The Partition of India led to millions of people displaced and marked as one of the largest mass migration ever over the world. August 15, 1947 was a very significant day for Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and many others. It marked the day of the British partition of India, and India won its freedom from colonial rule, ending nearly 200 years of British rule. This successful attainment of independence from colonial rule defined a narrative of religious nationalism, but also has led to displacement and violence between the two nation states of India and Pakistan. Once a peaceful union of Muslims and Hindus had become separated, whereas Muslims got Pakistan and Hindus got an independent India (Best et al, 2008). “The Other Side of Silence” (Butalia, 2000, pp.264-300) the oral testimony of a Punjabi woman Maya Rani, who was a child living in Pakistan during the Partition. Her testimony was crucial to understand the historiography of the event, because she was a witness of the impact of the Partition, but she was not directly involved in the violence that the emergence and independence of India that has brought.
Maya Rani comes from a lineage of Harijans who were one of the minorities of groups in India. The Harijans were also affected by the Partition, but their involvement in was limited as the strife was for the most part between the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. The interview was taken by and translated by Urvashi Butalia in 1985-1986, with Peter Chappell and Satti Khanna. The testimony by Maya Rani particularly addressed the unfolded events during and after the Partition, and depicts the panic and horrific tragic that have occurred through a personal, but detached perspective and as well as of a child with lower stature perspective. This...
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...l sources cannot provide. In Maya Rani’s oral narrative, there’s no pointing fingers of Hindus nor Muslims, but instead descript in a third person point-of-view, provided an unbiased source of information.
In conclusion, the testimony of Maya Rani on the Partition of India provides a good overview of the fateful events leading to that disastrous decision made by the British, and the fatal suffering of innocent civilians that has passively caught between the crossfire of communal hatred. The importance of her oral testimony to history from a gendered, female, child, and caste perspective is severely underrated as the actions of a nation through her eyes (and other oral histories) are paramount to understanding the emotions, reasoning and social human logic behind the events that unfolded on the ground as more than just facts, dates and statistics on a piece of paper.
The truths contained within this book show the attempt at the genocide of the Indian nations, which rival that of the Holocaust during World War Two. The parcels are too strong to ignore. Beginning with the long walk of the Navaho where children were stolen and sold into slavery and many died during the journey. When they arrived at the camp they were counted daily. What a correlation to the relocation to the Jews to the concentration camp, many of whom also dying along the way.
New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print. The. Singh, Jaswant. Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence.
Miriam, L. (1928). The Problem of Indian Administration. Maryland, MD: The Lord Baltimore Press. Retrieved from Alaskool.
In the impoverished imagination of the multiculturalist, all those who do not belong by birth to the predominant culture are engaged in a united struggle against its oppressive and illegitimate hegemony.” Dalrymple is explaining that with the increasingly pluralistic character of modern Western society there is an increasing belief that all cultural traditions and perspectives represented in the public deserve to be heard at every level. However all those who do not belong to the ‘dominant Western culture’ are living on the fringes of society. In order for multicultural coexistence to work it requires goodwill from all parties. It requires tolerance towards other’s religious and moral values to an extent. Religious tolerance is not a value universally admired within the immigrant cultures of showcased Indian families. A Muslim patient of Dalrymple had fallen in love with a young Sikh boy. Once the Muslim girl’s family found out about the relationship its outcome resulted in violence. The Sikh boy was machete and forced into hiding by the Muslim’s girl’s brothers. Although the brothers were tried in court and regarded as delinquents to the rest of society, the members of their community thought the girl’s brothers behaved in an honorable and decent way. They had broken the law in pursuing their blood feud and risking
Around the time of his birth, fighting among local warlords made life dangerous in Canton. The political turbulence that Pei witnessed seems parallel to Einstein’s experience with political turbulence in Germany, and Ghandi’s experience with India under British rule and the loss of Hindu identity that came with the ruling of a different culture.
Anisa Kidwai’s memory of the partition compelled her to write down not of her own deeds nd sufferings, but about thousands of innocent victims whose sufferings can easily rise above its historic limitations and also can be a subject to transhumanism in Nietzsche’s terminology. Mrs Kidwai personally was charmed by Gandhiji’s principle of nonviolence which is a key word of the Indian concept of humanism that plausibly could have diverted the direction of the partition agitation to some other positive way. While working in two refugee camps, the writer saw how the affected people of the riot in 1947 were attacked by thirst, hunger and different epidemic diseases. It was also shaming for her to see how girls were raped and wounded brutally by the riot hooligans, how everyday fifteen and every night ten newborn babies opened their eyes unwanted and in the most unhygienic atmosphere. She was shocked to see a little boy talking of only ‘murder’ and ‘death’. Amidst destruction and distrust, there were few, who bore the message of hope and
Born in a Bengali Christian family in 1937, Nandy was 10 when the British partitioned British India into India and Pakistan. Living in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Nandy witnessed and experienced the atrocities and the violence of the partition up close and personal. His writings are deeply
The most threatening conflict between Hindus and Muslims is the province of Kashmir. This is where the decision to divide India into India and Pakistan seems to have been a terrible mistake. Kashmir, which is the only Muslim majority city in India, lies between the divided India and Pakistan. After India’s independence in the 1940’s, Kashmir had to choose to either unite with India or Pakistan. The Prince of Kashmir chose India but Pakistan invaded the province soon after and have occupied part of Kashmir since then. Controversy still surrounds the province today because naturally, Muslims want to control it. While many Muslims relocated to Pakistan and the Hindus to India, half of the Muslim population was left in India and their relations did not improve after being partially separated.
The decision to grant independence to India was not the logical culmination of errors in policy, neither was it as a consequence of a mass revolution forcing the British out of India, but rather, the decision was undertaken voluntarily. Patrick French argues that: “The British left India because they lost control over crucial areas of the administration, and lacked the will and the financial or military ability to recover that control”.
In the book Train to Pakistan, author Khushwant Singh recalls the brutal and unfortunate times when Muslims were being forced out of Mano Majra. They, along with the Hindu and Sikh population, were living in relative peace. But when there had to be change, chaos ensued. There were several key individuals that shared the total responsibility of the expulsion of Muslims from Mano Majra; Even though some had purer motives than others, they all took stock in the unfortunate process.
Two of these massacres, one in Delhi, followed by another a few days later in Sarhupurreceived widespread publicity. The killers, who were Thakur Rajputs, had just one message to send through murder — the untouchable Jatav cobblers had to learn their place in society and the caste hierarchy. This is also the message that Mistry’s Thakur Dharamsi wished to send to the Untouchable Chamar families who had sought democratic equality in defiance of caste hierarchy. What is evident here is a conflict between the terms of nationhood and those of caste stratification, which have their roots in Hinduism. The casualty in the conflict is the principle of democracy upon which equality of citizenship depends. Mistry’s fictional and Akbar’s documentary accounts of caste violence may be usefully situated within the broader context of “caste wars” that have dominated parts of Tamilnadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Bihar. Most of the violence against the Dalits comes from landowning caste Hindus, who are equipped with militias and private armies that have been recruited and trained with government assistance and cooperation, initially for the purpose of combating Maoist-style uprisings from tenants and landless
“India and Pakistan: Tense Neighbours.” BBC. N.p., 16 Dec. 2001. Web. 15 May 2011. .
Urvashi Butalia in her book, The Other Side of Silence, attempts to analyze the partition in Indian society, through an oral history of Indian experiences. The collection of traumatic events from those people who lived through the partition gives insight on how history has enveloped these silences decades later. Furthermore, the movie 1947 Earth reveals the bitterness of partition and its effect of violence on certain characters. The most intriguing character which elucidates the silence of the partition is the child, Lenny. Lenny in particular the narrator of the story, serves as a medium to the intangibility created by the partition. The intangibility being love and violence, how can people who grew up together to love each other hate one another amidst religion? This question is best depicted through the innocence of a child, Lenny. Through her interactions with her friends, the doll, and the Lahore Park, we see silence elucidated as comfort of not knowing, or the pain from the separation of comfort and silence from an unspoken truth.
Kashmir — a beautiful mountain state with clear rivers, evergreen forests and one of the highest death rates in the world. It is at the center of an age-old dispute between Pakistan and India that has dragged on from the independence of both nations over fifty years ago to the present time, with no resolution in sight. The combined population of the two nation totals over a billion, so no conflict between them is of passing importance, especially when nuclear weapons are involved. Pakistan and India share a common heritage, language, and traditions, yet the subject of Kashmir can push them to the brink of annihilation. Fifty years of animosity have built up as a result. A proxy war still brews in Kashmir, claiming dozens of lives every day, running up a casualty total over time into the hundred thousands. Kashmiris have suffered untold horrors and Kashmir has the notorious reputation of being one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints.
Until a child is eighteen years old, the parents have full responsibility. They provide a stable and loving environment for their children. As the leaders in a household, caring and loving parents also maintain the bonds that hold the family together. However, absence of loving parental guidance can create tension between family members. Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day shows how war, specifically the partition of India, affects a particular family. The partition of Indian in 1947 created the separate countries of India and Pakistan, consequently ripping families apart. The partition, initiated by India’s independence from Britain, attempted to accommodate irreconcilable religious differences between Muslims and Hindus by forming the Islamic Pakistan. In Clear Light of Day, the Das children’s relationship with their parents causes lasting sibling conflict that mirrors this social and political upheaval of India.