Rewriting history of partition: Narratives of four generations of Pakistanis and Indians

A Book Review of Anam Zakaria’s ‘The Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians’

“Her book, explores attitudes across four generations of Pakistanis and Indians since Partition.”

‘People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them’ {James Baldwin, Stranger in the Village}

Partition was a moment of rupture and genocidal violence, making the termination of one regime and the inauguration of the two new ones. It was the outcome of the political decolonisation of the countries in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the partition left deep resentment and animosity, and the most militant of nationalisms – Pakistani against Indian, and Indian against Pakistani, now backed up by nuclear weapons; on the other, a considerable sense of nostalgia, frequently articulated in the view that this was a partition of siblings that should have never occurred. Up to the recent past the historians both in Pakistan and India only dealt with the political factors; what were the causes responsible for it; who did it and why? But now young people like Anam are breaking that tradition of history writing. She is tracing people’s history-their past, their memories; making analysis, probing historical facts by using oral testimonies to substantiate her viewpoint about the deep scars that partition left.

In this century of displaced persons, the Partition of India in 1947, which uprooted about 10 million people from their ancestral homes, still remains one of the greatest social upheavals. Partition related massacres and migrations represented a human tragedy of enormous proportions. Yet, historians have so far mainly focused on the causes of Partition and endlessly debated whether it was inevitable and who was responsible for it. They have ignored the dislocation of human lives and the loss, trauma, pain and violence people suffered. In this communal holocaust, women became the most vulnerable and least protected victims. The brutality that accompanied the riots deliberately targeted women, for the wounds inflicted on them scarred entire communities.

‘The Footprints of Partition: Narratives of Four Generations of Pakistanis and Indians’ (Published by HarperCollins, New Delhi, 2015) is a result of painstaking interviews conducted by Anam over two years. It is dedicated in part to her grandmother whose life, as the dedication notes, was shaped by the partition. Her book, explores attitudes across four generations of Pakistanis and Indians since Partition.

“This volume helps to restore to the migrants their history. The fractured identities of migrants, torn from their homelands, forced to forge new lives elsewhere finds expression in the telling of the stories.”

The book is embedded in the author’s familial experiences, while moving well beyond them. Although born and raised in Pakistan, the author have parents and siblings born in India and displaced to Pakistan during partition, and Anam includes by her grandmother in her book.

It re-interrogates partition, the exchange of populations, and the violence that accompanied it (as Hindus were displaced from Pakistani territory to India, and Muslims from India to Pakistan), from the standpoint of subaltern survivors personal narratives.

Outcome from an oral history project (Citizen Archives of Pakistan), she uses a combination of commentary and analysis, narrative and testimony to enable these voices to be heard, “sometimes challenging, sometimes agreeing with, and sometimes probing historical facts, insinuating herself into the text and there by compelling a different reading of it”. It makes a particularly important contribution to the significance of oral testimonies to historical analyses.

The intention in writing about partition has been to overcome its legacy and the hatred and suspicion it has engendered. The book is having a shared concern with retrieving the human dimensions of partition. It reflects the ways in which history has been used to help forge competing national identities and to foster mistrust, and on the need to construct a new account of partition which seeks to comprehend rather than to castigate, and to explore complexities rather than conceal them behind chauvinistic slogans.

The memories of partition are not just traumatic for its survivors, but are also still capable of reviving old biases and igniting violence. The fact is that those memories are not dead. They are handed down from one generation to another. The probing questions posed by Anam during the interviews might have helped these survivors of the partition to revisit their past and negotiate with their memories. Memories should never be suppressed. So it is necessary to remember the bloodbath of the partition – not to revive old religious prejudices and animosities, but to use it as a corrective catalyst to pre-empt its recurrence.

While reading Anam’s book which demonstrates her marvellous ability to enter the realm of silence and bring out the thoughts and feelings of women which are often muted in public, she was using the tools of oral historians. The power of oral history lies in the fact that it is about regular people, the girl next door, someone’s grandfather, someone’s daughter. And so it inevitably raises questions as to the perceived “otherness” of the protagonists of these human horror stories: the story of Partition is not about a well-oiled machinery of state-sponsored violence nor is it about institutionalised mass-murder. It is about families, friends, neighbours, and communities being torn apart in a frenzy of paranoia, hatred, and fear.

Anam’s hope is that by putting the unspeakable into words, she will help heal the trauma and thereby help repair the India-Pakistan relationship. In this fascinating book, she sets out to recover the partition narratives from those who remain largely invisible in ‘written history’. Thus the footprints of partition are meant to give voice to the heretofore silent survivors of Partition violence in the Punjab, yet primarily it reveals how little the conditions that kept the marginalised out of public histories and official records have changed.

This volume helps to restore to the migrants their history. The fractured identities of migrants, torn from their homelands, forced to forge new lives elsewhere finds expression in the telling of the stories. What is remembered and what is forgotten is significant in this retelling, for memory is not a ‘monolithic entity’ as Pierre Nora notes, it is both plural and unsettled. The act of remembering is related to the images and ideal of the social relationships. The process of recovering and the organisation of this memory is thus not value free but can be seen to be associated with the need to preserve, understand and transmit a particular rendition of the past.

It gives a vivid description of the survivors of those horror stories of partition who sacrificed much to get the modicum of what they had thought about the making of Pakistan. People have paid a huge price for achieving their homeland ‘Pakistan’. They have sacrificed a lot to realise the dream of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. For those people what Pakistan really meant…’ To Mrs Alam the brutal death of several family members is the price of her homeland. To Malik Siddiqui (Chapter Five) the permanent distance between him and his loved ones is the cost of Pakistan. For Shireen’s mother (Chapter Four), the constant ache of being ripped away from her Bombay is the pain she had to bear for this land.

These voices are a rich historical source and there is little doubt that in Paul Thompson’s words they provide a history which is more personal, more social, and more democratic. In this context the lacunae that it is primarily Muslim memory that is being explored (with exceptions), needs to be addressed. In every way the book provides a fascinating insight into memory, history, and identity in post-colonial Pakistan.