Interreligious Dialogue and the Partition of India: Hindus and Muslims in Dialogue about Violence and Forced Migration [1 ed.] 1785923129, 9781785923128

Table of contents :
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Dialogues in Tri-Belonging
1 The Silence of Partition
2 The Diversity of God’s Womb
3 Rethinking Art and a Shared Humanity
4 Contemporary Dialogues of Unification
Conclusion: Towards a Theology of Restitution
Appendix 1: The St. Andrews Declaration for a Shared Humanity
Appendix 2: The India Declaration for a Shared Humanity
Appendix 3: A Woman’s Declaration for a Shared Humanity
References
Subject Index
Author Index

Citation preview

interweaves anecdotal and experiential account with penetrating critical analysis. The response to toxic interreligious behaviour is the patient journey of deep, interpersonal, interreligious dialogue. Aguilar deftly draws the reader into his own such journeying and allied theological reflection.’ – Professor Douglas Pratt, University of Waikato, New Zealand and University of Bern, Switzerland ‘Perceptive political analysis intersects with passionate theological imagination to paint a poignant, yet profound, picture of the boundary-crossing potential of the faith in the context of boundary reifications.’ – The Revd Dr Peniel Jesudason Rufus Rajkumar, Programme Executive for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation, World Council of Churches

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Mario I. Aguilar is Professor of Religion & Politics and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion & Politics at the University of St Andrews. He is also a poet and a hermit.

www.jkp.com

Series design: www.ianrossdesigner.com

Aguilar_9781785923128_UK_8.9mm_AW.indd 1

INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA Hindus and Muslims in Dialogue about Violence and Forced Migration

INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA

‘In this informative, evocative, and provocative work, Aguilar

Mario I. Aguilar

Mario I. Aguilar

In a time of schism, violence, and forced migration, how can God be understood? With his latest book, Catholic Benedictine hermit Mario Aguilar explores the religious identities of Hindus and Muslims in the aftermath of the 1947 Partition of India. Looking at the experiences of the victims who were silenced, he reveals how out of this traumatic period has emerged a peaceful dialogue between faiths, held together by shared humanity and prayerfulness. Founded on a fascination with what unites rather than divides religions, Aguilar offers a theological reading of a major event in twentieth century history that is both creative and constructive.

STUDIES IN RELIGION AND THEOLOGY

29/05/2018 16:21

INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA

by the same author Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves and Sacred Rivers

Christian-Hindu Monastic Dialogue in India 1950-1993 ISBN 978 1 78592 086 8 eISBN 978 1 78450 347 5

in the Studies in Religion and Theology series

The Way of the Hermit

Interfaith Encounters in Silence and Prayer ISBN 978 1 78592 089 9 eISBN 978 1 78450 354 3

also in the Studies in Religion and Theology series Exploring Moral Injury in Sacred Texts Edited by Joseph McDonald Foreword by Rita Nakashima Brock ISBN 978 1 78592 756 0 eISBN 978 1 78450 591 2

of related interest Muslim Identity in a Turbulent Age

Islamic Extremism and Western Islamophobia

Edited by Mike Hardy, Fiyaz Mughal and Sarah Markiewicz Foreword by H.E. Mr Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser ISBN 978 1 78592 152 0 eISBN 978 1 78450 419 9

INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AND THE PARTITION OF INDIA Hindus and Muslims in Dialogue about Violence and Forced Migration

Mario I. Aguilar

Jessica Kingsley Publishers London and Philadelphia

Appendix 3 ‘A Woman’s Declaration for a Shared Humanity’ is reproduced with kind permission from Porsiana Beatrice. First published in 2018 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers 73 Collier Street London N1 9BE, UK and 400 Market Street, Suite 400 Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA www.jkp.com Copyright © Mario I. Aguilar 2018 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying, storing in any medium by electronic means or transmitting) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the law or under terms of a licence issued in the UK by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd. www.cla.co.uk or in overseas territories by the relevant reproduction rights organisation, for details see www.ifrro.org. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher. Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 78592 312 8 eISBN 978 1 78450 625 4

Dedicated to Irma Santibáñez, Glenda Tello, and Sara Ann Catherine

CONTENTS Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Introduction: Dialogues in Tri-Belonging . . . . . 13 1 The Silence of Partition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 2 The Diversity of God’s Womb . . . . . . . . . . . 55 3 Rethinking Art and a Shared Humanity . . . . . . 85 4 Contemporary Dialogues of Unification . . . . . . 113 Conclusion: Towards a Theology of Restitution . . . . . 139 Appendix 1: The St. Andrews Declaration for a Shared Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Appendix 2: The India Declaration for a Shared Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 Appendix 3: A Woman’s Declaration for a Shared Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work on Partition and interfaith dialogue has been influenced by the experience of a journey from New Delhi to Dharamsala via Varanasi in June 2017 and three other visits to India during 2017. Through the conversations with others and the friendship and care of Indians in India I have experienced the sense of admiration for such a developing canvas of human and divine experience. If the two previous volumes explored the past and the present, this third volume of my Indian Trilogy explores the future through the past. If the other works were deeply grounded in history and theology, this volume opens the possibilities of art and of a conversational existentialism. It is art, utopia and existentialism that can unite the forms and shapes constructed through forms into a shared shape of insights that resemble the variety of the possible manifestations of Brahma and of the Absolute. In opening such ventures towards the Absolute in India and among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, I am grateful to Shruti Parthasarthy, Executive Editor of the DAG Modern in New Delhi, for her words of wisdom and encouragement and for preparing materials and archives with enthusiasm and care. But more than the texts given to me, the texts from her heart spoke of the realities of utopia, art and knowledge as the manifestations of the Absolute. These manifestations related to the secular work of Chittaprosad and Altaf would not have been possible without the elegant welcome provided by Kishore Singh, President of the DAG Modern, and the ongoing advice and expertise of Rishnitt Singh Heera as art advisory to the Fundación Milarepa of Chile. I am grateful to the Babu-Gandhi family for opening the year with a wonderful wedding in Amritsar in which I was able to witness and take part in the Vedic prayers and have ex­tend­ ed discussions with family members in Amritsar, particularly 9

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Ramesh  Babu, Sunita Babu, Praval Gandhi and Sunra Babu Gandhi, Varun Gandhi and Dhyuti Shah. During the year my brother Ramesh lost his mother and she is remembered through this work. Together with such celebrations Professor Balwant Singh Dhillon and Professor Gurnam Singh Sanghera of the Guru Nanak Dev University of Amritsar shared their thoughts, lives, and knowledge with me, thoughts that shaped some of the pages within this work. I am grateful to Salinder Singh for accompanying me to the Golden Temple and for sharing a meal while assuring me that relics were important for one’s life. I am particularly grateful to Professor Dhillon for guiding me always, for his friendship, and for having taken part in all interfaith encounters in India. In June 2017 the Unification Ensemble (see Chapter 4) signed the India Declaration for a Shared Humanity at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Okhla in New Delhi, and I am very grateful to many friends at the hotel who welcomed the idea and looked happy and proud of the event. I am particularly grateful to Ranjan Banerjee (General Manager), Deepanshu Chaturvedi (Duty Manager), Aditya Bidani (Duty Manager) and Vikrant Sharma (Assistant Manager Crowne Events) for the time they took to talk about interfaith dialogue and Hinduism as well as the impeccable organization they provided for the ‘signing’ and related activities. Among the pilgrims I am especially thankful to Professor Hossein Godazgar, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education, Dundee, UK, and his wife Dr Masoumeh Velayati for joining us in all journeys throughout India, and to Macarena Varela, Omar Ali, Grace Dau, Fausto Andrade, and Edith González. I am grateful for the ongoing support of members of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics (CSRP) of the University of St. Andrews, namely Dr Eric Stoddart, Dr John Perry, Kabir Babu, James Morris, Mohammed Al-Hinai, Jake Cowpland, Webster Kameme, Porsiana Beatrice, Marjorie Gourley, Stefanie Turkanik, Mátyás Bodi, and Clair Linzey. I acknowledge my intellectual debt to the theological devel­ opments proposed by Dr Eve Parker and her pioneer theological thinking on the Adavasi and the ongoing conversations with

Acknow led gem ent s

Dr Gordon T. Barclay, Dr Milja Radovic, Dr Sanguita Sen and  Dr Vibhor Saxena. To Professor Hugh MacDougall: OM! I acknowledge with thanks permission by Porsiana Beatrice to reproduce her ‘A Woman’s Declaration for a Shared Humanity’. Mario I. Aguilar Arunachala Hermitage – Fundación Milarepa, Santiago, Chile, December 2017

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INTRODUCTION Dialogues in Tri-Belonging As I was lecturing on Buddhism I noticed that there was an older man sitting at the back of the lecture hall. My initial thought was that he was a parent that had accompanied some new student to the university. At the end of the lecture he thanked me for the lecture. On the following day I found a book in my office that came from him, Davide Castiglia.1 This short but very powerful book carries experiences and dreams and a personal search for meaning, for the Absolute and silence. He recalls talking to a woman who being distracted by a writing on the wall told him about the importance of children because they represent ‘salvation’ and ‘help for humanity’.2 Castiglia writes of that woman: ‘I saw her eyes on that writing but could not understand it. She did not utter a word, but I now understood she knew that there is a time and a purpose for each of us, and a way’.3 This is the basis of interfaith dialogue and the dialogue between civilizations and systems of knowledge and beliefs. It is an encounter in a synchronic moment of history that can be narrated and interpreted but never repeated as the same moment later. It is the encounter of human beings that have different understandings, ways of life and daily rituals but who can appreciate the richness of another human being. To dialogue human beings must accept a difference in time and space that will never return. For their dialogue would be constrained and enriched by the context in 1 2 3

Davide Castiglia (2017) Perfumed Colours: From the Tomato Field of the West to the Gates of the East, From Heaven to Earth, From Earth to Heaven, in a Middle that Does Not Exist. Rome: Logos Universal. Castiglia, D. Perfumed Colours, p.53. Castiglia, D. Perfumed Colours, p.53. 13

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which life itself has taken place and hold of individual lives. Thus, the dialogue between the Jesuit Daniel Berrigan and the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh can never be read without the backdrop of the Vietnam War, so that the conversations that took place in 1974 asked difficult questions about the events of 1968.4 The possible end to the war brought deeper questions summarized by Robert Ellsberg: ‘How to resist violence without absorbing the very poisons that feed it – anger, paranoia, the thirst for power? To what extent could religious traditions supply answers to those questions? To what extent was organized religion itself part of the problem?’.5 But Ellsberg’s are diachronic questions that are asked within a different context even when those questions relate to the synchronic moment of dialogue experienced by Dan Berrigan. Questions about the Partition of India and the transfer of power in 1947 are not very different. They constitute a universal search for the mediation of socio-political arrangements in which people of different faiths, ethnicity and histories must confront social change within a diversity that for some cannot exist. Thus, issues of interfaith dialogue come to the fore when the memory of the past generations that come later, and within a synchronic use of time and space, can reflect on horrible events of violence. In doing so, they sustain what I have called elsewhere ‘dialogues of history’ in the context of India, so that a dialogue that was interrupted can resume and can be sustained in the present and in the future.6 For such dialogue to take place any historical contested truth cannot be unified; instead, the voices of those who went through traumatic events can be heard in order to influence a different history within a common journey to be continued in the immediate and distant future. Following from such framework, 4 Hanh, T.N. and Berrigan, D. (2001) The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist-Christian Awareness. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. 5 Ellsberg, R. (2001) ‘Introduction’, in T.N. Hanh and D. Berrigan (eds.), The Raft Is Not the Shore, p.xii. 6 Aguilar, M.I. (2016) Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves and Sacred Rivers: Christian–Hindu Monastic Dialogue in India 1950–1993. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

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this work is a short tentative contribution to the reconstruction of the history of India as much as an experiential journey in which I have been on a journey with Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhists within contemporary India. The voices of the past haunt us with sounds of hate as well as union while the contemporary journey allows us to try again to be part of a route with the Absolute in which our own narratives find a common resonance rather than an ethnic dissonance. It has been an incredible journey of dialogue and I would like to reflect on it as to make it more challenging for the future.

Violence, Memory and Dialogue In her reflections on nationalism, Gayatri Spivak has provided a recollection of India’s independence as ‘a polite affair’, in which there was the waving of flags and the singing of the songs by Tagore.7 For her, however, Partition was the important event, the division of the country.8 She wrote: ‘Mother was out at dawn, at the minor railway stations as the trains came in from the East, busy with refugee relief and rehabilitation, coming home battered in the middle of the evening.’9 Spivak recalls that ‘the country was going to be divided and so, people with whom we had lived forever, for centuries, in conflictual coexistence, suddenly became enemies.10 Spivak’s experience at age four was not different than mine at age 14 when the planes of the Chilean Air Force bombarded the Chilean presidential palace on 11 September 1973, and my mother tried to get some food, while I was told to remain under my bed, in case bullets were to shatter our windows in Santiago. In June 2014 Spivak and I met at a short conference in her honour 7

Spivak, G.C. (2010) Nationalism and the Imagination. London, New York, and Calcuta: Seagull Books, p.9. 8 I note that Spivak uses a capital ‘P’ for the partition of India, and I shall follow her insight within this work. 9 Her recollections were of Kolkata, where she was living at that time, see Spivak, Nationalism and the Imagination, p.9. 10 Spivak, Nationalism and the Imagination, p.7.

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at the University of St. Andrews on the occasion of her receiving an honorary doctorate for her work on ideas on colonialism and gender. She represents herself as an atheist born in a Hindu family (and her parents as anti-casteists).11 During that one-day conference I presented a paper on the possible forgiveness or avoidance of it in the case of the ‘Flaca Alejandra’, an informer that had led the Chilean security forces to detain, torture and made to disappear some of her former comrades. Two decades later, the ‘Flaca Alejandra’ had a personal conversion to Catholicism and in her memoirs asked for forgiveness from others. As a Catholic theologian and a former supporter of the movement she helped to exterminate I asked myself if I could forgive her. My answer was that I couldn’t and Spivak agreed with my personal position.12 On asking questions about Partition in India I return to the same  mysteries of human beings who can love and who can kill many  as well. Partition becomes a central moment in the history of India and Pakistan, because not only is there a forced removal  of human beings, but those who are removed are also violently attacked,  scared, raped, made into slaves, and most importantly they are stripped of the freedom of following a ritual system  through  rape. They cannot return to their loved ones because  they can pollute the lives, lands and families of others, including their loved ones. The process of forced removal, displacement, and social incorporation becomes the centre for the possibilities of crimes against humanity and crimes of lesser humanity that can only be prevented and challenged by an education on the equality of human beings. Thus, a theological anthropology of respect for all human beings becomes a similar narrative about a God that unites all humanity within the shared 11 Spivak, Nationalism and the Imagination, p.8. The self-definition by Spivak corresponds to all Hindus as atheists, because they do not believe in a creator God who created everything at the beginning, because there is no beginning, and there is no monotheism as it is the case in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. 12 See chapter ‘The Hermeneutics of Torture and G.C. Spivak’, in Aguilar, M.I. (2015) Religion, Torture and the Liberation of God. New York and London: Routledge.

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theology of human rights and the globalized discourses on human rights that have emerged within the twenty-first century. In my previous work on the practice of Christian and Hindu dialogue in India I have outlined the possibilities that historical reconstructions could bring meaningful symbolic structures to processes of understanding and cooperation. For in what I have labelled ‘dialogues in history’ the fragmentized world of difference is examined not as a universal apportioning of different religious practices, but it is defined as the complementary examination of moments of religious practice through the history of individuals or the history of social categories. These blocks of social meaning have allowed explorations on the possible impurity and indecency of the [in]-possibility of not complying with the clean and settled symbolic borders of human religious experience and human behaviour. On the one hand, this task of explaining and experiencing the role of the reader of a religious text that annihilates human beings is a must in order to understand the freedom of a post-partition; on the other hand, this textual reading of social action brings the absolute condemnation of the colonial machinery that made subjects of empire Christians, and therefore started outlining the otherness of any other way of being religious. For a Christian empire lent its machinery to the crushing of a diverse India, and in providing the hope of the birth of a Muslim nation it also created death, pestilence, and the violence against otherness/sameness. The tri-partite axe of symbolic power, i.e. Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, becomes inversed after 1947, when Hinduism becomes central to India, while Islam exists at the borders of India while Christianity ceases to be the authorized state religion that makes Indians into copies of a European empire. Partition as a violent process of displacement disorders the centrality and marginality of different manifestations of the Absolute and provides the seeds for an open and violent fight for socio-religious sectarianism within a secular invention of a narrative that is not supposed to be religious but secular. In doing so it defies the centrality of political Hinduism, political Islam, or political Christianity and provides a Vedic secularity with/without the caste system.

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Theologically, as I did in my work on the 1994 Rwanda genocide,  I must ask: where was God during Partition? Such theology requires the reading of history, because the Christian God acts and moves within history and gives us by the fact of being human beings the freedom to choose and to perform human actions that will carry not only social consequences but divine experimentations. All actions have consequences but all consequences can be re-enacted in the future so that all moments of extreme violence can be re-enacted through life in the future. The relocation of the Gods during 1947 had a certain consequence for the daily lives of those within the forced migration of Partition: the Christian God, the Hindu manifestation of Brahman and the God of Muslims had to negotiate a sectarian development that was very much part of the new identity of two independent nations  and also of the British who were left behind with their schools and hospitals. I must ask: Where was God in 1947? Was God retreating to Europe in the boats in which the Christian colonizers left India? Or was God present in the new Muslim nation that arose out of Partition with the name of Pakistan? Or was God only present in the divine manifestations of Hindu gods and blessed the birth of an independent India in 1947? Are there possibilities of forgiveness, reconciliation or rejection of forgiveness after the massacres that were conducted by Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in the name of religion? I approach these dialogues in history with the utmost respect for those who lost their lives and history within this period of Partition and national affirmation. For the theological reflections that arise out of Partition are not philosophical but are based on blood and suffering, the suffering experienced by all those 15 million or so that had to move and the one million killed  that had to exit prematurely from an independent India without the British. The reflection on this history of Partition and the experience of the victims can give us lessons about God,  and about our own journey in the contemporary, because the reflections on God can give us lessons for the ongoing journey to be undertaken with Hindus and Muslims.

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In my previous work, Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves and Sacred Rivers, I have already explored the ways of dialogue between Christians and Hindus after 1950 and the example of a courageous search by individual Christian priests that arrived in India after independence. They were at the start servants of a European God of missions and colonialism, and they became servants of the divine manifestations and of the Absolute. They never mentioned Partition, because their personal interest was to go beyond religious divisions in order to experience God through silence, prayer, and meditation. In this work I ask questions about the location, action and understanding of God by Hindus and Muslims between 1947  and 1950. I return to some of the questions that I had already asked within a self-reflection on camps of prisoners, torture and God during the period of military rule in Chile. I have no authority to provide solutions for the mystery of the human soul. However, I approach this exploration of God in history as a hermit who follows the ways of Christianity and who has deep respect and admiration for the symbolic tenants, texts and the way of life of Hindus and Muslims. The raping and killing of women by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs had a rationalistic and evil background. Women represented the honour of males as heads of families, and one of the most effective ways of destroying another group was by planting the male seed into a human womb in order to plant the new nation. Women had the choice of killing themselves, to become part of a new household, or being thrown away as disposable animals, without a family, and without a future. However, in the midst of this violence women changed their god, and Hindu women who were raped by Muslims became part of Muslim households. Thus, the silence of many years, and the silence of today by victims and perpetrators, bring together all those who took part in Partition, because there was not one group that killed and raped, but all groups did. Thus, all became united as victims and perpetrators. Some of the voices of women I have heard and read about speak about the commonality of the experience of violence by Muslims and Hindus, and the experience of starting new households and

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hoping that one day males would worship the same common god. For women were forced to follow the gods of their husbands, brothers and fathers without being asked what they wanted to do. In this monograph, I would like to explore the understanding of God within this violence expressed through testimonies by the majority of women who publicly rejected another god but that inside their soul continued worshipping one god with many manifestations and never blamed God but men for what had happened. Silence needs to be broken, even when this is a dangerous proposition. Theologically, I would argue that God was present with the victims, that God had many names that were used wrongly to emphasize male cultural tenants of purity and kinship. Together with the caste system all these exclusions and the forced opening of wombs during Partition negated the very essence of the religious faith of Muslims and Hindus. The womb of God gives birth to all human beings sharing a common humanity, and the womb nourishes not one community, or one nation, but all. Thus, following Panikkar’s understanding of silence I have argued that before creation God was in silence and came in love before we decided to create narratives of exclusion and hate. In writing this monograph I would like to follow the arguments of Elie Wiesel, the Jewish Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a survivor of the Shoah, who argued that if we forget the victims, we kill them again and again. It is my own argument that as a Christian who has been given love and generosity by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs I cannot forget those victims, and I must assert once again the faith in the God of many names who after all is the God of all regardless of nations, caste systems or the raping of wombs. This is an uncomfortable theological proposition for the Hindu nationalists, but it is the only proposition that can be expected within an honest interfaith dialogue. Thus, I shall expand on the history and memory of Hindus and Muslims in India being a Christian, because we are all children of the same Absolute. However, I will try to express the possibility that by knowing we can journey, even in dissent, not because we belong to a nation, but because we are all first

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and foremost human beings and secondly, because we belong to religious traditions in which life is sacred, even when many forget such truth. Works on this historical period, reviewed Chapter 1 of this work, have outlined the cause and effect paradigm, extremely European and colonial, that violence took place hours after Partition because the agreement between the British, the Hindus and the Muslims  was to create a new state with the name of Pakistan where Muslims could live in peace. As I argue in this work, the violence started years before Partition and lasted years after the transfer of power. The lessons of all colonial boundaries gone wrong in the previous partitions of Africa and Asia during colonial times were forgotten. The creation of artificial boundaries regardless of people’s social institutions, including marriage and kinship alliances based on ethnicity, reproduced the problems faced previously by the colonial powers on containing peoples’ movements from one territory to the next. The creation of independent boundaries after Partition in Africa and Asia was to create the same problems, with ongoing genocidal violence in Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and later South Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. However, a geo-political explanation does not suffice for the purposes of this work. Hindus and Muslims had been living together in geographical areas for centuries and had learned to negotiate social relations. Further explanations related to a lack of transport or a clear planning for the difficult task of ordering millions of people after the rising of two flags are not necessarily helpful, while politically they are necessary. Thus, with no clear explanation for why human beings of a determined ethnicity and faith could be so cruel to each other the need arises to explore the worlds of social, emotional and even metaphysical perceptions by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs during Partition. The political response to such crisis was eventually silence, firm borders and public discourses of exclusion, misunderstanding, and xenophobia by the governments of India and Pakistan.

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Dialogues in history, contemporary inclusion In my previous work on India and the commitment of Christian monks to come closer to Hinduism and to assume some of the practices of Advaita Vedanta I have argued that ‘dialogues in history’ refers to the movement, geographical and emotional, of practitioners of one religious tradition who want to learn and communicate with practitioners of another religious tradition.13 This is the crux of an interfaith movement of wills and minds that creates the possibilities of inclusion in diversity, an interreligious dialogue between different understandings. Within this model of temporary and contemporary inclusion the religious ‘Other’ can be assumed as a possible partner within a public and material world inhabited by humans who understand the physical and metaphysical worlds in different ways. Thus, ‘dialogues in history’ points to the possibility that materially and diachronically a human being can enter the events of the past, particularly if those events are a human mess of violence, rape, physical abuse, torture, and death, in order to feel solidarity, empathy and love towards somebody else who is not part of my own religious ordering of worlds. Religious worlds cannot be classified any longer as religious versus secular, or scientific versus theological, classifications that came to India from Europe in colonial times. The ordering of the worlds come from the self-understanding of a Muslim or a Hindu of how and when and if a person who follows one way of life, that is all encompassing, can change into another world. A secular India then is an India of diversity, where the nonconfessional constitution refers to the freedom of ritual practices and symbolic alliances, whereby there is no one India but many India(s). This point was discussed before India’s independence and the protection of religious minorities emphasized. However, what happened at Partition was a clear indication that the secular as inclusive of religious tenants, as a way of life that is different for different people, mattered.

13 Aguilar, M.I. Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves and Sacred Rivers, at p.12.

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In their ongoing work, David Cheetam, Douglas Pratt, and David Thomas have asked fresh questions about the interreligious within the world of diverse religious tenants, so that for them the underlined central question of the interreligious is ‘the question of how religions perceive, and so relate to, their “others”’.14 For the inner perception of ‘others’ matters in order to understand the possibilities and the conflict. Thus, the tri-partite actors of Partition, namely Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity, have a different understanding of these relations with ‘others’ and how one person can become part of the ‘others’. Hinduism seems at first more inclusive of all ‘others’ as reincarnation provides an ontology that cannot be controlled. However, such openness is challenged by those who advocate the existence of a caste system today, whereby a person is born within a system that cannot be open to others who have not been born within such system. An extreme position within such exclusivism which I will explore further within the historical materials of Partition relates to Hindutva (‘Hindu-ness’) or Hindu nationalism, who in the words of Jeffery Long ‘see the religious other, in the here and now, as a second-class citizen of the Indian nation-state’.15 Thus, for Long the traditional attitude within Hinduism towards others can be described as radical inclusivism, as the other is part of itself so that Hindus can adhere to the possibility that Christians and Muslims possess important spiritual truths and even read their scriptures.16 However, they may avoid significant interaction with actual Christians and Muslims.17 For Muslims, the central chore of teaching regarding other religions, and particularly towards Christianity, comes from the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad, so that ‘they provide not only the main source of attitudes towards other faiths but also 14 Cheetham, D., Pratt, D. and Thomas, D. (2013), Understanding Interreligious Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.1. 15 Long, J.D. (2013) ‘Hinduism and the Religious Other’, in D. Cheetham, D. Pratt and D. Thomas (eds), Understanding Interreligious Relations, p.55. 16 Long, ‘Hinduism and the Religious Other’, pp.56–57. 17 Long, ‘Hinduism and the Religious Other’, p.57.

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the constraint on what is acceptable and what is not’.18 And while  there are sections of the Qur’an that seem to imply some sense of  inclusivism most commentators would agree that the notion of God within Islam provides an exclusivist position towards other religions. This stand comes from the critical assessment made of Judaism and Christianity from the point of view of the tenants of Islam so that for David Thomas ‘the norm is Islam and the Qur’an, and there is no comparable alternative’.19 There are contemporary developments if not inclusivism within the writings of the Palestinian scholar Ismail Raji al-Faruqi who argued that there are elements within Islam that provide rules for interreligious understanding and dialogue.20 He further argues that differences between Islam, Judaism and Christianity are no more than domestic disputes among members of the same family.21 In the very contemporary world Islam came to be thought as having an inclusivist edge when Sayyid Muhammad Khatami argued for a challenge to the clash of civilizations so much advocated by contemporary political theorists and international relations. Thus, Khatami advocated a dialogue among civilizations, a dialogue that could be advocated by Islam, and that he argued for in the period between the First and Second Iraqi War and before the American 9/11. After such period exclusivism has ruled.

Prayer and the Unification of Worlds If Partition brings the crushing of wombs in the name of the Divine, it is once again prayer and meditation that brings the plausibility of the unification of worlds. For Hindus Brahman is manifested as encompassing all, because all creation is a manifestation of 18 Thomas, D. (2013) ‘Islam and the Religious Other’, in D. Cheetham, D. Pratt, and D. Thomas (eds), Understanding Interreligious Relations, p.149. 19 Thomas, ‘Islam and the Religious Other’, p.163. 20 I rely here on David Thomas’s commentary on Ismail Raji al-Faruqi’s essay published in 1980 ‘The Role of Islam in Global Inter-Religious Dependence’, see A. Siddiqi (ed.) (1998) Ismail Raji al-Faruqi, Islam and Other Faiths. Leicester: Islamic Foundation, see Thomas, ‘Islam and the Religious Other’, p.164. 21 Thomas, ‘Islam and the Religious Other’, p.164.

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the  Absolute. The Absolute brings the possibility of a diverse One in Islam and the One in Three as clear manifestations of a unity of divinity and humanity that can bring the end of a Partition and the  possibility of an empathy while listening to the joys  and suffering of human beings that follow other ritual practices and  metaphysical understandings than mine. Thus, the experience of prayer is central to the experience of a poetic and utopian solidarity in which one human being connects with the joys and the sufferings of another. Partition comes out of ignorance and  sectarianism, two characteristics that cannot be associated with the Absolute but with the utilization of the Divine for socio-political purposes that stand far from the tenants that most religious texts emphasize. Prayer and the poetics of a universal canticle arise out of the conviction of Mahatma Gandhi who argued that different religions could not only co-exit but be a force for good in a postcolonial India. Gandhi’s negation of conversion from one religion to another arose out of his personal experience as a Hindu but also from his sense that human beings could encounter goodness and assurances within all religions of India. Thus, Gandhi wrote: ‘the Hindu system of philosophy regards all religions as containing the elements of truth in them and enjoins an attitude of respect and reverence towards them all. This of course presupposes regard for one’s own religion.’22 On the experience of prayer and action–reflection postPartition one can relate to the experience of Abhishiktananda and Bede Griffiths who, from a deep love for their own Christian monastic tradition, searched for God in the presence of the Hindu tradition and other Christians working with the poor in India. Thus, Abhishiktananda connected his own Christian texts to the actions of those who belonged to the Christian reformed tradition and to Hindus: ‘The people in India whom I have found to be 22 Mahatma Gandhi (2008) ‘Religious Education’, Young India (6 December 1928), in Mahatma Gandhi: The Essential Writings, edited with an introduction and notes by Judith M. Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press, §57, p.52.

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taking the Sermon of the Mount more seriously are a Quaker family who do not even recognize the necessity of baptism, and another family – Hindus – in Maharashtra, which runs an extraordinary colony for lepers.’23 The practices that they undertook brought tension to their Christian lives, but it also brought a deep respect for the Hindu tradition. Instead of becoming fearful of losing faith  they felt a great solidarity with Hindus and at the same time aided to create some bridges after Partition between Christians and  Hindus. Christianity had been the colonial established religion and therefore distrusted and challenged at all socio-political levels after Indian independence. However, those Christian monks experienced communion with Hindus at the level of a daily experience of the social and of the sacred. But I have asked myself how we can ever move forward the experience of solidarity with those who have been marked by violence for generations to come. The experience of ‘dialogues in history’ points to the acquisition of knowledge in order to understand and prevent possible human madness again. The experience of prayer and interreligious dialogue is for a few initiates in general and poses the possibility of exclusion of those who are not religious practitioners or who blame religious traditions for the violence that has taken place, for example, in the Rwanda genocide, in Sri Lanka, and certainly at the Partition. It is with these challenges in mind that I propose to examine human creations, artistic and poetic forms, that express the passing of knowledge, the solidarity with suffering, and the rage of knowing about injustice, even when such injustice does not affect me in my material life. However, it affects those who can see the Divine immersed within the centrality of the human so that the suffering of the human impacts my own sense of peace and wellbeing. In searching for such ‘dialogues in history’ I have introduced two elements to ongoing and assumed ways of interfaith dialogue: the communal appreciation of art produced in moments of suffering, famine, social distress, war, and social uncertainty, and 23 Abhishiktananda to Sr Marie-Thérèse Le Saux (17 December 1964).

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the possibility of public declarations that have clear messages of journeys together within groups of human beings that have undertaken common journeys in humanity, but that in   their appreciation believe and serve different manifestations of the Absolute. If I explore the common human experience of  the  womb, it is because we, all human beings, come out of our mothers’ wombs, and it is then that through sociability and education we acquire symbolic and socio-religious differences. Those differences, I would argue, cannot reduce the Absolute to our own image, and therefore we could or might agree that the Absolute who was, who is and who will be with us, despite and before our human conception, stands before all religious social forms, canons and shapes. Thus, God the Absolute is much larger than any of these post-Logos manifestation.24 Panikkar, for example, argued that ‘We exist because we are from (ex-sistere), we proceed from this infinite source which is not limited by any name or, in the words of Eckhart, is sunder Namen (“without name”) über all Namen (“above all Names”), innominabilis (“unnamable”) and ommninominalibus (“namable by all [names]”)’.25 This work explores the years in which due to socio-political reasons Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in India forgot this existence, common from such infinite source.

24 Aguilar, Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves and Sacred Rivers, p.171. 25 Panikkar, R. (2004) Christophany: The Fullness of Man. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, p.102.

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THE SILENCE OF PARTITION ‘[…] how do we move forward and not only carry this history with us, but also transcend it? Is this even possible?’ 1 The British exit from India and the Partition of India was the product  of a process of events at the political level that granted constitutional self-rule to India.2 The unrest among those who wanted  self-rule included not only political parties and their supporters but also intellectuals, artists, and traders who were the recipients of colonial policies. Some of these protests were regional while others were fuelled by international events such as World War II, and the growing sense of international movements for social justice  and self-determination. Thus, artists, writers and thinkers such as Chittaprosad (see Chapter  3) were inspired by an international solidarity among peoples, that  were  deeply moved by the Spanish Civil War and artists such as Pablo Picasso  (see  Chapter  3).3 While following Gandhi, the cry for self‑rule was a general cry suggesting that the British were 1

Butalia, U. (ed.) (2015) Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Zubaan and Haryana, India, pp.ix–x. 2 See the developments of such chain of events in the documents of the period made available to general public thirty years after the independence of India in Mansergh, N. (ed.) (1973) Constitutional Relations between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power 1942–7. Volume IV: The Bengal Famine and the New Viceroyalty 15 June 1943 – 31 August 1944. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. 3 See for example: Chattopadhyay, S. (2012) An Early Communist: Muzzafar Ahmad in Calcutta 1913–1929. New Delhi: Tulika Books; Johari, J.C. (1972) Naxalite Politics in India. Delhi: Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies; Lockwood, D. (2016) The Communist Party of India and the Indian Emergency. New Delhi: Sage Publications; Masani, M.R. (1954) The Communist Party of India: A Short History. New York: Verschoyle in association with the Institute of Pacific Relations; Overstreet, G.D. (1959 [2012]). Communism in India. Bombay: The Perennial Press; Paul, B. (2015) The First Naxal: An Authorised Biography of Kanu Sanyal. New Delhi: Sage Publications; and Gupta, B.S.(1972) Communism in Indian Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. 29

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overstaying their welcome in India. However, the silence of Partition and the atrocities that took place had already started before the transfer of power began. Partition did not take place during the night of the 15 August 1947, but it was a process of boundary shifting, identity assignment and the invention of India that was ritually marked by the creation of Pakistan and the lowering of the Union Jack. Partition, as a process of socio‑political exclusion and self-defence by Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, had already taken place throughout the early 1940s through processes of exclusion and social injustice decided by the British colonial power but implemented by all communities. Those who were as usual discriminated upon were the social and geographical peripheries of India, so that the lands of exclusion and periphery, Punjab and Bengal, became the lands for Partition. It has been my argument throughout meetings regarding the Partition of India in 2017 (see Chapter 4) that there were other social factors and other actors that pushed the British into a transfer of power, and that in reality meant that areas where those who had challenged the British policy of ethno-religious isolation suffered more intra‑state violence, and those who dissented from the invention of a new independent India were also side-lined for political isolation. For example, cultural movements of artists that challenged the British, and later the government of India, through art, poetry and song, were excluded by the British as well as by Nehru after independence. In this chapter I explore the silence of Partition through the silent voice of archives, letters and writings that suggest a longer period of Partition from the Bengal famine of 1943 to the post‑Partition violence of the late 1940s in India and Pakistan. However, this chapter and indeed this book deals with British India and independent India, not with independent Pakistan, as all my work, thought and participation, has taken place within either British India or independent India. Thus, this chapter outlines the historical narratives of the Partition of India outlining particularly the religious discourse used and the issues of religious belonging and spatial purity involved. For so much has been said about the

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divisions on a map and so little has been understood regarding the forced movement of human beings together with the suffering in silence that they endured. For everybody was affected, a population calculated as 400 million at the time of Partition.4 Even those who didn’t have to move were affected because after all communities had to rethink their positionality within a post-British India and all communities had to negotiate new boundaries, new rights and obligations and a new possible lack of rights under the post‑Partition India.

Religious tensions within the Raj During the Raj Christianity was the official religion as India had been under the sovereignty of the British monarch since the times of Queen Victoria. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims were ongoing, particularly when religious reformers tried to change rules of special coexistence and socio-religious purity. Thus, on 23 December 1926, Swami Shraddhananda was murdered by Abdul Rashid.5 Shraddhananda had been a Muslim by birth who converted to Hinduism and became a sanyasi after renouncing the world on 12 April 1917.6 A member of the Arya Samaj, Shraddhananda rejected politics, because members of the Congress movement did not have very much time for devotions within Hinduism.7 His dream was to bring Vedic ideals into politics, a possibility that was given to him when he was invited by Gandhi 4

Figure used by Pandit Nehru on his address of 3 June 1947, see L/P&J/10/81: f 363, as well as Mr Jinnah on the same day within his speech, see L/P&J/10/81: f 364. 5 Sharma, J. (2015) ‘My Religion is Less Violent than Yours: Myth, History, and the Representation of Violence’, in U. Butalia (ed.) Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Zubaan, and Haryana: Viking, with the collaboration of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Delhi, p.231. 6 Jordens, J.T.F. (1981) Swami Shraddhanand: His Life and Causes. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 7 Fischer-Tiné, H. (1981) ‘Kindly Elders of the Hindu Biradri: The Ārya Samāj’s Struggle for Influence and its effect on Hindu-Muslim Relations, 1880–1925’, in A. Copley (ed.) Gurus and their Followers: New Religious Reform Movements in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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to bring ‘dharmic aims’ into the political realm.8 As it was the case with Gandhi, Shraddhananda was married but advocated brahmacharya [celibacy] as an important practice within the Arya Samaj. His ideals of Hindu unity [sangathan] in the possibilities of resistance against the British brought him to work for shuddhi, an initiative that aimed at reconverting those Hindus who had been converted to Christianity and Islam. Shraddhananda was murdered while he was ill and confined to his bed being treated by Dr Ansari, a Muslim doctor.9 Conversion in British India was a fact of life. However, those who converted to another religion could not live with their families and became outcasts. This was the case, for example, of Sadhu Sundar Singh. Born on 3 September 1889 in Rampur, a village in the Punjab, Sundar Singh belonged to an affluent Sikh family.10 He attended a Methodist missionary school and was baptized at age 16 in Simla. Thirty-three days later he took the life of a sadhu. He became an itinerant sadhu talking about Christ dressed in his saffron robes and his turban. His upbringing had been within a Sikh family that also had deep respect for the Hindu Scriptures. As a child, he was educated in the Vedas and the Guru Granth Sahib. He claimed to have a vision of Christ and decided to become a Christian, bringing shame to his family. The only Christians in  the village cleaned houses and ate from the scraps left for them, they were outcasts, and Sundar’s family was not very pleased that he wanted to become an outcast. As a declaration of 8 Gandhi wrote several tributes to Swami Shraddhanand after his murder, see ‘Shraddhanandji – The Martyr’, Young India (30 December 1926), CWMG vol.37, pp.455–457, Young India 6 January 1927, CWMG, vol. 38, pp. 1316, and ‘A Candid Critic’, Young India (20 January 1927), CWMG, vol.38, pp.85–88. 9 Sharma, ‘My Religion is Less Violent than Yours’, p.233. 10 For a short biography see Moore, C.E. (2005) ‘Introduction’, in Sadhu Sundar Singh: Essential Writings. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, pp.9–29. Other works include Andrews, C.F. (1934) Sadhu Sundar Singh: A Personal Memoir. London: Hodder & Stoughton; Appasamy, A.J. (1958) Sundar Singh: A Biography. London: Lutterworth; Heiler, F. (1996) The Gospel of Sadhu Sundar Sing. Delhi: ISPCK; and Thompson, P. (1992) Sadhu Sundar Singh. Bromley: O.M. Publishing.

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his rejection of the Sikh religion he cut his long hair and his family made him sleep on the veranda, outside the family boundaries. When he left home, he took the saffron robes. However, it must be said that he maintained his deep respect for the religious traditions he had grown up with, that is Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam.11 He started an ongoing pilgrimage meeting the poor and the outcasts and in his condition of a sadhu being welcomed by some of the rich as well. On return to his village he found that as a barefooted sadhu he was made welcome. In 1929 he crossed into Tibet but was never seen again. He was not a writer but wrote six slim books in the last years of his life to fulfil requests from friends and followers.12 The first book was written in Urdu, his mother-tongue, the others in English.13 Ritual purity was of the essence in India because communities were either Muslims and Hindus and they became polluted if they drank the waters of others. Women were the keepers of the water within the home making sure that such water had been taken from the proper well, and women were also the ones who kept the fire and the Hindu shrine with water, flowers, incense and fire within the home. Thus, while the seclusion of women resembled a complete patriarchal injustice, women had the power of the home in which ritual purity, oral traditions, and the sense of a family was kept always. Thus, Sundar Singh could not stay with his biological family after conversion to Christianity, because he had become impure and would pollute the whole family if he stayed with them. Purity was different between Hindus and Muslims and between different groups within the Hindu caste system, and therefore a sense of purity created divisions and sub-divisions within villages and local populations. If Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs lived in peace with each other with the occasional flare of violence, it was because after years 11 Moore, Sadhu Sundar Singh: Essential Writings, p.18. 12 Moore, Sadhu Sundar Singh: Essential Writings, p.26. 13 Selections from these six books are those available in Moore, Sadhu Sundar Singh: Essential Writings, Part I: ‘Conversations’, pp.31–101, and Part II: ‘Parables’, pp.103–141.

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of negotiations they had managed to settle those boundaries of purity, including the water sources that belonged to different traditions. Partition unsettled those boundaries by moving people from their already acquired ritual boundaries. Therefore, Partition can be described as a movement of lines on the map by the British and the destruction of symbolic and ritual boundaries of purity as a result. If purity was to be the foundation of the new post-Partition India, such purity needed to be negotiated, and in those delicate negotiations the social fear of pollution, of a disorderly and unhappy life, led Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs to fight for their rights and their purity in very uncertain and traumatic times imposed upon the population of British India by the transfer of power of 1947. However, the discussions on the transfer of power and the challenge to the British had already started years before, and particularly in the peripheries of Bengal and Punjab.

The silencing of Bengal (1943) Some colonial policies under the pressure of War World II created, and rightly so, the image of the British as ready to leave people to die if they had to feed their own. Thus, the famine in Bengal in 1943 accelerated discontent not only at the political level but also at the level of cultural movements by artists and others, a socio-cultural phenomenon which I explore in Chapter 3 of this work, particularly triggered by the work of Chittaprosad and other artists, members of the Communist Party of India. The 1943 famine in Bengal was a man-made disaster, a ‘catastrophe of distinct significance’ already recognized as such by 23 September 1943.14 The disaster arose out of the association of India with Britain in World War II and the need for resources

14 ‘The Man-made “Famine” in Bengal’, in S.K. Mallik (ed.) (2011) Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1. Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery Pvt Ltd., p.21.

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and supplies that British India provided to the war effort.15 The fall of Rangoon to the Japanese cut the rice supply from Burma, and the 1942 Quit India call hardened the position of the British colonial power towards the local population of Bengal.16 To make matters worse, a cyclone hit the coast on 16 October 1943 on the villages and lands that had been protesting against the British and their policies. The colonial administration blamed the lack of grain availability for the famine but Dr Amartya Sen made clearly the point that the crops of 1943 were larger than those of 1941 when there was no famine.17 For Sen there were complex issues associated with the famine rather than solely a lack of grain production. A short review of some of the archives of the time suggest that the policy of feeding India was collapsing and was not adequate. Thus, Lt. Col. Sir John Herbert (Governor of Bengal) wrote to the Viceroy of India, stating that ‘the Basic Plan contemplated sending an agreed total of nearly 370,000 tons of rice to Bengal over a period of a year to be reckoned from December 1942. Actually, in the seven months December 1942 to June 1943 only a little over 44,000 tons reached Bengal’.18 The end of the British Raj in India coincided with the end of World War II, because by then Britain needed to reconstruct a 15 For an analysis of the 1943 Bengal famine see Batabyal, R. (2015) Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali 1943–47. New Delhi: Sage Publications India; Mukerjee, M. (2010) Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Forgotten Indian Famine of World War II. New York: Basic Books; Mukherjee, J. (2015) Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire. New York: Oxford University Press; Stevenson, R. (2005) Bengal Tiger and British Lion: An Account of the Bengal Famine of 1943. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse; and Venkataramani, M.S. (1973) Bengal Famine of 1943: The American Response. Noira, Uttar Pradesh: Vikas Publishing House. 16 For relevant documents see Great Britain: Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1973) Transfer of Power in India, 1942–47: Bengal Famine and the New Viceroyalty, June 15, 1943 – August 31, 1944, Vol 4: Constitutional Relations between Britain & India. London: Stationary Office Books. 17 Sen, A. (1981) Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 18 Sir J. Herbert (Bengal) to the Marquess of Linlithgow, Government House, Calcutta, 2 July 1943 MSS. EUR. F. 125/43. Herbert concerns himself with the food situation in Bengal and requests for the Central Government control of food grains.

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country destroyed by war, and the efforts in India could not take priority over the post-war efforts at home. The cries for self-rule in India had continued throughout the war, particularly with the fear that India had been dragged into the war by the colonial power without any consultation and that India could be attacked by Britain’s enemies at any time. However, as the war ended and a new British government was elected led by the Labour Party, it was clear that a post-war Britain was not going to be able to continue its complex human and economic involvement in India.19 Thus, after 30 years of Indian strife for independence Britain decided to hand over power in 1948, a date that was quickly moved forward to  August 1947. Lord Mountbatten was put in charge of British India, and in June 1947 an agreement was reached between the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress to create a new state called Pakistan. The term had been developed in the early 1930s and while it had all the makings of a need for a greater Muslim homeland, it also had the worrying connotation of ‘the land of the paks – “the spiritually pure and clean”’.20 Pakistan would eventually be the product of the Partition of the Punjab and British India, less part of the Punjab was to be called India. Suggestions to call independent India as Hindustan were finally rejected. In June 1947, a ‘Partition Council’ was formed with the task of dividing all assets of the Government of India, assets that included ‘everything from railway lines, food stocks, ships and bulldozers to printing presses, chairs and typewriters’.21 In July 1947, the British Parliament passed 19 Mahajan, S. (2000) Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications; and Panigrahi, D.N. (2004) India’s Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat. London: Routledge. 20 The name ‘Pakistan’ had first been adopted in the 1930s by a group of Muslims at Cambridge to encompass a fictitious greater Muslim homeland consisting of P(unjab), A(fghania, i.e. the North West Frontier), K(ashmir), I(ran), S(ind), T(urkharistan), A(fghanistan) and (Baluchista)N, see Keay, J. (2001) India: A History. London: HarperCollins, and New Delhi: HarperCollins India, p.496. 21 French, P. (1998) Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division. London: Flamingo, p.314. For a detailed economy study of these assets’ partition see Sengupta, A. (2014) ‘Breaking up: Dividing assets between India and Pakistan in times of Partition, Indian Economic and Social History Review 51, 4, pp.529–548.

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the India Independence Act, and at midnight of the 14 August and as the 15 August began constitutional authority to India and the newly formed Pakistan was given.22 The two events, the transfer of power and Partition, became engraved events in the soul of India, so that together with freedom there was what Jadeja has called a ‘vivisection on the communal basis’.23 Such tragic events created an ambivalent memory, either of independence or of tragic events. However, as soon as things got out of hand, silence started to reign, because the reality was that the number of killings and rapes were enormous and that both Hindus and Muslims were involved. Gandhi’s dream of a united secular India had collapsed, because the secular in Hinduism had meant the possibility of a society in which all religions and philosophies could co-exist. In a talk with Y.M. Dadoo and O.M. Naicker, the Mahatma spoke as follows: ‘India is now on the threshold of independence. But this is not the independence I want. To my mind it will not be independence if India is partitioned and the minorities do not enjoy security, protection and equal treatment.’24 Gandhi’s assassination in 1948 became the first state occasion in which the secular was enforced, and Partition silenced in its totality. Thus, for Mira Debs ‘Gandhi’s assassination cemented his representation as an

22 Among other many works see Khan, Y. (2007) The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; and Talbot, P. (2007) An American Witness to India’s Partition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 23 Jadeja, K.D. (2015) ‘The Partition of India and Its Reflections in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan and Bapsi Sidhwa’s, ‘Ice Candy Man: A Comparative Study’, Holos 31, 3, pp.415–419. 24 Mahatma Ghandi, Talk with Y.M. Dadoo and O.M. Naicker (G.) Biharni Komi Agman, MPWMG, vol. III, pp.268–269, in Judith M. Brown (ed.) Mahatma Gandhi: The Essential Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, § 135 at p.160. Further writings by Gandhi on the political unity in religious diversity can be found in Iyer, R.N. (ed.) (1986–7) The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, 3 volumes. Clarendon Press, 1987.

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Indian icon, part of a broader project to develop unifying and hence secular symbols for the new nation’.25

Forced migration and silence Gandhi had opposed Partition against the British judgement that stated that if the Muslims were left within India there would be a civil war. At the start of the negotiations for Indian independence, the Indian Muslim League leaders M.A. Jinnah and Liaqat Ali Khan could not agree with the Indian Congress leaders Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel.26 According to Bal K. Gupta, at the time of the Partition the total population of undivided India was 400 million of which circa 300 million became part of secular India and one hundred million formed Islamic Pakistan.27 Of those in India 15% were Muslims and 20% of those in Pakistan were Hindus and Sikhs.28 Those who needed to move because they were on the wrong side of the new map due to their ethnicity and religion were circa 15 million that constituted the largest number of migrants in history to be moved together within a short period of time.29 Pakistan was formed with the five Muslim majority provinces: West Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, North Western Frontier (NWFP) and East Bengal. East Bengal, that is East Pakistan, was separated from West Pakistan by 1,200 miles of Indian territory. Thus, Pakistanis who had to travel from one part to the other had to travel 2,000 miles by sea. In 1971, and after an armed conflict between East and West Pakistan, East Pakistan became independent as the Republic of Bangladesh.

25 Debs, M. (2013) ‘Using cultural trauma: Ghandi’s assassination, partition and secular nationalism in post-independence India’, Nations and Nationalism 19, 4, pp.635–653 at p.641. 26 M.A. Jinna died of tuberculosis in 1948, and Liaqat Ali Khan, who became Pakistan’s first prime minister, was assassinated by Sed Akbar, a Muslim, in 1951. 27 Gupta, B.K. (2012) ‘Preface’ to Forgotten Atrocities: Memoirs of a Survivor of the 1947 Partition of India. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Enterprises, p.xxii. 28 Bal K. Gupta, Forgotten Atrocities, p.xxii. 29 Bal K. Gupta, Forgotten Atrocities, p.xxii.

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Violence between Muslims and Hindus had started already in 1946 after the general elections in which Jinnah and the Muslim League had taken 90% of the seats allocated by the electoral system to Muslims. Jinnah wanted the protection of Muslims fearing that they would be discriminated against by Hindus when the British left. The British did not agree with any partition of India, and therefore Jinnah proclaimed 16 August 1946 as Direct‑Action Day. Jinnah’s intention was to put pressure on the British to give autonomy to Muslims rather than to leave Muslims in British India under the ruling of Hindus. Gandhi’s views were ignored with enormous respect from 1946 to 1947, the year in which Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, Viceroy of India, prepared the announcement of transfer of power on 3 June, with a series of meetings in which political and civil leaders were consulted about the possibilities and consequences of different plans for Partition.30 Thus, for example, on 31 May 1947 at 11am Mountbatten conducted the Thirty-Fourth Staff Meeting at the Viceroy’s House in New Delhi, and the issue of Gandhi’s opinions were discussed.31 Within Item 4 of the minutes it is reported that Rao Bahadur Menon conveyed Sardar Patel’s opinion to the effect that ‘not too much account should be taken of the recent utterance of Mr Gandhi in favour of a united India’.32 Gandhi’s utterances had been reported in The Times of India of 30 May 1947: ‘Since his return to New Delhi five days ago, Mr  Gandhi has, every 30 Mountbatten had prepared two different speeches, one of them to be broadcasted on 3 June 1947, one referring to the partition of Bengal, another with a unified Bengal included, see Minutes of Viceroy’s Thirty Fourth Staff Meeting, Items 1–7, Mountbatten Papers, in Mansergh, N. and Penderel Moon, P. (eds.) (1982) Constitutional Relations between Britain and India, The Transfer of Power 1942–47. Volume XI: The Mountbatten Viceroyalty – Announcement and Reception of the 3 June Plan, 31 May – 7 July 1947. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, § 1. 31 Minutes of Viceroy’s Thirty Fourth Staff Meeting, Items 1–7, Mountbatten Papers § 2. Present at the meeting were The Viceroy, Sir J. Colville, Lord Ismay, Sir E. Mieville, Mr Abell, Rao Bahadur V.P. Menon, Captain Brockman, Mr I.D. Scott, Mr Campbell-Johnson and Lieutenant-Colonel Erskine Crum. 32 Minutes of Viceroy’s Thirty Fourth Staff Meeting, Items 1–7, Mountbatten Papers § 4.

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evening, at his prayer meeting, preached against “vivisection of  the motherland” in terms disquietingly militant’.33 In The Times of India of 31 May 1947 there was a report on the previous evening prayer meeting led by Gandhi in which he had declared after the prayer meeting: ‘I made it clear yesterday that if I had my will there would never be Pakistan before peace, and certainly not through British intervention’.34 Mountbatten had asked his attaché during the meeting of his staff on 31 May 2017 to note in an aside of his speech of 3 June 1947 pointing ‘to his basic agreement with Mr. Gandhi that the partitioning of India was wrong’.35 Within the discussion Mountbatten reiterated his wish to make a remark on Gandhi’s dissent regarding Partition but he agreed that Gandhi’s position regarding a British imposition of a united India could not be sustained as any constitutional handover of India needed to be agreed by the consensus of all parties involved.36 By then Mountbatten had informed the governors of Punjab, Bengal and Assam that their provinces would be subject to a constitutional partition.37 It is clear from the archives that Viceroy Mountbatten had enormous difficulties getting the different political leaders to agree with different plans for Partition. It is also clear that the administrative partition of assets and constitutional roles needed

33 Cited in Mansergh and Moon (eds.) Constitutional Relations between Britain and India, footnote 5 at p.5. 34 Cited in Mansergh and Moon (eds.)Constitutional Relations between Britain and India, footnote 5 at p.5. 35 Minutes of Viceroy’s Thirty Fourth Staff Meeting, Items 1–7, Mountbatten Papers § 1. 36 Minutes of Viceroy’s Thirty Fourth Staff Meeting, Items 1–7, Mountbatten Papers § 4. 37 Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma to all Provincial Governors Telegram, R/3/1/150: ff 132–134, New Delhi 31 May 1947 11.50pm. At § 15 Mountbatten wrote: ‘To Governors of the Punjab, Bengal and Assam only). We must go ahead once with provisional administrative plans for partition and I will telegraph shortly about this.’

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to be done properly by the British civil service.38 However, if Hindus gave way to Mr Jinnah and the formation of a new Muslim state with the name of Pakistan, the Sikh community found themselves with very large numbers of their people on both sides of the new border between India and Pakistan in the Punjab. Initially, the Sikh leaders agreed with any plans that would keep their peace and independence that they had managed to maintain so well under the British Raj. Later, they did not know how to read the news that the Sikh community would be left divided on both sides of the border. However, on the eve of the Partition announcement of 3 June 1947 Baldev Singh, leader of the Sikh community, wrote to the Viceroy with some concerns about the whole issue of Partition.39 Balved Singh in his letter reminded the Viceroy that ‘we as a community have always stood for a United India and all we have desired is that our particular interests should be adequately safeguarded’. Mr Singh reminded the Viceroy that ‘the Sikhs have been unable to obtain any coherent and acceptable guarantee of their security in such a set-up and are therefore unable to contemplate being forced into it against their will’. Further, he reminded the  Viceroy that given the recent violence in Western Punjab they did not see any security from the Muslim League and he spoke of the situation as ‘under Muslim domination’. As plans were being made for a Boundary Commission that would function after Partition Mr Singh spent a large part of the letter asking about this Commission. However, the letter expressed the assurance that the Sikh community had agreed to a possible Partition as the solution for peace within the transfer of power, but the summary lines outlined disappointment and somehow fear within the 38 See for example Minutes of the Meeting of the Viceroy with the Indian Leaders, Second Day L/P&J/10/81: ff 379–385, sections ‘The Administrative Consequences of Partition’, ‘Division of the Armed Forces’, and ‘Sterling Balances’, June 1947, available in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 39. 39 Baldev Singh to Viceroy Mountbatten, 1 Bhagwan Das Road, New Delhi, 2 June 1947, see Viceroy’s Conference Paper V.C.P. 65 L/P & J/10/81: ff 386–388.

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months ahead in the following terms: ‘I should like to bring to your notice that though assurances have been given to us that we shall have equal rights with the two other major communities for the safeguard of our communal rights and privileges, nothing tangible has so far been done to give effect to these assurances’. On the evening of 3 June 1947 Partition was announced through the following radio broadcasts: Viceroy in English, an­ nouncement in English, Nehru in English, Jinnah in English, Baldev Singh in English, Translation of Viceroy’s Speech and Announcement, Nehru in Hindustani, Translation Jinnah, and Translation Baldev Singh.40 In his broadcast the Viceroy made a special mention of the Sikh community stating that ‘this valiant community forms about an eighth of the population of the Punjab, but they are so distributed that any partition of this Province will inevitably divide them’.41 Within the statement broadcasted to India the Provincial Legislative Assemblies of Bengal and Punjab were informed that through a single majority vote both provinces would decide on Partition by taking the census of 1941 as the basis of the population census of each province.42 Within his address Pandit Nehru spoke about the difficulties and obstacles ahead but reminded listeners that ‘it must always be remembered that the future of India can only be decided by the people of India and not by an outside authority, however friendly’.43 40 Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma to the Earl of Listowel Telegram R/3/1/151: f 233, New Delhi 3 June 1947 2pm Received 3 June 1.50pm, available in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 41. 41 Text of Broadcast by Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma on 3 June 1947 at 7pm I.S.T. (3.30pm in the United Kingdom – Double British Summer Time), R/3/1/150: f 252, available in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 44. 42 Statement of 3 June 1947, Cmd. 7136 ‘Indian Policy’, 5–9. This statement was made by Mr Athlee in the House of Commons and the Earl of Listowel in the House of Lords at 3.30pm (Double British Summer Time) and was published in India at the same time, available in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 45. 43 Text of Broadcast by Pandit Nehru on 3 June 1947 L/P&J/10/81: f 363, available in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 46, and in Independence and After: A collection of the more important speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru from September 1946 to May 1949, New Delhi: Government of India.

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Nehru outlined his pain for the occurring ethnic violence saying: ‘my mind is heavy with the thought of the suffering of our people in the areas of disturbance, the thousands who are dead and those, especially our women-folk, who have suffered agony worse than death’.44 After Nehru’s speech, Jinnah spoke stressing the fact that it was the first time that a non-official had been offered this possibility.45 Further, he asked all within India to keep peace and order but particularly he addressed Muslims requesting them to examine the plans and to reach a conclusion about the Viceroy’s proposals. It was clear within Jinnah’s speech that some Muslims did not agree with parts of the proposals, but he left the final decision of agreement or settlement to the All India Muslim League, a leading Muslim body that was to meet on Monday 9 June 1947 to discuss the proposals put to India on 3 June. Jinnah requested the officials of the Northern Frontier who were on peaceful strike to depose it so that the people could vote on the proposals, and he also remembered those who had suffered because of the process, those who died and those had their properties destroyed. After Jinnah, it was the turn of the Sikh Balved Singh to speak.46 He spoke about ‘a great day’, but overshadowed by the differences between the communities so that ‘neighbour has risen against neighbour. Thousands of innocent lives have been lost. Men, women and children roam from one place to another, homeless and without shelter.’ He outlined the possibility of a settlement, not fully pleasing to the Sikh community, but a settlement after all so that ‘taken in that spirit, this plan should halt the dismal gloom that shrouds our Motherland and so many other stricken spots today’. His address was aimed at all communities within India and with a special mention to the armed forces that had been sent to restore peace in many localities, stressing the unity, discipline and honour they had 44 This ‘agony worse than death’ was clearly interpreted as rape and abuse towards women through the disturbances and the post-Partition violence. 45 India records at the British Library, L/P&J/10/81: f 364. 46 India records at the British Library, L/P&J/10/81: f 365.

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regardless of their belonging to different communities: ‘do not forget that India’s honour is your honour’. The troops available under the leadership of Nehru were crucial to secure the conditions whereby regional assemblies could express their wish regarding Partition. The Viceroy requested from Nehru that nine British officers should supervise the referendum in the North-West Frontier Province.47

Violence and disturbances in the Punjab As I outlined previously, some of the general understanding was that violence on a massive scale erupted within the Punjab and Bengal after the announcement of Partition, and was a product of the handing over of power in August 1947. This was not the case, as violence had already begun a couple of years before the transfer of power due to the uncertainty of the future political situation within British India. Indeed, Gandhi’s fast and endless meetings with Jinnah and Nehru related precisely to the ongoing violence at local and community level. Viceroy Mountbatten had taken the line that the pre-independence laws that allowed ‘for the use of minimum force to suppress disturbances’ should be maintained and Mountbatten’s opinion was that they should not be altered.48 All the different analyses of the violence took for granted that Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs would take to violence once a central corporate power such as the British would not stop violence by force. This had been the case in some of the riots before the transfer 47 Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma to Pandit Nehru 3 June 1947, see R/3/1/151: f 105, available in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 49, and a note by Mr Abell written on 2 June 1947 that raised the issue of possible accusations of bias if Indian officers were to oversee the referendum, see R/3/1/151: f 100, mentioned in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 49 footnote 1. 48 Minutes of Viceroy’s Thirty Fifth Staff Meeting, Mountbatten Papers, ‘The use of force to suppress disturbances’ § 2. Meeting of the 31 May 1947 at 3.45pm. Present at the meeting were The Viceroy, Lord Ismay, Sir E. Mieville, Mr Abell, Captain Brockman, Mr I.D. Scott, Mr Campbell-Johnson and LieutenantColonel Erskine Crum.

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of power, but it had not been the norm over centuries whereby Muslim, Hindus and Sikhs coexisted in peace and cooperation. In his sound historical analysis Patrick French has provided two words  that summarize the difference between localized confron­ tations that always exist between communities competing for resources, and the frenzy of killing that took place after Partition: fear and revenge.49 Killers had different motivations such as anger, hatred, peer pressure, greed, drunkenness, cowardice, blood lust or mob fury, elements emphasized in their enormous variety by French.50 However, once the killing had started villages or families that had nothing to do with the killings started storing weapons of defence that were changed into weapons of revenge once members of a family, a clan, a caste, or a village had were attacked. Honour and purity became higher values than a common independence project, particularly because families were moved forcefully due to a centralized political agreement. The centrality of the family home and its honour was of higher value for those involved than any foreign sense of loyalty to a flag, a ruler, or a king, thus outlining the enormous difficulty of shaping India and Pakistan under a common political history which did not exist. Once the relief of the transfer of power was on the air the communality of the oppression of the colonizers ceased to bind Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs together. Their common history was a common fight against the British; however, without the British the new imagining of British India became the installation of separate ethnic histories that were united by their allegiance to a set of socio-cultural values heavily founded on their allegiance to Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism. The emphasis on understanding the violence that was arising before the transfer of power focused on the Punjab rather than on Bengal. On the one hand, not only was the Punjab a very large territory but all those involved in the contestation of socio-ethnic and socio-religious power had ritual and political centres within 49 French, Liberty or Death, p.352. 50 French, Liberty or Death, p.352.

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the Punjab. On the other hand, the last British governor of the Punjab was Sir Evan Jenkins who was a very seasoned British member of the Indian Civil Service but also a man who felt deeply for Punjab, so that in Britain it was said that he was married to the Punjab as he had remained a bachelor.51 Thus, on the same day that Viceroy Mountbatten was planning his June 1947 speech, and Gandhi was expressing his disagreement with Partition in The Times, Jenkins wrote to Mountbatten outlining the violence, particularly the widespread incendiary violence within different locations in the Punjab.52 He described the tension as high but introduced the word ‘mass hysteria’ that could account for the irrational violence that erupted throughout the Punjab. Sir E. Jenkins reported many cases of incendiarism whereby torches were thrown through open windows by unknown individuals that could not be apprehended, and no rioting or public protests. Numbers were small in relation to what was to come but nevertheless very significant for any moment in a city such as Lahore, and he wrote: ‘casualties in Lahore have been heavy – I should say by now about 120 dead and perhaps 190 injured’ and ‘in Amritsar our troubles resembled those in Lahore’.53 After the 3 June 1947 speeches, disturbances and violence were not only on the increase but they were blamed by Pandit Nehru on 51 Sir Evan Meredith Jenkins (1896–1985), son of Sir John Lewis Jenkins and Florence Mildred, was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. He joined the India Civil Service in 1920 and held various posts in the Punjab Commission and Central Secretariat. In 1943 he was appointed as Secretary to the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, and later Governor of Punjab from April 1946 to August 1947. Jenkins opposed the partition of the Punjab and the early withdrawal of British troops stating that the ethnic violence would be tremendous. 52 Sir E. Jenkins (Punjab) to Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, Government House Lahore 31 May 1947. India records at the British Library, R/3/1/178: ff 58–61; Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 12.1 For the issues of Gandhi’s opposition to the creation of Pakistan see Minutes of Viceroy’s Thirty Fourth Staff Meeting, Items 1–7, Mountbatten Papers §  4, document on which I have commented upon in a previous section of this chapter. 53 Sir E. Jenkins (Punjab) to Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, Government House Lahore 31 May 1947available in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 12.2.

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the inefficiency of the British so that, as published by The Tribune in Lahore on Monday 6 June 1947, riots in Punjab, Bengal and elsewhere were ‘no isolated riots’ but ‘were planned attacks’.54 In the Punjab, Nehru said ‘murder and arson continued’. However, he added ‘the trouble was prevalent the most where there were the British  officers in charge’.55 Jenkins wrote to Mountbatten responding  to such accusations arguing that Nehru was ‘wrong both in his facts and in his reasoning’.56 Jenkins argued that the disturbances varied not only in kind but also in degree from those in the past, and he described the seriousness of the situation stating that  ‘in the Punjab we are going through what amounts to a revolution’.57 Jenkins challenged Nehru’s assessment of the British negligence when it came to violence, and in doing this he reported on the Bihar massacre that until that moment was considered the worst in Indian history.58 Jenkins reminded Mountbatten that all Deputy District Commissioners within the Punjab were non‑British Indian and that Nehru’s position as Deputy in the British Government of India made necessary a clarification so that British civil servants could remain in post until the transfer of power.59 However, while violence continued the governors of Punjab and Bengal needed to organize a Partition Committee that was to advise on all matters of consultation and the final decisions to be taken by the British Government. Jenkins called a meeting where Party Leaders were to discuss among themselves proper advice to be given to the governor on the membership of such a committee, with Khan Iftikhar Husain Khan of Mamdot, Lala Bhim Sen

54 Enclosure to No. 218 Extract ‘Tribune’, in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, p.429. 55 Enclosure to No. 218 Extract ‘Tribune’, in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, pp.429. 56 Sir E. Jenkins (Punjab) to Rear-Admiral Viscount Mountbatten of Burma, Mountbatten Papers, Official Correspondence Files: Punjab, Situation in, Part II (a), Government House, Lahore, 16 June 1947, No. 684, in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 218 paragraph 3 at p.428. 57 Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 218 paragraph 3 at p.428. 58 Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 218 paragraph 3 at p.428. 59 Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 218 paragraph 4 at p.429.

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Sachar, and Sardar Swaran Singh present.60 Further, the Chiefs of Staff Committee were concerned about the planning of military resources for the transfer of power and the fact that the Indian Dominion Bill had one important omission, namely the provision of ‘military facilities’ ‘in the event of India either remaining in the Commonwealth or becoming an independent republic’.61 The seriousness of these military provisions after Partition were discussed in relation to the British military requirements in India.62 However, regardless of endless deliberations a borderline needed to be agreed between India and a newly created Pakistan.

The Radcliffe Line Conversations concerning Partition were triggered by the request by the Muslim League led by Mohammed Ali Jinna for  an independent land in which all Muslims could be safe, rather than remaining a minority within independent India. The Viceroy and the British Government spent considerable hours of meetings in London and Delhi discussing this possibility with Jawarharlal Nehru and with the Sikh community. Gandhi and Nehru opposed any partition of mother India while Nehru then realized that partition was needed if there was going to be a stop to violence, particularly in the Punjab, Calcutta and Lahore.63 60 Enclosure No. 219 ‘Note on a meeting on partition preliminaries held at Government House, Lahore, at 10 a.m. on Monday 16 June 1947 (Extract), in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 219 at p. 430. See Chiefs of Staff Committee. C.O.S. (47) 76th Meeting, Minute 4 L/WS/1/1032: ff 127–129 in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 221. Those present at the meeting held on 16 June 1947 at 4 pm were Vice-Admiral Sir R. McGrigor (Chair), Major-General A.D. Ward, and Air Vice-Marshal Foster. 61 Annex to No. 221 ‘Copy of a minute dated 16 June, 1947, to the Minister of Defence from Lt.-General Sir Leslie C. Hollins’, in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 221 pp.433–434 paragraph 5 at p.434. 62 Annexe II to ‘Copy of a minute dated 16th June, 1947, to the Minister of Defence from Lt.-General Sir Leslie C. Hollins’, in Mansergh and Moon (eds) The Transfer of Power, § 221 paragraph 6 at p.434. 63 See their 1946 conversations in Makasuda, S.A. (2008) Gandhi, Nehru and Noakhali. Dhaka, Bangladesh: Mahatma Ghandi Smarak Sadan.

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To complicate matters, in between the aspirations of Nehru and Jinnah there were six million Sikhs who were badly represented by their leaders, and there were also peoples who were not included within the term Sikh.64 This was because Sikhs historically had been protected by the British who declared them ‘martial’ and many Sikhs had been fighting within British regiments during World War II, and they had just returned from the front. Some Sikhs had joined the Congress Party, but most of them were supporters of the Punjab’s Unionist Party, the pro-Unionist Khalsas, the Central Akali Dal, and the Official Akali Party. The challenge for Sikhs in politics had been to gain control of Sikh temples (gurdwara) that were in the hands of Hindu priests. The Sikh community rejected any idea of the creation of Pakistan as large numbers of Sikhs lived in West Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province. It is a fact that some Sikh leaders had also considered the possibility of an independent Sikh land. These were territories where Muslims rather than Hindus were the majority, and Sikhs would be left cut off from their holy shrines in East Punjab. Thus, the possibility of a Muslim homeland with Sikhs within it provoked a very strong reaction reproduced by Patrick French and attributed to Giani Kartar Singh, a Sikh campaigner, who in August 1944 proclaimed in Amritsar: ‘if Pakistan is foisted upon the Sikhs with the help of the British bayonets, we will tear it into shreds as Guru Gobind Singh tore up the Mughal empire’.65 The most forceful advocates of a Sikh land were those who belonged to the Official Akali Party led by Master Tara Singh, a seventy-two-year-old former Hindu who commanded the respect of the Sikhs because he was well versed in the Granth Sahib, the 64 For a full history of Sikhs within Partition see Singh, K. (2006) The Sikhs and Transfer of Power (1942–1947). Patiala: Publication Bureau, Punjabi University. For the very thoughtful reminder of those who were excluded and who ‘disappeared’, see Kothari, R. and Thadani, J. (2016) ‘Sindhi Sikhs in India: The Missing People’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 39, 4, pp.873–890. 65 French, Liberty or Death, p. 332. French refers to note 27 in his work where he cites from Singh, K. (1991) A History of the Sikhs, Vol. II. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, revised edition, p.252.

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Sikh scriptures. He threatened many times in public to go to London to put the case of the Sikhs in the eyes of the British public, but he was not taken completely seriously by either Lord Wavell or by Sir Evan Jenkins. The Sikhs suffered violence at the hands of Muslims in March 1946 in Rawalpindi to which Master Tara Singh replied calling for blood, and the Sikhs organized themselves through a defence fund and formed squads (jathas) using the military expertise of former INA soldiers.66 In July 1947, a ‘Sikh Memorandum to the Boundary Commission’ was produced requesting that a frontier running along the Chenab River would safeguard their important shrine of Nankana Saheb and leave 90% of Sikhs inside India.67 This position was unacceptable within Partition, as it would have secured most of the Punjab for India contravening the name Pakistan and the prevalence of the Punjab within it. Indeed, any safety measures for the Sikhs in the new Pakistan would have involved a mass migration, as most of them were located in the proposed Pakistan, a measure that was suggested by the Akali leader Giani Kartar Singh but was immediately rejected as impractical. Sikhs thought that Baldev Singh’s acceptance of the 3 June plan left the Sikhs at the mercy of all others, an understanding that was quickly assumed by the whole Sikh community and that led to criticisms and reactions against Baldev Singh. To manage the boundaries for Partition, Sir Cyril Radcliffe KC was appointed by the British Government. He was to supervise the work of the boundary commissions within British India and to finalize the boundary lines through which the transfer of power was going to operate. The only possible difficulty in the eyes of those in India was that Radcliffe had never been to India and was not acquainted with matters of empire outside Europe. However, 66 Ray, S. (2017) ‘Intra-group Interactions and Inter-group Violence: Sikh mobilization during the partition of India in a comparative perspective’, Journal of Genocide Research 19, 3, pp.382–403. 67 For a comprehensive survey of Sikh shrines see Singh, P. and Kumar, J. (eds) (2015) Walking with the Gurus: Historical Sikh Shrines. Amritsar: B. Chattar Singh JIwan Singh.

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he was a well-known barrister that after studying at Haileybury, like Clement Atlee, read law at Oxford and became quickly and at a young age appointed as a barrister, and was known for his incisive legal mind and formidable memory.68 During World War  II, Radcliffe was Director-General of the Ministry of Information under Brendan Bracken exercising policies of government censorship and propaganda.69 It was clear that Radcliffe was appointed to supervise boundaries in India because he was an establishment figure who would put the interests of the state above his own or indeed anybody else’s.70 When Radcliffe arrived in India on 8 July 1947 he was 48 and one of the leading barristers in England. He spent six weeks in India, and his final decisions in conversation with the British Government were only announced after the transfer of power due to their sensitive nature. It is a fact that the drawing of boundaries had not been at the centre of the negotiations for the creation of Pakistan as it was assumed by the new leaders that boundaries would be fluid and that India and Pakistan would negotiate future boundaries. Indeed, with hindsight it is possible to argue that if the boundaries of the newly created Pakistan had been set in 1946 many problems would have been avoided. However, any fluidity or compromise was not part of the understanding by the British Government. Thus, all boundaries were drawn by Radcliffe with the closing of borders after the transfer of power and the announcement of boundaries a day later with the return

68 Viscount Cyril John Radcliffe (1899–1977), for his biography see Heward, E. (1994) The Great and the Good: A Life of Lord Radcliffe. Chichester: Barry Rose. 69 Radcliffe was directly responsible for organizing the campaign against Nehru’s sister Vijana Lakshmi Pandit when she travelled to the United States, see French, Liberty or Death, p.321. 70 After working in India Radcliffe served in many government committees and delivered many important public lectures, see for example, Radcliffe, C. (1952) The Problem of Power: The Reith Memorial Lectures 1951. London: Secker & Warburg; and (1961) Censors: The Rede Lecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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of Radcliffe to London on 17 August.71 Apart from the partition of the Punjab and Bengal Radcliffe provided a last-minute surprise by including the Chittagong Hills Tracks in Pakistan and Ferozepur and most of Gurdaspur in India.72 The Hindu–Muslim–Sikh boundaries were also marked by languages and languages became markers of nationalism and exclusion, as they had previously served within the regional boundaries of British India. For it was a fact that as the Indian leaders did not agree with a full Partition, the vacuum left by national politics was filled by nationalism and the nationalism of language.73 Indeed, Perry Anderson has argued that today’s inequalities within the Indian state arose out of such a nationalistic fight by Nehru for an independent India and the catastrophe of Partition.74 Another catastrophe was the fact that not even Jinna wanted Partition, and that he felt he had not been treated justly given that Pakistan did not include all of Muslim-occupied lands as he had wished for.75 However, the post-Partition period in Delhi created a consciousness of nationalism and Partition that permeated the fear of future foreign interferences due to the very difficult moments faced by Nehru within a pre-Partition and a post-Partition period.76 Within the language of Partition all human beings, even the most secular, became Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs as they were marked even by body signs such as the signs of circumcision or 71 For the thoroughness of the boundary commissions in Punjab and Bengal see Radcliffe, C. (1947) Report of the Punjab Boundary Commission, chairman Lord Radcliffe. India, Republic of India: Punjab Commission; and (1947) Report of the Bengal Boundary Commission, chairman Lord Radcliffe. India, Republic of India: Bengal Commission. 72 The issue of the last-minute boundary line was raised by Pakistan in the United Nations in 1948. 73 See for example Wanchoo, R. (2014) Imagining Hindi: The Politics of Language Before and After Partition. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. 74 Anderson, P. (2013) The Indian Ideology. London and New York: Verso. 75 See Interview of JIwatram Bhagwandas (born 1988) by Henry Vincent Hodson (1964?), SOAS Indian Politics, British Library C940/11. 76 Nair, N. (2011) Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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the lack of it and different hair styles carrying ritual meanings. Nobody could escape such classification and those who were Christians, for example, started wearing small red crosses to escape the carnage. Was there any protection by the state or within the states of Punjab or Bengal? The demobilization of British forces and the division of military personnel that was arranged for India and Pakistan after Partition meant that all forces of order were depleted, especially British forces. Further, the British order of command that was vertical and unified was broken along ethnic lines. As a result, local police forces did not intervene when those attacking buildings or killing people were from their own ethnic or religious group. In the case of the Punjab, for example, the 4th Indian Division became on 1  August 1947 the Punjab Boundary Force. It numbered 15,000, and it grew to 23,000 when it was strengthened at the end of the month with the addition of a paratrooper brigade and other units.77  Such an improvized Boundary Force was not going to be able to stop the killings, as it was made responsible for 38,000  square miles of territory, including 17,000 villages. Further, when Sikh jathas or Muslim bands attacked they were able to escape into the Princely States. It was also clear that Muslim bands had purchased arms and ammunition from the North-West Frontier through the Khan of Momdot.78 By the end of August 1947 not even Master Tara Singh had control over those involved in the slaughter within the Punjab. The Boundary Force attempted to keep order, but it was not capable of doing so. On 14 August, for example, they found the bodies of 35 Sikhs who had been knifed at Lahore railway station, and that night they tried to control a mob that was burning down the main gurdwara in Lahore with hundreds of Sikhs sheltering inside. On the following day, Major General Thomas Rees with some of the Boundary Force marched into Amritsar to try to prevent retaliation for killings in Lahore. Amritsar’s police had already deserted, and Muslim women had been taken from their 77 French, Liberty or Death, p.346. 78 French, Liberty or Death, p.347.

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homes and paraded naked through the streets outside the Golden Temple. After this they were raped and hacked to death without being able to be protected by the Boundary Force. According to Patrick French 14 to 17 million people were on the move ‘in what was to be the largest migration in human history’.79 When on 1 September the Boundary Force was dissolved, and its members sent to India or Pakistan, they changed from having been part of the British Indian Empire to being Indians or Pakistanis. The killings continued daily in their thousands until the population that had been diverse became predominantly a natio­ nal  population within India or Pakistan. Thus, by 1950, the Muslim population of Indian Punjab was just above 1% while the  Hindu and Sikh population of Pakistani Punjab was just below  1%.80 Ration lists that indicated the religion of those collecting food were used to determine the religion of those to be killed, and the killing was preceded by humiliation, torture and genital mutilation. There was no authority either in India or Pakistan during the killings, and people spoke of having been away ‘working’, when they joined a band to journey to another village to kill. Within refugee camps women were sold and bought as if they were cattle, and after passing from one man to another they were put to work in brothels. By 1952 around 30,000 women from both sides had been repatriated under an agreement between India and Pakistan, but many did not wish to return to their families, as they were unclean, and particularly if they had had children with their captors. Horrifying tales of ethnic cleansing, mass rapes, and human slavery followed every refugee and once the killing stopped they became part of a social trauma of silence in both India and Pakistan. In the following chapter I will explore the situation of women and silence, as well as the possibilities of liberation from the past and the challenges of memory and forgetting. 79 French, Liberty or Death, p.347. 80 French, Liberty or Death, p.351.

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THE DIVERSITY OF GOD’S WOMB Before and after the drawing of the Radcliffe line the anxiety and fear of the different communities triggered violence on a scale that had not been seen in India previously, and communities that used to live together and celebrate their feasts and their weddings together, be they Hindu or Muslim, descended into mindless burning, looting and raping of women. Fathers killed their daughters before they could be taken by advancing mobs and women threw themselves into wells rather than being taken alive. In the minds of those with whom one can talk to today there is the memory of a period of madness in which human beings ceased to be so. The largest migration of refugees crossing the borders of India and the newly created Pakistan suggested the movement of 14 to 17 million people and the killing of circa one million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Within those movements and the violence that triggered them, women, as usual, were the most vulnerable, trying to move holding tight to their children, hoping for the best, knowing that at any given time they were less important than men and were considered property. However, during 1947 women were not protected by advancing mobs, on the contrary after having witnessed the killing of their fathers, husbands, and brothers they were raped and appropriated as war booty by those who previously had been their protectors, their neighbours and their friends. This chapter explores the raping and appropriation of women by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs in which in the name of honour most women captives were raped and taken into forced marriages. It explores the role of the womb for two new nations under different religions and the forced conception of new citizens to keep the honour and purity of men. It outlines female narratives in

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which those who were victims speak about their understanding of God and gives some examples of the solidarity between Hindu and Muslim women who rejected the killing of any human being and particularly children.1 The violence and the rape of women had some  further social and individual consequences, mainly the loneliness of young women who could not marry and who in old age still suffered the isolation and the clear rejection of their own families. The memory of Partition becomes actualized in narratives  in which the importance of women’s narratives as individual human beings become central to learn the lessons of massive events of violence. Within those events rape as the silencing of wombs becomes the silencing of a social group within India and Pakistan: women who were forcefully converted and those who, having escaped the atrocities with their lives, couldn’t integrate themselves into a social group to which they belonged previously. For the physical destruction of a womb could be repaired, but the social breaking of a womb could not be repaired after the events then and would never be repaired again as families were destroyed.2

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The narratives available are fewer than in other conflicts such as Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia, because India and Pakistan took decades to come to terms with the atrocities that had taken place in 1947 and didn’t encourage questions about the Partition for at least 50 years. In the case of Rwanda, for example, immediately after the 1994 genocide NGOs and human rights organizations started collecting oral testimonies so that by 1995 there was a clear sense of the atrocities that had taken place within the three months of the genocide. See interviews of survivors for example in Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance. London: African Rights (1995). The use of rape as a breaking of sociability and kinship was also present in most conflicts in which large numbers of people were killed because of their religion or ethnicity. Thus, in the case of Rwanda the killing of Tutsi and those who protected them was done not only with the machetes but women were raped and objects used in order to destroy their wombs before and after their death, see chapter ‘Rape and Abduction of Women and Girls’ in Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance. London: African Rights, pp.748–797.

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Exploring memories of the womb Urvashi Butalia has argued that ‘the exploration of memory is also not something that is or can be finite’.3 Thus, once the reconstruction of memory is opened, it cannot be assumed that at one point or another the exercise is done and the memory of the past reconstructed. The reconstruction of memory does not even end with the death of the last survivor of an atrocity, but the complexities of Partition and memory appear within the following generations. Thus, not only new narratives and memories appear, but the different actors and victims of Partition shift according to those who were victims and perpetrators and who in many cases were victims at the start and later settled as members of the families of the perpetrators. Further, the work by Mahua Sarkar among urban Hindu and Muslim women in Bengal has challenged the Partition syndrome which suggested that there was only violence, honour/shame, seclusion and strife.4 Sarkar interviewed women who had been educated in Bengal after the changes from full family seclusion for women to the point when a significant number of Hindu and Muslim women were attending school and college before Partition. The study shows that young women visited each other’s homes and even ate together at times in a social atmosphere in which friendship and study surpassed religious boundaries, not freely, but under changes to seclusion that had been the product of colonial educational policies towards and for women. The edu­ cation of women was such an important policy during colonial times and within an emerging India that education continued even at refugee camps after Partition in places such as Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi.5 But the winds of Partition separated the wombs socially, by force, wombs that were only separated  symbolically. 3 Butalia, U. (2015) Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Zubaan, and Haryana: Viking, with the collaboration of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Delhi, p.ix. 4 Sarkar, M. (2015) ‘Changing Together, Changing Apart: Urban Muslim and Hindu Women in Pre-Partition Bengal’, History & Memory 27, 1, pp. 5–42. 5 See Sen, A. (2015) ‘A Good Education.’ in Butalia (ed.), Partition: The Long Shadow, pp. 64-77.

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Violated  wombs by men contradicted the unity of women as mothers, and all within Partition had a mother. Raped women became an unwanted challenge to the universal womb of God, symbolized for Hindus in the universal manifestation of Brahma.6 The memories of the womb are on the one hand physical, legal, and historiographical so that the consequences and therefore the social memories of belonging/not-belonging in legal and theological  terms do not stop within that generation but continue throughout the following generations. The memories of Partition have been depicted through art forms, literature, film, plays and music showing that the diversity of voices has outlined the possibility of forced silence by state and religious actors.7 These works have been a creative and necessary form of depicting Partition and many have agreed with Lodewijk Brunt, who disclosed that ‘I have found it useful to read novels and short stories about Partition, although I realize that there are some obvious difficulties implied in such undertaking, one of the most important being the unknown quantity (and quality) of books which have been written on this subject’.8 Partition provided a common state order to resettle following the assumption that a majority Muslim could live in the newly created Pakistan and that a majority Hindu could settle in India. However, not only the peripheries of the new states provided a complex situation for Partition, but Partition was a different phenomenon for men and women. Men attacked and defended their women, but women had to flee or move according to what men were doing, usually moving their children into safety. 6 Young, K.K. (1994) ‘Women in Hinduism’, in Arvind Sharma (ed.), Today’s Woman in World Religions. Albany: State University of New York Press. 7 See for example the interviews conducted by Allok Bhalla in which he tried to understand the fictional project of seven Indian and Pakistani novelists vis‑à‑vis Partition, namely Intizar Husain, Brisham Sahni, Krishna Sobti, Krishna Baldev Vaid, Kamleshwar, and Bapsi Sidhwa, in Bhalla, B. (2007) Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home. New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 8 Brunt, L. (2016) ‘An Eye for an Eye: The imagery of the 1947 Partition (India, Pakistan)’, in C. Brants, A. Hol, and D. Siegel (eds) Transitional Justice: Images and Memories. London and New York: Routledge, p.279.

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The general image of chaos and the movement of large numbers of evacuees was only apparent after Partition when at local level members of a household had to negotiate their settlement, and the right to be and to remain alive. Within those struggles, the movement of a family was easier, more difficult or non-existent, according to factors such as ‘partition, migration, questions of caste, ecology and discriminatory refugee policy’.9 Partition represents the most violent moment of communal violence in the history of India. Of course, there had been other moments of communal violence such as the Mutiny or the torching of Hindu and Muslim homes over issues of local disagreement and the challenges of mutual understanding between Hindus and Muslims who were requesting the end of British rule in India. Further, Partition represented a threat to the stability of Hindu and Muslim families and therefore according to NarasimhanMadhavan  ‘the threats to family, religion, national status and security during the partition magnified the tension over ownership and honour in female sexuality, leading to terrible violence inflicted against the women of both societies’.10 And while it seemed that Partition brought a generalized violence, the centre of such violence was the Punjab, a large part of British colonial India that was partitioned in such a way to give cities such as Lahore to Pakistan and Amritsar to India.11 In relation to the Punjab one of the most poignant works on women’s experience of Partition was the research by Urvashi Butalia who interviewed women about Partition many years later within processes of extended conversations which in some cases lasted for years.12 Butalia came from a Punjabi family, an Indian middle class 9 Sen, J. (2015) ‘Reconstructing Marichjhapi: From Margins and Memories of Migrant Lives’, in Butalia (ed.), Partition: The Long Shadow, pp.102–103. 10 Narasimhan-Madhavan, D. (2006) ‘Gender, Sexuality and Violence: Permissible Violence against Women during the Partition of India and Pakistan’, Hawwa 4, 2–3, pp.396–416 at p.400. 11 Talbot, I. and Singh, D. (eds) (2006) Epicentre of Violence: Partition Voices and Memories from Amritsar. New Delhi: Permanent Black. 12 Urvashi Butalia (2000) The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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family, that at the time of Partition had to leave Lahore.13 Settling back in India Butalia heard stories of Partition that didn’t mean anything to her until in October 1984 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh guards. What followed was retaliation and violence against the Sikhs so that Butalia recorded 3,000 Sikhs being killed in Delhi, being burned alive by mobs of Hindus. She took part in relief work for those who had been attacked, and she realized what Partition was after all, when those who had been attacked and had fled during Partition spoke of the violence of Partition again.14 For women would be singled out, and they would volunteer to be interviewed. The consequences of Partition for women who were at the point of getting married and who were relocated was that they became lonely women, because the effort of refugee families included those of women who never married but became part of an intense and costly effort to rebuild lives and families.15 Questions of forced removal and dislocation during Partition can be compared to those of Jewish women during the Holocaust in order to bridge any kind of colonial perception of Partition, so that they did horrible things in India, but these violent moments have never happened in Europe. Indeed, Partition takes place after the end of World War II and the killing of millions of Jews precisely for the same reasons as in India, their ethnicity and their religion as an expression of ethnicity. As in the case of Partition, women who were detained or segregated with their husbands and children during the removal of the Jews from territories being occupied by the Third Reich were also forcefully removed. Early research on the experiences of the Jews forcefully removed did not make much difference between men and women. Once an attempt was made to speak of women and the Holocaust, there were accusations of revisionism, as it was understood that what happened to men happened to women as well implying that women’s narratives 13 Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, p.4. 14 Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, p.4. 15 Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, p.89.

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could not be different after all. This was not the case. However, well-known writers and witnesses to the Shoah were mainly men such as Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. The recent analysis by Nicole Ephgrave has reminded us that ‘fewer people, I would argue, know about the Holocaust through such survivors as Charlotte Delbo and Isabella Leitner’.16 Myrna Goldenberg has argued that oral narratives provide a different memory than archival testimonies while focusing on the ‘different horrors, same hell’.17 Further issues of shared humanities within the Shoah reflect common experiences with the women of Partition as bearers of the next generation of Jews with the immense and vast seriousness of such perception for the Nazi machinery. As the Jews were to be exterminated, the possible fertility of Jewish women entailed two different threats to the Nazi ill-conceived Aryan world, so that James Young suggested that Jewish women were killed twice, ‘as Jews, and as women-bearers of Jews so that women after the Holocaust did not share shameful experiences of sexual exploitation, of violations of religious modesty and decorum, of rape, of childbirth, or of abortions’.18 It has been discovered lately that those who were pregnant on arrival in Auschwitz II-Birkenau in 1944 and who faced the scrutiny of Dr Mengele on arrival told their stories of survival and reunion.19 In exploring the Shoah and the experience of women within it I wanted to lift the local experiences that sometimes are used to create a wall against the shared human experience of suffering and to try to unite the common experiences of women who belonged 16 Ephgrave, N. (2016) ‘On Women’s Bodies: Experiences of Dehumanization during the Holocaust’, Journal of Women’s History 28, 2, pp.12–32 at p.14. 17 Goldenberg, M. (1990) ‘Different Horrors, Same Hell: Women Remembering the Holocaust’, in R.S. Gottlieb (ed.) Thinking the Unthinkable: Meanings of the Holocaust. New York: Paulist Press. 18 Young, J.E. (2009) ‘Regrading the Pain of Women: Questions of Gender and the Art of Holocaust Memory’, PMLA: Modern Language Association of America 124, 5, pp.1778–1786. 19 For the stories of Priska, Rachel, and Anka see Holden, W. (2015) Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance and Survival. London: Sphere.

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to different religions, countries and historical traditions. I would argue that while every tradition, every social group and every nation has the authority to speak about its own suffering and grief, it is also a right of the shared humanity to utter an ongoing invitation to feel for others and to find a shared and common history. It is such shared history that binds for example religious traditions when members of different traditions find a common path in respect, mutual appreciation and joy. In the following section, I explore a very physical part of the shared humanity, the womb, because all human beings are conceived, grow and come out of their mother’s womb. Thus, if theologically we can go back to the silence of the Trinity as the eternal and infinite period without and before creation the main thrust of the impossibility of fully returning to the beginnings without matter arises as a primary theological quest. Thus, when matter becomes an important factor of a creator God, and his Son decides to incarnate himself sent by the Father, the process of incarnation from a woman brings together the possibilities of shared humanity post-creation and post-incarnation. As a result, a biological reflection on our commonality already poses the plausibility that we are all human beings because we come out of a woman’s womb. The womb is the place that socially creates the link between the social role of a mother and the social identity of a son, a daughter, or a father. Can we reflect upon the womb theologically? And can we carry out this reflection from the point of view of the poor and the marginalized? Can we do so from the point of view of Partition? My answer is ‘yes’, and this section is an attempt to do so locating as much as I can this theological reflection within the context of Asia. For contextual and liberating theologies create not only a movement towards the peripheries of society, the nation-state, and humanity but also recognize that the moment that we turn to a philosophical theology of essences and universals we return to a colonial theology. Such theology excludes the periphery, and thus

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excludes the main actors within such periphery, that is women and wombs, and in the case of India the peripherical states of Punjab and Bengal. Thus, within Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism women refer to the Virgin Mary and protective female deities as being protectors. They mediate what is a female human identity with ‘integrity and autonomy’, terms used by Elina Vuola in her own challenge to European feminisms contra Virgo Maria.20 Vuola critiques the emptying of women’s experiences that arose within certain feminist research that generalize the experiences of women within religions without asking them how they perceived their religion.21 I want to explore the centrality of the womb as the place where the Absolute creates a new human being, a place where unborn human beings become in our understanding Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and Christians by the fact that they come out of the womb and by sociability they take the religion of their families. It  is a place of abode not only of the God of the Abrahamic religions but the place where Brahma abides, because after all, Brahma embraces all. The womb constitutes a place and a self which connects mothers not with patriarchal control but with their own sense of locating identities and selves, an action of selfhood, individual and social, that males cannot do. For it is at the womb that all human beings are equally located socially, even when in contemporary India female unborn foetuses are aborted by family

20 Elina Vuola (2009) ‘Seriously Harmful for Your Health? Religion, Feminism and Sexuality in Latin America’, in M. Althaus-Reid (ed.) Liberation Theology and Sexuality, second edition. London: SCM Press, p.153. 21 Elina Vuola, ‘Seriously Harmful for Your Health?’, note 54 at p. 157. Vuola refers to Chapters 3 and 4 of her 2002 work Limits of Liberation: Feminist Theology and the Ethics of Poverty and Reproduction. Sheffield and New York: Sheffield Academic Press and Continuum. The Spanish text was published in 2001 as La ética sexual y los límites de la praxis: Conversaciones críticas entre la teología feminista y la teología de la liberación. Quito: Abya-Yala.

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pressures to have baby boys rather than baby girls, following the social politics of reproduction.22 Within Partition a painful exercise of social purity and exclusion was carried out, because mothers who are socially married give birth to the continuity of religions and ethnic communities that carry such ritual purity within them. Thus, as well as condemning all inequalities within the womb I would like to outline an interfaith theology of the womb in which different manifestations of the Absolute provide the continuation of a shared humanity. They do so by informing the conception and birth of humans born with the same bodies, of the same social body, with equal rights as manifestations of the Absolute. Thus, the shared humanity in total is sacred and despite human, social and ritual differences life is completely sacred, and cannot be violated, tortured or annihilated.

The divine wombs at Partition It has been argued that social and ritual purity is central to the Hindu world, and so too has this been said about Islam. The reasonable assumption that ritual purity exists and must be kept does not bring an immediate sense of defence, fear, and attack towards others. Further, the possibility of diversity within imperial rule indeed took place as Hindus, Buddhist and Muslims lived side by side most of the time and they only fought when their rulers started moving boundaries and requesting political and military allegiances that at time contradicted and threatened their ritual existence. For it is a fact that colonial history was constructed by the rulers and that religious histories, heavily influenced by colonial histories, excluded women from the public sphere of influence. If women were kept at their homes, it was because of the 22 Harcourt, W. (ed.) (2017) Bodies in Resistance: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, Chapter 4; Obermeyer, C.M. (ed.) (2004) Cultural Perspectives on Reproductive Health. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Chapters 1 and 2; and, Winter, J. and Teitelbaum, M. (2013) The Global Spread of Fertility Decline: Population, Fear, and Uncertainty. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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dangers of other men and other purities arriving in a village, or at the palace of a ruler who quickly sent the concubines to hide from view. However, this sense of history and of theology is the public sense of such history, the published narrative of a colonial officer and the elongated words of an Indian informant that provided the view that was acceptable for an encounter with the colonial, with the foreign, with the impure. For in a European perspective of the twentieth century, public spaces were marked by purity and impurity through the sovereign, through the monarch that in Britain since 1707 and the Act of Union had marked the devolved the authority of Christ onto the person of the monarch. The public sphere of the public as political and the private as social was fought by the Indian Congress Party not only on issues of rights but of purity. For the nationalists, then and today, Christianity as a foreign religion with a foreign God that was European had defiled the land of the Hindus with foreign constructions, foreign spaces and impurity. For in the case of Hinduism, the same conquered land remained a land of Hindu deities and of a transcendent vision that had metaphysical implications for life and death, for this world and the next. Visions of creation, life, birth and rebirth, and of the end of things clashed deeply and were irreconcilable even when Hindus had to silence their own visual and heart vision of the landscape, the rivers and the trees around them. Diana Eck has outlined these parameters of a different vision in her own project of trying to understand the Hindu vision of Kāshī – the Luminous, the City of light, the city that we know as Banaras or Vārānasī.23 Foe Eck ‘Kāshī is said to sit above the earth as a “crossing place” (tirtha) between this world and the “far shore” of the transcendent Brahman’.24 Thus, despite the presence of colonial officers or civil service the vision by Hindus of India and of Banaras as the wholeness of Hindu ritual was different than those telescopic and orderly visions of maps that were expanded by the British Colonial Office. The terra 23 Eck, D.L. (1993) Banaras: City of Light. New Delhi: Penguin Books, p.3. 24 Eck, Banaras, p.6.

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nullius as empty land that was being filled by the British on maps was already filled by the presence of Brahman for Hindus. And to complicate matters the expansion of Islam in India had meant that landscapes had been filled with mosques and Qur’anic schools as landscape constructions of the Muslim ‘submission’ to the One God rather than to the multiple manifestations of Brahman. The only possibility of mediating such different perceptions of space and time within colonial India was that of Mahatma Gandhi. Once his vision was rejected and Partition took place, the violence that followed in theological terms was the war between the  supremacy  of one vision of the landscape in colonial terms rather than of the possibility of the diversity of godly visions that had previously operated. For previously, villages and towns had Hindus and Muslims among them, and they lived in some sort of cooperation provided they could keep their purity through rituals, prayers and home religious education. If violence and misunderstanding arose, the colonial power exercised the necessary force to keep British India in peace, not an imaginary peace but a peace mediated by the European understanding of the supremacy of Christianity and  the orderly conduct provided by the civil services, the army, and the hegemony of Christian missionaries with their mission compounds, their churches and their hospitals. The hegemonic womb of India in colonial times was not a spiritual force arising out of the diversity of experiences, but it came out of the empowered womb of the monarch who in turn had been anointed by God, in their understanding that God was the Christian God.

Partition and the awakening of the gods In recent essays on Partition, writers have focused on the peripheries of Partition, including peripheries such as Ladakh where at Partition Muslims and Buddhists confronted sociopolitical changes that were dictated from Delhi or Karachi that were different than the great migrations by Hindus and Muslims in the

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Punjab or in Central India.25 Ladakh, comprising the two districts of Leh and Kargil is the largest territory in the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). It has a Tibetan Buddhist population that until the Chinese invasion of Tibet nourished itself with its allegiance to the Dalai Lama and shared kinship and religion with families in Tibet. Thus, the 1947–1950 period of Partition affected Ladakhis, Buddhists and Muslims in unexpected ways: the landholdings by Muslims were redistributed under a national land reform and the Buddhist community faced the uncertainty of not being able to connect with other communities by crossing the borders to Tibet. In fact, novice monks were not able to cross freely into Tibet and to become novice monks at the great colleges of Tashilungpo, Sera, Drepung and Ganden in Central Tibet. Thus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians had to look for jobs within an emerging cash economy, and life in Ladakh changed so dramatically that many Ladakhis migrated to Europe and the United States. Siddiq Wahid in his analysis of Partition in Ladakh has emphasized uncertainty, because in his words there was ‘a change that is unprecedented in its qualitative depth and its temporal pace’.26 Uncertainty and the example of those Buddhists cut off from Tibet in Ladakh became a possible model for understanding that uncertainty creates fear, and that fear and uncertainty together fuelled by rumours and lack of state communications can trigger violence and attacks on other human beings. I would argue within my analysis of uncertainty, fear and the womb that rural populations in 1947 did not have the immediate  understanding of how Partition was going to affect their livelihoods or their future belonging to the state. However, it can be argued that they knew what their primordial identity was within an extended family and such identity was expressed in a ritualized life within a world religion such as Islam or Hinduism or Sikhism. For the world was not the globalized world of the 25 Wahid, S. (2015) ‘Converging Histories and Societal Change: The Case of Ladakh’, in U. Butalia (ed.), Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Zubaan and Haryana, India. 26 Wahid, ‘Converging Histories and Societal Change’, p.20.

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politicians, the geographers or the cartographers, but the global was self-contained within a locality or a village where religion and its practice with its identity and its rights had been passed through several past generations. For most ordinary people involved in moving after central forceful orders were given their identity vis-à‑vis others was summarized in a single statement: ‘I am a Muslim’, ‘I am a Hindu’, ‘I am a Sikh’, ‘I am a Christian’. And while the male head of a family navigated external negotiations of identity, the cradle of identity was located within the home and within the home bestowed on a woman who was able to nurture the identity of children and members of the family and who was able to conceive and give birth to the continuity of a family who was ‘Muslim’ or ‘Hindu’ or ‘Sikh’. It is within this analysis that I connect the biological procreation and birth with the theological, that is with the notion that an identity marker is also a theological statement of belonging. ‘I am a Muslim’ can be interpreted in several ways showing social alliances, locality and ways of dressing, but ultimately it expresses a theological statement of submission to Allah, the One God written about in the Qur’an. Regardless of whether a Muslim considers using the label a ‘secular Muslim’ for issues of social identity and within the period of Partition, once born a Muslim such person is a Muslim. In the cases of Hindus who do not uphold a moment of creation human beings at birth are part of the social fibre of an extended family regardless of the kind of Hinduism their family profess. Thus, in the eyes of a Hindu extended family all human beings are Hindu because of the presence of Brahma within every human being, every animal and through the whole of the world and the cosmos. For Sikhs the acceptance of the One God with different scriptures suggests an ethnic belonging whereby a Sikh is born of a Sikh womb and conversion to Sikhism is unheard of because identity is based on birth. Thus, regardless of the person’s religion Sikhs welcome any other person into their temples and places of worship.

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The partition of wombs The Partition of land, landscape and creation in different states responded to a national agreement for independence within males, soldiers, administrators, politicians and the King. For most ordinary people the need to comply did not require an explanation. Indian families were used to being moved by colonial powers, by land-owners, regents and maharajas who in return offered them protection against marching armies, and a certain security even in poverty and dependency. The world of the gods was also a secure world in which offerings at a temple, pujas, and blessings could secure moments and paths within a very insecure life. Thus, if security was to be gained within conflict protection was needed and religious tenants came into these understandings. The poor could be the subjects of the wishes of the powerful, but they were sound theologians that could understand the relation between a human material world and the metaphysical realities that were controlled by the Gods and their manifestations. The wheel of samsara, of a life in which merits [karma] could be accumulated to secure a better and more prosperous rebirth was understood by those who were left in India after Partition. Thus, the Indian flag has the wheel as its central image. Theological understandings became central to the birth of a nation and those who were to be born as Hindus in India and as Muslims in Pakistan needed at Partition to be given the possibility of coming into the world in an orderly manner, and that included coming out of a Hindu womb or out of a Muslim womb. Thus, within an uncertain moment in history in which title deeds of land or family history did not matter any longer, being a Hindu or a Muslim secured citizenship within the two new nations arising out of Partition. Those wombs who were in the wrong part of Partition needed to be conquered by male insemination before they could become wombs in which the gods could dwell and form their manifestations that would emerge as human beings and at the same time be citizens of either India or Pakistan. This very crude depiction of reality which could seem shocking is the

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only possibility of avoiding the taboo of sexuality, because after all economic and political desires as explored by Mo Sung have a lot to do with sexual desires. The ordering of wombs was not very different that the ordering of the empty land on arrival that the British colonial power had carried out, so that national censuses and the issuing of IDs and transit permits were no more than instruments of control to settle local populations within bounded populations. Once those physical and political boundaries were moved the new state powers produced state documents as to divide populations by new nationalities within a post-colonial territory. Wombs and their fertility fluids and the plausibility of producing citizens was also ordered by the state. The Pakistani police arose out of those Muslims within the colonial police who were sent across the new borders to live with their families in Pakistan. Thus, the vision of rape was that of conquerors who wanted to damage the possibility of kin, family and fertility within the families of the enemy. For raped women were damaged goods that in very few cases would be taken back. Women at marriage were supposed to be virgins and reproduce their husbands’ lineage, religion and kinship. Damaged wombs were not only rejected but those women who remained in many cases were disfigured before being forced into polygamist marriages following the Muslim custom of having several wives, concubines and slaves. After the restoration of the womb by marriage and ownership they ceased to be Hindu or Sikh and became within Pakistan Muslim women who prepared Muslim food, lived within a larger household and said Muslim prayers rather than Hindu prayers. In the case of Hindu women who had been raped and violated within Pakistan and returned in trains to India they could not be taken by Hindu husbands or taken back by their Hindu husbands and therefore many of them ended up living on their own. Following from the methods of a liberating praxis in liberation theology I would like first to hear the oral testimonies of those women who were present during those moments of violence or when those who had been victims of attacks arrived lonely, defeated and frightened. It is only after listening to those testimonies or

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reading of those moments that one can theologize as a ‘second step’ as the ‘first step’ is the listening and sharing of those experiences of the womb within Partition. One researcher who has provided the tapes of such testimonies is Andrew Whitehead, and the following testimonies are my own listening and transcription of the narratives by some of those participants, victims, helpers and perpetrators provided in audio.27 Together with other liberation theologians I would argue that it is by the active participation through praxis  that sentiments of utopia, empathy and love are  triggered, so that the listener relives the memories of the past and makes it part of the present. I am reminded that within Christianity the issue of rape and sexual relations outside marriage has been for centuries a very serious issue, so that those who committed such offences and were caught were excommunicated since mediaeval times. Thus, during the crusades those males who were in such situation of a grave sin against the womb, and the order of the womb, were given the opportunity to fight in Jerusalem to have a chance of entering Heaven, while women in that situation were sent to convents where they could expiate their sin, always outside kin, family and society. First, a note on the methodology used. As I mentioned at the start of this work, the issue of silence because of shame of what happened to victims and state shame by India and Pakistan is a factual one. Because India and Pakistan have preferred to blame the colonizers for what happened during the 1947 Partition there are fewer transcripts of testimonies of Partition than we might expect, given the size of the population on the move. I note that in the case of the Holocaust, Rwanda and the massacres in the former Yugoslavia as well as the violence by the military regimes in Latin America there have been national and international efforts to collect testimonies that later were used in criminal prosecutions either at national level or at the international level through, for example, the International 27 See www.andrewwhitehead.net/partition-voices.html. Interviews and some transcripts donated by Andrew Whitehead are available at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London.

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Criminal Court (ICC).28 Most of the secondary sources on Partition use testimonies in order to explore a particular aspect of Partition, as in this work, but they do not reproduce interviews. Thus, I chose to read the Partition theologically, as I have done within other works, particularly my theology of genocide in Rwanda, through Andrew Whitehead’s interviews and transcripts, because any other reader could do so and because the testimonies are open-ended.29 Thus, those interviewed were asked general questions, but they were able to locate themselves within those memories by not only narrating their experiences but also uttering personal judgements and feelings that arose out of their horrendous experience of the period of Partition. I listened to each interview and took notes of what was said. I then commented upon the interviews with an emphasis on the role of women as victims, spectators, perpetrators, and their relation to the conflict through their bodies. I noted their sexual or physical abuse as women, and the personal and social consequences of their traumatic experience. For example, I note the testimony of Mrs Khorshed Italia (nee Mehta) who lived most of her life in a top floor flat in Connaught Place, Delhi. She outlined some of the experiences of rejection and uncertainty by women who had been kidnapped, raped and left to die within the violent attacks that took place in the Punjab at the time of Partition. In 1947, she was a volunteer worker at Lady Hardinge Hospital, helping refugees arriving from Punjab, most of them on their own and in shock. She died on 14 June 2010, aged 88. I have listened to her interview, and as I was listening, annotated the aspects of her narrative that related to women who had been displaced, after being kidnapped, raped and separated from their husbands and extended families. Part of Mrs Italia’s 28 For the history and principles of the ICC see Cakmak, C. (2017) A Brief History of International Criminal Law and International Criminal Court. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Schabas, W.A. (2016) The International Criminal Court: A Commentary on the Rome Statute. Oxford: Oxford University Press; and Schabas, W.A. (2017) An Introduction to the International Criminal Court. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 29 See Aguilar, M.I. (2009) Theology, Liberation, Genocide: A Theology of the Periphery. London: SCM Press.

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interview/testimony outlined the following facts and feelings of Partition as she herself lived the consequences of Partition: They had to check the women who were arriving from the Punjab in Delhi and find out ‘to whom they belonged’ and if they had been raped before sending them to a refugee camp. The violence had started months before Partition as Muslim shops were attacked and Muslims had to flee for their lives. Many people became rich as in exchange for money or jewellery they provided safe passage by Muslims to Pakistan. Women as young as 16 or 17 had been raped and became pregnant. They were offered abortions but some of them were too many months pregnant and couldn’t abort. Mrs Italia particularly remembered with horror being sent to meet the trains with other volunteers and how half of the train was full of dead bodies. She didn’t want to continue, she could barely cope with the scene of the dead bodies within the train. She remembered a husband who finally found his wife among the women who had arrived. His wife, however, was pregnant with a child of one of the rapists and the husband refused to take her back. Therefore, the woman had to be brought to a refugee camp alone with an uncertain future because she did not have a husband to protect her any longer.

Narratives of that time spoke clearly about the crush of a social fabric, whereby families disintegrated not by the fact that some were killed but by the realization that daughters and mothers would not be accepted again by males within Hinduism, because they were soiled and were considered damaged goods. In the newly founded Pakistan women were integrated into Muslim polygamous households or were treated as slaves or as concubines and they resumed a secluded life in which they were Hindus by birth but Muslims by adoption. After rape, the different gods were dislocated from their shrines and those who were born from an ethnic womb became part of a community with different rites and obligations. They were re-branded and re-appropriated by force creating the social separation of ethnic groups but also the segregation of gods within India and Pakistan.

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Loneliness and uncertainty One of the phenomena in the awakening of the Gods within Partition was the awareness that in times of extreme displacement and uncertainty religious communities did not have sufficient structures of cooperation that could have prevented the violence that arose. Women who were displaced and abused symbolized the treasures of ethnicity, the continuity of families, the manifestation of the fertility of the Gods whom they prayed to and to whom they offered the future of their children. In the uncertainty of such theological narrative the coverage of Partition has dealt with the  socio-political and the economic aspects, but it has omitted the possibility of expression of women within Partition. Women have represented the social impossibility of crying voices that cannot write their experiences not only because of lack of a Western‑oriented education but also because of the pain that has triggered silence, compliance and inner love. Francis X. Clooney, a scholar filled with the knowledge and the understanding of different traditions of India, has made a significant  contribution to the understanding of how we can textually explore two religious traditions and find the same aspects of human life.30 Thus, in his exploration on the Hebrew text of the Song of Songs and the Hindu Holy Word of Mouth (Tiruvaymoli) Clooney has explored a woman’s absence and presence of her beloved.31 While there have been many different readings of these texts, including the possibilities that the Beloved applies to the Divine rather than the human, love and absence are human feelings, powerful ones, that arise out of love, that in the Christian tradition, ultimately come from God.32 However, Clooney uses a powerful last sentence in his work His Hiding Place is Darkness: 30 Clooney, F.X, (2010) Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 31 Clooney, F.X. (2014) His Hiding Place is Darkness: A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 32 For other manifestation of divine attributes and women see Clooney, F.X. (2005) Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary. New York: Oxford University Press.

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‘What really frightens her is his freedom to come and go, but this is the freedom all lovers must suffer. Loving God is always a risk’.33 However, within the events that took place at Partition the risk was not an intellectual fear of erring away from the truth but the possibility of being attacked, removed, killed and raped because of such love of family, ethnic group and because of a belonging to a religious tradition. Love for the Beloved became transformed from being a public recognition of goodness value into a plausible secretive sense of the Absolute by silence, hiddenness, and social segregation. For if to be a Muslim or a Hindu had been of no major public consequence within the colonial period, a system of classification of wombs allowed those who wanted to harm others to negotiate very quickly any confusion regarding somebody’s allegiance, locality and Absolute allegiance within the period that followed Partition. Such classification of wombs and therefore of gods with their particular religio-political allegiance was over imposed as a system of classification as it was done in every genocide and every ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. Thus, in Rwanda the fluid ethnic terms of Hutu and Tutsi that had been used with no major social connotation because of inter‑ethnic marriage under the reality of being Christian and Rwandan as a unifying principle became a genocidal exercise of classification. If a person carried an ID card that stated that she was Hutu, she would live, while if the ID card were to state that the person was a Tutsi, she would be killed. And so it was during Partition. This is a process outlined clearly by Khushwant Singh in his seminal novel of Partition, Train to Pakistan.34 Within the fictitious but very real world of the border village of Mano Majra, Iqbal, an educated man from Delhi, arrives at the village with the difficulty that he does not want to be classified.35 One could argue that in his case education and political commitment goes beyond the womb. His name, Iqbal, is used by Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs, 33 Clooney, His Hiding Place is Darkness, p.139. 34 Singh, K. (2016) Train to Pakistan. Gurgaon, Haryana, India: Penguin Random House India. 35 Singh, Train to Pakistan, pp.35–36.

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and without knowing his second name it is impossible to suggest if he is a Muslim, a common suspicion among villagers. Thus, ‘he could be a Muslim, Iqbal Mohammed. He could be a Hindu, Iqbal Chand, or a Sikh, Iqbal Singh’.36 When Iqbal is arrested on a false suspicion of a murder within the village the magistrate becomes irate because the police has not been able to determine Iqbal’s village, the name of his parents, and therefore his religion, an important fact within Partition.37 Iqbal is a further puzzle, because he is not married either.38 Iqbal becomes irate because he looks down on the villagers as he knows that at the heart of the violence that is taking place lies the fact that for fellow villagers, ultimately treated as kin, one could lie and kill those who are not of the same village and therefore those who lie outside kin.39 The challenge for Iqbal and the villagers around him is the same that constitutes the central question and challenge of the moral life outlined by the Gita: Facing us in the field of battle are teachers, fathers and sons; grandsons, grandfathers, wives’ brothers, mothers’ brothers and fathers of wives. These I not wish to slay, even if I myself am slain. Not even for the kingdom of the three worlds: how much less for a kingdom of the earth!40

Arjuna’s challenge is why to kill those who are his kin, and within Partition those who were killed were not considered kin by their killers. The challenge in applying the Gita today is to accept that not only all human beings are considered Hindus and therefore kin but that all traditions accept a shared humanity in which from the womb we are all kin and family as humans and as part of a religion. Raimon Panikkar emphasized such common belonging by arguing for the unification of all religions, not in a 36 Singh, Train to Pakistan, p.38. 37 Singh, Train to Pakistan, p.67. 38 Singh, Train to Pakistan, p.43. 39 Singh, Train to Pakistan, p.44. 40 Bhagavad Gita I: 34–35.

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structural manner but through what he called the cosmotheandric intuition.41 Panikkar argued that the religion of the future cannot be exclusively theocentric nor anthropocentric but must unite, in the words of Panikkar, ‘the three ultimate dimensions of reality’: the material and corporeal aspect with the facets of ‘Man and  his activities’, and those dimensions with ‘the recognition of the mysteric, divine, or immanent/transcendent principle’.42 Religion, thus, ‘must permeate all reality.’43 Thus, what happened at Partition can be challenged as a product of religion and religious understanding and can be developed as a foundation for change in which theological understandings within Christianity, Hinduism and Islam can evolve into ‘cosmotheantric intuitions’ that generate finally the freedom for religion to permeate all reality.

Sharing the Womb Among the many possibilities and exhortations regarding Partition the reality of the womb becomes the reality of life and death, of the beginning of life and the possibility of the crushing of such womb for the sake of fear, the fear of diversity. How to address the realities of Partition but with respect, anger and silence? I was not part of the Partition, but the process of killing and raping resembled other human processes which as a result have annihilated human beings. Partition provides a history that is the history of humanity, and that history is also mine by default. Less I forget other human beings, I need to remember the realities of other human beings who also came out of wombs like I did from my mother. The fear of forgetting and the memory of silence and absence has been engraved for ever in humanity through the memories of Elie Wiesel and his father’s biological end at Buchenwald concentration camp, when Wiesel fell asleep: ‘I woke up at dawn on January 29. On my father’s cot there lay another sick person. They must have taken 41 Panikkar, R. (2015) Opera Omnia II: Religion and Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, p.207. 42 Panikkar, Opera Omnia II, p.207. 43 Panikkar, Opera Omnia II, p.207.

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him away before day-break and taken him to the crematorium. Perhaps he was still breathing …’.44 The same reality of death and silence brings me to the possibilities of silence in which silence is not a non-active participation in killing but the act of respect by those who share the same sense that within a moment of killing and death God is not absent but very much present, not as a witness but as a victim. God was crucified in Jerusalem and the same God is being tortured and killed in human form whenever there are moments of social violence, killing, ethnic cleansing or genocide. For after the events that took place in the former Yugoslavia and the coining of ‘ethnic cleansing’ those events that took place within the Partition of India can be understood as a moment of ethnic cleansing. We cannot change history, but can dialogue with it so that we become challenged and transformed through attitudes of communion, diversity, and hope for our children. Thus, the sharing of the womb becomes not only a human moment of communion but a manifestation of the possibilities of divine presence for the future. Without forgetting, and with justice for the victims and legal punishment for the perpetrators, we move forth in hope and in unity. The womb is physically a female reality through which women give birth, men don’t. However, the meeting of male and female has recreated the possibilities of new life through conception within the womb. After all, sociability and difference teach males and females to treasure their own identity with violence being considered a male domain that is manifested through the protection of his family and household. It is at this moment of differentiation that the aspects of divine presence as neither male nor female need to be explored. And it is here that Christianity has a lot to learn from the diverse manifestations offered by Hinduism. For I am afraid that it is a reality that Christianity not only developed at times as a hegemonic colonial movement vis-à-vis other religions but also proclaimed its exclusive understanding and ownership of God. God became the head of a 44 Wiesel, E. (2008) Night. London: Penguin Books, p.112.

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colonial enterprise that crushed others to provide a male domain in which the Father could be heard and respected. This was clearly an incorrect mode of existence that neither God nor those outside the colonial machinery wanted. The image of a male God was culturally sound but did not reflect the possibilities of the diversity of the womb and God’s diversity at the womb. Within the Indian context and in a post-Partition atmosphere those Christian monks who explored the inter-face between Christianity and Hinduism also explored aspects of a non-colonial reality through Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual understanding of reality and of a spiritual life. Bede Griffiths, for example, stressed the possibilities of the feminine after he had a stroke and was shaken to the core not only physically but also spiritually. At that moment, he saw, as he said, the Divine Mother and understood some of the realities he had undertaken to explore within his life in India. For in Hinduism Brahma is neither male nor female and both separately and at the same time constitute a manifestation of Brahma. I fully agree with this theological understanding that the God who was before the beginning of time did not have to be considered male or female but the Absolute. Any other understanding of God diminishes the qualities of a God who is supposed to be all-powerful and all-present within the worlds he created which does not refer necessarily only to our planet. Therefore, once I try to return to the womb of God I am not returning to capabilities of maleness of femaleness, but I am returning to God, the Absolute. It is in that desire to be with God that I desire to be with the victims [and perpetrators] of Partition. The first movement, theologically speaking, is towards God, the second related movement is to others in respect and in silence. Exercises that help such understanding include the meditation in silence in which I lay in a foetal position feeling the care and warmth of God who allows me at that moment to calm my pulse and my desires in order to return to the womb. I invite the reader to do this exercise with eyes closed for five minutes, becoming aware that the darkness one sees with eyes closed has still bright

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points and sometimes a central bright point which is the encounter between the senses and the Absolute. Thus, the diversity of the womb becomes a personal challenge because it is less a socio-historical understanding of a moment in the history of humanity but a personal realization that the Absolute provides diversity through the womb, a richness that becomes a personal point of non-desire and of communion with others. Silence then becomes a way of finding the Absolute and challenging the possibilities of the killing of the womb through hate, social pressure and in the end the rejection of God. Thus, a return to the earlier periods of Hinduism could be useful to challenge the plausibility and affirm the implausibility that females who carry the ritual purity of the family could be understood as less important within the context in which all human beings and indeed all creation comes out of Brahma.45

The reinterpretation of Brahma Within the Vedic period in Hinduism, Brahma, as the absolute principle of life, was neither male nor female. The end of the Vedas suggested different qualities in which the full equality of humans comes from Brahma. It is much later that such understanding is used by the Braminic powers of the priests to order the caste system in India according to purity/impurity, a classification of inclusion/exclusion. While the extension of Brahma is neither male nor female the latest periods of Hinduism stressed the possibilities of some Hindu manifestations (gods) being male or female. A reinterpretation of Brahma as a person could aid the development of a more caring sense of action and devotion in all human beings outside the caste system and such extension of the 45 I note that I have already explored the contribution by Raimon Panikkar to the re-exploration of Christianity in this chapter, and that in Chapter 4 I explore the challenging contribution towards the dialogue of religions by Shaikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Salimi (2012), ‘Belief and Righteous Work: An Open Vision for a New World’. Lecture given at Rhodes House, Oxford 29 September 2011. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.

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womb as Brahma being present and active in the world and first and foremost through women. Anantanand Rambachan has argued that ‘too much energy has been expended in Hinduism in establishing the so-called unreality of the world and too little on seeing the world as a celebrative expression of Brahma’s fullness, an overflow of Bramah’s limitlessness’.46 Rambachan’s criticisms point to the possibility that if Brahma’s presence in the world is diminished then an overall emphasis on advaita (not-two) rooted in the understanding of the four Vedas (Rg, Sāma, Yajur, Atharva) and on the Upanishads as the last of the Vedas has pointed to the absence of interest for justice and the actual human condition.47 Rambachan argues quite convincingly that advaita is a theological system, a Hindu one, that provides experimental readings of the Upanishads that can be attempted again in order to face, discuss and eradicate social problems such as patriarchy, homophobia, anthropocentrism, childism, and caste.48 One of the lessons of Partition was that Hinduism is a family of different ways of understanding and therefore executing practices related to Brahma. There is no ‘one’ Hinduism but many. This was one of the reasons why centralized calls to stop violence would not make any difference at Partition, because the authority for Hindu villages and families came from their village elders rather than from the national, the regional or the local political authority. As indicated by Rambachan, ‘it should not surprise us, therefore, to discover significant differences in the status and roles ascribed to women in Hindu society’.49 However, as he argues correctly the examination of Sanskrit texts, mainly masculine 46 Rambachan, A. (2015) A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two is Not One. Albany: State University of New York Press, p.7; cf. Rambachan, A. (2006) The Advaita Worldview: God, World and Humanity. Albany: State University of New York Press, Chapter 5. 47 Rambachan, A Hindu Theology of Liberation, Introduction. 48 Rambachan, A Hindu Theology of Liberation, Part II; cf. Rambachan, A. (1991) Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Sankara. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 49 Rambachan, A Hindu Theology of Liberation, p.91.

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in orientation, could be fruitful to re-assess attitudes to women during Partition and in the post-Partition periods in India as well as to lay foundations for the strengthening of attitudes towards equality in the future. For the examination of Brahminic texts and their re-interpretation is still influential within contemporary India as it was at the time of Partition. One could argue that the principle of ethnic exclusion overtook the central principle of Braminic authority, that is the centrality of Brahma. Thus, in my own experience I have never been side-lined as different once in India, because those associated closely with Brahminic circles have suggested that they respect knowledge in any form and that after all I am a Hindu like all human beings, because all human beings are a manifestation of Brahma. Within Hinduism a process of Brahmanization or Sanskriti­ zation is normative. However, the texts are read as unchangeable, which becomes problematic for the interpretation of texts within Hinduism. For texts within Hinduism are not normative, as they would be in the Abrahamic religions, and therefore the teachings of the masters who uttered the Upanishads can be critically interpreted once and again, and they can therefore be critically re-assessed. Rambachan has outlined some of the central texts used by contemporary Gurus in order to imply the social inequality of women, but he certainly has agreed with the ambiguity of Brahminic texts.50 For example, the Manusmrti (ca. 200 bce–100 bce), a central work for Hindu Law by Manu, outlines not only the duties and obligations of women but also the sacred honour that must be given to women by her family, and mostly by her husband.51 The classical texts are interpreted later in terms of a woman’s significance only in relation to men so that texts such as the Ayodhyākānda and the Rāmacaritamānasa are seen as 50 Rambachan, A Hindu Theology of Liberation, pp.92–113. 51 Buhler, G. (trans.) (1886) Laws of Manu. Oxford: Oxford University Press; and Olivelle, P. (trans.) (2009) The Law Code of Manu. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For a critical edition with commentary see Olivelle, P. (2005) Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Mānava-Dharmásāstra. New York: Oxford University Press.

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emphasizing through the Sundarakānda that women are described as objects to be beaten.52 Thus, the explanation of such texts has been linked to the sins of previous lives and the purification of women within the caste system, so that Swāmi Rāmsukhdās offers advice to a woman who has been beaten by her husband in the following terms: ‘The wife should think that she is paying her debt of her previous life, and thus her sins are being destroyed, and she is becoming pure. When her parents come to know this, they can take her to their own house, because they have not given their daughter to face this sort of bad behaviour’.53 It is within such texts that the respect and dignity of women within a secular India in which Hinduism is so fundamental can also be found. Particularly within Hinduism where texts are not interpreted as canonical, as is the case in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, such a labour of love for shared human beings can start. The texts need to be explored once and again with contemporary realities in mind, both essence and existence together, so that in the words of Raimon Panikkar ‘there is no essence without existence, no existence without an essence’.54 In the following chapter I will explore other forms of empathizing with suffering, particularly through Indian artists who like Chittaprosad recorded the suffering of women and children, all refugees, already at the time of the Bengali famine in 1943–1944.

52 Rambachan, A Hindu Theology of Liberation, p. 95. 53 Swami Ramsukhdas (1994) How to Lead a Household Life. Gorakhpur: Gita Press, p.50 (cited and explained in Rambachan, A Hindu Theology of Liberation, p.95). 54 Panikkar, R. (2016) Hinduism, Part I The Vedic Experience: Mantramanjari. Opera Omnia Volume IV: Hinduism. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, p.xix.

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RETHINKING ART AND A SHARED HUMANITY The analysis of a common suffering humanity and issues of gender within history and theology remain an ongoing challenge. This is a larger challenge when it comes to the experiences of women in the third, fourth or fifth world, because it is there that societal rights do not provide the necessary levels of protection to natural rights that are usually upheld by religious traditions and faith communities. For whenever humanity suffers and individual human beings suffer, questions are asked that can remain within the intellect and be forgotten. Thus, observers and journalists remain within a general level of information without going into the next level. It is this next level that brings hope after tragedy and new challenges to those who have had the utopian dream of constructing new communities. Partition and new flags do not provide a new nation, but a new nation is developed within the contested narratives of the fight for freedom and identity. This is the case of India where, after the violence that preceded and followed Partition, new challenges to the state came from Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and from the cultural and art world of those who had fought for a new India. For some of them such a new India was not the one they saw after Partition. Throughout my life, I have chosen to ask not the ‘why’ of such suffering first (the problem of suffering) which I leave to ethicists, philosophers and political scientists; instead, I have asked in which way human beings who suffer express their multiple (religious) belonging, identities and their hope for the future. How to help them comes before theology because they are all my brothers and sisters. For in the depth of suffering human beings experience a metaphysical reality or a deep sense of humanity that make 85

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them share a commonality with other human beings. Indeed, one could argue that violence expresses a human commonality through space in which one group challenges the other for the same spatial existence, being fully aware of the physical and metaphysical existence of the other. However, within any genocide or communal violence stories start appearing of those who didn’t comply with the orders to kill and to attack. In their own silent ways neighbours helped neighbours and children left orphans were carried long distances to safety and later adopted by other families even within an intense period of social trauma. For example, Khushdeva Singh, a Sikh doctor, evacuated Muslims to safety from a small town near Simla at the time of Partition.1 A story is narrated in The Sunday Tribune of Pakistan of a certain patient Maimoona who was mother to two children and who was being treated for tuberculosis by Dr Singh. Once the violence started her family who later emigrated to Pakistan was worried about her. Dr Singh assured everybody that whoever his patient was they were also his responsibility and he requested her to stay at the hospital. Once she arrived, he told her that she had been his patient but that now  she had become his daughter. He alerted Muslims to imminent attacks and sent them with escort to the British camp away from the village. Maimoona stayed with Dr Singh for two months, and when violence ended, he took her to her father giving her Rs 500. When later Maimoona sent a note with the money to Dr Singh, he returned the money with a note that stated 1

Kushdeva Singh (1902–1985) was an Indian medical doctor and social worker who contributed to the study and treatment of tuberculosis in India. He was born in Patiala in the state of Punjab and worked at the Hardinge Sanatorium in Dharampur in Himachal Pradesh. The founder of the Leper’s Welfare Society  in Patiala, an institution that helped in the rehabilitation of leprosy patients, he protected his Muslim patients and brought Muslims to safety in the summer of 1947. In 1957 Dr Singh was honoured by the Government of India with the award of Padma Sri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award for services to the nation. The Padma Shri Dr Khushdeva Singh Hospital for Chest Diseases in Patiala is named after him. He wrote the following works: Love is Stronger than Hate: A Remembrance of 1947. Patiala: Guru Nanak Mission (1973); In Dedication 1, Patiala: Jain Co. Booksellers (1968) and In Dedication 2, Patiala: Guru Nanak Mission (1974).

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‘Maimoona, how could a father after spending any money on his daughter take it back from her?’.2 Behind that empathic reaction there is no doubt fear of being in the same situation and the impossibility to control reality in the way that we would like. These reactions are combined within the witness of suffering out of a natural disaster or out of a tragedy created by war or violence. After the initial shock of despair, spoken words, written words, shared words, common silences and personal tributes start appearing. These are culturally mediated but always express the shock of a new disaster, new sufferings and the possibility that despite economic prosperity and inward self‑awareness humans have once again experienced suffering, and what is worse they have inflicted suffering on others. The time of Partition was not different. Reports of the atrocities by all groups within India left a post-colonial world numb in Europe and in India. The hopes of two new nations had  been somehow dented by the reality that India and Pakistan had become very different than the anticipated Gandhian paradise of unity in diversity. The expressions of horror did not change a tense social reality and had to be silenced until the children and grandchildren of the victims and perpetrators started asking questions about the happenings of Partition. The silence of words, the heavy hearts and the increasing lack of hope for dialogue between Hindus and Muslims was mediated by suffering, silence and suffering in silence. Thus, in expressing the horrors of Partition silence has been the first experience. Later generations organized letters, oral communications and written memoirs. Immediate narratives of these events of murder, rape and pillage could not be openly talked about and the order of post-colonial India had to prevail as not to prove the possible point that without the British neither India nor Pakistan could function as orderly states.

2 ‘Insaniyat amidst insanity: Some recollections of 1947’, ‘Spectrum’ – The Tribune, Sunday 16 October 2005.

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Partition, silence and memory The silenced expression of non-uttered words had to be expressed in other forms and different artistic expressions became the means to witness to the suffering of Partition and to come to terms with personal and social suffering. Thus, art as an expression of the self provided the possibility of expressing what was being experienced or seen. Further, it was not only reproduced but personally interpreted. As a result, art in India became an expression of the sentiments of the painter, musician, or sculptor. For example, let’s take the drawings of S.L. Parasher (1904–1991), an artist, writer and teacher who lived through the Partition.3 Parasher at a very difficult time rode on top of a train in order to get a job as Commandant at the Baldev Nagar Refugee Camp in Ambala.4 He developed what Prajna Paramita Parasher has described as ‘a vocabulary of silence’, so that whenever he could not speak or share an experience he took his pencil and made a drawing.5 In drawing number 11 ‘Grief has no voice’ two old people are depicted by S.L. Parasher as a couple, because they are very much together.6 While the woman turns into herself by pulling her dupatta over her hair, the man looks outward and faces forward not looking at anything. In Prajna’s Parasher interpretation ‘it is the stunned expression of one who has looked into disaster and shrivelled with the experience, static in recognition of his own diminishment’.7 In this chapter, I explore the forms of expression of suffering and a common humanity through art in the forms of the work of a Bengali artist Chittaprosad, and a Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, bringing them into the dialogue of a more contemporary artist, Altaf Mohamedi. Those artists expressed their own feelings about human suffering with feeling, sentiment, and art. In doing so, I 3 4 5 6 7

For a family testimony of his work see Parasher, P.P. (2015) ‘A Long Walk Out from Partition’, in U. Butalia (ed.) Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Zubaan and Haryana, India. His photograph at the refugee camp is available at Parasher ‘A Long Walk Out from Partition’, p.205. Parasher ‘A Long Walk Out from Partition’, p.206. Drawing available in Parasher, ‘A Long Walk Out from Partition’, p.216. Parasher, ‘A Long Walk Out from Partition’, p.217.

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am taking a leap of regionalism to universalism, with the personal interest of reflecting upon the possibilities of post-Partition common understandings by those who suffered together, even when they inflicted suffering on the others. In this way art becomes a medium to express historical terms in hermeneutic terms so that history remains contested but post-conflict conflict conversations on art provide a common journey without forgetting history (history as ‘what happened’). I shall examine first a different but related work of drawing and empathy with other human beings on the 1943 famine in Bengal carried out by Chittaprosad voluntarily and by his own convictions as a member of the Communist Party. Chittaprosad’s works precede the works on Partition but he brings the same empathy and artistic realism which goes beyond compliance, canonicity and acceptance. One central question I have related to Chittaprosad’s work and the suffering of Partition due to ethnicity/religion is the following: Is it possible to make a bridge from the localized phenomenon of partition to the possibility of an emphatic and dialogic understanding of suffering by others that can foster and encourage interfaith dialogue? The lack of dynamics of the solely localized is that those who suffer and those who witness such suffering connect during a human disaster but quickly move on with their own lives, and they forget the larger human common experience. For it is a truism that as we have more and more information about other peoples and their suffering a Christian tends to focus on the plight of Christians within a conflict and the aftermath while a Muslim connects quite quickly with a Muslim community that has experienced the suffering of a natural disaster or Muslim civilians who have been in the middle of a conflict. The difficulties of outlining a common suffering and hope throughout the aftermath of Partition have related to this division of interests. This localized interested on the ones who belong to my community, nation or ethnic group is understandable and good. However, within globalization nations have helped others in need and we have empathized with other human beings who do not share our religious affiliation or language or history. More on this question later.

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The cry of Guernica I have chosen an unlikely human character and artist to begin this exploration of human empathy. Pablo Picasso was an atheist who in a time of war and uncertainty in Europe did not have to react as he did when the town of Guernica was bombed by the German Air Force on 26 April 1937. Picasso responded to the news that he received in Paris producing a very large painting with the name ‘Guernica’, labelled as ‘the greatest historical painting of the twentieth century’, and ‘the most violent and moving painting ever painted’.8 In choosing a painting by Picasso I want to explore the plausibility of a human expression that shows empathy to others and the commonality of a human expression that can transcend state and religious boundaries. Born in Málaga, Spain in 1881, Pablo Picasso became one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century and with Georges Braque was the co-founder of Cubism. He died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France. His prolific production of art (more than 16,000 works) included his response to his views on the Spanish Civil War and particularly the bombardment of the Basque town of Guernica by the German and Italian Air Force that was aiding General Franco during the Spanish Civil War.9 While it was customary that artists would ignore political realities Picasso, who at that time had been commissioned to paint a work for the Spanish Pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Artes et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne of 1934, did not do so.10 The exhibition was to be postponed twice because of labour riots in the centre of Paris. When the Exposition finally opened 8 Bernadac, M.L. and Du Bouchet, P. (2011) Picasso: Genialidad en el arte. Barcelona: BLUME, p.89. 9 ‘Catálogo Picasso: Reeditan el catálogo más completo de Picasso, el de Christian Zercos’, El Periódico 14.11.2014 at http://www.elperiodico.com/ es/noticias/ocio-y-cultura/reeditan-catalogo-mas-completo-picasso-christianzercos-3688168 10 For an excellent outline of the 1937 Exposition see Chapter 2 (‘Silent Requiem’, pp.54–81) of van Hensbergen, G. (2005) Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon. London: Bloomsbury, Chapter 2 ‘Silent requiem’, pp.54–81.

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on 24 May 1937, thanks to the political will of Prime Minister Blum, and after further riots where protestors were killed, only five pavilions were ready, i.e. the Russian, German, Italian, Danish, and Dutch. The Basque town of Guernika (Guernika in the Basque language, Guernica in Spanish) was bombarded on 26 April 1937 by the German Airforce. The aim of the bombardment was clearly the annihilation of the population of one of the mythical centres of Basque nationalism because military installations and strategic points of convergence of the pro-government armies stationed in the Basque countries were not touched. Instead, 31 tons of bombs were thrown on the town, and as the population ran to the hills, pilots used machine guns to kill civilians. Picasso received the news on 1 May 1937, and until the end of June 1937 he painted 45 different large sketches that became part of this extensive mural. Picasso decided to paint his own interpretation of Guernika’s bombardment. He reacted with  an intense and angry response to the killing of civilians during  the bombardment that took place when most civilians were on the streets and that devastated the town. One of Picasso’s main questions was about the possibility of losing touch with other human beings and becoming so indolent and separated from other peoples’ lives.11 Thus, despite of several criticisms about the choice of Picasso as the main artist for the Spanish Pavilion, as others would have preferred an artist of Basque origin, Picasso managed to portray in the painting his own battle with humanity or inhumanity and his own personal battle to love several women at the same time. Thus, van Hensbergen astutely summarized Picasso’s state of mind as fear, the human fear of losing life and losing oneself so that for van Hensbergen ‘Guernica had become a collaboration between Picasso’s imagination, his phenomenal skill and almost perfect hand-eye coordination, his autobiography, 11 In the words of Bernadac and Du Bouchet: ‘Cómo sería possible desinteresarse de los otros hombres y, en virtud de qué indolencia marfilina, separarse de una vida que ellos entregan tan copiosamente?’, in Bernadac and Du Bouchet, Picasso: Genialidad en el arte, p.89.

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the history of art and the present drama in his love life that was playing itself out as the painting progressed’.12 Picasso’s work was about blood, about the shedding of blood, a continuous life motif within his work on bulls and horses that are killed, a lively depiction not of death but of a life in which blood becomes the human concern and spectacle that denounces death and cries for human life. Within so many expressions of blood, Picasso hoped for a period of peace so that war would be a matter of memories. Within such a utopian possibility, and as the Spanish Civil War was followed by World War II, Picasso argued that finally ‘the only blood that flows will be before a fine drawing, a beautiful picture. People will get too close to it, and when they scratch it a drop of blood will form, showing that the work is truly alive’.13

The movement from Guernica to India The human response provided by Picasso to a moment of injustice and genocide within human history provided the possibility of examining with a very strong conviction the plausibility that ‘the language of art is universal’.14 For we are not dwelling on that challenging question raised by African art historians who suggested that a traditional artefact is art but with the enormous power of human expression that arises out of art as an expression. Regardless of the value or the taste of those who contemplate art forms, and some of them assume colonial norms that only consider art as a European form, art as a human expression is universal. There has been an absolute centrality of written and spoken words, fundamentally stressed by the colonial enterprise in which  the ‘Word of God’ is central to human expression and in which written words have more value than oral expressions. However, the centrality of silence as outlined by Raimon Panikkar within 12 van Hensbergen, Guernica, p. 52. 13 Phrase cited without reference in van Hensbergen, Guernica, p. 53. 14 Mohammed Al-Hinai to Mario I. Aguilar 27 February 2017.

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his human experience in India makes us return to the possibility that the absence of words in art becomes closer to the forms of expression of the Absolute, whereby the Logos and the OM do not need to say anymore to exist. I am arguing here for a further movement within the silence of suffering that arises out of experiences such as the bombing of Guernica or the Partition of India. I am speaking about the absolute form of colours and shapes that recreate the human possibilities existent within the Divine and that portray the full encounter within the known and the knowing, within the spoken and the written, and within the silence of the artist, the canvas and the spectator who becomes the interpreter of such silence and of such powerful expression of the self or the absence of the self. I am referring to the possibility of empathy, solidarity and theological encounters by the artistic expression of suffering, despair, and subsequent hope. The artist provides an expression and a texture to the melody of life and in doing so it provides a personal and sometimes, many times, communal expression of empathy. Without empathy, there is no dialogue and without art there is only silence, because words are not uttered but feelings, communal and international, expressed through the canvas, the pencil, the sculpture or the contemporary montage, are. Thus, the silence of Partition has been challenged by artistic works exhibited fifty years after the Partition. For example, ‘Lines of Control’ opened in February 2009 in Karachi, bringing works by 13 artists who were from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh or who have roots in those countries.15 According to the curator Hammad Nasar the intention of the project was to look at Partition as a productive space.16 Later, the ‘Lines of Control’ project moved

15 Ahmed, S. (2009) ‘Exhibition in Karachi explores tensions of Indian partition’, The Telegraph, 2 February. Available at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ asia/pakistan/4432242/Artists-explore-tensions-of-Indian-partition.html 16 At the time of the exhibition in Karachi Hammad Nasar was the co-founder of the London based arts group Green Cardamom, group that later relocated to Hong Kong, see http://greencardamom.net

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to locations in the United States such as the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.17 Artists from this post-Partition have challenged the possibility of silence and make political statements through art that provide the possibility of bringing together the subjects/objects of Partition. One of those artists, Bani Abidi, born in Pakistan, incorporated film, together with her paintings and printmaking, in order to address issues of nationalism and postcolonialism, particularly the ongoing rupture of relations between India and Pakistan that started at Partition and continued through different perceptions of Kashmir.18 Abidi has explored difficult subjects such as religious minorities in Pakistan, that is Hindus, Christians and Zoroastrians, claiming some space for difference within a state that does resist difference. For example, in 1999 her film Mangoes explored the lives of two women, one Pakistani, the other Indian, who eat mangoes together. Those two women share memories of their childhood and their shared memories while they eat delicious mangoes. Abidi’s film Karachi – Series 1 (1999) explored through photos and film the lives of Hindus and Christians in Karachi during the month of Ramadan, a period in which, while Muslims pray and fast, the streets are deserted allowing minorities to occupy spaces that usually are denied to them. If they constitute only five percent of the population Abidi allows them to conduct their daily activities such as arranging flowers or ironing in public. 17 http://greencardamom.net/html/gc_lines_of_control.html 21 January to 1 April 2012. Artists taking part included Bani Abidi, Francis Alÿs, Sarnath Banerjee, Farida Batool, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Muhanned Cader, Duncan Campbell, Iftikhar Dadi, DAAR, Anita Dube, Taghreed Elsanhouri, Sophie Ernst, Gauri Gill, Shilpa Gupta, Zarina Hashmi, Emily Jacir, Ahsan Jamal, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Amar Kanwar, Noa Lidor, Mario Mabor, Nalini Malani, Naeem Mohaiemen, Tom Molloy, Rashid Rana, Raqs Media Collective, Jolene Rickard, Hrair Sarkissian, Seher Shah, Surekha, Hajra Waheed, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, and Muhammad Zeeshan. 18 Bani Abidi was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1971. She lived in New Delhi, Karachi and Berlin and in 1994 she studied painting and printmaking at the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan (B.A.). From 1997-1999 she studied for a Master’s degree at the Art Institute of Chicago, developing a deep interest in cinematography. Her first visit to India was when she was 21 years old, see www.baniabidi.com/index.html

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As  a  result, from 2000 she concentrated on the use of video to bring the political and the social to the forefront. Thus, other works followed her depiction of lives and mangoes, including Section Yellow (2010), The Speech Writer (2011), Proposal for a Man in the Sea (2012), A Table Wide Country (2013), and ‘Funland’ Karachi Series 2 (2014). It is clear from her artistic project that she has managed to show aspects of socio-political life that remained hidden within the genesis and construction of the state as well as within the imaginary that sustained the state after Partition. For one can possibly argue that religion, the religious and the language of religion could be considered a language of power, an exploration so familiar to Abidi. In Death at a 30 Degree Angle  (2012) she explored how politicians construct and convey authority by fictionally recreating a small politician who commissions a monumental self-portrait by a well‑known sculptor and plays with the possibilities of costume and pose for the strongest possible effect. However, Abidi’s work has the sensorial creation of a possible future through the exploration of the past. Thus, in 2016 she prepared a memorial, ‘Memorial to Lost Words’ dedicated to those who fought for the British Empire in World War I and who came from British India, and particularly the Punjab. With the foundation of the poems from the archive of the London-based poet Amarjit Chandan she created a sound installation with two sets of voices: the songs of the women who didn’t want their men to go to war, and the letters written by some  of those men who went and wrote back about the real atrocities of war, letters that were censored, as the voices of the women were censored as well.19 On the Indian side, one of the participants of the ‘Lines of Control’ exhibition was Anita Dube, an Indian artist based in Mumbai who has used politicized language to continue the critique towards art and its commodification within a post‑colonial India. Dube completed her B.A. in history at the University of Delhi (1979) and later her M.F.A in Art Criticism 19 https://uk-india.britishcouncil.in/explore/edinburgh-city-tour/memorial-lostwords-bani-abidi

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from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (1982). Dube’s work has been heavily influenced by her connection to the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association, a group of Malayali artists (except for Dube) founded by K.P. Krishnakumar, a very charismatic painter and sculpture, in Baroda in 1987. The group developed an active sense of radicalism and an interest in socio-politics and conscious politics within art who challenged the 1970s Baroda School or ‘narrative painters’.20 In 1987 the Indian Radical Painters prepared an exhibition with the name ‘Questions and Dialogue’ at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda. At the same time, they led a protest with posters and a manifesto written by Dube challenging the commodification of art and the lack of social engagement by the ‘narrative painters’. Dube and the others were challenging the business making of art for profit and decided to protest by changing the materials they used for art. Thus, instead of art materials they used industrially ‘made and found’ materials that in themselves had very little material value. They wanted to create works that were beyond commodification, to connect with the working classes, and to challenge a bourgeois project of displaying, selling and marketing art outside of its social environment. After the initial protest, the group shifted to Kerala where another exhibition was mounted at Khozikode in February 1989. The group also staged a public protest in Mumbai where the art selling house Sotheby’s was hosting an art auction, at that time something unheard of in India. The Times of India supported the art auction and the group challenged the timeliness of Indian art within their propaganda suggesting that as the British colonial power had created a timeless India the contemporary art dealer wanted to do the same in a neo-colonial project. The group disbanded in 1989 when K.P. Krishnakumar committed suicide.

20 Members of the Baroda School included Bhupen Khakhar, Nalini Malani, Vivan Sundaram, Jogen Chowdhury, Sudhir Patwardhan, Ghulan Mohammed Sheikh and the art critic Geeta Kapur.

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The Dialogue of Chittaprosad I now return to the famine in Bengal. The possibilities of art and silence become obvious as the individual expression of artistic drawing, for example, is no more than a journalistic interpretation of a social recording. However, such recording is not void of meaning and sentiment as the drawing, as well as the written reporting in words, expresses the necessary emphasis on why some news is more important than other news, and how news can be emphasized by a particular reporter. Thus, Picasso emphasized his anger at the first example of a ‘total war’ and S.L. Parasher was able to depict in such detail grief, sorrow and the absence of words. It is to be noted that they operated within a shared humanity that was at a very large scale experiencing war and where the experience of the displaced and the refugees was common. By the time that Chittaprosad experienced the Bengal famine which was humanly produced rather than a fact of nature Picasso was a prisoner of the Second World War in France while the policies of the Bengal famine only preceded the inhumanity that was to follow within Partition and the re-creation of Bengal as part of Pakistan. It is at the juncture of a pre-Partition Bengal that questions about identity, ethnicity and social injustices were very much part of an ongoing process of preparing the shared humanity of Gandhi for the inhumanity of Partition and the social injustices that were to be so much part of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in the years to come. The historical parts of Partition after colonial times are factual: Partition referred to the partition of British India in 1947 into two different states, India and Pakistan. However, the process of partition continued in 1971 with the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. During that year, the Bengali liberation movement fought for independence in East Pakistan. Thus, on 25 March 1971 the Pakistani military junta launched Operation Searchlight pursuing the systematic elimination of Bengali nationalists. The Provisional Government of Bangladesh was formed on 17  April  1971 in Mujibnagar and moved to

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Calcutta as a government in exile. After the intervention of India within the war and the air strikes by India on eastern Pakistan the government of East Pakistan surrendered in Dacca on 16  December  1971. However, during those nine months in 1971 the general population suffered violence, and rape was top of the agenda by the Pakistani forces in the eastern part of the country.21 Bangladesh was recognized by most UN member states in 1972 and became the seventh most populated nation in the world. While this work deals with the 1947 Partition there is no doubt that the role of Bengali artists and the Bengali Communist Party was foundational for challenges to the social injustices, famine and bombardments by the governments of British India and Pakistan from World War II to Partition and later throughout the conflict that created the state of Bangladesh. It is within this ongoing context of partitions and repatriations of refugees that Chittaprosad lived as a member of the Communist Party and as an artist fighting social injustice. Chittaprosad (21 June 1915–13 November 1978) was born Chittaprosad Bhattacharya in Naihati, India, currently North 24 Parganas District, West Bengal.22 Through his drawings and paintings he executed the possibility of influencing society through his politics of place and displacement, life and death, and the impossibility of equality within the colonial and postcolonial periods. He attended Chittagong Government College in the 1930s and joined the grass movement that fought British colonialism and the oppression of the feudal Indian system. Together with these challenges he did not accept the caste system and rejected the spiritual preoccupations of the Bengali classical school. As he didn’t agree with the caste system he didn’t use his Brahmanical name and through drawings and cartoons challenged 21 Rai, R. (2013) Bangladesh: The Price of Freedom. New Delhi: Nigoyi Books. 22 For a full biography and an assessment of his work as well as reproductions of his drawings see the two-volume work edited by Kishore Singh as Project Editor that accompanied the exhibit ‘Chittaprosad: A Retrospective’ July–August 2011 DAG Modern, New Delhi that was published as Mallik Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978.

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the influence of such systems within the inequality that could not be blamed only on the British but on Indians as well. His works in pen and paper were not produced for art galleries but for the masses, and thus were not classified but understood as being the artist’s own reflection on a given moment of social injustice within society.23 Chittaprosad became a self-taught artist and a member of the Communist Party in India. Inspired by village sculptors, artisans and even puppeteers he developed a sense of materiality in suffering with the hope that through art others would feel the same empathy to support changes within an Indian supra-structure where whoever owned the means of production, be they European or Indian, tended to exploit others for their own enrichment. However, these were not theoretical discussions but a personal commitment to search for those who were dispossessed by injustice. This was a utopian vision with a revolutionary commitment as a Brahmin such as Chittaprosad could have easily justified his own place within a supra-structure, but he didn’t. However, during 1943–1944 he experienced firsthand the Bengali famine which he depicted in pencil sketches that spoke for themselves, with images of suffering, hunger, malnutrition and forced human acceptance. The 1943 famine in Bengal was a human-made disaster, a ‘catastrophe of distinct significance’ already recognized as such by 23 September 1943.24 The disaster arose out of the association of India with Britain in World War II and the resources and supplies that India provided to the war effort.25 The fall of Rangoon to the Japanese cut the rice supply from Burma, and the 1942 Quit India call hardened the position of the British colonial power towards

23 Later Chittaprosad’s works were exhibited in the Dag Modern Gallery established in New Delhi in 1993. 24 ‘The Man-made “Famine” in Bengal’, in Mallik Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1, p.21. 25 For an analysis of the 1943 Bengal famine see Batabyal, Communalism in Bengal Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War Mukherjee, Hungry Bengal Stevenson, Bengal Tiger and British Lion Venkataramani, Bengal Famine of 1943.

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the local population of Bengal.26 To make matters worse, a cyclone hit the coast on 16 October 1943 on the villages and lands that had been protesting against the British and their policies. The colonial administration blamed the lack of grain availability on the famine, but Dr Amartya Sen made the point that the crops of 1943 were larger than those of 1941 when there was no famine.27 For Sen there were complex issues associated with the famine rather than solely a lack of grain production. Thus, the text prepared for Chittaprosad’s exhibition in 2011 argued that ‘the freezing of supplies for the war-front, and the greed of the stock-hoarders, coupled with a general maladministration to form the primary causes for the immense suffering and the numerous deaths’.28 Chittaprosad challenged with his own drawings of famine and his outline of a political project against injustice the Indian ‘heroic’ phase of modernism in the 1920s and 1930s that had centred on a romantic idealization of rural and tribal India.29 For such idealization had been dominated by important figures such as Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy and Amrita Sher-Gil. Chittaprosad’s generation saw such a romantic vision of India as a place of social injustice, and artists viewed themselves ‘as political radicals’ declaring their solidarity with the ‘proletariat’, ‘seeing anti-colonial struggle as part of a wider resistance to world capitalism and fascism’.30 Together with Chittaprosad, other artists such as Zainul Abedin, painted the man-made famine of West Bengal in 1943. Paintings expressed the actual struggle by Indian peasants not only against British colonialism but against any kind of socio-political movement that oppressed peasants in India and elsewhere. Together with paintings, posters and prints expressed not the dream but the reality of peasant rebellions, for example, Somnath Hore’s sketchbooks that recorded the 26 For relevant documents see Great Britain: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Transfer of Power in India, 1942–47s. 27 Sen, Poverty and Famines. 28 Mallik, Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1, p.22. 29 Mither, P. ‘Foreword’, Mallik (ed.) Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1, pp.12–13. 30 Mither, ‘Foreword’, p.12.

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Tebhaga rebellion, an Indian independence campaign initiated in Bengal by the Kisan Sabha (Peasant Front of the Communist Party of India) in 1946–1947. Other forms of art such as street theatre were also used by the Communist Party of India before Partition so that in 1942 the Indian People’s Theatre Association (I.P.T.A) was founded, affecting under the Communist banner the performing arts. The IPTA grew and became ‘a direct response to the hunger and death of the people of Bengal in the 1943 famine, a perverse enterprise of the British government toward “war effort”!’.31 Chittaprosad rejected following those parameters, namely the colonial art of the academy as well as the orientalist Bengal school. His sense of the political art challenged the wellaccepted ‘apolitical’ formalism of the Calcutta group of artists.32 This revolutionary challenge to establishment was to be followed in a non-Indian context by artists such as Kathe Kollwitz, José Guadalupe Posada, Diego Rivera and other Mexican muralists.33 Thus, the developments of a branch of the Bengal school by artists stationed in Santiniketan was to provide an opening towards a post-Partition world through its contextual modernism.34 The ‘social-realistic’ moment of art in Bengal appeared in the 1940s triggered by the famine and the social injustice. If Chittaprosad and Somnath Hore were members of the Communist Party, there is the temptation of speaking of a ‘political art’. However, another group of artists neither connected to the Communist Party nor to any political party ‘found it impossible not to respond, in terms of theme, content and a suitable shift in pictorial language, to the current socio-political turn of events’.35 Other artists such as Zainul Abedin, Gopal Ghose and Govardhan

31 Bagchi, J. and Dasgupta, S. (eds) (2007) The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India. Kolkata: Stree, pp.1–14 at p.8. 32 Mither, ‘Foreword’, p.13. 33 Mither, ‘Foreword’, p.13. 34 Mallik, ‘Preface’, in Chittaprosad : A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1, p.15. 35 ‘Visualizing the Famine’, in Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1, p.25.

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Ash followed with their own expressions of the famine.36 Thus, Zainul Abedin became a chronicler of the urban scenario of Calcutta with the destitute influx and the unattended corpses of the city. Abedin also used the black ink of Chittaprosad with a clear dry-brush technique (learned at the Government School of Art in Calcutta) for famine pictures without tonality and placing the figures at the centre of the human vision without much accessories.37

Being a shared humanity with Chittaprosad Ruth Illman has collided, narrated and interpreted the experiences of artists of different faiths, with some of those artists being of a non-theistic persuasion, of no faith at all, who have expressed their own sense of belief within their works of art.38 The artists have engaged in interreligious dialogue from the point of view of their own work that as any artists would assume express their own sentiments and personal expressions. Thus, a canvas becomes an expression of selfhood and personhood and from that point of view it brings forward an individual in dialogue with another individual. If one were to view such work of art as a text in which 36 Zainul Abedin (1914–1976) became well-known because of his famine series of 1944 and after Partition he moved to Pakistan. In 1971, and coinciding with the creation of the state of Bangladesh, he was considered by Syed Manzoorul Islam  as the father of Bangladeshi modern art. In 1948 Abedin helped established the Institute of Arts and Crafts (later Faculty of Fine Arts) at Dhaka University. He was given the title Shilpacharya (Great Teacher of Arts) in Bangladesh. Gopal Ghose (1913–1980) was born in Calcutta, West Bengal and studied painting at the Government College of Arts and Crafts,  Jaipur (1935) and sculpture at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Chennai, under Debi Prasad Roy Choudhuri. Ghose was one of the founders of the Calcutta Group (1943) and taught at the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Kolkata (1940–1945) and at the Engineering College, Shibpur. 37 ‘Other Artists’ Responses to the Famine’, in Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1, pp.39–44. See for example Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin ‘Famine Sketch’, Ink on paper 1943, reproduced as Plate 21 in Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1, p.39 and kept at the Bangladesh National Museum, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 38 Illman, R. (2014) Art and Belief: Artists Engaged in Interreligious Dialogue. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

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a personal narrative is expressed and outlined through paint rather than words one would be talking about a shared hermeneutic of artistic expression and a meaningful encounter in consonance or dissonance. For art can be used for interreligious dialogue so that the beauty of a mosque, for example, could bring forth the beauty of the God with many different names, called Allah by Muslims or the Absolute by Christians. However, my argument is slightly different and brings complementarity to the possibilities of artists or musicians who are believers and who in turn exchange their own lives of faith with each other. We have passed the era of asking ‘what is art?’, because the contextuality of the possible materiality of art/artefact, essence/ accident or physical/metaphysical has not given a clear answer but it has become a problem. Thus, Chris Smith and Linden Reilly have argued that firstly, ‘functionalist’ definitions of art ‘relate quite closely to the classical theory of concepts’, so that since 1964 art is ‘functional, procedural, and historical’.39 Secondly, the definitions of art mistakenly used ‘procedural theories’ so that art is recognized as art because it serves the purposes of art.40 Thirdly, definitions of art could be related to ‘a prototype theory of concepts’ where a central concept such as art has a radial structure with different meanings.41 Thus, with such historical problematics I would prefer to look at art with the description proposed by Chris Smith and Linden Reilly as ‘a complex multi-medium assemblage’.42 ‘What work does the artwork do’ relates then to the possibility that artwork works for inter-faith dialogue and because of such condition becomes an artwork within ‘a complex multi‑medium assemblage’.43 39 Smith, C. and Reilly, L. (2007) ‘What work does the art work do? A question for art’, Journal of Visual Art Practice 6, 1, pp.5–12 at p.7. 40 Smith and Reilly, ‘What work does the art work do?’, p.8. 41 Smith and Reilly, ‘What work does the art work do?, p.9. 42 Smith and Reilly, ‘What work does the art work do?’, p.10. 43 I outlined further thoughts on the problematic of the acceptance of art works during my lecture ‘Interfaith Dialogue: Experience and Art’ delivered on Thursday 16 November 2017 at the Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education, Dundee, UK.

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Thus, I return to the foundational principle of any interreligious dialogue or any theology of interfaith: theology is a second step, as outlined by Gustavo Gutiérrez, liberation praxis as action and solidarity comes first. Thus, before examining Chittaprosad’s contribution to art and the understanding of a shared humanity in dialogue I would like to recall the discussions on inter-faith that a group of followers of different religions and no-religion had at the DAG Modern in New Delhi on Friday 9 June 2017 from 4pm to 6pm. A fuller description of other inter-faith activities in India during that month can be found in the following chapter. Suffice to say that I had invited 50 people to be in India during June 2017 to walk, pray and talk together in New Delhi, Varanasi and Dharamsala on the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India. I have been interested in, even mesmerized and absorbed by, the drawings of Chittaprosad, since I first saw them on the internet. However, I didn’t know where those drawings were and if they were available for viewing by the public. By the time that I had invited a few people to meet in India, I had discovered that  Chittaprosad’s works were available at the DAG Modern in New Delhi. Thus, I wrote to Ashish Anand, CEO of DAG Modern who kindly forwarded my correspondence to Kishore Singh, President of DAG Modern.44 Kishore Singh responded immediately with an offer to host the group and to provide us with a small room to view some of Chittaprosad’s work as well as to view a short documentary on Chittaprosad that had been produced by Pavel Hobl.45 Kishore Singh welcomed 12 of us at the DAG Modern, a beautiful gallery located in Hauz Khas Village.46 The imposing and elegant figure of Kishore Singh welcomed the group and we proceeded to watch the short documentary. Chittaprosad appeared 44 Mario I. Aguilar to Ashish Anand 2017.116 – 22 May 2017. 45 Kishore Singh to Mario I. Aguilar 23.05.2017 – ‘I will be happy to set up a selection of Chittaprosad’s works in a room especially for your group, and take the opportunity also to screen a short film made by a Czech director, Pavel Hobl, in 1971–72, on the occasion’.  46 http://dagmodern.com

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at his home working, talking, with some teeth missing, the very image of an ascetic man who throughout his life did not accept the possibility that he could make money with his art, because he was a revolutionary and a man in solidarity with others rather than an artist in search of fame or wealth. Ing Frantisěk Salaba, a friend and patron of Chittaprosad who arrived on 3 October 1954 as assistant to the trade commissioner of Czechoslovakia recalled: ‘it took me a few months to discover that he lived in excruciating poverty and was in debt. But his pride did not allow him to show it or to even try to sell some of his art works to me’.47 My thoughts went to the fact that art in most contexts invokes a world of plenty and of materiality while it provides the emotional actualization of an abstraction beyond materiality. Thus, materiality expresses the essence of a moment and of a social process rather than the abstraction of the only material for the sake of price. This is the process represented by the figure of Chittaprosad that outlined a life of political commitment against injustice and through art gave voice to the unknown people who were part of the famine in West Bengal in 1943. We proceeded together, human beings of several faiths and no faith, to view Chittaprosad’s works in a small side room where samples of his different works were being shown to us, ordered between the famine paintings on the one side and the political drawings on the other. I gave a very short introduction to Chittaprosad and to the actual exercise which was not to be on art appreciation but on the possible opening of one’s heart to one another, to Chittaprosad’s world, and to a shared and common humanity. General comments were made in a conversation that was communal within a shared individuality of perspectives on life and the possibilities of art. It was a daring experiment, and it worked so that even those who were not used to art appreciation expressed their sense of having been able to make something out of the exercise of putting words in the individual locationality of the 47 ‘Reminiscences of Chittaprosad: In Conversation with Ing Frantisěk Salaba’, in Malik, Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 2, p.486.

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soul vis-à-vis the painting. In simple words they were able to express their own feelings about art shown in front of human beings.48 What was said? I noted that Western human beings tend to ask questions about content and possibilities to understand reality. Were we all Western human beings? Indeed, the level of tertiary education of the participants indicated that everybody in the group, despite being Latin American, European, Indian or Middle Eastern, was conversing with a common Western language and that each member of the group had university education at the highest level. Thus, I thought that this conversation could have had a different sense and content if the content of Chittaprosad’s art were to be explored by Indians conversing in Hindi or Bengali rather than a predominantly foreign group conversing in English. However, one interesting point was that nobody challenged the possibility of Chittaprosad’s drawings being considered art. We have moved a long way, I thought, from the discussions during colonial times in which only classical paintings were considered art. And this has a good feeling knowing that in the case of African artists this challenge still is a challenge to ‘what is art?’. It is crucial to understand that while Chittaprosad challenged the first attempts made by the Bengal School to challenge imperial colonial art, he was not part of the Calcutta Group that arose out of the 1943 famine and that for ten years dominated the challenges to colonialism before independence and after. I noted that for some the visit to the art gallery was an entry into India, and that those who had already ‘entered’ other different worlds rather than remain in their own self-contained academic or professional worlds they had entered a second stage of finding new possibilities and new ways of human expression. For some, the strong drawings suggested a real possibility of entering the experience of suffering, an experience that maybe needed to be entered in silence. However, one could ask if the experience of a single sitting can draw the honest inner-feelings of a participant? Or are more sittings needed? While on purpose I avoided the 48 Fausto Andrade to Mario I. Aguilar – 9 June 2017.

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possibility of sitting everybody in silence and in meditation in front of Chittaprosad’s art I was struck by the possibilities seen by the participants.49 Jake Cowpland, a Scottish researcher, wrote to me after the experience in the following terms: ‘My own experience of art is that it is only after returning to a piece many times that I see something new, or that it invokes emotions it did not in the past’.50 I wonder if such comment relates to the repetitiveness of Christian prayer and meditation that instead of becoming a tedious routine becomes a habit. Thus, the prayerful person starts experiencing deeper feelings and emotions of a challenging nature as well as the consolation and familiarity of a prayer that is said once and again. As a result, such prayer becomes familiar and therefore part of a human experience of being. In the case of the appreciation of art within a gallery a return to sitting in front of the same piece of art in a gallery many times brings the possibilities of going deeper and further than the first level in which questions are asked. Thus, when questions cease a common human experience begins. Is this the process in which an individual human being becomes immersed in the world of the artist? Or is it the act of contemplating a work of art together the actual human experience of sharing the human journey of human beings on the same path? Many of these thoughts have haunted me, because in the case of publicly accessible art it is possible to return once and again to the experience and to ask questions on the first, second or third viewing. It is even possible to return with the company of the same human beings. However, the experience of admiring the appreciation of feeling within Chittaprosad cannot be repeated as the works are part of a private collection, and at the same time those who took part in the common experience of viewing would 49 The avoidance of using objects for meditation comes from my natural understanding that the emptying of the mind creates the possibilities for such Eastern meditation rather than the schools of Christian Western meditation that have emphasized the filling in of the soul through the imagination and the senses. These schools are not opposed but complementary; however, within a single moment of art contemplation I opted for the possibility of the individual comment and the emptying of meaning. 50 Jake Cowpland to Mario I. Aguilar – 28 July 2017.

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very unlikely be at the DAG Modern together again, united by soul, space and time, in a synchronicity of purpose and journey within the same space. There is no doubt that the experience of a common sitting conversing about art, particularly if such art portrays the feelings of hope or grief of a common humanity, has the powerful possibility of bringing experiences of inter-faith dialogue. It is through those experiences, and many others, that human beings who have been raised with feelings of separation and suspicion towards other peoples of different languages, societies or religions, can be brought together in a learning of a togetherness that had been previously discouraged. For the materiality of art provides the great possibility of experiencing the immateriality of an artist’s feeling within a synchronic moment such as the famine in Bengal.

A continuous Partition: Altaf In a further visit to the DAG I was able to connect with another Indian artist, Altaf. There is no doubt that the Partition of India as a political and constitutional phenomenon shows certain continuities, social and political, even when the prime idea was to provide a homeland for India’s minority Muslims after the British transfer of power. Chittaprosad’s work constitutes the artistic and poetic manifestation of the voices of pre-Partition that spoke loudly even when silent of the unheard voices of the peripheries, of those who in any social or political event seem to be forgotten. Those with no savings, no dignity, and no power are the first ones to be part of the unseen consequences of political decisions. And so, it was that the states to be partitioned were all at the periphery of a British colonial India as they were to be after 1947 at the periphery of a majority Hindu India localized within the central part of India. Even sadhus and those seeking moksha evaded the centres and returned to rivers and mountains, not to the urban centres of political power. Within the post-Partition India there were also artistic voices that spoke of the fragmentized realities of the Indian peripheries

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and challenged the silencing of poverty and dirt, the silencing of most Indians in order to create a fragmentized vision of India for export and for elite consumption. The task undertaken by Pandit Nehru on the day of Indian independence was enormous, because India was a huge country with massive processes of violence, and the whole administrative tier of a new administration needed to be replaced by an Indian civil service. Once the civil service was in place policies needed to be developed and international alliances sought, first with countries of the emerging Commonwealth and then with others. This natural process of political development carried with it a unification of the image of India not very different than the colonial processes carried out by the British with the stress on the variety and richness of the historical Indian civilizations, and the imagining of India as a secular state. Within this natural process of political development those who criticized the emerging India were ignored and sometimes found themselves in the fringes of nationhood as it has been with the colonial power. I would like to introduce the concept of a continuous Partition, the partition of centre-periphery that can only be solved by the end of caste systems and cultural institutions that support the inequality in socio-economic terms. In a way, the continuous Partition was addressed by hundreds of artists that responded with their own artistic language to moments in which that continuous Partition was made more acute either by natural disasters, industrial oppression, or political centralization and repression. One of those many artists was Altaf Mohamedi (1942–2005), an Indian artist who remains difficult to classify within canons of modern art.51 Educated in London he returned to Bombay (Mumbai) and used his art to express his political ideas of changing society. A member of the Communist Party, he moved his art to slums and factories to discuss the world with others, in order to change it, in order to dream and to be among the people. A note from Ashish Anand, director of the DAG Modern, summarizes 51 For a chronology of Altaf ’s life see ‘Altaf: A Brief Chronology’, in Singh, K. (ed.) (2017) Altaf: A Retrospective. New Delhi: DAG Modern, pp.122–127.

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the enormous richness and complexity of Altaf when he wrote ‘An affable, well-read, extremely friendly and pleasant person, and belonging to a wealthy milieu, Altaf nevertheless chose to align his work to a Marxist political ideology in which he was completely invested’.52 Born in Baroda within a pre-Partition India on 18 August 1942 and at the height of the Quit India movement, he lost his mother at birth. In 1943 his family moved to Bombay, and Altaf studied at Scindia School, Gwalior. In 1960 he enrolled at Central Saint Martins, London where in his second year of study he left because of disagreements with his lecturers, but he remained in London until 1966. In 1964, and while in London, the life imprisonment of Nelson Mandela in South Africa shaped his development, and he attended an anti-apartheid demonstration at Trafalgar Square. Altaf attended Bertrand Russell’s speech at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park and he joined demonstrations against the bombardment of North Vietnam as well as rallies for nuclear disarmament. After the arrival of his sister in London in July 1964, he was admitted to the Chelsea School of Art in September. In 1965 he continued visiting art galleries in different European countries and as the US troops started their Vietnam offensive Altaf participated in a peaceful demonstration outside the American Embassy in London. During that year he attended Lal Bahadur Shastri’s address to students in the UK. In 1966 and after participating in the Aldermaston March against nuclear weapons he left London.53 Between 1966 and 1967 and on his way back to India Altaf visited southern France, Spain, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Baalbeck, Babylon, Damascus, Baghdad, Iran, Isphahan, Rasht, Shiraz, Bandar-e-Palhavi, and Bahrain. In 1968 he began his prolific production of art, first very much connected to Europe with his first exhibition at Taj Gallery, Bombay, while he started studying French. However, in that year his reflection against an apolitical world came to the canvas with his The Corridors of Alienation. Altaf shared these reflections 52 Anand, A. (2017) ‘Note from the Director’, in Singh, Altaf, pp.4–5. 53 In 1966 Nehru’s daughter, Indira Ghandi, becomes Prime Minister of India.

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over the following years with artists, writers and filmmakers such as Mani Kaul, Kumar and Roshan Shahani, Prabhakar Barwe, Gaitonde, Udayan Patel, Arun Khopkar, Neela Bhagwat, Nalini Malani, Akbar Padamsee, Dev Nathan, a group that usually met at the Weavers Centre or at the Café Samovar. It is the meeting and cooperation with other like-minded artists that made him realize that his art and social conscience could find a home, at least temporarily, in the Communist Party of India. Thus, between 1969 and1975 Altaf joined Proyom (Progressive Youth Movement) linked with the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI  ML) and worked, together with Navjot, in slums, labour camps, and factories, speaking to workers and helping with the printing of protest posters. Altaf led literary classes and workshops, exhibiting outside hospitals, factory gates, and labour camps affiliating himself and Navjot together with the Dalit Panthers, and taking their works to a Dalit colony in Chembur, Bombay.54 It is this force of art production that is done socially and with others in mind and soul that makes Altaf different than other Indian  artists who had studied in Europe. As in the case of Chittaprosad, art becomes the link between their personal concerns for the world outside their own self. It becomes a medium of social communication stating like the Silk Road Ensemble of Yo‑Yo  Ma and the Unification Ensemble outlined in the next chapter that there is a shared and common humanity. Thus, even in the worst moments of history can find each other primarily as human beings and later with their socio-cultural conditionings and their ritual systems of religion as well. There is indeed a continuous Partition that needs to be analysed in relation to the liberation of wombs. It is journey of critical analysis and continuous partition that I outline in the following chapter.

54 The Dalit Panthers were a radical movement of young intellectuals, belonging to the lower-class untouchables, who challenged their class socially and politically.

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CONTEMPORARY DIALOGUES OF UNIFICATION We cannot change what historically happened within the Partition of India, but we can show through ‘dialogues in history’ our willingness to understand, whenever we can, to show solidarity, compassion and love and to try in our own lives to show that a different world of inter-faith dialogue is possible. ‘We must learn from the lessons of the past’ as the plausible outcome of a horrendous massacre is not enough. What to do? How to do it? Answers to these questions would depend on the stage of the personal journey of an individual and on the courage and love of a group or community. The efforts by members of the artists’ communities of India and Pakistan, as outlined in the previous chapter, show that the state boundaries that affected the development of a shared humanity after Partition can be mediated, and following from the cinematography by Bani Abidi, particularly Mangoes and Karachi, individuals and communities can share their memories and their futures. In this chapter I narrate, with my own personal biases and from a personal point of view, a journey of a group of men and women, older and younger, of the different world religions into India in June 2017. From India, my life companion and I went to the Sultanate of Oman, where conversations, meals, visits to the mosque and Ramadan triggered further experiences and thoughts that I share within this chapter. This work shows the possibilities of a Christian–Hindu–Muslim dialogue, because honest seekers from these three traditions walked India together. However, the final part of this chapter, and indeed of this work, returns from India and the Ganges to the sands inhabited by the Omani sect of Islam in the Sultanate of Oman through the conversation and 113

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writings of Shaikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Salimi. In this first commentary on his work and a dialogue with his tenants I propose the conclusions to this work that need to be explored elsewhere: that an Islamo-Christian civilization as proposed by Richard Bulliet’s Case for Islamo Christian Civilization be expanded to include the rise of Hinduism, an ancient civilization that in Al Salimi’s analysis shows the sign of ‘emerging fundamentalist ideologies, particularly in Hinduism’.1 I am looking for aspects of a shared humanity to be celebrated intensely in between the defragmentation of the fragmentized notes of a globalization that already has been poisoned and that doesn’t exist. I am looking here for the seeds of the Word, that Word that spoke at the beginning, before the different institutional religions tried to appropriate the divine mandate of love and action for others, that does not belong to one tradition only or to another but to a humanity created by the energy of the Absolute before even thoughts became absorbed by the Logos. Within those examples of shared human values, I have outlined in the previous chapter the centrality of art that can bring human beings together from the different traditions and civilizations of the world. However, I return to art as painting and music of the soul, music of the feelings of human/divine nature through one very striking cacophony of notes, instruments and souls, the ‘music of strangers’, powerful and synthetic performances of a man who wants to change the world, and it happens that he has a cello: Yo-Yo Ma, and the silk road ensemble. Thus, in this final chapter I argue that inter-faith dialogue cannot be a solely intellectual activity for meetings, but that it has to vibrate with the experience, the daily realities of others through a continuous pilgrimage in which the ‘I’, the eternal soul, goes with others, and in which the expressions of humanity such as the arts of painting and music allow us to learn other ways and other paths that do 1

Ziaka, A. (2016) ‘Introduction’, in Shaikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Salimi, Religious Tolerance: A Vision for a New World, edited with an introduction by Angeliki Ziaka. Hildesheim, Zürich and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, p.159.

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not threaten our own personal journeys within our own traditions. Instead, other traditions enrich such a path with other aspects of the Absolute within the daily human activity of this humanity and on this planet.

Levels of interfaith dialogue There are different levels of interreligious or inter-faith dialogue, and those can be outlined within rational models of understanding that take place within one’s own nation, states, communities and landscapes, and those models of understanding and models that take place outside one’s own landscapes. It can be argued that the models related to ‘dialogues in history’, thus the past in the present, and for the future, fall within the models of an outward landscape. Within such level of inter-faith dialogue human beings depart from their own known parameters and learn through experiential moments the understandings of others. This can take a life-time, but I would argue they constitute a deeper level of decolonization of one’s tenants of metaphysical understanding so that not only the body and the mind travel to learn from others but the soul, dangerously at time, starts to move towards the Other in ways that the philosophers could never do. This movement towards the Other is forced by a geographical move into another place, another community and another custom. I recognize that this movement towards the Other in interfaith dialogue is not different than the movement of the anthropologist, the linguist or the NGO personnel, who for a purpose of understanding moves to a distant land attracted by the different, the colourful and the ancient. At the first level, comparisons are made so that questions are asked about a Christian or a Hindu understanding of the same human phenomenon and the divine designs within such moments. During the second level, further absorptions of experience provoke a closeness or a rejection of the Other so that some human beings continue the way of a shared experience and others decide to leave it at the first level of understanding. During the third level, layers of experiential

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learning are added, and the dialogue becomes a dwelling of common experience whereby prayers and rituals contribute to a ‘dialogue of unification’, a moment in which at least for a few minutes a shared humanity is experienced. The dialogue is not done necessarily through words but through meaningful actions of togetherness in which the experiential creates the unification of souls in the present with a wish to continue experiencing such commonality in the future. Most interreligious dialogue stays within this level that has already taken its toll on detachment from activities, family and professional activities. The fourth level and the fullest of encounters is the inner encounter of the soul, the search for meaning and realization in the inner-being whereby some will continue finding experiential practices meaningful while others would naturally feel a movement, an uneasiness of the soul in silence, prayer, and meditation that will allow eventually the soul to move in unexpected ways. The dwelling with God and with the experiences of others can be a peaceful move but also a stormy one. The fifth level is the returning of the soul daily and always to such unity with others and with God in which the experience of dwelling has become part of an indwelling of humanity, and the dialogues with the past have been a learning experience through which the past violence has remained a fact of history, but the cycle of misunderstanding, vengeance and hate has ceased with the plausibility of a futuristic look at the commonalities rather than differences. At this level, the soul dwells in a bliss of detachment that in Christian terms relates more to the mystical language of the Spirit while in Hinduism reaffirms the daily assertion that all is OM. The fifth dwelling can be compared to Anthony de Mello’s experience of prayer in which there are four phases between the human being and God: I speak, you listen – you speak, I listen, nobody speaks, both of us listen, and finally nobody speaks, and nobody listens – Silence.2

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de Mello, A. (1988) La oración de la rana. Santander: Editorial Sal Terrae, p.24.

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Dialogues of unification One of the most challenging phenomenon of post-Partition has been the silence of the state and the silence of the participants. The wounds of Partition remained untold until very recently and the victims and perpetrators of violence divided into different categories rather than unified within genders as women were the victims of Partition and men were the conquerors of Partition. This process of violence was firstly outlined by literary works, for example the classic novel Train to Pakistan. Other challenges included the possibility of theological discussions regarding difference in India and Pakistan and included the uncertain place of Christians within an independent India. If Hindus were supposed to inhabit India except for those Muslims protected within the princely states, and Muslims were supposed to be in Pakistan, the reality remained that Christianity was present within southern India. Thus, the Hindu and Muslim wombs present in India needed also to be discussed in the presence of Sikh and Christian wombs. If Partition allowed for a division of land, the creation of two states and the respect for minorities, the challenge of those diversified wombs was not only how to live in peace but also to know how to respect and get to know each other’s social and cultural forms as well as the connection between Hindus, Muslim, Sikhs and Christians in relation to their physical and metaphysical universes. For being a citizen of a state stops short of the actual human existence of a human being who lives an earthly life from womb to biological death but who understands the metaphysical in different ways. Thus, I have explored somewhere else the life of Christian monks from Europe who became sanyasi (renouncers) in India and who after Partition dealt with issues of dialogue and non-dialogue in their own lives and out of their ashrams. If the conversations after Partition have been associated with socio-political and ethnic issues within India there is a need to expand such conversations to the metaphysical realm that after all becomes the foundation for issues of honour/shame and the purity of the womb that after all created some of the most horrendous violence against women

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within Partition. If in the name of socio-cultural understandings of religion human beings have killed and raped it is in the name of religion that human beings can come together in dialogue and a shared journey towards the Absolute. However, following from the methodology of the theologies of liberation, that experience comes first and theological reflections second, it is necessary to experience the possibilities of returning to a shared humanity before one can theologize about the possibilities of returning to the womb and towards the Absolute together.

The unification ensemble It was in June 2017 that one of my life dreams was made true, and so started the plausibility of the exploration of an ongoing interfaith dialogue that could be done on the road, on the waters and  towards the skies. I invited 40 human beings of different faiths and of no faith to gather in India to share our own journeys in a period of one day minimum and two weeks maximum journeying from New Delhi to Dharamsala. At the heart of this desire was the wish to experience the Other in myself and to provide the opportunity of change and continuity that at the human level brings the daily possibility of the encounter with the Absolute. At the foundation of this desire was to provide new dialogues of unification whereby a single human life narrative is able to challenge the influential project of the ‘clash of civilizations’. Indeed, clashes and divisions have no place in the desire to find oneself in God because all other human beings theologically are also united to the same God. The union in God that I have explored previously suggests that before any religious system was developed the Trinity existed as a manifestation of the One. It is through the One, the unity of the masculine and the feminine, that human beings encounter each other. Such a process of being with others provides an encounter long before civilizations and before political systems clash with each other. Thinkers such as Katani have challenged the clash with the dialogue of civilizations, and Shaikh Al-Hamini has also encountered the possibilities of Islam, Christianity and

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Judaism walking together on the One. Within such return to the experience of the One and of the other human beings one turns  to the possibilities of dialogues on the move because it is necessary to come out of our structures of limitation to encounter the Other where such human beings are. Thus, a journey to India in dialogue with each other and with the possibility of greeting the Absolute through landscapes, rivers, mountains, sacred places, texts and through the daily encounter with other human beings who after all are very much like ourselves in the Absolute was a need, and a spiritual one. The dialogue between some of those pilgrims had already started  in September 2016 at the signing of the St. Andrews Declaration for a Shared Humanity at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland where some of our Indian hosts, shall I say Hindu hosts, had shared the signing, the conference and the prayers at the university chapel and at the pier with us. June 2017 was the time when pilgrims based in Europe would take the road to India to learn, to discuss, to pray, and to allow themselves to be changed together. Dialogue offers the possibility of an encounter between human beings, their shared humanity, and the Absolute in its many manifestations. Of course, a shared humanity does not have room for the declassification of an absolute order of equality because such order would always be a negation of the divine assertion of created beings that are equal (Christianity, Islam, Sikhism) and the manifestation of Brahma within the whole of creation (Hinduism). Systems of inequality and of social oppression in the name of religion outline a human conception for means and ends of human oppression that at the end create religious sectarianism, fundamentalism and within the contemporary world acts of terrorism. I return in this chapter to the basics of unity within a shared humanity and the possibility of a common journey by all religious traditions. All killing lies outside a religious tradition, and such killing includes partial acts of killing such as domestic violence, the abuse of children, human trafficking, acts that bring the lack of human dignity such as rape, incest, and

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intra‑religious violence. I include acts of ‘structural sin’ that in the context of theologies of liberation were acts of the state and society that have brought shame and lack of human dignity to human beings created by God such as hunger, lack of housing, lack of work, inequality between men and women, lack of education and lack of clean water. I would also add the lack of structures that allow human beings to pray, to worship their different deities, to dream for a better future, and to dream of a better world. In Chapter 2 I examined some of the theological parameters of the human and divine womb. In Chapter 3 I explored the possibilities of art and the human manifestations of a shared human and divine wisdom through the infusion of material colours and canvasses with the feelings of the soul. In this chapter, I outline some of the experiential efforts to return together to the womb of God where all human beings share the same dignity and at the end the same freedom to become fully human, even when they follow different religious or philosophical systems or none. For one of the ways of returning to the womb of God is to journey together greeting each other in the most basic, caring, and loving way. Once again, I note that theology is a second step, a reflection on action, whereby the journey with a group representing different religions comes first, the reflection comes second. During June 2017 and in three locations followers of different religions gathered together in India to discuss what it is to be human sharing a divine coming from different mothers, different wombs and entering different traditions. Others from Europe desired to join the group, thus allowing themselves to be challenged by the experience, even when they would only admit that they were interested in seeing India and were afraid of doing so on their own. But how can you see India if India is made of its peoples, a diversity of colourful human beings that have the greatest treasure from ancient times: the daily connection between the physical and the metaphysical. For it is in India that one finds the myriads of expressions of the Absolute with many names, many manifestations and many languages. And to see India one needs many lives because one can only enter India through one prism, through one

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location and through one initial experience. It is this initial entry that makes a person biased towards one India among many kinds of India. On a personal note: I entered India years ago through the Himalayas and Tibet, and my own experience of India has been marked by the desire to experience and to understand the mountains where renouncers, holy men and women live, trying to master practices that would allow them to renounce what they would learn on the way. That journey into the inner soul and nothingness has been my point of entry and continues to be my point of arrival in every journey into India. Some very exceptional human beings, but very few among them, have managed to navigate the movement and the sitting within different locations and traditions in India. In doing so, they have been challenged by their own traditions, and their final move has been towards the inward soul and towards the majestic search for oneself without movement, without words and without attachment. Raymond Panikkar, for example, managed theologically to integrate the power and beauty of the One in the many manifestations that make God the centre and the institutions and possibilities of exclusion secondary. Born of an Indian father and a Spanish Catholic mother, Panikkar managed to search his Christian and Hindu roots within a life of a Catholic priest in Spain and India and to go deeply into the study of Buddhism and the possibilities of the encounter within the three religions that not only are present in India but that have been very much part of the pilgrim’s life of those entering India within contemporary times. Thus, in my invitation to those coming to India in June 2017, I had indicated the difficulties and the challenges to be faced by journeying to India and I had also indicated the fact that once a person has visited India such person would not be the same again.3 For, I would argue, the dormant soul of the everyday life feels the challenge of the awakening within the large world of the senses in India and as a result becomes unsettled, even in the materiality

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Mario I. Aguilar, India 6.2017: Bulletin 1 New Delhi 9 June 2017.

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of food and the heat of the passing breeze within rivers, temples, mosques and multitudes. The encounter of an ensemble of human beings equipped with their sole humanity could bring a group of tourists for the sake of visiting other countries, but I wanted to experience within a group  the diversity of the ritual path, the pilgrimage and the silence of the diversity of the human soul and the unity of  the  Absolute. The Unification Ensemble could be a possible name for the Interfaith Ensemble that departed from different corners of the planet to assemble in New Delhi on 9 June 2017 for a first conversation, a first chanting of the Vedas and a reading of the Upanishads. Beyond the wish to have peace and to prevent any religious violence lies the search for a common idea and conferences and seminars on interfaith are plentiful. However, my dissatisfaction with such a model lies within the possible inclusion of the rational  and the agreeable with the exclusion of the diverse, the different and the silent. Silence is indeed a form of speaking but in arguing such quality of words we are asserting the centrality of our known paradigm of words that lead to action, and I wanted to find the experience of the action that led to silence, the diversity that led to unity, the different understanding of God that leads to the Absolute rather than to the solving of human differences and human puzzles of division. The Unification Ensemble wanted to walk India on the 70th anniversary of Partition bringing greetings to the main religions of India by faith practitioners and those born within a religion. The gatherings were to be learning moments in which by pausing in silence the group would become more mindful of others and for those practicing a faith more mindful of the presence of the Absolute. Silence became a central paradigm within the journey because silence becomes the unifying factor in the rituals and shrines of the most devoted of Hinduism and Buddhism. A different kind of communication arises out of silence and out of the silenced body that moves towards the silencing of the senses to embrace the destruction of the ego and the selfishness that prevents

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the possibility of the encounter and the attainment of immortality. The invitation was bold: come and join us in India and leave your comfort zone behind for a few days. I had invited some friends from Edinburgh in Scotland to join the group that departed from Edinburgh to New Delhi. I was surprised but not shocked when a female suggested that she could not visit India because of the violence and unjust acts that took place in India towards women. I respect such a position. Many had it at the time of apartheid in South Africa when those protesting the exclusion of black Africans from participation in South African society would not visit the country or would not buy South African goods in UK supermarkets. However, these problems are with the state of India and I was interested in journeying through a sacred landscape of unification that was set by the basic common unifying denominator: the human being at the womb. If at Partition the womb was destroyed and conquered, seventy years later there is the possibility of the communication of human beings and their common wombs of dialogue.

The Silk Road Ensemble The movement of pilgrims to India in June 2017 could not be considered a unique social activity as India receives millions of pilgrims looking for sanctification, cleansing, and spiritual paths every year. However, the movement of pilgrims from different faiths marked a unique path in which the interfaith path of pilgrimage was preferred rather than the single religious pilgrimage to shrines belonging to one religious tradition. Theoretically, it was important to link this pilgrimage of diversity with the hymns of universal diversity proposed by the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, the Latin American poet Ernesto Cardenal and Raymond Panikkar. Theologically the praise of creation as a reflection of God’s creation has united humanity in the awe of the beauty of stars, firmaments and planets. Theology and science have explored the possibilities of the beauty of creation so that we materially see it as a reflection of God and her Creation. These narratives of the music of the spheres

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have always seemed to exclude the experience of those who do not uphold a theistic narrative of the universe, because music can be described as secular or sacred but in the end is the expression of the human soul, of creation and of the unity of those who chant their sentiments during periods of their lives. After the events of India 2017 I became aware of the extent to which in music and a universal dialogue the cellist Yo‑Yo Ma has elaborated the same kind of project of a common human exploration  of diversity through music. Yo-Yo Ma, an internationally renowned cellist, went to the United States from France with his Chinese parents and became a child-prodigy.4 He gathered musicians from all over the world who played different instruments in order to explore the possibility of the universal in music, a concept that he had received from Leonard Bernstein. The universal did not mean for Yo-Yo Ma a fusion of diverse music into one single language, but the contribution of the diversity of music towards a common language of good-will and understanding. Thus, the Silk Road Ensemble, a group of performers from all over the world, formed in 1998, having met and assembled in different locations to create music together within different music traditions and diverse musical instruments.5 Music, for Yo-Yo Ma, is ‘sound and energy in space … It joins people together… it expresses things … It’s really hard to define music because it is very ephemeral, but its effect is generally always something bigger than yourself ’.6 Thus, The Music of Strangers as a documentary film outlines the activities and the music composed and played together by an eclectic group of human beings, of musicians who came together in order to experience music together in different locations on the planet.7 The Silk Road Ensemble was not solely a crazy dream of Yo-Yo Ma, who in his younger years had become 4 Whiting, J. (2008) Yo-Yo Ma: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 5 Whiting, Yo-Yo Ma, p.ix. 6 Yo-Yo Ma in Harvard Political Review, March 6, 2014 at www.yo-yoma.com/ about-2 7 Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (2015) The Music of Strangers. Available at http://themusicofstrangers.film

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enchanted and changed by the music of peoples of the Kalahari desert, but the proof that artistic forms as human tools are able to challenge the unity of human beings who are disunited. For me, the Silk Road Ensemble has become an inspirational tool, because what an international group of musicians have achieved, that is to play together new music and new forms of music with different instruments and with varied participants, has given me the confidence that the different forms of silence, ritual symbolisms and prayer can also create a human and divine music despite their differences. Thus, let me explore in detail what Yo-Yo Ma has done and those involved within this project of universal musical value and human togetherness. Yo-Yo Ma brought key musicians interviewed within the film and many others, and as he suggested throughout his narrative when all those were together troubles began. The different feelings, emotions, experiences of each participant were not necessarily agreeable or wanted by others, a fact of life, an essential part of life itself. Thus, the arrival of Cristina Pato from Galicia and her bagpipes brought an earthy feeling of primitive feelings of the hearty human being whereby Yo-Yo Ma appears even screaming within a music session led by Pato. The journey to India was not different, all was well in diversity until troubles began – the pilgrims wanted to exit the reality of silence with others.

A journey of silence It was no coincidence that the Sunday before the departure for India the Reverend Graham McGeoch, a minister of the Church of Scotland, invited members of the Interfaith Ensemble to join Christians and Muslims at his parish in Edinburgh for the celebration of Pentecost Sunday. I had invited all those who could not make it to India to join us in prayer on Sunday coinciding with Pentecost. The service included singing and the reading of scriptures. At that occasion a local Muslim Imam provided the homily joining the Revd McGeoch and the Vicar General of the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh at the altar.

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After the words by the Imam and instead of the Creed I led the congregation in the proclamation of the St. Andrews Declaration for a Shared Humanity that had been signed by a group of diverse religious leaders at the University of St. Andrews in September 2016 (see Appendix 1). On the 9 June 2017, the Interfaith Ensemble met at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Okhla New Delhi.8 There were no clerics, even when some had been invited, and there were old friends as well as new friends. There were older and distinguished scholars as well as young emerging students of knowledge that could be classified in academic circles as non-Western and related to the so-called world religions. Refreshments were served and the Indian contingency from Amritsar represented the majority of those taking part from India, partners in dialogue already well-advanced, by then friends and associates. With them we had shared discussions during 2016 in Amritsar, and we had met again to celebrate, to eat, to drink and dance together in January 2017 on a family wedding having shared meals and tea together in India and Europe previously. With some we had shared the pilgrimage to the Golden Temple and had sat together to eat the delicious food provided to pilgrims by the largest kitchen of the world. The invitations had not aimed at a perfect human engineering but at the strengthening of ties with those who were already on the journey, who had decided to attend, and who had the means to attend. Thus, a few representatives of a larger group of human beings gathered in New Delhi on a hot day in June. The meeting took place at the Emerald Room, a majestic and beautiful room that was considered the main meeting place of the hotel. Chairs within the room were arranged in a circle with a circular table at the centre. Those attending took their seats as they wished, and the meeting started with my introduction to the event explaining the intentions and objectives of the meeting 8

There is no doubt that personnel at the hotel felt very moved by the gathering of people from many countries, and they were proud to have hosted the event that in its preparation was flawless, beautiful, warm, and a beauty at the Emerald Room.

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as well as the background of the participants. The reading of the Upanishads and the chanting of the OM by Mrs Babu, an Indian headmistress and a Hindu, preceded the signing of the India Declaration for a Shared Humanity (see Appendix 2). I had asked three participants to speak briefly: Professor Balwant Singh Dhillon (Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar), Professor Hossein Godazgar (Principal and Vice-Chancellor Al‑Maktoum College of Higher Education, Dundee, UK), and Porsiana Beatrice (Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics, University of St. Andrews, Scotland). The speeches reflected the support to any interfaith activity given by the Sikh community aspect that Professor Dhillon emphasized. For he mentioned that it had always been the spirit of the Sikh community to welcome anybody who was not a Sikh to their temples and to give food and shelter to pilgrims and those in need. Indeed, Professor Dhillon invited me in June 2016 to the Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar to give a talk about shared humanity. Professor Godazgar emphasized the contribution of  multiculturalism by his Muslim institution and the possibilities  of  the discussion of ideas at any given time. I thought myself that the issue of multiculturalism was an important one within inter-faith because ethnic labels within society do not necessarily relate to a religious practice. Thus, I consider Professor Godazgar a Muslim because he is an ethnic Muslim from Iran, but he does not necessarily follow all practices of a certain kind of  Islam regarding prayers at the mosque or the possible rejection  of a Western life and values of individual freedom or secularism in general. Porsiana Beatrice spoke of issues of multi‑religious belonging, that is the issue of those who practice more than one religion in their daily lives, for example Christianity and Buddhism.

Beside the Ghats of Varanasi On 10 June the Unification Ensemble moved from Delhi to Varanasi, from the capital city of contemporary India to the holy

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city of the Hindus. It wasn’t clear to me if pilgrims were going to be at home in the city that seems more different and strange to Westerners, because it is ancient, and because all the shades and aspects of Hinduism and Hindu practice are represented and performed within the city. In her seminal work on Banaras, Diana L. Eck has described two central aspects of the immortalization of the city of Kāshī – the Luminous, the City of Light: ‘Long flights of stone steps called ghāts, reaching like roots into the river, bring thousands of worshippers down to the river to bathe at dawn’, and ‘from the perspective of the river, there is vision of transcendence and liberation, which Hindus call moksha’.9 Varanasi, the city of Shiva, was the home founded by the ascetic of the mountains who leaving his perpetual state of meditation married Pārvatī, daughter of the Himalayas, and of all beautiful places on earth to reside he chose the city of Varanasi. The city became so associated with the Lord Shiva that later his followers described Kashi as the ‘original ground’ where Shiva and Parvati stood at the beginning of creation and where at the end all creation would return in the fire of time’s end.10 The idea of the Unification Ensemble was to visit the sacred sights and to be present at the fire ceremony, performed every evening at the ghats of the city. The following morning, Sunday 11 June, there was an introduction to the Upanishads and the sacredness of the city and the river.11 Pilgrims were eager and restless; thus, they quickly went into the heat of the city looking for a quick sensorial appreciation of places and sights. They returned at lunch time with the sense that there was nothing to see. Indeed, I said there is little to see and to rationalize. There is lots to do and to acquire through the soul and the senses. My life companion and I visited the Gandhi Temple in Varanasi where we could experience the coolness of the temple as well as the hospitality of its keeper and 9 Eck, Banaras, p.3. 10 Eck, Banaras, p.94. 11 The Upanishads, a collection of sayings, also known as the end of the Vedas, remain important texts for those involved in reflections and meditations about the nature of Brahman and the development of the Vedic rituals into a philosophical system of non-duality.

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an old man in the bookshop who, while selling us a brochure in Spanish and some postcards, explained to us what the temple meant for those who came to ask the gods for a fuller life. The initial plan had been to walk to the Ghats, but in the end the whole group took a boat down the river that brought us to the scenes of all Ghats and finally located us in front of the Dashāshvamedha Ghāt, one of the main Ghats where the fire ceremony was to be performed. The boat travelled down the river in a couple of hours and pilgrims were able to see all the different Ghats, including those two where cremations take place, and the different temples associated with sacred myths and places of worship in Varanasi. The diversity of the group meant that different pilgrims while seating on the upper deck of the boat talked or remained in silence according to what was happening on the shores of the river. It was hot, but there was a heat that came from the advancement of many boats towards the Ghats that were finally positioned an hour or so before the priests started the ceremony of fire. Within Vedic Hinduism, according to Christopher Bartley, ‘ritual performance orders, sustains and perpetuates the universe, creating new time and ensuring the regular succession of the seasons’.12 The fire ceremony (aarti) conforms to such rituals and can be performed several times a day by the Vedic priests, but it always symbolizes the end of a prayers (puja). Thus, the large fire ceremonies for thousands of pilgrims to the Ganges River mark the end of the day light, and they dominate the end of the daily prayers until the morning when a new aarti would mark the start of the day. Aarti is said to have descended from the Vedic concept of fire rituals, or homa. In the traditional aarti ceremony, the flower represents the earth (solidity), the water and accompanying handkerchief correspond with the water element (liquidity), the ghee or oil lamp represents the fire component (heat), the peacock fan conveys the precious quality of air (movement), and the 12 Bartley, C. (2015) An Introduction to Indian Philosophy: Hindu and Buddhist Ideas from Original Sources. London and New Delhi: Bloomsbury Academic, p.10.

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yak‑tail fan represents the subtle form of ether (space). The incense represents a purified state of mind, and one’s rationality is offered through the adherence to rules of timing and order of offerings. Thus, one’s entire existence and all facets of material creation are symbolically offered to the Lord via the aarti ceremony. The word may also refer to the traditional Hindu devotional song that is sung during the ritual. However, the purpose of performing aarti is the waving of lighted wicks before the deities in a spirit of humility and gratitude, while faithful followers become immersed in God’s divine form. It symbolizes the five elements: space (akash), wind (vayu), fire (agni), water (jal) and earth (prithvi). The pilgrims witnessed the enormous variety of songs that the Hindu pilgrims were singing in two adjacent Ghats, while until the evening brought darkness pilgrims were bathing in the river. The intention was to remember Raymon Panikkar who had lived for years in Varanasi and had left many students who studied under him.13 The flowers with candle-lanterns were deposited on the  water, and many single lights reflected on the sacred waters of  the river. As the ceremony was coming to an end, the boat brought us back to the beginning of the river, where some pilgrims still dipped their toes in the river. A great and long day was coming to an end, and the experience of Varanasi brought tranquility and peace to a group of several religions that had not only witnessed the ritual happenings at the sacred river, but they also had had the intention of doing it with pilgrims of other religions and other countries represented within the group. It was time to move from the river to the sacred mountains of the Himalayas, and the following morning the pilgrims made their way to Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi and from there in a small plane to the hills of Dharamsala in the Himalayas, the home of the 14th Dalai Lama. It was in Dharamsala that the India Declaration for a Shared Humanity was signed again, as it had been signed in New Delhi and Varanasi. 13 His studies of Hinduism at Varanasi were published as Panikka, Hinduism, Part I.

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Conversations in Oman The visit to the Sultanate of Oman was completely unexpected, and a very welcoming return to the desired communion between Christians and Muslims during Ramadan of 2017. Ramadan is kept at the very public level in Oman, where a muslim majority attends prayers at the mosques. June is a hot month with high temperatures, but with the commonality of the solidarity of human beings expressed by Pope Francis in the message for the end of Ramadan (E ‘Id al-Fitr 1437 H): ‘the world is a “common home”, a dwelling for all members of the human family. Therefore, no one person, nation or people can impose exclusively their understanding of our planet’.14 We visited the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque led by Mohammed Al Hinai who together with his father and extended family organized the visit to Oman. The grandiose architecture, carpets, chandeliers and minarets speak of the great care for a large place of prayer. The building of the Grand Mosque was the desire of Sultan Qaboos, and the building was started in 1994 and completed in 2001.15 Together with Mohammed Al Hinai we prayed facing the gate that points to the two directions central to any dialogue: the gate in direction to Mecca and that in the direction of Jerusalem. It was a place of peace as we visited outside the main prayer times and only a few tourists and guards were on sight. From the Grand Mosque, we went to the ministries building where we met with Mohammed Al Hinai’s father, and together we visited and had a conversation with the Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed al Salimi.16 He spoke warmly of his past encounters with academics such as Professors Hans Küng and Jon Esposito. At the meeting, he gave me some of his works, and it is within this section that I want to explore some of them, because he not only has given a life of service within 14 Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, ‘Christians and Muslims: Caring for our Common Home’ -Message for the End of Ramadan E’Id al-Fitr 1437 H. / 2017 A.D., Vatican 19 May 2017. 15 For a virtual tour see http://sultanqaboosgrandmosque.com 16 The meeting took place at HE office at the ministry on Sunday 18 June 2017.

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the Omani government but has been a prolific academic who has been invited to speak at significant academic and church venues in Europe. He was born in 1962 into a family of erudite ‘ulemas’ from  the line of Salimi, assuming his ministerial office in 1997 following the drive for religious tolerance and understanding that has been the policy of the Sultanate of Oman since 1970.17 His grandfather, Shaikh Nur El Din Salimi, was one of the main thinkers behind the revival of religious thought and the study of Oman while HE’s father was a historian.18 Thus, within a very troubled and violent Middle East, Oman has managed to emphasize the Ibadi principles of religious tolerance, with a government that has been hospitable to other peoples and other religions within a spirit of religious tolerance. Thus, the Sultanate has more than 50  linguistic and confessional congregations, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs as well as Buddhists, Sunni and Shia Muslims.19 In 1997 the Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs changed name to the Ministry of Religious Affairs. Since then he has been involved in a series of activities, mostly academic, publishing and of an interfaith nature that have not only made Ibadism known to outsiders but has enhanced the possibility of understanding and cooperation between Muslims and Christian scholars.20 His thinking on interfaith dialogue has diversified and considered events that have taken place around the world such as the attack on the US on 9/11, developments in US policy, developments in Vatican policy, the blaming of Islam for violence against the US, and even the unfortunate lecture delivered by Pope 17 Ziaka, ‘Introduction’, p.153. 18 Nizami, F.A. (2012) ‘Introduction’, in Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work: An Open Vision for a New World. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, p. 6. 19 Any recognized group need to register at the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs. 20 As a recognition in 2010 Sultan Qaboos awarded HE Alrusoukh (Firmness) Medal Grade I. In 2012 the Queen of the Netherlands awarded him the Order of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and in 2002 the President of Egypt Arab Republic awarded him a medal of Science and Literature, see Ziaka, ‘Introduction’, p.156.

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Benedict XVI, who by using a character portray of Islam in the Middle Ages angered the Sheikh of Al Azhar, who sent a letter to the Vatican rebuking the Pope. However, through all these speeches, seven of them published in a single multi-lingual volume, he analysed without apologizing the rising of fundamentalism in the difficult context, for example, of the military.21 One of his many important contributions refers to the issue of violence on the part of Islam. For if one considers conversations about Islam after 9/11 the issue of jihad as a war against infidels has come to many. In general, those who listen to such questions would agree that a religious text could not call to kill, but sadly, as Pope Benedict did, one returns to the Crusades and starts assuming that jihad is a violent war. Not for him who in discussing haram, thus what is prohibited in Islam, includes violence.22 Even when, as he would remind us, advocates of violence in the name of religion would have another interpretation for him: ‘it is also haram to adopt extreme positions aimed at politicizing religion, whatever the supposed excuse might be’.23 Thus, once the issue of violence is settled as forbidden then the edifice of dialogue and cooperation can be built. For the beginning of such a search for a Muslim is the call by the Qur’an to a two-fold approach in the relationship between Muslims and People of the Scripture. Firstly, there is a call to People of the Scripture to join Muslims in worshipping the One God (Q. 3:64), and secondly, there is a call to treat Christians fairly for ‘We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we

21 Shaikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Salimi, ‘The Influence of Religion on Strategic Decision-Making: Some Reflections on the Present Day Situation’ – Speech at the National Defense College, Muscat, 24 October 2013. Seven speeches are published in Salimi (2016), Religious Tolerance: A Vision for a New World, edited with an introduction by Angeliki Ziaka. Hildesheim, Zürich and New York: Georg Olms Verlag. 22 Al Salimi, ‘The Influence of Religion on Strategic Decision-Making’, Religious Tolerance, p.244. 23 Al Salimi, ‘The Influence of Religion on Strategic Decision-Making’, Religious Tolerance, p.244.

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have submitted (as Muslims)’ (Q. 29:46).24 For HE this two-fold principle comes out of a ‘sharing’ by Muslims and the People of the Scriptures that brings another principle: ‘people must deal with each other on an equal footing in terms of humanity, dignity and justice’.25 For HE there should not be superiority between Muslims and the People of the Scripture and the worshipping of other lords rather than God would indicate such divisions so ‘that none of us shall take others as lords besides God’ (Q. 3:64). Thus, equality towards others comes from that submission to God as Muslims (cf. Q. 3:64). What follows such principles of belief in God and respect towards others is the development of an approach with a fair representation of the history and creeds of Christian groups that would set markers for a respectful treatment of Christians.26 For Christians showed respect for the Scriptures and carried out good deeds even when ‘committing errors in good faith’. However, they were sent messengers: ‘We sent, after them, Jesus, the son of Mary, and bestowed on him the Gospel. And We ordained in the hearts of those who followed him, compassion and mercy’ (Q. 57:26–27). Christians are called by the Qur’an ‘rebellious transgressors’. However, the Islamic ‘calling’ and the Christian proselytizing bear witness to God and involve others ‘in divine goodness – basically in terms of the values that both observe’.27 As a result, and in explaining theologically the strife between Muslims and Christians, HE returns to the wrongness of the forbidden ‘seeking of lordship’ whereby violence in the name of Islam is forbidden because of the commonality between Muslims and Christians so that the Qur’anic mandate stands firm regardless of history: ‘… that none of us shall take each other as lords besides God’ (Q. 3:64).28 Another reason for the 24 Al Salimi, Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed (2012) Belief and Righteous Work: An Open Vision for a New World. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies., p.11. 25 Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.12. 26 Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.13. 27 Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.15. 28 Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.16.

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clash between Muslims and Christians has been their universal spread and their great numbers.29 Historically there was a period between the ninth and sixteenth centuries in which a cooperation that almost became a partner­ ship took place between three great civilizations: the Islamic, the Chinese and the Christian–European.30 It was only after the sixteenth century that the return to the Greek and the Roman imperial eras divided such partnership in the name of expanding empires. However, HE recognizes that European dominance was not only military but cultural and that Christianity as a shaped cultural and Romanized religion became the source of the clashes with other religions as hegemony rejected past experiences of respect and partnership.31 Thus, as a Muslim scholar cited without name by HE said: ‘the fact is that it is not the Romans (i.e. the Europeans) that were Christianized; rather, it is Christianity that has been Romanized’.32 Colonialism included a process of cultural hegemony on Muslims in Africa and Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it was only at the advent of the Cold War and World War II that Christian churches contacted Muslim communities worried about the atheist states that were oppressing Christian and Muslim believers. The Muslim response requested a challenge of Western hegemony and moves towards Muslim recognition 29 Regarding numbers it is plausible to suggest that Hinduism has also provided large numbers and influences but that Hinduism as having been absent from Europe in the beginnings of modernity was colonially excluded from its effect on many millions of people. The same stands for Buddhism in all its forms. 30 HE relies here on the work of the historian Toby Huff, see: Huff, T. (2011) Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; and Huff, T. (2017) The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, third edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 31 Scholars of colonialism such as Valentin Mudimbe and those Christian theologians of inculturation such as Aylward Shorter would agree with HE in that within the expansion of Christianity cultural traits of European and Roman thought prevailed over what it was Christianity with its Gospel so that the colonial Christianity that was encountered after the sixteenth century was a colonial construct of oppression rather than the Gospel values of freedom. 32 Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, pp.24–25.

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in Palestine and Kashmir. If different responses were given HE acknowledges that the recognition of Islam as an Abrahamic region came with the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).33 Further, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought together a response against Communism by Muslims and Christians. However, the US response included the unfortunate understanding of a ‘clash of civilizations’ and new tendencies towards hegemony.34 The perception towards Islam as opposed to the West grew with the use of expressions such as the ‘Green Danger’, ‘Clash of Civilizations’, and ‘Risks of Fanaticism and Fundamentalism’. Western hegemony was seen as the only solution for Islamic fundamentalism and the attacks on the USA by Al-Qaeda on 9/11 strengthened the possibility that Islam was a risk to the West. For HE the last two decades have been dominated by a literature and conversation on conflict as if Islam did not have values of openness, tolerance and democracy. In HE’s analysis he suggests that ‘perhaps those policies of conflict were the ones that, over the last two decades, led to the delay in imagining and achieving peaceful transformation’.35 The possibilities of Muslims and Christians together come, according to HE, from the call to believe and to do good. A system of values for the common good brings common recognition and a system that protects humanitarian issues such as the right to live, the right to think, the right to religion, the right to reproduction, and the right to property.36 It could be that at the level of the state or political level these rights are ignored but at the level of religious and ethical responsibility there are internal motives and commitments that make such deeds good. These commitments, according to HE, ‘include intent, freedom, choice, conscious motives and goals’.37 For HE the contemporary world is different from before as great powers such as China, India, Japan, Indonesia, Turkey and 33 34 35 36 37

Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.26. Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.27. Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.28. Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.29. Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.29.

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Brazil are arising, thus providing a world that is ‘multipolar’ rather than the ‘unipolar’ that creates conflicts and wars.38 Within this multipolar world Muslims and Christians can work on a common shared enterprise for the world, and HE suggests four points of cooperation: 1. A study to understand divisions is needed, despite unity on belief and a value system. HE suggests that hegemony would most probably be the result of such a study. Thus, a commitment to a value-based system is needed not only from Muslims and Christians but by the whole world with values such as equality, dignity, freedom, compassion, justice, acquaintance, and public good. HE suggests a ‘coalition of civilizations’ seeking consensus rather than hegemony.39 2. A pluralistic set of values for the world requires insistence on differences, recognition, amicability and embarking on religious and ethical values. Humanity for HE aspires to live a universal order with equal and cooperative partners. Such pluralism should include all parties from all continents.40 3. Muslims need to review the work of Muslim religious clerics and scholars. Some of this erroneous work has led to ‘negative radicalism’. He suggests that followers of the Abrahamic religions cannot deal any longer with old realities but need a new vision.41 4. A new vision, proposed by HE, requires Muslim and Christians to rethink, reform and process with a new vision towards monotheism, to apply an unexploited economic exchange system, multipolar politics and ethical responsibility.42 38 39 40 41 42

Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, p.31. Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, pp.32–33. Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, pp.33–34. Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, pp.34–35. Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work, pp.35–36.

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The contribution by HE Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed al Salimi certainly ensembles the possibilities of dialogue at a global level and within the realms of public policy. For a group of pilgrims to India and a musical ensemble through the silk route, as outlined within this chapter, create the foundations for a larger project. Such a project is the return to the sources of humanity, the Absolute, to strengthen the foundations for a shared humanity. I cannot but remind myself of Noah’s ark and how diverse species and humans went into the ark protected by God to appear not in the past and gone Garden of Eden but at the futuristic clear sky of peacefulness after the storm. Maybe many arks are needed, and an important one took the journey from New Delhi to the Himalayas via Varanasi in June 2017. Other arks will take to the choppy waters in the future, very much together with the lessons of Partition and with the presence of the Absolute, the God of All in mind.

CONCLUSION

Towards a Theology of Restitution It is telling that the Hindu masters and those practising around them did not blame an Absolute for the possibilities or impossibilities of a happy human life. The Absolute remains, and human beings have the choices to kill or to return to the Absolute where we all come from. The possibilities and the ethics of human immersion and theological warmth can be highlighted by the Brihadaranyaka: You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is. So is your destiny.1 But destinies within human conflicts such as Partition and the Holocaust in the twentieth century connected humans to desires that were not the choice of those who were victims. Other human beings attacked and killed in the name of their own desires. Thus, and in the context of the Holocaust, art treasures were stolen by the Nazis. Those treasures in the art market were worth millions in terms of objects of desire for those who collected art. However, in terms of the relation between human beings, their memories and their homes they were priceless. Paintings hang on walls of family homes, and they become part of the learning process of children as part of a family history that is sometimes narrated through a painting. In religious terms, the history of religious traditions and the tapestries that hung on walls relate to manifestations of the divine nature and the possibilities of inter-connectiveness with the Absolute. Thus, years later, and when they grow up, children can

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remember the location and meaningful nature of such paintings which in the case of portraits narrate personal and family histories. For example, in the 2015 film Woman in Gold Helen Mirren plays the character of Maria Altmann, a Jewish Austrian who had emigrated to the United States when her family was being arrested and  sent to the extermination camps by the Nazis in Vienna. The Nazis  had stolen from the family apartment a painting by Gustav Klimt with the title of ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer’ (aka The Woman in Gold and the Lady in Gold). Maria Altmann wanted it back, arguing very strongly that despite laws and the lack of documentation about the painting the ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch‑Bauer’ belonged to her family, and therefore as her relatives were dead it belonged to her through inheritance. The painting had been painted during Klimt’s ‘Golden Phase’, a period that was marked by positive critical reactions towards his work and financial success. Many of his paintings from this period included gold leaf and Klimt had previously used gold in his ‘Pallas Athene’ (1898) and Judith I (1901), although the works most popularly associated with this period are the ‘Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I’ (1907) and ‘The Kiss’ (1907–08). There is no doubt that Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer is a very beautiful painting and an expensive one but Maria Altmann wanted it back for reasons of family memory more  than judicial restitution of damage after it became a stolen good by the Nazis. Can we restitute our memories? Can we manage to repay the  loss of the womb, the loss of the possibility of returning to the innocence of water, the safety of wombs and the safety of the Sacred Womb, the Absolute? For it is the immortality taken from us that we seek. Immortality, in the wrong sense understood as safety, unchangeable safety. But the safety of the Absolute is the safety of movement, of change, of an ongoing movement towards others and inwardly into our absolute soul. Can we re-discern sacred texts to regain the equality of male and female? I would argue that we can by re-examining texts related to women and the actual manifestation of Bramah. For example,

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texts from the Mānava Dharmasāstra (MDh), the authoritative Manu’s Code of Law, where Chapter 3 on marriage states: Where women are revered, there the gods rejoice; but where they are not, no rite bears any fruit. Where female relatives grieve, that family soon comes to ruin; but where they do not grieve, it always prospers. When female relatives, not receiving due reverence, curse any house, it comes to total ruin, as if struck down by witchcraft. (MDh 3.56–58)2

Regarding the plausible re-interpretation of these texts it would be possible to expand and critically assess the challenges and contributions of Hindu theologians who have suggested that social institutions of the past can be re-thought within an analysis of the text and that even the manifestation of Bramah as a person can also be explored once and again. Without the respect given to textual analysis and text within Hinduism it would be very difficult to change cultural perceptions of the family and the role of women within a family and within society by solely invoking humanly agreed laws of equality, as central as they are for conceptions of natural law and socio-cultural institutions. Such togetherness in the dialogue of change between religions becomes a must, in that issues of a shared humanity require a foundation of justice that is not an interference with cultural practices but a common search for an ongoing search for means to recognize more fully the presence of the Absolute in the human. Dialogue is no more than an expression of togetherness that begins with the simple act of exchanging a word and holding hands in friendship. Thus, the words by Pope Francis to the meeting of Christians and Muslims at the Vatican in May 2016: ‘Dialogue is going out of ourselves, with a word to hear the word of the other. The two words meet, two thoughts meet. It is the first step of a journey. Following this meeting of the word, hearts meet and begin 2

I use Olivelle’s 2005 translation of Manu’s Code of Law.

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a dialogue of friendship which ends with holding hands. Word, hearts, hands. It’s simple! A little child knows how to do it’.3 And one could wonder why dialogue comes into any reflection on multiple religious belonging. Indeed, the belonging poses the greatest challenge because God’s boundaries are enormous and God who was in silence at the beginning must wonder why we try  to make the boundaries of the Kingdom of God smaller and tighter to suit our own sense of purity and belonging. Thus, the focusing on inter-faith dialogue provokes the possibility of challenging our own belonging to God. Who is God for us? Is he or she the God of one single community or many? Is God the God of Christians or the God of Hindus, the Absolute? Or is God the metaphysical representation of ourselves in the nothingness of the beyond? The road ahead will tell if we keep ourselves together on the road with those who belong to different religions.

3 ‘Final Declaration of the Colloquium in Rome of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (R.I.I.F.S.)’, Holy See Press Office N.0322 7 May 2016.

APPENDIX 1

The St. Andrews Declaration for a Shared Humanity The first ‘Declaration’ on a shared humanity was signed on 23 September 2016 at the University of St. Andrews in the context of a conference on silence in Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. Thus, religious leaders, diplomats, academics, members of faith communities, school representatives, members of NGOs and interfaith practitioners gathered at St. Andrews in Scotland to publicly assert the basic common denominator of all members of faith communities, of all those who are atheists or agnostics, including Buddhists and Hindus, indeed the whole of humanity. Any encounter be it religious or purely humanistic requires the will to do so. In that will there is the firm purpose of accepting similarities and differences, diverse actions and diverse traditions, knowing that by accepting that God is the Absolute and that the Absolute has millions of manifestations we can encounter some of those human manifestations along the road. It was at Arunachala Hermitage and in the context of prayer that I wrote in November 2015 the basics of what such will of journeying together could be. I knew that the central encounter on a journey happens within a mystical language, the language of God that many times cannot be embodied by the human language, the everyday language of our human encounter. Within such predication of human language, I chose some basic texts that are central to the main religions of this world, texts that divide us, but texts that are recited, believed and treasured within our common journey, a journey that unites us. The ‘Declaration’ sets the parameter of human beings as equals in a journey, not in isolation but with others, and the final text was first published 143

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in  electronic form as part of the inter-faith year that coincided with the 2015–2016 academic year at St. Andrews.1 The ‘Declaration’ published in a shorter form in June 2016 was expanded with just one more paragraph that included a Sikh text after my visit to Guru Nanak Dev University in Amritsar, Punjab, India during that same month. Thus, the second version of the ‘St. Andrews Declaration’ with the addition of paragraph 7, read as follows: 1. We declare that human beings are born equal and that they all share hopes and aspirations, paths of fulfilment, paths of suffering, and dreams within a common journey as human beings. 2. We declare that human beings share the freedom to follow particular paths of life within the rights and obligations shared by all and contributing to the common good of humanity. 3. We declare our respect and good-will towards all religious traditions that follow a path towards peace, common cooperation, and goodness. 4. We share a common path towards the Absolute and as such we recognize the diversity of paths, texts and traditions that we intend to respect and foster their respect in others. 5. ‘For sentient beings, poor and destitute, may I become a treasure ever plentiful, and lie before them closely in their reach, a varied source of all that they might need’ (Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva III, 10). 6. ‘OM. This eternal Word is all: what was, what is and what shall be, and what beyond is in eternity. All is OM’ (Mandukya Upanishad).

1 http://www.yearofinterfaithdialogue.com

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7. ‘Blessed is the season when I remember You. Blessed is that work which is done for You. Blessed is that heart in which You dwell, O Giver of all. O my God! You are the Universal Father of us all. You dwell deep within each and every heart. All share in Your Grace; none are beyond You.’ (Sri Guru Granth Sahib, p.97). 8. ‘Shema Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad – barukh shem kevod malkhuto le’olam va’ed’ (Deuteronomy 6:4–9). 9. ‘In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful, Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’ (al-Fatihah). 10. ‘May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me’ (John 17:21). 11. We declare that as brothers and sisters we can share our joy, peace and happiness with all human beings through our daily prayer and meditation. (M.I. Aguilar July 2016)

The Declaration was launched in the morning of Friday 23 September 2016 at the University of St. Andrews coinciding with the conference ‘Silence, Texts and Service: Towards a Christian, Hindu and Buddhist Dialogue’. The event was attended by senior members of the Christian Churches, the Catholic Church, Hindu communities from the UK and India, senior Buddhist monks and an Edinburgh Imam. The 130-strong religious delegation from 19 countries was joined by 32 school pupils from Fife, Scotland, and three school children from Canada. The Declaration signed in public suggested that religion is not a problem for society but that it is the solution to isolate those who have been radicalized and do not contribute to the cooperation within society expected by faith communities.

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For the records of history, the following were the words I addressed to those participating in the signing ceremony and those who followed the ceremony via the internet: Venerable Abbot Rimpoche, Imam Yahya, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, representatives of Pope Francis and of H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama, members of the delegations from Austria, Canada, Norway and India, Master of the United College, Principal of St. Mary’s College, Fr.  Clooney  SJ, distinguished excellencies, fellow pilgrims and fellow human beings. I would like to greet those who are following our gathering through the internet, particularly those at the Vatican [Papa Francisco, un gran abrazo], in Norway, and  at the hills of Dharamsala, Tashi Delek! I welcome you to the University of St. Andrews, the first university of Scotland, a place that has fostered dialogue and academic colloquia for the past 600 years. It has been my dream and desire that we should meet in St. Andrews to continue conversations that began over the past few years, particularly in India. Those of you coming from Amritsar would know my joy of having spent time with you last June and having visited the Golden Temple and two institutions of dialogue and learning. I am very thankful and moved by the response of more than one hundred guests who have arrived to share reflections, to learn from each other, to start a way of ongoing cooperation, to pray together for peace and understanding and to dispense greetings beside the St. Andrews Pier to many fellow human beings that will gather in India next year. In gathering together, we suggest publicly to civil society that members of faith communities have a lot to offer to contemporary society, that the practice of an honest path of symbolic belonging brings cooperation, peace and understanding to our own societies, nations  and the contemporary world. The path of violence and hate is not our path and it cannot be the path that arises out of reading sacred texts, prayer and meditation. Your choice of  being present has not been easy. That I know. With many of you I have shared pilgrimages, conversations,

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meals and mutual understanding. The signing of the St. Andrews Declaration for a Shared Humanity is the affirmation that we agree on disagreeing but that in our diversity and our different paths we can agree that at the basic level we are all human beings. Through the 11 paragraphs of the Declaration we call upon our fellow human beings to adhere to this basic tenant and to respect all human beings and all sentient beings. During the conversations that will follow the signing of the St. Andrews Declaration we will examine the contribution of silence within Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism. These three traditions proclaim the centrality of the action for other human beings, all sentient beings, and our planet as well as the cosmos. This common journey departs from a single way of material life and through the principles of metaphysical causation and the inclusion of all human beings shares the joy and the suffering of all sentient beings through respect, compassion and a common understanding. If we sign a document it is to express a common understanding, our walking together visiting each other and praying together continues as it already started. This is a journey that continues because it has already started in the places where we live our daily lives and will continue through periodic encounters in each other’s symbolic spaces. In a year’s time, we will be gathering in India to sign the India Declaration in the land of Hinduism and where the Tibetan Buddhist community and the Christian Churches have also found a home. A common silence during our journey will become our common language. For it is through silence and the calming of my unwanted emotions that I wait for another human being and this visitor becomes a divine presence and a visiting manifestation of the divine. Silence provides the creative movement of opening to others in which otherness becomes closeness and closeness becomes happiness. Through the St. Andrews Declaration, we reject the misuse of our dear symbolic systems for violence, hate, and exclusion. Killing, hate and violence contradict completely the tenants of our religious beliefs and of our way of life and we condemn such violence. It is never acceptable to harm another human being, it is never acceptable to harm a sentient being,

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it is never acceptable to harm mother earth or Mama Ganga. We seek refuge in the possibility of meditating together and through the active engagement with public society to do good, and to generate positive energies, dialogue and understanding. We serve the poor and the marginalized through our places of worship and we embrace others because of their beauty and sanctity. This morning our solidarity goes to those who wanted to be present but couldn’t come and those who feared that by being associated with the signing of the Declaration they and their families would be harmed. Among us there are wise and holy religious leaders, great teachers and students of this university, researchers and fellow human beings. But we have invited those who represent the hope of peace for the nations. Thus, I welcome the representatives of the secondary schools in the Kingdom of Fife. Take this opportunity to share our commitment to peace and understanding with others, show your happiness through your selfies and social networks because it is you who now can make the difference towards a more inclusive and ethical world. I also welcome our Canadian pilgrims from Quebec. You have insisted that Canadians wanted to take part and I am delighted that we can welcome the youngest signatories of the Declaration: Charles and Pierre, bienvenou! This is an academic endeavour in which we will fight ignorance through knowledge and we will come to learn other ways, other texts and other silences because it is through knowledge and the discussion of ideas that our humanity can feel a basic togetherness.

APPENDIX 2

The India Declaration for a Shared Humanity It was in Amritsar, India and after visiting the Golden Temple, a sacred place for the Sikhs, that I wrote in dialogue with my life companion the India Declaration for a Shared Humanity during June 2016. In Amritsar where the massacre of Indian civilians under the British Raj had taken place and where the violence of the partition of India divided Hindus and Muslims I prayed hard for peace and unity among human beings on the same journey. The final text was reached with two corrections in form after a conversation with Ramesh Babu and family and with the wise and patient advise of Kabir Babu. The signing of the ‘India Declaration’, during June 2017, in Delhi, Amritsar, and Dharamsala, followed the same pattern of thought, prayer and contemplation of the St. Andrews Declaration: a common humanity on a common journey of a shared symbolic significance with material and textual differences but made in common. The text as corrected in conversation with Kabir Babu read as follows: India Declaration for a Shared Humanity (2017) 1. We locate ourselves today in India Mother and path of all religions And secular experiences. 2. We locate ourselves in the land Of many religions and many philosophies And together we proclaim A shared common humanity.

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3. We embrace those who suffer Particularly those who suffer Any kind of unjust violence And discrimination in the name of religion. 4. We greet the Absolute as our guide As our principle and together we seek Human and spiritual immortality. 5. We stand with India, the land of Gandhiji And the land of Mother Theresa of Kolkata And we seek to embrace the poor, The marginalized and the oppressed. 6. May the OM TAT TA resound In our hearts and in the hearts of All Indians as bearers of a shared humanity. 7. May our lives, prayers and meditations From Kashmir to Kanyakumari Give praise to the Absolute and Eternal. 8. We stand together for a future understanding of peoples And we pledge our thoughts and actions To foster peace and religious understanding. 9. May India remain a sign of all history And all future history of peace and human understanding. OM TAT TA Amen Mario I Aguilar Written in Amritsar June 2016

APPENDIX 3

A Woman’s Declaration for a Shared Humanity

A Woman’s Declaration for a Shared Humanity We receive, we listen to the other, the different person, in his novelty and irreducibility. Our Shared Humanity unites and differentiates us within a community of exceptional singularities in touch with one another. May our ever new and ever old human relationships multiply and infinitely proliferate. We do not claim to know the other, however, we long to meet him, relate to him, share dreams, hopes, aspirations, prayers, endeavours. We are eager to brotherly and sisterly listen, observe and offer our gifts, strengths, and humanity, which we universally and willingly embrace throughout all its expressions of energy, power and fragility. We do our best to offer our presence, communion and action where required. May our courage guide our decisions, the ones needed to shape today and the future as expressions of our brotherhood and sisterhood, as expressions of that communion which joyfully celebrates the generative prosperity of the difference, kindness, tenderness and love uniting humanity without making it uniform. 151

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Therefore, we hope for death not to surprise any of us as abandoned or outcast since our purpose is to appreciate, collaborate and listen to one another, in hope, love and freedom of faith. There is no ugliness in diversity; we wish not for a virtually filtered encounter with the other, we rather wish for a real encounter, thus, avoiding collisions and receiving surprises. We do not claim to hold the Truth, nonetheless, we desire it, we seek for it, we yearn for it: a Truth without prefixes, adjectives and opposites, since we believe it embraces what may be perceived as contradictory and paradoxical. We respect and love those who suffer and shall do our best to foster the repairing and saving processes, as we regard suffering as an experience to cherish for ourselves as well. We do not fear contradictions, for they are the otherness within ourselves and within other persons: we consider them as the irreducible difference emerging from the genuine encounter with ourselves and other human beings. We wish to openly encounter the other, both when this openness leads to a mutual enrichment and when it fractures our convictions and prejudices. The Humanity we share is not anonymous, it always has a face: a unique and unpredictable face, as well as an irreducible, unprecedented, individual story rich in occurrences and experiences.

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The Humanity we share is neither assimilating, nor subjugating, but liberating, for the difference is not reduced to the same, the new is not reduced to the old, it finds free expression of its uniqueness instead within the encounter and communion we wish to establish. We have no aim, no target therefore, we expect no advantages or damages, but the willingness to encounter the other, share our humanity in communion with him, and creatively being transformed by it. We ardently believe that our Shared Humanity is an inexhaustible source of possibilities, and, consequently, hope. Our Shared Humanity is an acknowledgment of plural perspectives, hence, it is not definitely definable. We recognise that our Shared Humanity needs, sometimes, our silence, especially when words divide us and impoverish creativity, contemplation, possibilities, desires and differences. Silence, instead, may allow us to listen to the other and having our thoughts creatively transformed by this encounter. Our Shared Humanity is the joyful hope of growth, development, expressive liberation and life. Our Shared Humanity is not an established institution or a powerful institution to be established. Our Shared Humanity is a synergy which fosters, through encounters and relationships, the experiences of the singularities in communion with one another.

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Our Shared Humanity escapes from attempts of normalization, since it unites us without any claim of making us uniform, it is a joyful discovery and continuous exploration, it is the experience of the apparently nonsensical casual encounter that is able to donate sense, hope and love to life. Porsiana Beatrice Written in Royal Leamington Spa (England) July 2017

REFERENCES (1995) Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance. London: African Rights. Aguilar, M.I. (2009), Theology, Liberation, Genocide: A Theology of the Periphery. London: SCM Press. Aguilar, M.I. (2015) Religion, Torture and the Liberation of God. New York and London: Routledge. Aguilar, M.I. (2016) Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves and Sacred Rivers: Christian–Hindu Monastic Dialogue in India 1950–1993. London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Ahmed, S. (2009) ‘Exhibition in Karachi explores tensions of Indian partition’, The Telegraph, 2 February. Available at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/ pakistan/4432242/Artists-explore-tensions-of-Indian-partition.html Al Salimi, Shaikh Abdullah bin Mohammed (2012) ‘Belief and Righteous Work: An Open Vision for a New World’. Lecture given at Rhodes House, Oxford, 29 September 2011. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Al Salimi, Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed (2012) Belief and Righteous Work: An Open Vision for a New World. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Al Salimi, Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed (2016) Religious Tolerance: A Vision for a New World, edited with an introduction by Angeliki Ziaka. Hildesheim, Zürich and New York: Georg Olms Verlag. Anand, A. (2017) ‘Note from the Director’, in K. Singh (ed.), Altaf: A Retrospective. New Delhi: DAG Modern. Anderson, P. (2013) The Indian Ideology. London and New York: Verso. Andrews, C.F. (1934) Sadhu Sundar Singh: A Personal Memoir. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Appasamy, A.J. (1958) Sundar Singh: A Biography. London: Lutterworth. Bagchi, J. and Dasgupta, S. (eds) (2007) The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India. Kolkata: Stree Bartley, C. (2015) An Introduction to Indian Philosophy: Hindu and Buddhist Ideas from Original Sources. London and New Delhi: Bloomsbury Academic. Batabyal, R. (2015) Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali 1943–47. New Delhi: Sage Publications India. Bernadac, M. and Du Bouchet, P. (2011) Picasso: Genialidad en el arte. Barcelona: BLUME. Bhalla, A. (2007) Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home. New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brunt, L. (2016) ‘An Eye for an Eye: The Imagery of the 1947 Partition (India, Pakistan)’, in C. Brants, A. Hol, and D. Siegel (eds) Transitional Justice: Images and Memories. London and New York: Routledge. Buhler, G. (trans.) (1886) Laws of Manu. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butalia, U. (2000) The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Int er rel i g i o us Di a l o gu e an d t he Par t it io n o f I nd ia Butalia, U. (ed.) (2015) Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Zubaan and Haryana, India. Cakmak, C. (2017) A Brief History of International Criminal Law and International Criminal Court. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Castiglia, D. (2017) Perfumed Colours: From the Tomato Field of the West to the Gates of the East, From Heaven to Earth, From Earth to Heaven, in a Middle that Does Not Exist. Rome: Logos Universal. Chattopadhyay, S. (2012) An Early Communist: Muzzafar Ahmad in Calcutta 1913– 1929. New Delhi: Tulika Books. Cheetham, D., Pratt, D. and Thomas, D. (2013), Understanding Interreligious Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clooney, F.X. (2005) Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary. New York: Oxford University Press. Clooney, F.X. (2010) Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Clooney, F.X. (2014) His Hiding Place is Darkness: A Hindu-Catholic Theopoetics of Divine Absence. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Debs, M., ‘Using cultural trauma: Ghandi’s assassination, partition and secular nationalism in post-independence India’, Nations and Nationalism 19, 4, pp.635– 653. Eck, D.L. (1993) Banaras: City of Light. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Ellsberg, R. (2001) ‘Introduction’, in T.N. Hanh and D. Berrigan (eds), The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist-Christian Awareness. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Ephgrave, N. (2016) ‘On women’s bodies: Experiences of dehumanization during the Holocaust’, Journal of Women’s History 28, 2, pp.12–32. Fischer-Tiné, H. (1981) ‘Kindly Elders of the Hindu Biradri: The Ārya Samāj’s Struggle for Influence and its effect on Hindu-Muslim Relations, 1880–1925’, in A. Copley (ed.), Gurus and their Followers: New Religious Reform Movements in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. French, P. (1998) Liberty or Death: India’s Journey to Independence and Division. London: Flamingo. Gandhi, M. (2008) Mahatma Gandhi: The Essential Writings, edited with an introduction and notes by Judith M. Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldenberg, M. (1990) ‘Different Horrors, Same Hell: Women Remembering the Holocaust’ in R.S. Gottlieb (ed.) Thinking the Unthinkable: Meanings of the Holocaust. New York: Paulist Press. Great Britain: Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1973) Transfer of Power in India, 1942–47: Bengal Famine and the New Viceroyalty, June 15, 1943 – August 31, 1944. Vol 4: Constitutional Relations between Britain and India. London: Stationary Office Books. Gupta, B.K. (2012) Forgotten Atrocities: Memoirs of a Survivor of the 1947 Partition of India. Raleigh, NC: Lulu Enterprises. Gupta, B.S. (1972) Communism in Indian Politics. New York: Columbia University Press Hanh, T.N. and Berrigan, D. (2001) The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist-Christian Awareness. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Harcourt, W. (ed.) (2017) Bodies in Resistance: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Age of Neoliberalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Heiler, F. (1996) The Gospel of Sadhu Sundar Sing. Delhi: ISPCK.

References van Hensbergen, G. (2005) Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon. London: Bloomsbury. Heward, E. (1994) The Great and the Good: A Life of Lord Radcliffe. Chichester: Barry Rose. Holden, W. (2015) Born Survivors: Three Young Mothers and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage, Defiance and Survival. London: Sphere. Huff, T. (2011) Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huff, T. (2017) The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West, third edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Illman, R. (2014) Art and Belief: Artists Engaged in Interreligious Dialogue. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Iyer, R.N. (ed.) (1986–7) The Moral and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, 3 volumes. Oxford: Calrendon Press. Jadeja, K.D. (2015) ‘The Partition of India and its reflections in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan and Bapsi Sidhwa’s ‘Ice Candy Man: A comparative study’, Holos 31, 3, pp.415–419. Johari, J.C. (1972) Naxalite Politics in India. Delhi: Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies. Jordens, J.T.F. (1981) Swami Shraddhanand: His Life and Causes. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Keay, J. (2001) India: A History. London: HarperCollins, and New Delhi: HarperCollins India. Khan, Y. (2007) The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kothari, R. and Thadani, J. (2016) ‘Sindhi Sikhs in India: The missing people’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 39, 4, pp.873–890. Lockwood, D. (2016) The Communist Party of India and the Indian Emergency. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Long, J.D (2013) ‘Hinduism and the Religious Other’, in D. Cheetham, D. Pratt and D. Thomas (eds), Understanding Interreligious Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mahajan, S. (2000) Independence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Makasuda, S.A. (2008) Gandhi, Nehru and Noakhali. Dhaka, Bangladesh: Mahatma Ghandi Smarak Sadan. Mallik, S.K. (ed.) (2011) Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, 2 Vols. Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery Pvt Ltd. Mansergh, N. (1973) Constitutional Relations between Britain and India: The Transfer of Power 1942–7. Volume IV: The Bengal Famine and the New Viceroyalty 15 June 1943 – 31 August 1944. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Mansergh, N. and Moon, P. (eds) (1982) Constitutional Relations between Britain and India, The Transfer of Power 1942–47. Volume XI: The Mountbatten Viceroyalty – Announcement and Reception of the 3 June Plan, 31 May – 7 July 1947. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Masani, M.R. (1954) The Communist Party of India: A Short History. New York: Verschoyle, in association with the Institute of Pacific Relations. de Mello, A. (1988) La oración de la rana. Santander: Editorial Sal Terrae. Mither, P. (2011) ‘Foreword’, in Mallik (ed.) Chittaprosad: A Retrospective 1915–1978, Volume 1. Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery Pvt Ltd.

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Int er rel i g i o us Di a l o gu e an d t he Par t it io n o f I nd ia Moore, C.E. (2005) Sadhu Sundar Singh: Essential Writings. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Mukherjee, J. (2015) Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire. New York: Oxford University Press. Mukerjee, M. (1949) Independence and After: A Collection of the More Important Speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru from September 1946 to May 1949. New Delhi: Government of India. Mukerjee, M. (2010) Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Forgotten Indian Famine of World War II. New York: Basic Books. Nair, M. (2011) Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Narasimhan-Madhavan, D. (2006) ‘Gender, sexuality and violence: Permissible violence against women during the Partition of India and Pakistan’, Hawwa 4, 2–3, pp.396– 416. Nizami, F.A. (2012) ‘Introduction’, in Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Salimi, Belief and Righteous Work: An Open Vision for a New World. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Obermeyer, C.M. (ed.) (2004) Cultural Perspectives on Reproductive Health. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Olivelle, P. (trans.) (2005) Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Mānava-Dharmásāstra. New York: Oxford University Press. Olivelle, P. (trans.) (2009) The Law Code of Manu. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Overstreet, G.D. (1959 [2012]). Communism in India. Bombay: The Perennial Press. Panigrahi, D.N. (2004) India’s Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat. London: Routledge. Panikkar, R. (2004) Christophany: The Fullness of Man. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Panikkar, R. (2015) Opera Omnia II: Religion and Religions. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Panikkar, R. (2016) Hinduism, Part I The Vedic Experience: Mantramanjari. Opera Omnia Volume IV: Hinduism. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Parasher, P.P. (2015) ‘A Long Walk Out from Partition’, in U. Butalia (ed.) Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Zubaan and Haryana, India. Paul, B. (2015) The First Naxal: An Authorised Biography of Kanu Sanyal. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Radcliffe, C. (1947) Report of the Punjab Boundary Commission, Chairman Lord Radcliffe. India, Republic of India: Punjab Commission. Radcliffe, C. (1947) Report of the Bengal Boundary Commission, Chairman Lord Radcliffe. India, Republic of India: Bengal Commission. Radcliffe, C. (1952) The Problem of Power: The Reith Memorial Lectures 1951. London: Secker & Warburg. Radcliffe, C. (1961) Censors: The Rede Lecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rai, R. (2013) Bangladesh: The Price of Freedom. New Delhi: Nigoyi Books. Rambachan, A. (1991) Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Sankara. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Rambachan, A. (2006) The Advaita Worldview: God, World and Humanity. Albany: State University of New York Press. Rambachan, A. (2015) A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two is Not One. Albany: State University of New York Press. Ramsukhdas, S. (1994) How to Lead a Household Life. Gorakhpur: Gita Press.

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Int er rel i g i o us Di a l o gu e an d t he Par t it io n o f I nd ia Venkataramani, M.S. (1973) Bengal Famine of 1943: The American Response. Noira, Uttar Pradesh: Vikas Publishing House. Vuola, E. (2002) Limits of Liberation: Feminist Theology and the Ethics of Poverty and Reproduction. Sheffield and New York: Sheffield Academic Press and Continuum. Vuola, E. (2009) ‘Seriously Harmful for Your Health? Religion, Feminism and Sexuality in Latin America’, in M. Althaus-Reid (ed.), Liberation Theology and Sexuality, second edition. London: SCM Press. Wahid, S. (2015) ‘Converging Histories and Societal Change: The Case of Ladakh’, in U. Butalia (ed.) Partition: The Long Shadow. New Delhi: Zubaan and Haryana, India. Wanchoo, R. (2014) Imagining Hindi: The Politics of Language Before and After Partition. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Whiting, J. (2008) Yo-Yo Ma: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Wiesel, E. (2008) Night. London: Penguin Books. Winter, J. and Teitelbaum, M. (2013) The Global Spread of Fertility Decline: Population, Fear, and Uncertainty. New Haven: Yale University Press. Young, J.E. (2009) ‘Regrading the pain of women: Questions of gender and the art of Holocaust memory’, PMLA: Modern Language Association of America 124, 5, pp.1778–1786. Young, K.K. (1994) ‘Women in Hinduism’, in. Sharma (ed.), Today’s Woman in World Religions. Albany: State University of New York Press. Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (2015) The Music of Strangers. Available at http:// themusicofstrangers.film Ziaka, A. (2016) ‘Introduction’, in Shaikh Abdullah bin Mohammed Al Salimi, Religious Tolerance: A Vision for a New World, edited with an introduction by Angeliki Ziaka. Hildesheim, Zürich and New York: Georg Olms Verlag.

SUBJECT INDEX

9/11 136 and attitudes to Islam 133 A Woman’s Declaration for a Shared Humanity 151–4 aarti 129–30 abuse of women, symbolism of 74 Act of Union 65 active listening 71 active participation, importance of 71 advaita, understandings of 81 Afghanistan, Soviet Invasion 136 agreement, problems of 41 Al-Qaeda 136 allegiance 75 anthropology of respect 16–17 Arjuna 76 art Abidi, B. 94–5 Altaf 108–11 appreciation of 26–7 Bengal famine 97–102 as challenge to silence 93–4 Chittaprosad 89, 97–102 Chittaprosad and shared humanity 102–8 context and overview 85–7 DAG Modern 104–6, 108 defining 103 Dube, A. 95–6 and fragmentation 108–9 Guernica 90–3

human possibilities 93 immersion in 107–8 interreligious dialogue 102–8 Klimt, G. 140 ‘Lines of Control’ exhibition 93–4 Mexican muralists 101 Parasher, S.L. 88, 97 Picasso, P. 90–2, 97 possibilities of silence 97 post-Partition 93–4 prayer and meditation 107 public/private 107–8 ‘Questions and Dialogue’ exhibition 96 as recording 97, 100–1 as revolutionary challenge 101 shared humanity 102–8 significance of 139–40 silence and memory 88–9 social 110–11 social realism 101 theft during Holocaust 139 universal language 92 as vocabulary of silence 88 artificial boundaries, effects of 21 author’s experiences 15–16 autonomy, Muslims 39 Bangladesh, secession 97–8 belonging 142 Beloved, presence of 74–5 Bengal drawing and empathy 89 famine 34–6, 97–102 bias 120–1

birth, and conversion 68 blame apportioning 20 of colonisers 71 book approach taken 19, 26, 27 author’s perspective 20 overview 14–15 scope of 30–1 boundaries effects of 21 enormity of 142 management 50–2 mediation 113 and purity 33–4 Boundary Commission 41 Brahma 79 multiple understandings 81–2 reinterpretation of 80–3 Brahman, manifestation of 24–5 Brahmanization 82 Brihadaranyaka 139 Britain, demobilization 53 British exit, background to 29–30 Buddhists, effects of Partition 67 caste system, Chittaprosad’s opposition to 98–9 cause and effect paradigm 21 Chile, author’s experiences 15 Christian Ashrams, Hindu Caves and Sacred Rivers (Aguilar) 19 Christian-Hindu dialogue 17 161

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Int er rel i g i o us Di a l o gu e an d t he Par t it io n o f I nd ia Christian sanyasi 117 Christianity attitudes to rape 71 exclusivity and hegemony 78–9 as official religion 31 citizenship and Partition 69–70 and wholeness of existence 117 civil service 109 classification, use of 75 coexistence 45 colonial theology 62–3 colonialism attitude to Bengal 34–5 cultural hegemony 135–6 effects of 17, 30 mediating position 66 religious tensions 31–4 common history 45 commonality, of suffering 85–6 communal violence 59 Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI ML) 111 contested truth 14 continuous Partition 109 conversion effects of 32–3 Gandhi’s view of 25 cooperation between civilizations 135 four points of 137 cosmotheandric intuition 76–7 crimes against humanity, challenging 16–17 cultural hegemony, colonialism 135–6 DAG Modern 104–6, 108 Dalit Panthers 111 Death at a 30 Degree Angle (Abidi) 95 demobilization, British forces 53 depiction of memories 58 desires, conflicting 139 Dharamsala 130

dialogues Christian-Hindu 17 expression of togetherness 141–2 global 138 interfaith 26–7, 114–16 opportunities/possibilities 119 prerequisites for 13–14 through art 102–8 of unification see unification dialogues dialogues in history 14, 17, 113 acquisition of knowledge 26 elements of 26–7 inclusion 22–4 models of understanding 115–16 difference theological discussion of 117 understandings of 17 differentiation, of gender 78 Direct-Action Day 39 disaster, reactions to 87 discourses, human rights 16–17 discrimination 30 displacement 17, 58–9 extent of 55 diversity, within imperial rule 64–6 divine mandate 114 divine presence 78 drawing, and empathy 89 education, women 57 elections, 1946 39 empathy and drawing 89 see also art ethnic exclusion 82 ethno-religious isolation 30 European dominance 135 exclusion 30 ethnic 82 risk of 26

fear 45 effects of 67 nature of 74–5 female deities, role of 63 fire ceremony, in Hinduism 129–30 five elements 130 ‘Flaca Alejandra’ 16 forgiveness 16 possibilities of 18 former Yugoslavia, use of testimonies 71–2 four points of cooperation 137 free will 18, 139

faith, nature of 20 famine, Bengal 34–6, 97–102

happiness, possibility of 139 haram 133 helping, as priority 85–6

gender Brahma 80–1 of God 79 manifestations of gods 80–1 and Partition 58–9 genocide 21 Ghats of Varanasi 127–30 Gita 76 globalization, empathy and aid 89 God as Absolute 24–5, 27 Christian understanding of 18 diverse expression 68 forgetting 27 gender of 79 and humanity 142 ownership of 78–9 presence of 20 union in 118 as victim 78 within violence 20 see also the Absolute gods awakening of 66–8 dislocation of 73 manifestations of 80–1 Gods, relocation of 18 Guernica 90–3 Guru Granth Sahib 49–50

Su b j ect I nd ex Hinduism multiple understandings 81–2 perception of ‘others’ 23 re-examination of sacred texts 140–1 role of ritual 129 historical reconstructions, potential of 17 historical writings, scope of 21 history dialogue with 78 exclusion of women 64–5 Holocaust as comparator 60–2 theft of art 139 use of testimonies 71–2 honour 117–18 and violence 45 see also women human possibilities 93 human rights globalized discourses 16–17 theology of 16–17 violations 53–4 humanity shared 20–1, 76–7 suffering 85 hymns of diversity 123 Ibadi principles 132 identity and belonging 68 self-knowledge 67–8 immortality 140 inclusion 22–4 India Declaration for a Shared Humanity 127, 130, 149–50 India Independence Act 36–7 Indian Dominion Bill 48 Indian People’s Theatre Association (I.P.T.A) 101 Indian Radical Painters 96 interface, ChristianityHinduism 79 interfaith dialogue Al Salimi. A.b.M. 132–8

basis of 13 DAG Modern 104–6 levels of 115–16 Interfaith Ensemble see Unification Ensemble interfaith movement 22 interreligious dialogue, art 102–8 Islam and landscape 66 perception of ‘others’ 23–4 prohibition of violence 133 recognition of 136 Islamic fundamentalism 136 Islamo-Christian civilization 114 isolation 30 jihad 133 Karachi – Series 1 (Abidi) 94–5 Kashi 65, 128 Kashmir, requests for Muslim recognition 135–6 killing, as outside religious tradition 119–20 labelling, of self 68 Ladakh, effects of Partition 66–7 land reform 67 landscape competing visions 66 purity of 65–6 languages art 92 centrality of speech and writing 92 nationalism and exclusion 52–3 liberation theology 70–1 life, as sacred 21 ‘Lines of Control’ exhibition 93–4, 95–6 listening, active 71

literature, of Partition 58 local, as global 67–8 localized interest 89 loneliness, women 74–7 Maimoona 86–7 Manava Dharmasastra (MDh), 140–1 Mangoes (Abidi) 94 materiality in suffering 99 meditation 79–80 and art 107 ‘Memorial to Lost Words’ (Abidi) 95 memories depiction of 58 exploration/ reconstruction of 57 restitution 140 sharing 113 memories of the womb 57–64 Mexican muralists 101 migrants, number of 38 military facilities, provision of 48 military personnel, division of 53 models of understanding, interfaith dialogue 115–16 moksha 128 monarch, religious authority 65 multi-religious belonging 127 multiculturalism 127 multiple religious belonging 142 multipolarity, of world 137 music of the spheres 123–4 music, Silk Road Ensemble 123–5 Muslim League 39, 41, 43 request for independent land 48–9 Muslims calls for autonomy 39 requests for recognition, 135–6 violence against 53–4

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Int er rel i g i o us Di a l o gu e an d t he Par t it io n o f I nd ia names, significance of 75–6 narratives freedom and identity 85 uniting 16–17 see also testimonies nationalism, post-Partition 52 nations, development of 85 Oman 131–8 Ibadi principles 132 One 118–19 Other, movement towards 115 others, perception of 23 Pakistan agreement for creation 36 formation of 38 Palestine, requests for Muslim recognition 135–6 participation, active 71 Partition announcement and speeches 42–4 continuous 109 elements of 16 focus of recent writings 66–7 lessons of 18 personal experiences 15–16 problems of agreement 40–1 process of 30 Partition Committee 47–8 Partition Council, formation of 36 Partition syndrome 57 peaceful coexistence 45 pilgrimage, Unification Ensemble 118–23 police forces, failure to intervene 53 policy development 109 political isolation 30 political responses 21 pollution 33–4 poor people, position of 69 Pope Benedict XVI 133 Pope Francis 131, 141–2

population, at Partition 38 Portrait of Adele BlochBauer (Klimt) 140 post-war Britain, attitudes to India 36 prayer and art 107 four phases 116 puja 129 and unification of worlds 24–7 prosecutions, use of testimonies 71–2 protection post-Partition 53 and rights of women 85 protests, campaign for selfrule 29–30 Proyom (Progressive Youth Movement) 111 public declarations, possibility of 27 public spaces, purity/ impurity 65–6 puja 129 Punjab violence 53–4 violence and disturbance in 44–8 women 59–60 Punjab Boundary Force 53 purity 33–4 centrality of 64–5 under imperial rule 65–6 public spaces 65–6 and violence 45, 117–18 see also women questions about dialogue 14 about Partition 14, 16 about suffering 85–6 of later generations 87 perception of ‘others’ 23 scope of 19 Where was God? 18 ‘Questions and Dialogue’ exhibition 96 Radcliffe Line 48–54 Raj, religious tensions 31–4

Ramadan 131 experiences of minorities 94–5 Ramsukhdas, S. 83 rape Christian attitudes 71 consequences for victims 70, 73 and dislocation of gods 73 extent of 19–20 ongoing effects of 16, 19–20 vision of 70 see also women readers, roles of 17 reconciliation, possibilities of 18 reconversion 32 refugees 58–9 numbers of 55 religion and citizenship 69–70 as force for good 25 inequality and social oppression 119 as justification for violence 117–18 within secular narrative 17 religious classification 52–3 religious knowledge and understanding 69 religious tensions 31–4 religious texts, readers’ roles 17 religious tolerance, Oman 132 religious unification 76–7 religious worlds, classification of 22 remembering 77–8 resettlement 58 respect 134 revenge 45 riots 46–7 ritual, in Hinduism 129 ritual purity 33–4, 64–5 romantic idealization 100 Rwanda 56 n genocidal classification 75 use of testimonies 71–2

Su b j ect I nd ex sacred texts, re-examination 140–1 sadhus 32–3 Sanskritization 82 Second Vatican Council 136 secular narrative, religion within 17 security, sources of 69 self-defence 30 self-labelling 68 self-rule, background to 29–30 sexual desire 69–70 shame 71, 117–18 shared humanity 76–7 Shiva 128 Shoah, as comparator 60–2 shuddhi 32 Sikh Memorandum to the Boundary Commission 50 Sikhs concerns about Partition 41–2 One God 68 position of 49–50 violence against 50, 53–4 silence 20 centrality of 92–3 possibilities of art 97 post-Partition 117 as respect 78 and shame 71 of suffering 92–3 of the Trinity 62 silence of Partition approach taken 30–1 Bengal 34–6 boundary management 50–2 challenge of art 93–4 context and overview 29–31 and expression of horror 87 forced migration 38–44 and memory 88–9 position of Sikhs 49–50 Radcliffe Line 48–54 rape as silencing 56 see also women

religious tensions during the Raj 31–4 violence and disturbance in Punjab 44–8 Silk Road Ensemble 111, 114, 123–5 social fabric, destruction of 73 social injustice 30 solidarity among women 56 prayer as 25–6 Spanish Civil War 29 St. Andrews Declaration for a Shared Humanity 119, 126, 143–8 structural sin 120 structures of cooperation, between religious communities 74 suffering experience of 85–6 humanity 85 localized interest 89 materiality in 99 questions about 85–6 silence of 92–3 Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque 131 Sultanate of Oman 113–14 symbolism, of abuse of women 74 testimonies Italia, Mrs Khorshed 72–3 use in prosecutions 71–2 see also narratives texts, role of women 82–3 the Absolute 24–5, 27 expressions of 120–1 see also God The Corridors of Alienation (Altaf ) 110–11 The Music of Strangers 124 The Sunday Tribune 86–7 The Times of India, on Gandhi 39–40 the Word 114 theological anthropology of respect 16–17

theological reading, of Partititon 72 theological reflections, basis of 18 theological understandings, centrality of 69–70 theologies of liberation 120 theology, colonial 62–3 theology of human rights 16–17 theology of restitution 139–42 traditions, connecting 25–6 tragedy, reactions to 87 Train to Pakistan (Singh) 75–6, 117 transfer of power 36–7, 39 violence 44–5 Trinity, silence of 62 uncertainty as model for understanding 67 and religious belonging 69–70 women 74–7 understandings, of Partition 67–8 unification dialogues 117–18 context and overview 113–15 journey of silence 125–7 journeying 118–23 levels of interfaith dialogue 115–16 Silk Road Ensemble 123–5 see also Unification Ensemble Unification Ensemble 111 Al Salimi. A.b.M. 131–8 Delhi meeting 126–7 Dharamsala 130 Oman 131–8 Pentecost service 125–6 in Varanasi 127–30 unification of image 109 union in God 118 universal in music 124 values for the common good 136

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166

Int er rel i g i o us Di a l o gu e an d t he Par t it io n o f I nd ia Varanasi 127–30 victims, remembering 20 Vietnam War 14 violation, challenging 16–17 violence beginning of 39 causes of 46–7 communal 59 duration of 21 God within 20 honour, shame and purity 117–18 killing 119–20 as male domain 78 motivations for 45 post-Partition 53–4 prohibition in Islam 133 Punjab 44–8 towards Sikhs 50 and visions of landscape 66 violence against women extent and effects of 19–20 see also rape vocabulary of silence, art as 88

water, and ritual purity 33 Western hegemony 136 Where was God? 18 Woman in Gold 140 womb of God 20 return to 120 wombs classification of 75 Partition of 69–73 post-Partition 117–18 return to 79–80 role and symbolism 62–4 sharing 77–80 as source of diversity 80 at time of Partition 64–6 women consequences of violence 56 context and overview 55–6 education 57 exclusion from history 64–5 expectations of virginity 70 gender roles 58–9 loneliness 74–7

memories of the womb 57–64 methodology 71–2 Partition of wombs 69–73 possibility of expression 74 presence of Beloved 74–5 protection and rights 85 Punjab 59–60 and ritual purity 33 role in religious texts 82–3 solidarity 56 symbolism of abuse 74 testimonies 70–3 uncertainty 74–7 violence against 53–4 vulnerability 55 see also wombs Word of God, as central to expression 92–3 world, multipolarity of 137 World War II, and British attitudes 35–6 worlds, unification through prayer 24–7

AUTHOR INDEX

Abedin, Z. 100, 101–2 Abhishiktananda 25–6 Abidi, B. 94–5, 113 Aguilar, M.I. 19, 22 Al Hamini 118–19 Al Hinai, M. 131 Al Salimi. A.b.M. 114, 131–8 al-Faruqi, I.R. 24 Altaf 108–11 Altmann, M. 140 Anand, A. 109–10 Anderson, P. 52 Ash, G. 101–2 Babu, Mrs 127 Bartley, C. 129 Beatice, P. 127, 151–4 Berrigan, D. 14 Blum, L. 91 Braque, G. 90 Brunt, L. 58 Bulliet, R. 114 Butalia, U. 29, 57, 59–60 Cardenal, E. 123 Castiglia, D. 13 Chandan, A. 95 Cheetam, D. 23 Chittaprosad 29, 83, 89, 97–102 shared humanity 102–8 Clooney, F.X. 74–5 Cowpland, J. 107 Dadoo, Y.M. 37 de Chardin, T. 123 de Mello, A. 116 Debs, M. 37–8 Dube, A. 95–6

Eck, D. 65, 128 Eckhart, 27 El Din Salimi, N. 132 Ellsberg, R. 14 Ephgrave, N. 61 French, P. 45, 49 Gandhi, I. 60 Ghandi, M. 25, 29, 32, 37–8 assassination 37–8 meetings with other leaders 44 opposition to Partition 38, 46, 48 views ignored 39–40 vision for space and time 66 Ghose, G. 101–2 Godazgar, H. 127 Goldenberg, M. 61 Griffiths, B. 25, 79 Gupta, B.K. 38 Gutiérrez, G. 104 Hanh, T.N. 14 Herbert, Lt. Col. Sir John 35 Hore, S. 100–1, 101 Illman, R. 102 Jadeja, K.D. 37 Jenkins, Sir E.M. 46–7, 50 Jinnah, M.A. 38, 39, 41, 44, 48, 52 Partition speech 43

Katani 118 Khan, L.A. 38 Khatami, S.M. 24 Klimt, G. 140 Kollwitz, K. 101 Krishnakumar, K.P. 96 Levi, P. 61 Long, J. 23 Ma, Yo Yo 111, 114, 123–5 McGeoch, G. 124 Menon, R.B. 39 Mohamedi, A. see Altaf Mountbatten, Lord 36, 39–41, 44, 46–7 Partition speech 42 Naicker, O.M. 37 Narasimhan-Madhavan, D. 59 Nasar, H. 93–4 Navjot 111 Nehru, J. 38, 44, 46–7, 48–9, 52, 109 Partition speech 42–3 Panikkar, R. 20, 27, 76–7, 92–3, 121, 123, 130 Parasher, P.B. 88 Parasher, S.L. 88, 97 Patel, S. 38, 39 Picasso, P. 29, 90–2, 97 Posada, J.G. 101 Pratt, D. 23 Radcliffe, C. 50–2 Rambachan, A. 81–2 Rashid, A. 31–2 167

168

Int er rel i g i o us Di a l o gu e an d t he Par t it io n o f I nd ia Rees, T. 53–4 Reilly, L. 103 Rivera, D. 101 Roy, J. 100 Salaba, I.F. 105 Sarkar, M. 57 Sen, A. 35, 100 Shastri, L.B. 110 Sher-Gil, A. 100 Shraddhananda, Swami 31–2 Singh, B. 41, 50 Partition speech 43–4

Singh, G.K. 49 Singh, K. 75–6, 86–7, 104–5 Singh, S. 32–3 Singh, T. 49–50, 53 Singh Dhillon, B. 127 Smith, C. 103 Spivak, G.C. 15–16 Sung, M. 70

van Hensbergen, G. 91–2 Vuola, E. 63 Wahid, S. 67 Wavell, Lord 50 Whitehead, A. 71, 72 Wiesel, E. 20, 61, 77–8 Young, J. 61

Tagore, R. 100 Thomas, D. 23, 24