Debunking myths about our freedom struggle
B. Raja Rakshana Nachiar
1 BCOM D
I have always
expressed my feelings, be it anger, sadness or happiness through writing.
Sometimes as a letter, sometimes as a story. And if none of it worked out for
me, I always turned to my friends for help. An hour-long phone call would do
the magic that other methods could not. That is when I realized how much
talking helped me in expressing myself and how listening to others helped me
gain new perspectives. I started listening to podcasts only about a year ago
when one of my friends published a podcast on mental health. It caught my
attention right away and I felt better about myself after listening to it. It
was after this that I started to listening a lot more.
For this assignment I
wanted to produce a podcast, would be a promising idea as I can talk about my
creative ideas and therefore express it clearly. Podcasts have a certain charm
about them as they provide thought-provoking content. And that is exactly what I
am aiming for, to help the listener understand about the harsh realities behind
our freedom struggle as they question their beliefs.
Artistic expression opens the heart to new learning,
allowing them to gain control over strong feelings, and letting them transform
emotions into new and creative energies. Instead of reflecting states of the
external world, art is held to reflect the inner state of the artist. Art to me
is an invaluable source of stress release and self-awareness through creative
and imaginative processes, and helps me understand myself in a much deeper way.
If art can help one understand themself better, it can help
us understand our history better. We must reimagine our history by combining
arts with philosophy. In fact, many historians are now reevaluating written
historical accounts, searching for the underlying political and philosophical
biases of the writer in the way literary critics have long evaluated works of
imagination. By reimagining or remembering our history we might recover the
center and restore the authenticity of the so-called facts. Our imagination has
the power to transcend time and take us back to history. Therefore, reimagining
history using a creative mode of expression will help us in understanding it better
and we will also remember it for an exceedingly long time.
The historical context I have selected is the “Partition of
India.”
Previously held under the control of the United Kingdom,
India became an independent state in 1947, following an independence struggle
led by Mahatma Gandhi, and has advanced throughout that time into one of the world’s
leading economic powers. Gandhi was opposed to the partition of India and
Pakistan and worked towards improving Hindu-Muslim relations. In India, riots
between Hindus and Muslims can be traced back to 1893, sparked off by religious
processions, disputes over temples and mosques and cow protection movements
(cows are viewed within Hinduism as a symbol of wealth and abundance), among
many other things.
India and Pakistan won independence in August 1947,
following a nationalist struggle lasting nearly three decades. It led to the
largest mass migration in human history of up to ten million people. As many as
one million civilians died in the accompanying riots and local-level fighting,
particularly in the western region of Punjab which was cut in two by the
border. The Muslim League Council was a political party established in the
early 20th century. It held a strong advocacy for the establishment of a separate
Muslim-majority nation which successfully led to the partition of India into
two separate states – one with a Muslim majority (Pakistan) and the other with
a Hindu majority (India).
Hindu Mahasabha leader Lala Lajpat Rai was one of the first
persons to demand to bifurcate India by Muslim and non-Muslim population
followed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League council. The British and
the Congress had equal parts in the proposition of this idea.
The people affected during this were none other than the citizens.
Hindus and Sikhs fled Pakistan, a country that would be Muslim-controlled.
Muslims in modern-day India fled in the opposite direction. The legacy of that
violent separation has endured, resulting in a bitter rivalry between India and
Pakistan. Bungalows and mansions were burned and looted, women were raped,
children were killed in front of their siblings. Trains carrying refugees
between the two new nations arrived full of corpses; their passengers had been
killed by mobs en route. There was widespread massacre and riots all over the
country that resulted in a massive loss of lives.
What can explain this intensely violent reaction? Many of
the people concerned were very deeply attached not just to religious identity,
but to territory, and Britain refused to use its troops to maintain law and
order. The situation was especially dangerous in Punjab, where weapons and
demobilized soldiers were abundant. An unforeseen consequence of Partition was
that Pakistan’s population ended up more religiously homogeneous than
originally anticipated. After arguing for years that Hindus and Muslims could
work together, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel failed the decisive test
of working with the Muslim League when the British put them together in the
interim Cabinet of 1946-47.
Maybe Partition was a good idea. Maybe not. Maybe it could
have been executed in a more organized manner. Maybe people could have reacted
in a non-violent manner. The answer would always remain a maybe as we never
know whether it would have worked out or backfired. All we can do from now on
is try to learn from the mistakes our ancestors made and live in peace and
harmony.
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