In­dia and Pak­istan go through their rou­tine rit­u­als of ‘in­de­pen­dence’ cel­e­bra­tions on 14 and 15 Au­gust 2021 re­spec­tively, af­ter the mega-sized colony of British In­dia was carved up in 1947 into a new Hindu and Mus­lim ter­ri­to­r­ial block to swiftly af­fect the un­de­mo­c­ra­tic and geno­ci­dal British ‘trans­fer of power.” To­day, 74 years on, the Pan­jaab lib­er­a­tion move­ment, like many oth­ers in the re­gion, seeks struc­tural changes in South Asia, says British Sikh writer and Na­tions with­out States ac­tivist Jagdeesh Singh.

SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS ON is a crit­i­cal mo­ment to high­light the en­dur­ing, ag­o­nis­ing strug­gles and per­se­cu­tions of mul­ti­ple na­tions across South Asia, who were each bull­dozed over by that same elit­ist and ex­clu­sivist British trans­fer of power into the hands of their in­com­ing In­dian and Pak­istan rul­ing elites. To­day, they con­tinue to suf­fer in­ces­santly with­out any mean­ing­ful and sub­stan­tive self-de­ter­mi­na­tion or free­dom.

In­stead, their story is one of dire poverty, crush­ing vi­o­lent state ter­ror­ism, hu­man rights atroc­i­ties, eth­nic per­se­cu­tion, cen­tralised state power, mil­i­tary and po­lice geno­cide.  What are In­dia and Pak­istan ex­pect­ing their peo­ples to ‘cel­e­brate’?

The sem­i­nal case of the Pan­jaabi na­tion, neigh­bour­ing Kash­mir, en­cap­su­lates all that was wrong with 1947 and re­mains struc­turally wrong to this day with In­dia and Pak­istan.

Prior to the ar­rival of the in­va­sive Eu­ro­pean and British global im­pe­ri­al­ism from the 1700s on­wards, the map of South Asia was a colour­ful mix of in­de­pen­dent and au­tonomous re­gional states and coun­tries such as Pan­jaab, Ra­jputana, Balochis­tan, As­sam, Na­ga­land, Tripura, Tamil Nadu, Ben­gal, Sindh, and more.

Prior to the ar­rival of the in­va­sive Eu­ro­pean and British global im­pe­ri­al­ism from the 1700s on­wards, the map of South Asia was a colour­ful mix of in­de­pen­dent and au­tonomous re­gional states and coun­tries such as Pan­jaab, Ra­jputana, Balochis­tan, As­sam, Na­ga­land, Tripura, Tamil Nadu, Ben­gal, Sindh, and more. These were re­gional eth­nic na­tions, with their own cor­re­spond­ing po­lit­i­cal states. 

Into this came rav­ish­ing British im­pe­ri­al­ism, con­quer­ing and an­nex­ing each of these in­di­vid­ual states one by one; and con­sol­i­dat­ing them into a sin­gle British In­dia –the so-called “Jewel in the British crown.”

Pan­jaab was the last and fi­nal of these many in­de­pen­dent na­tions and coun­tries to be cap­tured and an­nexed. Af­ter two in­tense and phe­nom­e­nal An­glo-Sikh wars be­tween 1845-1849, which al­most de­feated the British armies; the once staunchly and mil­i­tar­ily pow­er­ful coun­try of Pan­jaab was con­sumed as a province of British In­dia.

From that pe­riod on­wards, the na­tion of Pan­jaab has been striv­ing and strug­gling through mul­ti­ple phases and chap­ters, to re­trieve back it full in­de­pen­dence or, al­ter­na­tively, full au­ton­omy. In 1947, Pan­jaab as­so­ci­ated as the in­dige­nous home­land of the rad­i­cal and re­bel­lious Sikh peo­ple was steam­rolled into the su­per­im­pos­ing Hindu-Mus­lim di­vide which pro­duced the British off­spring states of In­dia and Pak­istan. Both states were handed be­tween them, the di­rect spoils of the 200 years of British im­pe­r­ial ter­ri­to­r­ial con­quest which was then con­sol­i­dated and ‘uni­fied’ British In­dia – the sin­gle largest and most pres­ti­gious em­pire-build­ing colony across the globe.

De­spite calls for them to be made in­de­pen­dent and re­stored back to their pre-British sta­tus; in 1947 both Pan­jaab and Ben­gal were par­ti­tioned and forced to be­come parts of two new ar­ti­fi­cial coun­tries cre­ated on pa­per by Mount­bat­ten, Gandhi, Nehru, Pa­tel and Jin­nah. These two su­per­states would take over from where the British were now leav­ing. Their crude Hindu-Mus­lim so­lu­tion would cut through es­tab­lished na­tions, coun­tries, eth­nic peo­ples; and cre­ate In­dia and Pak­istan in­stead. 

It did not oc­cur to any of the de­ci­sion-mak­ers that re­turn­ing coun­tries like Pan­jaab, Ben­gal, Sindh and Balochis­tan back to their for­mer sta­tus as in­de­pen­dent states, would be the most log­i­cal and nat­u­rally just thing to do. In true British im­pe­ri­al­ist form, they in­stead sought to cre­ate more and more lay­ers of struc­tural in­jus­tice, to con­fuse and com­pli­cate. 

In this crude cut and run exit in 1947, af­ter 200 plus years of du­bi­ous and im­pe­ri­ous gov­er­nance, the British cared noth­ing for de­mo­c­ra­tic due process nor for the pro­tec­tion of hu­man life. They con­sciously ig­nored the hu­man dev­as­ta­tion, the geno­cide -Pan­jaabis killed and mass dis­place­ment of 10 mil­lion Pan­jaabis (not to men­tion the num­bers at the Ben­gal end), that their cruel and de­vi­ous exit strat­egy con­ve­niently formed with their In­dian and Pak­istan coun­ter­parts would cause. 

Power changed hands, but not to the peo­ples of Pan­jaab, Kash­mir, As­sam, Na­ga­land, Ma­nipur, Baluchis­tan or Ben­gal. It was  handed to two new cen­tralised pow­ers in In­dia and Pak­istan, not to the peo­ples con­tained within those ar­ti­fi­cial coun­tries.

The op­pres­sion and dev­as­ta­tion that would fol­low in the en­su­ing 74-years, com­prised geno­cide, mass cor­rup­tion, crush­ing of eth­nic iden­ti­ties, forced In­di­an­i­sa­tion and Pak­istani­sa­tion, com­pre­hen­sive po­lice vi­o­lence and ter­ror, caste rapes and mur­ders, mas­sive fail­ure of pub­lic health and ed­u­ca­tion ser­vices, mas­sive poverty, lack of food sup­plies, and so much more.

In a coura­geous re­cent pub­lic af­fir­ma­tion, the Chief Jus­tice of In­di­a’s Supreme Court -Jus­tice N. V. Ra­mana, has ad­mit­ted that: “the threat to hu­man rights and bod­ily in­tegrity are the high­est in po­lice sta­tions”. A fact, al­ready well-known to hun­dreds of mil­lions who bear the brunt and fear every day.

De­spite all this, the peo­ples of In­dia and Pak­istan are forcibly trained, in­doc­tri­nated, schooled and ed­u­cated by both states to ‘cel­e­brate’ their ‘free­dom’ and be loyal and obe­di­ent to their coun­tries.

The mere act of non-vi­o­lent dis­sent­ing and vo­cal­is­ing of any­thing re­lat­ing to struc­tural change to the In­dia and Pak­istan struc­ture is crushed, vil­i­fied and crim­i­nalised.

Any talk, dis­cus­sion or di­a­logue about ‘ref­er­en­dums’, ‘au­ton­o­my’, ‘self-de­ter­mi­na­tion’, ‘in­de­pen­dence’ is vig­or­ously crushed for anti-state ac­tiv­i­ties by po­lice ter­ror and re­pres­sion, cou­pled with le­galised per­se­cu­tion through the crude state court sys­tem with an as­sort­ment of state pros­e­cu­tions, based on anti-peo­ple laws -many of which are relics of the British le­gal sys­tem prior to 1947. 

The mere act of non-vi­o­lent dis­sent­ing and vo­cal­is­ing of any­thing re­lat­ing to struc­tural change to the In­dia and Pak­istan struc­ture is crushed, vil­i­fied and crim­i­nalised.

Whereas in the west­ern world, one can speak and cam­paign for ‘de­vo­lu­tion’, ‘in­de­pen­dence’, ‘union’ and so forth openly and with­out fear: in In­dia and Pak­istan, there is a com­pre­hen­sive blan­ket of fear across jour­nal­ists, civil so­ci­ety, aca­d­e­mics, stu­dents and more. These are ul­tra-sen­si­tive sub­jects.

In­di­a’s ram­pant re­sponse to ex­ter­nal and in­ter­nal sup­port for the Pan­jaab-led farm­ers’ ag­i­ta­tion, has ex­posed the ex­tent of its in­se­cu­rity and vi­cious panic to­wards any­thing re­motely re­lated to Pan­jaabi state­hood, na­tion­hood, self-de­ter­mi­na­tion and in­de­pen­dence.

Both In­dia and Pak­istan have suc­ceeded in cre­at­ing an at­mos­phere of paralysing fear, which is backed up and en­forced through re­peated cam­paigns of vi­o­lent re­pres­sion and geno­cide in Pan­jaab, Kash­mir, Balochis­tan, Ma­nipur, Na­ga­land and many more ar­eas.  

Will civil so­ci­ety be forced to rise up, in a frus­trat­ing spring of re­bel­lion, like the re­cent Pan­jaabi farm­ers?

The clear func­tional fail­ure of both these rushed, un­de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cally im­posed states is man­i­fest not only in their po­lit­i­cal dog­mas and big­otry but more­over in their re­spec­tive mon­u­men­tal fail­ures to pro­vide pub­lic health ser­vices on Covid-19, to pro­vide clean wa­ter to their pop­u­la­tions, to pro­tect and safe­guard civil­ians from reg­u­lar po­lice vi­o­lence and tor­ture.

His­tory shows that no state which is not pre­pared to make a rad­i­cal in­ter­nal change can sur­vive. Mere power and mil­i­tary force are not enough. His­tory, past and fu­ture are dri­ven by struc­tural change. Be with it, or against it. How much longer will In­dia and Pak­istan sur­vive and con­tinue on their mor­bid path of mass, sys­tem­atic fail­ure?

Will civil so­ci­ety be forced to rise up, in a frus­trat­ing spring of re­bel­lion, like the re­cent Pan­jaabi farm­ers?

Guru Nanak in Guru Granth Sahib says, ‘King­doms and man­sions built on sand, can­not en­dure.”  How much more must the peo­ples of South Asia en­dure, be­fore struc­tural change hap­pens, to give them true in­de­pen­dence, free­dom and jus­tice in their lives?