Book Review: Lahore (The Partition Trilogy #1)

It is hard to review a book that you have been waiting two years for. A book you had high expectations from both because of the subject matter and the author. A book you pre-ordered because you wanted to grab it as soon as you could. And a book which lived up to expectations, yet left you without words.

There have been many books written about the Partition. There are books that describe the high level political negotiations between the people who made history. And there are books written about the people who bore the brunt of Partition. Manreet Sodhi Someshwar’s ‘Lahore (The Partition Trilogy, #1)’ does both.

In Delhi, Mountbatten, Patel and Nehru lay down their non-negotiables and engage in a game of give and take around it. In Lahore, till the very end, the coolie, Belli Ram, who was brought up by his friend Mehmood’s family refuses to accept Partition till be actually “sees” the line separating India and Pakistan.

In Lahore, the ‘mad woman’, Billo, is thrown out of her home when she predicts a rain of blood, and takes up residence on the branches of a tree. In Delhi, Edwina Mountbatten shivers when she sees the unseasonal blooming of the Laburnums because when death is imminent, trees bloom and set fruit in a last ditch attempt to secure progeny.

The stories of the people and events that make up history, alternate with those of the people who have to bear the consequences of those decisions. Many of those stories end at a climatic point, where you are forced to pause and process what you witnessed before you can move on.

And, of course, at the end, she had both threads meet, however briefly. A reminder that Partition, eventually, was about people. People who survived. People who didn't. Dreams that were crushed. Pieces that were picked up.

This book is particularly significant because it puts many events in their proper context. The British would have left behind two partitioned nations and 565 princely states. Today, people try to assign the blame for Partition on certain leaders, choosing to forget that it was they who stopped the Balkanisation.

You will love ‘Lahore (The Partition Trilogy, #1)’ if you are interested either in the history of the subcontinent or in reading stories rich in human emotions. Take a bow, Manreet, for yet another masterly book.

The Women Who Disobeyed Civily

[When the men were behind bars, women came to the forefront. Where are they now?]

It was the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930. The leaders of the freedom movement were in prison, along with tens of thousands of freedom fighters. The British thought they had been able to stamp out the movement, but then, something unexpected happened. In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru (as quoted in Discovery of India)- 

Most of us menfolk were in prison. And then a remarkable thing happened. Our women came to the front and took charge of the struggle. Women had always been there of course, but now there was an avalanche of the, which took not only the British Government but their own menfolk by surprise. Here were these women, women of the upper or middle classes, leading sheltered lives in their homes- peasant women, working- class women, rich women- pouring out in their tens of thousands in defiance of government order and police lathi. It was not only that display of courage and daring but what was even more surprising was the organizational power they showed.

That was the decisive moment when the British Government realized they could not hold India much longer. If women, who till a few years back were in purdah and were still not allowed to take part in public life, could come to the forefront to demand freedom, sooner or later they would have to leave the country.

But who were these women?

In the early days, it was only the wives, daughters and sisters of the leaders of the freedom movement who participated in the freedom movement. Since there were no women-only political organisations, it was difficult for common women to negotiate a place in the struggle, and the only women who could were women from elite families.

Though women were initially not allowed to participate in the Dandi March, two women, Sarojini Naidu and Mithuben Petit, stood behind Gandhiji when he violated the Salt Law. However, once the salt Satyagraha began, women from middle class families started pouring out onto the street. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay led a huge contingent of women in Bombay who not only made salt at Chowpathy Beach, they even sold it in the city. The popular story goes that when Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was arrested and produced before the magistrate, she held up a packet of salt and asked if he would like to buy the 'salt of freedom'!

Women, who started coming out in response to Gandhiji's call for the Salt Satyagraha, began coming out in droves once the men started being arrested. They were led by the wives and sisters of the leaders, prominent among whom were Kasturba Gandhi, Kamala Nehru and Nehru's sister, Vijaylakshmi Pandit, but many women also rose to leadership despite not being from political families.

Sucheta Kriplani, Aruna Asaf Ali, and Durgabai Deshmukh, among many others joined the Freedom Struggle during the Civil Disobedience Movement. They all married freedom fighters from different communities (even religion), and continued to serve the nation even after Independence. Sucheta Kriplani became the first female Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Aruna Asaf Ali was the first lady mayor of Delhi and did a lot of work in education. Durgabai Deshmukh was a lawyer who served as a member of the Constitute Assembly and later of the Planning Commission.

Initially, the police used only moderate violence against women, but when they kept coming out, women too were lathi charged and imprisoned for long terms. None of this, deterred the women, and despite having to manage the home in the absence of their menfolk, they continued being a part of the freedom struggle.

Some of them paid a very heavy price for their rebellion. Rani Gaidinliu, for instance, was arrested when she was seeking to drive the British out of Manipur and Nagaland when she was only 16 years old, and spent 14 years in prison before she was released after Independence.

There were other women who lost their lives in the Struggle. Matangini Hazra, the poor peasant woman who was also known as Gandhi Buri was shot dead by the police during the Quit India Movement when she was leading a procession of over six thousand people. Eighteen year old Kanaklata Barua was shot down while participating in the Quit India Movement.

Despite these setbacks, women were equal participants in the Freedom Struggle. They protested unjust laws, they sang patriotic songs, they hoisted the national flag, they ran radio stations and printing presses, and they provided shelter to freedom fighters fleeing the police. If India was able to gain Independence a lot of the credit should go to these women.

What after Independence?

Unfortunately, after Independence, women were not able to capitalize on these gains. Unlike in other countries, women were given Universal Adult Franchise right after Independence. Women also occupied positions of power, though in small numbers. There were fifteen women in the Constituent Assembly who helped draft the Constitution, there was one women in the first Union Cabinet of Independent India, and a woman headed the Indian delegation to the United Nations and was the first ever woman to be elected the President of the United National General Assembly.

Despite the early head start, even today, the representation of women in public life remains disproportionately low, which results in the framing of policies that do not adequately empower women. India attained her Freedom seventy four years ago, but we will be able to consider ourselves to be truly free only when we are adequately represented in positions of policy making.

India's tryst with Vaccines

 We all now know about the Plague Epidemic that started in 1896, and spread from Bombay to other parts of the country. It was to deal with this that the Epidemic Act was enacted in 1896 (and which continues to this day). What is much less known is that in 1897, Dr. Haffkine developed the Plague Vaccine in his 2 room laboratory in Parel, Bombay. This was the first case of a vaccine developed in India being used across the world.

The cholera vaccine too has strong connections to India. Dr. Haffkine developed the vaccine in France, but it was in India that he conducted the clinical trials and proved the efficacy of the vaccine in preventing the disease.

By the first decade of the 20th century, India had the capacity to produce vaccines against four deadly diseases- smallpox, cholera, plague and typhoid. Over the next few decades,  both development and manufacturing facilities were set up across the country, and India was a favoured destination for conducting clinical trials.

By the time we gained Independence, India was already a major player in the vaccine space.

Post independence, a facility to manufacture the BCG vaccine was set up in Guindy, Madras in 1948, and after a pilot project, the BCG vaccinations was extended to schools across the country. The campaign to ensure that all children receive the BCG vaccine, however, took off only many decades later.

In 1952, Zydus Cadila was the first indigenous compnay to set up manufacturing facilities for drugs and vaccines, following which many others came up.

Serum Institute set up facilities for the development and manufacture of vaccines 1966.

Genome Valley was developed in the then Andhra Pradesh in the mid 1990s, and attracted many, including Bharat Biotech and Shantha Biotechnics. Shantha Biotechnics, developed a recombinant product which received WHO prequalification as a Hepatitis B vaccine,  which cost a fraction of what the original vaccine cost.

India has been largely ‘atmanirbhar’ when it comes to vaccines for close to a century.

Our biggest successes have, however been in the immunisation of our huge population.

Small pox was finally eradicated in India in 1975- despite our large population and the challenges of reaching far-flung areas, we managed this feat before most other countries.

India's success story with the Oral Polio Vaccine is something that is studies in all public health courses. 

If we want to take pride in anything, it is our many historical successes that is what we should be proud of. Not just in the fact that we are a part of the supply chain of a global corporate.

To end with a story of the first “celebrity endorsement” for a vaccine campaign. When the smallpox vaccine was first introduced in the country, the response of the public was not very encouraging. In a bid to boost public confidence, before her marriage to the Maharaja of Mysore, Devajammani, his second wife got herself vaccinated with “minimum loss of dignity” in 1805. A portrait of the queen by Thomas Hickey where she is pointing to the place where she took the vaccine inspired the public to come forward to avail of the vaccination. People sharing photographs of themselves being vaccinated, therefore has a historical precedent from two centuries back.

~ Tai ~

 

I was 14 when my husband died

A man I barely knew.

A man who’s life mine was linked to.

I was forced to 

    climb

      on

        his

  funeral pyre.

She rescued me. 

Allowed me to have my child.

She taught me to read

Made me a teacher.

Stood me on my feet.

Helped me marry the man I loved.

I owed everything to her

I would have given my life for her.

But the guilt remained.

One day, it burst forth- 

“Tai, I silently watched

    while my sisters 

       threw stones at you”,

           I confessed.

“I know”, she said.

And smiled.

[Savitribai Phule was born on Jan 3, 1897.

An illiterate girl from a lower caste, married off when still a child, she went on to become one of modern India's first female teachers, and founded a school for girls which rivalled those run by the government by young boys.

A staunch feminist and an anti-caste advocate, she dedicated her life to the upliftment of women and to the abolition of the caste system. Her protests earned her the active animosity of Brahmins, who saw her as a threat to the privileges they took for granted. Yet, most of the battles she fought were against unjust practices that affected Brahmin women the most. She could have chosen to look away, and only work to benefit the women of her caste. But she didn’t, because she realized that women couldn’t be free, unless all women were free.

Long before the term ‘intersectional feminism’ was coined, Savitribai Phule was one.]