'Obviously, the BJP and others in the same mould didn’t even read the book else they might have seen that Singh was, in fact, being fair in analysing partition.' – (File Photo)

LISTENING to criticism and appreciation of Jaswant Singh I was reminded of a conversation I had a few months ago with a Baloch nationalist who was trying to explain to me how an independent Balochistan would happily build links with the independent states of Punjab, Sindh and Pakhtunkhwa.

I was amused to see his calm expression as he talked about post-independence interaction in a civil manner. He did not seem to appreciate for a minute that there would be rivers of fire flowing any new partition in the region. Perhaps, the Baloch nationalist leader was forgetting that 62 years after partition people have still not managed to avoid the pitfalls.

The story of Jaswant Singh’s book exposes the mindset of the people. I do not plan to comment on the book. Instead, this is a commentary on attitudes observed after the book’s publication. The Bharatiya Janata Party threw out one of its key members and there were many others in India who reacted sharply to Jaswant Singh’s analysis. Obviously, the BJP and others in the same mould didn’t even read the book else they might have seen that Singh was, in fact, being fair in analysing partition.

Equally quick were those in Pakistan whose commentary was that Singh’s fate depicted Indian imperialism and intolerance. One would like to remind such people of two other books that received similar treatment. The first one, which is closer to Jaswant Singh’s book, is Ayesha Jalal’s The Sole Spokesman about Jinnah and partition. This book had generated controversy. I distinctly remember angry reactions from some who thought Jalal had committed sacrilege by arguing that Jinnah did not have a grand plan for the partition of India.

Ayesha Jalal was luckier than the great Urdu novelist and short-story writer Qurratulain Hyder. The reaction to her novel Aag ka Darya from certain rightwing quarters was severe. Pro-establishment intellectuals were upset that her novel did not take a position for the Muslims. Her narrative included the lives of both Hindu and Muslim characters — the way they lived, their sociology and politics — who were not very different from one another. For the rightwingers, it was atrocious for Qurratulain Hyder not to have described the Muslims as the ultimate victims.

It is apparent that many, especially the religious and political right, are not able to cross the blazing rivers of imagination to a place where the ‘other’ cannot be described as a victim or praised. It is difficult to admit but a lot of us in South Asia are extremely intolerant when it comes to the ‘other’. Partition was a collective experience in which all sorts suffered.

I remember chatting with the Sikhs in Amritsar, hailing from my mother’s neighborhood. In 2006, I sat chatting with men and women about Muslims who lived there before 1947. They had fond memories. The reality is that the Hindus who migrated from Pakistan to post-partition India were actually the foreigners with behaviour patterns that the people in this neighbourhood were not used to. The story on the other side of the border was similar. People had to learn to live with total strangers!

During our conversation I asked one old Sikh gentleman why then was there such killing and bloodshed. It all seemed like an accident to him. According to him, the carnage was the reaction of a mob to the news of the arrival of trains from across the border full of dead bodies of Sikhs and Hindus. I am sure the gentleman, his family, elders, friends and neighbours did not know then that people on the other side had heard similar tales and had reacted in the same fashion.

Collectively and individually, people from the northern tip of the subcontinent engaged in mass killings that they then tried to explain away by making demons out of the other side. I am reminded of the story of a calm and collected gentleman with an extremely gentle appearance. In the last days of his life he confided to his family how he had killed a family hailing from a different faith.

In our six-decade history, we as a people on both sides of the border have not managed to face the reality regarding our involvement in acts of brutality, nor have we tried to investigate where and how the carnage started. Such a historical inquiry, which is still possible, is necessary for a closure of our past bitterness — imperative for crossing the river of fire.

Some of us might even wonder if it is any use conducting such an inquiry as we might have crossed the Rubicon and may no longer be in a position to bring about peace in the region. A phenomenal development in the past couple of decades has been the transformation of the Indian-Pakistan dispute from a territorial to an ideological one. The new generation on both sides has been fed on the belief that the ‘other’ never intended any good. So, while there still is some fascination to visit the other side — places one has seen in films or heard about — the divide has now become almost impassable.

I can speak about the experience of teaching in at least one public-sector university in Pakistan where children did not even think it necessary to build cultural ties. We have to admit that in these so many years we have managed to extend the river of fire rather than build a bridge across it. And so, what some writers have to say might create temporary excitement but it later falls on deaf ears. I wonder whether the Baloch leader would appreciate the loss that nations and civilisations create for themselves.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

ayesha.ibd@gmail.com