The divided land

Rajmohan Gandhi’s book on the history of undivided Punjab is likely to be an inhabitant of the bookshelves of historians, intel­lectuals, mustachioed royal households of the Punjab, and others with an investment in the region. Reading it from the perspective of a lay person with no personal ties to the history of Punjab has been full of pleasant surprises.

The book is organised as a strict chronology of events, of the “then what happened” variety. This has two pos­sible effects. The first effect is experienced while glancing through the book casually, where the reader is instantly transported back to the horror of fact-laden school-time his­tory textbooks. The hand that turns the page must periodi­cally thump the forehead and rub drooping eyes awake. As it turns out, casual reading is a poor strategy for such a book and may prevent you from reading it altogether. Reading the book with a fine-ish tooth comb on the other hand, is far more rewarding.

In his introduction, the author poses questions, par­ticularly on the legacy of Par­tition, that invest the Indian reader in the story of Punjab. Gandhi argues that denying ourselves a“Punjabi his­tory” that predates Partition, denies us the chance to truly understand ourselves. For many of us, this may be a rev­elation. By bringing Pakistani Punjab into our Bollywood and tandoori-chicken tainted view of Punjabi culture, the book helps the reader to shed stereotypes before embark­ing on the complex historical discussion to follow.

We see Punjab as a fertile, frontier land, ruled by the Kushanas, the Mauryas, the Guptas, and the Sultans of Delhi, and fought over by the Mughals, Afghans and Brit­ish — outsiders all. Amazingly, it is only in 1799 that a ‘son of the soil’ ruled Punjab for the first time — the remarkable, one-eyed Sikh ruler, Ranjit Singh. Gandhi discusses why undivided Punjab’s Muslim majority failed to seize power after the death of Aurangzeb. He contends that by collat­ing histories from the time of Aurangzeb’s death, a clearer picture emerges about the growing dominance of the Sikhs, the lack of opposition to British rule on the part of the Muslim majority, why Punjab responded with reluc­tance to the Gandhian move­ment, and the tragic events accompanying the Partition of Punjab in 1947 (here Gan­dhi also documents numer­ous incidents of ‘insaniyat’ triumphing over bloodlust). The author is expectedly invested in the hypotheses he presents as questions at the beginning of the book. While these may be debat­able, what allows the reader to lend him an ear is that he refrains from interpreting the stories he chronicles.

Once the reader is im­mersed in the narrative, the book takes on a life of its own. The tale is replete with fratricide and patricide, deals and betrayals, eccentricities and idiosyncrasies, as we are introduced to the greater and lesser claimants to the thrones of Punjab and Delhi. The Iranian Nadir Shah leaves tens of thousands dead and the true chaos of a power vacuum comes to life. Adina Beg Khan rules parts of Punjab in the name of almost every possible player. Finally, the depth of detail in the book is such that unremarkable highway stops like Rajpura and Ambala, or chai-samosa railway stations like Nanded, become irrevers­ibly linked with marauding Afghans, mass beheadings and other such raindrops on roses.