Indian Subcontinent Partition Documentation Center Commemoration
Independence
and Partition Commemorative and Mujib Remembrance; August 15, 2020
Sachi G. Dastidar
· Welcome
to you all at our Indian Subcontinent Partition Documentation Project or ISPaD
for this new virtual experiment. Next time please join in person in NYC. Our
events are family oriented, So, please join with your family and kids. Many of
our friends like Jay Hyman, Alireza, Sumedha, Shefali, Dilip and Dipa, Banani,
Debashree and others have provided food and snacks for our events that included
Persian, Jewish, Caribbean, Indian, Bengali and American food.
· I
thank Mr. Shuvo Roy for organizing this year’s event.
· 74th
Independence Day is a joyous event. Partition is a painful event for people
like us who lost their homeland for no fault of ours. It was a joyous event for
the Muslim League Party and the British. My grandma, grandpa and two uncles
spent years and years in British oppressor’s prison for saying Vande Mataram or
Glory to the Motherland for India’s independence and driving the colonizer out,
yet soon got evicted from home of tens of generations by partition-supporter
Muslim League Party activists as penniless refugee.
· I
appreciate Mr. Khurshedul Islam’s suggestion as to evaluate how far have we have
come since British-created divide-and-rule policy starting on October 16, 1905
by dividing Bengal Province into Muslim Bengal and Hindu Bengal when there was
no such demand from Muslims and Hindus, and then giving money to start a
separatist Muslim League Party.
· Let
me look back at what happened since India, Bengal, Punjab, Assam were partitioned
in 1947, and Kashmir in 1948.
· With
that Pakistani Punjab became a place devoid of Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and losing
many of her Christians to India. She lost her Hindu-Sikhs from Sindh, Pathan
and Baloch areas.
· Indian
Punjab lost most of her Muslims, but not all. Thank goodness most Muslims
stayed in India, though most supported pro-partition Muslim League Party as
British started an apartheid voting system in India for Muslims and
Mon-Muslims.
· Pakistani
Kashmir’s 20% non-Muslims vanished altogether. My friend Bal Gupta of Atlanta
lost 26 members of his family. Should we care about that? It is great that
Indian Kashmir has retained her Muslim majority, although some Muslims are
agitating, while their Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists are happy.
· Bangladesh/East
Pakistan lost 50 million Hindus from 1947 through 2001 Census, plus many Chakma
and Buddhists. Can our displaced minorities return back? Incidentally, our Big
Powers and pushing Bangladesh to ignore 71 genocide, but still are protesting
Nanking massacre though the number of people killed is very small compared to
Bangladesh killing by Pakistan. And because of that Japan, China, North and
South Korea have not normalized their relation. Why his hypocrisy?
· In
1947 India’s West Bengal lost some Muslims but quickly many more returned increasing
its share of state population.
· Burma
declared herself Buddhist-Burmese and after 1962 coup deported millions of
indigenous Hindus, Muslims, Christians to India. I had classmates who were
deported. Why didn’t revolutionaries and pacifists protest? A new form of
racism?
· Sri
Lanka declared herself Buddhist-Sinhala and expelled Tamil Hindus, Muslims and
Christians to India. My NY Tamil neighbor’s parents were deported although they
were Sri Lankan.
· China
after occupying Tibet cleansed tens of thousands of Buddhists to India. Did we
protest? Did our Left and Right protest?
· Years
later, after Tibet’s occupation, China marched her army through the Indian
territory of Eastern Ladakh in 1962 occupying an area slightly smaller than Bangladesh.
So, what did we do?
· Many
Indian states were divided because of ethnic sectarianism.
· Bhutan
claiming to be Buddhist-Bhutanese monarchy recently expelled over a quarter of
her citizens, the Nepali-speaking Hindus. Many of our Nepali neighbors in New
York are those refugees. Our reaction?
· Nepal
during her Hindu monarchy expelled her plains Hindi-speaking Madhesis to India,
though India is the only country which allows Nepalese to work without any
paper. And now the communist rulers of Nepal have come up with a new map.
Surprise? Are they following the same “anti-Delhi” policy of communist rulers
of Indian West Bengal?
· In
1971 Pakistan killed over 3 million Bengali Hindu and secular Muslims when
Bengalis formed the majority of their nation, yet no Army mass murderer or
babus have been arrested. Why? Why no nation in the Subcontinent but Bangladesh
and no Muslim-majority nation demanded trial of mass murderers? Their followers
also murdered the Father of the Nation Mujib and his entire family including
babies. Why haven’t we asked for trial of those murderers living in the U.S.,
Canada, Britain and in Muslim-majority nations? Why our lives don’t matter? How
can we move ahead forgetting our history? We admire the courage of our
transformative leader Bangabandhu or Friend of Bengal.
· Time
is long past when people sharing a generic Indian culture to come together, not
at the cost of one another but for prosperity of all. This must be at equal
footing for all. I find that spirit side-by-side with intolerance. All nations
need to be equally tolerant, secular and pluralistic.
· I
am speaking from what I found from my visits from Kathmandu, Nepal to
Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, from Karakorum Mountains in Pakistani Kashmir to Jaffna
in Sri Lanka and Chittagong in Bangladesh, and from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh to
Rawalpindi, Pakistan to Maldives, and from Tuichwang, Mizoram, India to neighboring
Bagan in Myanmar. If Mizoram and Bagan were in Europe or South America the
journey could have taken a few hours instead days now via Assam, North Bengal, Kolkata
and Yangon. From Pakistan to Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka to distant states
of India, I was invited by strangers to their home. This is wonderful,
heartwarming, and life changing. One poor family invited me to stay with them
who had only a torn sari on the floor as bed and a roll of hay as pillow.
· In
my mind, India is nation of nations where national, sectarian, regional or
narrow-based parties and ethnic states fight against “Delhi” in a
pathologically dysfunctional manner to hide their own incompetence and
sectarianism. From distance I sometimes wonder if India’s neighbors too are
fighting against “Delhi” like Indian states, as ethnic cleansing from their nations
suggest with no reaction from leaders. Their populations are warm to each other
as my experience suggest. Why reality and rhetoric do not match? Once I was
welcomed by a family in Pakistan while their boy was staying at our home in New
York as he had no place to stay.
· We
must move ahead economically, socially and culturally. We want a prosperous
region. We need not only people-to-people contact but need all nations to treat
all of her citizens equally, without glorying past or present oppression. Yet,
history must not be forgotten. As we forgot our history, 1947 partition was
quickly repeated with 1971 partition.
· Our
Partition Center tries to preserve stories of horrendous oppression, killing
and displacement from victims, as well as love from neighbors. Ispad also tries
to bring people together, not censoring our past.
· We
record stories of refugees, protectors and survivors affected by partition,
from 1947 to the present. Please check ispad1947 channel at YouTube. Please
join our channel. If you know of such individuals, please record and send us the
interview for uploading.
· We
have a small Partition Museum. We would appreciate if you start one in your own
home, neighborhood, village or town like the Irish, Jewish, Armenian, African
American, South African, Holocaust victims, Gypsy Roma, Slaves, Palestinian museums
in many countries. My New York City has all such museums by the dozens. We have
a partition library whose partition collection is possibly lot bigger than any
library here.
· If
you have artifacts of displaced families which could be displayed, please let
us know.
· Please
join our annual conference and journal release on Saturday, October 17, 2020
starting at 10:30 AM EST. We have already received several proposals for
presentation. We welcome yours. We have books and journals for sale at Ispad
office.
· Lastly,
our project runs through donation. We appreciate any donation you are able
make. ISPaD is a tax-exempt, non-profit organization. Moreover, we welcome your
active participation.
· In
the end, we don’t want more partition, genocide and displacement. I will be
happy to answer any question. Be well and be safe! Thank you.
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