First published on http://www.hindustantimes.com in July 2024
How long have you lived with the stories of your grandparents? What was the final impetus to write this book?
I grew up with the stories, to some extent. Some of the things my grandmother, Tahirah, told me first hand, but because I thankfully found her recorded tapes I didn’t have to rely on my memory of them. By the time I found the tapes, I had already decided I was going to write this story. On a couple of trips to India, I dabbled in the corners of it – when I was there to cover the 2014 elections, I tried to find my grandmother’s house in Aligarh. Then, I lost my father and realised that my mother is now close to 80 – my parents’ generation is starting to slip away. I think the book is an accumulation of a story that was in the back of my mind for a long time. Then it became bigger, as it was about a complex and contentious period of history. I needed a framework to put the individual stories into, and unless I understood the political side, I had no base to fit their stories. It’s written with a lot of love and is a celebration of a lost world. The generation that lived through those times is nearly gone, and once they’re completely beyond living memory the generations of our children will have no tangible connection to the past anymore. That generation is a part of all of us.
What were the challenges you faced blending the personal and the political?
Had I realised how big a project it was going to be, I may not have begun, because it was so overwhelming at times! I wanted to keep it fairly narrow at first because I saw it as a social history. But I was keen to understand my grandparents’ choice for Pakistan – I couldn’t do that without putting it in context. I’m not a historian, and it was daunting to step into that territory. Being a political journalist, I wondered what it would be like to interview these historical figures about their decision-making at the time. The biggest challenges were probably writing the historical aspects and really wanting to be fair and as true as possible to all the communities involved. My grandfather Shahid wrote this line that really resonated with me – “In our own small way, we are all a part of history”. He lived through some extraordinary times as he was the Private Secretary to British commander Claude Auchinleck in that period. My other grandfather Mumtaz’s memoirs helped to give so much richness of the book. He spoke of his own discovery of the country, when he goes to meet my grandmother’s family in what’s now Andhra Pradesh – everything about that life was eye-opening for him. The accounts from his unpublished memoir helped me write all the bits of daily life that are so often missing when you read history.
Both your grandmothers had such strong personalities. Did they ever talk to you about their lives and decisions?
I think both their stories are really interesting for exactly that reason – so many women at that time, especially Muslim women, were a bit behind other communities in terms of being outside the home. They encapsulated their generation of women who are starting to embark on professions, even though marriage interrupts nursing for Mary and medicine for Tahirah. But they still embarked on something that was unimaginable for their mothers. Mary died when I was 11, so I was never able to talk to her about these things. But Tahirah would tell me things which I think her husband would not have been comfortable articulating – that she had a real sense of loss about the friends they lost in 1947, and the places that they could never go back to; the society they left behind. They settled in Rawalpindi as that was their first posting with the army after independence. I think she felt that it was a very small place compared to what she had known growing up around Delhi, Aligarh and Lucknow. Those were places where she felt really at home, and I think there was always a sense of wistfulness about the past. That was difficult to articulate sometimes even within the family in Pakistan because they just had to feel fortunate about their lives as so many people suffered so much more. They were the founding generation of a new country that was going through all sorts of difficulties; they just had to make the best of it. It was a more old-fashioned way of looking at the world – you didn’t complain.
How important were your Pakistani roots to you growing up in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Britain? Do you hold your South Asian identity close?
I would say it’s a bit different for me because I was an expat child in the Middle East. Indians and Pakistanis were a big part of our social circle in Abu Dhabi. Pakistan was important to me as it was the one home we went to which belonged to the family. Otherwise, we were constantly living in doctors’ accommodations. My grandparents’ home was the only fixed place that didn’t change. I didn’t come to England for any length of time till I was 12, when I went to boarding school. The identity conflict wasn’t there for me, but certainly my South Asian identity was important. I always knew that even within Pakistan, there was no ancestral village I was going back to – those places were in India for us. I had that sense that my grandparents’ own roots are somewhere else, and therefore part of my roots are somewhere else too. Thanks to my work, I’ve been able to travel to India many times. I’m probably the only one in my family who’s been able to access part of my heritage in a tangible way.
As someone writing a Partition story in today’s political climate, what do you hope the book conveys to readers?
To readers in India and Pakistan, some of this history will certainly be better known than it is to readers in Britain. At the same time, I think over the years it’s boiled down mostly to a narrative of violence – particularly in Punjab – rather than a sense of British decision-making. The period from 1918 to 1939, when Britain is always behind India’s demands for political and constitutional change, is so important. The role of the Second World War and the incredibly swift period between 1945 and 1947 – there are so many things about this crucial period that have been forgotten. There were so many junctions when a different future was possible, and it didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, some of them very much about the personalities involved. I think the details are absolutely relevant when you think of the effect it had on the circumstances in which the two countries became independent. I believe there’s also a contemporary relevance to the story and I hope people will take away their own lessons from what I detail. I hope people will be able to put their own families’ experiences somewhere within the tapestry that I’ve created. There is a spirit around the founding generation of both countries which is important to remember – the upheaval in their lives, the choices they had to make, often very fast and without realising the long-term consequences. I don’t think that my mother’s parents thought it would be so difficult for them to travel back to their homes. At the end of the book, I try to draw some conclusions and think about the things that caused them pain in their lifetimes and would still cause them pain today. I really hope there are contemporary as well as historical takeaways from their stories.
Huzan Tata 