Other Side Of Silence

by Urvashi Butalia

  Paradoxes and complications abound, however. It was difficult to find an easy fit between the democratic agenda and social vision that the new nation had set itself and the way rehabilitation policies were being played out on the ground. Spatial outcastes, Harijans remained second class citizens even as they were rehabilitated. And while there was little space for them in the new nation’s agenda, there was much greater space for women because with them, the stakes were different. Thus widows were recognized as being the permanent responsibility of a paternalistic State, homes and ashrams were provided for destitute and raped women, marriage bureaus were set up and the State took upon itself the task of looking after women’s ‘moral well being’. Despite this, in the shifting geography of citizenship at the time, the norm for the new Indian citizen remained, by and large, the male citizen. And it was this that allowed the State to not only be paternalistic, but also to act as coercive parent where women were concerned. Thus even as they were being assigned rights and privileges as citizens of this country, those very rights were being flouted with impunity through the process of forcible recovery, particularly of those women who did not wish to be recovered.

  I have spoken in this chapter mainly about the experiences of scheduled castes in relation to Hindus, and to the Indian and Pakistani States. I have little information about anything that took place outside of India, but I would like to end this account with two stories which have to do with the experiences of poor, marginalized people, and which relate to the two most important moments of life, birth and death. For me, these stories are moving reminders of the many hidden ways in which Partition touched on the lives of people.

  Dais (midwives) perform the task of bringing children into the world, of assisting at their birth. They are usually from the lower castes: the job of birthing is a messy one. It’s the dai who deals with the mess: cleaning up the blood, cutting the umbilical cord and so on. Equally important are the people who prepare the dead for burial or cremation: a number of rituals have to be carried out, in both instances the body has to be bathed and dressed. These tasks are performed either by close family or by those for whom the task is a profession. Anis Kidwai’s moving memoir, to which I have returned again and again, more regularly, and with much more absorption than I have to any book of conventional history, tells the story of an old man who had no one to perform his last rites.

  As I walked through the camp one day, towards the hospital, I found a dead body lying next to a patient on a bed in the hospital tent. This was nothing new: while there was time to tend to the living, there was little time for the dead. Normally, the task of bathing the body and preparing it for burial, putting on the shroud, all these were done by the family or then by the Jamiat. So I didn’t think much of this.

  Some time later, as Anis Kidwai returned, she found the body had not yet been removed. Is there no one to bury this old man, she asked, where are his relatives? But there were none, except for a girl, probably his daughter, and her young son. The daughter wept the whole time, but was not willing to take on the task of preparing her father’s body for burial. Kidwai and her friend, Jamila, then went off to look for somebody. Their first stop was the office of the relief committee. Here the maulvi refused to entertain their request. All the gravediggers and shroud- preparers have left for Pakistan by the last train, he said, and now there is no one to perform these tasks. Despite their entreaties, he refused to help them, saying this is not my business, I have enough on my hands.

  Defeated, Kidwai and Jamila tried to recruit the help of students from Jamia, but they too had all left. They tried to persuade the daughter, without luck. Just as they were despairing of ever being able to find someone to take on the task, two old women walked up and offered to do it. ‘We’ve never done it before,’ they said, ‘but one human body can’t be very different from another, and after all, we are all the same before Allah.’ And so saying, they began the work while Kidwai, Jamila and some others began digging a grave. Finally, the old man was laid to rest. His daughter did nothing but watch and weep and later, her family responsibilities over, she left for Pakistan.

  If the departure of gravediggers created a problem of what to do with the dead, so did that of the midwives, except that in this case the question was what to do with the living. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Anis Kidwai’s daughter, Kishwar Kidwai, found herself inadvertently assisting at the birth of a baby. Impatient to make its entry into the world, the baby was virtually pushing itself out while Kishwar, alone in the ‘hospital’ at the time, tried desperately to locate a nurse or a midwife. But they had all gone to Pakistan. The doctor who arrived, a Hindu and a male, turned his back to the mother, and gave detailed instructions to Kishwar who followed these nervously but managed to complete all the tasks assigned to her. No matter that Partition dislocated and uprooted people, said Anis Kidwai, but that did not mean that the round of births and deaths stopped. Nor, of course did many of the other things that make up routine and ritual in people’s lives. And it was in this that the importance of people who were otherwise assumed to be marginal, becomes clear.

  MAYA RANI

  ‘Blood upto the knees . . . ’

  I met Maya Rani in 1985-86 with Peter Chappell and Satti Khanna during the course of their film, A Division of Hearts. The interview that you see here was a sort of joint enterprise on all our parts, although the bulk of the questions were posed by Satti. The transcribing and translation was done by me. I have chosen to include this interview here for many reasons. As I mentioned in the above discussion, so much of the discussion on Partition has focused on Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, that the experiences of others whose lives were impacted by Partition barely figure in any telling. From that point of view, Maya’s interview is particularly important. Hers is the only telling that directly and squarely addresses the issue of caste. The importance of the issue only came home to me gradually, although it was Maya’s interview which spurred me on in the direction of actually looking at caste, and therefore also class, as a factor in Partition. Had I understood what she was pointing to earlier, I would perhaps have been able to find more people who could speak about the issue. As it is, hers is the only such interview, and its place in this narrative thus, is thus essential.

  Maya was in her mid-fifties when we met her, a strong, confident Punjabi woman who worked hard all day to make a living. Her permanent job in a school gave her a kind of security that was very important for the sense of self-confidence that Maya showed. She talked to us in her home, pointing to all sorts of objects, reminders of Partition. These were things she and her friends had looted, taking advantage of the confusion of the time, and the sense of immunity they felt because they were not part of either of the warring communities. I was struck by the curious detachment, the almost humorous and somewhat distanced way in which she told her story. There were no tears here, no nostalgia, no breaking down. It was as if the violence had happened to someone else, as indeed it had. As Maya said, they had little sense of fear because she and her friends were children and the whole thing was something like a game. There is a point at which she describes the violence, and an incident of rape. She talks of some young boys who were taking away a woman, and having only mentioned this, her only comment is: ‘and like this two hours passed’. Because Maya’s was among the first of the interviews I was involved in, it is important to me also for all the questions we did not ask. Why did we not probe the question of her Harijan identity further? Or try to find out if others too had felt as she did? Eleven or twelve years later, it is little use asking these questions. I have no idea where Maya is now, or whether I would be able to find her again. It is one of my greatest regrets that I did not, at the time, understand the importance of what she was saying, and therefore probe it further.

  MAYA RANI

  That day ... on the way we saw many things — stealing, people killing each other. So we all got up on the roof. The children — they were children then — all the girls from that area, we all
went up on the roof to see what was happening. We saw all this and worse, happening. After some time the military came. They shouted to us to come down otherwise we would be shot at. We weren’t frightened even then. We were young then, you see, and not so scared. We just kept looking and looking at what was happening — people were looting and throwing things around. If anyone had any jewellery in their ears, on their neck, they would pull it off, others were hacking and cutting up people ... for two days dead bodies lay around on the roads, even the dogs did not want them. It was terrible, the death and destruction that happened at the time when Pakistan and Hindustan were created. There was a very rich Muslim lawyer — he had six houses. He said, we’re not going to leave whatever happens. We will stay in Dinanagar. We’ll stay in the house and only come out when it is safe to do so. There were some old women in that house — they never used to come out. So people thought, well, let them stay. So they did. They stayed inside the house for a whole month. Then, some boys said to them, come, we’ll take you, so the family began to fill up trucks with their belongings — but the boys told them, leave all this, we’ll reach it to you later. Just take your money and your gold. So they did. But when they’d got a little distance from the house ... they threw some petrol onto the truck and set it, and everyone inside it, on fire. All of them died. These are some of the things we saw. Were 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, the children did this. Then the city elders, Hindus, they felt that 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 that 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.

  We told [our father] that we’d stay close by. You see this house? We used to have Muslim neighbours living as close to us, so we just used to jump down into their house from our roof ...

  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.

  I didn’t have any Muslim friends of my own, but my mother had a friend whose condition was so bad that it made me feel very sad. My mother didn’t have a sister so this friend was like a sister to her, and she cried for her. We cried too. My mother said, your masi’s condition is very bad. She had daughters and she pleaded with my mother to keep her daughters. But my mother said, how can we, the police doesn’t allow us to do so. Hindus don’t allow us to do so. How can I hide your daughters? My hands are tied. You see, the Hindus kept a watch on everyone and if you hid anyone they would come immediately and make you take the people out. When things became a bit better we learnt that my mother’s Muslim friend had a bad time later as well — the place where she was living was destroyed. Some time after Partition my mother went back to Pakistan — for a while the roads were opened for a few days, eight days. My mother said she must go because she wanted to find out about this friend and to meet her family who were in Lahore. In Pakistan she met many of her Muslim friends and asked them about Fatima, her friend, and learnt that her whole home had been destroyed. But my mother was very happy to meet all her Muslim friends — they too were happy to see her.

  Even now when we go to Pakistan we meet all our old friends and everyone is greeted with much affection. The fighting was between Muslims and Hindus. We didn’t fight with the Muslims, it had nothing to do with us.

  I have never been there. My mother went. And you know that friend of mine, the leader, she went and met my uncle, and they sent lots of things for me and for the children. She’s going again soon. She’s got herself a permit — she gets a visa from Delhi each time and then both of them go. I met her the other day and she asked me if there was anything I wanted to send for my uncle.

  That was a particular kind of time. And we were children so for us the whole thing was almost a sort of game. We had little sense of what its effect could be — that sort of sense only comes when you’re older and maturer. How can children have any sense of this? Soon after that I got married and then completely forgot about Pakistan — this was a year or so after Partition and I used all the old stuff for my dowry. A friend of mine, the one who was married in Batala, and I, we were both married together. I had very little gold but she had managed to get a whole lot from some house and she used it to get married. She had a nice wedding. But after getting married we forgot everything about those earlier times.

  And now there’s no one to tell us anything. If at that time there had been some sensible mature person to guide us, he would have been able to tell us what was happening. After all, what can one person do, you can’t think of everything.

  The Muslims and Hindus fell at each other because the English divided them, told them they were different people. They said if you want to be independent, to rule yourselves, you must be separate. Otherwise, why should we have separated? The first rumour was that Pakistan had been made and Hindus and Muslims would live there together, and Hindustan had been made and it would be the same. And this was all good and acceptable. But then there were people who incited the Hindus and the Muslims by giving them a negative strength. And they said that to make this area indpendent there must be, as we say in Punjabi, blood upto the knees. And that was what happened — there was so much bloodshed that we were knee-deep in blood. This was the advice of the troublemakers. Become separate, live separately and don’t let this land be at peace. If there is strife here, the English will then be able to look to another place, knowing they need not worry about this one. This was the plan of some evil ones.

  I don’t know any English — I’m just telling you stories from hearsay. There used to be an old baba, he used to tell us that the people who are behind all the trouble, they are the ones who want the British to come back. Each time we used to hear the same things that we were incapable of looking after the country. So it was good strategy to create strife between us — two killed one day, three another so that in the end we would give up and say I can’t do this, you do it, you rule this country, it’s your work.

  Peace? Well, this second time round the same thing happened, only it was between the Hindus and the Sikhs, the same kind of dissensions and divisions were created as happened at the time of Pakistan. There are evil people here as well who say we should become separate. It was such people among the Sikhs who insisted that they wanted to become separate. The same time is coming, the same kind of time as it was then, some people dying here, others dying there. The thing that happened at the time of Pakistan and Hindustan, the same feeling as there was at the time was behind it. But when people came to know what
was likely to happen, people in government, they controlled the situation otherwise things would have been as bad.