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Book Review
History sans argument
ANANTH KRISHNAN
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Wide-ranging reportage of the build-up to the Partition of the subcontinent and its aftermath
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AN AMERICAN WITNESS TO INDIA’S PARTITION: Phillips Talbot; Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., B1/I1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area, Mathura Road, New Delhi 110044. Rs. 720.
Phillips Talbot was a young journalist of 23 when he was sent to India on a fellowship by the New York-based Institute of Current World Affairs in 1938. Talbot would spend the next 12 years in South Asia carefully recording his observations on myriad different things about political and social life in the region. From quiet village life in tiny Salura in Kashmir to Gandhiji’s rallies attended by thronging millions, and the political events leading up to the Partition
to the joy and sadness that swept over the two nations at the time of their creation, Talbot’s reports were wide-ranging and extensive.
An American Witness to India’s Partition is a broad collection of these reports, which were in fact letters that Talbot sent back to the institute. That Talbot was more a scholarly observer rather than an employed journalist allowed him to freely write outside the constraints of Imperial censorship. He had no knowledge of India when he began his mission. But in some sense, it is the tabula rasa that Talbot came with that also enabled him to write and observe freely and dispassionately, without placing his judgement or casting his lot either with the Empire or the nationalist movement.
Talbot was fortunate to have easy access to the people who would shape the destinies of India and Pakistan. It is the author’s interactions with Gandhiji, Nehru, Jinnah and Mountbatten that form the core of the account. His deconstructions of these men are significant on two levels. While the author is able to achieve a real sense of intimacy in painting their portraits, he also helps us better situate these figures in the political roles they would later fulfil.
Revealing portraits
The book is full of anecdotes and insights into the lives of these men, which makes it eminently readable. Talbot made several trips to Gandhiji’s Sevagram Ashram in Wardha. Like most of the other residents in the ashram, he too was not immune to Gandhiji’s charm. Gandhiji constantly referred to the ashram as “his lunatic asylum”. “And I’m the biggest nut of them all,” he told Talbot.
It was Gandhiji’s magnetism that made him so robust as a leader. Hundreds of thousands from villages across India would flock to his meetings, through bad rail connections, mud roads and numerous other obstacles. But ultimately for them, it was well worth the journey. “This little man with the exceedingly ugly ears electrified the audience of several thousand,” Talbot observes at his first public meeting, by talking to them “sweetly, lovingly, personally” as a father would address his children.
Perhaps most interesting of all are Talbot’s experiences with Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He describes Jinnah as a shrewd “megalomaniac”, but concedes that that was his “driving power”. Jinnah operated in a markedly different way from Gandhiji, but it could be argued that he was just as effective.
In a rare moment of candour, Jinnah described himself as a “cold-blooded logician.” While he was uncompromising and stubborn, he was strongly principled, and it was this that quickly drove him to the top of the Muslim League: “Muslims have long wanted to have a champion, and the more Mr. Jinnah is called an obstructionist… the more many Muslims like it,” Talbot notes.
Sixty years on
Talbot’s careful chronicling of the events in the final years before the Partition makes for riveting reading. Sixty years on, it poignantly invokes a sense of what might have been. From his account, it is clear that there were indeed several historical moments that could have been seized, where the leaders of the nationalist movement had great opportunities to come together and reconcile their differences.
Talbot notes even in 1946 that a compromise was still possible, but “to succeed it must be based not on…hopes that the two parties will get together in the best interests of their country… [but] on an exact analysis of their relative strengths.” But it was not to be. Talbot was in Calcutta when Jinnah’s fatal decision to call for ‘direct action’ led to communal riots that ripped apart the city, leaving thousands dead. This scene would be repeated across the country. At a time when the two countries are celebrating the 60th anniversary of Independence, it is exceedingly important to remember that while millions celebrated on August 15 1947, there were millions others who were being ripped apart from their homes in what was undoubtedly one of the greatest tragedies in history.
Relevant today
Even with the hindsight provided by six decades, Talbot’s observations and insights on how the two new countries would get on remain very relevant, and for this the author deserves credit. After his travels in a Kashmiri village in 1940, he foretells, “I can’t get away from the feeling that the India I am seeing in the villages and towns represents the end of an era, socially and economically, and that the coming generation will see terrific and perhaps violent changes.”
A final note of caution. Talbot’s work is by no means a comprehensive account of the Partition – and it does not attempt to be so. Indeed, what makes the book stand out from other literature in this realm is that it is far removed from the typical historical account – it has no introduction, argument, thesis or conclusion. It is a history that invokes the sentiment that the legendary German historian Leopold van Ranke wrote of in the 19th century – a history of recordings, observation and detail. A history without prescription or argument.
And, in the final analysis, the author’s observations are extremely insightful and will greatly help supplement a student of history’s understanding of the events of the time.
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