Talking Partition with Children
Of all the times I have to stand up in front of an audience and talk, the ones that make my palms sweat are the guest speaker sessions in my daughter’s class. She is 7. And boy, are these guys brutal! Not only are they genuinely curious, they are also almost entirely unable to tell which questions are likely to embarrass a speaker. Quite unlike your regular bunch of bored adults who will either ignore a speaker or ask questions that are basically disguised but strongly held opinions. These kids on the other hand, with their limited vocabulary of adverbs and adjectives will often get straight to the point, force you to distill the concept to it’s necessary constituent parts. Richard Feynman once said that if you cannot explain a subject to a 5 year old, you most likely do not understand it yourself. And I didn’t want to face the collective wrath of Feynman and my daughter, so I did my homework.
Thus, suitably nervous, earlier today, I stood in front of twenty second graders, about to discuss the Partition of India and it’s impact on communities and generations of migrant families. I had put together a few images as a photo essay and I was going to show them a short animation film about a friendship across borders. Plus this was right after their lunch break so I couldn’t do too badly.
I started with the front page of The Hindustan Times from 15th August 1947, and asked them to identify what it might be from the headlines. I was hoping to set some context for place and time by discussing India’s Independence and how it was a day of celebration. They quickly gathered what the image was and when I probed a little about the history of the independence struggle, we had a very animated conversation about the legacy of the Empire. One boy asked, “What do you mean by the word empire? I stumbled on that answer. My efforts at the simplistic explanation that we were now free to rule our country and manage our assets was met with how the British empire was a good thing for the world as we now know English and have the Royal Opera House. Erm, excellent points children. I wanted to add western potty that’s making our hamstrings weak. Anyhoo.
I nudged the conversation forward to talk about how the Independence of India was accompanied by Partition of the country into two nations, and large communities of people were displaced from their homes. To make the point, I showed them a map of the undivided Indian subcontinent under British rule from the 1909 census and asked them if the map looked different from how they know it now. At first, it seemed like nobody thought it was different but then a couple of comments started pouring in, “I think there is something extra hanging on the right hand side…” (the map includes Bangladesh and Burma). “Oh, and this left part is fat.” “My dad told me that Mumbai was not a part of India before Independence.” “Arre, but Mumbai was called Bombay earlier.” When I next showed them an image of divided India, they immediately saw the difference. I told them all these people in Pakistan, and East Pakistan, one night they were Indians, and then the next day they were not. Hypothetically speaking, if we wake up tomorrow and Mumbai becomes a Chinese colony, and let’s say everyone with a white car is asked to move to China, what will happen? If you are going to laugh at my example, you try having this conversation without discussing the politics of religion because is that a hard one to do or what? Coming back to the example, it was quite revealing to see how the kids responded. One little girl who has a white car said she would hate to be asked to go to China because she will be sad about leaving her pet fishes behind. Some kids said they will miss their friends. One smart cookie asked, “Why can’t she just sell the white car?” Um, well because let’s just say they can’t. “Even if they ask for 10 dollars less?”
I followed this up with showing them the routes on the map my grandparents must have taken, Rawalpindi to Patiala, Gujranwala to Delhi, Sialkot to Jullunder, Dera Ismail Khan to Delhi. I asked them how they thought the families may have made these long journeys? One perky chap said, very dismissively, “Of course in a white ambassador.” Someone asked if it was by plane, another wondered if they took a boat. The teacher prompted them to think about how many people may have had the money for these expensive private journeys and what do you think they could have done. With little hesitation a boy’s hand shot up to say, “Maybe they used Uber Pool.” In that moment I was reminded of why I volunteer to do this at all.
When I showed them some photos of how people may have travelled, with Sikh men carrying grown women on their shoulders, an old Muslim woman in a makeshift palanquin and thousands of people stuffed inside and riding on the roofs of trains, there was pin drop silence. The kids absorbed the pictures for what I hoped was a slightly better understanding of the hardship of the time. One little boy asked, “Were they fined for travelling on top of the train, it is also dangerous.” Well my child, dangers of falling off a moving train was the last thing on their minds. I did not go a step further to talk about the riots and the violence, both because it was hard to prick their bubbles just yet and I wanted to focus on the issues of displacement in my talk. But how do you really explain riots in all their monstrosity and complex underpinnings to 7 year olds?
I shared some true personal stories about my grandparents. My maternal grandparents met in and were engaged to be married in Gujranwala near Lahore. But the riots broke out and they were separated, my Nani finding safe passage owing to their status in the jeweller community. My Nana on the other hand had a large family with his mother and his siblings that he was responsible for. They travelled to India for long distances on foot. And once in Patiala, he set out on a search for my Nani to marry the girl his heart was set on. They were married in the month of August and completed 50 years of marriage in keeping with the golden jubilee of India’s independence in 1997.
Toward the end, I shared the video of a short film by Nina Sabnani titled Mukand and Riaz. It’s a sweet story of young friendship, and the animation is beautiful celebrating the rich applique textile tradition from Sind and Gujarat. While we were setting up the video, I heard the following snatch of a conversation that I will leave you to make of, what you will:
Little Boy 1: “I think we should kill all Pakistanis”
Little Boy 2: “If I had a gun, I would kill all Pakistanis, US has friendship with Pakistan”
Little Boy 3: “We shouldn’t say that, they are also people like us only”
Little Boy 1: “They have F17s and machine guns and also have nuclear bombs”
Little Boy 2: “But we also have nuclear bombs”
Little Boy 4: “And my father said, we are more powerful than them because we are number five on the list of nuclear power nations, and Pakistan is number six”
