Violence, Martyrdom and Partition: A Daughter's Testimony

Violence, Martyrdom and Partition: A Daughter's Testimony

Volumn , Issue , 2012, Pages 1-264

  Datta, Nonica ^a  

^a Nehru Memorial Museum Library   (India)

Author keywords

Arya samaj; Martyrdom; Narratives; Oral testimony; Partition; Subhashini; Women's education

Indexed keywords

EID: 84874377369     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195699340.001.0001     Document Type: Book

References (113)

1. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XIV (Oxford, 1908), p. 108.
2. David Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860-1940 (London, 1994), p. 51.
3. Bhawani Lal Bhartiya, Swami Shraddhanand Granthawali, Khand Gyarah (Delhi, 1987), p. 124;
4. J.T.F. Jordens, Swami Shraddhananda: His Life and Causes (Delhi, 1981), pp. 164-7.
5. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 12 September 1940-15 April 1941, Vol. 73 (Delhi, 1978), p. 38.
6. According to a historical work, the transfer was due to the outbreak of malaria in 1927. See J.E. Llewellyn, The Legacy of Women's Uplift in India:Contemporary Women Leaders in the Arya Samaj (Delhi, 1998), p. 38.
7. Sindhu, 'Amar Hutatma Bhagat Phool Singhji', pp. 75-6;
8. Devvratt Shastri, 'Arya Samaj ke Pramukh Balidan', in Arya Pratinidhi Sabha Shatabdi Smarika, Dayanand Math, Rohtak, May 1987, p. 165.
9. 'We were constantly taunted that she (Subhashiniji) encouraged us to meet men.' Interview with Priyamvada, Kanya Gurukul Khanpur, September 1999.
10. Fydor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment [London, 1974], p. 49.
11. Chowdhry Abdul Haye, 'The Freedom Movement in Mewat', in Kunwar Mohammad Ashraf: An Indian Scholar and Revolutionary, 1903-1962, Horst Kruger (ed.) (Berlin, 1962), pp. 330-1.
12. Based in Patiala, she was Amtussalam's niece. She had been, as Gandhi's letters show, to Sabarmati in the early 1930s. And it is likely that she met Subhashini there. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, January-March 1933, Vol. 53 (Delhi, 1972); 23 April-15 September 1933, Vol. 55 (Delhi, 1973).
13. Ranbir Singh has recently published his memoirs, Swaraj ke Swar: Sansmaran (Gurgaon, 2005).
14. On the relevance of fifty-two panchayats among the Malik Jats, see Joseph, Customary Law, p. 5.
15. There were a number of attacks on Puthi village by armed Jats from 2 September 1947 onwards. See Siddiqui, Tahrike-Pakistan Mein Rohtak, pp. 174-82.
16. In contrast to Subhashini's narrative, in a nationalist narrative Phool Singh is lauded for using Gandhi's weapons of satyagraha and fast. Shadi Ram Joshi, Satya ki Manzil, Sewa ki Rah: Punjab Pradesh Mein Sewa-Sadhna ki Adhunik Parampara (Jalandhar, 1975), pp. 156-72.
17. Joseph, Assessment Report of the Gohana Tahsil, p. 10.
18. Darling, At Freedom's Door, p. 312.
19. Vidyamartand, Amar Hutatma, p. 96.
20. The canal was the Western Jamuna Canal, the Butana branch of which irrigated Gohana and Rohtak tahsils, while various distributaries from its 'Delhi branch' supplied Rohtak and Sampla. Imperial Gazetteer, Vol. XXI, p. 317.
21. Historically, in Rohtak, ghosts were feared at the burning grounds, and they were believed to possess people sometimes. The cure for the affliction was said to be the application of 'red pepper'. See Fanshawe, The Settlement Report, pp. 66-7.
22. Customary cohabitation, levirate, as it came to be interpreted in the nineteenth century. See E. Joseph, Customary Law of the Rohtak District (Lahore, 1911);
23. Prem Chowdhry, The Veiled Women: Shifting Gender Equations in Rural Haryana, 1880-1990 (Delhi, 1994).
24. In contrast to Haryana, in colonial Punjab the Muslims formed 57.1 per cent of the population, the Hindus 27.8 per cent and the Sikhs 13.3 per cent. See B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India (Bombay, 1946), p. 429.
25. In the four districts of the east Punjab (Rohtak, Hissar, Karnal and Ambala), Hindus were 74 per cent of the population and Muslims 23.5 per cent. H. Calvert, The Wealth and Welfare of the Punjab (Lahore, 1936), p. 201.
26. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XXI (Oxford, 1908), p. 314.
27. H.C. Fanshawe, The Settlement Report of the Rohtak District in the Hissar Division (Lahore, 1880), p. 1.
28. Eric Stokes, The Peasant Armed: The Indian Rebellion of 1857, C.A. Bayly (ed.) (Oxford, 1986), p. 130.
29. Punjab District Gazetteer, Vol. IIIA, Rohtak District, 1910, p. 117.
30. Imperial Gazetteer, Vol. XXI, 1910, p. 315.
31. Punjab District Gazetteer, Rohtak, 1910, p. 133.
32. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XXI, p. 322.
33. Neeladri Bhattacharya, 'Pastoralists in a Colonial World', in Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia, David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha (eds) (Delhi, 1995), p. 85.
34. Stokes, The Peasant Armed, p. 120.
35. Bhattacharya, 'Pastoralists in a Colonial World', p. 85.
36. R.C. Majumdar, The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857 (Calcutta, 1963), p. 63.
37. Fanshawe, The Settlement Report, p. 37.
38. Bhattacharya, 'Pastoralists in a Colonial World', pp. 70-1.
39. Denzil Ibbetson, Punjab Castes (Lahore, 1916), p. 139.
40. Ibbetson, Punjab Castes, p. 139.
41. Stokes, The Peasant Armed, p. 129.
42. K.R. Qanungo, 'The Jats and the Importance of their History', in Historical Essays, K.R. Qanungo (ed.) (Agra, 1968), p. 78.
43. 'The worst evil-doers of the time had been the Shekhs of the Fort, the butchers and the Ranghars, and on these the heaviest punishment fell.' Fanshawe, The Settlement Report, p. 40.
44. See Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Delhi, 1998), p. 28.
45. Joseph, Assessment Report, p. 10.
46. Uma Chakravarti, 'Whatever happened to the Vedic Dasi: Orientalism, Nationalism and a Script for the Past', in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (eds) (Delhi, 1993), pp. 22-87;
47. Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, 1996);
48. Bernard S. Cohn, 'The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia', in An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi, 1987), pp. 224-54.
49. K.W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (Cambridge, 1989), p. 96.
50. Nonica Datta, Forming an Identity: A Social History of the Jats (Delhi, 1999).
51. David Hardiman, 'Purifying the Nation: The Arya Samaj in Gujarat 1895-1930', Indian Economic and Social History Review, 44 (1), 2007, pp. 49-50.
52. 'Je tu Brahman Brahmani jaya, to aan baat kyun aya. Teyn ghalya kandh janeu, tu bhulya baat bateu. Hai sab haad manss mal gooda, yame ko Brahman ko sooda.' K.C. Gupta, Sri Garib Das: Haryana's Saint of Humanity (New Delhi, 1976), p. 61.
53. Datta, Forming an Identity, p. 73.
54. Malcolm Lyall Darling, At Freedom's Door (Delhi, 1949), pp. 169-70.
55. Tribune, 29 October 1946.
56. For Bhagat Phool Singh's biography, see Acharya Vishnumitra Vidyamartand, Amar Hutatma Shree Bhagat Phool Singhji ka Charitra (Khanpur, 1951);
57. Suresh Kumar Sindhu, 'Amar Hutatma Bhagat Phool Singhji', Smarika, Pratham Vishva Yuva Jat Sammelan, All India Jat Mahasabha (Delhi, 1986), pp. 75-6;
58. Satyaketu Vidyalankar and Haridutt Vidyalankar, Arya Samaj ka Itihas, Vol. 3 (Delhi, 1983).
59. Vidyamartand, Amar Hutatma, p. 42.
60. Diwan Chand Sharma, Makers of the Arya Samaj, Book I (London, 1935), p. 30.
61. Nonica Datta, 'The "Subalternity" of Education: Gurukuls in Rural Southeast Punjab', in Knowledge, Power and Politics: Educational Institutions in India, Mushirul Hasan (ed.) (Delhi, 1998), pp. 27-65.
62. Vidyamartand, Amar Hutatma, p. 109.
63. On Gurukul Kangri, see Harald Fischer-Tine, '"The Only Hope for Fallen India": The Gurukul Kangri as an Experiment in National Education (1902-1922)', in Explorations in the History of South Asia: Essays in Honour of Dietmar Rothermund, J. Lutt, G. Berkemer, H. Kulke and I. Frasch (eds) (Delhi, 2001), pp 277-99.
64. Lajpat Rai, A History of the Arya Samaj (Bombay, 1967).
65. Karen Leonard, 'Hyderabad: The Mulki-Non-Mulki Conflict', in People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in the Indian Princely States, Robin Jeffrey (ed.) (Delhi, 1978), pp. 92-3.
66. Pandit Narendra, Hyderabad ke Aryon ki Sadhna aur Sangharsh (Delhi, 1973).
67. Arya Samaj Loharu ka Romaanchkari Itihas (Rohtak, 1970).
68. Bhagat Phool Singh, 'Gurukul Adhyapkon ke Naam Patra', 11 September 1940, in Vidyamartand, Amar Hutatma, pp. 156-7.
69. Sindhu, 'Amar Hutatma Bhagat Phool Singhji', p. 75.
70. Gurukul Vidyapeeth Haryana Bhainswal Jila Rohtak ka 27 Varsh ka Vritant (Gurukul Bhainswal, n.d.).
71. Chhotu Ram's letters to Maru Singh (1939-42), in Ranjit Singh, Mook Sevak: Chaudhari Maru Singh Jeevan Charitra (Rohtak, 1994), pp. 233-9.
72. H.H. Wilson, A Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms and of Useful Words Occurring in Official Documents Relating to the Administration of the Government of British India, from the Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Uriya, Marathi, Guzarathi, Telugu, Karnata, Tamil, Malayalam, and Other Languages (London, 1855), p. 381.
73. Fanshawe, The Settlement Report, p. 4.
74. Malcolm Lyall Darling, Wisdom and Waste in the Punjab Village (London, 1934), p. 188.
75. Vidyamartand, Amar Hutatma, pp. 102-6.
76. Kenneth Jones, Arya Dharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th-Century Punjab (Delhi, 1989), pp. 193-5.
77. See Anais Nin, Ladders to Fire (London, 2004), p. 158.
78. See Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (London, 1996), p. xiii.
79. E. Joseph, Jatu Glossary (Extracted from the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, VI [12], 1910).
80. Walter Benjamin, 'The Task of the Translator', Walter Benjamin:Selected Writings: 1938-1940, Vol. 4, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Others, and Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (eds) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003), p.256. I am grateful to Sigrid Weigel for this reference.
81. Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura 1922-1992 (Delhi, 1996), p. 4.
82. Luisa Passerini, 'Memories between Silence and Oblivion', in Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory, Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone (eds) (London, 2003), p. 240.
83. See Walter Benjamin, 'On the Concept of History', Walter Benjamin:Selected Writings: 1938-1940, Vol. 4, p. 396.
84. Uma Chakravarti, Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai (Delhi, 1998);
85. Meera Kosambi, Pandita Ramabai through Her Own Words: Selected Works (Delhi, 2000);
86. Sudhir Chandra, Enslaved Daughters: Colonialism, Law and Women's Rights (Delhi, 1997);
87. Rosalind O{horn} Hanlon, A Comparison between Women and Men: Tarabai Shinde and the Critique of Gender Relations in Colonial India (Madras, 1994).
88. Passerini, 'Memories between Silence and Oblivion', p. 248.
89. See Fanshawe, The Settlement Report, p. 66;
90. The Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. XII, Oxford, 1908, pp. 304-5.
91. I owe this point to Passerini, 'Memories between Silence and Oblivion', p. 250.
92. This point is elaborated in Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition:Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 50-1.
93. Nonica Datta, 'Partition and Many Nationalisms', Economic and Political Weekly, XL (28), 9 July 2005.
94. David Gilmartin, 'Partition, Pakistan, South Asian History: In Search of a Narrative', Journal of Asian Studies, 57 (4), 1998: 1086;
95. Anders Bjorn Hansen, 'The Punjab 1937-47-A Case of Genocide?', International Journal of Punjab Studies, 9 (1).
96. Anders Bjorn Hansen, Partition and Genocide: Manifestation of Violence in Punjab 1937-1947 (Delhi, 2002), p. 189.
97. Ian Copland, 'The Further Shores of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan 1947', Past and Present, 160, August 1998, p. 216.
98. Paul Brass, 'The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab 1946-47: Means, Methods, and Purposes', Journal of Genocide Research, 5 (1), 2003, pp. 70-1. I thank Paul Brass for this reference.
99. Shail Mayaram, 'Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence in Mewat', in Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty (eds) (Delhi, 1997), p. 143.
100. Veena Das, 'The Event and the Everyday', in Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Delhi, 2007), p. 1.
101. Alessandro Portelli, 'Oral Testimony, the Law and the Making of History: the "April 7" Murder Trial', History Workshop Journal, 20(1), 1985, pp. 5-35.
102. Tribune, 25 March 1947.
103. Tribune, 7 October 1947.
104. Tribune, 24 October 1947.
105. Tribune, 24 October 1947.
106. Nonica Datta, 'Transcending Religious Identities: Amrita Pritam and Partition', in Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home, Displacement, and Resettlement, Anjali Gera Roy and Nandi Bhatia (eds) (New Delhi, 2008).
107. Mohammad Mujeeb, 'The Partition of India in Retrospect', in The Partition of India:Policies and Perspectives, C.H. Phillips and Mary Doreen Wainwright (eds) (London, 1970), p. 401.
108. Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (Delhi, 1998);
109. Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries:Women in India's Partition (Delhi, 1998).
110. Joanna Bourke shows how emotions mediate between the individual and the social. Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (London, 2006).
111. Intizar Husain, 'An Unwritten Epic', in Stories about the Partition of India, Vol. 3, Alok Bhalla (ed.) (Delhi, 1994), pp. 59-78;
112. Manzur ul Haq Siddiqui, Tahrike-Pakistan Mein Rohtak ka Kirdar (Lahore, 1998), p. 174.
113. I owe this point to Ranajit Guha's 'Chandra's Death', in Subaltern Studies V: Writings on South Asian History and Society, Ranajit Guha (ed.) (Delhi, 1987), pp. 135-65.