Shattered Land : A Journey of Partitions
Shattered Land
Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia
We all have studied history from different perspectives as presented by different historians to the ideology they have followed like left historians, sub-altern etc. The credit to Sam goes for the fact that he has presented this book as factually as possible without any tint of ideological bias. The book is divided into 15 chapter with detailed notes, epilogue, acknowledgement notes, maps and illustrations. The book starts with the introduction of the Simon Commission and it’s visit to Bombay wherein it held deliberations with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Sarojini Naidu and Mahatma Gandhi. The relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Jinnah soured over certain misunderstanding. The chapter introduces the readers to the personal life of Jinnah, his wife Ruttie and daughter Dina. There is interesting map which shows places visited by Simon Commission, which starts from Aden to Rangoon, Madras to Tinsukia. One interesting fact, the book presents that there was Mahatma Ottama in Rangoon, who was in favour of continuing Myanmar with India and on the contrary, Mahatma Gandhi opposed its inclusion in India and wanted that Myanmar should be separate country. Infact Mahatama Ottama was made president of Hindu Mahasabha and perhaps only one till date. The description of Saya San Rebellion in Myanmar is one of the overlooked event in the history of freedom of India. Finally on 1 April 1937 Burma was separated from an India. The issues of Rohingya and Bengali Muslim was a problem in 1930s also between Myanmar and Bengali speaking population, which continues even till today as we see recent fights between Buddhist Monk and Muslim. Chapter 2 and 3 deal with the post effect of the separation of Myanmar from India and how violence broke out which forced Indian settlers mainly Tamils and Gujarati population settled in Rangoon, which was one of the most cosmopolitan town. The onslaught of Second World War and attack of Japan on Burma border bought war to the India with the battles of Imphal and Kohima. In the chapters, Direct Action Day and Dividing an Empire, details of 1940s on how the partition of India became imminent is discussed with Mountbatten having tough time to implement mandate of British Parliament. The book points that even till March 1947, the Persian Gulf was administered by Indian Political Service and as mentioned earlier the South Yemen and Aden were part of India till late 1940s. Kanak Khimji was the first Hindu Shaikh representing Bania Tribe in the history of Gulf.
The political and diplomatic battle for division which included the unification of Indian princely states and race to merge them with India or Pakistan is a good read. We mostly know about the issues of merger of Hyderabad, Jamnagar, Jodhpur and Kashmir but there were so many issues to be sorted before the merger and the risk of fractured India loomed until Sardar Patel and Mountbatten stepped in. The case of Hyderabad is very unique where book mentions that Jinnah was banned from entering Hyderabad and Nizam of Hyderabad could not see Jinnah an eye to eye. The influence of Hyderabad was such that the Oman Army was the main supplier of Hyderabad and it was Qua'iti family which was ruling from Hyderabad. The book mentions
“When Soviet premiere Nikita Khrushchev found out what had happened, he looked on in disbelief. How had India managed ‘to liquidate the princely states’, he asked, ‘without liquidating the princes?’'
The chapter, "Mother Tongue" discusses the fight for the languages and how the post-Independence politics shaped the language issue. The entire Bangladesh movement was built upon Bengali script and suppression of East Pakistan's political will.
The book is very lucid, interesting and binds readers even if they are not aware of any historical context previously. The reproduction of maps of subcontinent gives a context to the entire discussion. The author had accessed the private papers from government, archives, private letters and papers and weaved it into a masterpiece on specific topic of partition of south Asia. So within a span of few decades Indian subcontinent underwent 5 partitions and now there remains only acrimonious relation between most of the nations.
Comments
Post a Comment