Other Side Of Silence

by Urvashi Butalia

  7

  ‘Margins’

  Despite the recent opening up of Partition histories there are many aspects that remain invisible in official, historical accounts of the event. Yet, as one begins to scratch the surface, even of what are seen as ‘traditional’ sources of history — documents, reports, official letters, newspaper accounts etc., — there is an immediate clamouring of ‘voices’ that demand to be ‘heard’, voices that tell of the many histories that lie, still undiscovered, in these pages. Among these are stories of very many people who inhabit a world that is somehow — falsely — seen as peripheral. These histories have remained hidden, to my mind because so much writing on Partition has focused on Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims — or more correctly on Hindu and Sikh and Muslim men — that it is as if no other identity existed. More, being Hindu, Muslim or Sikh has been understood only in religious terms. Differences of status and class among Hindus or Muslims, or indeed differences of gender or caste, those difficult things that complicate the borders of what we see as identity have, by and large, been glossed over. In its almost exclusive focus on Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims, Partition history has worked to render many others invisible. One such history is that of the scheduled castes, or untouchables. Harijans, Dalits, untouchables, by whatever name you call the protagonists of this history, have remained, in a sense, virtually untouchable even in the writing of this history. In trying to recover these voices I make no claim to have discovered something new. For many years, like others, I too have thought of Partition only in terms of religious identities, and more particularly, the identities of the two opposing communities. It is always difficult to pinpoint when one begins to arrive at a different understanding. For me, I think the process began with my exploration of the histories of women and children. In 1986, Peter Chappell, Sati Khanna and I had spoken to a woman, a sweeper from Batala about Partition. At the time, I had automatically identified Maya Rani as a woman, assuming that it was from this identity that she would speak. But Maya, when she spoke to us, identified herself differently, as a Harijan, and only then as a woman. Was there then a history of Harijans too at Partition? I realized then that the stories of women and children were not the only ones that lay shrouded in silence. There were others, too, whose lives Partition had touched in unexpected ways, and about whom little was known. Thus it was that I began to look at other stories, other silences.

  When we met her Maya was in her mid-fifties, a sturdy woman working as a sweeper in a school (which she called a college) in Batala. Once school duty was over, Maya did a bit of moonlighting, working in private houses to add to her income. Maya told us the story of her home, Dinanagar. As with many villages in 1947, the fate of hers too had hung in balance for a while. (And indeed, Gurdaspur district, in which Batala falls, was considered one of the ‘disputed’ districts, neither straightforwardly Muslim nor straightforwardly Hindu/Sikh.) Now there was a rumour that it would go to Pakistan, she said, and suddenly stories would fly that it would go to Hindustan. Each time one of these rumours became rife, people of the other community would abandon their homes and run, leaving everything behind. Maya and her friends watched this helter-skelter flight almost as if it was a game. She laughed as she told this story:

  Weren’t we frightened? No, we weren’t frightened — everyone tried to scare us, even our parents. But all the children of that area, none of us was scared. Often, we would leave our own roof and climb up onto a neighbour’s, just to see. Then we all got together and started to go into people’s houses. In some we found rice, in others almonds, sevian ... we began to collect all these and pile them up in our house. Great big utensils, patilas, parats ... we collected them all.

  Yes, we children did this. Then the city elders, Hindus, they felt this was not a good thing, this kind of looting, and it should be stopped, if possible without any ill feeling. About six or seven of the important ones got together and called us. We were all together, our people. They said, don’t do this, you will also be searched later, all your things will be snatched away from you, you shouldn’t do this. But we didn’t stop, we just went on.

  Our father also told us to stop, and each time he said that we’d say, yes, we’ll stop. But as soon as the men went away to sit down and talk, we would start again ... rice, food, all sorts of nice things. From one shop we stole pure ghee and almonds; at other places we found cloth. We collected so many utensils that we filled up a room as large as this one. Once we’d done this, the city elders announced that all copper utensils that were found in anyone’s house would be confiscated. People should sell them. They must have wanted to get hold of them. So we sold the whole roomful, at two rupees or two and a half rupees a kilo. Later, people realized that this had all been a trick to snatch away all this cheaply — the shopkeepers took a lot of it ...

  I kept lots of new utensils, hamams, etc., for my wedding. I brought a lot of utensils with me when I got married. I also looted many razais, quilts, some already made and some which I made later with the material we found. There were eleven of us, girls, we all made our dowries with the stuff we collected ... two of those girls were also married in Batala.

  Maya’s story seemed amazing to me. How could she and her friends have done this? Didn’t anyone try to harm you, we asked. How did you escape the violence? Maya did eventually admit to being somewhat frightened while she and her friends looted their neighbours’ houses. But, she said, ‘we kept doing this, going from street to street. Our parents were very worried, they kept trying to stop us, saying we would get killed, people would take us for Musalmaans. But we thought, who’s going to take us away, who’s going to kill us? We call ourselves Harijans. Hindus, Christians, no one can take us away. (my italics) And like this, we jumped from roof to roof, not really caring what happened.’

  The first time I heard this, it came as a shock to me. Loot and theft are a part of all situations of conflict, and for the economically disadvantaged the chaos of the situation offers opportunities to amass goods and wealth, so it was not that that worried me. But, like all Hindus, somewhere deep down inside me I had assumed that Harijans (Dalits), Gandhi’s supposed ‘children of God’, relegated to the fringes of society, were part of the Hindu community, part of ‘us’. Yet, why should they feel this? Was this how they saw themselves? Maya was quite clear that they did not see themselves as Hindus or Christians (or indeed anyone else). Rather, they had their own, distinctive identity. Hard on the heels of this realization came another: in mainstream Hindu society the customary invisibility of the Dalits is based on their status as ‘scheduled castes’, ‘untouchables’ — people whose casteless status somehow places them outside the pale of caste Hindu society. They are the performers of menial, albeit essential, tasks: collecting refuse, cleaning toilets, tasks that must remain unseen, and more, untouched. And precisely for that reason, they remain ‘invisible’ and ‘untouchable’. Here, with Maya, was an ironic twist to this untouchability which, if she was to be believed, actually acted as a protective shield in a fight that was supposed to be between Muslims and Hindus. Further, the fact that Harijans were, to some extent, rendered invisible in Partition violence had led to another kind of invisibility: that of history itself. I realized then that the extreme visibility of Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs in the history of Partition had worked to ensure that those looking at Partition did not ‘see’ any other identities. Beginning to apprehend this, at first only vaguely, I decided to consciously look for stories that could throw some light on the subject.

  And there were many. In January 1948, two social workers, Sushila Nayyar and Anis Kidwai, went to visit Tihar village on the outskirts of Delhi. They had heard that a rich Hindu from Pakistan had left behind huge properties when he had moved, and had therefore, like many people, effected an exchange of property with a rich Muslim in Tihar to whom the land belonged. Each took the other’s property. But neither was obliged to carry on with the other’s business. The Hindu therefore, threw out all previously employed workers from his
newly-acquired piece of property. Most of these were Muslims, but about a third were Harijans. The Muslims made their way to one or other of the two Muslim camps that had been set up in the city. But for the Harijans, displaced in a war that was basically centred around Hindu and Muslim identities, there was nowhere to go. No camps to help them tide over the difficult time. No recourse to government — all too preoccupied at the moment with looking after the interests of Muslims and Hindus, no help from political leaders whose priorities were different at the time.

  Not only were their priorities different, but there was another, more ‘political’ reason why leaders could not allow themselves to ‘see’ the Harijans as separate, or different, from Hindus. In 1932, the colonial State had recognized the Dalits as a distinct group and had awarded them separate electorates. Then, a few months later, this was partially reversed by what came to be known as the Poona Pact. By this, the Congress, which was rapidly coming to be seen, by virtue of its opposition to the Muslim League, as representing Hindu interests, had drawn Dalits under its umbrella. They were part of the broader nationalist effort in Indian politics — thus while difference was recognized in that the Poona Pact established reservations, Harijans still formed part of the joint electorate. In 1946, this invisibility was further heightened when the Cabinet Mission put forward an interim plan which, it was hoped, would pave the way for a peaceful and planned transfer of power to Indians. The plan suggested the setting up of a Constituent Assembly, consisting of Indian representatives in order to enable Indians to devise a Constitution for themselves. But who would be represented on the Constituent Assembly? The Cabinet Mission, in its wisdom, decided that it was ‘sufficient to recognise only three main communities in India: General, Muslim and Sikh’. Anyone other than Muslim or Sikh then, was subsumed under the term General (for which one can read Hindu). Not Sikhs and not Hindus, nor Muslims, but ‘general’ — how could their different needs then be recognized?

  When Anis Kidwai and Sushila Nayyar went to Tihar, they found, on the outskirts of the village, a number of old Harijan men, standing, looking at their old homes, bemoaning their fate. Their village was now being prepared to house the Hindu refugees who would be coming in from Pakistan. ‘But what about us,’ they said, ‘where will we go? Who will look after us?’1 And indeed there wasn’t anyone to look after them, for they did not fit any of the definitions that enabled displaced people to seek help. In December 1947 Ambedkar wrote to Nehru, complaining that scheduled caste evacuees who had come into East Punjab were not able to take shelter in refugee camps established by the Indian government. The reason, he said, was that officers in charge of the camps discriminated between caste Hindus and scheduled caste refugees. Apparently, the Relief and Rehabilitation Department had made a rule that only those refugees who were staying in relief camps could receive rations, clothing etc. ‘On account of their not staying in the Refugee Camps for the reason mentioned above,’ he said, ‘the Scheduled Caste refugees are not getting any relief.’2 So only those who could get into camps were eligible for rations; scheduled castes could not get into camps because camp officers would not allow them in. They were, ostensibly, ‘Hindus’ living in Hindustan. By and large refugee camps housed two kinds of refugees: those coming in from Pakistan (mostly Hindus), and those waiting to go there (mostly Muslims). The Harijans of Tihar did not fit any of these categories. They were from Delhi and needed a place in Delhi. Where, then, could they go?

  There were further anomalies in this. Not all Dalits were homeless or unable to get into camps. Among those who had managed to come away from Pakistan were large numbers who worked on the land. But for them, the problems were of a different order. According to the administrative rules that had been laid down, compensatory land was made available mainly to those who could be defined as agriculturalists — in other words, to those who owned land. Dalits, however, were not owners. Rather, they were tillers of the land, so they could make no legitimate claim to getting compensatory land. A number of appeals were made to the government suggesting possible remedies for this lacuna — among these was the following letter dated May 3, 1948, from Rameshwari Nehru who was, at the time, head of the Harijan Section:

  Sir

  About 2,50,000 Harijans, i.e. 50,000 families of Harijan refugees have migrated from West Punjab and are at present rotting in East Punjab camps. About 90% of them are fine agriculturalists i.e. tillers of the soil and can made a magnificient contribution to the ‘Grow More Food’ campaign. But they are at present living a life of misery and idleness in refugee camps and are depending for their sustenance on the free but inadequate rations supplied by the Government.

  2. The problem of their rehabilitation requires our immediate attention. On a rough calculation even if the Government is spending Re.1/- per day per refugee, the daily expenses on the relief of these refugees come to Rs 2,80,000 which is a huge drain on any Government. Besides signs of gradual demoralization among these refugees living a life of forced idleness are discernible. We must therefore plan their immediate rehabilitation.

  3. These Harijans have been life long agriculturalists i.e. tillers of the soil. It will be improper to change their life long avocation and divert them to other channels. They must therefore be settled on land. If possible scientific and improved methods of agriculture must be taught to them.

  4. The baffling problem, however, is whence to bring the land? According to a statement made by the Premier of the East Punjab, Dr Gopichand Bhargava, at a Press Conference at Delhi on November 26 1947, Muslims of East Punjab have left behind 33 lac acres of land, whereas the non-Muslims of West Punjab have left behind 61 lac acres of land. It has also been estimated that 12 lac acres of land have been left behind by the Muslims in the 4 states of East Punjab, i.e. Jind, Patiala, Faridkot, Kapurthala. This means that there are 45 lac acres of land available for distribution to immigrants from West Punjab. According to the policy so far announced by the East Punjab Government, the available land in that province will be allotted to land owners as distinguished from mere tillers of the soil as Harijans are. It is humbly suggested that if out of the total of 45 lac acres of land only 5 lac acres are reserved for Harijan refugee agriculturalists and the remaining 40 lac distributed amongst the owners of 60 lac acres of land, we will, without any appreciable cut in the allotment of land to those who had holdings in West Punjab, be taking a bold step for the resettlement of poor Harijans. Each Harijan family could thus be assigned 10 acres of land with occupancy rights and it should be possible to introduce cooperative farming among them to ensure increased production.

  5. It is gratifying to learn that through the intervention of Government of India, the Bikaner State has allotted about one lac acres of land vacated by Muslims in Ganga Nagar colony (Bikaner) to the actual tillers of the soil by granting 16 acres to each agriculturalist family. About 1200 Harijan families i.e. about 6000 Harijans have also been allotted land in that area. In Bharatpur and Alwar States, also, vast tracts of cultivable land have been left by Muslims and Rehabilitation Department of the Government of India have rigidly stuck to the principle of granting land only to the actual tillers of the soil. With a partial application of this principle on a limited scale in East Punjab, the poor tiller of the soil would feel the glow of economic freedom under Congress Raj. He had so far been a mere serf and now in Independent India he would become a peasant proprietor, a free man with some status. He would understand the meaning of swaraj, the significance of Congress Raj. His bonds would be broken and he would consider himself as a free and independent man.

  6. It may be remembered that there were only a few Muslim landlords in East Punjab before Partition. The land was mostly distributed amongst small holders of land. [It is recommended] that the tillers of the soil through efforts [be] made to introduce cooperative farming.

  7. Another point deserving attention is that allotment of land to those land owners who might look upon trade as their main source of income, holding land only as absentee-landlords, wou
ld not be sound agrarian policy. It would be better to allot land to actual cultivators. If this view is accepted Harijan cultivators would be able to settle down on land in common with other agriculturalists.

  8. To sum up, therefore, 50,000 families of Harijan agriculturalist refugees from West Punjab demand that in free India they must no more be treated as serfs. As a matter of fact, they are not prepared to accept the position of ‘tenants-at-will’ which in other words means a life of serfdom. It is therefore respectfully submitted that this matter may be taken up and decided with the East Punjab Government on high level so that the poor tiller may not be deprived of land which is his birth right.3

  Land — how much was lost and how much recovered in exchange — was a key question at the time of Partition. The irony and tragedy, so evident in Rameshwari Nehru’s appeals that the Punjab government follow the pattern set by others and keep the promise of independent India, was that where refugees were concerned, land was seen to belong to only those who owned it, not those who worked it. So all compensatory policies and schemes were owner-to-owner — if you lost property, you got property in exchange. But land is surely more than just ownership. It is, to use an age-old cliche, the product of the labour of those who work it. While relief and rehabilitation policies then had found a way of compensating those who owned the land, there was no way the loss of labour, or indeed of the location of that labour, could be compensated. For those who were mere labourers, or who lived on the land on which they laboured, once that land went, so did their homes and their work. In a new location, the landowner could hire new labour, or put the land to a different use. Who would make good the other kinds of losses? This was evident with the Harijans in Tihar, as it was in the concerns reflected in Rameshwari Nehru’s letter above. Why, one might ask, was no thought put into how the State could compensate for the loss of labour? Could it be that the exigencies of the situation made it difficult for those in power to take account of all contingencies? But then, given the agenda of independence, the promises it held, and the fact that land reform had been ongoing since the thirties, here was the ideal opportunity to change the pattern of land ownership vis-à-vis the Harijans. Why was it not used? Could this, then, the fact that Harijans did not own much in terms of property or goods, have also been a reason for their immunity in the attacks? The seizure of property had, after all, played a fairly significant role in the violence. The Harijans had nothing to be looted, nothing to lose. And there was a bizarre kind of immunity that their work bestowed on them: to put it crudely, if you kill a landlord, another will come up in his place. But if you kill someone who cleans your toilets, it’s probably difficult to find a ready replacement.