Read Online The Hindi-Bindi Club by Monica Pradhan - Free Book Online
Authors: Monica Pradhan
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“I believe Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by nonparticipation in anything you believe is evil.”
At the stroke of midnight, August 15, 1947, the British Raj turned over the keys to the kingdom, returning the stolen “jewel in the crown” to her rightful owners. Buffed and polished, yes, but bashed into pieces.
Partitioned.
Hacking off chunks of the northwest and northeast created two countries. Democratic, secular India in the middle, flanked on either side by Islamic Pakistan, “land of the pure,” a victory for the Muslim League.
The theory:
a separate homeland for the Muslim minority, should they wish to leave Hindu-majority India.
The reality:
the most colossal human migration and exchange of population in history. Unprecedented carnage.
How did it happen? Who was to blame? Ask five different people and you’ll get five different answers. According to my parents and other family who survived to tell, fanatic leaders and militia groups played on communal fears and suspicions, and people of differing religions who’d managed to coexist in peace for centuries turned and raged against each other. For millions who suddenly found themselves on “the wrong side of the tracks,” remaining in their homes wasn’t an option. Driven by hope of a better future, or fear of peril, they got the hell out of Dodge.
In the Punjab, my family’s ancestral state in the northwest, the dividing line carved by the British boundary commission onto a map, akin to a butcher’s knife slitting the throat of a Hindu’s sacred cow or a Muslim’s sacrificial goat, rendered ten million people homeless. Among them, my mother’s family.
Forced to flee their beloved Lahore, “the Paris of India,” they were among millions of Hindus and Sikhs who migrated east. Simultaneously, millions of Muslims migrated west.
Along the way…
As my mother recounted to me in Goa, in excruciating detail, “One million deaths. Twenty thousand
reported
rapes. Almost a quarter million people declared missing.” Then, as if all that wasn’t horrific enough, her voice cracked, splintering my heart,
“Nanaji. Naniji.”
More personal, more painful than aggregate statistics: my great-grandparents, our casualties.
My stomach felt queasy, and I had to sit. Intellectually, I’d absorbed the history. I’d learned that when you seized a family’s ancestral land, forced people from their homes, tortured and murdered their innocents, or coerced religious conversions, there were ramifications. Lifelong, often multi-generational ramifications. The breeding of hatred. The quest for justice, or revenge, depending on your point of view.
Importantly, my parents wanted me to understand
Partition
was the root of modern-day tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan. Disputes over territory in Kashmir were ongoing aftershocks. And the problems of distant lands, like stones thrown in a pond, could one day, out of the clear blue sky, ripple to virgin shores with devastating results.
Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind,” but my mother, who revered the man, would be among the first to point out neither he nor I had her family’s experience.
If Gandhi couldn’t change her mind, what chance did I have?
Before I spoke, I chose my words carefully, knowing what an ultrasensitive topic this was, with reason. “I know there were atrocities I can’t begin to imagine. You’re right, I’ll never completely comprehend Partition because I didn’t live through it, or grow up surrounded by families who did. But Mom,” I said gently, “communal animosity…it’s like the Hatfields and the McCoys, passing down legacies of hate and prejudice to future generations,
innocent
generations. It’s not right. It wasn’t then. It isn’t now.”
“Oh, Preity.” My mother heaved a weary
At the stroke of midnight, August 15, 1947, the British Raj turned over the keys to the kingdom, returning the stolen “jewel in the crown” to her rightful owners. Buffed and polished, yes, but bashed into pieces.
Partitioned.
Hacking off chunks of the northwest and northeast created two countries. Democratic, secular India in the middle, flanked on either side by Islamic Pakistan, “land of the pure,” a victory for the Muslim League.
The theory:
a separate homeland for the Muslim minority, should they wish to leave Hindu-majority India.
The reality:
the most colossal human migration and exchange of population in history. Unprecedented carnage.
How did it happen? Who was to blame? Ask five different people and you’ll get five different answers. According to my parents and other family who survived to tell, fanatic leaders and militia groups played on communal fears and suspicions, and people of differing religions who’d managed to coexist in peace for centuries turned and raged against each other. For millions who suddenly found themselves on “the wrong side of the tracks,” remaining in their homes wasn’t an option. Driven by hope of a better future, or fear of peril, they got the hell out of Dodge.
In the Punjab, my family’s ancestral state in the northwest, the dividing line carved by the British boundary commission onto a map, akin to a butcher’s knife slitting the throat of a Hindu’s sacred cow or a Muslim’s sacrificial goat, rendered ten million people homeless. Among them, my mother’s family.
Forced to flee their beloved Lahore, “the Paris of India,” they were among millions of Hindus and Sikhs who migrated east. Simultaneously, millions of Muslims migrated west.
Along the way…
As my mother recounted to me in Goa, in excruciating detail, “One million deaths. Twenty thousand
reported
rapes. Almost a quarter million people declared missing.” Then, as if all that wasn’t horrific enough, her voice cracked, splintering my heart,
“Nanaji. Naniji.”
More personal, more painful than aggregate statistics: my great-grandparents, our casualties.
My stomach felt queasy, and I had to sit. Intellectually, I’d absorbed the history. I’d learned that when you seized a family’s ancestral land, forced people from their homes, tortured and murdered their innocents, or coerced religious conversions, there were ramifications. Lifelong, often multi-generational ramifications. The breeding of hatred. The quest for justice, or revenge, depending on your point of view.
Importantly, my parents wanted me to understand
Partition
was the root of modern-day tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan. Disputes over territory in Kashmir were ongoing aftershocks. And the problems of distant lands, like stones thrown in a pond, could one day, out of the clear blue sky, ripple to virgin shores with devastating results.
Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind,” but my mother, who revered the man, would be among the first to point out neither he nor I had her family’s experience.
If Gandhi couldn’t change her mind, what chance did I have?
Before I spoke, I chose my words carefully, knowing what an ultrasensitive topic this was, with reason. “I know there were atrocities I can’t begin to imagine. You’re right, I’ll never completely comprehend Partition because I didn’t live through it, or grow up surrounded by families who did. But Mom,” I said gently, “communal animosity…it’s like the Hatfields and the McCoys, passing down legacies of hate and prejudice to future generations,
innocent
generations. It’s not right. It wasn’t then. It isn’t now.”
“Oh, Preity.” My mother heaved a weary
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