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Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space pp 137–158Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Image and Imagination in the Creation of Pakistan

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Abstract

Chester traces the origins of the 1930s–1940s campaign to create Pakistan, a homeland for South Asian Muslims. Paying particular attention to the role of maps, she argues that calls for Pakistan combined specificity and ambiguity. Debates over this new Muslim state foreshadowed key elements of the 1947 India-Pakistan partition, including retaliatory violence, mass migration, and assaults on women. These implications received little attention, due to internal contradictions in Pakistan proposals, the widespread assumption that minority populations would remain in place, and British and secular nationalist reluctance to engage with Muslim separatism. “Image and Imagination in the Creation of Pakistan” shows how this combination worked against serious discussion of the way that migration, identity, and space could—and would—collide in the event of partition.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Salman Rushdie, Shame (London: Picador, 1983), p. 87.

  2. 2.

    I am grateful to David Gilmartin for discussing these issues with me. Any errors of fact or interpretation remain my own.

  3. 3.

    I use the phrase “Pakistan debate” as an umbrella term, even though not all proposals for separate Muslim homelands used the word Pakistan.

  4. 4.

    “A Nation State Insufficiently Imagined? Debating Pakistan in Late Colonial North India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 48:3 (2011): p. 385.

  5. 5.

    K. Hill et al., “The Demographic Impact of Partition in the Punjab in 1947,” Population Studies 62:2 (Jul 2008): pp. 155–170. As the authors note, this estimate is significantly higher than previous estimates.

  6. 6.

    Patrick French, Liberty or Death (London: Flamingo, 1998) p. 347.

  7. 7.

    Sumathi Ramaswamy’s The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010) is the definitive work on the subject.

  8. 8.

    Punjab province, divided in order to form West Pakistan, experienced much more overall violence, including attacks onwomen, than did Bengal province, partitioned to create East Pakistan. See Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, The Partition of India (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009) pp. 108–109.

  9. 9.

    Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1998) p. 70.

  10. 10.

    Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, “Recovery, Rupture, Resistance: The Indian State and the Abduction of Women during Partition,” in Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India, ed. Mushirul Hasan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 208–235.

  11. 11.

    Menon and Bhasin, Borders p. 103.

  12. 12.

    Menon and Bhasin, Borders pp. 99–100.

  13. 13.

    Menon and Bhasin, Borders pp. 132–165.

  14. 14.

    The Sole Spokesman (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1985) p. 242.

  15. 15.

    “Partition, Pakistan, and South Asian History,” Journal of Asian Studies 57:4 (Nov 1998) p. 1081.

  16. 16.

    Origins of the Partition of India (Delhi: Oxford UP, 1987) p. 107.

  17. 17.

    “Debating,” p. 403.

  18. 18.

    Sumathi Ramaswamy, “Midnight’s Line,” in Iftikhar Dadi and Hammad Nasar, eds., Lines of Control (London: Green Cardamom, 2012): p. 30. See also Ramaswamy’s “Art on the Line: Cartography and Creativity in a Divided World,” in James Akerman, ed. Decolonizing the Map (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), pp. 284–338.

  19. 19.

    Most participants in the Pakistan debate wrote in English or Urdu, while others used Bengali, Farsi, Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, or Telugu. For Urdu-language discussion, see Venkat Dhulipala, Creating A New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (Delhi: Cambridge UP 2015).

  20. 20.

    This is not to say that British government officials operated only in English. Many officials spoke vernacular languages, and for those who did not, the colonial government of India published summary translations of significant articles in vernacular publications.

  21. 21.

    Rushdie, p. 87.

  22. 22.

    29 Dec 1930, Allahabad, in Syed Abdul Vahid, ed., Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal (Lahore: Ashraf, 1964) pp. 170–171.

  23. 23.

    Vahid, pp. 174–175.

  24. 24.

    K.M. Ashraf, “Foreword,” in Pakistan (Delhi: Adabistan, 1940) p. iv.

  25. 25.

    “Now or Never: Are We to Live or Perish Forever?” (28 Jan 1933) in K.K. Aziz, Complete Works of Rahmat Ali, vol. I (Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1978) pp. 1–10.

  26. 26.

    Aziz, “Foreword,” pp. xxvii, lii.

  27. 27.

    Rushdie, p. 87.

  28. 28.

    Aziz, Complete Works of Rahmat Ali, vol. I (Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1978) “Introduction,” pp. xx, xxx, xlviii.

  29. 29.

    Dhulipala, Medina p. 204.

  30. 30.

    Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, Foundations of Pakistan: All-India Muslim League Documents: 1906–1947, vol. II (Karachi: National Publishing House, 1970) p. 337.

  31. 31.

    Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001) p. 399.

  32. 32.

    Pirzada, p. 341.

  33. 33.

    The subsequent debate over the nature of the state Jinnah envisioned (whether fully independent and sovereign or part of an Indian federation) is beyond the scope of this chapter. See Jalal, The Sole Spokesman.

  34. 34.

    Khaliquzzaman to Jinnah, 7 Oct 1942, reproduced in Pathway to Pakistan (Lahore: Longmans, 1961) p. 425.

  35. 35.

    Hallett to Linlithgow, 16 Feb 1940, reporting on a meeting with Khaliquzzaman, quoted in Dhulipala, Medina p. 219.

  36. 36.

    See the numerous photos of the meeting in Ata-ur-Rehman, A Pictorial History of Pakistan Movement (Lahore: Dost Associates, 1998), none of which include maps.

  37. 37.

    Pirzada, p. 325.

  38. 38.

    For example, Rehman reproduces nine newspaper reports related to the Lahore Resolution, none of which include any maps.

  39. 39.

    B. Verma, “Quaid-i-Azam’s Dream,” The Tribune (Lahore), 2 Apr 1940, p. 3.

  40. 40.

    See Jalal, Self and Sovereignty pp. 388–408 and Ramaswamy, “Midnight’s Line.”

  41. 41.

    “Silences and Secrecy,” in Paul Laxton, ed., The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP: 2002) p. 86.

  42. 42.

    Review of Creating a New Medina, by Venkat Dhulipala, American Historical Review 121:1 (Feb 2016) pp. 217–218.

  43. 43.

    (Cambridge: Dinia Continental Movement, 1945).

  44. 44.

    Choudhry Rahmat Ali, Pakistan: The Fatherland of the Pak Nation, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Pakistan National Liberation Movement, 1947).

  45. 45.

    Aziz, “Foreword,” p. xxxv.

  46. 46.

    Aziz, “Foreword,” pp. xxxviii–xxxix. A complete set of Rahmat Ali’s pamphlets is available in the archives of the Centre of South Asia Studies at Cambridge University (Frost Papers, Box 2).

  47. 47.

    M.S. Toosy, My Reminiscences of Quaid-i-Azam: A Collection of Interviews and Talks with Quaid-i-Azam during November 1942 to May 1943 (Karachi: National Book Foundation, 1976) p. 2.

  48. 48.

    Toosy, Reminiscences p. 3.

  49. 49.

    M.R.T. [M.S. Toosy] Pakistan and Muslim India [hereafter PMI] (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2005 [1942]) pp. 88–89. Toosy insisted that the separation of Ambala District was the only boundary change possible in Punjab, a preemptive rejection of the central Punjab partition that occurred in 1947.

  50. 50.

    M.R.T., PMI pp. 102–103.

  51. 51.

    M.R.T., PMI p. 17.

  52. 52.

    M.R.T., PMI p. 84.

  53. 53.

    M.R.T., PMI p. 84.

  54. 54.

    M.R.T., PMI p. 100.

  55. 55.

    M.R.T., PMI p. 107.

  56. 56.

    Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, p. 242.

  57. 57.

    M.R.T., PMI p. 6.

  58. 58.

    Dawn, 7 October 1945, quoted in Dhulipala, “Debating” p. 400.

  59. 59.

    Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [hereafter CWMG], vol. 78 (Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1958), p. 132.

  60. 60.

    Speech at Chatham House meeting, London, 20 Oct 1931, CWMG, vol. 54, pp. 65–66.

  61. 61.

    “Tyranny of Phrases,” in K.M. Ashraf, Pakistan (Delhi: Adabistan, 1940), p. 74.

  62. 62.

    “Tyranny of Phrases,” in Ashraf p. 75.

  63. 63.

    Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: Last Phase, vol. 1 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1956) p. 381, quoted in Joseph Lelyveld, Great Soul (New York: Knopf, 2011) p. 298.

  64. 64.

    CWMG vol. 95, p. 245.

  65. 65.

    Ramaswamy, The Goddess and the Nation, p. 231.

  66. 66.

    “Hindus and Pakistan,” in Ashraf p. 40.

  67. 67.

    “Hindus and Pakistan,” in Ashraf p. 41.

  68. 68.

    “Dividing the Baby,” in Ashraf p. 85.

  69. 69.

    Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia UP, 2007), p. 121.

  70. 70.

    Urvashi Butalia offers a lengthy discussion of Thoha Khalsa and the issue of sacrifice in The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000), pp. 155–194. Photographs of the Rawalpindi killings’ aftermath, including an image of the corpse-filled well at Thoha Khalsa, are preserved in the Clement Attlee papers (Box 53, ff. 270–292, Modern Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford University).

  71. 71.

    Abortions offered to women impregnated during their abduction were referred to as safaya (Butalia p. 128).

  72. 72.

    Menon and Bhasin, Borders p. 41.

  73. 73.

    See the oral histories and analysis provided by Menon and Bhasin, Borders, especially p. 39ff.

  74. 74.

    The pathbreaking work of Butalia, Menon, and Bhasin challenged this sacrifice narrative.

  75. 75.

    Talbot and Singh, p. 102–3.

  76. 76.

    Talbot and Singh, p. 103–4.

  77. 77.

    Zamindar p. 7.

  78. 78.

    Cartographic representations of the national body form what Thongchai Winichakul calls the geo-body of the nation. Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997).

  79. 79.

    Lucy Chester, Borders and Conflict in South Asia: The Radcliffe Boundary Commission and the Partition of Punjab (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009).

  80. 80.

    Thoughts on Pakistan (Bombay: Thacker and Co., 1941).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. History and International Affairs, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

    Lucy P. Chester

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Tabea Linhard

  2. Department of History, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Timothy H. Parsons

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Chester, L.P. (2019). Image and Imagination in the Creation of Pakistan. In: Linhard, T., Parsons, T.H. (eds) Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77956-0_6

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