Ian Talbot

The 1946 Punjab Elections

On August 21st 1945 the viceroy announced that elections would be held that Winter to the Central and Provincial Legislative Assemblies. They were to precede the convention of a constitution-making body for British India. The Muslim League had to succeed in this crucial test if its popular support of its demand for Pakistan was to be credible. In particular it had to succeed in the Punjab as there could be no Pakistan without that province. But in the Punjabs last elections held in 1937 the League had fared disastrously. It had put forward a mere seven candidates for the 85 Muslim seats and only two had been successful. In the 1946 elections the League won 75 of the total Muslim seats. This improvement in its performance which had momentous implications for the future for the subcontinent requires explanation.

India and Pakistan

The chapter examines the institutional and political legacies for India and Pakistan arising from British rule and the independence process. It argues that the different political trajectories of the two subcontinental neighbours can only be fully understood within this historical context.

Making a new home in the diaspora: opportunities and dilemmas in the British South Asian experience

Abstract This special issue focuses on the diverse experiences of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain as its members make new homes and identities outside the subcontinent. It has two main intentions. First, it attempts to show how it is possible to bring together much of the small-scale case-study literature on the diaspora by concentrating on significant and continuing themes in the diaspora experience. All members of diasporas have core tasks to perform as they make new homes for themselves outside their countries of origin. Here, our authors pay particular attention to the work of creating sacred and domestic space being done by South Asians in Britain—work that has to be continued through successive generations and well beyond the first stage of movement outside South Asia. Second, the authors hope to indicate why scholars and other readers beyond those who particularly study diasporas should be concerned with the British South Asian experience. Not only is this particular ethnic diaspora a persistent part of the subcontinents own history, it also is significant for an understanding of Britains social, economic, political and cultural history. The British South Asian experience is particularly important in the light of the attacks on the London transport system in July 2005. These raised important issues concerning diaspora community identity and cohesion, and religious authority and leadership, particularly the disengagement of many young South Asians from traditional religious institutions, which is a central theme in many of the contributions.

The 1947 partition of India

The British divided and quit India in 1947. The partition of the subcontinent was accompanied by large-scale massacres which sparked off an unforeseen mass migration. The Punjab was at the epicentre of the disturbances which spread across much of North India. In all an estimated 18 million people were displaced in a chaotic two-way flight of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan and Muslims from India. The migrations were over within the space of three months in the Punjab, but were to continue intermittently from Bengal during periods of communal tension throughout the following decades. The total movement of population represented the greatest forced migration of the twentieth century.

Planning for Pakistan: The Planning Committee of the All-India Muslism League 1943–46

Most studies have concentrated on the Muslim Leagues political activities and objectives. It is generally believed that it lacked a distinctive economic programme and unequivocally favoured private enterprise. The radical economic ideas produced by its Punjab and Bengal branches are attributed to a handful of activists who received short shrift from the High Command. The Leagues stance is thus contrasted with the Congress which addressed economic issues from a largely Socialist perpective.

India and World War 1: A Centennial Assessment

World War I directly and indirectly caused events and social and political trends which defined the history of the world for the rest of the century, including the Russian Revolution and the rise of communism to the Great Crash of 1929 which lead to the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. It marked a turning point in world history as the end of the historical era of European dominance and the ushering in of a period which accelerated demands for freedom and autonomy in colonial settings. India played a significant role in the war and in the Allied victory on the battlefield. This book explores India’s involvement in the Great War and the way the war impacted upon the country from a variety of different viewpoints including case studies focusing on key individuals who played vital roles in the war. The long and short term impacts of the war on different locations in India are also explored in the chapters which offer an analysis of the importance of the war on India while commemorating the sacrifices which were made. A new, innovative and multidisciplinary examination of India and World War I, this book presents a select number of case studies showing the intimate relationship of the global war and its social, political and economic impacts on the Indian subcontinent. It will be of interest to academics in the field of War Studies, Colonial and Imperial History and South Asian and Modern Indian History.

McGarr, P.M. (2013). The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945–1965Bajwa, F. (2013). From Kutch to Tashkent: The Indo-Pakistan War of 1965

These two volumes add to the growing number of works on the Cold War and its impact on the South Asian “periphery.” This subject has been aided by the increasing use of material from State Department and Presidential Archive sources, as well as by materials in the UK and India. Official sources from Pakistan have proved more elusive, as is reflected in Bajwa’s study. Despite its title, the work is not solely a military history of the 1965 Indo– Pakistan conflict and its aftermath, but examines in detail political and diplomatic developments in this crucial period. The volume in this sense is a comprehensive study written with considerable authority and verve. It is usefully read alongside McGarr’s more wide ranging perspective. Together the volumes provide a comprehensive, if not definitive understanding of the crucially important opening phase in Indo-Pakistan relations and its international context. McGarr’s volume critically examines British and American interventions in the Indian Subcontinent in the context of growing superpower cold war rivalry. It usefully brings out the differences in perceptions and policies in Washington and London regarding the limiting of Soviet and Chinese influence. At the same time it reveals that these occurred in the context of a close partnership. Indeed in the early 1950s, Washington was content for Britain to lead in efforts to secure western influence (p. 40). Even a decade later, the Kennedy administration was urging Britain to play an equal role in burden sharing with respect to accelerating India’s economic development and arming New Delhi in the face of the Chinese threat (p. 116 & ff). London’s economic problems, faltering influence in South East Asia and the Middle East, as well as the need in the Commonwealth context to appear even handed in relations with the South Asian Dominions however limited Britain’s capacity. McGarr’s discussion of Anglo–American interventions is highly revealing, firstly with respect to the continuing residual British influence in the Subcontinent. Even a decade after the “great divide” of 1947,

Safety first: the security of Britons in India 1946-1947

A month into his viceroyalty, Lord Mountbatten took time out from sounding Indian political opinion about independence to discuss the future security of British residents with his provincial governors. By this stage, the concerns stemmed from fears of a general breakdown in law and order and Hindu–Muslim conflict rather than nationalist assault. Detailed plans were developed for a sea-borne evacuation. In the event, the only Britons who were evacuated were those airlifted from Srinagar in November 1947 as they were in the path of an invasion of the disputed Kashmir territory by Pakhtun tribesmen from Pakistan. Despite numerous articles on the British departure from India and the aftermath of Partition, little has been written about either the airlift or the broader strategic planning for European evacuation. The paper will focus on this neglected corner of the history of the transfer of power. It argues that while anti-British sentiment declined from a peak around the time of the Indian National Army trials, of 1945–6, the memories of the wartime chaotic flight from Burma and Malaya and the irreparable damage this had done to British prestige in Asia coloured the safety first approach adopted in 1947.

Bodies of power, forms of power: an introduction to the annual conference edition of the British Association for South Asian studies.

This special double issue brings together papers presented at the 25th anniversary BASAS conference, which was held at the University of Southampton in April 2011. ‘Bodies of Power, Forms of Power: South Asia through History and Across Disciplines’ was the conference theme. With generous support from the British Academy, the conference brought together senior and junior academics from South Asia and beyond to join the commemorative event. The contributors to the special issue come from varying disciplines and adopt a range of methods through which to explore how power is understood, endorsed and contested in everyday lives and at fraught moments of South Asias history.

PAKISTAN AND SIKH NATIONALISM: STATE POLICY AND PRIVATE PERCEPTIONS

The paper will examine Pakistan policies and perceptions of Sikh nationalism in the period from 1947 until the present day. The policies, it will be argued, have been opportunistic rather than strategic and have embraced both covert support for militancy against the Indian state in the 1980s and the attempt to use Sikhs and East Punjab as a bridge between Pakistan and India in the post-2001 period of composite dialogue. Private perceptions will be explored first through the accounts of partition survivors. They contain a typical mixture of romanticized views of Muslim–Sikh rural harmony before 1947 and of the Sikhs as an aggressive ‘Other’ in the ‘War of Religions’ at the time of the massacres and mass migrations. Their official counterpart is the attempt to ‘blame’ Sikhs for the violence and to understand the attacks in East Punjab as part of a Sikh Plan of ethnic cleansing. Secondly, private perceptions will be examined in terms of accounts written at the time of the 1980s Punjab crisis. These Pakistani works support the view of Sikhs as an ‘aggrieved minority’. Sympathy for Sikh nationalist struggle stops short of overt support for the militants in such texts. They frequently indulge, however, in attacks on the ‘Brahminical’ hegemony within India, thus echoing Sikh ethno-nationalist writings. Contemporary writings are suffused with romanticist imaginings of the Punjab, bringing harmony to the region in which the ‘love’ aspect of the love/hate relationship between Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs is emphasized. The extent to which the two Punjabs have drifted away from each other since partition is seldom acknowledged; nor the history of competing Muslim and Sikh nationalisms in the region.