The last viceroy had enormous charm, style and a capacity for hard work, and was wholly committed to success. Did that make him a great man?’
Lord Mountbatten was appointed to oversee the transition of British India to Independence, which was to happen no later than 30 June 1948. With unbridled ambition and the desire to have the British leave India smoothly, his appointment and his decisions bring up many questions.
Read on to know more about what led to Mountbatten becoming India’s last Viceroy, and his intentions as he worked towards securing a safe exit for the British from India.
The ‘uniting’ of India under the Imperial rule has always been considered as a great British achievement. However, a close look at British politics of the time paints quite a different picture.
From believing that India was home to ‘backward races’ with no capacity for self-government to continuing to use Hindu-Muslim antagonism as a tool to prolong British rule in India, Churchill’s intentions in the last few decades of the Raj are quite revealing.
Read on to get an insight into India as envisioned by Winston Churchill, one of the most influential leaders in British history.
If anyone can hold a mirror up to a society that has lived through Partition, it is Manto. Whether he’s narrating the story of a worried father searching for his missing daughter or a Sikh man struggling to live with himself after a particularly horrific round of looting during riots, he has the masterful skill of making a point with the deepest impact.
Manto was arguably the most prolific writer of the Independence era. Read on, as he proves it yet again through two of his most heart-wrenching stories in The Horrors of Partition.
Two travellers on a train. One starts telling the other about an event that happened in 1919 in Amritsar, about the son of a prostitute who stood up to the British, sacrificing his life in the process. But that isn’t the worst part of the story. As the listener, enraptured, hears the storyteller reveal the rest of Thaila Kunjar’s story, he can’t help but question whether the storyteller was just a simple ‘onlooker’.
One of the most impressive storytellers to come out of the Independence era, Manto truly portrays his prowess in ‘A Tale of the Year 1919’. Poignant yet powerful, this is not just a story about martyrdom and bravery but also about prostitutes and their children and their status in the country.
Rub Nawaz’s and Ram Singh’s families have been neighbours and friends since their grandfathers’ time. Both Nawaz and Singh, born a few days apart from each other, went to the same school, signed up for the army together, even fought alongside each other during the Great War. But in a strange turn of events, they now find themselves part of two different armies that are fighting each other for Kashmir.
Read on, as Manto looks at the aftermath of Partition in his inimitable style, replete with humour while cleverly making a point.
India is just a few years away from Independence; cries of ‘Inqilab Zindabad’ have been reverberating in Amritsar, the Swadeshi movement is in full swing and that is when we first meet ‘Shahzada’ Ghulam Ali, caught in the fervour of the fight for freedom. His legendary speeches are the talk of the town and it is just a matter of time before he is imprisoned – quite the badge of honour when you are going to jail for your country.
But before he goes to jail, he and Nigar must marry, and they will only marry in the presence of Babaji, who insists on their spending time at the ashram, where they just might learn a new definition of freedom and what it means to them.
Subtly brilliant and typically Manto, ‘For Freedom’s Sake’ is a surprisingly insightful take on something we usually take for granted: the right to freedom.
A few years after Partition, the thought occurred to the governments of Pakistan and Hindustan that, as with ordinary prisoners, an exchange of lunatics was in order.’
Bishan Singh, an inmate of Lahore asylum, is set to be transferred to India. But what he would really like is to stay where his home town – Toba Tek Singh – is, except that no one is telling him whether it falls in India or Pakistan. Which is also because no one knows for sure what lies where any more. As the day of the transfer draws near, Bishan Singh’s agony escalates. Is there no one who can tell him where Toba Tek Singh lies?
A satirical take on Partition and the relationship between India and Pakistan, Toba Tek Singh is classic Manto – quietly revealing and every bit entertaining.
Before seeking shelter on the Indian side of the border during Partition, Khushwant Singh was leading a life of luxury and splendour in Lahore, entertaining friends who were writers and artists, and art critics, starting a literary circle (which is how Singh’s literary career was born), and drinking (mostly Indian-brewed liquor).
Not many Indians believed that the British would willingly relinquish their Empire in India but Singh knew that his days in Lahore were definitely coming to an end.
Read on, as Singh describes the horrors he witnessed during the run-up to Independence, a stark contrast to the life he was leading mere months before.
Like many north Indian families, Urvashi Butalia’s family too was divided during the Partition. While her mother found herself on the Indian side of the border, Rana, her brother, chose to stay behind in Lahore.
Ever since she could remember, Butalia had heard stories of Partition, and of her uncle – who had not only stayed behind, becoming the sole owner of the family house, but had also become a Muslim. It is with these thoughts and not knowing what to expect that Butalia visits Lahore to see Ranamama.
A heartwarming story of families broken and reunited, amidst mistrust and misunderstandings, ‘Ranamama’ defines the pain and heartbreak of the Partition era that has affected generations.
Ved Mehta – born to a Hindu Punjabi family in Lahore of British India – has the chance to revisit his childhood home after thirty years. It has been thirty years since Partition, since a communal division of two countries, and so, what he might encounter in a house he hasn’t stepped into since he was a child is anybody’s guess.
Will the house still be standing? Will it be the same? Does he want it to be the same?
Read on as Ved Mehta finds the answers to these questions while being amused, more than a little surprised and, most of all, humbled.
