Midnight's Tribe

The sad legacy of partition and modern politics in South Asia:

Midnight’s Children is about characters born at midnight on August 15th, 1947, the moment when the Dominion of India and Dominion of Pakistan became independent. Sir Salman himself was born in 1947. The Booker prize-winning 1981 novel examines the Indian project through the literary device of “midnight’s children” who have special psychological powers.

India marked its 75th anniversary of independence this week and some of the tensions of 1947 have returned. Independence was bittersweet for many of those — including Mahatma Gandhi, who would be assassinated six months later — who led the fight for it. Sweet because of sovereignty transferred from the British Raj; bitter because of partition, dividing the British colony into India and Pakistan and (latterly) Bangladesh.

The dream of an India which included both Hindu and Muslims as full citizens within a religiously neutral state was rejected by the Muslim League. It feared that minority Muslims would be second-class citizens, or worse, in a majority Hindu India. Thus partition took place, with the consequent migration of millions of Muslims from India to Pakistan and Hindus in the opposite direction. ...

On the subcontinent partition was not peaceful, leading to Hindu-Muslim riots and lethal violence. Estimates are that as many as 20 million people migrated, and the resulting dead are estimated to be hundred of thousands, or perhaps even several million. Enmity was sown between India and Pakistan, with permanent military hostility and occasional wars.

The Muslim minority in India is enormous, some 200 million. Only Indonesia (230 million) and Pakistan (212 million) have more Muslims. Bangladesh has 153 million. After independence it seemed as if India — declared a republic in 1950 — could accommodate its Muslim minority in the world’s largest democracy. For most of the twentieth century the worst fears of Muslim persecution in a majority Hindu India were not realized.

Yet at India’s 75th the idea of India as a privileged republic for Hindus has more currency now than it did in 1947. The BJP government of Narendra Modi, prime minister since 2014, has favoured “Hindutva,” a Hindu nationalism that sees India as a Hindu state, with authoritarian measures justified to preserve that Hindu character. That means that religious minorities — primarily Muslims, but also the country’s Christian minority (2.3 per cent) — has their civil and political rights curtailed.

Harassment is reported frequently. For example, late last year the Indian government suspended Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity from receiving foreign donations, meaning the sisters had to ration the food they provided to the starving. An international backlash put an end to that bureaucratic bullying, but the message to all non-Hindu citizens of India was clear. If the sisters who serve in the slums can be targeted, anyone can.

India is rightfully proud of its new president, Droupadi Murmu, who took office last month and is the first “tribal” to be head of state. “Tribals” or members of the “Scheduled Castes” or “Scheduled Tribes” occupy the lowest place in the traditional social hierarchy. The term “Dalit” or “untouchable” was also used and Gandhi famously used the term “Harijan,” meaning “children of God”.

By whatever name, Murmu’s ascension is a remarkable step, hard to imagine in 1947. Yet she is a BJP member who also advances Hindu nationalism to the detriment of religious liberty.

As governor of Jharkhand in 2017, she approved an inaptly named “Freedom of Religion” bill. The law ostensibly bans “forced” religious conversions, but can be used to threaten any Hindus who desire to become Christians or Muslims. A “forced conversion” can simply be one that the BJP does not like.

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Chaudhuri was talking about what he saw in Delhi, where the bloodshed was relatively contained. What happened along the new borderline was unimaginable.

Men, women and children were tortured, mutilated, raped, burned alive, blinded with acid or chilli powder, boiled in cauldrons, hacked to pieces. Bands of goondas slaughtered patients in their hospital beds, children in their classrooms, worshippers in their mosques, temples and gurdwaras.

Some of the grisliest massacres took place on the trains that carried refugees across the border. The engines would pull in at their destinations with gore dripping from every door, and not a single passenger still breathing. Sometimes, a message would have been chalked on the side of one of the carriages: “A present from India” or “A present from Pakistan”.

I don’t want to dwell on the horror. Nor do I want to write a column about whose fault it was. That dim, image-obsessed popinjay Lord Mountbatten must carry the blame for timing things the way he did. Andrew Roberts’s critique in Eminent Churchillians, written nearly 30 years ago, still stands.

But it was not Mountbatten who carried out the abominations, which surprised him as much as they did everyone else. Even those who had called for a phased withdrawal were caught off guard by the sudden frenzy among people who spoke the same languages, dressed the same way, and lived in the same villages.

No, my focus is a different one, namely the largely unremarked and unacknowledged fact that, when coming to this country, the descendants of the victims and of the perpetrators managed to leave their quarrels at the door.

Many British Asians have roots in the provinces that were worst affected by the violence: Bengal, Gujarat, Kashmir and, above all, Punjab. Some left their homes precisely because they had been touched by the atrocities. Yet, arriving here, they were able to put it behind them.

This strikes me as a rather beautiful achievement, and one that tends to be taken for granted. India and Pakistan found it hard to get over what had happened. Those two kindred states have fought three-and-a-half wars since, and the 75-year-old border remains one of the most militarised on Earth.

But in Britain, Sikh, Muslim and Hindu populations have settled, often in the same cities, with little tension. ...

Once parties feel they can rely on bloc votes for ethnic or religious reasons, they become complacent, and often corrupt (see Northern Ireland). The people in those blocs become less likely to think issues through from first principles. Worse, they can be stirred up against other blocs (again, see Northern Ireland).

 

Why, that sounds like Canada.