They Too Wrote Our History

Among the in-between figures of Partition there are many who are essentially tragic, and a handful who must be considered truly heroic.In the latter category falls the name of Sardar Tarlok Singh, of all the people mentioned here the only one still alive, living in quiet retirement in NewDelhi. After Partition became an accomplished fact, Tarlok Singh was placed in charge of rehabilitation in the Punjab. His job was to allot, to Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Punjab, land vacated by Muslims fleeing in the other direction. He had both the intellectual equipment (a degree from the London School of Economics) as well as the strength of character to do this quickly and do it fairly.

Working with a team of equally committed officials, Tarlok Singh made 2,50,000 allocations in two years. Very few were challenged. For the most part, the displaced peasants took charge of their new land, and set it to work. Twenty years down the line, the Punjab became the bread-basket of India. The farmers and their new technologies generally get to take the credit—in truth, at least some should be shared with the officials in charge of rehabilitating them.

Tarlok Singh and his team notwithstanding, the heroes were probably outnumbered by the heroines. Perhaps the most exemplary figures of Partition were the women social workers who laboured in riot-torn villages and gloomy refugee camps, seeking to restore communities and reunite families. Many were inspired by Gandhi, as for example Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya, Rameshwari Nehru, Mridula Sarabhai and Anees Kidwai. Kamaladevi directed the building of new townships, Mridula and Rameshwari directed the recovery of abducted women, Anees brought succour and hope to victimised refugees. Their life and work has been sensitively portrayed by feminist historians. One heroine who awaits a modern rediscovery is Bibi Amtus Salam, whose extraordinary fast to restore communal harmony in Noakhali is recounted in Pyarelal's 1956 book, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase.

Perhaps the most intriguing woman on the other side was Mohammed Ali Jinnah's sister, Fatima. Educated as a dentist, she ran a successful clinic in Bombay in the 1920s, a feat which alone must mark her out as being most unusual for her time and place. However, on the death of Jinnah's wife Ruttie, Fatima closed her clinic and joined her brother, thereafter serving as his housekeeper, companion, and political confidant. In photographs and cinema reels of the time we see her hovering around the Qaid-e-Azam, clad always in a sari, a dress that has since regrettably gone out of fashion in Pakistan itself.

Fatima was devoted to Jinnah while he lived, and devoted to his memory thereafter, seeking to control what was said or written about him in their country as well as in the world at large. Yet she does not even rate an index entry in Ayesha Jalal's The Sole Spokesman , this a mark of how comprehensively she has been ignored by historians of Partition andPakistan.A truer indication of her importance lies in the fact that she was chosen as the combined Opposition candidate to stand against Field Marshal Ayub Khan in the Presidential elections of1965.Fatima Jinnah gave Ayub a close fight, in the end losing because the Field Marshal had more money, controlled the administration and the election machinery, and got some influential mullahs to issue fatwas to the effect that Islam did not permit of a woman serving as head of state.

Apart from the leaders and the masses, the story of Partition thus features a whole range of middle-level figures, some of whom we may admire, others feel sorry for, and still others simply wish to know more about. There were also a few who were very nearlyvillainous. As for instance, a man named Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar.In 1947, he had served for almost a decade as sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya SwayamsevakSangh. Bearded, with long hair and hooded eyes, originally from Maharashtra but more lately a post-graduate of the Benaras Hindu University, the RSS supremo was a man of much intelligence and motivation, this not always directed into the most productivechannels. His name peeps in and out of records I have recently been studying, which are of the Delhi Police for the autumn and winter of 1947, that is, the weeks and months immediately following Independence and Partition. These records make for very chilling reading indeed.

Periyar Opposed to north Indian domination, he spent alifetime fighting for a separate Dravidian state

There is an important book waiting to be written about the kinds of people I have touched upon here: politicians not quite as powerful as Nehru and Jinnah, colonial officials not nearly as glamorous as the viceroy, social workers nowhere near as famous as MahatmaGandhi. These are individuals whose life and work illuminates the history of Partition in new and quite unexpected ways. And our interest in them should not be wholly academic. For these are figures who, as example or warning, remain quite relevant to the practice of politics and the conduct of social life in India today. Although Partition lies 58 years in the past, its scars and wounds remain. Now, as in 1947, Indians can deal with them in one of two ways. The first is to try and heal these wounds, following the example of (among others) Tarlok Singh and Amtus Salam. The other is to make them septic, in the manner of M.S. Golwalkar and his RSS.