Displaced people in their homeland

The Oxford University Press has published in a book form a Journal 'Transeuropeennes Numero 19/20, 2000-2001' which is devoted to the study of changing 'borders', displacements, collective violence during and after Partition and the sufferings of 'refugees' and especially women victims of violence-led separations and divisions.

This study includes fifteen contributions. Seven of them are from the natives of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and the narratives include Radha Kumar's 'Settling Partition Hostilities', Ranbir Samaddar, Syed Sikander Mehdi on 'Refugee Memory in India and Pakistan', Meghna Guhathakurta, Ritu Menon and Subhoranjan Dasgupta who provide narratives and oral history as told by the victimised 'women' and an interview by Mushirul Hasan.

The South Asian historical experiences dominate this volume as shown by the contributions of Seven South Asian and a French, Claude Markovits, on the Partition of India.

The Partition stories of erstwhile Czechoslovakia-Yugoslavia have been very poignantly described by Jacques Ruptnik under the caption 'Divorce by Mutual Consent or War of Secession?'

Cyprus and Jerusalem are also described in a journalistic manner and this book just offers a mixed bag of researchers and non researchers brought together to tell us about the Partition of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Cyprus and Jerusalem.

Except Mushirul Hasan who in an interview, refers to the role of colonial powers fathering the partitions, all others have maintained a conspiracy of silence on the tragedy of partitions which were all gifted by the colonisers.

Penderel Moon, a British historian, has very aptly summed up the role of colonisers by mentioning their policy of 'divide and quit'. Radha Kumar is engaged in offering solutions to post-Partition 'stabilisation policies' as President George Bush, Jr. is engaged in a post-aggression phase in Iraqi society.

Ranbir Samaddar has nothing to say about the pernicious role of colonisers and imperialists in institutionalisation of religious identities of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, but he is on his hobby horse that the post-colonial regimes are sleeping over the issue of self-determination of communities in new nation-states. More partitions in the name of right of self-determination are welcomed!

The best contribution is by Syed Sikander Mehdi on 'Refugee Memory in India and Pakistan' who rightly observes that the "Healing becomes all the more difficult in India and Pakistan where diverse and powerful interest groups have benefited from the business of conflict between the two post-colonial South-Asian states and where a culture of hate has been deliberately promoted on both sides of the border..."

Are the writers of the Hindutva project of history under the supervision of Sangh Parivar listening to the sane voice of a scholar from Pakistan that history based on hate will continue for ever the politics of violence! Not only this.

The past is not monolithic but it is plural and depends on its representation by colonisers and communal historians.

Mehdi rightly states: "But clearly there was another past-past which was humane and harmonising, even during the worst moments of communal frenzy "" both before and after Partition."

Do we not know that victims and non-victims of Partition-linked violence receive succour and support from members of every community!

A fact which should have also been part of post-Partition memory of India and Pakistan that Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan met at Amritsar on 18 August, 1947, just three days after Independence, to mobilise all resources to control the ugly situation of post-Partition killings.

Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Nehru also held a meeting to deal effectively with the inhuman tragedy in both the countries.

Colonisers followed 'divide and quit' and let anarchy prevail but the successor state leaders immediately jumped to grapple with the new situation of human tragedy.

Further, Partition studies have been occupied by the tragic events of two divided Punjabs, it is now that the two Bengals are receiving attention and Meghna Guhathakurta of Dhaka University and Subhoranjan Dasgupta of Jadavpur University in their two chapters bring out on the basis of 'Two Family Histories' and 'Trauma and Triumph'.

Dasgupta tells us: "What is the basic structure of emotion which distinguishes these Partition women? What is the unifying bond between Somavanti in the West and Sukumari Chaudhury in the East, Chapalsundari in Brindabon and Sabitri Chatterjee in Calcutta? It is essentially dialectical, operating between the two extreme points of trauma and triumph. Neither ultimately prevails over the other. For whenever trauma terminates, its memory mellows the quality of triumph or reconciliation."

The same tragedy is described by Antoine Maurice about how do you enter Jerusalem. He states: "Entering Jerusalem from the east is in itself a political choice."

Unlike the writers on Jerusalem or 'divided women' in divided countries, Radha Kumar and Ranbir Samaddar conceal the role of colonisers in bringing about Partition. One of the solutions to difficult problems as mentioned by Radha Kumar is "A change of heart in the parent nation/diaspora support".

Radha should know, because there is enough empirical evidence, that diaspora is also manipulated and maneuvered by the imperialists in generating conflicts among 'ethno-religious groups' leading to partitions in the parent nation.

The best example is America's support to Jewish Israel against struggling Palestinians on the basis of a quid pro quo between Jews of America and Israel to act as policemen for American's in oil-rich Arab countries.

The Indira Gandhi government had 'hinted' that the American CIA was manipulating a section of Sikh diaspora to instigate secessionist movements in Punjab. Radha should know that Hindu communalists in the US are funding the fascist Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

A few contributions in this edited volume are outstanding and a few others are non-descript because Oxford University Press has compromised with its own standards of publication by converting a journal into a book without a format and a reasonable quality of an edited volume.

DIVIDED COUNTRIES, SEPARATED CITIES

The Modern Legacy of Partition

Edited by Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes

and Rada Ivekovic

Oxford University Press

Pages: 192/ Price: Rs 395