Channel 4 has chosen the 60th anniversary of indias independence to make this docu drama about the partition, it was fascinating to watch what happenned 60 years ago as the programme tries to be neutral and yet will be engulfed in huge controversy
i can see how the sikhs will feel totally outraged at being blamed for initiating the massacres, which the lord mountbatten character in the program clearly indicates was the result of master tarachand and his extremists followers taking their kirpans out, but it also asks a vital question if the british and everyone else was aware of the atrocities being planned, why the hell did they let it happen, were the british in such a hurry to leave india that knowing the extremists on both sides were preparing to massacre each other in cold blood, they left india in the mess that acoording to them they found it in, this is utterred by lord mountbatten as a very lame sounding apology for the total chaos which ensued.
we were to be blamed equally for neighbour killing neighbour and raping their friends wives and daughters but if according to the programme it only required 20000 troops from stopping the train massacres and tarachand from starting the massacre then the british administration is equally responsible .
its shot on location in india and pakistan and its heartbreaking to see an old man coming to describe how his rentire family including his grandparents to children were all martyred, you can feel his sense of loss even today after 60 years and he states it in a very matter of fact way, yet says it happenned for no reason at all .
the fact it actually has descendants of allama iqbal , his son [visionary muslim poet responsible for the idea of pakistan], mr nehrus and mr tarachands granddaughters, being interviewed and trying to explain how in the context of the anti muslim behar riots the idea of pakistan was born in iqbals mind and then realised by a charismatic , westernised socialite bombay lawyer, and mr. nehrus grand daughter lamenting his actions saying he was not even a fanatic, he was a modern muslim, and mr .tarachands grand daughter saying sikhs were insecure and thats why they initiated the genocide , all real people trying to justify or explain the circumstances is fascinating, yet strangely bizarre as mr nehrus granddaughter still implies she sees pakistan and bangladesh as part of india, because of cultural similarities, thats obviously going to be a statement strongly contested by bangladeshis and pakistanis .
there are eyewitness statement of the trains arriving in lahore railway station which were filled with corpses and severed mutilated limbs and mountbatten exclaiming, this cant be hidden now its too much, the muslims will go crazy now, but why couldnt the trains have had a gaurd of 50 armed men for protection against the sikh kirpans when they knew they were going to be attacked [it says the only survivor was the hindu engineer and the train was sent as an independence gift to pakistan
the programme says 750000 people were killed, sikhs claim 600000 sikhs were killed, hindus that 500000 were killed, whereas the lowest and most conservative muslim estimate is 2 million killed at least, this in addition to the women on either side who were abducted and raped, which runs into hundred of thousands, the program claims 2million were displaced yet I think that again its a fable, from the accounts alone it seems it was at least 10 million .
the truth is if you were a punjabi on the wrong side of the border, you were dead meat, unless you ran for your life, and as always it was the poor and women who sufferred the most, a muslim man tells how he bought kerosene to burn his family[women] alive so they wont be dishonoured by the nonmuslims but when he came home and looked at their faces he was unable to perform the ritual, luckily for him lahore was given to pakistan, my heart is torn apart just thinking about the poor muslim, sikh and hindu women on the wrong sides of the border who had to jump into wells or sati themselves to save the word honour, yet where was honour, this was the most shameless and terrible act in the history of india and it was done by ordinary people in a frenzy, no need to blame mr.tarachand, you have to have followers to have a leader in the first place
its portrayed very truthfully that the sikh and hindus lost financially much more as they were the landowners and businessmen in pakistani punjab [scenes of the old city of lahore burning are terrifying .real footage ], while the muslims loss was more casualties as east punjab was totally evacuated of muslims, as was west punjab of sikhs and hindus, but again the question is why was it PUNJAB that decided to commit this genocide, why arent there any religious riots in kerala or south india, why do asians live in peace abroad yet cut each others throats in india itself .
it remains to be seen how we as indians and pakistanis and bangladeshis deal with it today,
the program shows gandhi and jinnah exactly as they were, secular, opposite yet principled and extremely logical and sophisticated, though nehru and edwinas alleged affair is not shown, the fact he was very close to them is portrayed, the mahatma and quaideazam are depicted as statesmen.
the production is immaculate with real footage of charred childrens bodies lying in steets, and lahore and delhi burning with the aerial footage of pedestrian caravans [150 miles long ]desperate to enter pakistan so their lives will be spared, frantically marching with women carrying goats on their shoulders and naked kids riding on cowbacks, its is too tragic to even shed any tears upon this event.
my greatest concern is that as the anniversary approaches many more such documentaries are likely to be aired, are we mature enough to analyse them and deal with our past blunders in a logical manner remains to be seen .
finally the episode where mr . gandhi asks mr. mountbatten to ask mr.jinnah to accept to be the first leader for free india, to which jinnah replies to mountbatten, this is the mahatmas idea have you put the question forth to nehru and congress and isnt the answer a plain no, what a pity as jinnah was dying of tuberculosis and he only had a few months to live and he knew that, but then as mr .nehru says in his first speech, he had a tryst with destiny .
unfortunately for millions of innocent people they had a tryst with swords and axes and kirpans being wielded by their racial cousins and were not going to see the so called day of independence .
, even though the portrayal in the drama of the montbattens is saintly, as if they had no responsibility at all in the least bit and it was the 3 communities to be blamed even if it was the sikhs who started it, who was the policeman in charge
im afraid it was lord mountbatten and no one can deny that,
