The Problem
with Partitions
By Yasmin Khan
In the 20th
century, the great powers devised a new method for
solving entrenched conflicts in faraway countries
The tool kit was simple; it required only maps and
pens. It appealed because it could be carried out
relatively quickly by departing imperialists from
their airy colonial offices, and it could be imposed
from above on the peoples they formerly governed.
The method was known as partition, and it was the
chosen solution in Ireland in 1922, South Asia in
1947, Palestine in 1948 and Cyprus in 1974. It was
revived as a strategy in the Balkans in the 1990s.
And today, it is being promoted again in some quarters
as a way out of the morass in Iraq . If Sunnis,
Shiites and Kurds can't get along, the thinking
goes, then why not just cut the country in three?
The potential difficulties are obvious. Determining
the natural boundaries of nation-states is always
a tricky business. As we learned in the last century
-- and are learning again today -- getting out of
an imperial commitment is substantially harder than
getting into one. All too often, there is no neat
fit between those making land claims, those appealing
to ideas of nationhood and those calling for ethnic
solidarity.
And even after partition, conflict and bloodletting
often follow as ethnic or religious groups continue
to pit themselves against each other. Think of Palestinians
and Israelis in the Middle East; Hindus and Muslims
in South Asia, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland
.
Nevertheless, the strategy of carving up peoples
and land has been applied regularly and with gusto
since 1922, for better or worse, generally presented
as a way of solving competing claims to land by
rival groups when alternative power-sharing ideas
have floundered.
The Partition of India was the bloodiest of all
of these partitions. Sixty years ago, South Asia
was a conglomeration of "princely states"
and land directly governed by Britain . But in August
1947, the British Raj was dismantled, and two new
nation-states were formed from its debris: India
, a state with a majority Hindu population, and
Pakistan , which was predominantly Muslim. During
the unanticipated mass migrations that followed,
perhaps 12 million people crossed the borders on
either side of the divided Punjab seeking safety
and security, often leaving everything they owned
behind.
There had been ethnic violence between some Muslims,
Hindus and Sikhs in the past. But the violence that
followed the partition was of a force unlike anything
that had preceded it. The scale of the killing was
so grave that historians are still uncertain how
to quantify the numbers of dead children, women
and men; some say a quarter of a million died, some
say a million. Chaos and disorder threatened the
integrity of the new states themselves -- and left
the Kashmir region an unresolved chronic crisis
to this day. The province of Bengal , where Calcutta
is located, was faced with such calamitous waves
of refugees that even today refugee camps exist
that date to 1947.
The Partition of 1947 was justified by various arguments.
It was a last resort, given the intransigence of
the deadlocked political parties, the Indian National
Congress and the Muslim League. The situation was
likely to end in civil war anyway, so some felt
it was better to try to forestall it by carving
out a territorial solution. For nationalists in
Pakistan , it meant that their campaign for self-determination
in South Asia had been successful, and Muslim leader
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was hailed as a triumphant hero.
So what went so catastrophically wrong?
One problem was the disjunction between the colonial
power and its former subjects. To put it simply,
the two had different priorities and were working
to different goals. For the British in 1947, there
was terrible impatience to return home. Both soldiers
and civilians were tired and frustrated by nationalist
protest and the daily grind of governance and riot
control.
The daily life of ordinary Indians was far from
the mind of policymakers in London in 1947, who
were more concerned about the frosty Cold War climate,
the health of British financial balance sheets,
the safety of British civilians in India, Britain's
international reputation in the global press and
the risk of British involvement in civil strife
in Palestine and Greece. The last thing that the
penurious British government needed -- with a home
population racked by rationing and austerity measures
at the end of World War II -- was an overstretched
army staying on in the subcontinent.
London 's priority was to cut British losses, by
leaving a united India if possible, a divided India
if not, and this was far detached from the intricate
community politics of the subcontinent. This meant
that safeguards were not put in place and the consequences
were ill thought through.
Another problem was that, as in most parts of the
world, the people of South Asia did not live in
hermetically sealed bubbles among their own kith
and kin. In colonial India , people lived in towns,
villages and regions that were a hodgepodge of ethnic
and religious groups. So when partition came, it
was simply impossible that all the minorities from
one state could be fished out and exchanged with
the minorities of the other.
Somehow nobody had considered this, so that minorities
on both sides of the partitioned line were left
uncertain about their security and citizenship rights
and scared to remain in a state that, they were
told by some leaders, was no longer their own.
To compound the problem, partition in South Asia
was imposed at a breakneck speed and completed in
just over two months from the moment of decision
to the moment of execution. The lack of clarity
and reassurance provided to those living along the
borderlines proved fatal.
At the time of Indian and Pakistani independence
in 1947, many hoped for an open border and good
communications between the two countries. But the
reality is that in the aftermath of contested, unhappy
partitions, nationalism turns ugly and fossilizes.
As it turned out, reciprocal tensions, wars and
the acquisition of nuclear weapons have created
a protracted cold war between India and Pakistan
.
It is very difficult for Indians or Pakistanis today
to acquire the visas needed to cross their contested
borders and to meet each other face to face. So
what was presented as a solution to one generation
in fact marked the beginning of a new set of hostilities
for their children.
(Yasmin Khan is author of "The Great Partition:
The Making of India and Pakistan ," recently
published in Britain and due out later this year
in the US. Courtesy The Los Angeles Times)
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