1.2 Pre-partition history

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Do curso por The University of Melbourne

Contemporary India

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The University of Melbourne

Contemporary India

29 ratings

This course presents some important vignettes of a complex, highly diverse India that is also witnessing unprecedented changes since its formal independence in 1947 from Great Britain. The lectures revolve around social dimensions of change, the continuing influence of ancient texts on contemporary India, political democracy, economic transition from the state to the market, gender relations, India's economic globalisation and changing world view. While one of the objectives is to capture the multifaceted process of change, the course also critically examines some of the tensions inherent in these changes. For example, how does gender inequality play itself out in a changing Indian society, how do the modernist conceptions of art entailing market valuation challenge the more socio-centric values found in South India, what are the politics linguistic identities, and how might India address its myriad development challenges such as poverty and unemployment. No specific prior knowledge is required. However, it would be helpful if students are aware of the socio political dynamics at play in contemporary India and keep themselves abreast with current affairs and debates in the country to fully appreciate the various dimensions and contours if the subject matter in the course. This course is taught in English. View the MOOC promotional video here: http://tinyurl.com/hx8mhxb

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Contemporary India's history

We begin this course by discussing the history of pre-partition India i.e. before 1947. We will trace the trajectory of British rule from its inception in India and discuss important events like the mutiny of 1857, the formation of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, the divide and rule policy of the British, the idea of separate electorates and how it paved the way for partition in the subcontinent. You will be able to appreciate the devastation that partition brought to the region with millions of people killed, displaced and made refugees overnight. We will try to impress upon the fact that such a momentous event in world history, which involved ethnic cleansing in huge numbers, has been almost forgotten or is not remembered often enough; nor are the lessons learnt. The week concludes by discussing how partition still continues to affect community relations, relations between states and the very foundational ideas of the two nations: India and Pakistan.

1.1 Colonial history: British rule in India12:10

1.2 Pre-partition history7:58

1.3 The tryst with destiny9:38

1.4 Partition and nation-states: a technology of modernity11:10

1.5 Partition and amnesia12:33

1.6 Ghosts of partition: contemporary India 18:32

1.7 Ghosts of partition: contemporary India 212:39

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Anthony D'Costa
Professor
School of Social and Political Sciences

Welcome again.

This is the second section of the lecture on contemporary Indian history.

And in this one we are going to discuss pre-partition history.

In the previous one we looked at India's colonial history.

And so in the pre-partition, history is important because it actually

gives you an idea of how the population of India, which is multi-religious,

lived together before partition happened in 1947.

And the important thing to understand in this context,

is that the Muslims in India who came

in various manifestations as rulers

from about 1000 A.D., Muslims in India were not a united group of people.

They had Arab, Persian, Turk, Afghan heritage, so they were quite diverse.

And vast majority of them were also converts to Islam.

So they were local people who had converted to the religion.

And they had very often retained vestiges of their previous religions, and

previous religious practices and customs.

And there were a lot of customs, traditions,

rituals especially, at the domestic level, that Muslims and

Hindus at that point certainly had in common.

Many shared cultural and social practices and

beliefs with other religious groups.

There was revivalism in the 19th century amongst both Hindus and

Muslims, Monks and Muslims there was Deobandis, Jamaati-Islamis, Ahmadis, and

all of this definitely sharpened the Muslim sense of identity.

This picture is Salim Chisti's dargah in Fatehpur in Fatehpur Sikri and

this dargah is an example of the syncretism I've been talking about,

it is visited by a people of all faiths, various Hindus who go and

pray to the pier, the saint to grant them whatever wishes they want.

So

it's a good example of a Muslim saint who is venerated by all religions in India.

But after the 1857 rebellion,

the Muslims were seen as a great threat by the British, because the British had

displaced the Muslim rulers, the last ruler of the Mughal Empire.

This meant also, that the British followed a kind of divide and rule policy, which

they had also imposed on a variety of other colonies, and perhaps the one that

is best known to you would be Ireland, you know, where this divide and rule policy

caused the troubles in Ireland for, you know, up to the present really,

you know, in the division of Ireland into Eire or Ireland and Northern Ireland.

So after 1870 the British imperial strategy involved

attracting the support of powerful Muslims.

And the British were very much into codifying and categorising.

And one of the things that they did was to categorise the people of India

by religion and without an understanding of the various connections and

syncretic relationships that

people of different religious faiths had with each other.

And

to help to win the Muslims over to their side, the British helped

establish the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh.

And supported all India Muslim conference,

both of which were institutions from which the leaders of the Muslim League, that were

absolutely crucial in the formation of Pakistan, the ideology of Pakistan

the Muslim League emerged from those two organisations.

As soon as a League was formed, Muslims were placed in a separate electorate, and

therefore the separateness of Muslims were built into

the electoral process, the separateness of Muslims from Hindus and

from people of other religions were built into that process.

So by 1946 Jinnah, who was import… of well,

probably the most important leader of the Muslim League won the majority of

seats reserved for Muslims and partition became more or less inevitable.

So pre-partition I don't want to paint the pre-partition era as some kind of

golden-age where everybody lived together in happy harmony.

There were communal tensions and violent conflicts, these did occur.

However, such events remain small-scale and marginal.

What partition did was to supplant the normal model of the small-scale, marginal

conflicts and tensions which would happen in any case when people live together.

This normal model was supplanted with an extremist model of conflict resolution,

an extremist model involving huge violence, death and a disruption.

And what is tragic about it is that it is now the inevitable backdrop

of post independence politics in both India and in Pakistan.

It provides the rationale of anti-minority politics in both countries,

and it has kept Pakistan and India at war for ever since 1947 which is

the moment of independence till the present Pakistan and

India have fought three wars and have also constantly

had hostilities over the disputed border in the State of Kashmir.

And they have not been able to have what I suppose one would say

a normal relationship between nation state, states that the pathology and

violence of partition has influenced, and has poisoned really

the future relationship that Indians and Pakistanis have with each other,

even though people in India and Pakistan,

on both sides of the border, had relations,

friends, relatives on the other side.

And if you,

I mean some of you might have looked at an advertisement for Google.

This Google advertisement actually shows this old man

missing his Muslim friend in Pakistan and their grandchildren getting them together.

It's a very sentimentalised evocation

of partition, feel good partition, you know, nostalgia.

But there is an element of truth, and there were friendships and

relationships and so on, which were ruptured.

And because of the pathology of the relationship after partition,

these friendships and relationships remained ruptured.

And finally, in a sense the illogic if you like of some of

the partition rationales came to fruition in the creation of Bangladesh in 1971,

where there was uprising in Bangladesh over really

the language policies imposed by what was called then West Pakistan.

And the Bangladesh War happened with Indian aid. Bangladesh,

which was previously East Pakistan then became independent.

So in the next section we're going to talk about the moment of independence for

India and Pakistan in 1947.

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