A Revised History of the Partition of India in 1947: A Trailer of Things To Come.

 

A Revised History of the Partition of India in 1947: A Trailer of Things To Come.

Shrikant G Talageri

 

A Woke-Leftist journal on the internet, thewire.in, has taken up the task of promoting attempts to revise the history of the Partition of India in 1947:

https://thewire.in/books/how-a-bengali-book-series-is-attempting-to-make-partition-history-real-for-children

 

The article begins by telling us that a "worrying trend in history lessons has been the blurring of the human and the divine, where myths and legends are passed on as history [….] the pedagogical history books hardly emphasise the immensity of the humanitarian crisis and how lives of ordinary men and women were disrupted. Instead, they reestablish the binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’/the ‘celebrated’ and the ‘demonised’".

 

But now "Besides the well-known publishing houses, researchers are also coming together to contribute towards retrieving the lost voices of individuals and their stories for the young readers. One such endeavour has been the series titled Itihashe Haatekhori (Introduction to History) in Bangla. Divided into three parts – Deshbhag, Desher Manush and Desher Bhasha, the slim series focuses on the least taught and talked about event of Partition and its aftermath. The books have been conceptualised keeping in mind the dearth of Partition histories for the young readers".

 

The writer tells us: "In most history textbooks, Partition is a historic event like many other, and was a consequence of a political tussle in which one political party was unwilling to compromise, whereas the other wished to avoid it at any cost". But that apparently is not the truth: "At the very outset, the narrator foregrounds the amity and friendship that had existed between Hindus and Muslims for centuries. The rulers, irrespective of their own religions, treated members of both the communities equally, even though there were instances where one community may have enjoyed certain extra privileges than the other, depending upon the ruler’s identity. Within a span of three sentences, the narrator succinctly sums up the debates which had existed from time to time around the superiority of one religion over the other and how only Hindus were considered as original inhabitants of the county unlike the Mughals and the British who were labelled as ‘invaders’".

From the above sentence, it appears that Hindus debated "the superiority of one religion over the other"! Perhaps the Hinduism discovered by this "narrator" treats "non-believers" as future denizens of hell and teaches Hindus to hate them, kill them, impose prohibitive taxes on them, destroy their places of worship, and capture millions of them to be sold as slaves?

So it was originally the tendency of Hindus to consider their religion "superior", and to treat the Muslims as invaders, which sowed the seeds of Partition.

 

But there is more: "The narrative of Deshbhag, though not strictly chronological, sifts through Partition history almost in a sequence with a clear interpretation of each event backed by existing academic interventions. To ensure that children understand the complex nature of the history of the divisive politics in the subcontinent, the narrator begins by mentioning how in undivided Bengal, the ‘zamindars’ were mostly Hindus, who exploited the poor Hindu and Muslim peasants.

However, even though all peasants, irrespective of their religion, protested against the oppressive ‘zamindars’, it was the Muslim peasants’ protests which were seen as a conflict between the Muslims and the Hindus and not as a peasants’ struggle."

 

This is historical revisionism par excellence! Compare what is given above with what Dr. Ambedkar has very clearly written about the zamindar-peasant Hindu-Muslim situation, mutual relations and interaction:

"the primary cause why the Indian Muslims as compared with their fellows outside are backward in the matter of social reform. Their energies are directed to maintaining a constant struggle against the Hindus for seats and posts in which there is no time, no thought and no room for questions relating to social reform. And if there is any, it is all overweighed and suppressed by the desire, generated by pressure of  communal tension, to close the ranks and offer a united front to the menace of Hindus and Hinduism by maintaining their socio-religious unity at any cost. The same is the explanation of the political stagnation in the Muslim community of India. Muslim politicians do not recognize secular categories of life as the basis of their politics because to them it means the weakening of the community in its fight against the Hindus. The poor Muslims will not join the poor Hindus to get justice from the rich. Muslim tenants will not join Hindu tenants to prevent the tyranny of the land-lords. Muslim labourers will not join Hindu labourers in the fight of labour against capital. Why? The answer is simple. The poor Muslim sees that if he joins in the fight of the poor against the rich he may be fighting against a rich Muslim. The Muslim tenant feels that if he joins in the campaign against the land-lord he may have to fight against a Muslim land-lord. A Muslim labourer feels that if he joins in the onslaught of labour against capital he will be injuring a Muslim mill-owner. He is conscious that any injury to a rich Muslim, to Muslim landlord or to a Muslim millowner is a disservice to the Muslim Community for it weakens the Community in its struggle against the Hindu Community. How Muslim politics has become perverted is shown by the attitude of the Muslim leaders to the political reforms in the Indian States". (AMBEDKAR1941:232).

 

 

The article in thewire.in has many more gems of wisdom to offer. We will only take up one or two:

 

The book apparently "even provides an explanation that since during the colonial rule, the Muslims lagged behind the Hindus socially, economically and politically, leaders like Muhammad Ali Jinnah strongly felt that only Muslim leaders understood the problems of the Muslims and they should be elected through a separate electorate [….] Eventually, when the INC won the 1937 elections, the Muslim League realised that no further negotiation with the INC was possible and a separate nation was the only solution.

Through such arguments and explanations, the book offers multiple perspectives regarding the causes of Partition, which include the INC’s refusal to share power with Jinnah, who in reality never wanted a separate nation. Jinnah’s desire to control and the worsening Hindu-Muslim relationship, a lack of plan and foresight on the part of the British about sharing of powers between the INC and the Muslim League, as a consequence of which the disastrous decision to divide the country on religious lines was taken". [Contradictorily and strangely, the article shows a picture of "A mass meeting of Muslims held at Dhaka on September 4, 1906, in favour of the partition of Bengal"!!].

 

To add insult to injury (or is it the other way round?), we are told: "While mentioning how not everyone was happy with the Partition, the narrator adds that despite the turmoil, many on both sides of the border – Hindus in Muslim majority East Pakistan and Muslims in Hindu majority West Bengal – stayed on for the sheer love of their birthplace, homes and neighbours, hoping that soon things would improve, the leaders would keep their promises and they would be able to return to their pre-Partition life of peace and brotherhood."

This, of course, requires us to ignore the fact that the "sheer love of their birthplace, homes and neighbours" of the Muslims and the "return to their pre-Partition life of peace and brotherhood", has resulted in the following demographic changes in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and West Bengal:

1. At the time of Partition, the percentage of Hindus in Bangladesh in 1951 was 22.05 and at the latest count, in 2022, it is 7.95.

2. At the time of Partition, the percentage of Muslims in West Bengal in 1951 was 19.51 and at the latest count, in 2011, it is 27.01. (as no census was undertaken in 2021, the figures for 2021 can only be shuddered at). Even this does not reveal the fact that many districts and talukas have almost become Hindu-mukta areas.

 

These books, so heartily promoted on the "recommended by pocket" section on google search, are only the trailer of what is to come in future in matters of revisionism of history in the Indian, specifically Hindu, context.

About Partition, apart from the fact that people really have no reason to be in the dark about its causes and features, we do have books giving us the un-whitewashed history: there is first the book published in 1964, "The Tragic Story of Partition" by H.V.Seshadri, who was no less than the Akhil Bharatiya Pracharak Pramukh of the RSS at the time of his demise in 2005. Then there is the much more deeply analyzed review of this book by Sita Ram Goel, entitled "Muslim Separatism - Causes and Consequences", published in 1983.

Even these two books are enough to give the true history of Partition. But, there is no doubt that the present-day Islamic RSS would more prefer to promote the Itihashe Haatekhori type of books in this matter than the book by its own former Akhil Bharatiya Pracharak Pramukh. The book by Sita Ram Goel is of course out of the question: he was anathema to the RSS "thinkers" even in the past, and, in the present regime he would probably have been arrested for hurting the feelings of Muslims and Arab Shaikhs.

In the past, there have been many articles describing the kind of history taught in Pakistani textbooks. But in future, Indian textbooks will rival and easily outmatch Pakistani textbooks in falsifying Indian history to the detriment of Hindus.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

AMBEDKAR 1941: Thoughts on Pakistan. Ambedkar, Dr. B. R.,  Thacker and Company Ltd, Bombay 1941.