12-19-2008, 10:09 PM
Maulana Azad was tlaking about a number of Muslim officers who got stuck in TSP thanks to Nehru.
The Unmaking of Peoples
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->THE UNMAKING OF PEOPLESÂ
EDITOR'S CHOICE
<img src='http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081219/images/19bookpart..jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Nowhere to belongÂ
The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories By Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, Viking, Rs 495
There are a few standard approaches to the Partition of India in 1947. One is to look at British policy and how, over the years, the British pursued a policy of divide and rule which eventually to the creation of Pakistan, a separate state for Muslims. The reverse of this approach is to look at the role played by Indian politicians in the unmaking of the sub-continent. A very different perspective was opened up when analysts moved away from politicians and policy-making to the lives of the people who were affected by the uprooting, the violence and so on. Building on this, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar opens up a new and refreshing dimension.
The Partition involved, as Zamindar so tellingly observes, âthe bureaucratic violence of drawing of political boundaries and nationalizing identities that became, in some lives, interminableâ. At first sight, the matter seems obvious enough: a group of administrators, at the behest of their political masters, redrew the boundaries of India to create a new nation state called Pakistan. Suddenly, the identities of some people changed, some were even asked to choose identities. What appears simple in its telling became an entangled mess at the level of the day-to-day for the people and the families who were affected. They suddenly became victims, and in the conventional way that historians look at history, some of them became subjects of the history of Pakistan and others of India. Their lives, their suffering and the confusion slipped through the mess.
Zamindar seeks to recover these lives. The Partition, even sixty years later, continues to affect peopleâs lives â hence her phrase, âa long Partitionâ. The author is also asking us to rethink the category of national histories. Those families that came to be divided, the men and women who lost their identities â to which country do they belong, India or Pakistan?
Take the case of Ghulam Ali, whose story started off Zamindar on her quest. Ghulam Ali was a havildar in the British Indian Army. When Partition was announced in June 1947, he, like all those in the government and military service, was asked to choose which of the two nation states he wanted to serve. He opted for India as he hailed from Lucknow. But before the formalities could be completed, communal violence broke out, and India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir. Ali was forced to work for the Pakistan army. In 1950, he was discharged as he had opted for India, taken to the border and, since he was deemed to be an Indian, was âforcibly removedâ into Indian territory. The Indian checkpost did not recognize him as an Indian and he was arrested for entering India without proper documents. He served a prison sentence and in 1951, he was deported back to Pakistan on the grounds that he was a Pakistani. In Pakistan, Ali appealed to the courts to be recognized as a Pakistani national, but in 1956, he was declared to be an Indian national. He bought himself a Pakistani passport and came to Lucknow, where he applied for Indian citizenship. This was turned down and the Indian authorities took him to the Wagah border, where the Pakistani officials arrested him considering him to be an Indian, and Ali spent the rest of his life in the âHindu campâ in Lahore. Ghulam Aliâs story comes closest to that story about Toba Tek Singh of Sadat Hasan Manto. Like Tek Singh, Ali did not know where he belonged. He was not allowed to belong.
Zamindarâs narrative is rich in stories like this. This alone would have made her book an outstanding one, since the research and ethnography are both new and deep. But she successfully weaves these stories with other layers of history â the national and the provincial. In one cogent narrative, she brings together the personal, the local, the provincial and the national. This is a remarkable achievement of scholarship.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The Unmaking of Peoples
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->THE UNMAKING OF PEOPLESÂ
EDITOR'S CHOICE
<img src='http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081219/images/19bookpart..jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
Nowhere to belongÂ
The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories By Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, Viking, Rs 495
There are a few standard approaches to the Partition of India in 1947. One is to look at British policy and how, over the years, the British pursued a policy of divide and rule which eventually to the creation of Pakistan, a separate state for Muslims. The reverse of this approach is to look at the role played by Indian politicians in the unmaking of the sub-continent. A very different perspective was opened up when analysts moved away from politicians and policy-making to the lives of the people who were affected by the uprooting, the violence and so on. Building on this, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar opens up a new and refreshing dimension.
The Partition involved, as Zamindar so tellingly observes, âthe bureaucratic violence of drawing of political boundaries and nationalizing identities that became, in some lives, interminableâ. At first sight, the matter seems obvious enough: a group of administrators, at the behest of their political masters, redrew the boundaries of India to create a new nation state called Pakistan. Suddenly, the identities of some people changed, some were even asked to choose identities. What appears simple in its telling became an entangled mess at the level of the day-to-day for the people and the families who were affected. They suddenly became victims, and in the conventional way that historians look at history, some of them became subjects of the history of Pakistan and others of India. Their lives, their suffering and the confusion slipped through the mess.
Zamindar seeks to recover these lives. The Partition, even sixty years later, continues to affect peopleâs lives â hence her phrase, âa long Partitionâ. The author is also asking us to rethink the category of national histories. Those families that came to be divided, the men and women who lost their identities â to which country do they belong, India or Pakistan?
Take the case of Ghulam Ali, whose story started off Zamindar on her quest. Ghulam Ali was a havildar in the British Indian Army. When Partition was announced in June 1947, he, like all those in the government and military service, was asked to choose which of the two nation states he wanted to serve. He opted for India as he hailed from Lucknow. But before the formalities could be completed, communal violence broke out, and India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir. Ali was forced to work for the Pakistan army. In 1950, he was discharged as he had opted for India, taken to the border and, since he was deemed to be an Indian, was âforcibly removedâ into Indian territory. The Indian checkpost did not recognize him as an Indian and he was arrested for entering India without proper documents. He served a prison sentence and in 1951, he was deported back to Pakistan on the grounds that he was a Pakistani. In Pakistan, Ali appealed to the courts to be recognized as a Pakistani national, but in 1956, he was declared to be an Indian national. He bought himself a Pakistani passport and came to Lucknow, where he applied for Indian citizenship. This was turned down and the Indian authorities took him to the Wagah border, where the Pakistani officials arrested him considering him to be an Indian, and Ali spent the rest of his life in the âHindu campâ in Lahore. Ghulam Aliâs story comes closest to that story about Toba Tek Singh of Sadat Hasan Manto. Like Tek Singh, Ali did not know where he belonged. He was not allowed to belong.
Zamindarâs narrative is rich in stories like this. This alone would have made her book an outstanding one, since the research and ethnography are both new and deep. But she successfully weaves these stories with other layers of history â the national and the provincial. In one cogent narrative, she brings together the personal, the local, the provincial and the national. This is a remarkable achievement of scholarship.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->