Daily Times

My book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012), was awarded the Best Non-Fiction Book Prize by UBL (United Bank Limited) and the Jang Group at an elaborate ceremony held at the famous Alhamra in Lahore on November 22, 2013. Earlier this year, it won the same prize at the Karachi Literature Festival. Ironically, this time too, I was not invited to the ceremony. It reminded me of the Urdu verse, “Zikr mera mujjh sey behtr hai keh uss mehfil mein hai” (reference to me is better in my absence).

My friend Zaman Khan rang me up on the evening of November 25 to convey the happy tidings about the award. He put me in contact with Mr Asghar Nadeem Syed, the chairman of the panel of judges who chose the award winners in the various categories of writings. Syed sahib confirmed that indeed my book had been chosen as the best non-fiction book of 2012. We had a very amiable exchange of courtesies. I gathered that the jury was concerned exclusively with deciding the best works. I then talked to Ghazi Salauddin sahib who represented the Jang Group in the committee. He told me that the event had been advertised in the media, but probably it was assumed that I was still in Stockholm and therefore was not informed about it.

In any case, newspapers on November 23 reported that as many as 300 nominations were received. My book had been submitted by my publishers, Oxford University Press. A jury comprising celebrated literary figures of Pakistan shortlisted the nominations and selected the winners. Noted writer Intizar Hussain headed the jury as chief adjudicator while writer and playwright Asghar Nadeem Syed was the convener of the panel of judges. The other jury members included renowned educationist and writer Arfa Sayeda Zehra, author and freelance journalist Anwer Mooraj, scholar and academician Dr Anwaar Ahmad and author and critic Asif Farrukhi. Journalist and columnist Ghazi Salahuddin represented the Jang Group while Ali Hasnain, Group Executive, Retail Bank, represented United Bank Limited in the awards ceremony. Besides a number of literary figures, the ceremony was attended by a large number of people from different walks of life. It was stated: “Ishtiaq Ahmed was given the award in the category of English non-fiction for his book The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed. In the general citation applicable to all the winning works, the brilliance and originality of the work and the stand taken against extremism by the authors, were especially emphasised.

The French-Algerian Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1957, Albert Camus, observed most succinctly: “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” Indeed, the stark reality of the partition of Punjab was such that fiction writers and poets such as Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander, Khushwant Singh, Balwant Singh, Ashfaq Ahmad, Ramanand Sagar, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Amrita Pritam, Faiz Ahmed Faiz and many, many others employed their imagination, combining fact and fiction to produce the most outstanding genre of Urdu/Hindi/Punjabi literature.

Academic research hesitated for too long and was seriously handicapped because the truth of the Punjab partition could not be told with the help of the sources that historians were used to — archival material maintained by the state and its functionaries. From August 15 onwards, when power was transferred to the Indian Punjab and Pakistani Punjab administrations, the state became silent. If at all the fortnightly reports of what happened after August 15, 1947 were written by the Governors of East and West Pakistan, they are still classified.

It is my book, which through the facts tells the truth — an ambition that an academic scholar only can have in contrast to fiction writers whose great talent Albert Camus talked about. It tells the untold story of the partition of Punjab from where conventional historians put their pens down: August 14 — when the British transferred power to the Indian and Pakistani Punjab administrations. The 300 plus first-person accounts from August 15 to December 31, 1947 were gathered from shattered and traumatised Punjabis from both sides of divided Punjab and from Punjabis dispersed all over the world.

I had access to the fortnightly reports of the British governors and chief secretaries of Punjab: the 12-volume, Transfer of Power series; newspapers, and various fact-finding reports from the Indian side, and the 1993 and 1995 reports published by the Pakistan government. Additionally, in the aftermath of the 50th anniversary of the partition, on both sides, there was a flurry of newspaper articles and oral histories published in which the events from 1947 were recalled and many people narrated their stories. However, it was Indian feminists Urvashi Butalia, Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin who broke new ground when they began to tell the story of how women suffered during that holocaust. They talked to survivors and reported their agonies and traumas.

However, they directed their attention entirely to the atrocities meted out to Hindu and Sikh women in western Punjab. All three of them had their roots in western Punjab and their families had been affected in the bloodbath. They never ventured to look into the fate of Muslim women who suffered too. All they needed was to start from the outskirts of Delhi, and from Gurgaon onwards till Wagah there is a lot to be told about the suffering of Muslim women from what became East Punjab.

(To be concluded)

The writer is a visiting professor, LUMS, Pakistan; Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book award at the Karachi Literature Festival: The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, Oxford, 2012; and Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Oxford, 2013. He can be reached at:billumian@gmail.com