Read Online The Great Partition by Yasmin Khan - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Yasmin Khan
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naval mutineers in Bombay, Karachi and Madras, peasant movements, or
kisan sabhas
, attempted to seize control of food committees, resist the control of richer food-hoarders and protest against ration cuts.
The newest aspect of 1946 was the fusion of so many different movements, some urban and some rural, some violent and some law-abiding, many of which were explicitly directed against the British while others, led by rebels, targeted exploitative Indian landlords, loan sharks, autocratic princes and existing social dynamics more broadly. The one thing in common was a feeling of resistance to the status quo. Many of these movements sliced across the neat chronological parameters of Independence and Partition. The armed clashes of the colossal Telengana uprising spread to three to four thousand villages in the Telugu-speaking regions of Hyderabad where peasants armed themselves and seized land. 11 This rebellion, stretching from July 1946 to October 1951 was an interconnected series of armed reprisals for excessive rents, extortion, oppression and the pitiful living conditions in lands ruthlessly controlled by the Nizam of Hyderabad and his landed oligarchy. Radicalised by communist leadership, peasants attempted to liberate their village hinterlands, to redistribute land, and to establish a more equitable society, and even after Independence, once the Nizam had been removed from power by the violent intervention of Indian troops, rebels continued in their struggle against the Indian state itself well into the earliest years of Independence.
Elite Indo-British relationships endured and for the select few the rounds of tea parties, shoots and open houses, attended by rich Indians and Europeans alike, continued unabated. On the streets of major cities, though, a definite streak of anti-Europeanism started to mar relationships, with western ties and hats forcibly removed from Europeans in Bombay, Calcutta and Karachi, the Punjab Governor's car stoned by student demonstrators on the Mall in Lahore and Europeans thrown from their bicycles, while some British tommies about to be shipped home chalked ‘cheer, wogs, we are quitting India!’ on railway carriages. 12 ‘I am bound to say that I cannot recollect any period,’ wrote the anguished British Governor of the Central Provinces and Berar to the Viceroy in 1945, reflecting on the charged political rhetoric of the times, ‘in which there have been such venomous and unbridled attacks against Government and Government officers.’ 13 The 1946 Victory Day parade, a grand spectacle that would have been utilised, in the old order, to express imperial might and to celebrate Indian and British connections, was boycotted by nearly all the major political parties and accompanied by anti-imperial rioting in New Delhi. Mills, schools, shops and colleges were closed, black protest flags were draped from windows, and European-owned cars smouldered while police used fire and tear gas to control crowds. As the procession passed through Connaught Circus, Delhi's commercial hub, crowds cheered the men of the Royal Indian Navy, which had recently mutinied in Bombay, but other units were jeered as they passed through. 14 The popular mood had changed to one where anti-imperial feeling could be aired freely and without fear.
Ultimately, European civilians were not harmed during the violence of 1946, or in the Partition conflict that followed, and some even commented on the ease with which they were able to move around afflicted cities: ‘the start of a street fight was delayed to allow my wife to cross the road,’ one British newspaper editor bemusedly recalled. 15 Yet it was not self-evident that this would be the outcome and there was mounting anxiety about the safety of Europeans as the Raj went into terminal decline. As an alarmist intelligence report, forwarded by Wavell to the Governor-General, recorded, ‘In Delhi, large handwritten posters in red ink recently appeared threatening
kisan sabhas
, attempted to seize control of food committees, resist the control of richer food-hoarders and protest against ration cuts.
The newest aspect of 1946 was the fusion of so many different movements, some urban and some rural, some violent and some law-abiding, many of which were explicitly directed against the British while others, led by rebels, targeted exploitative Indian landlords, loan sharks, autocratic princes and existing social dynamics more broadly. The one thing in common was a feeling of resistance to the status quo. Many of these movements sliced across the neat chronological parameters of Independence and Partition. The armed clashes of the colossal Telengana uprising spread to three to four thousand villages in the Telugu-speaking regions of Hyderabad where peasants armed themselves and seized land. 11 This rebellion, stretching from July 1946 to October 1951 was an interconnected series of armed reprisals for excessive rents, extortion, oppression and the pitiful living conditions in lands ruthlessly controlled by the Nizam of Hyderabad and his landed oligarchy. Radicalised by communist leadership, peasants attempted to liberate their village hinterlands, to redistribute land, and to establish a more equitable society, and even after Independence, once the Nizam had been removed from power by the violent intervention of Indian troops, rebels continued in their struggle against the Indian state itself well into the earliest years of Independence.
Elite Indo-British relationships endured and for the select few the rounds of tea parties, shoots and open houses, attended by rich Indians and Europeans alike, continued unabated. On the streets of major cities, though, a definite streak of anti-Europeanism started to mar relationships, with western ties and hats forcibly removed from Europeans in Bombay, Calcutta and Karachi, the Punjab Governor's car stoned by student demonstrators on the Mall in Lahore and Europeans thrown from their bicycles, while some British tommies about to be shipped home chalked ‘cheer, wogs, we are quitting India!’ on railway carriages. 12 ‘I am bound to say that I cannot recollect any period,’ wrote the anguished British Governor of the Central Provinces and Berar to the Viceroy in 1945, reflecting on the charged political rhetoric of the times, ‘in which there have been such venomous and unbridled attacks against Government and Government officers.’ 13 The 1946 Victory Day parade, a grand spectacle that would have been utilised, in the old order, to express imperial might and to celebrate Indian and British connections, was boycotted by nearly all the major political parties and accompanied by anti-imperial rioting in New Delhi. Mills, schools, shops and colleges were closed, black protest flags were draped from windows, and European-owned cars smouldered while police used fire and tear gas to control crowds. As the procession passed through Connaught Circus, Delhi's commercial hub, crowds cheered the men of the Royal Indian Navy, which had recently mutinied in Bombay, but other units were jeered as they passed through. 14 The popular mood had changed to one where anti-imperial feeling could be aired freely and without fear.
Ultimately, European civilians were not harmed during the violence of 1946, or in the Partition conflict that followed, and some even commented on the ease with which they were able to move around afflicted cities: ‘the start of a street fight was delayed to allow my wife to cross the road,’ one British newspaper editor bemusedly recalled. 15 Yet it was not self-evident that this would be the outcome and there was mounting anxiety about the safety of Europeans as the Raj went into terminal decline. As an alarmist intelligence report, forwarded by Wavell to the Governor-General, recorded, ‘In Delhi, large handwritten posters in red ink recently appeared threatening