There is an Indian amnesia about those behind the partition. It’s time to call Ashrafasi

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Pof Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tweet That 14th August should be celebrated as the partition horrific Memorial Day has created a controversy. Many critics have compared it to reopening a wound for cynical political purposes. The saying that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it, they are forgotten. In fact, it would be quite fitting if Pakistan also celebrated 14 August, its Independence Day, as the Partition Horror Day, because its birth was marred by a scale of violence that it would never wish upon itself again. To do so, he must accept that violence is intrinsic to his existence. Moreover, for Pakistan, officially, the Partition agenda is not complete. It has gone to war with India four times, and has been fighting a thousand cut wars for more than 30 years now. Ghazwa-e-Hind, India’s dream of Islamic conquest is as good as an official ideology, with Pakistani missiles named Ghauri and Ghaznavi as chilling reminders.

Even if allegations of cynical politicization of the tragedy persist, two facts cannot be ignored. One, that partition was a terrible tragedy. And, two, that politicians are clever creatures who will not kill a dead horse. If politicians resonate with the public by citing history, it is because history is contemporary, not ancient; And, if the religious discourses and political narratives leading to Partition are contemporary, not history, politicians will happily harp on them.

The question to be asked is how can a tragedy of cataclysmic proportions be forgotten, in which more than a million people died and more than a hundred million were displaced, and whose interests are served by this righteous amnesia? Second, was the Partition a one-time event, or has it been a recurring theme as the ideological dynamism that resulted in the Partition of India still throbs in our political culture? If this was a strange event, and not an inevitable segment of a long historical process, we could very well forget it without worrying about it coming back on us. But if it’s a live continuation, we’ll take stock of what went wrong and how to turn it off.

Read also: Let’s talk about partition. We owe this debt to the dead and the displaced.

time to call ashrafsi

As far as the horrors of Partition are compared to the Holocaust, one would be surprised that unlike Nazism and the Nazis, the ideology that led it, and the people who pioneered it, was never taken into account.

In Partition historiography, as an acquittal, it is fair to say that in the 1946 elections, only about 12 percent of the population was given the right to vote; Therefore, segmentation fault should not be generalized. Correct. But the question is, who were these 12 per cent who gave 96 per cent Muslim seats under a separate electorate to the Muslim League, which was contesting on the issue of Pakistan?

they were mainly self-styled ashrafasi – Literally, the superior and privileged class – the descendants of foreign rulers, concentrated mainly in Uttar Pradesh, and little spread as zamindars throughout the country. He flaunted his exoticism, and conceptualized his relations with India from a purely political point of view with the right to eternal sovereignty over the country. When it was no longer possible for them to rule the entire country, the elite Muslim class opted to divide it on the basis of religion. Partition led to genocidal bloodshed, which led to the ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs on the one hand and Muslims on the other, from the wrong side of the Radcliffe Line in Punjab, Bengal and elsewhere.

Those killed and uprooted did not demand partition. But the whole blame of this massacre was laid on the shoulders of the fearless villagers trapped in the whirlpool stirred up by the volunteers. Politics Of the Ashrafs of UP, who remained spotless. Naturally, since he continued to control the narrative even after the Partition, as he had done before. Historically, they have retained ownership of the definition and interpretation of Islam and the political narratives that stem from such religious thought. They have controlled madrassas and universities, and thus the minds of indigenous Muslims whose conversion to Islam is tantamount to their recruitment of Ashrafs as foot soldiers. Brahmanical control over Hinduism has little in comparison to the Ashraf’s hold on Islam.

He influenced the partition. Half of his family went to Pakistan to establish Islamic State, and half remained here for piety over secularism. These guilty men of the Partition of India and the accompanying ‘Holocaust’ have never been singled out. Hence, they perpetuate the same narrative and do the same politics till date. Thus, there has been no introspection and no revision of the ideology that gave rise to the politics of separatism. This impunity has recently given rise to an aggressive narrative of charity towards India by which identifiable Muslim politicians have taken the side of India by following Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and when they could have gone to Pakistan for better prospects. So he stayed back. No, sir, you stayed for your reasons, not to force Gandhi and Nehru, which you did not obey until Partition showed you its folly.

Read also: Modi’s enthusiasm for dates misses the real monument of Partition violence

Pseudo secularism should be invoked

The descendants of the ideology of Partition have revived the politics of separatism under the honorific title of identity. Liberal intellectuals bring fancy postmodern theories in their support by invoking post-colonialism, orientalism, relativism, and chic formulations to justify their primitive motivations. Neo-separatists do not demand empowerment for Muslim citizens, instead, they seek a share of power for Muslims as a religious group, the right to represent what they pride themselves on. They operate under the guise of a fictional minority character of regressive Muslim personal law and the ideological capital of a university in Aligarh. They speak liberal-secular words and use clever constitutional logic to promote their communal agenda, thinking they cannot be seen. His statement lacks integrity, and he lacks credibility.

The historiography of the objection, whether of the Marxist method or of the liberal national integration method, with such serious presumptions as Aurangzeb being secular, and the unsuspecting Muhammad Ali Jinnah being linked with Pakistan, is of the past. Promoted not honest acceptance, but a fraudulent denial. Without which there could be no ownership, no repentance and reformation.

The liberal intelligentsia, being wholly dependent on Muslim communalism for its relevance, should refrain from further discrediting itself by advancing such specific arguments as minority communalism being the lesser evil. Minority communalism is not minor communalism. It nurtures and nurtures majority communalism. The use of Muslim communalism to fight against Hindu communalism is pseudo-secularism.

Read also: Don’t just blame Hindutva for Ayodhya dispute, the politics of Muslim elite is also responsible

To pacify the specter of partition, the politics of separatism has to be put to an end, which is not possible unless Muslim society undergoes a radical secularization, or their religious views to cleanse Islam from the harmful power theology. is not completely changed. Muslims will not differentiate themselves further by adopting foreign customs in appearance and living. Anti-assimilation religiosity should become a thing of the past.

Still, the public will be remembered for the horrors of the division in order to save them from the fire pit into which the narrators – the unchanging and irrevocably privileged classes – are pushing them.

The author is an IPS officer. He tweeted @najmul_hoda. Thoughts are personal.

(Edited by Neera Mazumdar)

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