The Many Histories of Modern India

Diba Siddiqi

A primary source of understanding is one which is made during the time you are exploring with children. While curating a middle school social science course, I reach for material that was created in the period of study. I forage for images and voices that tell stories. They bring the situations of people alive. Students may step into the shoes of another person, and feel what life may have been like for them. I also adapt secondary sources based on primary material, that I feel speak in a language that illuminates a period and is accessible and suitable non-fiction for a middle school student.

I have facilitated the course “The Many Histories of Modern India” thrice, in the last six years. In this course, I was keen that we work with primary sources that would help us explore events and situations often not highlighted in standard textbooks. The conventional time frame that historians of Modern India refer to stretches from 1857 to 1947. One end marks the end of the control that the East India Company wielded in the Indian subcontinent. 1857 was the year of the Sepoy Mutiny or the uprising in which soldiers employed by the company revolted against the hegemony of their officers. As violence spread across the north, many common folk and local rulers joined in support of the uprising. The control of the East India Company ended and the rule was transferred to the British crown.

1947, the other end of the modern period, marks another time of upheaval and massacre. This too was a time of transfer of power from the British crown to the people of the Indian subcontinent. The partitioning of the subcontinent happened quickly and haphazardly. Arson and killings erupted in Bengal and Punjab as people feared the loss of their homelands and lives. As in the revolt of 1857, violence spread quickly.

The period preceding the transfer of power in 1947 is often viewed as the “Pre-independence” period or the time of the “Freedom Struggle”. Emphasis is laid on the attempt to oust British rule. The key figures extolled are stalwarts of the Independence movement. In this perspective, there is scant narrative of the rampant hardships of the time as well as of the compassion and help extended across a diversity of peoples.

School curricula provide limited primary material for students to learn about other upheavals and dire situations of the time, which affected thousands of people.

‘The Many Histories of Modern India’ is a course which attempts to explore multiple histories and perspectives of the Modern period based on primary and secondary sources.

In this article, I will present selections from the content and process of the course.

I curated a course which drew from the following material I gathered:

1. Photographs of people and events from the modern period.
   There are iconic photographs made by acclaimed, lesser recognized and anonymous photographers. These depict times of joy, distress, and coping. There are pictures of skeletal ghost-like bodies deprived of food from the late 1800s; makeshift hospitals during the plague epidemic of the late 1890s; photographs of Indian soldiers overseas during the World Wars, portraying the diversity of their experiences; and numerous emotive photographs from the time of the Partition.
2. Archived International newspapers of the time (Times of India, The Times London and The New York Times). Students read and responded to reports in the Times of India about Adivasi lives in Tripura, Thane, and Chotanagpur. They learned about famines, plague, and the impact of the World Wars through newspaper reports.
3. Voices
   There are podcasts of voice recordings of Indian soldiers, talking about their lives overseas during the World Wars. One of these is “The Ghostly Voices of World War One”. Students learned about the lives of the one and a half million soldiers of Indian origin who were shipped overseas to fight in the wars. They heard the voices of figures such as Gandhi, Ambedkar, and Mountbatten.
4. Documentaries
   There are short films made during the modern period. Some of these show stalwarts such as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the north western Pashtun leader, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

They provide an opportunity for students to have a “live” glimpse of personalities.

5. Secondary material
   I adapted secondary materials for middle school students. These include the well-referenced books by Ramachandra Guha. His book “The Makers of Modern India” (Penguin books, 2010) is a compilation of pieces written by personalities in their own voices. Students may infer the concerns and perspectives of leading figures of the time through their own writing.

His book “India After Gandhi” (Picador 2007) has chapters which vividly describe a refugee camp and analyse the upheaval of Partition.

During the first half of the course, all students learned about the following topics:

1. The plight of highly diverse Adivasi peoples prior to and just after Independence
2. Famines
3. Epidemics
4. The impact of World War 1 and World War 2 on the lives of Indian people and
5. The Partition.

In the latter half of the course, students worked on individual projects around a particular topic.

The process of the course
The course began with a reading of images, selected from across the Modern period, visually introducing students to stories from across the stretch of the modern period. I asked the students to “look deeply” at the images and respond on the same card sheets to the following questions:
Who do you think the people in this picture are?
What do you think is happening in the picture?
What does the picture tell us about life at the time it was made?

Students responded individually to pictures. They also read one another’s responses. Students thought about the clues that informed their “guesses”.

Some of these were “posture”, “expression”, “clothing”, “surroundings” and “objects”. Following this visual introduction to the course, we sequentially learned about other topics through both primary and secondary materials.

These were:

1. The plight of select Adivasi folk
   Students learned from the anthropologist Verrier Elwin’s own writing. He lived among Adivasi peoples in parts of the Indian subcontinent for several decades. He writes from the perspective of a “close and involved” observer.

They also read an article by Jaipal Singh, a dynamic Munda leader, politician, and writer. One of his compelling pieces entitled, “Welfare of true Indians sorely neglected” appeared in the Times of India on January 26, 1951. The article begins:
“Adivasis, the original settlers in this country (are) the most ancient aristocracy. Today they are found in compact groups, mostly in the hilly tracts, whither they retreated and fled as newcomers pushed them farther and farther from the fertile river basins. Until very recently, they were left unnoticed, untouched and uncared for, and they continued to live their own life. It is remarkable how their manners, customs and languages managed to survive the ever-menacing impact of newcomers.”

Jaipal Singh’s description and analysis provided a basis for students to explore questions. The students thought and wrote about:

1. The role and difficulties of the Adivasi movement in Chotanagpur.
2. The impact of the demise of long-standing local panchayats.
3. The meaning and significance of “linguistic” freedom in primary education.

2. Famines
I prepared a text which describes the varying contexts of famines through the nineteenth century.

Students saw the iconic photographs of Sunil Janah as well as photographs by unknown photographers which graphically depict the emaciated condition of people.

Students learned that the Bengal Famine of 1943 was human-made. The lack of food was not due to a lack of food grains but due to conscious human decisions. Freight trains were diverted to the north-east to feed soldiers stationed there as World War 2 advanced to that region. Grain was also sold in the market to raise funds to support the war effort.

From an article in the NYT in 1946 titled “Prevention of Famine: Aid to the Distressed” students learned about the different contexts in which an acute shortage of food may arise and be addressed through appropriate food “procurement and distribution”.

3. Epidemics
   I made a presentation of the epidemics of typhoid, cholera, Spanish flu which affected thousands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students learned about the early attempts to develop and administer vaccines. They learned about the Epidemic Diseases Act, legislated in 1897 during the bubonic plague epidemic in order to address the crisis.
4. Lives of soldiers and other people in the Indian subcontinent during the World Wars
   Students listened to two podcasts “Ghostly Voices of Indian Soldiers”¹ and “India’s Forgotten War”,² based on recordings of soldiers overseas. There are numerous photographs which depict the complex of lives of Indian soldiers.

The historian and writer Santanu Das’s book: “1914-1918: Indian troops in Europe” (Mapin 2015) is a visual history based on rare archival photographs from Europe and India.

From an interview with Santanu Das published in The Guardian in June 2015, students explored soldiers’ lives in some detail. They identified people, places, and events in the textual material. They found categories of information in their notes, which included “relationships with Europeans”, “hardships” and “the care of wounded soldiers”. They learned that life for soldiers overseas was harsh but also had moments of care and respite.

5. The 1947 Partition
   Students had a vivid glimpse of the plight of refugees from Ramachandra Guha’s “India After Gandhi”. In the opening paragraphs of the chapter “Refugees and the Republic” he writes about the situation of refugees in the Kurukshetra camp: “The refugees had to be housed and fed, but also clothed and entertained…. The UCRW (United Council for Relief and Welfare) commandeered film projectors and showed Disney specials featuring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck…. A social worker commented: “This two-hour break from reality helped the refugees forget their shock experiences and misery.”

An essay by William Dalrymple, “The Great Divide: the violent legacy of Indian Partition” published in The New Yorker (June 29, 2015), talks about the wider historical context and impact of the Partition.

Students watched rare footage, a fifteen minute colour documentary: “1947 Independence of India rare colour video” which juxtapositions the Independence day celebrations in New Delhi with scenes of arson and aerial clips of millions of refugees on the move, in both directions.

Students learned and thought about the nuanced meaning of the word “secular”.

They learned that a supposed “secular” state makes no policies or decisions based on faith. They learned, from secondary material and photographs of meetings that even as the idea of Partition arose, leaders in the Indian subcontinent engaged in intense and prolonged discussions to ensure that the subcontinent would not be divided along lines of faith. They learned that some leaders strongly believed that the varied cultures and communities of the subcontinent who had co-mingled, eaten in one another’s homes, shared their customs and language, belonged together.

In the latter half of a twelve-week term, students worked on individual topics of interest.

Students chose a topic on which to write an evidence-based essay.
I gathered reference material for the students to work with.
Students made notes on “People, Places and Events” they encountered in their readings.
I then asked them to look at their notes and to see if any further topics or “categories” appeared. The categories they found helped them structure an essay and continue with their own writing.

These are some of the essay topics that students explored, across the three courses:
The Making of the Constitution; Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his changing views; The Partition; the life and views of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad; Cholera and Plague in the nineteenth century; Women personalities from the Modern Period; IPTA (the Indian People’s Theatre Association).

What follows is an account of select student projects:
The Making of the Constitution
While reading and making notes on the Making of the Constitution, students came across further events and personalities. They learned about a spectrum of perspectives which included the views of personalities such as Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar.

They learned about fraught times which required lengthy and numerous meetings in the attempt to reach shared clarity. They learned about the move to include women in the constituent assembly which framed the Constitution. Photographs offer a glimpse of processes of this time. There is a photograph of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi engaged in deep conversation. There is a picture, made in the early 40s of Gandhiji walking with his arm around Jinnah’s shoulder, both of them smiling. It reflects a sense of relating, no matter the differing perspectives on the terms of British departure.

Women personalities
Mid-way through the course, a student exclaimed: “But where are the women in all of the material we are reading?!” This prompted me to transcribe a voice recording I had made of my mother recounting her suffragette grandmother’s effort to address issues such as women’s education and peasant women’s rights. The student explored and wrote about the “unsung firebrand”, Aruna Asaf Ali, Basantlata Hazarika, who organized women in Assam and my great-grandmother, Sakina tul Fatima.

Partition
The time of Partition came alive through “real stories”. Two sisters, in two different courses, interviewed their granduncles. One sister learned about the trauma of leaving a home in Karachi and coming to Bombay to make a new life. The other sister spoke to a great uncle who grew up in Bombay and learned of the life of a “new” settler. The oral histories they wrote out offer glimpses of hardship as well as of hope, people helping one another out in these starkly difficult times.

Epidemics
Reading selections from the book Colonising the Body by David Arnold, one student learned about the larger context and impact of the epidemics of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries epidemics; the crucial role of reliable data in planning appropriate action at a population level; and of the “Epidemic Diseases Act” of 1897 which gave the British government powers to tackle the situation. She became interested in “Epidemiology”, a field of study which seeks to throw light on the wider context of health situations by gathering and analysing a variety of data, in an attempt to address a host of contributing factors to a health situations through multiple approaches, not only medical.

Cultural expression
One student read about the “Indian People’s Theatre Association” (IPTA). She learned about the committed endeavour to engage with issues through creative expression. She read and wrote about Zoya Sehgal, an ardent dancer and actress involved in IPTA from an early time. She learned about the film “Bhookhi hai Bengal” directed by Balraj Sahni which portrays the graveness and the larger context of the 1943 Bengal Famine. She also learned about the Progressive Writers Association founded in 1936 as a platform for artistes to present critical perspectives and invite dialogue and deliberation.

In all three courses, students presented their projects in a final session. They came away with the understanding of how a perusal of a time in history through image, voice, and writing can make it come alive as a complex of multiple stories, seen through the lens of multiple perspectives.

References

1. https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/nQtvrjott0YxIma7pR9JXO/The-singing-sepoys.html?facet=amp#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16835610864877&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p028z30p

The author has worked at the Centre for Learning since 1996. She has worked in the areas of middle school social science, art, photography, nature observation and vegetable gardening. She can be reached at dibasiddiqi@gmail.com.