How do you win over the people that you are forced to suppress.
PHOTO: FILE
Peace and cooperation between India and Pakistan will remain elusive unless the peoples and the governments of both the countries come to a “broader” consensus.
This was the crux of a lecture delivered by Dr Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi at Institute of Strategic Studies on “Understanding Modern Pakistan and India through the Prism of Undivided Punjab”.
“My grandfather was one among the killed in the 1947 carnage. This impelled me to understand the story of [the] Punjab,” he said.
Many histories books written in India leave out the bulk of Punjabis. To his great surprise and disappointment he noted that even in Lahore there were not many studies on Punjab’s history.
Talking about a few of the findings from his book, ‘Punjab: A History
from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten’, he said “When empires are in retreat, their focus is not so much on the people that they were ruling over but on their own withdrawal which is priority number one.
What happens afterward to the people is not their concern.”
Punjab the most empire-friendly of the British Indian provinces saw the greatest violence.
The British abandoned their duty to be responsible while departing.
The British, he said, faced their toughest fight in their sub-continental conquest in Punjab, yet they succeeded in getting the people they defeated to be their staunchest allies.
Both the governments of India and Pakistan have to understand this.
After all, the governments in these two countries also face very difficult situations whether in Kashmir, or Northeast part of India, or Balochistan.
How do you win over the people that you are forced to suppress?
Concluding his talk, Dr Gandhi said that even in August 1947 when the worst killings took place, even at that time Punjabis who protected other Punjabis were far more numerous than the Punjabis who killed fellow Punjabis.
Even then a vast majority of Punjabis helped one another. This is the under reported story of 1947, and his latest study attempts to cover some of these brave and successful attempts by people to save threatened fellow Punjabis.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 14th, 2013.
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