Partition: 1947

This post coincides with the 65th anniversary of 'Independence' - that point in 1947 marking the end of the British Raj and the division of the Indian subcontinent into the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The entire subject remain complex though over the next couple of posts, I hope to explore a few thoughts and opinions on the matter. In this post I begin by starting with a brief history.

British Colonial administration did not directly rule all of "India". There were several different political arrangements: Provinces were ruled directly and the Princely States had varying legal independent arrangements.The Indian National Congress formed in 1884 by a mixture of Indian (Hindu and Muslim) and English activists led for the initial calls to have more Indian representation within the administration.

By 1906 the All India Muslim League had been formed in Dhaka in reaction to what some elite Muslims viewed as Hindu dominance in Congress. As the appeal of Mohandas Gandhi and the Free India movement increased, a number of different scenarios were proposed. Amongst the first to make the demand for a separate state was the philosopher Allama Iqbal, who, in his presidential address to the 1930 convention of the Muslim League, proposed a separate nation for Muslims.

The 1946 Cabinet Mission aimed to reach an agreement between Congress and the Muslim League amid growing tension. Nehru, leading Congress was unwilling to accept a decentralised state and Jinnah, leading the Muslim League (made up largely of the 'secular' landed Muslim elite) returned a demand for Pakistan as a bargaining chip. Initially most Muslims opposed partition and there was no pre or post Pakistan 'plan' right up to the announcement in June 1947 that the British had set a date for handover.

Religious communalism fuelled the British decision to exit early (Lord Louis Mountbatten having just been made Viceroy of India in February 1947) and sealed - by accident - the decision to partition the subcontinent. Sir Cyril Radcliffe never having visited India before was employed to draw the boundaries between the two states in July 1947 five weeks before the end of British rule. On August 15 1947, India was granted her independence, and Pakistan the day before. Note, this was before Radcliffe Boundary Committee had made the announcement on the boundaries and before either country knew their borders. Significantly, partition led to the biggest sudden movement of people in human history  - with up to 12 to 15 million people uprooted within a short period and the after effects felt for years.

More in my next postings ...

Ahmad Shah Bābā احمد شاه بابا

Ahmad Shah Durrani احمد شاه درانی (born in 1722 either in Herat or Multan; died in 1773, Kandahar), also known as Ahmad Shāh Abdālī احمد شاه ابدالي was the founder of the Durrani Afghan Empire is regarded by many to be the founder of the modern state of Afghanistan when he united the land in 1747.

Born as Ahmad Khan, Ahmad Shah rose quickly to become a commander of four thousand Abdali (later known as Durrani) Pashtoon soldiers following his enlistment in the military of the Afsharid kingdom. In June 1747 following the death of Nader Shah Afshar of Persia, Ahmad Shah became the the Emir of Khorasan. Able to mobilise the Pashtoon tribes and allies, he pushed east towards the Mughal and the Maratha Empire of India as well as west towards the disintegrating Afsharid Empire of Persia and north toward the Khanate of Bukhara.

Within a few years he had conquered all of today's Afghanistan and much of northeastern Iran. After a failed attempt to gain the Panjab in 1748, Ahmad Shah returned two years later and displaced Mir Mannu, the Mughal-heir apparent and governor of Panjab. His incursions into India roused the oppostion of the Sikhs and the Maratha rulers on several occasions leading to the defeat of the Marathas eight times, including the major victory at the 1761 Battle of Panipat which was fought north of Delhi.

Western advances of the Sikhs, better organised and disciplined in opposition led to Ahmad Shah returning to Panjab in 1764 and 1767 to defend Lahore, but the threat of internal strife and mutiny of his troops over pay, meant that on his retreat, Lahore was eventually taken followed by the Sikh advance further into Panjab. Ahmad Shah focused his efforts on retaining hold of Peshawar and the country west of Attock. Even today, for Afghans who oppose the British laid Durrand Line, these areas would still be included in a "Greater Afghanistan".  

Ahmad Shah's mausoleum is located in Kandahar, Afghanistan, adjacent to the famous Mosque of the Cloak of the Prophet Mohammed PBUH in the center of the city. Today he referred to as Ahmad Shah Bābā, احمد شاه بابا,  the Father of Afghanistan and the man who united the Pashtoons into one country.

Discordia

Discordia was the Latin incarnation of Eris, the goddess of strife in the Greek mythological traditions and right now, there are many examples of strife around us. 

Without going into a 'depressingly' exhaustive list of trouble spots around the world, the wars in Libya and Syria serve to illustrate a key point. Both countries have resistance movements that stem from this year's Arab Spring and in both places the opposition threaten an older political tradition of despotic rule by singular individuals. Libya and Syria, had so far, manage to avoid general expectations around accountability at home, because, like the remaining Arab world, they are not democratic. The truth is that however Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar Al Assad choose to view this, the resistance is a form of People Power and undoubtedly both will recognise the significance of this. 

It is this combination of People Power and Discordia which bring me right to India, the world's largest democracy.

Of late the international media is beginning to pay more and more interest to news threads around Anna Hazare, an ex-military political activist in his 70s, who seems to have mobilised the masses and troubled the Indian authorities with his calls for accountability. The government's reaction to Hazare and his followers suggests that feathers indeed have been ruffled and the crack down is drawing both domestic and international comment. Arrested, and on hunger strike, Anna Hazare, seems to have challenged the established belief that India might not also be as draconian as the rest.

People Power and Discordia, live here too.

Textbook Conversations

Shuttling between Kabul, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Attock, Karachi, Abu Dhabi and Manchester over a period of four days is pretty hectic. Several flights, taxi rides, meetings, dinners and family formalities later, I take the opportunity to reflect on conversations that I've had with people. Briefly I want to consider Pakistan - damaged by internal strife, poor international press and yet still trying to build an image for itself.

I'm always willing to learn in order to understand more, but that does not mean I passively accept everything that is said. I had an interesting dinner in Islamabad, where the host accepted that Pakistan had a poor public image but his view was that Pakistan survived despite aggressive policies by greater enemies because of Allah's protection and that the neighbours - India and Afghanistan could not be trusted. I heard a similar view in Karachi - that India was ready to 'attack' Pakistan. Rather than contemplate the failings within, the commonality was one of finger-pointing and feeling sorry that Pakistan had failed to live up to its founder's ideals. In short the view was that the country was misrepresented and misunderstood and that the leaders were little more than stooges for the UK and the US. 

I have a family connection to Pakistan, but I have always been a little ambivalent about what the country stands for - and whilst I always want it to be better for the common people, I don't claim to be automatically forgiving. As much as I try to understand the passions of the country, I see significant failures and widespread alienation. What emerged from the conversations I had with people is how commonly held values (myths?) about Pakistan are not questioned or challenged. These opinions form what may be considered the "textbook" view within Pakistan.  There are voices from beyond that ask legitimate questions, but these seem to be filtered out of the media within because they criticise the basis on which the country stands. I think that this fundamentally comes down to an education system that has operated much like the state's propaganda machine where critical thinking is not encouraged.

Most people in Pakistan think of survival, so I can forgive some of the apathetic acceptance of the way things are, but if an educational culture of critical thinking were to exist, then there could be serious questions asked about the status quo. A kind of enlightenment, no less.

Malla Kalyan

Osama, Dead.

This is not a good day for Pakistan, despite the announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden. 

The compound in Abbotabad that Osama Bin Laden was found in was reported to have had high walls, barbed wire and security cameras. Did the intelligence arm of the Pakistan military - the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) know he was here less than a 1km away from a military academy?

Since 2005, the US authorities have become increasingly persuaded that the ISI has taken an "a la carte" approach to terrorist groups - picking and choosing which group to support.

Crudely, this boils down to whether the groups act as a hedge against the growing regional influence of India.

Billions in aid is sent every year to Pakistan and if the US assessment is that there were elements within the ISI who did know where Osama Bin Laden was hiding, US relations with Pakistan - already severely strained - could reach crisis point.

... Oh and ... whilst I do know better than to join the conspiracy theory wagon, exactly where are the photographs that prove the death yesterday ...?

A Conversation Between Two Great Men

When I reflect on the continuing turmoil that surrounds the lands of my people, I think of how far we have strayed from Bacha Khan's vision. I take comfort, however, in these words here - the possibility - the hope and the belief of who we are. Here's an excerpt of a conversation between Mahatma Gandhi and Bacha Khan, two incredibly great men:

BACHA KHAN: Gandhiji, you have been preaching non violence in India for a long time now, but I started teaching the Pathans non-violence only a short time ago. Yet, in comparison, the Pathans seem to have grasped the idea of non-violence much quicker and much better than the Indians. Just think how much violence there was in India during the war in 1942. Yet in the North West Province, in spite of all the cruelty and the oppression the British inflicted upon them, not one Pathan resorted to violence, though they too possess the instruments of violence. How do you explain that?

GANDHIJI: Non-violence is not for cowards. It is for the brave and the courageous. And the Pathans are more brave and courageous than the Hindus. That is the reason why the Pathans were able to remain non-violent.

Read more.

Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa پښتونخوا

The announcement today to rename the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to one of the names preferred by the Pashtoons is welcome news. There is still some debate about the nature of the name, but for now, Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa خیبر پښتونخوا is a name that represents a break from the colonial past when the territory was split by the British colonialists from Afghanistan and incorporated within the empire as the north west frontier of British India and a buffer to Russian influence.

پښتونخوا زما وطن
Pukhtoonkhwa, zama watan
Pukhtoonkhwa, my homeland

Tor_Khan تور خان

Afghan Folkore

Three brothers had children born the same year.

To Mohammad Ayub, a son named Khadi.
To Mohammad Akbar, a son named Aslam.
To Mohammad Sufi, a daughter named Marghalai.

Mohammad Akbar and Mohammad Sufi were wealthy farmers,but Mohammad Ayub had lost all his land in a flash flood by the Khash Rud, and he worked as a labourer for his two younger brothers.

As Khadi and Marghalai grew up together, they fell in love and would often meet secretly in a clump of trees near Koh-i-Duzdan (Mountain of Thieves). Their love was as pure as they were young,and one day Khadi asked his father to ask his uncle for Marghalai in marriage. The father tried to gently persuade his son, but could not.

So Mohammad Ayub set out on his impossible task, for he knew that Marghalai had already been promised to her wealthy cousin, Aslam.

When the young lovers met for the first time after the sad news, they both wept, and Khadi announced his decision to leave and seek his fortune in Hindustan.

"I shall return wealthy and we shall be married," he said.

"And I shall wait," said Marghalai.

Khadi left in the darkness, followed by the eyes of Marghalai, flooded with tears.

Years passed, and a rich caravan from Hindustan approached the village. The leader was Khadi, now handsome and wealthy, by the will of Allah. The caravan camped near the same clump of trees, and Khadi, disguised as a peddlar, entered the village and asked about Marghalai.

The people told him, "She is alive and well. She is happy, the wife of Aslam and the mother of Jamila, Ayub, Akbar, and Khadi. Allah has been gracious to her."

"And what of Mohammad Ayub?"

"Dead, dead many years ago. He died of a broken heart because his son, Khadi, left without a word, the ungrateful wretch?"

Khadi sadly returned to the clump of trees. The caravan left and slowly made its way back to Hindustan with all its riches, and with Khadi, and his broken heart.

taken from the retelling by Louis Dupree

Proxy Wars

"Without Pakistan and without its co-operation with Afghanistan, Afghanistan cannot be stable or peaceful," Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a news conference in Islamabad yesterday.

"It is also, I believe, recognised in Pakistan that without a stable and peaceful Afghanistan there cannot be stability or peace in Pakistan.

"Afghanistan does not want a proxy war between India and Pakistan on its soil. It does not want a proxy war between Iran and the United States in Afghanistan," he said.

Are they listening?

Nuclear Neighbourhood

With a fifth of the world's population between them, deep distrust and the never ending threats and posturing, a question on a BBC forum that caught my interest was, "Should Pakistan and India engage in dialogue?" It's a valid question especially considering that there are many who are deeply apathetic about the situation in South Asia and for varying reasons feel that talking to the neighbour has never quite yielded desirable outcomes. Personally, whatever we think of the political game play, it would be very worrying if Pakistan and India didn't speak. Why is this so? Well it's because they are nuclear powers for one.

Here's a comment left by a contributor called Vejain (at 11:56am on 17 Feb 2010) on Soutik Biswas's blog that he writes for the BBC. The comment is in relation to the stalemate between India and Pakistan:

The US is responsible for creating this morass of mind-boggling proportions. Had it not been for US's insatiable thirst for showing its might to the "commies" it would not have got involved in Vietnam and Afghanistan. After it was ignominiously defeated by the North Vietnamese with China's help, the US tried a different tack. As USSR was perceived a bigger threat to capitalism and as there is no love lost between China and USSR, why not get China on its side? Thus the policy of "engaging" China rather than isolating it. To be bedfellows with China they used Pakistan as the go-between. As a result of this 'engagement' China became the world's factory for manufactured goods - at the cost of decimating industries of the West and almost destroying their economies.

CIA and its progeny ISI did manage to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, but in the process created the Taliban monster. Now the US is facing two self-inflicted monsters – Chinese hegemony and ISI delinquency. One has destroyed its economy and the other is thwarting its efforts in Afghanistan by inventing the so-called good Taliban and bad Taliban!!

Food for thought, I guess.

One People

In response to a reader letter to his publication Harijan in 1939, Ghandi wrote this reponse. Readers of this blog will be able to figure the political position posed by the writer of the letter, but here I admire how Gandhi clearly understood the universality of people. His answers take the form of questions and the message - from any perspective - Hindu or Muslim - remains relevant today, over 62 years after Gandhi's death on 30th January 1948.

Why is India not one nation?

Was it not one during, say, the Mughal period? Is India composed of two nations? If it is, why only two? Are not Christians a third, Parsis a fourth, and so on? Are the Muslims of China a nation separate from the other Chinese? Are the Muslims of England a different nation from the other English? How are the Muslims of the Punjab different from the Hindus and the Sikhs? Are they not all Punjabis, drinking the same water, breathing the same air and deriving sustenance from the same soil? ...

... The way suggested by the correspondent is the way of strife. Live and let live or mutual forbearance and toleration is the law of life. That is the lesson I have learnt from the Quran, the Bible, the Zend Avesta and the Gita.

... the truth is the truth ...

Quotes from Mahatma Gandhi:

"A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble."

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

"We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it."

"Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth."

700 Innocent Civilians in 2009

Ahmed Rashid, Lahore-based, journalist writing for the BBC:
Pakistan & Afghanistan Crisis: Pakistan

In 2010, Pakistan faces a triple crisis:

• Acute political instability - President Asif Ali Zardari may be forced to resign, which could trigger long-term political unrest
  
• An ever-worsening economic crisis that is creating vast armies of jobless youth who are being attracted to the message of extremism
• The army's success rate in dealing with its own indigenous Taliban problem

The latter has been partially successful, but consider the figures reported by the Dawn Media Group:

Peshawar: Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians. According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009.

For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent people also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities. The success percentage for the drone hits during 2009 was hardly 11 per cent. On average, 58 civilians were killed in these attacks every month, 12 persons every week and almost two people every day.

Ahmed Rashid continues:
Pakistan & Afghanistan Crisis: Afghanistan

The Pakistan military, which effectively controls policy towards India and Afghanistan, shows no signs of giving up on the sanctuaries that the Afghan Taliban have acquired in Pakistan. US success in Afghanistan is unlikely without eliminating these sanctuaries or forcing the Afghan Taliban leadership into talks with Kabul.

For the moment the army is hedging its bets with the Afghan Taliban, as it is fearful about a potential power vacuum in Afghanistan once the Americans start to leave in 2011. Other neighbouring countries - India, Iran, Russia and the Central Asian republics - may start thinking along the same lines and prepare their own Afghan proxies to oppose the Afghan Taliban, which could result in a return to a brutal civil war similar to that of the 1990s.

Is History about to repeat itself?

In a World of Plenty ...

... why are so many of us hungry?

The child pictured, from Pakistan, is a window cleaner and the sole breadwinner in her family. "Whatever I earn I give to my mother, and when I am a hungry, I eat at the food distribution centre." BBC News

Yesterday's media commentary on the UNICEF report, TRACKING PROGRESS ON CHILD AND MATERNAL NUTRITION raises some alarming statistics - over 90% of the worlds most undernourished children are in Asia and Africa with an estimated 195 million children in developing countries suffering from stunting and poor physical development as a result of undernourishment.

Undernutrition caused by poor feeding and care, aggravated by illness leads to a cycle of recurring illness and faltering growth – irreversibly damaging their development and their cognitive abilities, and impairing their capacities as adults. If a child suffers from diarrhoea – due to a lack of clean water or adequate sanitation, or because of poor hygiene practices – it will drain nutrients from his or her body.

And so it goes, from bad to worse: 1 billion people world-wide are undernourished. and hungry. Children who are weakened by nutritional deficiencies cannot stave off illness for long, and the frequent and more severe bouts of illness they experience make them even weaker. A third of all deaths of under 5s is related to undernutrition.

Fifty-nine percent of under-5s in Afghanistan show signs of moderate to severe stunting and comes out as the country where percentage wise, its the highest. India, Nigeria and Pakistan also have percentages in their 40s.

In a world where there are people over-eating, and too much of our food is wasted, it is outrageous that globally, as we approach 2010, we still have instances when our children go to sleep hungry at night.

Badshah Khan: A Torch for Peace

Yesterday evening, I saw the film The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, A Torch for Peace, which played at the Marina Mall as part of the Middle East Film Festival, Abu Dhabi 2009. The film is an amazing documentary on the life of the Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a towering giant of heart and stature who was, is and will always remain a Pashtoon King of Peace, known as Badshah/Bacha Khan. He was a key figure in the Free India movement and this of course, invited the wrath of the British, even towards his peaceful cause.

As a Pashtoon, Bacha Khan showed the people that he loved a very different way - he challenged the opinion that Pashtoons could only be known for the gun and as a result could only remain backward. Bacha Khan was a good friend of Mahatma Gandhi and, like Gandhi, managed to mobilise the masses to resist injustice through peace. His movement of Khudai Khidmatgars (Allah's helpers) were taught to stand on their feet and bring about a positive change in themselves and their society through peace and social work. In the film, his daughter talks about his 'love for the poor people'.

Peace: Long live the King

His peace movement invited trouble and for a third of his time on earth, Bacha Khan was prisoner of conscience - in 1962 he was named by Amnesty International as Prisoner of the Year - overall for every three days of his life, he spent one day in British or Pakistani jails, often in solitary confinement. He continually challenged the validity of the British laid-down borders and later found sanctuary in Afghanistan - a natural home for the Pashtoons, travelling extensively and asking to be buried in Jalalabad when he was dying. When Bacha Khan's family said it would be difficult to arrange visas to cross the border, his reply to his family was "One day all this will be one".

The Elephant Clock of Al Jazari

A Most Ingenious Mechanical Device

One of the centre pieces of the India Court at the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai is the Elephant Clock, based on a medieval invention by Al Jazari, celebrated craftsman, mathematician and astronomer.

Al Jazari, born in 1136, upper Mesopotamia served as a engineer to the court of the Turkish Artudid dynasty that ruled Eastern Anatolia and the areas that are now northern Syria and Iraq. The elephant clock, featured in Al Jazari's manuscripts, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, is an early humanoid robot featuring a mechanical mahout who strikes a cymbal every half hour.

The Book of Knowledge

The elephant clock above photographed by me at the Ibn Battuta Mall is a stunning reproduction of the original and is featured below in illustrative form in the book of knowledge.

Kuch Dil Ne Kaha

I'm not a real Bollywood boffin and with exception, I have tended to avoid the newer, more western-orientated batch of popular films. I'm a family person, so the movies must generally fit that "viewing for all" criteria. There was a time, (think circa 1980) when my father would hire a video player from a place on Morley Street, Bradford, and a bunch of films that had been copied onto VHS. I distinctly remember seeing Gunga Jumna that way and maybe even Amar, Akbar, Anthony.

My father and my Mama* are compediums of knowledge when it comes to back and white Bombay Cinema - mixed in with recollections of their tales of growing up in Karachi - and can easily tell you all-you-need-to-know about the films of the time. Between them, they have a classic collection of films - mostly VHS (and some VCD/DVD), but one that would be a fine digital library if anyone took the time to convert. Anyway, the better impression of Bollywood that I have is of that classic era, so here's a clip. Lata Mangeshkar sings for Sharmila Tagore in the film Anupama (Unparalled), 1966. This song, Kuch Dil Ne Kaha (The Heart Said Something) is a personal favourite.

*Mama = Maternal Uncle

The Beast Within

What you have here is a BBC report on the spread of Taliban influence in Pakhtunkhwa suggesting that only 38% of NWFP and FATA areas is under government control.

The immediate reaction to this when it was put out was one of vehement denial by President Asif Ali Zardari who was in London meeting with PM Gordon Brown negotiating an aid package.

The BBC continues, asking:

Is the Pakistan army serious in its objectives?

There have been a lot of questions raised about the commitment of the Pakistan's security establishment. In particular, the role of the country's powerful but shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has been the subject of much debate.

Most of it is focused on the agency's relationship with the Taleban. The Taleban were very much a creation of the ISI as part of the army's doctrine of 'strategic depth'.

This doctrine saw Afghanistan as a friendly satellite that would give Pakistani forces geographic strategic depth in case of war with its perennial rival India and its much more powerful military.

The army also saw the Taleban as an instrument in Pakistan becoming a player in the new great game for energy resources in Central Asia. While post 9/11, the country ostensibly threw in its lot with the US, many believe the army and the ISI continue to secretly support the Taleban.

While all Pakistani authorities deny this on the record, many senior security personnel have admitted some support to the Taleban. They point to the growing influence of India in Afghanistan, and say Pakistan cannot allow this 'encirclement' as it directly imparts on its national security.

I should add, that it was the President's late wife, Benazir Bhutto who in her tenure as PM gave the initial green light to the Taliban when they came prominence in Afghanistan back in 1994. Denial or irony?

Ustad Awal Mir استاد اولمير

Ustad Awal Mir, استاد اولمیر, celebrated composer, musician, singer and poet continues to be a legendary figure in Pashto music. He was born in 1931 Peshawar, British India where studied music under Ustad Jafar in Peshawar and began to perform initially for radio broadcasts. His first song for Radio Peshawar was زړگى مې شو ټوټې ټوټې  Zrgee Me Sho Tttottai Ttottai (My Heart Has Broken Pieces).

At 18, he visited Kabul, Afghanistan to perform at the Independence Day concert where he remained until his death in 1982. The title, Ustad, was later conferred upon Awal Mir by the Ministry of Culture and Information, Afghanistan.

The clip shows him performing ستا د سترګو بلا واخلم Sta Da Stergo Bala Wakhlam (Let Me Take the Pain from Your Eyes) written by Amanullah Sailab Sapi and remains one of my all time favourites.

Tor_Khan تور خان