims lost their pre-eminent status, a process

beginning with the disintegration of the Mughal Empire but carried

much further as the British consolidated their hold on India.

 

Knocked off their pedestal, Muslims were now amongst the subjugated.

But another discovery awaited them too. Outnumbered by the Hindu

population, even amongst the subjugated they were not of the first rank.

 

Their overall position in India was thus relegated to number three,

after the British and the Hindus, this being a measure of the shift in

the historical calculus.

 

From mid-19th Century onwards, beginning with the first stirrings of

a modern Muslim consciousness as expressed by the Aligarh school,

Muslims may have agitated for jobs and special safeguards, such as

separate electorates, but informing and indeed fuelling their quest

was a vision of the past when they were great and the whole of India,

not just a part, was their happy hunting ground.

 

At odds with the reality of Muslim impotence, this vision, this

harking back to the past, reduced the Indian Muslim leadership to

fighting a rearguard action: seeking to play the new game, of which

the British were now the umpires, not across the entire field,

because they felt it not in their power to do so, but asking that a

patch be reserved for them so that in that reserved patch they should

be able to ride unchallenged.

 

In a crucial sense, then, the Pakistan movement signaled a retreat

from the heartland of empire to its outer edges, the final evacuation

from Delhi and Agra to new centers of power in Punjab and Bengal.

 

But even then it was for the new state, Pakistan, to create a

historical justification for itself by emulating and rivaling, in

achievement and glory, even if on a reduced scale, the success of its

historical model, the Mughal Empire (in a 20th Century setting,

it goes without saying).

 

In other words, breaking away from India, for that's what partition

did, the justification for Pakistan lay not in merely existing but in

showing the spark, vitality and vigour of a new organism, like America

to the old world, Israel to its decadent surroundings, the

breakaway part, in short, proving better in all that qualifies for

civilized achievement than the erstwhile whole.

 

Against this scale of measurement how on earth do you place the kind

of farce regularly staged in Pakistan: mediocre figures (no successors

to Babar or Akbar, excuse me), meddling in politics when it is not

their business to do so, adept neither at peace nor war, not

understanding their own business or that of others, a succession of

hopeless figures conspiring to make a mockery of a not-so-bad country?

Mughal Empire indeed. Islamabad seems more like a replay of the last

days of the Oudh dynasty.

 

The principal strengths of Muslim rule in the subcontinent were war,

the consolidation of conquest, politics and administration. In all

these fields Pakistan has not distinguished itself. Wars that should

never have been fought started and then lost. About politics the less

said the better.

 

It's not as if Pakistan lacked promise or potential. It did not. But

it has been betrayed by its stars and a succession of cardboard

figures who would have received short shrift at Akbar's court.

 

Is it all hopeless? Of course not. It's not too late to turn the ship

around. But we'll have to go back to the drawing boards and, instead

of taking Pakistan for granted which we often do, try to understand

why this country was created.

 

For rule by a few? To be lorded over by an oligarchy at once inept

and corrupt, heedless of history and out of sync with the times? Come

off it. Pakistan was meant for better things which it can still reach

provided we stop making a mess of our politics.

 

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--- End forwarded message ---