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Garma
Garam More
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Terrorism in Punjab |
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By Amanullah 'Imaginary Homelands' is originally a collection of essays and criticism by Sulman Rushdie. It is also quite an apt title for a column I write on eternal immigrants and the diaspora) THE YEAR 1997 marked the 50th anniversary year of India and Pakistan. Amid celebrations and fanfare, some thoughtful discussions did take place within and between the two countries. Much was said about the current state of affairs, relationship between the two countries and their vision for the 21st century. At the same time any meaning discussion of issues relating to the partition of India was conspicuous by its absence, except for the literary writings such as Granta's 'India ! The Golden Jubilee' and others. Partition of India 50 years ago was one the biggest ever officially sanctioned ethnic cleansing operation in the history. Seven million Muslims migrated to their newly found homeland. About the same number of Hindus and Sikh fled in the opposition direction. Close to some two million lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands of women were raped and abducted. In Punjab alone, where some of the worst such atrocities took place, there are some 100,000 women are still categorized as missing. Many of them are said to have converted to the religion of their abductors and even married them. Still, many more were passed hand to hand or sold to prostitution. As we celebrate the anniversary of our nations' independence, many of these immigrants continue to live in their imaginary homelands, like eternal immigrants unable to cut the umbilical cord from the places they were born. For the traumas of Partition in India, Pakistan, and specially in Bangladesh which had to go through it all over again in 1971, there has never been any Truth and Reconciliation process, the kind taking place in equally traumatized South Africa. A forum where the victims would have a day to air out their grievances and have them recorded in the history books. An inquiry where the perpetrators and those who actively and sometimes with relish participated in horrendous acts of violence, would come forward. Not the kind of countless closed door secretive and elitist inquiries or commissions typical for India or Pakistan, where the outcome of such inquest is often suppressed or inconclusive. Perhaps it is already too late for any truth and reconciliation to exorcise the ghosts of past. The generation that was the victim, the perpetrator, or the silent spectator of such violence is gradually vanquishing. We the descendants have largely acquiesced to these events as bigoted versions of our history books and propaganda has taught us to do. Some of us have relegated such violence to an aberration in history. Subsequent events in the sub-continent have shown that such violence was neither the work of alien or evil elements, nor was it any anomaly. In Pakistan, each conflict redefines the concept of a new enemy. New circles are drawn redefining the boundaries of 'us' and marking new exclusions. Each time the majority acquiesces to and even condones violence against a new adversary. In 1947, the antagonists were Sikhs and Hindus. Partly incensed by the equally brutal treatment meted out to the Muslims migrating to Pakistan, the Muslim majority in Pakistan condoned the perverse justice of brutalizing the migrating Hindus and Sikhs. Centuries of coexistence was overnight forfeited in favor of new definitions of 'we' the good and innocent and 'they' the evil, hence deserving of being looted, raped and killed. In 1971, it was the turn of 'unpatriotic' and 'lesser Muslim' Bengalis. Although the dirty 'war' was carried out by the Pakistani military, we in the West Pakistan supported their actions and by extension condoned the mass scale brutalizing of Bengalis. In the 70's and 80's we found enemies in Baluchistan and Sindh. The indiscriminate suppression of Ahmedis first under Bhutto and then under Zia's regime was carried out by applying the same logic. During the last 15 years, refugees from India largely living in Karachi and Hyderabad, who are ironically still called the Muhajirs (immigrants), have been revisited the traumas of the Partition. The latest battle there is now being waged between the Sunni and Shiite communities. In the second week of January 1998, amid the Holy month of Ramadan, 20 innocent Shiites observing a funeral were gunned down indiscriminately. Not only the direct perpetrators of violence, rest of the community stands indicted for condoning or at least tolerating such criminal acts by their eerie silence. Each time this taciturn majority has failed to defend the defenseless. As the cycle of violence continues, the definitions of 'we' and 'they' narrows down and the circles of inclusion and exclusion diminishes, assuring the ultimate self annihilation. Nations, like individuals, can become self-immolating or suicidal too. The list is by no means exhaustive but similarities between these episodes and those of the Partition are chillingly familiar. Nor can they be blamed just on some extremists or blamed on some foreign hand, as is often the practice. The demons are not outside, but inside ourselves, in our inability to accept and solve differences peacefully. Our intellectuals have piled up studies after studies showing how illiteracy, poverty, class and ethnic differences, and the lack of democratic institutions all contribute to such dilemma. In the last 50 years writers, intellectuals, social workers and politicians have tried to deal with the issues emanating from the Partition, with no apparent success. For me, born after the Partition in the Pakistani Punjab, the Partition's brutality remains still an enigma. Over and above all those class, ethnic and caste boundaries that plague villages of Punjab, deep inside there still is a bond of being from the same village. This undefined concept community as a unit is as sacred as motherhood. Unwritten rules still dictate - and largely honored - that when a girl from a village, considered as Dhee (daughter) of the village, is married in another village, then proverbially speaking the villagers of the girl's birthplace will not drink water from the place she is living after her marriage. This bonding, this concept of community and communal unity are expressed by simple notions of 'Watan' (one's village) and of 'Apney' (of the same village) and 'Paray' (of some other places). Although class and caste do come into play in the economic and social life of a village, so does the concept of land ownership, and it is likely that they all played some role or other in the Partition's woes, which unlike most other such events spread to the rural areas as well. It is not easy to understand violence in cities and towns, much less its occurrence in a village where people have been living side by side for centuries in more or less harmony with each other. For, the violence there was largely precipitated not by some economic change but by a completely alien concept of nationhood. I am sure if today I go to my village in West Punjab, only some 15 miles from the nearest city and 4 miles off the main road, things have not changed much in the last few decades, except that lamps in some houses have been replaced by electric bulbs, and those story tellers of Heer, Sohni, Laila and Zalikha are perhaps less numerous. I can still visualize Nawab Changar a 6 feet plus handsome 'goobroo' famous for winning the best bull awards in local melas, Makhan a sometimes wily man of wit, Yusuf the mechanic and a 'matiaal' charmer, Munshi Alla Dita the quite eternal philosopher, Ramzan the controlling tractor driver and so on , on a cold and long winter night squatting on the floor with their 'bukkuls' and 'hukkas', under the light of lamp, mesmerized by storyteller's often improvised 'qissa' and swamped by the imagination. They all come from different castes and class backgrounds. Some have land, most have none. Their daily hard work all year around means that they had not much time for mosques or mullahs, but for 'pirs' and visits to shrines of sufi saints and that too only after the harvests, which coincide with various 'melas'. But all these people are bound by an unspoken oath of allegiance to each other and to 'sacrifice arm' in order to help the other, which they invariably did, some times literally. Nostalgia for such beautiful winter nights charmed by the story tellers is shattered by the thought that before the Partition in 1947, along with figures like Nawab Changar, Makhan Singh, Yusuf, Munshi Alla Dita and Ramzan, there must have been equally colorful and humane Sikh and Hindu characters. I can easily imagine some Diljit, Kanwar, and Dhania Ram among this crowd mesmerized by a storyteller's spell, all squatted with their 'bukkuls'. As the night grows, their shadows under lamp become more crammed and intermingled. Then images of the Partition's violence shatters the reverie as this sense of community, innocence, and eternal beauty are transposed with images of these very characters rising up in arms against each other with savagery hitherto alien to them, like the hideous villains of fables they were listening to.
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