Let me try to share a few ideas and notes to help you digest the fascinating and insightful lecture by Praveen Swami on the history of postcolonial India.

On Monday, we surveyed some of the factors that shaped South Asia in antiquity, in the early modern period, in the colonial period, and up to independence and partition in 1947. Swami shared a set of (true) stories to help us understand the challenges of nation-making in contemporary India from 1947 forward.

As an introduction

This is a story of nation making, but under difficult and unpromising circumstances. Modern India is often celebrated as the world’s largest democracy. But… it is a project to create a nation where none existed. The societies of British India were multiple and varied and not easily assimilated as one.

And in the backdrop of the modern story, because it is fundamental to the contemporary history of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh – we have to recognize the violence of the partition in 1947.

The stories that he offered were stories from the periphery, but they shine light on the heart of the project.

1) The example of Jammu and Kashmir, which posed a particular dilemma. It had a Hindu ruler and a Muslim majority. Would it become part of India? Or Pakistan? Or cling to independence. You know the story now. Under pressure from Pakistan, in 1947, the Maharajah would agree to accede to the new state of India, but with guarantees for the respect of a distinct Kashmir identity

And you heard about the story of Sheik Mohammed Abdullah, the Muslim leader of Kashmir who was sympathetic to the social ideals of Jawaharlal Nehru and India

Radio sets of Kashmir that could only tune in to the official news of Radio Kashmir.

And the promise of a modern socialist utopia, that would bring education, land reform, and modern technologies to Kashmir… with a devil’s bargain, that required ignoring democracy and the popular will of Kashmiris. And so Sheikh Abdullah was arrested and ultimately Kashmiri autonomy and special dispensations would be limited.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as Islamist separatist movements have used techniques of terrorism, Indian state has struck back. It has been in stalemate since 2019.

A question of the modern nation. Note that the first maps of British India didn’t identify the borders of Kashmir. Partition created arbitrary borders. But in time, these borders would shape experience and identities.

The point: nationhood is malleable. Territorial sovereignty is a modern idea. But it is one that has produced remarkable violence.

2) Another story – a small village in east of India near the Myanmar border (I need to check the name). Villagers ordered by the Indian military to burn their own village and relocate. And then, when they refused, their village was burned and they were forceably relocated by the Indian military.

After three generations, it is a forgotten example of the use of force in the making of the nation.

3) Hyderabad. Reverse of Kashmir. Muslim ruler and Hindu majority. Also with a peasant insurgency demanding land reform. Remained independent in 1947. What would happen to this state? Indian Army moved against Maharajah and against peasant insurgents to control the region and bring it into modern India. Tactics included torture, ethnic cleansing, and mass violence.

In these actions, the Indian state and Indian military – especially in the 1950s – drew on tactics it had learned from the British anti-colonial campaigns in Malaya and Kenya.

The principle was a simple one – to “win hearts and minds.” In practice this was a euphemism for mass violence and ethnic cleansing. And Indian troops participated. See the Malayan Emergency. Or the attempts to put down the Mau-Mau Rebellion. See, for example, the work of the historian Carol Elkins, who has revealed the hidden story of colonial violence.

The Indian government and army used these same tactics – tactics left behind by the British.

In Conclusion

For Swami, from the point of view of 2024, the choices that the Indian govt made in the 1950s – relocations, bombings, torture, ethnic cleansing – are repugnant. The story of these events is often forgotten and lost – we need to save these stories and understand them.

Need to understand this history of violence that is tied to the modern nation-state.