Dilip Hiro is a prolific journalist and writer whose areas of interest have been Iran, the Middle East, the South Asian subcontinent and race relations in Britain. His latest book, The Longest August is premised on a theme that has been a favourite subject for many an author over the decades. The book comes across as a frank, straightforward, strikingly honest and a neutral chronicle of Indo-Pak relations which at times sounds like a guide to the politics of the subcontinent for a budding Western journalist. Despite being a fairly compressed version of the causes of the troubled relations between India and Pakistan, the book manages to hit the mark frequently.
After having briefly narrated the causes and reasons behind the Partition of British India in August 1947, the author, with reasonably success, establishes the point that the mindset of suspicion and hatred exists even today: both sides upping the ante at various points in time since the Partition, sometimes with justification but often driven by the still fresh rancour and wrath synonymous with the events of August 1947. Although Punjab was the worst hit area where those uprooted by the Partition looted and lynched their neighbours of decades in an orgy of blood and death, Hiro recounts the fear he felt as a Hindu child in a Karachi that was increasingly becoming a Muslim-only city. In Karachi, the communal violence thankfully did not assume alarming proportions, relatively speaking. Critical of the haughty and even racist attitudes prevailing in the Indian National Congress, mostly on the part of V.B. Patel and J.L. Nehru, at a few critical and crucial moments of history, Hiro does not hold back any punches and lays the blame where it is due.
Out of the ashes and humiliation of 1937 elections and its aftermath, the Lahore Resolution was born - where Jinnah, ever the liberal that he was, was at pains to spell out that the clash between Islam and Hinduism had not been a religious one, but one stemming from being “different and distinct social orders….” The Congress leadership, by not acceding to the proposal of making Jinnah the Prime Minister of United India on account of their mistrust and arrogance, did little to heal any wounds.
The Congress leadership, on the other hand, kept faith until it was too late with the long held belief amongst Hindus that the Indian Muslims were a body of converts and their descendants - and that they could not claim to be a nation apart from the parental stock. Also, they held the belief that the aristocratic descendants of the Turk, Afghan and Persian invaders - Shurafa or nobility - only constituted 10% of the total Muslim population of India. That and a deliberate decision on the part of Jinnah, according to Dilip Hiro, not to spell out the details of the Muslim homeland he had in mind created an extraordinary surge in the Muslim League’s popularity in the early 1940s which in turn handed him a hitherto unexpected veto over the future of India as a political entity.
After seeing off the 1965 war over the beautiful vale of Kashmir, Hiro’s proverbial longest August moves to 1971 where he recounts the chilling story of a journalist embedded with the Pakistan Army, which was eventually published by the Times of London. According to the embedded journalist Neville Anthony Mascarenhas, whole villages had been devastated by “punitive action”. He had listened with incredulity as the otherwise brave and honourable officers spoke of the day’s kill at their dinner tables in the officers’ mess in what was then East Pakistan.
The Indian side, on the other hand, adopted a scorched earth policy in Kashmir, resulting in thousands of extra-judicial killings leaving permanent scars on the Kashmiris in the 1980s and 90s. The gratuitous animosity and the false beliefs amongst security forces on both sides, exalting mutual hatred to the level of state policy and even religion, holds the region back as far as economic and human development is concerned. All in all, it has been a sorry tale of mistrust, brutal subterfuge and, most alarmingly, one in which the Indo-Pak rivalry triggered an irrational and ominously destructive arms race - culminating with both countries joining the nuclear club. Both India and Pakistan are spending billions of dollars on sophisticated weaponry and on their respective nuclear programmes at the expense of their citizens, the majority of whom do not have access to safe drinking water, healthcare and primary education.
Whilst citing a few examples - which can only be described as paltry if not disappointing - of economic thaw between Pakistan and India, like the airing of Pakistani TV dramas on some Indian satellite channels and Bollywood movies being shown in Pakistani cinemas, the author concludes by advising both the countries to follow the example of Sino-Indian economic relations and put an end to the Longest August which has killed hope, prosperity andprogress. While the above advice may be music to the ears of most peaceniks on both side of the border, the stark reality is that it is easier said than done.
Tariq Bashir is a Lahore-based lawyer. Follow him on twitter @Tariq_Bashir
After having briefly narrated the causes and reasons behind the Partition of British India in August 1947, the author, with reasonably success, establishes the point that the mindset of suspicion and hatred exists even today: both sides upping the ante at various points in time since the Partition, sometimes with justification but often driven by the still fresh rancour and wrath synonymous with the events of August 1947. Although Punjab was the worst hit area where those uprooted by the Partition looted and lynched their neighbours of decades in an orgy of blood and death, Hiro recounts the fear he felt as a Hindu child in a Karachi that was increasingly becoming a Muslim-only city. In Karachi, the communal violence thankfully did not assume alarming proportions, relatively speaking. Critical of the haughty and even racist attitudes prevailing in the Indian National Congress, mostly on the part of V.B. Patel and J.L. Nehru, at a few critical and crucial moments of history, Hiro does not hold back any punches and lays the blame where it is due.
Out of the ashes and humiliation of 1937 elections and its aftermath, the Lahore Resolution was born - where Jinnah, ever the liberal that he was, was at pains to spell out that the clash between Islam and Hinduism had not been a religious one, but one stemming from being “different and distinct social orders….” The Congress leadership, by not acceding to the proposal of making Jinnah the Prime Minister of United India on account of their mistrust and arrogance, did little to heal any wounds.
The Congress leadership, on the other hand, kept faith until it was too late with the long held belief amongst Hindus that the Indian Muslims were a body of converts and their descendants - and that they could not claim to be a nation apart from the parental stock. Also, they held the belief that the aristocratic descendants of the Turk, Afghan and Persian invaders - Shurafa or nobility - only constituted 10% of the total Muslim population of India. That and a deliberate decision on the part of Jinnah, according to Dilip Hiro, not to spell out the details of the Muslim homeland he had in mind created an extraordinary surge in the Muslim League’s popularity in the early 1940s which in turn handed him a hitherto unexpected veto over the future of India as a political entity.
After seeing off the 1965 war over the beautiful vale of Kashmir, Hiro’s proverbial longest August moves to 1971 where he recounts the chilling story of a journalist embedded with the Pakistan Army, which was eventually published by the Times of London. According to the embedded journalist Neville Anthony Mascarenhas, whole villages had been devastated by “punitive action”. He had listened with incredulity as the otherwise brave and honourable officers spoke of the day’s kill at their dinner tables in the officers’ mess in what was then East Pakistan.
The Indian side, on the other hand, adopted a scorched earth policy in Kashmir, resulting in thousands of extra-judicial killings leaving permanent scars on the Kashmiris in the 1980s and 90s. The gratuitous animosity and the false beliefs amongst security forces on both sides, exalting mutual hatred to the level of state policy and even religion, holds the region back as far as economic and human development is concerned. All in all, it has been a sorry tale of mistrust, brutal subterfuge and, most alarmingly, one in which the Indo-Pak rivalry triggered an irrational and ominously destructive arms race - culminating with both countries joining the nuclear club. Both India and Pakistan are spending billions of dollars on sophisticated weaponry and on their respective nuclear programmes at the expense of their citizens, the majority of whom do not have access to safe drinking water, healthcare and primary education.
Whilst citing a few examples - which can only be described as paltry if not disappointing - of economic thaw between Pakistan and India, like the airing of Pakistani TV dramas on some Indian satellite channels and Bollywood movies being shown in Pakistani cinemas, the author concludes by advising both the countries to follow the example of Sino-Indian economic relations and put an end to the Longest August which has killed hope, prosperity andprogress. While the above advice may be music to the ears of most peaceniks on both side of the border, the stark reality is that it is easier said than done.
Tariq Bashir is a Lahore-based lawyer. Follow him on twitter @Tariq_Bashir