Historiography

Question 1

David Gilmartin ‘The Historiography of India’s Partition’, JAS, 2015.

Answer 1

• Nationalist narrative
  o Focus on the role of British colonialism and communalism played in the partition
  o E.g, divide and rule, British inefficiency
• Revisionist challenge
  o Challenged the nationalist narrative in 1960s/70s
  o Shifted focus towards the agency of Indian political figures and regional factors
  o Competing interests and aspirations
• The subaltern turn
  o Focused on the indiv. experiences of marginalised and oppressed communities
  o Wanted to focus on the voices which have been side-lined during the historical analysis of the partition
• The transnational turn
  o Connections and interactions between countries, transcending national-level analysis
• CONC - needed a diverse range of voices and narratives being explored to create a truly cohesive understanding of the partition

Answer 2

Debates
* Historiography was heavily rooted in causes - Did the British grant India freedom or did India win freedom?
o Imperialist vs nationalist view

• Imperialist
   India was shepared to indep. through a series of progressive, graduated, constitutional stages
   Not many follow this belief anymore
• J.A Gallagher and Carl Budge - British constitutional reforms were geared to preserve Empire and to counter Indian agitation
   1919 and 1935 reforms were instituted to prevent the collapse of the Raj
• Imperialists bipartisanship - the differences between conservatives and labour
   RJ Moore; labour did wish to withdraw from empire but were indecisive towards domestic political issues
• And Hindu / Muslim transgressions
   Anita Singh - labour govt. tired to save Pax Britannica until the end
• Britain withdrew due to circumstances outside their control; India. Indep. came about due to the decline of Britain as a empire power
   (a) weakened by war, especially financially .: India was a net liability for Britain -> supported by BR Tomlinson
   Combination of administrative collapse in India and power shortages at home
   (b) international pressure, espc. from Roosevelt -> supported by Basudev Chatterji and A.D Gordon
• Nationalist view - Britain never wanted to hand over power
   Embracing Indian nationalism orchestrated mass uprisings -> forced British to leave; undermined and overturn the colonial state
   Judith Brown, Sumit Sarkar and Bipan Chandra - refuse to concede that British policymaking contributed anything towards indep.
   Constitutionary concessions were pried from a reluctant Raj, never freely given
• Eventual respb. was given in the from of a hasty and improvised settlement, at the high price of a bloodied and divided succession

 Cambridge school = emphs. self-interests rather than ideology of nationalism (JA Gallagher)
* Nationalists were groups of elites prepared to collaborate with the Raj in return for patronage and power
* Change did not emerge not because of monoethnic nationalist pressure, but a willingness to strike constitutional leaders to retain control
* Working relationship between nationalism and imperialism

 Subaltern Studies Collective - attacked Cambridge school
* Also a nationalist position, but differs from the earlier visions
* Population in general were involved -> elites too could be incorporated into subaltern when they opposed British rule
* Ravinder Kumar - elites and subalterns working together as uneasy allies against the British, becoming political opponents after 1947
* ‘Great Man Theory’ -> the role of indiv. in the story
* (a) Gandhi
* (b) Nehru
* (c.) Jinnah - Historians argue he is the most important factor in the history of the partition

• Result of British imperial policy of Divide and Rule?
• Was the Partition inevitable?
  o Are Hindus and Muslims actually two nations?
  o Was Jinnah (and the Muslim League) respb?
  o Indians have blamed Jinnah, Pakistan has blamed Congress for the partition

o Earlier accounts of the partition -> blamed the British
* British pitted communities against each other; Hindus and Muslims were locked in an antagonistic relationship with one another
* Divide and Rule
 Gyanendra Pandey -> Pakistan is the result of British / Muslim intrigue
* colonial modernity produced Hindus and Muslims as oppositional community
 Communalism was created by the same process that produced nationalism
 British constitutional policies of separate electorates and fostering competition between communities
* Partition was not a goal for Britain policy, but its logical consequence
 Muslim rejection of a unitary solution -> sustenance given to the two-nation theory by constitutional reforms over 30 years.
* How did colonial modernity place Hindus and Muslims as oppositional communities?
 Gyanendra Pandey -> argued nationalism and communalism were two sides of the same coin; born from the same colonial processes
* Believes communalism is a part of the way nationalism was constructed

o Two nations theory and Jinnah
* Works at two levels
* (1) Francis Robinson and Paul Grass
 Patterns of identity that were either pre-modial or instrumental, unable to attribute separatist politics either wholly to pervasiveness of Islamic value or wholly to pragmatic manipulation of elites
 Islamic organisation and the power structure of the colonial empire provided communalism with its separatist rationale and constitutional thrust
* (2) Two communities of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ were constructed by colonialism
 Peter Gottschalk
* Discusses scientism - shaped new forms of religious classifications, creating visions of self-constrained, bounded religions on both the local and imperial levels
* Talks about the complex signif. of transforming the meaning of religion in India from the village to the insti. of the colonial state
 Joya Chatterji - shown how Hindu communal parties as well as Congress contributed to Bengal partition
* Role of Hindu - linked to the interest of high caste
* Hindus became the minority in Punjab and Bengal - she states it’s the same argument, then, for Muslims having the partition
* Now accepted, with such an intervention, that there were various interests at play during 1947; Jinnah and Nehru wanted partition for different reasons, and British played a role
* Shift from causational focus to consequential focus within last 15 years of H; experience
* (3) The role of Jinnah
 Used Islam as a political move, rather than an ideology, and used Pakistan as a bargaining hand - he did not really want this
 Demonised in Indian historiography, and lionised in Pakistan historiography
* Both consider him the chief architect of the partition
* Dominant strand found when focusing on elite conflict, manipulation of popular religion and politics in India as the central key to partition
* His conversion from a central politician to a communal politician is at the heart of this narrative; renunciation of secular politics and towards communal in the wake of electoral humiliation
 Anita Singh and others -> argue Pakistan demand was his chief aim
* But the most influential intervention regarding the interpretation of Jinnah’s role in partition was by Ayesha Jalal
* Jinnah’s use of the communal factor was a political tactic, not an ideological commitment -> Jinnah did not want partition, but was forced into this position when the Cabinet Mission was rejected by Congress
* Actually against Jinnah’s interest to accept the partition which followed

Experiences
* 1980s subaltern studies and orientation towards history from below, it was felt the search for the cause trapped historians in a high politics perception
* Gyanendra Pandey -> violence that accompanied partition; how this shaped people’s experience and desire to reclaim it in later years
o Dominant narrative in his writing - discovering the memorabilia of partition under the state drama
o Stresses historians respb -> overtly challenge dominant nationalist narratives

• Led to a emergence of work focused on different segments of society and their partition experience
  o Women, for example, by R. Menon & K. Bhasin
• Show the complexity of experience regarding age, gender, class and caste
• But it was the people who died and moved - how do we recover that experience?
  o This was not easily found in the archives -> no material of ordinary people, so how to recover?
• Two strategies - in the 1980s, recog. only 35 years ago -> rush to collect material from witnesses
   Partition scarred cultural spheres of expression e.g., art, theatre, poetry -> huge depository of cultural production
   Urvashi Butalia; complexity of experiences of partition - age, class, gender, caste; not homogenous experience
   Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin- critical role of gender in partition violence and reconstruction of national authority
   Pakistan was not a spontaneous revelation, but there was a convergence of the grassroots