The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories

Cultures of History

by Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar

Nation-states often shape the boundaries of historical enquiry, and thus silence the very histories that have sutured nations to territorial states. "India" and "Pakistan" were drawn onto maps in the midst of Partition's genocidal violence and one of the largest displacements of people in the twentieth century. Yet this historical specificity of decolonization on the very making of a nationalized cartography of modern South Asia has largely gone unexamined.

In this remarkable study based on more than two years of ethnographic and archival research, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar argues that the combined interventions of the two postcolonial states were enormously important in shaping these massive displacements. She examines the long, contentious, and ambivalent process of drawing political boundaries and making distinct nation-states in the midst of this historic chaos.

Zamindar crosses political and conceptual boundaries to bring together oral histories with north Indian Muslim families divided between the two cities of Delhi and Karachi with extensive archival research in previously unexamined Urdu newspapers and government records of India and Pakistan. She juxtaposes the experiences of ordinary people against the bureaucratic interventions of both postcolonial states to manage and control refugees and administer refugee property. As a result, she reveals the surprising history of the making of the western Indo-Pak border, one of the most highly surveillanced in the world, which came to be instituted in response to this refugee crisis, in order to construct national difference where it was the most blurred.

In particular, Zamindar examines the "Muslim question" at the heart of Partition. From the margins and silences of national histories, she draws out the resistance, bewilderment, and marginalization of north Indian Muslims as they came to be pushed out and divided by both emergent nation-states. It is here that Zamindar asks us to stretch our understanding of "Partition violence" to include this long, and in some sense ongoing, bureaucratic violence of postcolonial nationhood, and to place Partition at the heart of a twentieth century of border-making and nation-state formation.

Genres: History, India, Pakistan, Nonfiction, Asia, Politics, Anthropology

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Yatharth Arora · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book will take you deep into how the violence spread and what was the effect of partition on Muslims in India and Hindus in Pakistan. The book has several excerpts of interviews of the author with the people who survived the partition violence . Also showcases how the government of both the states responded to the mass exodus of people.

[Mandeep Kalra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb academic monograph. Meticulously researched and cogently written. Zamindar makes a compelling case that the nation-states of India and Pakistan were not yet fully formed in August 1947 when the subcontinent was partitioned and these two countries attained independence. Rather, this was a long partition as in the years immediately following Partition, both India and Pakistan struggled to control the flow of people, police their borders, and articulate their definitions of citizenship.

Zamindar traces the creation of refugees in both India and Pakistan, the institution of the permit system for travel between the two countries, the implementation of legislation dealing with evacuee property as well as citizenship, and finally, the institution of the passport. She argues that for many, the real partition came after August 1947, in 1948 with the commencement of the permit system as restrictions were placed on border crossings.

Zamindar's focus is on Muslim refugees, contending that how they were treated shaped both Pakistan and India. She shows that the Indian state/bureaucracy through the creation of Muslim zones in Delhi, its enactment of the travel permit and then the passport, as well as its execution of evacuee property laws was instrumental in their displacement. However, the Pakistani state did not want these muhajirs (emigrants/refugees) either, fearing that they would strain the already fragile economy. Thus, Pakistan colluded with India to implement the permit system and then pioneered the creation of the passport so as to more firmly define citizenship and stem the tide of Muslims emigrating from India to Pakistan.

However, Zamindar very expertly elucidates the ideological bind the new leaders of Pakistan were in with regards to the muhajirs. Pakistan was ostensibly created to serve as a Muslim homeland, and those Muslims who had already emigrated to Pakistan exerted pressure on their new leaders to keep the border open to further refugee flows. Thus, the leaders of Pakistan continued to pay lip-service to the two-nation theory, while taking practical steps to control the influx of muhajirs.

Clearly influenced by Foucault, Zamindar deftly demonstrates how permits and passports also served as ways for India to surveil Muslims. Furthermore, those Muslims who chose to remain in India or those who wished to return from Pakistan were made to prove their loyalty. While it was a priority of the Indian state to settle non-Muslim (Hindu and Sikh) refugees fleeing from partition violence in Pakistan, Muslims who sought to return were not welcomed with open arms. When subjected deportation or the confiscation of their property under evacuee property legislation, they asserted their love and fealty to India. Many claimed to have always supported the Indian National Congress over the Muslim League. Even Urdu newspapers that pointed out the injustice and discrimination Muslims in India faced, tempered their language so as not to the invite the ire of the government or accusations of disloyalty. Muslim government bureaucrats had to report and sometimes bring back relations they had in Pakistan to demonstrate their loyalty to India. The Muslim minority in India in the years after Partition was marginalized from the public sphere and disciplined into the discourse and reality of the nation-state.

While I do not dispute any of Zamindar's arguments, I wish she had spent more time with Pakistan's religious minorities. She does a good job of showing why many Hindus fled Karachi, but then does not in any systematic way discuss the conditions faced by those who stayed or those who sought to return like she did with Indian Muslims. Zamindar mentions that under the "hostage theory" those Hindus who remained in Pakistan were subjected to the same discriminatory evacuee property legislation as Indian Muslims but does not elaborate. Zamindar aims to illuminate the impact of this long partition on present day India and Pakistan. She quite effectively limns the history of the cleavage in Pakistani society between muhajirs and non-muhajirs, a cleavage that still resonates today. But I think an equally important legacy of the long partition on contemporary Pakistan was how it was almost emptied of religious minorities (non-Muslims) and the insecurity and persecution faced by those that remained.

But overall this was an excellent book and I learned a lot from it.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

In an extremely electric scenario, Mountbatten proclaimed his Partition plan on June 3, 1947. Partition was avoidable only if Congress could agree to a constitutional organization envisioning a wobbly federal structure with robust autonomy for the provinces, along with Hindu-Muslim parity at the centre, as first proposed by Muslim League.

This three-part book constitutes of seven chapters:

1. Muslim Exodus from Delhi
2. Hindu Exodus from Karachi
Moving People, Immovable Property
3. Refugees, Boundaries, Citizens
4. Economies of Displacement
5. Passports and Boundaries
6. The Phantasm of Passports
7. Moving Boundaries

The first part of this book, chapters 1 and 2, explains histories of violence and displacements in Delhi and Karachi around 1947, recovering the conditions of eventuality in which people left their homes, and the role of the two states in the making of the dual figure of the refugee.

The second part, chapters 3 and 4, inspects the advent of permit regulations in 1948 and alterations in evacuee property legislations correspondingly, as they shaped displacements both across and within new borders.

The third part of the book, chapters 5 and 6, scrutinizes the transferal from permits to passports in 1952, a technology to mark distinct national identities and give closure to Partition’s enduring displacements.

The concluding chapter is a synopsis of events and the long after-effects of partition.

Partition meant that India and Pakistan were not like other ex-colonial new states in that their institutions and practices were not a continuation of their colonial arrangements but rather the result of complicated new arrangements.

Partition also created a flow of refugees who were not really at home in either of the two new states.

I quote directly from the book: “Some 12 million people were displaced in the divided Punjab alone, and some 20 million in the subcontinent as a whole, making it one of the largest displacements of people in the twentieth century, comparable only to the nearly contemporaneous displacements produced by the Second World War in Europe. The comparison with Europe is significant, since the rather well-documented social history of “refugee rehabilitation” there has been considered formative in the later drafting of international refugee laws and the establishment of international organizations for the management of refugees. From the European experience, it has been argued, the refugee emerged as an identifiable social and legal category that could then be studied in the subsequent burgeoning fields of “refugee studies” and “migration studies.”

Both new governments had massive complications regarding their minority populations. Dig this: the 1941 census showed that Delhi had a minority Muslim population of 33 % and Karachi a minority Hindu population of 48 %. Both governments and both peoples had twisted memories and perplexing histories to serve as the foundations of their new national identities.

However, it needs mention to end with that ‘Partition was inevitable’. The Indian movement could not have gone forward without the mass struggle advocated by Gandhi; this was against Jinnah's ego - who was increasingly sidelined. He went to London, and returned a changed man. His meeting with Linlithgow on 3rd Sept 1939 clearly indicates his unwillingness to accept anything less than partition; it also clearly documents the British brashness and stratagem of Partition.

Thereafter, it was comparatively easy to whip up rigidities in minority regions; majority regions were pro-India till 1947!

This book assimilates a history that helps elucidate the story of partition and shed light on the fact that there were no easy solutions to state-constructing on either sides of the border.

[Sahdia Khalid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grew up with Partition stories which were a fantasy, I realize the older I become. As a child, I was told that Pakistan was created as a safe haven for Muslims and that all Muslims were welcome. Then as I grew older, I started hearing stories from people about how horrible those times really were. Yet, the pervasive story was still: all Muslims were welcome in Pakistan.

This book shows that not all Muslims were welcome, not in Pakistan neither in India. For me, this is new and I was quite shocked at how both the Indian and Pakistani government often didn't put humanity first. Not all Muslims were welcome in Pakistan, because, understandably, they couldn't handle so many people coming in while there wasn't enough space and material to support and help them. Yet, they could have done more for desperate people. There were people left stateless because the Indian government wouldn't help them, the Pakistani government wouldn't accept them. Both made laws so they wouldn't have to help and support displaced people and both would even argue about which of them should be responsible for these poor innocent people. Both could have done more even in those circumstances.

You could live you entire life in the same place in India, but being a Muslim automatically made your loyalties suspect and you could be deported at any time, losing all your belongings. Or you could visit an ill relative in Pakistan, during your stay there laws changed and suddenly coming back home to India became impossible or very difficult. And vice versa.

Between these discussions and arguments of government agencies, ordinary people suffered. Didn't matter if you were Muslim, Sikh or Hindu, you'd suffer because suddenly you weren't a citizen anymore, or suddenly you'd be labeled a spy for the "other" side, or you'd suddenly be stateless, perhaps your status would become undefined due to new laws. And these laws kept changing so both governments could tell each other: no, we're not responsible, you are, you take these people in or you keep these people there.

Meanwhile, human lives were affected: people couldn't visit dying or seriously ill relatives or attend wedding ceremonies or funeral rites even. There already was suffering caused by Partition violence on all sides, then both governments added more suffering with these ever changing regulations which quite often weren't meant to help people, but to get rid of their own responsibilities.

Fascinating was how the permit system worked, and why it was replaced by passports. And how bureaucratic labyrinths on both sides with complicated and ever changing rules also caused a lot of suffering.

The many personal stories showed the human suffering behind facts and numbers. Keep in mind that this is mostly a dry academic book, you might not get a lot out of this book if you don't enjoy reading this kind of material. If you do give it a try and finish this book, it will give you great insights and it is definitely worth a read.

[Nate Rabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fascinating history. A history of how states can use bureaucracy to oppress and marginalise people, in this case, the people they actually purport to want to help.

I've read and studied a fair bit about the Partition but as an adult have always wondered about why some Muslims 'opted' for Pakistan and others decided to stay on. This book provides a moving and tragic insight into this. How fear, chaos, violence, uncharted waters, the legacy of 200 years of Imperial/colonial rule all combined together in a tangle to produce absurdity. And how millions of peoples lives were and continued to be ripped apart and damaged as a consequence.

The Partition didn't end in a day. It started in 1947 and continues on.

Essential reading for those interested in understanding contemporary South Asia.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores the way complexities around identity, kinship and documentation played out into the 1950s and 60s drawing out the complexities of partition.

The book focuses on a series of complex case studies drawing key themes of the period and the way in which these were dealt with by state bureaucracies.

I am researching migration in South Asia at the moment and this book was a very useful book.

[Becca w · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent exploration of the temporality of Partition and its aftermath and their impact on the lives of those caught in the crossfire of two new nation states acting to establish legitimacy amidst mass upheaval. Great insights into the technologies of the state, their constructed nature, and their unequal material impacts

[Water Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful theoretical treatise with sound empirical grounding! Should be read alongside 'Remembering Partition' and 'The Great Partition.'

[Venkateswaran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of books focus on the emotional aspects of the partition. This one goes one step further, and analyzes in depth how to fledgling nation states handled a problem that was unprecedented.

Learnt some startling facts though. Ind and Pak agreed to complete transfer of populations in the Punjab... Incredulous. Jinnah's divisive politics proclaiming a nation for muslims was a stunning political move, but not one that was well thought out through the end. It became immediately obvious that a new nation state could not absorb the incoming rate of refugees. Punjab stood in stark contrast to Bengal where the border was only a line. A Punjab like situation in Bengal would have crippled what was then limping nations.

I had thought that the partition was realized at midnight of 15th in 1947. This book dispelled such a myth. it took maybe 5 years for the people to realize what it actually meant. How did anybody expect a layman who had no idea what a nation state was to choose between 2 ideologies in an instant? How did 2 bureaucracies expect an illetrate to know when he was breaking unwritten laws regarding border crossing.

The most important possesion of a person is probably his house. To leave it and start afresh in a new land must have been the most harrowing experience. That both countries thought that they could just exchange people with their property was naive at best. That India could not limit the efflux of fearful muslims would remain its biggest failing. That pakistan could not afford to absorb everyone coming in was a tragedy beyond words.

[Nikhil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mandatory reading. Chronicles the sequence of policies and bureacratic decisions that solidified national identity in South Asia from 1947-1960. Illuminates the predicament facing many North Indian Muslims at the time of Partition and the role the state played in dispossessing and fracturing these families. Both states come out looking like the hypocritical violent bourgeois apparatus that they are. It astonishes me how easily both states wished to exclude people from their countries on the grounds of population pressures given that none of them cared about family planning whatsoever. I wonder to what extent "rehabilitating refugees" by exproriating "evacuees" was a technique used by the propertied classses to prevent meaningful redistribution at this time. I also wish the book was able to interrogate the Eastern boundary, which by all accounts was quite different.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I'm being honest, it's not the book's fault. I was seeking a more, and again I must be honest here, detailed and gory accounting of Partition as it was experienced gruesomely by those affected. This is a more academic, very dry accounting of the notions of citizenship, the myriad gray zones created in bureaucracy, and the respective courts ad hoc reaction to how Partition was experienced. No fault of Zamindar's, but this is something I would have enjoyed more in grad school with colleagues to discuss afterward.

[Hafsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent historical and ethnographic book on the ways in which both India and Pakistan constructed their nation-ness through the use of refugee camps, passports, ID's, and borders.
Goes against the grain of many of the existing historical books on the Partition which focus on the explicit violence. Zamindar's book is on on the day to day implicit violences of the modern state in attempting to craft a sense of identity and citizenship.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Without much basic understanding of Partition itself (apart from what is talked about in Midnight's Children) it was difficult to delve into a more academic text. But many of the specific case studies were interesting as we see the array of effects an event like this has on a population. It's also hard to imagine how something like this can be handled efficiently by a government as little precedent exists. Also, not quite the Brown girl magnet I hoped it would be.

[Puneet Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meticulously researched and littered with numbers that enforce the authors opinions, which is rare for a partition era book. Unlike most other books written on this tumultuous era, this one has the right balance of tragic personal anecdotes and intricate details on the administrative policies by both countries.

[dipandjelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

[review soon. in a few short words: this book blew my mind.]