scorecardresearch
Friday, March 29, 2024
Support Our Journalism
HomeOpinionThere’s Indian amnesia about those behind Partition. It’s time to call out...

There’s Indian amnesia about those behind Partition. It’s time to call out the Ashrāfs

Those killed and uprooted had not asked for Partition. And yet there is an amnesia in India about who asked for it.

Follow Us :
Text Size:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tweet that 14 August should be commemorated as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day has sparked a row. Many critics have likened it to reopening a wound for cynical political motives. The dictum that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, seems to be forgotten. In fact, it would be quite apposite if Pakistan too commemorated 14 August, its Independence Day, as Partition Horrors Day, since its birth was marred by a scale of violence that it wouldn’t wish upon itself ever again. To do that, it will have to acknowledge that violence has been intrinsic to its very existence. Furthermore, for Pakistan, officially speaking, the agenda of Partition is far from complete. It has gone to war with India four times, and has been waging a thousand-cuts war for over 30 years now. Ghazwa-e-Hind, the dream of Islamic reconquest of India is as good as an official ideology, of which Pakistani missiles named Ghauri and Ghaznavi are chilling reminders.

Even if the allegation of cynical politicisation of the tragedy were to stick, two facts can’t be ignored. One, that Partition was a horrendous tragedy. And, two, that politicians are smart creatures who wouldn’t whip a dead horse. If politicians find resonance with public by invoking history, it’s because that history is contemporary, not ancient; and, if the religious discourse and political narrative that led to Partition are current affairs, not history, the politician will gleefully harp on them.

The question to ponder is how could a tragedy of Holocaust proportions, in which over 10 lakh people were killed and over a hundred lakhs displaced, be forgotten, and whose interests are served by this righteous amnesia? Second, was Partition a one-time event, or has it been a recurrent theme inasmuch as the ideological dynamic that culminated into the vivisection of India still pulsates in our political culture? If it was a freak event, and not an inevitable denouement of a long historical process, we may very well forget it without worrying about a revisit upon us. But if it is a live continuum, we would rather take stock of what went wrong and how best to bring closure to it.


Also read: Let’s talk about Partition. We owe this debt to the dead and the displaced


Time to call out the Ashrāfs

Insofar the horrors of Partition are likened to Holocaust, one would wonder why, unlike Nazism and the Nazis, the ideology which led to it, and the people who were its vanguards, were never called to account.

In Partition historiography, by way of exoneration, it is fine to say that only about 12 per cent of the population were enfranchised in the elections of 1946; therefore, the guilt of Partition shouldn’t be generalised. Correct. But the question to ask is who were these 12 per cent who gave 96 per cent of the Muslim seats, under the separate electorate, to the Muslim League, which was contesting on the plank of Pakistan?

They were mainly the self-styled Ashrāfs — literally, the superior and privileged class — the descendants of the foreign rulers, majorly concentrated in Uttar Pradesh, and thinly spread all over the country as landed gentry. They flaunted their foreignness, and conceptualised their relation with India in purely political terms with an entitlement to eternal sovereignty over the country. When it no longer remained feasible for them to rule the entire country, the elite Muslim class chose to split it on the basis of religion. The split sparked genocidal bloodshed, which led to ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs on one side, and Muslims on another, from the wrong side of Radcliffe Line in Punjab, Bengal and elsewhere.

Those killed and uprooted had not asked for Partition. But the blame for this carnage was squarely laid on the shoulders of those unsuspecting villagers caught in the whirlpool stirred by the self-serving politics of Ashrāfs from UP, who remained blameless. Naturally so, since they continued to control the narrative as much after Partition as they did before it. Historically, they have retained the proprietary rights over the definition and interpretation of Islam, and the political narratives that stem from such a religious thought. They have controlled the seminaries and universities, and thus the minds of the indigenous Muslims whose conversion to Islam has been akin to their recruitment as the foot soldiers of the Ashrāfs. The much-maligned Brahminical control over Hinduism pales in comparison to the stranglehold that the Ashrāfs have over Islam.

They effected Partition. Half their families went to Pakistan to establish an Islamic State, and half remained here to pontificate on secularism. These guilty men of India’s Partition, and the accompanying ‘Holocaust’, have never been called out. So, they have continued to perpetuate the same narrative and play the same politics to date. Thus, there has been no introspection, and no revision of the ideology that gave rise to the politics of separatism. This impunity has recently given rise to the aggressive narrative of charity towards India whereby identitarian Muslim politicians have taken to boasting how they favoured India by heeding Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and staying back when they could have gone to better prospects in Pakistan. No, sir, you stayed back for your own reasons, not for obliging Gandhi and Nehru, who you never heeded till Partition showed you your folly.


Also read: Modi’s enthusiasm for dates misses the real memorialising of Partition violence


Pseudo-secularism must be called out

Progenies of the ideology of Partition have revived the politics of separatism under the respectable rubric of identity. The liberal intelligentsia bring fancy Post-modern theorisations in their support by invoking Post-colonialism, Orientalism, Relativism and a whole host of chic formulations in justification of their primordial motivations. The neo-separatists don’t seek empowerment for Muslim citizenry, instead, they want a share in power for the Muslims as a religious group, the right to represent whom they arrogate to themselves. They work under the cover of regressive Muslim Personal Law, and the fictive minority character of their ideological capital of a university in Aligarh. They mouth liberal-secular verbiage and employ clever constitutional arguments to promote their communal agenda, thinking that they can’t be seen through. Their narrative lacks integrity, and they lack credibility.

Historiography of obfuscation, whether of the Marxist method or of the liberal national integration method, with such egregious inferences as Aurangzeb being secular, and the unsuspecting Muhammad Ali Jinnah being thrust with Pakistan, promoted a disingenuous denial, not a sincere acceptance of the past, without which there could neither be any owning up nor any repentance and reform.

The liberal intelligentsia, desperately as it leans on Muslim communalism for its own relevance, should spare itself further discredit by forwarding such specious arguments as minority communalism being the lesser evil. Minority communalism is not minor communalism. It feeds and fattens majority communalism. Indulgence of Muslim communalism to fight against Hindu communalism is pseudo-secularism.


Also read: Don’t just blame Hindutva for Ayodhya dispute, Muslim elite politics also responsible


For the ghost of Partition to be laid to rest, politics of separatism must be abjured, which is not possible unless the Muslim society undergoes a radical secularisation, or a complete overhaul of their religious thought is undertaken to purify Islam of pernicious power theology. Muslims shall no further alienate themselves by adopting alien mores in appearance and comportment. Anti-assimilation religiosity must become a thing of past.

Still, the horrors of Partition shall be remembered to save the masses from the fire pit into which the narrative makers — the incorrigible and unrepentant privileged class — have been pushing them.

The author is an IPS officer. He tweets @najmul_hoda. Views are personal.

(Edited by Neera Majumdar)

Subscribe to our channels on YouTube, Telegram & WhatsApp

Support Our Journalism

India needs fair, non-hyphenated and questioning journalism, packed with on-ground reporting. ThePrint – with exceptional reporters, columnists and editors – is doing just that.

Sustaining this needs support from wonderful readers like you.

Whether you live in India or overseas, you can take a paid subscription by clicking here.

Support Our Journalism

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Most Popular