Why I don’t celebrate India’s independence - the azaadi that never came.
India’s Independence Day, Pakistan’s Independence Day and the partition are always sensitive topics. Everyone has different perspectives and personal experiences, and they’re all valid in their own contexts.
I get that most people want to celebrate the end of British rule in India, and rightly so. Colonialism was destructive, barbaric and entirely unjust. Indians of all religions fought long and hard to rid themselves of British rule and for the right to finally be able to govern themselves. So I won’t ever condemn anyone for celebrating India’s independence.
I also get that Muslims were legitimately concerned about how they would fare in an independent India. Look at India today. No one can deny that Muslims and other minorities face persecution there. So while I will always be uncomfortable with separating nations along religious lines, I won’t ever condemn anyone for celebrating Pakistan’s independence either.
However, I personally choose to commemorate India’s independence day rather than celebrate it.
The partition resulted in the largest forced mass migration in human history, and it was incredibly violent in nature. Over 1 million people were killed in their attempts to cross the border into their new respective countries. Around 14 million people were forcefully uprooted from their ancestral homes and were displaced, creating an overwhelming refugee crisis that the newly formed governments were in no way equipped to deal with. The intercommunal violence was staggering, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border. Mobs rampaged, attacking and killing members of the opposite religion. Trains and caravans of refugee families were attacked. Children were not spared. Women, desperate to avoid abduction and rape, committed suicide. “Ghost trains” full of the corpses of refugees plied the railway tracks. Families were separated and never saw each other again. Communities that had once lived alongside each other turned on each other in the most atrocious and tragic way. People were traumatised and scarred for life. To this day, India and Pakistan have not recovered from the hatred. This, for me, makes independence very difficult to celebrate.
Sikhs made a disproportionate contribution to the fight for independence. 77% of those sent to the gallows were Sikhs. 81% of those sentenced to life imprisonment were Sikhs. More than 60% of the 20,000 who joined the Indian National Army were Sikhs. All this, and yet Sikhs made up only 1.5% of the population. These are sacrifices that we must never forget. We also must never forget how we were denied the freedom that we had been promised.
Our homeland, Punjab, was torn into two. Virtually no Muslim survived in East Punjab and virtually no Hindu or Sikh survived in West Punjab. Our capital, Lahore, went to the other side of the border. Some of our most important historical places of worship, including the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev Jee, had to be abandoned, and to this day we haven’t fully been able to regain control of them. Our mother tongue came under attack. Hindi was forced upon us in Indian Punjab, and Urdu forced upon us in Pakistani Punjab. Gurmukhi is suffering, and Punjabi is dying. Our identity came under attack. In order to create a “unified India” we were expected to relinquish our attachment to it. We are constantly put under pressure by Indians to identify as Indians rather than as Punjabis, and we are even expected to identify as Indians above identifying as Sikhs. Since partition, Akaal Takht and Harmandir Sahib have been attacked by the Indian army, we have suffered a genocide that was supported by government officials and spectacularly covered up, and we have been continuously targeted by nationalists. Is this freedom?
I will never condemn anyone for celebrating their azaadi. However, I will not celebrate, because for many people, and for Sikhs in particular, that azaadi never came - their homeland may have been torn into two, or they may simply not have survived the partition to experience it.
Image depicting the British partition of Punjab in 1947, taken from Phulkari: Craft and Conflict, by The Singh Twins, 2017.
dededos
vaporwave
kaledo-art
snowghoul
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
jbbartram-illu
