The Border

a major area of conflict during partition. Lahore is located only fifty two miles away from India and my experience at the border was unforgettable. From I Heart Radio, I'm Nahasis and this is partition a podcast that will take a closer look into this often forgotten part of history. My family's last trip to Pakistan was for three weeks. This gave us time to explore more parts of the country, and Lahore was high on the list. It is filled

with stunning architecture dating back to the Mughal Empire. I love Garachi, after all, it's where I was born, but in terms of culture, Lahore has my birthplace beat. We do have amazing food though. While outlining our travel plans, my dad mentioned a ceremony Confused, I asked what he was talking about. He told me that every evening, a military event between India and Pakistan takes place. This ceremony was one of the first things we saw when we arrived in the whore, and it was the epitome of

a spectacle. During our visit, the air was filled with smog, which made our journey to get there all the more formidable. Cars were only allowed so far and we eventually had to walk the rest of the way to the stadium where the ceremony would take place. On the way, we had to go through numerous security checkpoints. As we made our way to the entrance, I tried to get my bearings. Walking along the crowd to get to the stadium was

just very bizarre. I'm not sure how long we were walking for, but it felt like at least forty five minutes. We were walking on the same roads where absolute carnage took place over seventy years ago. A shiver ran down my spine. The majority of people I saw were filled with excitement and anticipation to witness this tradition. I only noticed a handful of people realized the melancholy of where

we were and what we were doing. Both sides of the road were fenced off with barbed wire, indicating that the other side was Indian territory. The land beyond the fence seemed vast and endless. I turned to my mom and said, is this the closest I will ever get to India. She didn't give me a verbal response, but instead gave me a look that conveyed all I needed to know. As we continued our journey, I couldn't help noticing the amount of school children that were there. I

saw many different uniforms. I wanted to ask if they were from a local or nearby school, or did they travel from other provinces. I wondered what they were taught about the continuous strife between these two places. I didn't really know how to feel during the ceremony. At its core, it's a daily military practice for the Indian and Pakistani armies, a forty five minute long sequence of marches and songs. It's spoken of as a display of cooperation and brotherhood

between these two nations. In person, it was almost like a scene straight out of Gladiator. Thunderous claps and cheering performers, flag waving snacks being sold. Did my family and I buy some popcorn, absolutely, but didn't make the concept any less strange, not at all. The performance has two parts, the beating retreat and the changing of the guard, performed by the India Border Security Force and the Pakistan Rangers. Respective sides were separated by two gates that open and closed.

During this theatrical production, Indian and Pakistani soldiers march in perfect unison. The flags of both countries are lowered and they partake in puffery and intimidation. Think of a male peacock trying to attract a mate. The Pakistan Rangers were black uniforms while the Indian Border Security Force were as khaki uniforms, with both sides sporting pops of color. These colors demanded attention with every hand raise and leg kick.

The gates first open as the sun sets. The flags are folded after they are lowered, and a no nonsense handshake takes place to conclude the end of the ceremony. After the handshakes, the iron gates of the border close again. During the entire event, visitors sing their national anthems and chance slogans of Bakistan's in the body, which means long lived the land of pure or victory to Bakistan and jay Hind victory to Indian h Long live India across

the way. As I sat in the stadium, letting everything in front of me sink in, I couldn't help but think what were we all supposed to take away from this? Is it all fun in games? Or does it build antagonism? The idea behind it is to symbolize respect in addition to rivalry between the two nations, But ultimately it's a source of national and patriotic pride. There is no shame in being proud of your heritage and where you come from. But I think it's important to realize that our identities

are so entwined with each other. One does not exist without the other. Our culture, language, food, and countless other entities are cut from the same cloth. Yet decades later, there are so much anger, bias, and hurt. As I've said again and again, partition continues to haunt our daily lives. I asked how these two governments can have a daily ceremony together, a ceremony that started over sixty years ago,

when their relationships with each other are so troubled. I'm sorry, but you cannot have a ceremony that represents respect and friendship when Indian and Pakistani people are barred from visiting the other country just because of where they were born in familial ties. As I discussed a little later, it

wasn't always like this. This illusion of friendship, which is really a disguise for hateful policies and violent rivalry stemming from the British made border made me think of something I noticed when my family and I began to walk towards the stadium. In the distance, I could see both India's and Bokistan's flags waving in the wind. My dad noticed I was looking at them and said that India had put up a flag first and Pakistan followed suit,

but purposely made their flag higher than theirs. I asked if he was kidding. It's the to my mind to look this up at the time, but when writing this episode I did and he definitely was not kidding. In March, India put up a flag that was three d sixty ft tall. Five months later, Bakistan decided to put up a flag of their own, but at four hundred ft.

The Hindustan Times reported in July that India plans to create an even larger flag, one that is fifty ft higher than the current one they have in place, making it ten feet taller than Pakistan's. And I'm sure once that happens, Bakistan will make a larger one and the madness will continue. There are some, I'm sure who see this news and feel a deep sense of pride or find a comical I personally can't help but see it as a waste of time, energy, and money when there

are real needs to be addressed. The majority of our conversations on the border have dealt with how difficult it is for many Indians and Pakistanis to visit the other side. But why and what other underlying issues caused each government to deny visa applications from people of the other country. Since partition, India and Pakistan continue to have deeply tense relations. Both countries have nuclear weapons and continue to fight over Kashmir,

even with numerous wars already under their belts. It should be noted that the dispute over Kashmir and other tensions between these nations are very intricate and complex, so for the purposes of this episode, I'll be using a handful of examples to illustrate how tensions between the two countries manifest today. My research interests are about refugee ease and borders in South Asia, and so as a consequence of that,

I'm obviously interested in Partition. That is dr ant an historian and professor of international relations at Royal Holloway University in London. I wanted to ask her about the border from more of an historical lens. I first asked her about these borders over the last seventy five years, they have gone through different periods of accessibility. I have a picture of my fraternal grandparents in front of the taj Mahal in the sixties, shortly after my dad was born.

The likelihood of that picture being taken in two is extremely small. First of all, the kind of whole visa and passport regime has a much longer history. So in order to understand where that comes from, I think you actually have to go back to partition and both India and Pakistan trying to work out, as I said, who belongs and who doesn't. And in that process two things emerged a forman system first and then a passport system. So before the visas, they came passports for these people,

right and why did these systems emerge. The permit system really emerges because many Muslims who go to Pakistan want to come back to India and the Indian government is worried because many of these people have left property behind property to the Indian government calls evacuate property and was going to hand this over to Hindus and Seeks. So if these Muslims come back and claim this property, that causes a problem. So they make them apply for permits.

And the permits that are given to Muslims are different to the permits that are given to Hindus and Seeks in this period. So although ostensibly Naru has declared India to be a secular state, there is a difference in the way in which Hindus and Muslims are crossing this border. Even in Nhru was the first Prime Minister of India. The passport system interesting is introduced at the behest of Pakistan, but not quite at the behested Pakistan. But Pakistan has

a greater hand in the passport system. And the reason they introduce it is because actually they are overwhelmed by the number of Muslims who are coming into Pakistan and in order to stop that floor, they introduced another document that would make people's lives harder and more difficult. And the way this plays out in the next sort of a few decades is that both countries see crossing this border are acquiring this passport as a sign that you

have made a choice. But again, as I said to you in answer to an earlier question, people's lives are complicated. So some people across the border and they make a choice, and then they want to turn the clock back or the acquire a passport. And then they say no, but we want to go back. We want either claim property or we're not happy here. We want to go back

to our own lives. And so if you look at sort of Indian constitutional records as well as court cases, there are many, many of these court cases about people who are trying to claim citizenship, trying to claim passports, usually Muslims, who may have made decisions to go back and then come back again. So this history gets very, very messy. Much like any situation in which there are disputes between countries and governments, it all boils down to who is in charge. So you have this regime of

permits and passports. That's first of all, creating this bonder. Then over the next sort of a few decades, whether the border is open or closed, as you rightly said, is often a question of geopolitics. It's you know, down to who's in power, who's not in power. You know. So there was at one point of bus that went to Lahore. There was a train that went to Dhaka, right, So there's this kind of bus diplomacy that are trains

on the eastern side of the border. And then every so often something happens like the Cargill War, and these are shut down, you know. So there are moments in which diplomacy opens up these borders and moments in which the borders are closed. The Cargo War took place for over two months, and it is one of the wars between India and Pakistan overland and Kashmir. But what I think is really interesting about the borders themselves, and I did say earlier that we should think about the borders

is not just physical objects. But if we just see them as physical objects, as people kind of stamping your passport as you cross the border and so and so forth, is that actually, as I said, the border in the west has always been harder to cross, and In fact, there was a time when post did not go across the border. So if you posted a parcel from India to Pakistan and went to Dubai, right because you paid a crazy amount of But as I said, the border in the east used to be open for a much

longer period of time. But that border has now been militarized. There is now a barbed wire fence and India has been in the process of kind of creating a wall there. So the discourse around the border, around who is allowed to cross the border has also changed. Whereas once upon a time that eastern border would have been relatively easy to cross. There used to be something called an Indo Bangladesh passport, for instance, that you could simply used to

cross that border. So Hindus who had families either in Bangladesh or we're living in Bangladesh and families and India could simply use an Indo Bangladesh passport and vice versa across that border. That passport was abolished, I believe in

two thousands teen or something. Ada points out what happens within these countries is just as important as what is happening outside of them, and I will argue that the opening and closing of those borders is not just about you know, who's in power and so on, but it's also to do with internal politics, right about minorities, particularly

in India. And again if you look east, as that border was created, that militarized border, that has gone hand in hand with the writing of a new Citizenship Act, a new citizenship Act that kind of goes back on earlier conceptions of secularism and now makes India home for South Asia's Hindus and seeks quite explicitly in Episode one, I said that India would be home to the Hindu Sikh majority, but it would also be more secular than Pakistan. As Ada says, the amendment to the Citizen Act has

removed this notion. The Citizenship Amendment Bill was designed to amend the Citizenship Act of nineteen fifty five to recognize specific types of immigrants segregated by religion and country of origin. Under the citizens Amendment Act, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jains, Barsis and Sikhs who had migrated from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Bakistan to India prior to twenty fourteen are no longer considered

illegal immigrants. And have a better chance to obtain citizenship. However, notably Jews and Muslims are left out of the amendment, which makes this a prejudiced policy against the religions of Islam and Judaism in India. This legislation led to protest all around India for its blatant exclusion of minority fates. So I would say these questions around who is allowed to get a visa who is not when these open

up are also a product of domestic politics. And these domestic calculations around which minorities are seen to be legitimate and you know, how we can make people lives more difficult internally has an impact on external broad acrosses, all of these rules and regulations get further complicated because not only is this accessibility based on yourself and your faith,

but also where your parents and grandparents are from. If you are applying for a visa to India but your parents or your grandparent was born in what is today Pakistan, that's a much more complicated process, right. There extra forms to fill out. This isn't just about your passport or your nationality. There is a sort of grandfather and grandmothering of these of these causes, and again let's deliberate. The idea of identity politics really comes into play as more

time passes. But what's interesting is that in the two thousands, India introduces an overseas Indian citizenship and introduces a person of Indian Origin card and then overseas Indian citizenship. And the way that legislation is written is very interesting because technically most pakistani Is or many Pakistanis would be eligible to become persons of Indian origin or overseas Indian citizens right. That piece of Indian legislation is primarily kind of directed

at the wealthy diasport to try and get money back. Clearly, you know, some countries like Fiji et cetera, which saw invented labor from India were excluded from that list, right, But also it was specifically written to exclude Kistan and Bangladesation so on, so that you know, people from those

countries could not claim overseas Indian citizenship status, right. And so for me, I think a lot of these conversations are really really connected, these conversations about border crossing, the conversations about diasporic South Asians, as well as conversations within India about minorities. I think these are always intimately and intricately linked. All of my grandparents were born in India, which makes me a person of Indian origin. I can

trace this fact back several generations, I'm sure. But because they were forced to move during partition and I was subsequently born in Pakistan, this legislation does not apply to me. I think a lot of people, as I said in ninety seven, made a bunch of choices, not knowing what the long term consequences of those choices would be, or not expecting the long term consequences of those choices to be what they turned out to be, and the ways in which would be very hard to turn the clock back.

We also have to think in terms of privilege. I think about this a lot when I think about personal histories of Partition and the subcontinent, because the histories that have been written and the histories that have been told are so overwhelmingly upper class and uppercast. Right, the vast majority of the people who moved were working class people, and they had fewer options than many of the uppercast supper class people who moved across these borders. Right, So

how you moved across the border. What you took with you and then what happened to you after you cross the border was very closely linked to your social status before you cross the border. So even those Pajabis in particular, who came across and who had very little, but who belonged to a certain social strata or who had the education or who had the connections, were able to thrive in a way that many working class people struggle to

do so. And we know that that is particularly true of the the Lit community that moved from Eastern Bengal into West Bengal. Unther I mentioned the delt community, individuals belonging to the lowest cast. We're at the point where we're collecting all of these partitions stories where we're almost sort of curating partition for the next generation. But whose

stories are we curating. There's some really interesting work that shows that both India and Pakistan wrote that the Lit citizens out of their histories, but were panicked because many of these citizens did everyday jobs that the two new countries needed people to do, so try to retain them desperately while at the same time writing them out of their histories. When we step back and we look at

these broader histories, gender, class, cast, religion. All of these are so closely intertwined in how we understand, you know, not just border crossing in ninety seven, but what happens to those people in the next seventy five years. We go on to discuss refugees and they're eatment in a new place. I shouldn't have been shocked to learn that who is and isn't considered a refugee also leaned into

the notion of identity politics. I think that's a really important history of partition, that people didn't just cross a border and become seamlessly integrated into the new nation state. Right.

And India and Pakistan both refused to sign the nineteen fifty one UN Convention on Refugees, which defines who are refugees, and the reason they refused to do that has to do with the Eurocentric nature of it, has to do with the fact that it defined refugees as emerging from the war in Europe and so on and and so forth. But the consequences of India and Pakistan not signing that you still never signed it is that these people who crossed the border are known as various things. Sometimes there

are refugees. Sometimes they're displaced persons in official discourse. Sometimes they're migrants, and a lot of this is to do with how they are then treated. So we know from the exting literature, for instance, that the Punjabi refugees are seen as genuine refugees because the Indian government argues they fled violence and they are hard working and we deserve

to give them compensation and rehabilitation. Whereas these Bengali Is are lazy and they did not flee the same kind of violence that the Punjabis fled from, So somehow they're kind of claim to refugeehood is less authentic, and then they claim that therefore they don't deserve the same degree

of rehabilitation. But of course people keep coming and eventually the Indian state tries to resettle them, and some of these quite badly thought through rehabilitation schemes in Central India, which fail because you can't just move people to arid land and expect them to cultivate it overnight. But then that's further seen as proof that these Bengali is only one charity. They're not hard working like the Punjabis and

therefore truly deserving a rehabilitation. So groups of people who cross borders at the same time their faiths can turn out to be very friend depending on who they are, where they crossed the border and the communities into which they crossing too, right, And so those stories are really

really quite complex. Over the past few weeks, you've heard several stories about people and their homes getting left behind, and I wanted to know if I thought if there could be a time where maybe the process for everyone to visit these countries would be easier. Forced border crossing in South Asia is traumatic, and when forest border crossing everybody is traumatic. But there are some truly traumatic stories in South Asian and that's seven one. There are expulsions

of stateless people in South Asia. There's kind of ongoing trauma the Ranga is and so these stories are never going to end in some ways, right, and in a way I think that the kind of individual reconciliations were subsumed within both India and Pakistan's original intention to almost we raised partition, right, you know, we didn't have a partition museum in India will very recently an independence day

in our fourteenth of August. In Pakistan, fifteenth of augustin India is always focused on independence and then displaying a military hardware rather than the trauma partition. And that was a completely deliberate choice, right to raise some of those histories to subsume them within this broader narrative, So a sort of macro cosm of what happens at the Waga Atry border, right, if you think of it that way. So that's one of the reasons why those individual stories

have been kind of lost or don't get priority. And you were asking what the kind of the future of this might be like and what we can hope for, and I can't predict that future, but you know, we know that every time there is upheople in South Asia, it creates more forced migration across borders. And you know we know that for a fact, and in general, theoretically, I like to think of borders as entirely artificial constructs, right.

And as someone who's lived on kind of three continents, I was born on one continent, my children were born on a different continent. We spent a lot of time in North America. For me, border crossing has always been an everyday part of my life. It's been an expensive part of my life. But in the grand scheme of think, my privilege has made it not that stressful, stressful, if

I'm honest, not that stressful, right. Whereas for a lot of people in South Asia crossing these borders, and if you can look at the kind of India Bangladesh border, for people this this is a question of their livelihood and every time they cross that border, they take their life into their own hands in order to make ends meet. So for me, I don't see an end to the ways in which these borders have become securitized. I don't think we're ever going to roll the clock back on that.

Seventy five years of violence and turmoil is a lot to unpack. It's hard to imagine where you would even begin to have this conversation. Both governments are aware of what the people of India and Pakistan had to bear when it came to partition and contain enuously. Closing off these borders is truly an awful way to repay them. There is no time like the present to make amends for the past. Our next episode will be our last.

These past nine weeks, you've heard interviews from survivors, historians, artists, and other creatives discuss how partition is a part of them. But where do we go from here? How can we take all of these thoughts and discussions and turn them into actions. How has this tragedy taught us about what is currently going on in the world. Education and empathy are at the heart of all these questions. Until next week,

I'm Nahasie's and this is Partition. Partition was developed as a part of the Next Up initiative created by Anna Hosnier, Joel Monique and Yes Sinia mit En. Partition is produced by Anna Hosnier, Tricia Mukerjee and Beca Ramos. It is edited by Rory Gagan, with the original score composed by Mark Hadley.