Imagined communities

Partition stands as a testament to the terrible follies of the empire, argues author Yasmin Khan 'the Londoner', in a frank interview

Mehru Jaffer Vienna

It is 60 years since the Partition of the Indian subcontinent. Yet, the geographical divide that promised its people political and religious freedom continues to fascinate Yasmin Khan, author of The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, published last September by Yale University Press. She documents the terrible haste and recklessness, particularly the damaging legacy left in its wake. The political lecturer in the faculty of history and social sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, feels the Partition is the origin of many ongoing conflicts in South Asia, not least because it was the source of suspicions and national myths, deeply rooted in the definition of one State against the other. “Partition deserves renewed consideration and closer attention for abundant reasons. It was one of the 20th century's darkest moments. It stands as a testament to the follies of the empire which ruptures community evolution, distorts historical trajectories and forces violent State formations on societies that would otherwise have taken different and unknowable paths,” concludes Khan, who is amazed at the widespread indifference to the pain and loss inflicted due to the bloody series of events. It brought displacement and death. It benefited a few at the expense of many. This was epic tragedy, injustice, insanity and horror. Thousands of women were raped, at least one million people were killed and 10 to 15 million were forced to leave their homes as refugees.  Her book is about the birth of two States that emerged from the South Asian landmass at the end of the British empire and whose populations continue to live with deep-rooted loathing for each other. Khan notes that Indian and Pakistanis are, still, despite the ongoing and encouraging liberalisation of the visa regime in 2006, kept apart. For past 60 years, the two have been largely segregated in a manner unthinkable to the protagonists who agreed to the plan at the fateful meeting on June 3, 1947. The way in which India and Pakistan have evolved as nation-states and the literal, pedantic policing of nationality in the interim seems in retrospect a product of the anxieties and insecurities of Partition. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Hardnews.

What, if any, were the personal reasons for writing another book on Partition?

I have been fascinated by the Partition for many years from an intellectual perspective, but this was also underpinned by stories told by my family and by their various memories of the time. On my mother's side, my British grandfather had been stationed in Punjab in an army tank regiment and on my father's side the family migrated to Pakistan (from UP to Lahore and then to Karachi just after Independence). My father was a toddler at the time. When I began researching the subject I wanted to understand the Partition and the making of Pakistan but I was also surprised to see how little the human experience of these tragic events had been reflected in conventional historiography.

Is the Partition itself a problem, or does it lie in the way it happened?