History
Panel 2: Common History in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
Indo-Pakistan Antagonism: the Impact of the ‘Enigma’ of Indian Kashmir
by Nathalène Reynolds*
When reflecting on the conflict of which Indian Jammu and Kashmir has been the scene since the end of the 1980s, it strikes one that few have taken the trouble to examine the resurgence of a nationalism that had already tried to express itself during the partition of the sub-continent. By tacit agreement, India and Pakistan chose to qualify it rather as a regional particularism. Strange, however, in that this same Kashmiri nationalism - limited to the area of the Valley - would determine, at least in part, the future of the insurrection which broke out at the start of 1990. It was at that time that Kashmir rejected its vision of the history of the sub-continent, a vision that was, it is true, intertwined with the dominant Indian reading.
Kashmir adopted a version that was somehow tailor-made for it by Pakistan, whose objective was to encourage the Muslims of Indian Jammu and Kashmir to claim their adhesion to the Islamic Republic. An India that had proclaimed the collapse of the ‘two nation theory’ with the coming into being of Bangladesh was accusing Pakistan of engaging in a ‘proxy war’. The populations of India and Pakistan, for their part, were called upon to close ranks in a demonstration of irreproachable adherence to the ‘nation’. As for the citizens of Indian Jammu and Kashmir, they were disoriented by the readiness to ‘forget’ history shown by the older generation. The coup de grace, so to speak, was recently delivered by Islamabad itself: confronted by the rules of a new world order, President Pervez Musharraf denied (albeit indirectly) the myth of the Pakistani ally devoted to the cause of the former princely state.
This brief outline demonstrates the need to undertake a work, in a sense, of ‘reconstruction’. It would consist of revisiting, in the framework of a presentation on this panel, the key episodes (from 1947 up to the contemporary period) giving rise to the Indo-Pakistani antagonism. This approach undertaken by a French (and thus, at least by origin, impartial) researcher would clearly be based on the various studies (principally Pakistani, Indian, British and American) of the subject, but above all on two sources of particular interest which the author has consulted extensively: the French and especially British archives, and notably those which were opened only at the end of the 1990s.
We would also, in examining each of these episodes, present the principal versions of India, Jammu and Kashmir, and Pakistan (to cite them in alphabetical order). Furthermore, we would hope to demonstrate that Indian-administered Kashmir has constituted both a source of, and a backdrop to, the ideological confrontation opposing two states born in difficult circumstances. India and Pakistan - both of which have proclaimed themselves the defenders of the right of peoples to rule themselves - have in turn sought to instrumentalise the quest for autonomy of the different communities of Jammu and Kashmir.
* Dr. Nathalène Reynolds, Doctorate in the History of International Relations (Paris I, Sorbonne), is a Research Associate at the Center for Asian Studies, Geneva, and a Visiting Fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad, Pakistan. She recently published a historical study entitled Le Cachemire dans le Conflit Indo-Pakistanais (1947-2004) (Kashmir in the Indo-Pakistan Conflict, 1947-2004), Harmattan, Paris.
History Writing in India
by Visalakshi Menon*
India has had a strong and vibrant tradition of history-writing which began even before independence and was taken up with vigor in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The early generation of historians: R.P.Dutt, R.C.Majumdar, Tara Chand and P.C.Joshi were succeeded in the 1960s by a new generation in which the prominent names were: R.S.Sharma, Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, Irfan Habib, Satish Chandra and Sarvepalli Gopal. Many of them, even while engaged in active teaching and research, devoted a part of their time to writing history textbooks for children. In the 1960s, when the first such textbooks were brought out by the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the endeavor was not just to update historical knowledge, but also to place the discipline of history on strong, secular foundations. This was done because it was felt that much of the communal hatred which erupted from time to time in the form of riots, emanated from the communalized approach in history textbooks. Even today, in Gujarat, which has seen some of the worst incidents of communal violence in recent times, the history textbooks have had their role to play as has been pointed out by many civil liberties groups working in the region. Hence, there was need to re-examine the stereotypes about the so-called “Muslim period” or even the earlier glorified “Hindu period” and to shift the focus of historical enquiry away from the religious and the purel -political to the socio-economic.
Very soon thereafter we had Sumit Sarkar, Ranajit Guha and a whole new generation of historians who represented the subaltern school of history writing. They attempted to move on from so-called elite history writing to study popular movements and consciousness. The word “nation” began to be disaggregated and more and more focus was given to the “fragments” as Partha Chatterjee put it. They were the women, the tribals, the dalits and other such groups. A strong critique of the nationalist project also emerged in the process.
Today, history textbook writing in India has entered a new phase – in which the grand narrative is being given up for “themes”, when children are being encouraged to “construct” knowledge rather than having it given to them as the undisputable truth.” But even while this exercise goes on and the first generation of students and teachers are grappling with the new textbooks, questions come to mind. Some decades ago Fernand Braudel, one of the doyens of Annales school of history writing in France asked: “Why teach in bits and pieces a subject which is a whole?” He went on to beautifully describe historical events as “crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs.” He also lamented that , in France, after 1968, “owing to some haphazard choices by a succession of teachers, some pupils have gone through their whole school careers without hearing about one or another important period in history.” Are Braudel and E.H. Carr now outdated? One realizes that the ways of teaching history have to change over time – but is one running the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Even as these innovations and experiments proceed apace, the discipline of history is increasingly under threat. At the undergraduate level, fewer and fewer students are opting to study history and prefer instead to go in for economics or commerce or engineering and IT related courses. In the years to come, there will be fewer and fewer “experts” in the field even while distortions of history in the public domain are increasing with alarming rapidity. The objectives of this paper will be:
- To see the impact of the new history textbooks brought out by the NCERT on schoolchildren.
- To also record the strategies adopted by the teachers to make knowledge more participatory and constructivist.
- To document the use and misuse of history in the public domain and the role played by the Indian diaspora in this process.
References:
- This realization came even before independence. It was noted in the Report of the Kanpur
- Riots Enquiry Committee prepared by the Indian National Congress in 1933.
- MANDER, Harsh, “Unfinishe Justice”, Times of India, 22 March 2007.
- CHATTERJEE, Partha, “The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories”, Delhi: OUP, 1995.
- See National Curriculum Framework for School Education, 2005.
- BRAUDEL, Fernand, A History of Civilizations, Penguin India, 1993, p.xx and xxxiv.
* Visalakshi Menon is Reader in the Department of History Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. She has published two books: Indian Women and Nationalism: The UP Story (Har Anand Publications, 2003) and From Movement to Government: The United Provinces 1937-42. She is also co-author of a school textbook on Modern India prepared by the NCERT for government schoolchildren in Delhi. She is an activist and a member of the Delhi Historians Group which leads a campaign against the communalization of history.
Pashtuns Reading Gandhi: Non-violent Political Islam, Collective Action and Contesting Identities amongst Pashtun Communities
by Aneela Z Babar*
This paper generates new understandings and more complex representations of Muslim and Pashtun communities in South Asia and beyond. Drawing from the history of a Gandhian-inspired Pashtun social movement that formulated and adopted an indigenous code of inter- communal harmony, the paper explores inter-communal dialogues and a history of non-violence that has remained invisible in current public and security debates regarding Pashtun Muslim communities. Documenting their perspectives on political Islam, social equity and redefinition of the gendered self will contribute to any project on social cohesion, cultural and religious diversity in contemporary multicultural democracies hosting Muslim communities.
I approach this by drawing from the history of Khudai Khitmatgar (servants of God) a collective action led by Ghaffar (Badshah) Khan (1890-1988) that executed a model of ‘positive masculinities’ and inter-communal harmony during the Indian nationalist movement. Inspired by Gandhism, the social movement formulated and adopted an indigenous code of what constituted as ghairat (honour) and strateetop (complete personhood) from a framework of Gandhism, Islam, Buddhism, and Pakhtoonwali (code of conduct for ‘being’ Pashtun, to ‘do’ Pushto), familiar to the region and the community. By cataloguing the history of a period when Pakhtoonwali was expressed in relatively flexible forms one can authenticate the move towards multiple readings of Pashtun social and religious identities; thus exploring the possibility of synergy between social action groups working with Pashtun communities.
* Dr. Aneela Z Babar is an Endeavour Research Fellow at the Monash Asia Institute, Monash University, Australia.
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