[sacw] SACW Dispatch | 20 Aug. 00

Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Sun, 20 Aug 2000 01:54:27 +0200


South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
20 August 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

#1. Pakistan: Hamoodur Rehman Commission report remains Classified
#2. Pakistan: Retd. General's rejoinder to the Hammodur Rehman Comm. Report
#3. Sri Lanka: Refugees qualify for dispossession
#4. India: AG Noorani reports on Kashmir

#5. India: RSS & VHP at World Hindu meet in Trinidad
#6. India: Amit Chaudhuri on Partition & history

_____________________

#1.

DAWN
19 August 2000 Saturday

Hamood report remains classified

ISLAMABAD, Aug 18: An official spokesman on Friday clarified comments
attributed to the Minister for Information and Media Development, Javed
Jabbar, regarding the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report during his visit
to Sukkur on Aug 17 as reported in a section of the press the next day.
The spokesman said the press reports conveyed misperceptions about two
aspects: firstly, the minister was incorrectly reported as having said
that the government was already considering publishing the report.
"He did not make such an observation. The actual position is, the
minister stated that the government is presently in the process of
determining the authenticity of the version of the report published by
an Indian magazine in comparison to the actual contents of the report.
Aspects of whether the report was partially or wholly duplicated or
whether it was unauthorisedly handled at any point during the past 26
years, are also being investigated. As the period in question spans
about three decades, the task requires some time and, therefore, the
government will make a statement on this subject at an appropriate
stage."
Secondly, the spokesman elaborated, it had been incorrectly attributed
to the minister that, as the National Archives Act, 1993, allowed
documents to be declassified after 20 years, any citizen could now
approach the National Archives in Islamabad to obtain a copy of the said
report.
The spokesman said the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report remained a
classified document.-APP

______

#2.

The News International
20 August 2000

'Hamood report a politico-military cover-up for Bhutto'

ISLAMABAD: Reacting to the Hamood-ur-Rahman Commission Report that
appeared in an Indian newspaper, former Chief of General Staff (CGS)
Maj-Gen (retd) M Rahim Khan has, unconditionally, offered himself for
trial by a court martial or any other appropriate tribunal.

In a rejoinder to the report, he appealed to the government to take
pro-active measures to control the damage done by the commission, which
was a 'gigantic politico-military cover-up for ZA Bhutto and a fraud
perpetrated on this nation.

He said the government has three choices: the government can publicly
declare that Hamood-ur-Rahman Commission Report was a document
engineered by ZA Bhutto as a vengeful act directed against the army by
targeting its senior officers to deflect public anger from the leading
role played by him in the break-up of Pakistan and also that since due
process of law and justice was ignored by the Hamood-ur-Rahman
Commission by not giving the accused officers any chance to defend
themselves, the whole report and recommendations were highly suspect,
motivated and unreliable.

The second option is to appoint another commission to inquire all
causes, including political, which led to the military defeat and
break-up of Pakistan and the last option for the government is to
declare that recommendations of the Hamood-ur-Rahman Commission will be
implemented and officers who have been accused of serious offences will
be tried by court martial as soon as possible.

"As for myself, I, unconditionally, offer myself for public trial by a
court martial and if this is not feasible, by any other appropriate
tribunal," Gen (retd) M Rahim Khan said. He said as far as the
commission's findings and recommendations about him are concerned, he
has read it with great shock and anguish as his reputation built over 33
years of spotless Army career and 20 years of civil service and social
work stands grievously compromised.

He described the allegations against him as slanderous, totally false
and fabricated and an obvious frame-up. He said not once during his
appearances before the commission was he confronted with any
incriminating evidence of any witness or document.

He said some of the remarks and questions of the members of the
commission were pathetic and indeed laughable, adding that it evoked
their hostility towards his personality. "Similarly, his views on the
motives of the then prime minister Bhutto, and his threats to 'fix me'
are also well known," he added.

The former chief of general staff said the report has obviously been
passed to India by some 'patriotic' Pakistani in high position, who had
the access to the document. He said it has been released to the media at
this particular juncture, with the clear aim of embarrassing the present
military government and to malign the Army as an institution.

He said the government of Pakistan has not issued any categorical denial
of the authenticity of the report available on an Indian website. He
said the public could well assume that it might be a copy of
Hamood-ur-Rahman Commission Report, which had Eastern Command as its
special target.

He said the Dhaka surrender and the loss of East Pakistan was
undoubtedly a great national disaster and trauma and humiliation.
Nevertheless, the performance of Pakistan Army in East Pakistan in 1971
with only 30,000 fighting troops without heavy weapons and air power,
was an outstanding feat by any standard, admitted even by the enemies,
he added.

"It is well known how immediately after Bhutto's accession to power, the
whole state media and press was mobilised and a vicious campaign was
launched against the Army to destroy its public image and respect.
Bhutto hired military men to write spurious books on East Pakistan
debacle, but his main weapon was the constitution of Hamood-ur-Rahman
Commission. The Commission was launched under such terms of reference
which made this judicial forum a mockery," he said.

General Rahim said after reading the Hamood-ur-Rahman Commission verdict
on him, it was clear that the so-called evidence was fabricated and
engineered. He said the shameful aspect of this was that after making
such serious allegations against him, he was deliberately kept in dark
and never given an opportunity to respond as was his right under the law
to clear his name. After achieving its purpose the report had been kept
under wraps all these years.

"Parallel to Hamood-ur-Rahman Commission an independent military
investigation was conducted by the GHQ through a committee of senior
Army officers from West Pakistan on the conduct of officers of Eastern
Command. However recommendations of this report - Aftab Report - were
not implemented by the GHQ in deference to Bhutto's wishes," the former
CGS said.

______

#3.

Asia Times
August 19, 2000

Refugees qualify for dispossession

By Feizal Samath

KALPITIYA, Sri Lanka - Habib Mullah longs to go back home, far from this
small fishing town on Sri Lanka's north-western coast where he lives
with thousands of others like him. Sitting in his thatched roof hut, his
clothes hanging on a rope strung between cardboard walls, the
middle-aged peasant worries about his small farm, which he left behind
10 years ago.
''Can we go back with the situation like this? We are worried that we'll
lose everything we have back home,'' he says, referring to the ethnic
violence that drove him and the other Muslims out of their home in the
north-western town of Mannar.
Mannar had a mixed population of Tamils, the country's second largest
ethnic group, Muslims and a few Sinhalese, the majority community. But
tens of thousands of Muslims, who are Sri Lanka's third largest
community, fled Mannar in October and November 1990 when Tamil Tiger
militants ordered them to leave the area or face death.
Mullah lives in the Kandakuli refugee camp in Kalpitiya, some 175 km
from the Sri Lankan capital. He arrived here by boat 10 years ago. Along
with the other Muslim refugees from Mannar, he is worried about losing
the land he left behind, because under Sri Lankan laws, owners forfeit
land they have not occupied or used for a continuous period of 10 years.
The land can be claimed by anyone who has occupied and used it during
this period. The Muslim refugees from Mannar do not know if anyone is
living on their land.
Pressure groups are trying to help the refugees. The Colombo-based
Center for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a think-tank and rights advocacy
group, is backing a petition before the state-run Human Rights
Commission (HRC), seeking justice for the Muslim refugees. "The HRC is
trying to formulate some amendments to exempt internally displaced
people from the prescriptive law which allows non-owner users of land,
possession on the grounds of continued, uninterrupted occupation,'' says
CPA director, Rohan Edrisinha.
For the past 17 years, Tamil Tigers have unleashed a terror campaign,
demanding a separate home for the minority Tamil people in the north and
east of the Indian Ocean island nation. The ethnic crisis has displaced
more than half a million people who live in refugee camps or homes of
relatives across Sri Lanka. However, government officials say the land
problem immediately affects the Muslims from Mannar. ''Except for the
Kalpitiya refugees, others have not been displaced for periods of more
than five years, so they don't have this problem right now,'' says an
official in Colombo.
The refugees in Kalpitiya work with the local fishing community,
cleaning and mending their nets and boats. The women help gather the
onion harvest on the farms, being paid one rupee for each kilogramme.
Community workers in the refugee camps say the Muslims are worried not
only about their land back home, but also about losing the right to
vote.
''The constitution guarantees the right of residents to vote from
wherever they are, but these refugees haven't had voting rights for the
past 10 years,'' says S Mubarak, who is with a non-governmental
organization working in the refugee camps.
While the refugees struggle to make ends meet in camps, their prolonged
presence is also causing worry to the locals. Mohamed Careem, who owns
some of the land on which the refugee camp has been set up, knows the
chances of the refugees returning to their homes are remote. He is
worried that he will never get his land back.
(Inter Press Service)
______

#3.

Frontline
Volume 17 - Issue 17, Aug. 19 - Sep. 01, 2000

A report on Kashmir

Political analyst and senior lawyer A.G. NOORANI provides a range of
perspectives on and an assessment of the complicated situation in the
Valley on the basis of a series of interviews and discussions in
Srinagar with several of the major player s involved.

"Do not think you are dealing with a part of U.P. (Uttar Pradesh), Bihar
or Gujarat. You are dealing with an area, historically and
geographically, and in all manner of things, with a certain background.
If we bring our local ideas and local prejudice s everywhere, we will
never consolidate. We have to be men of vision and there has to be a
broad-minded acceptance of facts in order to integrate really. And real
integration comes of the mind and the heart and not of some clause which
you may impose on other people."

(From Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru; Second Series; Vol. 18; p.
421).

KASHMIR'S alienation from India began as the Jan Sangh leader, Shyama
Prasad Mookerjee, after resigning from the Cabinet, picked on Kashmir's
special status within the Indian Constitution, to which he was very much
a party, as a stick with which to beat Nehru. And Nehru, pressed by his
party, failed to live up to the sound advice he gave in the Lok Sabha on
June 26, 1952.

A national consensus for Jammu and Kashmir's "integration" with India
came to be formed. Mookerjee lent it his saffron hue, never altogether
absent in many of Nehru's colleagues. The hysterical reaction to the
State Assembly's resolution on autonomy refl ected that. A Bharatiya
Janata Party member dubbed it a demand for a "nation within a nation".
The Speaker of the Assembly, Abdul Ahad Vakil, two senior Ministers A.
R. Rathor and Mohammed Shafi, and the general secretary of the National
Conference, Shei kh Nazir, an old friend of 30 years, ably expounded the
State's case to me.

The day the resolution was passed (June 26), the Valley observed a
bandh, called by the Kashmir Bar and another body, to protest against
custodial killings which have increased lately. None of those who
descended on the Valley to propound solutions had a word about the
sufferings of the people. Even those who note the "almost total
alienation from the people of India" ignore the real causes for this and
the hideous behaviour of the security forces, especially the Special
Operations Group. They talk glib ly of a generous economic package, as
Indira Gandhi did to Nehru on May 14, 1948 and as the District Collector
did during the Raj. They talk hypocritically of "resolving the issue
with our own Kashmiris" after having failed to identify themselves all
the se years with the people as our "own". In which other State would a
senior lawyer like Jalil Andrabi be killed by a known senior Army
officer and the murderer allowed to go scot-free? Not one Bar
Association in India protested.

Sadaqat Ahmed's bitter plaint is representative: "The message from the
recent autonomy drama is: Kashmiris have no friends, no interlocutors,
no advocates within the Indian spectrum. Those who say they are, are
pretenders." (Greater Kashmir, July 20). Reprisals against innocent,
unarmed civilians, and disappearances and custodial killings apart, the
subjection of the people to daily humiliation, which any visitor can see
for himself, leaves scars on minds.

Ironically, just as the Government of India brusquely rejected the
Assembly's resolution for autonomy within India, on July 4, it was in
communication with the "separatist" Hizbul Mujahideen for a ceasefire as
a prelude to political talks. The Hizb is fo r accession to Pakistan.

The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) was set up on September 9,
1993 precisely in order to serve as an interlocutor with Delhi. It made
one overture after another. On August 26, 1999, its former chairman,
Maulvi Umar Farooq, said: "Let the governme nt talk to Kashmiris and
then involve Pakistan at later stages or let Delhi and Islamabad hold
talks first and involve the Kashmiris later." He added: "If the
Government of India comes out with a positive signal and announces a
ceasefire, we will persuad e the Mujahideen to halt their military
operations to facilitate talks." He had offered talks repeatedly, for
instance, on June 6, September 13, December 22, 1996 and later. The
offers were spurned for reasons which bear on the talks with the Hizb.
They must, in turn, be read in the political clime.

IT would be presumptuous to attempt a definitive analysis of the
situation after a week's stay in Srinagar (July 15-22). Governor G. C.
Saxena, Chief Secretary Ashok Jaitley, General Officer
Commanding-in-Chief 15 Corps Lt. Gen. J. R. Mukherjee besides o ther
officials, civil and other, whom I met were very candid and courteous in
their expositions of the state of militancy.

Lt. Gen. J. R. Mukherjee made an interesting point. "All policy was
previously" laid down by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
"Post-Musharraf, it now emanates from the Army directly, with Pakistan
intelligence having taken direct control in terms o f planning, all
planning - what targets to be struck at, how to organise the tanzeems
(outfits), whether to start a new tanzeem or not, what strength, what
weapons - is all planned by the Pakistan Army."

On why the number of punishments for human rights violations have not
been publicised he properly replied that it was a matter for the
Ministry of Defence. He had the data. "You are doing a soldier's job," I
said. "Would you say that ultimately it calls for a political solution?"
His answer was explicit: "I think it has been accepted by all that
ultimately there would have to be a political solution."

Ashok Jaitley had much the same thing to say. "There is total
disillusionment with Pakistan. A whole generation of the young has been
lost. The gun offers no solution, which is not to say that there is no
alienation as far as India is concerned. Let us n ot fool ourselves
about that. But the euphoria of 1990 is gone. Another realisation is
also that India is not a soft state. When it comes to the territorial
integrity and sovereignty of the country, the state is a hard state and
a tough state."

What is the future of the militancy? Will we be able to crush it by
brute force?

No, of course, not. I think that has been well established. Brute force
is not the answer and has never been the answer. The answer is - the
hearts and minds of the people.

Is it the Hizb which commands the "hearts and minds" of the people? Two
facts about it are incontrovertible. It is the only active militant body
of predominantly Kashmiri membership - unlike the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba
(L-e-T), the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e Islami (HU JI), Jaish-e-Mohamadi, and
Al-Badr. The Hizb predominates in towns and cities and controls arms
supplies with the help of locals. The L-e-T and the Jaish roam over the
rural areas.

The other incontestable fact is that the Hizb was set up in 1990 by the
ISI, alarmed at the success of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front
(JKLF), in order to decimate it, driving it to declare a ceasefire in
1994. The Army's own estimate provided to this writer reads thus:
"Favourable to merger of J&K to Pak. Formed to counter influence of JKLF
(40-50 per cent FMs)." FM means foreign mercenaries. Accurate or not,
the ISI's dominance has been as palpable as Pakistan's tacit approval of
the Hiz b's ceasefire offer.

A highly-placed source said that in contrast, the HUJI, L-e-T and Jaish
are offshoots of Pakistan's religious parties with an agenda beyond
Kashmir. They are independent of ISI control.

With New Delhi's new certificates for the Hizb's autonomy and indigenous
character, gone, so far as the Hizb is concerned, are charges of "proxy
war" and "cross-border terrorism". Tacitly admitted is a domestic
uprising, after all.

Why was the APHC's offer of ceasefire spurned and the Hizb embraced?
(One would omit for the present the Pakistan and U.S. factors). The APHC
has sought a ceasefire and dialogue for years; from 1993 at least - as
it saw militancy acquire ugly forms, the influx of foreigners, and much
else. It reckoned that once political activity was allowed, the people's
urges would be freely expressed for the world to see. To New Delhi,
however, ceasefire should buttress the status quo and simply restore the
pr e-1989 situation. Political parleys are farthest from its mind.

Rajiv Gandhi's technique was simple - sign an accord, get the agitation
to end, and renege on the political deal. Witness the Punjab, Assam and
Mizo accords. This is unlikely to be accomplished in Kashmir, for two
reasons. One is immediate and the other is long-term. "We want to retain
weapons for our safety and security," the Hizb told Home Ministry
officials (The Indian Express, August 7). New Delhi seeks the total
disarming of the Hizb; its quarantine in separate "protected" camps;
identificat ion of its cadres; and, its help to "identify and isolate"
other groups (vide The Statesman and The Telegraph, August 4).

Secondly, these men have not, however, come out to surrender, but to
parley. The ceasefire is a preliminary to doing it. The Hizb insists on
tripartite talks - very much like the Hurriyat. Only while the Hurriyat
could not be manipulated - not for want o f trying though - New Delhi
believes that the Hizb can be defanged and rendered impotent. It has no
use for the Hizb's 12-point agenda.

The Hizb will insist on something like the Naga and Irish models. On
August 15, 1964, a detailed "Suspension of Operations" Agreement was
concluded between the Government of India and Naga leaders. The proud
Indira Gandhi met them, without any precond ition, in six rounds - on
February 17, April 9 and 12, August 11 and 12, and October 27 and 29,
1966; in January 1967 and finally on October 5, 1967.

On one occasion, April 27, 1966, the Naga leaders met her alone. Dr. M.
Aram, then Director of the Nagaland Peace Centre, records in his
memoirs, Peace in Nagaland: "It was reported that she went to the extent
of suggesting that the solution could be within the Indian Union, not
necessarily within the Constitution." She probably had in mind an
"associate" Statehood under Article 2 of the Constitution. It empowers
Parliament to "establish new States" on special terms.

Another model is the Anglo-Irish Agreement of April 10, 1998 which has a
whole section on de-commissioning of arms. There existed already an
Independent Commission on Decommissioning, headed by the United States
Senator George J. Mitchell. Its report, da ted January 22, 1996, had
failed to resolve the issue - which came first, disarming or political
settlement? The object of the militancy was to reopen what India
regarded as a closed chapter. Have any of the parties learnt the lesson
of the decade that t he gun is no solution - whether to redraw
boundaries or to stifle a people's alienation?

The people will not go along with any sell-out by anybody. As for the
Pakistan factor, the Government of India can properly exclude Pakistan
from the current parleys on the ceasefire. But it cannot impose a
political accord which is not acceptable to the APHC and which does
command popular confidence, despite the APHC's grave shortcomings and
mistakes. Pakistan is not only a party to the Kashmir dispute, it is now
a party in Kashmir as well. In Kashmir there has always existed a
pro-Pakistan cons tituency. Thanks to India's wrongs, its size
increased. It has declined recently, though, thanks to Pakistan's
cynical exploitation of Kashmiri sentiments.

Internationally, a consensus has emerged around four propositions. 1.
Kashmir's accession to India is legally valid; 2. a dispute indubitably
exists, politically; 3. plebiscite is rejected; but 4. no solution can
be arrived at against the wishes of the people of the State in all its
regions.

Neither Pakistan nor the militants can detach Kashmir from India. Nor
can India rule over the State any longer indifferent to its people's
aspirations, through familiar devices. They are totally discredited.
Pakistan dare not attempt another military ven ture. India cannot resort
to any more gimmickry to conceal the realities of alienation of the
people and the existence internationally of a political dispute that
cries out for a peaceful and final solution. This is a deep and
universal yearning among the people. It would be a shame if India were
to fail to rise to the challenge by devising creative solutions which
meet Kashmir's aspirations, provide incentives to its neighbour to
settle, and yet satisfy India's own aspiration - Kashmir's members hip
of the Union of India. Similar solutions have been successfully
attempted elsewhere. One such is possible in Kashmir as well.

This was written before the Hizb ended the ceasefire on August 8, to no
one's surprise. It had sought parleys; New Delhi sought its surrender,
having exposed the men shamelessly before the media on August 3 -
something which was done to no other militant group. The government did
not take the Hizb ultimatum on the same day seriously, hoping as ever to
split the organisation as it had tried to break the Hurriyat. Democracy
is in peril when intelligence agencies mould policy and political
decisions. A fin e opportunity was lost through sheer low cunning.

A government that summarily rejected the State Assembly's resolution for
autonomy could not have been sincere when it agreed to parley with the
Hizb with its own agenda.

______

#4.

World Hindu meet in Trinidad from Aug 17

Port of Spain: A World Hindu Conference is being held here from August
17 to 20 and will discuss the state of affairs of the community the
world over.

The conference is being organized under the chairmanship of Raviji, head
of the Hindu Prachar Kendra. It will be attended by Ashok Singhal,
president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council), and
K. S. Sudarshan, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Most Hindu organizations in the country are involved and have a
representation on the organizing committee. It will bring information
about the state of affairs of Hindus in various parts of the world.

The closing ceremony will take place on August 20 at the National
Council of Indian Culture (NCIC). During the week an academic conference
will take place at University of West Indies (UWI), which will also
include a Hindu Youth Forum.

The conference is also expected to discuss the rise of Hindu nationalism
in India and its effects on Hindus outside India.

India Abroad News Service

______

#5.

The Telegraph
20 August 2000
Op-Ed.

SHADOWED BY A LINE=20
=20=20=09=20
BY AMIT CHAUDHURI
=20
=20
Reading Mukul Kesavan's response ("Unforgettable divide", August 15) to
my article ("Partition as exile", July 9), I was reminded once more of
the following, familiar question: to what extent is the discourse we
call "history" a representation of the truth, and to what extent is it a
construction, informing us as much of its authors and the conditions in
which it was written as of the events and people it describes? Certainly
Mukul Kesavan's article tells us as much about Mukul Kesavan as it does
about Partition, history and my piece; and it does this not through what
it says explicitly, but by elision, and by taking a few liberties with
interpretation.
Kesavan says something similar about my essay midway through his
article: "But Chaudhuri's essay isn't really about the events of 1947.
It tells us more about his narrative strategies for writing fiction than
it does about narratives of Partition, public or private." This is true;
although I would extend the second sentence somewhat to say the piece is
also about the way Partition affected the lives and consciousnesses of
those who lived through it, and the consciousness of the generation born
later; or, at times, significantly for me, failed to affect them in just
the way one might have expected. I don't think I make any claims that I
approach the issue as a historian, or any bones about the fact that I am
a writer whose interest lies in individual memory and consciousness and
the way they may be related to narrative, creative expression and to
history.

It is interesting, though, that Kesavan, who says he comes to my
article, and writes his, as a teacher of history, fails to mention, or
even imply, anywhere that he himself is the author of a novel about
Partition, Looking Through Glass, and that he may be more interested in
the relation between narrative strategy and history than he would have
us believe; that, at the heart of his response to my article, might be a
difference of viewpoint about the way fiction works in relation to
history.

Towards the beginning, Kesavan points out, "for him [that is, me]...the
reports, films and novels that speak of Partition, rehearse a
nationalist script that the authors first learnt in their schoolrooms".
Going back to my piece, I find I make a slightly more qualified
statement, a statement made in the context of the experiences of a
middle-class, post-independence generation, such as the one to which
people like Kesavan and myself, separated by a few years, belong, a
generation that did not experience Partition or independence at first
hand, learning about their history, necessarily, in the classroom, or
through oral sources like maternal memory, which Kesavan, later in his
piece, derides. The novels I refer to in my essay, however, are
specifically "recent novels in English", and not all novels. That I do
not refer to all films is evident from my final section on Ghatak.

The novel Kesavan offers as an exemplary instance of the literature of
Partition is Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines; oddly, he doesn't speak of
the greatest fiction to come out of the experience of Partition, written
by people who were directly traumatized by it, Qurratulain Hyder's
novel, Aag Ka Dariya, her novella, "Building Society", or the stories of
Saadat Hasan Manto. I am not making a value-judgement here; I'm not
saying a writer has to witness an event in order to write about it. But
I'm led from this observation to what I think is a fundamental paradox
in Kesavan's position.

Kesavan, in his response, is a spokesman for the irreducible
authenticity of Partition as a historical event, for its ontological
givenness, and its colossal, unignorable immediacy; it is unquestionable
in its immutable presence, rather like a frieze on an urn that never
changes. He takes issue with me for locating an event that brooks no
argument in my own subjectivity, for challenging its centrality by
giving it ambiguity, for calling it a "metaphor". (I should point out
that, in my piece, I speak of Partition being "disruptive rather than
definitive" not as a general, prescriptive statement, as Kesavan leads
his readers to believe, but in relation to my own life, prefacing the
statement with, "Its part in my life is profound but its meaning still
unclear." Further, Kesavan's repeated assertions that I claim Partition
was not a historical event are baffling; I can find it nowhere in my
piece, and must conclude he had a bad dream after reading it.)

Kesavan doesn't explain anywhere, however, why Partition should be so
unambiguous and central to his imagination, and to those of other
writers of his generation, some of whom began to write about Partition
about forty years after it occurred, none of whom had any memory or
experience of the event, for none of whom, indeed, had Partition been an
event. If there is anyone for whom Partition is a central, founding
trope, or signifier, or metaphor, rather than event, it is surely
Kesavan and others of his generation. It is not a paradox Kesavan
attends to, but it would surely enrich our understanding, not of
Partition, but of the intellectual life of a generation that grew up in
post-independence India, if it were attended to. How is it, in other
words, that Partition came to be a central signifier in, and component
of, the cultural life of English-speaking, urban India, even of its
elite diaspora, in the Eighties and Nineties?

Certainly, in the Seventies, Partition and the national narrative were
still not principal themes of the major Indian writers in English, as
they would become a decade later. Narayan had his own fictional universe
to chart; Ramanujan spoke of bilingualism; Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, who
was born in 1947, and himself displaced by Partition as an infant,
carried in a train from Lahore to Dehradun at the time, hardly writes
about Partition in his relatively few but outstanding poems: does that
mean that the event means less to him than it means to Kesavan, or that,
simply, the event, as a trope, has less significance or centrality for
him than it does for the latter? How much, then, does Kesavan's
interest, as an individual, historian and novelist, in Partition owe to
the actual event itself, and how much to his privileging of a national
narrative with which he identifies as a member of the post-independence
middle class; and how much, too, to the fictional strategies of Rushdie,
who, early in the Eighties, opened up horizons for writers like Kesavan
and others, prompting them to appropriate, through the lens or glass of
postmodernism, that narrative for their fiction?

Partition, then, hardly forms part of Kesavan's intellectual landscape
as an immediate and unmediated presence, but as a complex trope embedded
in a number of discourses, historical and fictional, that have grown in
importance since the Eighties. To consider these questions is surely not
to diminish a writer such as Kesavan, but to arrive at a more nuanced
engagement with the cultural moment he represents than he himself seems
to allow for.

Kesavan concludes with a few snide allusions to my fiction, noting, not
very originally, that I'm content to relegate major historical and
political events to the background, and to loll about observing the
domestic bric-a-brac of middle-class lives. There has long been a tone
of moral puritanism in much of what passes in India for criticism, and
Kesavan is not entirely free of it. He would have me attend to major
events with suitable awe and reverence; he would have made a good, but
probably not excellent, court poet (the greatest court poet, Kalidas,
composed seemingly apolitical poems and plays, and a rather ambivalent
national narrative, Sakuntala). Abandoning the rigorous adherence to
truth that a historian might have, he becomes, unannounced, a novelist,
fictionalizing my response to the Bengal famine, implying I would say,
"Was the Bengal famine an event? Hard to tell...people experienced
hunger in such different and complex ways."

Would that Kesavan would find other ways of writing fiction than putting
words into people's mouths. His comment reminds me of the case of
Satyajit Ray, who lived during the famine, but for a long time resisted,
in spite of pressure, making a film about the important political and
historical events he was living through, saying they were too remote
from the purview of his experience for him to address. He once admitted
that the famine did not make as much of an immediate impression upon him
as one might expect; Kesavan would probably find this remark as
incomprehensible as my statement that Partition meant different things
to different people, and sometimes meant nothing at all.

Ray's last truly great film, Aranyer Din Ratri, was accused, by Bengali
critics and contemporaries, of being about the silly foibles of a
self-indulgent middle class. Ray's subsequent attempts to deal with more
"important" events witnessed the beginning of his decline; his first
unsatisfactory film was Ashani Sanket, about the famine. It seems, now,
that the films that contemporary critics considered the least responsive
to history, like Aranyer Din Ratri, were actually most so, while those
that seem to engage with history directly, like Ganashatru, are least
responsive to it.

Kesavan, in his conclusion, makes the mistake of thinking that writing
about a political event in a fictional work is a sign of engagement,
while ignoring it is one of aesthetic remoteness. History tells us
otherwise. The dream-world of Kafka certainly seems, now, far more
responsive to history and culture than do, for instance, the many
European social realist fictions that would follow, or, in India, much
of the writing of the Progressive Writers Movement. The impoverished
peasants and young idealists in the latter now seem as aesthetically
removed and perfected as any figure etched upon a Wedgewood plate in a
curio shop; hopefully, Partition and modern Indian history, too, will
not be made to enter that great curio shop of historical writing.=20=20=20

______________________________
South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch (SACW) is an
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run by South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
since 1996. Dispatch archive from 1998 can be accessed
by joining the ACT list run by SACW. To subscribe send
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[Disclaimer :
Opinions carried in the dispatches are not representative
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