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August 16, 2007
"Now We Are Six(ty)"
Link: Dorf on Law: Now We Are Six(ty).
Anil Kalhan marks the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of India and Pakistan, the liberation of which spurred the decline of the benighted colonial era. Anil quotes Nehru's famous words:
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.
The anniversary remains, however, mostly bitter, due to the slaughter that accompanied Partition. Anil quotes Jinnah's speech, which celebrates religious freedom, but the irony of what followed is evident.
My mom remembers Partition as the time when the children were ordered to remain in the house, and the family ate by candlelight inside a home of blacked out windows, afraid of drawing unwanted attention.
Ennis, at Sepia Mutiny, discusses the horribly careless planning pre-Partition (e.g., six weeks to draw the border separating hundreds of millions of people whose lives were interconnected; a line drawn by a Brit who had never set foot in India). This history, of course, deserves serious consideration today, as withdrawal plans from Iraq are prepared.
Update: Thank you to my thougthful commentators, Anil, Kiran, and Zoya. To respond to Anil's comment--You're right. I should have made it clear that your post did not diminish the horrors of Partition. For Kiran: It would be great if there were efforts at unity, both countries celebrating their shared experience of throwing off the yoke of a colonial master. For Zoya: The disintegration of the Soviet Union resulted in much tumult (though thankfully less than that experienced at India's Partition); one hopes that we can learn the lessons of history in the future.
Posted by Anupam Chander on August 16, 2007 at 12:19 PM in Globalization | Permalink
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Comments
Anupam, I certainly wasn't trying to diminish the horrors of Partition, which members of my own family experienced firsthand as refugees displaced from western Punjab. (Which is part of why I didn't just quote Nehru and Jinnah, but also Gandhi and Faiz.)
But sixty years later, the subcontinent has a lot more than the immediate legacy of Partition to live with. So it seems noteworthy when Indians and Pakistanis -- together -- are looking for ways to reclaim independence as a moment that is more than either something only to be bitterly mourned, on the one hand, or something to be uncritically celebrated with fireworks and sweets (in the "India Shining" sense embodied in that House resolution), on the other. For Indians and Pakistanis to *jointly* celebrate, observe, and reflect upon independence together, as something *shared* in both positive and negative ways, is a somewhat radical notion, one that turns the very logic of Partition on its head in some ways.
We certainly should never forget Partition, not at all -- certainly in my own family, that will never happen. But at some point, there seems value in simultaneously looking forward, to try to find ways to reclaim and reinvent the meaning of that moment in more positive and hopeful ways as well.
Cheers
Anil [See my agreement in updated blog entry--Anupam]
Posted by: Anil | Aug 16, 2007 5:00:15 PM
For someone who grew up in east Texas, the eldest daughter of Pakistani immigrants, the joint celebration I witnessed showed me something I had yet to see- a sense of hope. The partition's horrors are not likely to fade any time soon but at least by honoring a point in our respective histories together meant past wounds I've seen indications of my whole life were beginning to heal. It was a small gathering, one that won't likely have any measurable impact but it was a step towards unity. It's imperative that we stop pointing fingers about the injustices of the past or we have no chance of bridging the divide.
Posted by: Kiran | Aug 16, 2007 5:14:01 PM
I agree with Professor Chander. Well, every time a change of such a magnitude in a country occurs, it raises much tempest. The collapse of the Soviet Union and independence of fifteen republics, witnessed by me and my family, was similar to the Partition of India and Pakistan-- both good and bad. Yugoslavia is another example. Self-determination of peoples as a human right and secession are often accompanied with violence, blood and wars, fueled by religion, ethnic strife and nationalism. Chechnya is still struggling in this quagmire. Therefore, often it is just not for the contemporaries to assess and evaluate these events. It is only for history to mark their true place.
Posted by: Zoya Kosmodemianskaya | Aug 17, 2007 10:37:16 AM
