The 'Daily' Reality Of Partition

Nations are necessarily exercises in remembrance and forgetting; they rememberthrough ritual commemoration and forget through collective amnesia. In the fiftieth year of their Independence, Indians however, decided tocommemorate what they had hitherto chosen to suppress or forget. As thesubaltern became the authorized alternative to elite officialese, quite a fewsacred binaries were opened up, if not reversed. 

Partition as the effaced annexe to our national history became the privilegedsite for such corrective treatment. So half a century after it happened,Partition and not just Pakistan -- which has always been a constant with theIndian state and people -- again found itself at the centre of both politicalrhetoric and academic ruminations.

But Pakistan and Partition had always made good copy. Right from itsill-defined birth in 1940, through the myriad definitions that were attached toit, till 1947, when its contours first became visible, the Pakistan demand wasone sure way for politicians of all hues to get reported on the front page ofnational and local newspapers. 

The imprecise parameters of the idea of Pakistan added to its mystique. Ittravelled the whole gamut of terrain from utopia to dystopia. On the one hand,it was heralded as a panacea for all the problems of Indian Muslims (and ofIndia, by extension), on the other, it was decried as a satanic conspiracyaiming to indefinitely stall India's march towards freedom and progress.

A thematic developed with Partition and Pakistan at its centre. Majornational events -- Quit India movement, Cripps and Cabinet missions,Rajagopalachari Plan, Mountbatten Plan and so on -- followed one after another;local incidents abided their own dynamic. There remained, however, a kind ofbasic continuity in the way all these happenings were articulated by thecontemporary press and digested by the public opinion.

News of various 'happenings' was refracted through the prism of Pakistan: thereader was encouraged to understand these newsworthy happenings through theover-arching categories of nation, culture, religion, history and tradition --all of which were seen as hostage to the notion of Pakistan, or conversely, forthe Muslim League sympathizers, to be actualised only through Pakistan itself.

Historians have used newspapers mostly to corroborate opinions and viewpointsbacked by hard archival data. Works on the print media have seldom gone furtherthan commenting on its links with political parties, or on the impact of thenational movement on the press. The press is seen as a contemporary commentator,a kind of participant observer of the political scene, and it is this veryparticipatory nature which supposedly makes the newspaper unfit to serve as anunbiased and objective historical source. 

Moreover, the non-fixed nature of the newspaper-- in Benedict Anderson's phrase 'the one-day best-seller'-- denies it the veryfinality normally associated with printed texts.² Conversely, the news-papershave also been used as direct pointers to popular consciousness. But rarely havethey been opened up to historical scrutiny as historical agents involved in theformation of discursive structures that map events.

A product of modernity, the newspaper ventures information that is instantand efficient. Efficiency and speed in collection and dispatch are vital for thedissemination of news as print. The mechanics of this rendering of the eventinto news is, however, a temporal process that is kept well hidden from view.What is overlooked, or wilfully forgotten is that the 'daily' gives news that isdelayed, by at least a day.³

Yet this late news has a kind of immediacy-- forthe reader the event happens only when it flashes as printed news. Moreover, thespatial economy of the newspaper conveys the relative importance andnewsworthiness of the event: front-page left side (the right-side, in case ofUrdu newspapers) news in bold typeface solicits attention as an event of signalimportance.

It remains in this privileged position till another of its ilk shifts it tothe inner pages, or even out of the paper, and finally out of the reader's mind.The format of news production then automatically limits news reception. Newsvalues and news judgements not only direct our thinking to specific areas, butalso direct it away from other, apparently non-important, areas, contributingthus to our mental maps of the world.

In the realm of politics, they define -- and define away -- opposition.⁴Analyses of news value show that this choosing and prioritising of informationis not random but involves an implicit understanding of the nature of society,the location of power in it, as also a notion of how this power is or should beexercised. 

Key categories of news-worthiness -- the elite, the government,political parties -- all have, according to Stuart Hall, the routine knowledge ofsocial structures inscribed within them. "To be intelligible to itsaudience the press must infer whatis already known, as a present or abstract structure, but [this structure] is aconstruction and interpretation about the world".⁵

It is an 'interpretation' that parades itself as truth. This wasalso thecase with colonial India, in the 1940s. The press was then, formany, theonly available means of engaging with the wider world. Mostcontemporarynewspapers were openly partisan (of course with an eye on thecolonialcensor), though partisanship was glorified as service to thenationalmovement. A nation could only be made if 'national facts' were knownbyall. 

The press, and especially the vernacular press, renderedsingularservice in disseminating the preferred nationalist view of theevents, asthe only correct way of understanding them. Moreover, many a timethetruth offered by the press was the only version that reached theindividual in a small town or qasba.

By commenting on and reiterating ad infinitum a subject -- say, forexample, Pakistan -- the press in effect constructs images. These images, likecoins ofexchange, acquire public acceptability and can be recalled by thesheermention of a single word, or by a news clip from the past.Crucially, thisimage cannot be dismissed as irrational fabrication. 

The veracityof thepress account may be questioned by some, but few people would doubtthatthe event reported took place in some other way. "For people livingin asecond hand worlds symbols focus experience (and) meanings organizeknowledge, guiding the surface perceptions of an instant no lessthan theaspirations of a life-time".⁶

The dependence on mediated knowledge about the world increasedmanifold ina milieu where the levels of literacy were not very high but thelevel ofpolitical participation was considerable.Along with pamphlets andposters,newspapers formed the basic source of knowledge about leaders andpolitical parties.

The only other means of mass communicationremainedthe grand sabha or public meeting, often organized as reaction toreports(gathered primarily from newspapers) about events or calamities ofnationalimportance. As riots took hold of the country from about 1946 to1948,Kanpur was deluged with various 'days' being celebrated orobserved. Therewas a Noakhali Diwas to protest against atrocities on Hindus inNoakhali,a Bihar Day (yaum-e-Bihar) for those against Muslims, and aPakistan Daythat was countered -- not through a Hindustan Day but, interestinglyby aPunjab Diwas. 

These were organized after reports of massacres orriots werepublished by the local newspaper. In turn, these sabhas themselveswerenews enough to get reported in local papers, often inciting otherreportsand events. Beyond such obvious relations between these 'aural'gatheringsand printed material, orality freely, and crucially, intermixedwithprinting and literacy. 

The last and most often, the mass audience ofthenewspaper was the one that heard it -- transliterated, moreover, fromthe shuddha bhasha (pure language) into a variety of regional, localdialects,and explained with the help of familiar, and frequently, evenfamilialmetaphors and analogies.⁷

It is to open up and interrogate these images that accrued toPakistan andPartition at a local level that I look towards the Vartman, a localbutimmensely popular newspaper published from Kanpur during the1940s. Inits pages, Partition is enacted at various levels, and Pakistanestablished, before it actually came into being. 

In its own way,the Vartman was engaged in outlining and consolidating a realm ofknowledgethat revolved around Hindustan and Pakistan, nation and community,religion and individuals, Hindus and Muslims, and others differentfromthem. Though these characterizations were formed over years,Partitionmade them more strident and uncompromising. 

Inasmuch as Vartman wasinvolved in the fashioning of this discourse in Kanpur, and as muchas itwas part of it, it offers insights into the complexities of themovementsfor and against Pakistan.

By the 1940s, Vartman was an influential presence in thejournalisticlandscape of Kanpur. The first and only daily paper to beconsistentlypublished from Kanpur for about two decades, Vartman positioneditself asthe plebeian counterpart to the Pratap, the better -- known weeklyprintedfrom Kanpur. 

From the very beginning Ramashankar Awasthi, itsproprietorand editor, very consciously located the paper within a Kanpuriyaidiom.Almost all its pages were steeped in local colour. National news wasofcourse important, but its local ramifications mattered more to Vartman. 

Interestingly, the process through which the news of a nationalevent gottranslated into local jargon was quite transparent in Vartman. Thepaperframed its report in three stages. The first was when an event madeit tothe front page as news.⁸ Catchy headlines laid out the paper's -- andsupposedly its readers' -- reaction to the news. 

Stage two appeared twodayslater: a long editorial on what presumably was judged as the mostimportant news item worth commenting on. This editorial delineatedtherelative importance, or non-importance, of the 'news' and placed itin itshistorical context. It broadcast for its audience the 'actual'meaning andthe correct way of understanding the event/news.

Stage three commenced -- again approximately after two days -- when the dailysatiricalcolumn "Manoranjan" unscrambled that editorial for popularentertainment.Through a dialogic tone and impudent lampooning, the argument wasgiven alocal inflexion, placing it firmly within the realm of theprevalentcommon sense.

Vartman addressed its own, largely Hindu, audience in Kanpur. Thispredominantly upper caste (though not always upper class) readershipwasdivided politically between the Congress -- and its two factions inKanpur-and the local Hindu Sabha. Vartman, in deference to thisdivision,was constantly engaged in a delicate balancing act. 

Inspite of thepaper'slatent leanings towards the Hindu Sabha, the national stature ofleaderslike Nehru and Gandhi almost always tipped the scale towards theCongress.Most of the time, however, Vartman tried to walk the tightrope --rootingfor the Congress while fraternizing with the local Hindu Sabha. Assuch,it offered a perfect platform for the Congress right wing, which by1945,had come to hegemonise and author the public discourse in Kanpur.

From around the time C. Rajagopalachari put forward his argumentfor arational consideration of the Pakistan demand (July 1944), andconvincedGandhi to hold talks with Jinnah, the paper's rhetoric was crowdedwith themotif of Pakistan.

Notwithstanding the still ambivalent nature ofJinnah'sPakistan, Vartman's Pakistan was understood as an all-encompassingcatastrophe about to befall India: a death-wish from "theunparalleledhorrors of which even a thousand Gandhis (sic!) would not be able tosaveIndia, its history and culture".⁹ Gandhi's consent to meet Jinnah atthelatter's house in Bombay was portrayed as his acquiescing in thedemandfor Pakistan. 

Further, 'Gandhi's love for Muslims' and his 'masteryof theart of surrender' was a pointer that shuddha, unalloyed Pakistanwouldinevitably result out of such meetings. Jinnah's rebuffs toGandhi's offerwere insults added to injury, and the breakdown of the talks wassomethingto be welcomed. Sab achcha hi hua! (All's well that ends well!) wasthepaper's verdict on the episode.

For Vartman, Pakistan was not just synonymous with Muslimcommunalism,though it was primarily that. The discomfiture with Pakistan -- at suchanearly date when its contours had hardly taken shape -- was that itquestioned, centrally, the totalising narrative of Indiannationalism. 

Vartman showed Pakistan as miasmic: it totally destabilized thecategoryof nationalism, making it open and accessible to all other groupswithinthe political spectrum. As the paper remarked early on, "giving into thePakistan demand would only lead to end-less partitions. We will notbeable to sit peacefully. All minorities would ask for the right toself-determination. How would we then stop them? Even women wouldone daydemand a separate Jananistan".

To counter the Muslim League's two-nation theory, Vartman (almost)positedIndia as a multi-national entity, led into modernity and progressunder theaegis of the Congress party. The Congress's seminal work ofinfusing thespirit of nationalism into an eternal but fragmented India, waswhatlegitimised its (attempted) monopoly of the national politicalspace.

Since Pakistan had opened a Pandora's box by contesting thismonopoly, aradical restructuring of the nationalist discourse was required.Eitherthe discursive limits of the nation were to be modified/extendedbeyondthe ideal represented by the Congress, or, conversely, variouscontestinggroups/nations be disciplined and appropriated within ahierarchised(rather than homogenized) nationalism. Vartman's advice was to gofor thesecond option. It provided a blueprint for it.

If the Congressrepresentedthe modern, constructed version of Indian nationalism (svadhintapriya),the Hindu Mahasabha represented the 'natural' nationalism (svabhavik rashtravad) inherent in the Hindu community. Members of the HinduMahasabha, the Ambedkarites, Dalits and other such groups wereargued tobe plain 'selfish' nationalists (swarthvadi), while the MuslimLeague, atthe nadir of this scheme, represented 'aberrant' nationalism -- indeed,communalism -- based on fraudulent principles, without any legacy ofparticipation in the freedom struggle, or of any kind of sacrificefor thenation.

It can be seen that this hierarchical layout took care of both thepast andthe future, while adroitly delineating the present. The svadheentapriyacould agree to partition -- Pakistan -- but certainly not the rashtravadi forwhom the territorial unity of the country was as sacred, if notmore, thana territorially compromised freedom. 

Since both freedom andintegrity weredesirable, the political impasse could only be overcome if thesetwo categories of nationalism borrowed from each other rather thanremain separate -- and opposed -- political entities. Only then -- by the sheerweight of majority -- would true nationalism be able to realize completeliberation andblock any kind of Pakistan, Achhootistan or (god forbid!) Jananistan. 

Vartman was prophetic in asking for this convergence. Its pagessoonrecorded Veer Savarkar's entreaty to Congressmen to join the HinduMahasabha, followed, a mere twenty days later, by Sardar Patel'sinvitationto the Mahasabha members to join the Congress in their fight for'theunity and integrity of India'.

Since Pakistan at this point existed more in the pronouncements oftheleaders, Vartman too framed its argument through them. Gandhi andJinnahformed two levers against which the narrative of the paper waspositioned.Till about 1944, Jinnah was viewed more as a strong and powerfulleader,well able to extract his 'blank cheque' from Gandhi and theCongress. 

Withthe fragmented Muslim politics of the United Provinces acknowledging hissupremacy, the Hindi press was not far behind in lionizing him assuch. Itis interesting that though he was projected as leading a paperorganization rife with internal squabbles (all of which wasreported withmuch glee), Jinnah's leadership over the Muslim masses was neverquestioned.

Rather, a messianic appeal was attributed to him: "Mr.Jinnahis as popular among Muslims as Gandhiji is among Congressmen".However,"unlike Gandhi, Jinnah commands a community of chauvinistic,aggressivebelievers. United by religion and passionate about it, they werecompelledby the force of their belief to wipe out the kafirs". Thisfanatical zeal,when coupled with the 'backwardness' of the Muslims, made themincapableof nationalist thought. 

With Jinnah obstinately clinging on to thePakistan demand, his image, however, increasingly began to takenegativeovertones. Throughout 1944-47, Vartman portrayed Jinnah as anirrationaland overbearing madman. Even his inconsequential interviews andspeecheswere reported on the front page, and always with reference toPakistan. 

Bythe mid-1940s Jinnah had no other identity left, save that of thesatanicprogenitor of the idea of Pakistan. In a curious reversal, Jinnahwasimaged, through Pakistan, the child becoming the father of the man.