funded by the British Council;1857 to 1947,Indo-Pak project;-

funded by the British Council;1857 to 1947,Indo-Pak project;-

Indo-Pak project grapples with versions of history

Nergish Sunavala, TNN | May 1, 2013, 04.40 AM IST

MUMBAI: Most schoolchildren in India associate the 1905 partition of Bengal with Hindus and Muslims uniting to oppose the division of the state along religious lines. They learn that Bengalis from both religions composed songs, marched barefoot to the Ganga and tied rakhis on each other in protest. 

In Pakistan, however, the partition of Bengal sparks off a different set of associations—those of furious Hindus agitating only because they couldn't bear to see Muslims become a majority in East Bengal.

These divergent accounts of history have been put together in a book, 'The History Project', conceived in 2005 and compiled by youths aged 16 to 27 from both India and Pakistan. A core team of three Pakistanis, who were instrumental in creating the book, launched it last week at four Mumbai schools, two of them being J B Petit High School, Fort, and Gokuldham High School, Goregaon.

A note at the beginning explains that most of the book's 30-odd contributors are graduates of Seeds of Peace, an international organization that brings together teenagers from conflict zones to a campsite in Maine, USA, for a few weeks every year. It was while debating history at this summer camp that most of the youngsters discovered the differences in their school textbooks. "We decided to make 'The History Project'... so that the reality that there are differences becomes literally inescapable," said Qasim Aslam (27), a Pakistani entrepreneur and part of the book's core team.

The project deals with the years from 1857 to 1947 and includes 16 historical events—such as the formation of the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League, the Khilafat Movement, Direct Action Day and the Mountbatten Plan.

"The War of Independence (in 1857) seemed like a good starting point because that is where the first divide happens," said Pakistani Ayyaz Ahmad, another core team member who is also a consultant with the World Bank in Pakistan. Since the Civil Disobedience Movement is omitted from Pakistani textbooks, that page in the Pakistani section of the book is left blank. The editors have also focused on questions that recur in Std X and XII exams, because "if you trace a line across those events all of a sudden you can identify a narrative", said Aslam.

To steer clear of controversy, the book's editors chose to reproduce information from textbooks but not introduce an alternative narrative. "We stayed well away from coming up with anything that says we are experts and know what history is," said Aslam.

This non-committal approach extends to the artwork, which uses a faceless character to avoid cliched depictions of Indians and Pakistanis. "I wanted to illustrate the illustration of history (on both sides) without imposing my view on it," said artist Zoya Siddiqui.

'The History Project' has only seven Indians among the 30-odd contributors. All five editors are Pakistani and more Pakistani than Indian texts were used. When asked about this, a core-team member said there was a shortage of volunteers from India and those who visited Pakistan took only three books. Besides Seeds of Peace, the book has also been funded by the British Council and Global Changemakers, an international youth network.

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comment white washing the divide and rule policy?

 
In 1905, Lord Curzon ordered the partition of the province of Bengal, which was seen as a perfect example of the the Brits' divide and rule policy. The division caused widespread agitations across India

Partition of Bengal (1905) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_Bengal_(1905)‎

The decision to effect the Partition of Bengal was announced in July 1905 by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon. The partition took effect in October 1905 and ...

Background - Partition - Political crisis - Significance

 

I. British India:

‘Divide and Rule’ was the standard policy employed by the British in their dealings with India and the Indians from the very beginning, when the East India Company (EIC) first made its presence felt in the subcontinent.

From its earliest victory at the Battle of Pelasi (Plassey) in 1757, the EIC was already actively engaged in turning the Indian rulers against each other. At Pelasi, the small force of Robert Clive only managed to defeat the larger force of Siraj-ud-Dawla, the Nawab of Bengal, because he had managed to conspire with the Nawab’s uncle Mir Jafar and persuaded the latter to betray his nephew. After gaining control of Bengal and other parts of India, the EIC began to introduce reforms in law and taxation law which allowed it to earn more profit which also creating dependent class groupings within Indian society.

In 1793 the Zemindari system was introduced by the British in the region of Bengal. The law transferred the ownership of the land from the village communities to the Zemindars, the class of tax-collectors, who were responsible to the EIC directly. These Zemindars became a new class grouping within themselves and this division led to further alienation and antagonism in Indian rural societies. The Zemindars in turn became a new breed of land-owners under EIC protection and served the role of tax-farmers who provided the EIC with guaranteed revenue through their own unscrupulous and often brutal means of tax-extortion.

Then in 1818 the EIC introduced the Ryotwari system in the Presidencies of Bombay and Madras. This made the Indian peasants (the ryots) tenants on land that was previously theirs anyway. The ryot were forced to pay tent-taxes to the EIC and if they failed to do so they were forced off their property. The Ryotwari system created a class of itinerant peasants and a new class of rural homeless poor. They were often victimised by EIC forces and officials, as well as local Indian money-lenders and profiteers who eventually took over all their lands.

The strategy of divide and rule was further entrenched and institutionalised in the wake of the First Indian War of Independence in 1857. Even during the conflict itself the British were engaged in pursuing the policy in their dealings with the Indians. The British authorities won the support of the Indian feudal rulers, Princes and Talukdars by promising that their lands would be returned to them if they supported the British effort. This isolated the mass peasant base that supported the war of independence, and allowed the British to defeat them in stages. After the defeat of the Indian forces, the British effectively decapitated the political leadership of the country. The last moghul ruler of India, Emperor Bahadar Shah Zafar, was deposed by the British in 1856, but he was proclaimed emperor once again in 1857 by the Indians. After the defeat of the Indians in 1858, Bahadur Shah was once again deposed by the British, this time for good. He was sent into exile in Rangoon after his entire family was executed and their heads were presented to the emperor by the British soldiers, served on silver platters.

The British colonial government then took over the rule of India from the East India Company, and it began to introduce a number of policies which were designed to further entrench the pre-existing social divisions within the country: It worked to keep Muslims and Hindus apart in the colony, and it introduced a system of deliberate racial discrimination which favoured Muslims over Hindus in some areas and the opposite in others. This was part of a deliberate and orchestrated plan to maintain British rule in the colony. Government officials realised that the pre-existing racial and religious differences between Hindus and Muslims could be turned to their advantage if the two groups were made to oppose each other, instead of working together to oppose British rule. As Sir John Strachey put it: ‘The truth plainly is that the existence side by side of these hostile creeds is one of the strong points of our political position in India’ (1888). This climate of hostility was itself artificially created and intensified by the divisive policies outlined above. As Lieutenant Colonel Coke has explained it: ‘our endeavour should be to uphold in full force the separation which exists between different religions and races, not mix them. Divide et Impera should be our principle aim’ (1860).

The British government also sought to employ the different racial groups in different sectors of the colonial economy and administration, thus emphasising ethnic and cultural divisions even more. In particular those ethnic groups that were regarded as being ‘martial races’ (i.e. Rajputs, Sikhs,) were used to man the military and security apparatus of the colonial state both in India as well as in the other neighbouring colonies.

Minor principalities and small Indian kingdoms were also given limited autonomy and governed indirectly. By allowing some petty Indian rulers to enjoy some of the trappings of power, the British government hoped to ensure that a minor Indian elite and aristocracy could be maintained that was well-disposed towards their colonial rulers. As in the case of the Malay sultanates, the Indian courts were appointed British residents and advisors, who in fact assumed de facto powers to rule while the native rulers were reduced to puppets of the colonial regime.

These policies were perpetuated and intensified well into the twentieth century. It culminated with the fragmentation of the Indian nationalist movement along class, ethnic, ideological and religious lines and the emergence of the Muslim League of India in 1906. By this time, Indian Muslims were certain that their presence would no longer be welcomed in an independent predominantly-Hindu India. The British, however, did not relent in their aim to keep the two communities at odds with each other, for it feared the prospect of an emerging Indian nationalism that might lead to the overthrow of British rule in India. The net result of nearly a century of racial division and social engineering was the eventual partition of India in 1946-47, and the racial and religious conflict that preceded and followed in the wake of India-Pakistan’s independence.