Mapping memory

But in addition to the displaced millions, another million died; 75,000 women were said to have been abducted and raped. There is no institutional memory of Partition, for the State has not seen fit to construct any memorials, to mark any particular places. There is nothing at the border that marks it as a place where millions of people crossed, no plaque or memorial at any of the sites of the camps, nothing that marks a particular spot as a place where the memories of Partition are collected. Partition was the ugly and dark side of Independence; the question then is, how can it be memorialised by the State without the State recognising its own complicity?Here I would like to refer to the detailed testimony of B.C. Dutt, a leading participant of the February 1946 Naval Mutiny, recorded in the first volume of our Naval History Under Two Ensigns. Dutt says that the leaders at that time were a tired lot. Veterans of many battles, now turned old and impatient and in a hurry for freedom at any price during their life-time.

The Naval Mutiny was a substantive hastener for Independence and a few months ago the Navy honoured Dutt and another prominent mutineer, Madan Singh, by naming the two tugs recently inducted after them.

But coming to the ideas of March, Urvashi Butalia — in her book The Other Side of Silence Voices From the Partition of India — has recorded that there is a small community of survivors from the Rawalpindi massacres that lives in Jangpura in New Delhi. Every year, on March 13, they hold a remembrance ritual for the victims of March 1947. Shahidi Diwas, or Martyr’s Day, is held to commemorate the martyrdom of many people, mostly women, who willingly gave up their lives so that abduction or rape could not stain them. The number declines with each passing year. The rituals begin by offering prayers, paying homage to their memory. Then their stories are retold. As one listens to the story of Mata Lajjawanti who led 90 women to their deaths by jumping into a well of water, jumping in first herself, rises before one’s eyes.

And as their story ends, Bhagat Kabir’s sholaka is recited. The English translation of which runs as follows: "In the seat of super-consciousness was struck the kettle drum. And the weapon hits the target of the heart. And the hero has taken the field, now is the occasion to wage battle. The true hero is one who fights in the defence of the humble; is cut limb after limb, and flees not the field."

The ceremony continues as other tales of death are told. Over the years, as the number of survivors of Rawalpindi has decreased, the gap between the teller of the stories and the audience has increased. Young people and small children now take their place listening with rapt attention. But for how long more? And who gained and who lost is indeed a gory balancesheet.

And on a personal note, for me — a `native’ of the other side of the Samjhauta Express who had to leave his land of his birth and his ancestors — the month brings many memories, not yet faded, and I recall the hymn that I sang along with other kids at the Sacred Heart Convent in Lahore in the early thirties: “Land of our birth, we pledge to thee, Head Heart and Soul in the years to be."