The Hindu : Front Page : Book sheds new light on why Partition went “disastrously” wrong

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Sunday, Aug 05, 2007
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Book sheds new light on why Partition went “disastrously” wrong

Hasan Suroor

Khan rejects criticism that the Muslim demand for Pakistan was a sectarian one
Indian edition of the book is expected to be published later this year

LONDON: A new book on Partition by a young British historian, who has links both to India and Pakistan, argues that even hardcore votaries of a separate Muslim homeland had not bargained for the shape in which Pakistan eventually emerged. Their idea of Pakistan was far removed from what was delivered on August 15, 1947: a separate nation involving division of territory, population and personal histories of millions of ordinary people on both sides. Rather controversially, Yasmin Khan questions Indian nationalist historians’ view that the Muslim demand for a separate homeland was itself divisive and fraught with risks.

The demand, she argues, arose from genuine Muslim fears that their political and economic rights may not be safe in a predominantly Hindu India. At the time, Partition seemed like a “reasonable solution” to meet Muslim aspirations, according to her. “Pakistan had a legitimate right to come into existence but the manner of its creation was disastrous,” she told The Hindu as her book “The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan” (Yale Uni versity Press) hit the stands in Britain.

To some extent, Ms. Khan’s own personal history was shaped by the Partition. Like thousands of other educated middle class U.P. Muslims, her father moved to Pakistan and later — like many professional Pakistanis — to Britain marrying a British woman.

Ms. Khan, who was born and brought up in Britain, remains very much a child of the subcontinent with divided family ties across the India-Pakistan border. Her book brings together the politics of Partition, the human suffering it caused, and its damaging legacy which continues to cloud both India-Pakistan and Hindu-Muslim relations.

Ms. Khan rejects criticism that the Muslim demand for Pakistan was a sectarian one and is at pains to stress that the violence and chaos that surrounded the Partition was not a direct consequence of Muslim desire for political and economic autonomy. “Pakistan” was the name they gave to the idea of Muslim autonomy, and not to a specific territorial entity. Not even staunch supporters of the Partition had anticipated the nightmare that it turned into. “Partition set in motion a train of events unforeseen by every single person who had advocated and argued for the division,” she writes pointing out that there was nothing “inevitable” about what happened. The Partition became such a “bloody” and “messy” affair because both the British and their home-grown Indian successors had their own agendas. British were in a hurry to cut their losses and run, while the Indian political class was in an equal hurry to assume power.

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