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Irish Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Shattered Lands. Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia: Wonderful telling of a sad history
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia Author : Sam Dalrymple ISBN-13 : 978-0008466817 Publisher : William Collins Guideline Price : £25 The very title of Sam Dalrymple's magnificent book underlines how vital a portrayal of the Indian subcontinent in the 20th century it provides. Many people will probably do a double take when seeing 'partition' in the plural in the subtitle, even more so as it refers to five of them. For most of us, the partition of India no doubt refers to the 1947 division of British-controlled India into the modern Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan . But there are other divisions that have cross-hatched what was once the world's largest imperial holding – the division, and perpetual provisional status, of Jammu and Kashmir between the two newly independent countries; the 1971 secession of East Pakistan to become Bangladesh; and also the separation of two other places whose history as part of the Indian Empire is mostly forgotten: Britain's Arabian territories, including Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai, Oman and Aden, which split on Britain's orders in 1931, and Burma, which became a separate crown colony six years later. Dalrymple's richly documented history provides an excellent refresher course for anybody in need of one. The better-known partition naturally looms largest in the book, one of the most dismaying humanitarian catastrophes of a bleak century, spurred by the rise of ethnonationalism, the gross incompetence and racist indifference of the colonial administration and crucially, the proximity to a global conflict that created a heavily militarised society, particularly in the Punjab, the historic home of the British Indian Army. Beginning with the Calcutta Riots of August 16th, 1946, the day the All-India Muslim League called a general strike to demand a separate Muslim homeland, India's Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs slaughtered each other in what Dalrymple calls a 'mutual genocide'. The bloodshed resulted in the deaths of up to two million people and the displacement of between 12 and 20 million, culminating in 'population transfers' between India and Pakistan that are considered the biggest movement of humans in history. READ MORE Panicked populations, driven by fear, distrust and rampant misinformation, killed their neighbours and fellow citizens, often in out-of-body frenzies of violence that would, in some accounts Dalrymple cites, shock and traumatise even the perpetrators for the rest of their lives. 'Firing a village is a normal occurrence like having breakfast, murder is like having a cigarette,' one contemporary account put it. There were many instances of Hindus and Sikhs protecting Muslim friends and strangers, and vice versa, but even these kindly acts would ultimately be powerless against the massive force of genocidal violence, leading people on both sides of the divide to migrate. These included the Hindu Urdu poet and satirist Fikr Taunsvi, who reluctantly left his beloved native Lahore for Delhi after his daughter was murdered by a neighbour. The uprooting of populations also diminished cultures, with the Delhi novelist Ahmed Ali lamenting the 'shrinking of his city's language' after partition. It was only the assassination of Gandhi by the Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse in November 1949 that, Dalrymple says, 'shocked the two nations to their senses' and brought an end to the violence. But the book deals with a lot more than just the events of 1947–1949. Dalrymple begins his account with the bumptious visit of the Simon Commission to India in 1928. The commission was tasked with writing a constitution for British India and was led by Lord John Simon, selected because he had a 'virgin mind on Indian affairs'. It was a perfect exemplification of Britain's mishandling of India and the commission members were shocked to find they were not overly welcome in the colony, where anti-colonial sentiment was rife. One of those members was a young Clement Attlee, who would, two decades later as prime minister, preside over India's leaving the empire. The first cleavage, and the first signs of ethnic strife, occurred in Burma, where there were two big pogroms of Indians in the 1930s. Though it might seem strange to think of present-day Myanmar as being part of India, there was, even among progressive Burmese, support for remaining attached to it. [ Understanding the hidden history of Myanmar Opens in new window ] Burma would later become a front line of the second World War, occupied by the Japanese, with local nationalists, including Aung San, father of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi , collaborating with the occupiers in the hope of getting independence. The former congress leader Subhas Chandra Bose would do the same, establishing the Indian national army, which fought the Allies alongside the Japanese. The British looked warily on the indifference to the war effort of other Indian nationalists, imprisoning most of them, including Jawaharlal Nehru, for much of the war. Only the Muslim League leader, and later founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, stayed out of prison on account of his support for the Allies. Still, the British knew independence would be inevitable when the war ended, as was acknowledged by the wartime viceroy Archibald Wavell. The Bengal famine, caused by a rise in the price of rice after Burmese imports disappeared, and exacerbated by Churchill 's callous racism, brought the impending break-up only closer. [ Winston Churchill sent the Black and Tans to Palestine Opens in new window ] Few of the chief architects of partition emerge with much credit. Nehru and Jinnah are portrayed as self-serving opportunists detached from the reality of life for ordinary Indians. Wavell's successor, Mountbatten, was, even among his contemporaries in India, widely viewed as incompetent although he was inexplicably left in charge of the process of handing over the colony, which was planned with an insanely irresponsible deadline of just 77 days. Even Gandhi, though not particularly venal in Dalrymple's nuanced telling, is far from the facile totem of saintliness he is viewed as in the West. [ Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire Opens in new window ] Still, Dalrymple gives them their due, acknowledging that partition was viewed at the time as a way to put an end to the ethnic violence already under way, even though it only ended up exacerbating it. He quotes John Keenan, an Anglo-Indian army officer of Irish descent, who surmises that the rush to get partition completed was due to fears on Nehru's part that the Tories would return to power in the UK and that Churchill would put a stop to decolonisation. India might even have been partitioned further: 584 princely states existed in India before 1947, with no constitutional link to the British empire. The best-known of these were Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad and Travancore, the latter of which made an ill-fated attempt at declaring independence in 1947. Almost all the princely states were subsumed into either India or Pakistan, with rare peripheral exceptions, such as Nepal and Bhutan, living on as independent states. There were also losers in the shake-up who failed to see their aspirations to independent homelands realised, such as the Naga and the Mizo, two Tibeto-Burman ethnic groups who live either side of the India-Myanmar border. Pakistan also continues to face insurgencies from separatists in its southwestern Balochistan province. The final partition occurred in 1971 when East Pakistan – following horrendous massacres by Pakistani forces that were an echo of the violence of the late 1940s, and a subsequent war with India – gained its independence as Bangladesh. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that a non-contiguous state, its two entities 2,000km apart and speaking different languages, would struggle to last. The fact the Karachi government refused to make Bengali an official language, despite it being spoken by 55 per cent of the population, made things only more fractious. Even so, the violence when it came was no less shocking than 24 years previously. Though relinquishing the colonies was undoubtedly the right thing to do, the precipitous manner in which it was done was much to Britain's discredit, and was done as much out of economic expediency as anything else. With Britain financially crippled after the war, Attlee was determined to let go of India. Britain would similarly give up its Arabian holdings in 1971 when inflation at home made running them far too costly. Oil money meant decolonisation was relatively smooth in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the Trucial States (now the UAE) but Aden, which was plunged into civil war, fared less well. Though nationalists across the various countries will surely disagree, Dalrymple is in no doubt the partitions left all countries, on the subcontinent at least, worse off. Travel between the three countries, two of which are belligerent nuclear powers, is now heavily restricted and he notes that it is easier for Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to meet in England, their former colonial power, than to meet in the subcontinent itself. The economies of all three countries suffered, particularly Pakistan and Bangladesh, which inherited little of the pre-partition structures or personnel of governance. The scope and verve of Shattered Lands makes it a wonderful read. Dalrymple, who grew up in Delhi, draws on a range of superb memoirs and testimonies of partition, including from the poet Taunsvi, the brigadier Keenan, and the Harvard graduate-turned-Bangladeshi freedom fighter Salahdin Imam, and also an impressive amount of documentation. He tells an extremely sad tale very well. Further reading From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra (Penguin, 2013) Mishra's history of the responses of Asian intellectuals, from India, China and the Arab world, to colonialism is a landmark work that provides invaluable insight into the underpinnings of anti-colonial action, which have been often obscured in western narratives. The Siege of Krishnapur by JG Farrell (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973) Farrell wrote of nothing but empire in his short but glorious career, which encompassed three novels. The Siege of Krishnapur brilliantly details the siege of a fictional British garrison town in India during the 1857 Mutiny. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1973, it lost out in the 2008 Best of the Booker, perhaps in an act of postcolonial poetic justice, to Midnight's Children. [ JG Farrell: plagued by disease Opens in new window ] Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta (Review, 2005) The Indian-American Suketu Mehta was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for this ambitiously sprawling nonfiction book about Mumbai, the city he lived in as a child before emigrating to the US. An important addition to city literature.
Khaleej Times
08-06-2025
- General
- Khaleej Times
Dubai: Are tenants allowed to make temporary changes in rental property?
Question: I'm renting a two-bedroom apartment in Dubai, and my two children currently share one of the rooms, I would like to divide their shared room into two separate spaces. I understand that structural modifications are generally not allowed in rental properties here. However, would it be legally allowed to install a non-permanent partition, like a gypsum board divider, that doesn't affect the apartment's structure? Please advise on the legality of this and whether any permissions are required for this type of modification. Answer: In Dubai, tenants are prohibited from making any changes or carrying out maintenance work in a rental property without first obtaining approval from the landlord and the relevant authorities, including but not limited to Dubai Civil Defence. This is outlined in Article 19 of Law No. 26 of 2007, which regulates the relationship between landlords and tenants in the emirate. The law states: 'A tenant must pay the rent on its due dates and must maintain the Real Property in a good condition as a reasonable person would maintain his own property. Without prejudice to the tenant's obligation to carry out any restoration that is agreed upon or which is customary for tenants to undertake, the tenant may not make any changes or carry out any restoration or maintenance works in the Real Property without obtaining the permission of the landlord and the necessary licences from the competent official entities.' Additionally, if a tenant makes changes that compromise the property's safety or cause irreparable damage, the landlord may seek eviction even before the lease term ends. This is in accordance with Article 25 (1) (e) of Law No. 33 of 2008 Amending Law No. 26 of 2007 Regulating the Relationship Between Landlords and Tenants in Dubai. 'Where the tenant makes any change to the Real Property that endangers its safety in a manner that makes it impossible to restore the Real Property to its original state; or causes damage to the Real Property as a result of his deliberate act, or his gross negligence by failing to exercise due caution and care or allowing others to cause that damage." Based on the mentioned provisions by law, while you may want to divide the room with a non-permanent partition, you should get prior approval of the landlord and the competent government authorities, including but not limited to Dubai Civil Defence.
Khaleej Times
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Khaleej Times
India-Pakistan tensions: A history of war, conflict between South Asian neighbours
Long-running tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan soared Wednesday after New Delhi launched deadly strikes at Pakistani territory. The missiles killed at least eight people, according to Pakistan, which said it had begun retaliating in a major escalation between the South Asian neighbours. India accuses Pakistan of backing the deadliest attack in years on civilians in disputed Kashmir on April 22, in which 26 men were killed. Islamabad has rejected the charge. Both countries have since exchanged gunfire in Kashmir, expelled citizens and ordered the border shut. Since the April attack, soldiers on each side have fired across the Line of Control, the de facto border in contested Kashmir, a heavily fortified zone of Himalayan outposts. The two sides have fought multiple conflicts, ranging from skirmishes to all-out war, since their bloody partition in 1947. 1947: Partition Two centuries of British rule ends on August 15, 1947, with the sub-continent divided into India and Pakistan. The poorly prepared partition unleashed bloodshed that killed possibly more than a million people and displaced 15 million others. Kashmir's monarch dithered on whether to submit to Indian or Pakistani rule. After the suppression of an uprising against his rule, Pakistan-backed militants attack. He sought India's help, precipitating an all-out war between the countries. A UN-backed, 770-kilometre (480-mile) ceasefire line in January 1949 divided Kashmir. 1965: Kashmir Pakistan launched a second war in August 1965 when it invaded contested Kashmir. Thousands were killed before a September ceasefire brokered by the Soviet Union and the United States. 1971: Bangladesh Pakistan deployed troops in 1971 to suppress an independence movement in what is now Bangladesh, which it had governed since 1947 as East Pakistan. An estimated three million people were killed in the nine-month conflict and millions fled into India. The conflict led to the creation of the independent nation of Bangladesh. 1989-90: Kashmir An uprising broke out in Kashmir in 1989 as grievances at Indian rule boiled over. Tens of thousands of soldiers, rebels and civilians were killed in the following decades. India accused Pakistan of funding the rebels and aiding their weapons training. 1999: Kargil Pakistan-backed militants seized Indian military posts in the icy heights of the Kargil mountains. Pakistan yielded after severe pressure from Washington, alarmed by intelligence reports showing Islamabad had deployed part of its nuclear arsenal nearer to the conflict. At least 1,000 people were killed over 10 weeks. 2019: Kashmir A suicide attack on a convoy of Indian security forces kills 40 in Pulwama. India sent fighter jets which carried out air strikes on Pakistani territory to target an alleged militant training camp.
Telegraph
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Britain's tragic decision that sealed Kashmir's fate
On July 8 1947, a senior British barrister called Cyril Radcliffe arrived for the first time in India and was handed an impossible job. The British were leaving the subcontinent, and the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League – the parties led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad Ali Jinnah respectively – had agreed to partition India to allow the creation of Pakistan as a homeland for the sub-continent's Muslims. They could not agree on a border, and both they and Lord Mountbatten, the British viceroy, wanted one drawn by Independence, which was scheduled for August 15. Radcliffe, whose ignorance of the country was seen as a guarantee of his impartiality, had just five weeks to decide the fate of millions of people. In the West, Radcliffe drew a red line dividing Pakistan from India from the Arabian Sea to the top of Punjab. But when he reached the foothills of Kashmir and Jammu, he stopped. Technically, the highlands feeding the headwaters of the Indus river were in one of the princely states of British India. The principality of Kashmir and Jammu was inhabited mostly by Muslims and had once been part of the Sikh empire. But since the first Anglo-Sikh war a century earlier, Kashmir had been ruled by the Dogra dynasty of Hindu Rajputs, under the suzerainty of Britain. It was a strange arrangement with all kinds of odd contradictions. Hari Singh, the Maharajah in 1947, was still nominally sovereign ruler, but was British educated and often wore a British military uniform. He had sent troops from his small army to fight for the British in the Second World War and sat on Churchill's war cabinet. His army and police were mostly Muslims, but his officers – until Independence – were British. Singh was seen as a liberaliser. Before the war he set up the state's first legislature and adopted a constitution that outlawed child marriage, made primary education compulsory, and opened places of worship to the lower castes. But he was not exactly a democrat, with fewer than half of the seats in the new parliament elected. Now he, and the rulers of more than 500 other princely states across the subcontinent, faced a crucial choice created by the reality of partition: join India or Pakistan. For Singh, it was an impossible dilemma. Kashmir literally and figuratively straddled the fault-line of partition; more than three quarters of his subjects were Muslim and would never accept joining India. However, the significant Sikh and Hindu minorities would never feel secure in Pakistan, especially following the bloodletting across Punjab that took place throughout much of 1947. Further complicating things was a split between two Muslim-led parties – one pro-India, one pro-Pakistan, and both anti-Maharajah. Lord Mountbatten urged Singh to make up his mind quickly. But Singh and his prime minister, Ram Chandra Kak, played for time. By July 1947, the Maharajah had opted to stay independent from both India and Pakistan – for the time being at least. Three days before formal Indian and Pakistani Independence on Aug 15, Singh's government telegraphed the governments of both new nations asking for a 'standstill' agreement to maintain the status quo. Pakistan replied in the affirmative; India asked for talks to draw up an agreement. Amid the turmoil of partition, independence for Kashmir was never sustainable. Two days later, Radcliffe's partition line was published, and both new countries were submerged in bloodshed. Perhaps one million people were killed and more than 15 million displaced as Muslims in India fled to Pakistan and Sikhs and Hindus in Pakistan fled the other way. Two months later, in October 1947, riots over taxation, unemployment for returning war veterans, and demands for accession to Pakistan broke out in Kashmir. There followed a brutal massacre of Muslims by Hindu militias. Shortly afterwards, Pakistan-backed tribal irregulars invaded the princely state. Singh appealed to India for help. Nehru, himself of Kashmiri descent, replied that help would come with a price: sign away independence and join India. On Oct 26, Singh signed the accession agreement and Indian troops began to land in Srinagar, the Kashmiri capital. Ali Jinnah, meanwhile, now the first leader of Pakistan, furiously denounced the accession deal as 'fraudulent' and a breach of the 'standstill' agreement. The first India-Pakistan war had begun. One year – and 27,000 casualties – later, it ended in stalemate with India in control of two-thirds of the province and Pakistan the remainder. There have been three more official Indian-Pakistani wars since then. The current crisis, if it spills into full-scale war, would be the fifth. If war is averted, it will merely become the latest entry in a much longer list of skirmishes, artillery duels and other lesser in all that time neither the shape of the territory, nor the basic grievances, have changed, and the line of control today still follows the same frontline where the fighting stopped in 1948. India insists that Kashmir is legally Indian, and accuses Pakistan's powerful intelligence agencies of sponsoring terrorist atrocities, including last month's attack in Pahalgam which triggered the current fighting. Pakistan claims the province was illegally signed over to India and that its Muslim majority have suffered repeated repression under Indian rule. For both, the high ground of the Himalayan foothills is strategically vital. Pakistan, which relies almost entirely on the waters of the Indus River, is loath to surrender the tributaries that pass through the mountains. But above all, the war in Kashmir has taken on existential dimensions. For Pakistan and India, mutual antagonism has become almost a defining feature of post-independence identity, and the events of those months in 1947 remaining bitterly contested. Pakistani commentators have long accused Mountbatten and Nehru of pressuring Singh to join India. One story holds that the Viceroy prevailed upon Radcliffe to change a section of the border to ensure that India, not Pakistan, controlled a crucial road into Kashmir. Debate still rages about whether Singh himself was complicit in the massacres of rebels in the early days of the war, or whether the massacres themselves were exaggerated by Pakistani propaganda. In Pakistan, perceived defeat in 1948 led, in 1951, to the first of many attempted military coups. In India, Nehru himself came under attack for appealing to the United Nations to adjudicate the peace in 1948. Narendra Modi, India's current prime minister, claimed in 2018 that 'all of Kashmir' would have been Indian if Nehru had not been prime minister at the time. Hari Singh left Kashmir in 1949, and afterwards proclaimed his son and heir, Karan Singh, to act as Prince Regent – an effective abdication apparently forced by Nehru. In 1952, Nehru's government abolished the Kashmiri monarchy altogether. And while Singh died in Mumbai in 1961, the conflict that he unwittingly helped initiate remains more explosive than ever.
