REMEMBERING HORRORS OF PARTITION

THE DECISION TO PARTITION THAT LEFT INNUMERABLE PEOPLE DEAD, MANY WOMEN DISHONOURED, WAS TAKEN BY A FEW LEADERS AND DID NOT REPRESENT THE PEOPLE’S WILL

- PROF RAGHUVENDRA TANWAR Professor Emeritus Kurukshetra University Chairman, Indian Council of Historical Research

In 2008, the University of Southampton (UK) had organised an international conference to commemorate the sixty years of India’s Independence. At the plenary session, I discussed the Partition of India with emphasis on its horrific events and implications. As the paper was opened for discussion, an Indian historian based in the UK sought to know why historians from India keep harping on the disaster and trauma of 1947. In doing so the scholar sought to suggest that the tragedy of India’s Partition was just ‘extra baggage’ that came along with the ‘grand story of India’s struggle for freedom and needs now to be forgotten’. This point of view did not surprise me as I was aware of such historical perspectives being part of the historical narrative that has been made to dominate historical discourse in the decades that followed Independence and Partition.

    Even a cursory review of history readings prescribed in the past for schools, colleges and even competitive examinations would show that the Partition story has merited a paragraph or at most two paragraphs in most readings. The attempt to oversight and understate the unfolding of the tragedy is in fact just one part of this carefully crafted narrative which has also propagated the view that the decision to Partition the country enjoyed mass support. This reading of the Partition story has also argued that the process was the result of historical circumstances which created conditions in which Partition was the only option. This is gross misrepresentation.