Where violence is free

State-complicity in large-scale communal violence has a long history that goes back to the very birth of independent India, as social activist Anis Kidwai’s disturbing book reveals, writes

Anis Kidwai’s In Freedom’s Shade is a soulful narrative about the untold agonies of Partition, interspersed with powerful Persian and Urdu couplets. Published originally in Urdu 37 years ago as Azadi Ki Chhaon Mein, it is brought to life in English by her granddaughter Ayesha Kidwai’s excellent translation. It will always be hard to understand how people who once took pride in their humaneness, respect for women, love for children and the inclusiveness of their faith, could display a bestiality that, as Anis puts it, was unseen “from the very beginning of the world until now.” It reminds this reviewer of a couplet penned by his friend, Moosa Raza. Samar fashan wa hayaat aafreen wa tamkeen baksh Yehi darakht hain jin se saleeb banti hai! (Fruit scattering, life-giving, comfort providing; these are the very Trees from which the Cross is made!) In Freedom’s Shade is about the resolve and steadfastness of a woman who overcomes the enormous tragedy of the murder of her selfless husband in Mussoorie and travels to Delhi, to be at the feet of the “ideal of spirituality in this age of materialism,” Mahatma Gandhi. In Delhi, she hopes to submerge her own sorrow in the misery flooding the capital of India. The book is an anguished cry from a daughter of India who witnesses the tragedies unfolding in Delhi during 1947-48 even as she tries her best to serve and protect the victims through the non-partisan NGO, Shanti Dal. She works with many unsung champions of peace, including Dr Sushila Nayyar, Subhadra Joshi, Mridula Sarabhai, and of course, the committed students of Jamia Millia Islamia which, in the words of Gandhiji, remained “an oasis of peace in the Sahara” of communal violence. Although Anis acknowledges, with grief, the involvement of Muslims and Hindus in acts of violence on both sides of the border, she honestly confesses that her book is centered around the ruthless massacre of Muslims made easy by “the excesses of the police and security forces, the cruelty of the RSS” and “the callous and partisan conduct of the official machinery”, a pathology that continues to take its toll on the minorities in India today. The charges against Narendra Modi and his government can be cited as an example. Anis Kidwai’s book brings out several hitherto unknown facts, such as the then home minister Sardar Patel’s outrageous statement (criticised by Gandhiji) in which he told Hindus, “Let the Muslims who are here, remain here. Why do you bother to kill them? The heat from the ground will eventually become unbearable and they will choose to leave on their own accord.” Also reproduced in the book is a letter (dated Oct 14, 1948) written by Patel to Dr Rajendra Prasad in which he asks the President of the INC to disband the Mridula Sarabhai-led Shanti Dal for causing “frictions and demoralisation in the administration.” Nonetheless, the Iron Man’s advice not to harm Muslims was ignored, as Anis narrates the pathetic situation in the two big Muslim refugee camps at the Purana Qila and the Humayun’s Tomb. The nearly 150,000 panahguzeen (sanctuary seekers) at both the camps were the injured, ill, aged children and women who were violently evicted from nearby localities. Describing the life in the camp as “the life of beasts”, Anis writes that “people would eat off their hands or in pot-shards” which along with some leaves served as their only utensils. “Other bodily needs had to be met with two bricks” reused later on as kitchen stoves. In these conditions were born twenty five unwanted, bawling infants every day. All kinds of diseases were widespread and “any shortfall in misery was made up by snakes, whose bites delivered scores from their tortured existence.” And when it rained, all that the panahguzeen could do was to huddle in the knee-deep mud and await death! To make matters worse, says Anis, “No Congressi ever visited the camp; its leaders had stopped talking to these people.” Those Muslims who chose to remain in their villages had to live with atrocities of forced conversion, abduction of their women, and the razing of mosques and mazars with the full connivance of government officials. According to Anis, the intention of the government was to throw as many Muslims as it could out of India and usurp their lands. It achieved this with the help of a retired army lieutenant, Hameed, who (Anis suspects) in collaboration with Delhi’s deputy commissioner of police, MS Randhawa, emptied numerous Muslim villages. Even when Gandhiji wanted the inmates of the camp to return to their villages, both Hameed and Randhawa discouraged them, saying “conditions were far from secure” and that the question of return does not arise as “the lands have been exchanged.” In fact, Anis writes that Randhawa ruined the lives of thousands of Muslims and Harijans by taking away, with the permission of Sardar Patel, 13,000 bighas of land in Tihar on which they had lived and worked. It may be mentioned here that MS Randhawa went on to become the vice president of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and the library at Punjab Agricultural University is named in his honour! But the most important aspect of Anis Kidwai’s book is that it has been written without rancour against any community. It narrates the magnanimity of several Hindus and Sikhs who, after the intervention of the Shanti Dal, restored the dignity of the Muslims by welcoming them back into their villages. In this context, Anis, recalls the services of Jajuji, a Gandhian from Wardha, Pandit Sunderlal, Swamiji and Krishan Nayyar who saved Hindus and Muslims from falling prey to the divisive agenda of the RSS, Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League. Claiming that the post-Partition violence was more of an attack on the idea of a secular India than an offensive against the Muslims, Anis warns that if the democratic and progressive character of India is to be preserved, the youth of our nation must take the lead to build a social order based on the unifying principles of human brotherhood, compassion and shared cultural practices, because, the disintegration of these binding elements would result in the death of humanity. And, as the title of the last chapter asserts, “Man can never die.”