Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 2013. vi, 295 pp. (Maps, figures.) US$27.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-19-906478-6.
This latest work by Britain’s leading historian of the Punjab, the independence movement, and the history of Pakistan is an excellent collection that brings together established as well as young scholars in examining issues old and new regarding the partition of India in 1947. Divided into three parts, “Violence,” “Politics,” and “New History,” it offers a fine introduction which succinctly summarizes the historiography of the subject and the topics developed in the ten chapters that follow.
The “Violence” chapters include a republication of Paul Brass’s 2003 article where he delineates the concept of “retributive genocide” in the Punjab to account for the violence which occurred at the time. He argues that violence, instigated by political leaders, created the conditions for partition in Bengal, where it subsided once Pakistan had been granted, and then to ethnically cleanse various areas of the Punjab. The British categorization of ethnic groups as “Muslims” and “Non-Muslims” made violence targeted toward the “other” “highly likely” (30), especially if a group of people was left out of a category and made vulnerable by being interspersed with others. In the Punjab, the situation was complicated due to the third community, the Sikhs, and the 16 semi-autonomous states scattered around the province. Muslims in the Western part of the Punjab eagerly turned on Sikhs and Hindus, who retaliated in the east as they expelled Muslims, who as refugees in the west brayed for revenge; and so the cycle of violence continued, with all communities guilty. Ilyas Chattha, in an important contribution, looks at some 1,000 First Information Reports lodged at local police stations in Gujranwala, Sialkot, Lahore, and Sheikhupura. Written in Urdu and now almost completely disintegrated, they document everything from petty crimes to large-scale murder and serve to give details, hitherto unknown, about the violence and the means by which it was perpetuated with, for example, one policeman absconding with a rifle and 50 cartridges. Talbot, in a fine contribution, focuses on the city of Sheikhupura, a major communications hub especially prized by both Muslims and Sikhs for its economic and religious value. Some two-thirds of the city’s property and businesses were owned by Hindus and Sikhs and plans were long made by Muslims to ethnically cleanse them to seize their wealth. When Muslim refugees who had been “turned out” by Sikhs arrived from the east, the desire for revenge was overwhelming. His study helps to map the violence in the Punjab and to indicate a “clear connection” (115) between transport nodes and violence hot-spots. Gurharpal Singh examines the role of Sikhs and the causes and consequences of violence, and the theories behind it from a “planned conspiracy,” a “cultural given,” “retributive Genocide,” and a “function of militarization.” He offers six suggestions for further research but calls for the “systematic overview that the subject desperately deserves” (134).
The four chapters in “Politics” are a delight for political historians. Victoria Schofield looks at how Wavell, temperamentally unsuited to be Viceroy, but an astute and knowledgeable observer of India affairs, was never given the authority to negotiate and govern that Mountbatten had. Had he been given the same powers and the same political support as Mountbatten, many believe independence would have occurred without its disastrous consequences. As it was, Wavell, out of favour with Attlee, as he had been with Churchill, was unceremoniously dumped for Mountbatten, who was more keenly attuned, as Talbot rightly points out, to nationalist forces in Southeast Asia, and the need to satisfy them, than many British (and especially French) administrators. Nick Lloyd looks at the role of Sir Evan Jenkins, the staunch supporter of the Unionist Party and the last British governor of united Punjab, and how his warnings about the consequences of Mountbatten’s policies were ignored. Between a rock and a hard place, Jenkins was blamed for the breakdown of law and order by some of the same people who were causing it! Mountbatten is central to the saga of partition and its horrific outcome. He was always lucky that the people who could have offered an alternative narrative, such as Wavell, Sir Evan Jenkins, and the last British commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, Claude Auchinleck, chose not to do so. Schofield’s and Lloyd’s chapters offer ideas for an analysis that helps redress the balance in the narrative. Sten Widalman looks at the role of Kashmir in the events of 1947, critically assessing how it was important to India to establish its secular credentials and to invalidate the demand for Pakistan.
The final section offers two chapters. The first is by Paul Griffin on the Christians of West Punjab (less than 2 percent of the population) who supported the demand for Pakistan as they were attracted by the All-India Muslim League’s minority rights discourse. Many of them attended the Lahore session of the league when the Pakistan Resolution was passed. Many migrated to the cities after partition, where Protestants attended Catholic churches, seeing no problem in doing so. The chapter adds another dimension to the partition story. Ritu Bhagat rounds out the volume by exploring the new field of social memory as part of her innovative project on “Landscape and Memory: Refugee Rehabilitation in Post-Partition Delhi.” In this fragment of her study she examines how food “constituted an important component of the partition migrant’s memory” (260). In doing so, she explains how migrants from the North-West Frontier Province, Punjab, and Sindh established restaurants in Delhi, most notably Moti Mahal and Embassy, that established “Punjabi” cuisine, especially tandoori (clay oven cooking) and butter chicken (chicken cooked with butter and spices), as the most renowned cuisine of north India and the diaspora. “Punjabi” food and restaurants became sites around which migrants maintained communal ties and memories. This chapter, and the entire volume, adds food for thought on partition studies, and is a valuable contribution.
Roger D. Long
Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, USA
pp. 707-709