Need to rethink Partition horrors remembrance

On the eve of India’s 75th Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the nation that August 14 will be observed as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day to acknowledge the pain Indians suffered due to Partition in 1947.

Modi has a penchant for springing surprise decisions on the people. Some measures he took on short notice, or with no notice at all, in the past seven years are now in limbo.

The Horrors Remembrance Day decision appears to have been taken on the spur of the moment. Modi announced it in a tweet, which read: “Partition’s pains can never be forgotten. Millions of our sisters and brothers were displaced and many lost their lives due to mindless hate and violence. In memory of the struggles and sacrifices of our people 14th August will be observed as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day.”    

Seventy-five years have elapsed, and two generations have moved on since the subcontinent witnessed the Partition horrors.

There was no immediate cause for raking up the issue. It is unwise to rekindle memories of a period of “mindless hate and violence” (as the Prime Minister himself put it), without sufficient reason.

Modi’s tweet came too late to organise any commemorative event this year. The Home Ministry later issued a formal notification based on the tweet. Modi’s tweet was factual. But it did not tell the whole truth.

Partition horrors were not a one-sided affair.  There were many who were victims as well as perpetrators of horrors on both sides of the India-Pakistan border.

In published correspondence relating to the ban on the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh after Gandhi’s assassination, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel has referred to the role of that organisation in the violence of the period.

Modi said Partition horrors remembrance would remind Indians of the need to “remove the poison of social divisions”.

The objective is, no doubt, laudable. But the path he has chosen may reinforce social divisions instead of removing them. The best way to eliminate social divisions is to eschew prejudices and ensure social justice.  

Modi did not go into the causes of Partition and its horrendous aftermath. Nor did he lay the blame for Partition at the door of any party or leader.

In the address to the nation from the ramparts of Delhi’s Red the next day, Modi reiterated the Horrors Remembrance Day decision. He also gracefully acknowledged the services rendered to the nation by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, among others.  

However, on Twitter several leaders of his Bharatiya Janata Party blamed Nehru for Partition. They need lessons in history. The roots of Partition lie in the two-nation theory. Researchers have shown that it was first articulated by VD Savarkar, the founding father of Hiindutva.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was associated with the Indian National Congress for many years, was cool to the theory initially. He took up the idea of a separate homeland only after he concluded that Muslims would not get a fair deal in Hindu-dominated India.

The Modi regime is, wittingly or unwittingly, proving Jinnah right. It has made religion a criterion of citizenship.The largest religious minority, accounting for 14.2 per cent of the population, has just one member in the recently reconstituted 78-member Council of Ministers.

At the end of World War II, the Viceroy, Lord Wavell, warned London in a letter that if some 2.5 million Indians, who had seen active service, joined hands with the Congress on demobilisation, it would be impossible to hold on to India. Accordingly, Britain set June 1948 as deadline for pull-out.

Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, decided to divide and quit early to avoid a forced disorderly exit.

This was the circumstances in which the Congress, while not accepting the two-nation theory, acquiesced in its implementation. The Congress and the Muslim League were the only parties with which the British negotiated.

 Let it not be forgotten that there were other political and social forces in the subcontinent at the time and they too willy-nilly acquiesced in the Partition decision.

Modi must rethink the horrors remembrance plan and come up with something in tune with the ancient Indian dictum “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (The world is one family).