Seventy years ago India and Pakistan came into being, the first of the tumbling dice that were the longtime colonies of European nations. Over the next two decades, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium would retreat from their possessions in Africa, Asia, South America, and the Caribbean. The importance August 15th 1947 cannot be understated, and its echoes reverberate still.

In an earlier post, Freedom at Midnight (1) – the birth of India and Pakistan, I discussed the process by which this came about. Below are links to two articles published today which examine the legacy of partition, a legacy that, as these pieces demonstrate, it still subject to much debate.

Writing in the New York Times, Pankaj Mishra deconstructs Jawahawal Nehru’s famous declaration of independence on 15th August 1947: “…one can, of course, mourn this August 15 as marking the end of India’s tryst with destiny or, more accurately, the collapse of our exalted ideas about ourselves. But a sober reckoning with the deep malaise in India can be bracing, too. For it confirms that the world as we have known it, molded by the beneficiaries of both Western imperialism and anti-imperialist nationalism, is crumbling, and that in the East as well as the West, all of us are now called to fresh struggles for freedom, equality and dignity”.

Anil Dharker, writing in The Independent, paints a rosier picture. India emerged from the trauma of partition and proposed. prospered. “Seventy years on, that’s something to be proud of. Even more is the fact that the idea of India as one country has survived, in spite of the country’s huge diversity and population, which makes it akin to a continent. Numbers confirm this amazing story: India’s population is now over 1.2 billion, spread over 29 states and seven union territories. There are 22 official languages and very many more dialects. Each state has its own language, culture and cuisine”.

And yet, he concludes, India has not yet realized the ecumenical promise of Nehru’s famous “tryst with destiny”: “Not even the most flag-waving Indian however, will claim that everything is perfect. The caste system refuses to die out; Dalits (the term used for untouchables) still face upper-caste persecution; they and minorities (especially Muslims) remain equal citizens only on paper; conservative and orthodox men still resist women’s fight for equality; the criminal justice system and the police still favour the affluent; reactionary religious elements still create tensions and face the future backwards”.

WH Auden composed a poem commemorating the events of 1947.

Specifically, he wrote of Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the English lawyer appointed by the British government to determine the borders of the new states. It was he who drew the fateful lines on the map of British India. An ironically objective narrative which recounts the story just as Collins and Lapierre tell it in Freedom at Midnight. It is, perhaps by design and intent, reminiscent of a celebrated poem by Dylan Thomas, and indeed, to paraphrase the Welsh Bard, “the hand that signed the paper” felled a city and bred a fever.

Partition

Unbiased at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.
“Time,” they had briefed him in London, “is short. It’s too late
For mutual reconciliation or rational debate:
The only solution now lies in separation.
The Viceroy thinks, as you will see from his letter,
That the less you are seen in his company the better,
So we’ve arranged to provide you with other accommodation.
We can give you four judges, two Moslem and two Hindu,
To consult with, but the final decision must rest with you.”

Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.

The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget
The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not,
Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.