As both India and Pakistan prepare to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Independence later this year, historians, poets, writers, and social scientists at the

eighth Karachi Literature Festival tried to explore the political trajectory as well as human dimensions of Partition. According to historian Ayesha Jalal, anniversaries are a suitable time for “mature introspection.”

Jalal maintained that while some international commentators suggest that this state of heightened security and economic anxieties is the inevitable fate of a country born out of bloodshed, “the idea of inevitability overlooks the role of human agency and responsibility as well as the politically contingent nature of historical processes. Fed on the officially-constructed truths about history, Pakistanis are hard-pressed to understand themselves.”

A dominant theme at this year’s Karachi Literature Festival was the partition of the subcontinent

According to her, Partition was the failure of the power-sharing arrangement between Pakistan and India, but it turned into a foundational myth that still resonates in the lives of people.

While in conversation with Nomanul Haq and Framji Minwalla in the session ‘Bringing the past into the present’, Jalal said that there was a tendency in Pakistan to turn people into legends and icons. “Pakistanis are too critical about everything and therefore incapable of the kind of well-considered and measured activities that can channel national energies into constructive debate and productive enterprise. I was always involved in this country. I am a passionate, questioning Pakistani who has the desire to lay the foundation of critical intellectual traditions in this country.”

At the session launching Indian columnist and socio-political activist Sudheendra Kulkarni’s book August Voices, moderator Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed questioned why the August of 1947 was not coming to an end. Kulkarni said: “We cannot undo Partition, but we can correct its negative effects by enhancing trade and discovering more connecting threads.” Unfortunately, long trails of bitterness hinder this process of reconciliation. Kulkarni noted that his book starts with a quotation from the great Urdu novelist Qurratulain Hyder that history is another name for humanity’s inability to learn its lesson. Matthew A. Cook, a professor of South Asian studies, reiterated Kulkarni’s stance of connecting threads: “There are enormous commonalities between Pakistanis and Indians, but unfortunately invisible walls have obscured the sharing of such commonalities.”

The subject of Partition echoed until the last day of the festival. In the session ‘Partition: Drawing borders in blood’, the human dimension of the epoch-making event of the subcontinent’s history was discussed. Historian Nauman Naqvi said Partition was the direct result of the apartheid nature of the colonial state. “Apartheid is not unique to South Africa and Israel. It was a general form of colonial state based on a modern doctrine of racial discrimination.” Terming Partition as historical trauma, he added, “The monster form of nationalism in both countries is the result of a lack of conceptualisation of the trauma.”

The session ‘The birth of two nations’ drew a large audience as moderator Harris Khalique made it interactive. In reply to a question, Jalal said that Partition was not just an event that happened in 1947, but it was a process as it had history both prior to and after 1947. “Partition continues in many forms. The way we demarcate differences, the way we exclude people, the way we stigmatise them — we have imbibed the logic of Partition as it happened in 1947.”

Pakistanis are too critical about everything and therefore incapable of the kind of well-considered and measured activities that can channel national energies into constructive debate and productive enterprise.

Roger Long, historian and biographer of Pakistan’s first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan, offered a different perspective on Partition by saying that all modern history revolves around identity politics. “The Pakistan Movement was actually an ethno-genesis movement as Muslims wanted equal power from Congress, but Congress forced the British to ignore the Muslim League.” Commenting on the bloodshed that followed in the aftermath of Partition, noted historian Sayeed Hasan Khan said that peace was the ultimate casualty as Partition did not come with consent.

‘The dawn of freedom, the pain of Partition’ was the last and concluding session on Partition and was — as panellist Urvashi Butalia pointed out — an “all-women panel.” Not surprisingly, Jalal started the discussion and said historians struggled to capture the human dimension of Partition as, unlike fiction writers, historians cannot put words into the mouths of dead people. “Partition has become a way of thinking, hence it creates more walls.” Objecting to Jalal’s comments, Indian activist Butalia said that memory and history were sisters and interconnected. But Jalal maintained that the job of a historian was to investigate reality, not mould it according to one’s hypothesis. Unfortunately, in our case it is a jumble of contradictory idioms and ideological projections.

The writer is a freelance essayist

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 26th, 2017