I could probably say that I have come to Karachi with three curiousities. I want to learn who Anant was, how Islam is, and what Pakistan will be.
For the first few days here I had my questions at the top of my dome for my Nani-Ma. It’s like they have been locked in a vault for a decade awaiting the key master (”Are you the key master?” “Yes, I’m a friend of his.”- Ghostbusters just for pops). We would be sitting in the morning, drinking chai, and I would blurt, “Was Anant a socialist?” And she would answer, “Yes. Until the end. Partition greatly hurt him. He, more than anyone wanted to see a unified India. But I think socialism is dead.”
A former student of my Nani-ma’s, Sadia, took me for lunch my second day in Karachi. We grubbed some Chicken Mahkani, Chicken Tikka Masala, and a lot of nan. As we are devouring the savory goodness and talking about South Asian history, she tells me with ultimate conviction,”There would have been unification, but Gandhi said that Muslims could not practice Islam in India.”
To which I said, “Whaaaat!?”
Then I had dinner with some folks who knew Anant a night later and I told them what this girl had said to me. This guy almost dropped his fork in shock. “That’s not true. No. It was Nehru’s power trip. Nehru had to be Prime Minister and he didn’t want to give any power to Jinnah. It was because of Nehru that there was partition.”
To which I sat and listened…
You’d think that there would be one straightforward answer to some of history’s great questions. Why was India divided into sections with Independence? Why did the U.S. intervene in Vietnam? Why did we invade Iraq? But I guess these are tough questions and various answers gain greater credibility in different areas and time periods.
One of my pet peeves is when someone gives me false information…especially when they tell me with a fist-stomping-the-table-attitude. I was in San Diego with a friend a couple years ago and a foreigner asked him, “How do I get to highway 8?” My friend bluntly answers, “There is no highway 8.” I had just moved to town and was unware of anything but “the 5″, so I went along with it. But I found out later, that there is indeed an important highway numbered 8. My buddy had already lived and driven in the town for a couple years and I was dumbfounded at how he didn’t know of the highway and how he told the guy with such undoubtful truth in his language.
I asked another friend about a year a go: (I feel like she’d kill me if I gave her name away, so I won’t. She is a Shia-Muslim from Iran) “What percentage of Iraq is Shi’a?” She replied “10%.”
So I figured “Huh, I guess the Shi’as have no way of obtaining a majority with a democratic election. I could have sworn they were two-thirds of the country though.”
Later that evening I was doing my nightly SD-WC politic chopping with my pops on the phone and I said, “Well, Iraq is only 10% Shi’a, so they won’t grab power with elections.”
“No, my son. You are mistaken. Iraq’s Shi’a constitute 60% of the population.”
To which I said, “Whaaaat!?”
The next day I stormed in on my friend and blew up at her. I probably overreacted, but I was so furious to have been misinformed. This has caused me to be weary at times over spreading sketchy information that I’m not 100% sure of. I usually hesitate when explaining things because I’m often not 100% sure… so I say things with a bit of apprehension. I hate this…but I think I prefer it to the arrogant “I know I’m right, as I look down upon you” manner that some people use.
I still like to trust what people say…but I guess I gotta do my homework in addition.
i took a class at UCLA taught by Rajmohan Gandhi, who was a grandson (son of a son) of the Mahatma. He taught us that it was Jinnah’s determination to be a leader of something that led to Partition. Gandhi and Jinnah held a series of now famous discussions in the weeks leading up to independence. Gandhi was struggling to convince Jinnah not to split, but Jinnah was convinced Muslims couldn never receive fair representation in India and therefore needed their own state. Gandhi even offered the Prime Ministership of India to Jinnah to quell those fears but Jinnah was determined to split. apparently he did not feel the independence movement was his and needed something bigger to his credit. again, this is coming from a grandson of Gandhi (who by the way was one of the nicest/coolest profs i had) …but I still believe it. after all, how can you doubt the grandson of a man who famously said “mother i can not tell a lie. i chopped down that cherry tree”.
He’s got a point.
Umm, that wasn’t me about the I-8 was it? You know how I like to maliciously lie to people who smell bad.
Actually Rajmohan Gandhi’s analysis quite different. He actually holds Jinnah in great esteem. This much is apparent when one reads his essay on Jinnah in the famous “8 Muslim Lives”.
As for his own grandfather… he was an enigma… the great Gandhi was racist against black people for example. Bet you didn’t know that…
All these people were complex