[Reader-list] Who's afraid of 'Partition'?

[Ravikant]

Dear All,

I find PP's take on Partition unacceptable. It is as one-sided as some of the 
representations of Partition in Hindi literature. I have in mind 
Kamaleshwar's recently published novel "Kitne Pakistan'  in which Partition 
becomes one of  many tragedies the world(!) has witnessed in its recorded 
history. The event in this manner of recall gets 'de-historicized'. PP's 
point about what can Partition tell us about Gujrat is well taken in that 
restricted sense. However, It seems to me that he goes overboard with his 
dislike for any kind of memory related to Partition. To collapse all kinds of 
memories of Partition is to commit the same fallacy as he accuses the poem of 
committing. Its also like putting all NRIs in one basket. 

Let me elaborate. The Panchajanya, the RSS mouthpiece, in a recent issue 
focused on Prtition, traced roots of terrorism - Islamic, what else - to 
Partition. In their discourse and Musharraf's, Kashmir remains the unfinished 
agenda of Partition. There is however a larger investment of people - 
writers, poets and NRI academics included - in talking about Partition. The 
efflorescence of scholarly material on Partition is actually a result of the 
sudden offshoot of violence in 1980s in Asian societies. But it is 
significant that people who talked earlier about it were not the rightwingers 
so much as the secularists - with a few exceptions like the novelist 
Gurudutt. Some of the members would recall the violent protests launched by 
Knickers to 'Tamas' the serial, when it was shown the first time. Those who 
have seen it would recall the pointed exhortation by the makers of the serial 
to remember, because 'Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it'.  
In Tamas and in the story-collections such as "Partition ZArii hai' or "Kitne 
Toba Tek Singh" Partition becomes the lesson people - 'here' or 'there' - 
should have learnt. 

Although in this recall also there is a chance of 'ahistorical' 
representation, that is not all. So, what PP calls nostalgia and a 
site/device of excoriation can also be seen as a critique of existence, of 
continued and painful vivisection that is permanently etched. And of 
Nationalism and identity politics of the worst kind. One of the reasons 
Gujrat happened and keeps happening-let me also speak of Gujrat as a 
metaphor- is that there are not enough readers of this literature, not enough 
students exposed to the learned Profs. like Saint and Pandey, and not too 
many people  to take these scholarly histories to people, who have a 
different, 'natural' and 'naturalised' take on Partition. In other words, 
secular propaganda is no match to communal hardwork at shakhas, etc. 

In conclusion, to argue that talking about partition is also to incite rift 
is like Swapan Dasgupta accusing an historian - now an NRI one! - of inducing 
fragmentation because he wrote about Bhagalpur riots in an EPW article. 

Sorry members, the mail became rather long, but this is one more proof, 
monica, that the lurkers actually read the postings!

Cheers,
ravikant