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Partition and the South Asian Diaspora
Covering over six decades, this is the story gleaned from many of the wandering refugees, some of the diaspora that had kept some account of its travails as it made for foreign shores, and the bagfuls of musty research accounts that have somehow outlived vandalism and destruction, that Papiya brings to you in the hope that we the coming generations don’t all together forget this traumatic period of history. The book discusses the story of the Mohajirs in detail. The Mohajirs from North India, who moved to Sindh in Pakistan, were never readily welcomed by the local business community. The Mohajirs from the post-1971 Bangladesh, also known as the ‘Stranded Pakistanis’, had been accepted by Pakistan after quite some time because there was a question of sharing business with the newcomers and the grab for power under a new government. The author suggests that Bangladesh should "grant citizenship to those Biharis who want to stay on", and that the UNHCR should treat the stateless as refugees and facilitate "Pakistani or Bangladeshi citizenship or explore options for third country resettlement". Bihar and the 1946 killings of the Muslims there and the initial seeding of the idea of the birth of Pakistan that emerged in Jinnah’s mind as a result of this genocide have been discussed at length in this well researched book. Maybe that the late Ghosh taught at Patna University and knew Bihar well or possibly it just missed her attention all together, that the displacement of the Sikhs from Pakistan finds hardly any mention in her account. This shortfall needs to be set right in the future by some historian who wishes to tabulate a fuller account of Partition, and all those who grievously suffered because of the greed and carelessness of some leaders. Ironically, Partition did engineer a new liberal mindset in many an Indian, freeing him from any narrow boundaries of communal thought and tension that might have existed earlier, towards the common good of the country. For one, sections of the Indian Muslims are very clear that fundamentalism by the majority is to be countered at all cost lest its fallout results in another migration being forced upon them. Their plight, Papiya quotes lucidly, "In another piece, Kawaja wrote that though 60 million Muslims chose to stay on in India after Partition, rejecting the two-nation theory, they ‘soon found themselves the victims of the backlash of the formation of Pakistan, an action which they had strongly opposed’." Another recurring theme is that of the Partition having never left the minds of the diaspora (the elders who went through with this experience), as also the indifference of later generations who were no part of it and for whom it has become somewhat of a boring story. For the elders, it was a case of their becoming a victim of the division of territories by a British government in a hurry to leave, and an Indian leadership of the time more interested in assuming control with little care for the border states. For many others in this part of the world, there have been other partitions and upheavals no less traumatic than 1947, like the case of the worker migrant moving to the Gulf, the cab driver in America, and the sugarcane cutter in Guyana, and these ‘incipient diasporic formation(s)’ have all enriched the native soil of their newfound lands. Perhaps one day someone writing about these intrepid travellers will write the ultimate story of an epic partition in every sense of the word. Today, when many in the diaspora of our neighbourhood look more towards the Middle East than South Asia when it comes to a geographic classification, it would be wise to remember what the South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection stated some time ago, "South Asians are a group of people with a shared history and that this history provides a common basis for understanding" of their place in the contemporary world. This book is a serious offering by a serious thinker, and should ignite any mind that values universal brotherhood and the inherent strength of the unbreakable linkages of a diaspora that refuses to recognise manmade partitions and divisions anywhere in the world.
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For many of us, Partition
begins and ends with the mass migration of the hapless in undivided
Punjab and to some extent of those stranded in the province of Sindh,
now a part of Pakistan. The movement of the Mohajirs at the time also
comes to mind, as also the tribulations of the Bihari community
post-1971 war when East Bengal became Bangladesh. However, the credit
goes to Papiya Ghosh to have centre-staged the story of the diaspora of
the sub-continent as it folded itself into the larger South Asian half
of its expanding nucleus.