India Archives - Page 3 of 4

The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan by Ayesha Jalal (1985)

Reflecting on the origins of Pakistan nearly forty years after the 1947 partition of India, Ayesha Jalal weaves a convincing revisionist narrative of the nation’s birth. Jalal’s focus falls on the political strategies employed by the Muslim League and its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in the run-up to the partition. Though it occasionally suffers from rough transitions and reads much like the dissertation from which it emerged, the work demonstrates great conceptual clarity. Painstakingly researched, Jalal’s work covers roughly a quarter century of Indian nationalist history, sensibly intensifying its focus as it advances through the final years of British rule in India. A blunt but insightful question drives Jalal’s inquiry: “[H]ow did a Pakistan come about which fitted the interests of most Muslims so poorly?”

Jalal pursues this question diligently, methodically investigating the relationship between the Muslim League and its varied constituents. She thoroughly exposes the province-level pressures navigated by Jinnah, his lieutenant Liaquat Ali Khan, and other Muslim Leaguers as they made their claim to represent all of India’s Muslims. Jalal charts the notion of Pakistan as it gains strategic viability and as Jinnah advances himself as the “one man to deal with” in Indian Muslim affairs. Pakistan thus emerges variously as a threat against Congress, a bargaining tool with the British, and a rallying cry for once disparate Muslim factions.

Jalal’s analysis of the continued deterioration of relations between Muslim League and an obstinate Congress following the instatement of Louis Mountbatten, India’s ultimate viceroy, provides perhaps the most compelling passage. London’s desire to maintain a firm bond with a strong central government in the Subcontinent, along with the quickened pace of British withdrawal upended Jinnah’s underlying agenda in Bengal and the Punjab and confirmed Pakistan as a political reality. The possibility of a single Union of India collapsed and a truncated Pakistan emerged from Jinnah’s longstanding bluff. The answer to Jalal’s query thus boldly challenges earlier scholarship on Indian communalism and paves the way for a host of new questions on the origins of Pakistan.

Photo credits:

Hulton Getty, “New Delhi, Lord Mountbatten and the main leaders of India negotiate the partition India according to the British plan. From left to right: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Vice-President of the Interim Government; Lord Hastings Ismay, adviser to Lord Mountbatten; Lord Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy of India; and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Quaid-e-Azam (All-India Muslim League,” 3 June 1947

Hulton Getty via Flickr Creative Commons (user Eye 4 It)

Jack Loveridge’s review of Jawaharlal Nehru’s biography.

Voices of India’s Partition, Part V: Interview with Professor Mohammad Amin

Voices of India’s Partition, Part IV: Interview with Professor Masood ul Hasan

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III: Interview with Professor Irfan Habib

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Interview with Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Voices of India’s Partition, Part I: Interview with Mrs. Zahra Haider

Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (Volume I: 1889-1947) by Sarvepalli Gopal (1976)

After serving in Jawaharlal Nehru’s government for ten years, Sarvepalli Gopal opens his biography of India’s first prime minister with a pledge to maintain objectivity. Gopal appears to overcome his biases, tracking Nehru from his privileged upbringing in Allahbad to his assumption of power in New Delhi in 1947. The author’s focus on the evolution of Nehru’s political thinking proves particularly compelling. We see Nehru as an enthusiastic young Congressman embrace Gandhian nationalism, writing in 1922: “In the golden days to come when the history of our times and our country comes to be written, the present will occupy a glorious chapter.” Gopal dampens this trademark romanticism of Nehru’s writings, putting his subject’s assertions and musings into conversation with the correspondence and observations of a wide range of contemporaries. The sources depict a wavering politician becoming a respected national leader. Nehru steps out of the shadows of his father, Motilal, and Mohandas Gandhi, forging his own intellectual path and developing a concrete vision for an independent India. He maneuvers the cause of Swaraj (home rule) toward a call for independence, proves instrumental in negotiations with the British Raj, and deviates from Gandhian ideals, embracing notions of industrialization and democratic socialism.

Despite his balanced assessment of Nehru and his Congress allies, Gopal leaves a gaping hole in his analysis of Nehru’s controversial role in India’s partition. The author neglects to consult primary sources surrounding Muslim League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Indeed, the papers of Muslim leaders fail to appear in Gopal’s work while the collections of top Congressmen and British administrators garner manifold citations. The resulting imbalance paints Jinnah as obstinate and prideful, particularly in the Muslim League’s rejection of the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan. In spite of this substantial shortcoming in engaging available sources, Gopal’s work provides an intimate and appropriately critical view of Jawaharlal Nehru’s development as a nationalist leader and statesman.

Photo credits:

Photographer unknown, “Jawaharlal Nehru hands out sweets to students at Nongpoh in Meghalaya”

Flickr user ktravasso via Wikimedia Commons

Wavell: the Viceroy’s Journal by Archibald Percival Wavell, ed. Penderel Moon (1973)

Archibald Percival Wavell served as the penultimate viceroy of India from 1943 to 1947, meticulously chronicling his experience through the twilight of the British Raj. With only light edits from Penderel Moon, Wavell’s journal delivers a lucid account of declining imperial power and rising nationalist aspirations in India during the Second World War. Wavell’s frustrations multiply through the journal, revealing not only the viceroy’s suspicions of key Indian leaders, but also the growing intractability of continued colonial rule.

The journal confirms Moon’s opening assertion that the structural limitations of the viceroyalty crippled Wavell. His entries reveal his claustrophobic position between the competing factions of Indian nationalism and the British government itself. Indeed, Britain’s War Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, demonstrates remarkable stubbornness through the 1943-1944 Bengal famine, cynically dismissing the viceroy’s relief proposals. Similarly, the Simla Conference of 1945 crumbles as much from pressures imposed by London as by the recalcitrance of the Congress and the Muslim League. Even after the Labour Party’s victory in the summer of 1945, Wavell reveals the government’s rigidity in its approach to Indian nationalism by exposing its refusal to grant the viceroy greater autonomy in negotiating the transfer of power and excluding him from the inner workings of the 1946 Cabinet Mission. In these ways, Wavell’s writings provide strong evidence for the charge that the British government’s failure to innovate in an administrative capacity precluded a smoother road to Indian independence.

Wavell candidly admits his own limitations as a negotiator, stating flatly: “I do not pretend to be a diplomatist.” Yet his journal reveals a creative and introspective individual, concerned both with the practical politics and the moral ramifications of his imperial role. While highly critical of India’s nationalist leaders, Wavell clearly aspires to deliver on promises of self-government. Evidence pours forth, condemning the inflexibility of that very role and redeeming the individual. Wavell emerges as a complex and contemplative character, in sharp contrast with his contemporary image as unimaginative and out of touch.

Photo credits:

No. 9 Army Film and Document Unit, “Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein KG GCB DSO 1887-1976. Montgomery as CIGS (Chief of Imperial General Staff) designate in the Vicerehal Gardens, New Delhi with the Viceroy, Field Marshall Wavell and Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, Field Marshal Sir Vlaude Auschinleck,” 17 June 1946.

Voices of India’s Partition, Part V

by Amber Abbas

Professor Mohammad Amin is a distinguished professor of History who spent his entire career in St. Stephen’s College, one of the founding colleges of Delhi University.

During his years at Aligarh, he was trained by Professor Mohammad Habib (Father of Professor Emeritus Irfan Habib). He remarked that Aligarh was known for its liberal History Department, which “later turned completely red.” His own priorities were in writing narrative histories of the medieval period. He described his own position as a skeptic, “History is not neat and tidy. If you find that you have an answer, I am very skeptical about it. How can there be a rational explanation for the irrational acts of irrational people?”

In this interview, Professor Amin reflects on his experiences at Aligarh during late 1940s, when the Muslim League was dominant and “Aligarh really was bristling with the movement for Pakistan.” Students were being dispatched into the hinterlands to spread League propaganda in 1945 and 1946 as India prepared for elections. Aligarh was considered so important as a center of Muslim opinion-making that, he tells me, if a meeting was taking place in the Union (the seat of student government), stores would close in towns and villages nearby as the community awaited news of Aligarh’s pronouncements on the important issues of the day. This centricity to Muslim opinion was key in placing Aligarh at the heart of the Pakistan movement. Amin, like narrator Masood ul Hasan, describes an atmosphere of youthful enthusiasm in which students were caught up in the political excitement of the time.

During the partition, however, as Amin’s story reveals, Aligarh became a site of suspicion; Muslims were targeted as potential traitors to the state, and Aligarh was especially vulnerable because many students had been active in calling for independent Muslim statehood. Amin mentions that as he returned to Aligarh in late summer 1947, he had been advised to carry a book with the name of a Hindu inscribed inside, so as to distract attention from his own Muslim identity. Trains, as he reminds me, were sites of massacre during the communal unrest that accompanied partition and on both sides of the border trains pulled into stations full of dead bodies. His return to Aligarh in 1947 was tense, but uneventful.

In remembering this, Amin moves directly to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. He connects Gandhi’s assassination to the atmosphere at Aligarh by describing it as particularly “telling.” On the day of the assassination, Amin was headed into the city—the predominantly Hindu city of Aligarh separated from the precincts of the Aligarh University by a railway line and a bridge. By the time they reached the city, now a few kilometers distant from their university and its protective walls, people shouted at them to “Go back!” Though they simultaneously heard that Gandhi’s assassin had been a Hindu, the students felt the threat of violence in the city, and those around them sternly directed them to return to the right side of the tracks.

Amin remembers how important Gandhi had been in preserving a tenuous peace in Eastern India during the chaos of 1947. Having gone on a fast to the death, he refused to break it until leaders of the three major faiths of the region: Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs came together to make a joint pledge to stop the fighting. In the moments after Gandhi’s death, Amin and his friends reaped the benefit of his magnanimity- they returned safely to their school- but they knew, as did those around them, that the situation remained tense enough to go either way.

LISTEN TO THE ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW HERE

READ THE ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPT HERE

Photo credits:

Amber Abbas, untitled portrait of Professor Mohammad Amin

Author’s own via Not Even Past

Jama Masjid, “AMU-Aligarh,” Decemer 23, 2009

Author’s own via Flickr Creative Commons

Unknown author, Untitled Portrait of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawharlal Nehru, July 6, 1946

AP Photo/Max Desfor via Flickr Creative Commons

You may also like:

Voices of India’s Partition, Part IV: Interview with Professor Masood ul Hasan

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III: Interview with Professor Irfan Habib

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Interview with Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Voices of India’s Partition, Part I: Interview with Mrs. Zahra Haider

Voices of India’s Partition, Part V: Professor Mohammad Amin

Interviewed by Amber Abbas

D-25, Oxford Apartment, Patpar Ganj, New Delhi (November 5, 2009)

Transcript:

Context Notes: During our interview Professor Amin was suffering from allergies and his nose was running constantly. He also had several attacks of sneezing. But he was patient and generous enough to continue speaking with me despite it all.

Professor Mohammad Amin: Going back to what we were talking about Aligarh. At that time, there was a euphoria that Aligarh was so powerful, that it will decide the destiny of the country and the partition of the country and whatnot. And people were carried away. It is a fact that if the meeting was called in the Union, and the bell rang here, shops in Hattras used to get closed. Aligarh mein ho raha hain, Aligarh mein ho raha hain. (Something is happening in Aligarh, something is happening in Aligarh) Pir, ooske bad, kya hogaya?Ooske bad, yeh ho gaya ke (Then what happened? What happened then was–) everywhere people were afraid for their life because it was rumored that people were going to attack Aligarh.

AA: Before partition or after?

MA: (0:05:31.5) After partition. After partition.

MA: (0:05:53.8) We were instructed to carry a book or something like that. And in the book, write the name Mahavir Prasad or Raghav Lal or something or the other. (laughs)

AA: Were you frightened?

MA: Anybody would be frightened! Because there were cases where people were being thrown out of the train. And killing them. Because, after all, there was that, kya nam hain (what do you call it?) spell of madness all over the country. And when people were coming from the other side, compartments full of dead bodies of Sikhs and Hindus. And here, this was going on on mass scale. I mean, I think one thing that tells you most is the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. I was present at Aligarh at that time. We were going to kya nam hain, the shaher (city). [When we reached there] Tho, is vakt jo hein, log bata rahein the “Vapis jao! Vapis jao!” Vahan se ho gaya tab thak avaz har jagey hein, “Mahatma Gandhi ko katal kar diya gaya, mar diya gaya, Godse ne, Hindu ne mara, Hindu ne mara, Hindu ne mara! Ek Hindu, pagal, oos ne, kya nam, mara!” (By this time, people were telling us, “Go back! Go back!” from there. By that time the sound was coming from everywhere, “Mahatma Gandhi has been murdered, has been killed by Godse. A Hindu killed him, a Hindu killed him, a Hindu killed him! A Hindu, a madman, he killed him!”)

Radio also kept on, every five minutes, repeating it. So that was a time. And then before that, leading to that, when the riots were in Delhi, you had Mahatma Gandhi had gone on a fast to the death. And he refused to take anything “Aisa nehin, aap kijiye, you, all the people, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims, they should come hand-in-hand to me and pledge that they will stop this.”

Voices of India’s Partition, Part IV

by Amber Abbas

Professor Masood ul Hasan was born in Moradabad in 1928. He completed high school from Hewat Muslim High School. His father was an employee of the Municipal Board. He completed his F.A. (Intermediate) from Government Inter-College, Moradabad. He studied in the Aligarh Muslim University from 1943 to 1947 where he completed his B.A. and M.A. in English Literature. He completed his Ph.D. in Liverpool while he was appointed as a Reader in the Department of English at AMU. He retired from AMU in 1988 after serving as Professor of English, Chair of Department of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts. He also served as the Proctor of the University. He continues to live in Aligarh, in Sir Syed Nagar.

I met Professor Masood ul Hasan first in July 2008, and I interviewed him a total of three times in 2008 and 2009 while I was living in Aligarh to conduct my dissertation research on the role and experience of Aligarh students in the freedom movement and the movement for Pakistan. He was extremely supportive of my project, and frequently introduced me to other senior and retired professors who had been his friends and colleagues for generations. I always looked forward to a visit and a cup of tea at his home during my stay in Aligarh!

Professor Hasan was also one of only a few students of the 1940s who was willing to speak about his involvement with the Muslim League in the 1945-46 elections. He frequently made sure that I understood that he regretted his involvement with the League and chalked it up to youthful enthusiasm, a desire for adventure, and naivete. He chose not to leave for Pakistan despite his involvement with the League and remained his entire career at Aligarh University as a professor of English.

In this interview he describes his experience on the day of Gandhi’s assassination, a mere five months after the partition of the country. On that day, Masood ul Hasan was traveling from Aligarh to his home in Bhopal. He took a train from Aligarh to Agra and was to buy his onward ticket in the Agra Cantonment Station. When he sat in the train, he made a deliberate choice to avoid the “minority compartment,” a concession made by the railways to protect Muslims and other minorities in the wake of the partition violence when trains became sites of massacre. It was his “little assertion of self-confidence” to ride in the general compartment, clad in a sherwani – a typically Muslim coat that was a gesture of pride in his heritage but marked him as a minority. These choices would have been only slightly risky on any other day. On this day, however, as he stepped onto the train platform at Agra and found it deserted, Masood ul Hasan felt afraid. The news of Gandhi’s assassination created a difficult position for him. If a Muslim had killed Gandhi, all Muslims would be held responsible, and the violence of partition could be reignited. As he stood on the platform, terribly alone, in the city made famous by Shah Jahan’s majestic Taj Mahal, a monument to India’s Muslim heritage, he feared what might happen if he were unable to leave.

Luckily, the ticket collector took pity on him, arranged for a ticket and Hasan was able to depart for the safer environment of his home in Bhopal. He did not become a victim of violence on that day, but the fear he experienced speaks to the uncertainty that Muslims in India felt, especially when traveling through unfamiliar environments, in the early years after India’s independence. Whereas they were supposed to have the same rights and privileges as other Indian citizens, the trauma of 1947 was still fresh, and, especially when traveling, Muslims often feared for their safety.

Hasan’s narrative picks up on some familiar themes from other stories Muslims tell about this day. It is singular, it stands out in the memory; he, like others, is able to tap into his emotions and experience with remarkable clarity. Muslims almost without exception feared a Muslim assassin. After everything they had been through in 1947 and Gandhi’s selfless efforts to protect Muslims in places they were threatened, a Muslim assassin would unseat in one shot the tenuous but safe position of Muslims in early 1948. Everyone knew this, not just Muslims. And when it was revealed that the assassin was a fundamentalist Hindu, Muslims heaved a collective sigh of relief. No conservative Hindus were targeted or held responsible for the actions of Nathuram Godse. Muslims were spared, but one of their staunch allies was lost.

LISTEN TO THE ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW HERE

READ THE ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPT HERE

Photo credits:

Amber Abbas, untitled portrait of Professor Masood ul Hasan

Author’s own via Not Even Past

Yann, Gandhi in Noakhali, 1946

Author’s own via Wikimedia Commons

Unknown author, “Group photo of Hindu Mahasabha, the group accused of successfully staging Gandhi’s assassination. Standing: Shankar Kistaiya, Gopal Godse, Madanlal Pahwa, Digambar Badge (Approver), Guruji M.S. Golwalkar. Seated: Narayan Apte, Vinayak D. Savarkar, Nathuram Godse, Vishnu Karkare.” via Wikimedia Commons

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III: Professor Irfan Habib

Interviewed by Amber Abbas

Center for Advanced Study, Department of History, Aligarh (June 28, 2009)

Transcript:

Context Notes: Professor Irfan Habib is probably the best-known professor of History in Aligarh. He was a young student, in the Intermediate classes during the 1940s. His father, Mohammad Habib was the leader of the progressive factions at Aligarh. Irfan Habib is an Emeritus Professor of the Dept of History but he still appears daily in the department where he sits in the office of Professor Shireen Moosvi and interacts with all of the students, other professors, Communist party activists and others who move in and out of the office throughout the day. Irfan Habib always provides hospitality to these guest, endless cups of tea and biscuits. On many occasions I had the opportunity to sit in the office and transcribe stories he would share in English or in Urdu with the people who came and went. It was some time before I could convince him to sit down with me for a formal interview because he was very skeptical of the methodology of my research, being as he is, a historian of medieval India and deeply invested in the investigation of documentary sources. When I finally did meet him he asked me to meet him in his own office, down the hall, a small cupboard of a room, which he referred to as his “Hole Office.”

Amber Abbas: What changed at AMU around partition? Obviously a lot of people left, but what did that look like?

Professor Irfan Habib: Well, first of all, one of the strengths of institution we didn’t notice, that admissions were on time, classes were held, a teacher disappears was replaced immediately by another teacher. Classes were held.

Secondly, Gandhi’s fast and martyrdom had much to do with the recovery. When Gandhi died I would expect 20% of the people in the university were from Pakistan. They had remained here to complete their second year, that is Intermediate Final, their fourth year B.A. Final and their M.A. Final. Because they had already done one year and they wanted to complete it. They didn’t know that riots will close us, they came in July when it opened the riots broke out in August. So they were here. So they were here. They were very concerned, you can understand, all of us were concerned, about the slaughter, and so Gandhi became the one man between slaughter and protection. We were coming from Lucknow and we heard at Hattras station that Gandhiji had been assassinated. So the next day my father with four or five people, you know, nationalists were very few at that time, Muslim Nationalists. But we were about ten or twelve, then some others joined us. So we went; I was a first year student. We went and stood in the SS Hall Gate, from this side, Bab-ul-ilm (Gate of Knowledge) or something like that. And soon students began collecting. HUGE crowd! At that time there must have been around 2500 students [in the whole university], then the number declined. HUGE crowd! We were asked to wait for V.M. Hall people. We went to City. Actually, that was my first impression of a demonstration. There were communists also demanding execution of RSS leaders. Hindu Sabha, nehin, RSS or Hindu Sabha, Phansi Do! Phansi Do! I forget the title, the slogans.

AA: So you left for City after you knew who the assassin was?

IH: No, that was announced on the radio immediately! Totally. I mean, his name was announced repeatedly on the radio. That it’s Godse and he’s a Hindu Mahasabhite. Oh, it was announced. Only Hindustan Times in an edition said it was suspected to be a Muslim, but they apologized later on, Devdas Gandhi apologized and Nehru was very annoyed. So that was a remarkable demonstration. And all these Pakistanis were there. And then the refugees started coming at almost the same time. They were admitted. I still remember Punjabis from Pakistan mixing with Sikhs, you know, shanyartis. Collecting things for them. Even in this demonstration there were Sikh students and Punjabis from Pakistan. And Hindus, of course, Hindus are not marked out. So that was a second feature, was how sharnyartis fitted in. No—not a single incident took place in the university between Muslim students and sharnyartis.

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III

by Amber Abbas

Professor Irfan Habib is probably the best-known professor in Aligarh. Born in 1931, he was a young student in the Intermediate classes during the 1940s. His father, Mohammad Habib, a staunch nationalist was the leader of the progressive factions at Aligarh. Irfan Habib is an Emeritus Professor of the Department of History but he still appears daily in the department where he sits in the office of Professor Shireen Moosvi and interacts with all of the students, other professors, Communist party activists and others who move in and out of the office throughout the day. Irfan Habib always provides hospitality to these guests: endless cups of tea and biscuits. On many occasions I had the opportunity to sit in the office and transcribe stories he would share in English or in Urdu with the people who came and went. It was some time before I could convince him to sit down with me for a formal interview about his experiences during the 1930s and 1940s in Aligarh. He was very skeptical of the methodology of my research, being as he is, a historian of medieval India and deeply invested in the investigation of documentary sources. Interviews, he reminded me, would only catch a person’s “bias,” and not “The Truth.”

In this interview, he describes the atmosphere in AMU in the years following partition and his experiences around Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. He first emphasizes the fact that though partition caused terrible disruption at the university, with thousands of students and many faculty departing for Pakistan, the university worked to minimize its effect on students’ lives. He repeatedly told me that no class was ever cancelled, even if a professor left, another instructor stepped in to cover his responsibilities. Continuity is important as a way to show that there were Muslims at the university who worked to support independent India—contrary to the narrative that has plagued the university since the 1947 partition by suggesting that its students and professors were, without exception, traitors and fifth columnists. Habib wears his nationalism on his sleeve, even if, as a Leftist, he has not really represented its mainstream.

Habib’s family had a long history of nationalist allegiance and his mother’s family had been close to Gandhi since the early years of his leadership. Habib earlier told me that Gandhi “was an idol… in our home. My mother called him ‘Bapu’ because of the family relationship, but I never heard my father referring to Gandhi as anything except ‘Mahatmaji.’ He wouldn’t even say ‘Gandhiji.’” In describing the events of Gandhi’s death, Professor Habib, however, does not emphasize his family’s grief, but the efforts of students publicly to show their solidarity with the nation. Because of the immediate suspicions that a Muslim may have committed the murder, and the anxiety that threatened the Muslims more broadly in the wake of partition, AMU stood out as a particularly sensitive site. Professor Mohammad Habib led the students from the University to the city of Aligarh, which involved crossing the railway line, the traditional boundary between the University and the majority Hindu city adjoining it. Crossing this boundary is a symbolic act of solidarity, and the Muslim students demonstrated their Indian-ness by publicly engaging in the response to Gandhi’s death. Habib also points out that many “Pakistanis”—by which he means those students whose family homes were in territories that became Pakistan in 1947: Punjab, Northwest Frontier Province, Sindh, Balochistan and Bengal—also participated in the march. Thus, even though Gandhi had been a controversial figure at the University, all students: Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and even Pakistanis came together to mourn for the man who had risked his life in 1947 to stop the murder of Muslims in Bengal.

In conclusion he notes that the refugees—sharnyartis—who arrived at the university in 1947 and 1948 were welcomed with open arms, students gathered clothes for them, and “no incident” ever took place between Muslim students and refugees. This is important at Aligarh in particular because of its much-vaunted history of religious tolerance. Aligarh University had always considered itself aloof from “communal” concerns, but partition was a test of this culture. During the 1940s, even as the Muslim League mobilized students to support a Muslim homeland, no communal violence took place there. Political and national groups with differing perspectives put them aside to join in solidarity to support the university and the state in 1947 and 1948—and this is a very different kind of story from that we hear in Punjab, in Delhi, in places where violence and not peace characterized this time.

LISTEN TO THE ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW HERE

READ THE ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPT HERE

Photo Credits:

Amber Abbas, untitled portrait of Professor Irfan Habib

Author’s own via Not Even Past

Yann, Gandhi During the Salt March, March 1930

Author’s own via Wikimedia Commons

Syed Gibran, Aligarh Muslim University

Author’s own via Wikimedia Commons

You may also like:

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Interview with Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Voices of India’s Partition, Part I: Interview with Mrs. Zahra Haider

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Interviewed by Amber Abbas

Alig Apartments, Shamshad Market, Aligarh (June 15, 2009)

Transcript:

Context Notes: I arrived at the home of S.M. Mehdi without an appointment, having been referred to him through a chance encounter with a University official. Though he was never a student of Aligarh, he has moved to the town after his daughter did her Medical degree there and is now practicing in Aligarh. S.M. Mehdi was surprised to see me, but agreed to answer my questions though he cautioned he could not be considered an expert on Aligarh. He told me, instead, of his experiences during partition as a Communist in Bombay. He worked for thirty years in the Soviet Embassy in New Delhi and has been a lifelong Communist. He is a very friendly and engaging person. He is tragically losing his vision and was eager for conversation. Though I met him only briefly, I felt very comfortable during my few visits to his home and looked forward to them.

SMM: There is another interesting incident I will tell you about that period. That is in 1948 when Gandhi was killed. That particular day I was going to Bhopal from Bombay. Thre was a very, very good friend of mine, Munish Saxena, he said, “I will come with you to the station.” So, Sardar Jafri, the Urdu poet, was getting married that day. There was a reception and so we went to the reception and then Munish said, “Come along, let us go, because then your train will be—[going].” I said, “Alright.” So we went to take a taxi. As we went there, we saw some people engaged in rioting on the road. So I asked somebody, “What is happening?” He said, “Gandhi assassinated.”

I said, “No, this is impossible, this must be some work of RSS, this propaganda business, this is nonsense.” So we took a taxi and we went to Victoria Terminus- have you been to Bombay?

AA: No.

SMM: Victoria Terminus was the name, now it is of course, changed [to] something else. So Victoria Terminus is a huge railway station! Very old! During British time it was made. And of course it was busiest area of Bombay. So we took a taxi, I had a small suitcase with me. We went to the station. And as we reached the station it was confirmed that Gandhi was killed, assassinated that time. So Munish told me, “Mehdi, if a Muslim has killed Gandhi, then there is going to be large scale trouble and I don’t think you should go because you’ll be in danger.” I said, “Yes, you are correct. So what do we do?” He said, “Let us go back and then see what happens. Who killed Gandhi, first of all?” I said, “Alright.” So I put my suitcase in the cloakroom and said, “Alright, go.” And can you believe me? As we came out of the railway station with buses and trams and taxis and whatnot and private cars, etc. I mean, Bombay! A city like Bombay, and especially that railway station! My God, what a huge thing it used to be.

And as we came out, there was nothing! Absolutely nothing on the road! No trams. No bus. No taxi. No car. Even no person! No man! Oh God, what has happened! Within two minutes, what happened? The whole city is dead! It was eerie. Terrible. What do we do now? No taxi available and miles and miles we have to go to reach where we were staying in Walkeshwar Road near Malabar Hill. So Munish said, “Let us try the local train and let us go from here, walk down to the railway station, the local train station.” I said, “Alright.” So I and Munish walked down. My God! There was no train. There were no passengers! The whole platform was deserted.

Oh God. It was such a—what do we do now? I said, “What can we do? Let us walk.” We started walking. And, I mean, there was no alternative. There was no train, there was no taxi, there no bus, that’s why. I mean, there was no person on the road! My God. So we were walking, and by this time it was sunset and it was dark now, because we were walking and walking and walking. We saw some light coming from behind us. So I thought it might be a taxi so I flagged it. As it stopped, I came to know that it was a [private] car and it was driven by a Sardarji, Sikh. He was all alone in his car.

We said, “I’m sorry, I thought it was a taxi.” He said, “My dear, there is no taxi today. Where are you going?” I said, “Na, na, na. It is alright, we are just going.” He said, “Look, today you cannot have anything so please come and sit in my car and I will reach you there.” So I looked at Munish, and Munish looked at me. He said, “Alright, baitiye. (sit)”

AA: Did you feel a little bit—?

SMM: Dar lag rahe hain ke patha nehin, Sardarji kaun? Kya kar dein?

(It was frightening, we didn’t know who this Sardarji was. What would he do?)

AA: Aur abhi tak aapko nehin maloom tha ki Mussalman nehin tha? Jinhone mara?

(Up till now you didn’t know that it wasn’t a Muslim? Who killed him?)

SMM: Nehin, nehin. Abhi kuch nehin patha! (No, no. We didn’t know anything!) Tho Sardar asked us, “Where are you going? Which locality?” We didn’t want to give him the name of the locality that we are living in Walkeshwar Road. We said, “No, no, Sardaji, you just please drop us at Opera House.” Opera House was a place, from there we could take a bus to our house. He said, “Alright.” We asked him, “Sardarji, where are you going?” He said, “I am going to Pakistan. And come along, you also come with us!” Meaning: Muslim areas. He was going to kill. So we laughed, and said, “No, no, we have got some work to do, etc. etc. So please you drop us near the Opera House. He said, “Alright.” So he dropped us and he went away.

So we walked and reached our house where Sardar Jafri and his newlywed wife were there. They asked us, “What is this?” So we told them the whole story about it. So he said, “How do we know who has done it?” By that time, it was nine o’clock in the night. There used to be a nine o’clock new bulletin everyday. That was an important news bulletin of the radio. So he said, Sardar Jafri told me, “See, on the ground floor, there is a lady, a Muslim lady, a Khoja, who stays there. If you go to her maybe she will allow you to listen to the news on the radio.” So I went there. There was only one woman living in this huge flat, it was quite a big flat. So I told her and she said, “Hanh, hanh. Yes, please go ahead and listen.” She did not know anything in the world what is happening whether Gandhi is dead or alive. She didn’t know anything!

So I just opened her radio for the nine o’clock news and Sardar Patel came out that “A Fanatic Hindu has killed Gandhi.” Oh, God. I felt so relieved! (laughs) So it was the next day that I took the train for Bhopal. (laughs)

AA: How did it strike you, emotionally, that he had been assassinated?

SMM: Hhmm? How did I?

AA: How did you feel, emotionally?

SMM: Oh, emotionally, about Gandhi. Hanh, hanh. Emotionally, about Gandhi I thought, I mean, we thought less, I suppose, than ourselves. What is going to happen to us? Presuming some one is going to stab us, kill us. Who has killed? The whole thing was, who can it be? And it always came down, it must be a Muslim, it might be a Muslim, it must be a Muslim, it might be a Muslim, that’s all. It must be a Muslim. We thought that Muslim Leaguer must have killed Gandhi. Because at that time they were saying that partition is not in favor of Pakistan but is in favor of—the Radcliffe Award is in favor of India, not Pakistan.

So, yeh dimag me baj gaya raha tha ke “Kis ne mara hoga? Mussalman hi ho sakta jisne mara hoga.” (This was bouncing in the mind that, “Who will have killed him? It could only be a Muslim who will have killed him.”) It must be a Muslim who has killed. And we were looking bhai, ke koi aa na raha ho, koi dekh na raha ho, koi marna nehin hum logon ko. (And we were looking, man, that no one should be coming, no one should be watching, no one should kill us.) And as we heard this news that a fanatic Hindu has killed Gandhi, it was a really greatly—I mean, just imagine! We, who did not believe in this nonsense of Hindus and Muslims, when we heard that a Hindu had killed Gandhi, we felt relieved. That at least a Muslim has not killed Gandhi. That was a terrible experience of my life.

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (1924)

by Isabel Huacuja

Set during the nascent years of the Indian nationalist movement in the fictitious North Indian town of Chandrapore, E.M. Foster’s novel, A Passage to India, follows Adela Quested, a young English woman visiting India for the first time. During a trip to the nearby Marabar caves, Adela accuses Dr. Aziz, an educated and well-reputed Muslim, of attempting to rape her. The contentious trial, which follows Adela’s accusation, brings to the surface the racial and sexual tensions of the British Raj.

British officials condemn Dr. Aziz before the hearing begins, and the judge comments at the onset of the trial that “the darker races are physically attracted to the fairer races but not vice versa.” Foster implies, but never explicitly states, that Dr. Aziz never molested Adela and that she imagined the entire incident. Therefore, the British abuse of power, or more explicitly British colonialism, and not the attempted rape, represent the real crime in the novel. Forster unashamedly condemns British colonialism, which he believes victimizes not only Indians, but also British women. Even though Adela causes Dr. Aziz great distress, Foster portrays her as a victim of patriarchy. As the literary critic Jenny Sharpe explains, colonial officials, “treat Adela as a mere cipher for a battle between men.”

Furthermore, Foster’s perceptive eye captures the political forces at work. Published in 1924, A Passage to India anticipates the nationalist movement’s eruption and India’s and Britain’s final rupture. “India should be a Nation!” yells Dr. Aziz in a spurt of passion. “India a Nation? What an apotheosis!” replies Mr. Fielding. At the end of the novel, Dr. Aziz and Mr. Fielding accept their differences and reconcile, but the two shall never be close friends again. “Why can’t we be friends now?” says Mr. Fielding to Dr. Aziz. “It is what I want. It is what you want,” replies Dr. Aziz. But the friends “swerved apart” because “the earth did not want it,” because “the sky said ‘No.”

Yet, to focus only on the political implications of the novel, and not mention its artistic accomplishments, would do a great disservice to Foster’s genius. He tells the story as an outsider and describes an India that is foreign, exotic, and incomprehensible to him – an India, that he lusts to understand, but humbly acknowledges he could never master. Forster recognizes his shortcomings as an outsider and perhaps that is why instead of attempting to present a whole and coherent picture of India, he sets out to capture special details: a festival, the monsoon sun, a man’s love of poetry. In his characteristic colorful style, Foster writes: “As it rose from the earth on the shoulders of its bearers, the friendly sun of the monsoons shone forth and flooded the world with color,” Simple, yet evocative passages such as this one, lend a magic touch to this extraordinary story and bear responsibility for the novel’s enduring popularity.

You may also like:

Voices of India’s Partition – Part 1

Sundar Vadlamudi’s review of Great Soul: Mahatma Gandi and his Struggle with India

Amber Abbas’s reviews of Krishna Kumar’s Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan and Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India

UT professor of history Gail Minault’s review of The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

Photo credits:

Photographer unknown, Hindus and Muslims displaying the flags of both the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League as a part of Mohandas Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement in 1922

via Wikipedia

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