Other Side Of Silence

by Urvashi Butalia

  That day, I was sixteen years old. We were on our way to work. I was working in their house, feeding their cow, cleaning her up etc., and cleaning their house. Just as I finished cleaning my father came. He had a knife this big on his shoulder. He came and called out, Basant Kaur, and she answered and said yes, brother, how are you here? He said I’ve come to fetch my daughter. She asked why, what’s wrong? My father insisted it was nothing, but Basant Kaur did not believe him. She said, how do you mean, nothing? Normally we don’t see anything of you and here you are today, something must be wrong. It was evening. My father said sister, let me tell you one thing, just make your preparations, just get ready to leave. She said why? He said Pakistan has been created. And she cried, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram what is this that has happened, what is this? Soon everyone from around that area collected and there was all confusion as people asked, what is this that has happened, what is this? Close by there was a Muslim household and the women from there kept saying don’t worry, don’t worry, we’ll continue to live just as we’re doing now. Naturally, because they were all friends and had lived together for years. But we went out and kept on walking ... there they’re telling us not to worry and look what is happening here. A little further there were two bodies and still further a group of boys, they were Musalmaans, and they were taking away a woman, and like this nearly two and a half hours passed. Then we heard people crying: ‘Hindustan, Hindustan’, and the Hindus began to feel hopeful again, and now they started to say, don’t worry, there’s nothing in this Hindu-Muslim business, we’ll live together like we have always done. But the troublemakers didn’t like this, they were bent upon creating confusion and division. In one house they were getting ready to prepare their meal, but they had to leave and the kneaded flour stayed uncooked in the parat. We went and saw, the fire was still hot. We went into these houses with bated breath, frightened lest the owners were hiding somewhere. We wanted to go in and pick up all their things, steal them, but we were also a bit scared. Suppose they were there ...? And 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. And like this we jumped from roof to roof, not really caring much what happened. Then it was another day, and things got worse. People started carrying things away, the whole Musalmaan mohalla was set on fire. There was fire on all sides, and of course things then became worse. And people thought if the houses of rich people could be burnt down like this, what was there to be frightened of from the poorer ones. And so that too began. In some houses, in one house, there was a small child crying: ‘have you seen my mother, have you seen my mother?’

  We did wonder what was happening but we had little understanding of it. It was all the big people who seemed to know what was happening. We were just watching most of the time. If the place had gone to Pakistan there was no danger for us. Because we are Harijans, whether it had become Pakistan or Hindustan it made no difference to us. We would stay where we were born. Our elders felt that whatever happened we wouldn’t move from this place. This was our home. If anyone had tried to make us leave, we would have shown our strength. After all, Harijans are not just anybody, we’re also a very powerful group. If that had happened, we would have asked for a separate state and they would have had to give it to us. We felt strong in this knowledge. Just like now the Sikhs are asking for a separate state, doesn’t that then make three countries, Hindustan, Pakistan and Sikhistan, so where’s the harm in asking for the fourth country? Even today we feel like this — that time it was only our elders who felt this, but today we too know. Everyone takes power — the Hindus took power, the Sikhs have taken it, at that time the English took it, but where are people like us in the count? Why have we been forgotten? Nobody has bothered about the poorer people, Harijans and Christians, we just don’t come into the picture. We have talked with Indira Gandhi and her father, both of them said the same thing, that it is your own country, you are the rulers. My father used to tell us that Nehru had also said this, that this is your country, you are the rulers.

  You ask what work my father and grandfather did. My grandfather was a sweeper in the grain market, later my father also worked there, and he had a government job as well. And then my brother also works there along with his government job. The grain market work has been in our family for a long time. I work in the college, and I also work privately in some houses. I start work at eight in the morning, and I’m through by eleven. Then J go to the college, after that to [a private] house, then again to college around two o’clock but sometimes I get there later and they don’t really say anything to me if I’m late because they know I don’t shirk work. In the other house I wash clothes, dust, clean etc.

  My understanding of life tells me one thing: that there can be no end to all this strife and fighting. And even if this can stop, the bad elements in society will not let them end. Right from the age of sixteen, and today I’ve seen nothing but fighting, nothing but strife. I don’t think there’s any way this can end. None of us has a recipe for it. Of course if they would stop it would be wonderful. We would have peace in our lands, in our Pakistan, or Hindustan, or in our Punjab, or indeed in the whole world. But the troublemakers will not let this happen. Even in Punjab I don’t think we will be allowed to have peace again ...

  We saw a girl killed, cut up and thrown away. They took off her earrings, threw her away, further on they were dragging a young girl and she, poor thing, fearing for her life, jumped into the canal nearby, she just jumped in. This is what we saw. There was one girl, the daughter of some sheikhs — they had two children, a girl and a boy, the boy was outside so the girl was like a son to them, she used to say she was a boy, everyone used to call her kaka. Some goondas got after her shouting we’re going to get hold of kaka, we want kaka, let’s see who this kaka is. She jumped off the roof to save her honour, she didn’t want to be insulted.

  The police weren’t interested in anything then. They didn’t bother with anyone. The army helped a bit, they provided safe passage to people, helped them to get away. The police were looting as much as anyone else. I think people lost all sense of honour and morals then ...

  In those two and a half hours when we first heard that Dinanagar had become part of Pakistan, the Muslims began to kill the Hindus, and then two and a half hours later there was a phone call which said that no, Dinanagar hadn’t gone to Pakistan, it was part of Hindustan. And in this time the tide was reversed and Hindus began to kill Musalmaans ... shouting slogans they pulled people out, they killed them, they threw them out of their houses, they raped the women, young women ... The first thing the Hindus said was that we are brothers and sisters, we are together. This is what they said at first. Even if it becomes Pakistan we will live together. After all, how could they leave their lives, their homes and go away? No, they would have stayed together. It was the devil who created this trouble. They wanted to divide us, to show we were incapable of ruling, so that the English would have a chance to come back.

  8

  Memory

  Perhaps the most difficult part of an exercise such as this is how to bring it to a close. What can I say about Partition that can adequately serve as a conclusion? That it was an event of major importance? That it touched people’s lives in unprecedented, and very deep ways? That its influence on the history of the subcontinent has been profound and far reaching? All of these are correct. But none of these is adequate. There is so much that remains to be learnt about Partition, that an exercise such as the one I have attempted must necessarily only remain a first step in our knowledge of this history.

  When I began work on Partition, I had little idea of what I would learn. In many ways I began as an innocent: someone familiar with the ‘history’ of the event — as many Indians are who have to study ‘modern history’ at school — and someone w
ho had grown up on stories of it, stories that somehow did not match what we learnt at school, stories that, perhaps because of that, we discounted. When, after 1984, I began to ‘hear’ these stories, to pay attention to them, my first feeling was of anger. Why had the history of Partition been so lacking in describing how Partition had impacted on the lives of ordinary people, what it had actually meant to them? Why had historians not even attempted to explore what I saw as the ‘underside’ of this history — the feelings, the emotions, the pain and anguish, the trauma, the sense of loss, the silences in which it lay shrouded? Was this just historiographical neglect or something deeper — a refusal, on the part of historians to face up to a trauma so riven with pain and grief, that there needed to be some distance before they could confront it?

  The tools of history are meant to lead you to an objective view of the past: how do you bring objectivity to bear on a situation in which your own family may have been involved? Death, displacement, dislocation, loss of home and family — these were so close to the lives of many historians, particularly from north India, that it was not surprising that the history of Partition had so far related only to a history of the State. 1984 acted as a watershed for many historians. But 1984 had been preceded — and indeed followed — by several equally disturbing developments : the violence in Punjab, the increasing strife in the north east, the growing influence of the Hindu Right, the destruction, in 1992, of the Babari Mosque by Hindu communalists, the subsequent Hindu Muslim riots that followed ... people watched, in horror and often helplessly, as the fabric of Indian society began to shred on lines of ethnic and religious identity. Partition came back to revisit many who had been mere spectators and others who had been victims and participants. Stories of ‘that time’ resurfaced. 1984 was ‘like Partition again’. ‘We didn’t think it would happen to us in our own country’ was a feeling expressed by Sikhs and Muslims in 1984 and 1992. It was this increasing polarization of Indian society on the basis of religion, that led, I think, to a re-examination of the history of Partition, a re-examination that was deeply rooted in the concerns of the present. It was this, too, that led me, personally, to understand how and why certain kinds of historical explorations become important at certain times, that particular kinds of explorations of the past are rooted in particular kinds of experiences of the present. It is the present, our involvement in it, our wish to shape it to lead to the kind of future we desire, that leads to revisit and re-examine the past. This may be nothing new to those engaged in the practice of history, but for me, it meant a great deal. It made me realize that the questions that had begun to preoccupy me, were not mine alone: others were thinking along similar lines, making similar explorations.

  A half century — an arbitrary figure, but perhaps it did have some meaning after all — also seemed to mark other beginnings. Many of those who were victims and survivors of Partition, were now in their seventies and eighties: to historians revisiting this history it became important to speak to the survivors, to gather their testimonies, while this was still possible. For the survivors themselves, the ‘distance’ of a half century, the events they had seen in that interim, also worked as a kind of impetus which surfaced memories of the time. While many still found it painful to speak about that time in their lives, there were others who wanted that their stories be recorded, they felt that for them the time had come to do so. The conditions seemed to be right for a new exploration of Partition to begin.

  When you embark on an excercise that seems, to you, unusual, perhaps unique, you begin by congratulating yourself on having discovered something new, a new approach, new material, a new way of looking at things. And, in the mistaken conviction that yours is the unique perspective, you begin by asserting that no one has looked at things in quite this way before. Yet research is a humbling thing, as I found out. Nothing is really new, other than your interpretation (and sometimes not even that): you simply train a different eye on the past. Quite quickly, then, I learnt not to feel complacent about being the ‘first’ — many, many others had been there before me. Because I was looking at what I saw as the ‘underside’ of the history of Partition, I had begun by being sceptical of the tools of conventional history. What could documents, government reports, speeches, tell me about what I was trying to look at: feelings, emotions, those indefinable things that make up a sense of an event? Yet, I learnt in the course of my work that even what we see as ‘conventional’ tools can yield a great deal, for so much depends on the perspective you bring to bear on them. Informed, for example, through women’s accounts, of the violence they had faced, I was able to trace some of its other dimensions in sources such as documents and reports. Curious about what had happened to children and scheduled castes, I was able to locate material about them, however slight, in speeches, newspaper accounts, parliamentary debates. My debt therefore, to the very ‘sources’ I was critical of, is great: had it not been for them, I would not have been alerted to many of the things I have written about in this book.

  This realization was important to me too as a feminist, and someone interested in history, particularly the history of those who have been marginalized by society, a history which had itself been marginalized in the broader world of history writing. Indeed, a question that I was constantly faced with in the writing of this book was: how do human beings relate to their history? It seemed to me that, at least where Partition history was concerned, there was a contradiction in the history that we knew, that we had learnt, and the history that people remembered. Many historians have spoken of how selective amnesia and memory are at the root of the relationship between human beings and their history, that historiography as a technique attempts to ‘dissipate amnesia and cultivate memory’.1 But in so doing, such an historiography is itself selective, in its illumination of certain aspects of the past. It became clear to me as I drew closer to the end of this work, that in any such exploration of the past, the aspects we choose to illuminate are determined not only the present we live in, but the future we wish to work towards. In this book, I have been concerned with looking at what one might call the voices of ordinary people, as well as those on the margins of society. I have consciously chosen to train a particular kind of gaze on the past, for mainstream history has tended to marginalize the experiences of such ‘groups’ (if one can use that word at all), and my ‘hypothesis for the future’ would be one in which all such groups, however small, had a voice and a role. I believe too that because of the particular way in which the historiography of Partition has trained its lens on the past, only certain aspects of the past have become visible, and new and different realities will emerge as we begin to re-read the past, bringing different tools of exploration to bear upon the histories we know. Thus it is because I wish to see a society in which women, children, lower castes have an integral role to play, that I seek out their histories in the past, that I try to recover what I have defined as their voices.

  In doing so, I have found the tools of feminist historiography to be enormously enabling because it allows you to listen to that most unheard of things, silence, and to understand it, to work with it. All too often, histories that attempt to recover hidden voices — and in some ways what I have tried to do in this book is precisely that — make a simple opposition between speech and silence. If something is shrouded in silence, then speech must be good, it must be liberating. There is little doubt that in the history of Partition, the stories of women, children, scheduled castes and many others, have been silenced both at the level of the State and at the level of history writing. Yet there is no simple way in which one can march in and attempt to break that silence, irresponsibly and unproblematically. I have referred, throughout this book, to the constant dilemma I faced while writing it. How much of what people spoke about, or of what they did not say, could I put down in print? How far could I go in persuading people to speak? For women who had faced abduction and rape, how would speaking about it now help? To me, these questions have only become possible thr
ough the practice of feminist historiography. In my work, the more I looked at women’s voices and found them inserting themselves into the text, the more I realized that the silences did not exist only around women, but also around others, those whose silences have been even less important to society. The search for a history of women was what then led me to a search for a history of others. The voices of women, of children, of untouchables, to me provide not only a different perspective on the history of Partition, but they also establish this history as a process, a continuing history, which lives on in our lives today in a variety of ways.

  I have attempted, throughout this work, to look at ‘voices’ both in people’s narratives and testimonies as well as in letters and documents. The recovery of ‘voice’ however, is not unproblematic. These are, I know, different kinds of voices: some, which are much more immediate, and which reflect the concerns of the here and now, and others, which are more reflective, in some cases more practised for they come after a gap of many years, and perhaps after many tellings. When the history of these voices is written, however, it is almost always written by ‘others’: how people define their self identities, and how these identities get represented, are two different things. I am deeply aware that my representations of the experiences of women, children, scheduled castes at Partition are, after all, my representations, selectively illuminated by my concerns and priorities. To me these make for another sort of voice: a voice that reads into, and interprets, other voices. If this is my representation, then the texts of the oral narratives represent, I hope, the way in which the people concerned themselves remember, and reconstruct, events. I have not attempted to make of them more than what they are: one way of remembering, at one time, with one person. It is not my endeavour to place these voices against the conventional, factual histories of the time. Rather, I would like to place them alongside existing histories: they are the memories of real people, memories of the history of Partition, and for that reason alone, they are important. It is through them that the history of Partition can be seen. There is yet another kind of voice that my work traces: that is the voice of the State, of official discourse, and sometimes, an oppositional voice (such as that of the RSS) but nonetheless a voice of considerable power. Together these different kinds of voices make up the whole that I have attempted to create.