LAHORE: The Lahore Literary Festival started on Thursday with several sessions across a spectrum of topics.

In one of them, author and Barrister (Queen’s Counsel) Marina Wheeler sat in conversation with Newsweek Pakistan’s culture editor, Nelofar Bakhtyar.

The conversation was focused on the situation of Punjab as seen by Wheeler’s mother, as she grew up there during the Raj, and also seeing Partition.

The book titled ‘The Lost Homestead: My Mother, Partition and the Punjab is’, is a memoir of Wheeler’s mother’s life, where she confronts what she calls an ‘uncomfortable heritage’.

“I got the idea for this book when it was the 70th anniversary of independence, or what the British refer to as the ‘transfer of power’, which also created a lot of interest in the UK,” she said. “I watched a lot of coverage with my mother. I realised she had been there. I was curious to know more about that. Empire being a difficult subject in the UK, meant I knew less about it than I ought. It was a motivation for me to write this book, but I also wanted to hear my mother’s account.”

Wheeler said she wasn’t prepared of how controversial the book would be, in the UK, India and Pakistan, because the narrative had now shifted. The book also mentions there was a paradox in talking about colonialism. Bakhtyar mentioned the vital intervention of Punjab in quelling the 1857 war. “The Punjab had saved the Raj and was now a favoured province,” she said. “There is a palpable sense of pride in serving the crown. It was like integration. I know there are different views on the recruitment of soldiers. But for many of those close to the Raj, like my grandfather, they saw the British were the rulers and the perspective may have been that they were ruling efficiently and they wanted to be part of that to serve their community.”

But, she said, the society around her mother was no different. It tended to be more Indian, rather than the British, as power was slowly being transferred anyway.

Many Sikhs were being inducted in the Indian army now, who had been part of the Raj. There was also the establishment of canal colonies which gave a great economic advantage to the British Raj, said Bakhtyar.

“From 1855 to 1947, land in the canal colonies went up from three million acres to 14 million acres,” she said. “Thousands of migrant workers were being brought into this area, within a span of 50 years we could see a very hard landscape being transformed into one of the biggest irrigation systems in the world.”

Wheeler said that in the UK the idea of an empire is very romantic. Her own education never ignored the atrocities and the imposition of power on a people who did not want them. “But a lot of people did think that the British were thought to have brought about prosperity and order to the area,” she said. “They also brought in a lot of educational opportunities to the children.”

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: The LLF’s keynote address was by University of Chicago’s Prof Wendy Donigor who traced the historical imagery and symbolism of horses in the land that is now Pakistan, in an upcoming book ‘The Neighs Have It: Mythology of Horses in Pakistan.’

Razi Ahmed, founder of the LLF, introduced Prof Wendy Doniger who has researched extensively on Hinduism and mythology, and her work in mythology has addressed cross-cultural expansion such as death, dreams, evil and women. She is also the author of 40 books on a variety of subjects.

Prof Doniger gave a background about the importance of horses in the history of the subcontinent and said that most of the people who came into this region, rode on horseback, so horses have always played a central role.

“First came the Vedic people, formerly known as the Indo-Europeans; then came the Greeks and Scythians riding over the northwest passes,” she said. “Turks and Mongols who later became known as the Mughals rode Arabian horses from Central Asia and Persia. Then came the British who brought Cape horses from South Africa and Walers from New South Wales in Australia.

Doniger highlighted parts of the land of South Asia that did not welcome horses as such.

“It is not easy for horses to find good grazing in South Asia,” she underscored. “They were not adapted to most of the conditions in the area. Horses’ hooves soften in the wet soil during the monsoon season, breaking and causing sores, and contrasted with extremely hot dry season the drying of hooves, which can be very painful,” she said. “But they do thrive in parts of South Asia, particularly what is now known as Pakistan. Many of the best horses of the subcontinent were bred in the land of Pakistan,” she said.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2021