The Truth Of Geography

As a historian of the Partition of India and the concomitant creation of thestate of Pakistan, I study conflict and accommodation in the political arenas ofthe Punjab in the first half of the twentieth century. The most challengingpuzzles in that era, and in my work, deal with precisely the kind of conundrumthat Mumbai has thrown up. Coming close on the heels of President Zardari’scomment that ‘there’s a little bit of India in every Pakistani and a littlebit of Pakistan in every Indian’, the attacks on Mumbai insist on imprinting adifferent kind of equation. When shared culture and conflict are so closelyentwined, as they are in the Indo-Pakistani relationship, how does one respondto a crisis like Mumbai? Let me step back for a bit and speak of a prior momentof violation.

In March 1947, lower level functionaries of the Muslim League coordinated tomount an attack on Hindus and Sikhs in the villages of Rawalpindi and Lahoredistricts of undivided Punjab. Five days later, members of the Congress Party inthe Legislature asked for a partition of the province. Had they paused toconsult the very victims of those attacks in the villages, they would have foundthat the victims demanded martial law, the punishment of perpetrators and allofficials who helped engineer the violence, the return of looted property, atightening of security, of police and the army. Instead, by opting to partitionthe Punjab, the Congress was trying to wash its hands off the entire mess. Theirrationale – that the violence made Partition inevitable – was proved wrongas the more serious attacks across every corner of the Punjab – were a consequenceof the decision to divide this once-united land.

Protests against Pakistan in India

Today we stand at a very different set of crossroads. Time and again, eventsin the last sixty years have shown India and Pakistan that despite the fact ofPartition, their destinies remain entwined. When the Babri Masjid was destroyedin India in 1992, temples were destroyed in Lahore in Pakistan. When anearthquake rocked Muzaffarabad in Pakistani Kashmir in 2005, Indian-held Kashmiralso suffered. Today the war between militants and the army that is tearingapart the fabric of Pakistani society threatens to tear apart the secular fabricof India’s carefully constructed democracy. Why us? Mumbaikars have asked inanguish. Because Mumbai is, despite the glamour and the success, close toKarachi, and Karachi is falling apart. Because much as it would like to becloser to New York and London, it is still grounded in a differently structuredworld. That is the truth of geography.

Today again the Congress party rules India, albeit in a coalition thatincludes support from about fifteen other parties. The Congress has weatheredmany a storm since 1947. It has itself fallen prey to the forces of Hindufundamentalism, especially in the 1980s and 90s and helped foster and battleinsurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir. The success story that is India still hasseveral battles to fight – against poverty and disease, against discriminationalong lines of caste, gender, religion, against tumultuous Naxalite movements inlarge parts of central India. The attacks on Mumbai have reminded Indians of onemore battle - the fragility of their internal security arrangements.

Right-wing commentators on the United Progressive Alliance’s (theCongress-led UPA government’s) measured and carefully calibrated response tothe attacks on Mumbai have wrung their hands at India as being seen as"soft" on terrorism. They seem to forget, or perhaps have never known, thatit takes a lot more strength to show restraint in the face of terror. When theworld’s only super power, the United States, has set an example of force, itis extremely hard to hold back and force oneself to think of the consequencesof lashing out. But the Congress-led UPA has done so, and for this, it must becommended. The resignation of crucial Ministers in the state of Maharashtra andthe government of India, the sharing of crucial intelligence with the FBI andother intelligence agencies, the setting up of a central intelligence agency,the determination to exercise a kind of vigilance hitherto unknown, are notripples on the surface. They will bear fruit.

In the meantime it is important for each of us to do our job: for historiansand educators to recognize this moment and respond to it intelligently;for policy makers to exercise caution even in the face of overwhelming publicrage; for politicians to understand that bad governance cannot be rewarded muchlonger. As for Pakistan, it is important for her politicians and her people tounderstand that things will never be the same again. There might not be war onthe anvil, but there will be tension, heightened vigilance, security loops, andenormous difficulties ahead. South Asia as a region can come out of this only ifher leaders recognize the seriousness of this moment.

I would like to end with two quotations: one from Amartya Sen’s ‘TheArgumentative Indian’ where he quotes ArundhatiRoy on the possibilities of a nuclear war in the region:

… the nature and results of an actual all-out nuclear war are almost impossible to imagine in a really informed way… "Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun." It is hard to think that the possibility of such an eventuality can be a part of a wise policy of national self-defence. [1]

The second quote is from Avishai Margalit, an Israeli philosopher grapplingwith memories of shared living and conflict. Margalit writes:

A nation has famously been defined as a society that nourishes a common delusion about its ancestry and shares a common hatred for its neighbors… in the context of ethics, a neighbor is someone with whom we have a history of a meaningful, positive, personal relationship. [2]

To some extent the children of post partition India and Pakistan have grownup with stereotypes of the ‘other’, with hatred of the ‘other’. Butequally memories of a more complex past have been shared across generations. Itis now in the hands of the next generation to decide whether they will continuefighting battles long lost, or search from a shared past, lessons that can beput to good use in forging a common future for our subcontinent.

Neeti Nair is an Assistant Professor in History at the University ofVirginia. Her book, Between Homeland and Nation: Punjabi Hindus and themaking of modern India, 1907-1947, is due to be published by Permanent Black later in2009.

This article is based on a talk given at ‘Thinking through Mumbai: APanel Discussion and Teach-In’, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 3December 2008.

1. Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History,Culture and Identity New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005, p. 257.

2. Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 2002, p. 76, 51.