The world is burning at the moment, and we may be hyper focused on the US trying to gun for the “Most Likely to Revert to a Dictatorship” award or Israel’s decision to start double-fisting wars or (literally happened today) US’s decision to join the Iran-Israel conflict — but do you know that WWIII came very close to breaking out in May?
India and Pakistan — both nuclear-armed, and both sworn enemies since the Brits left — started bombing each other over militant attacks in Kashmir, a disputed region that the two have fought wars over. It lasted for four, very tense days, during which the entire diplomatic community was freaking out telling Islamabad and New Delhi to calm the fuck down, while our collective attention was focused on the pope conclave. Then a truce was brokered — Trump took credit, obvi — and it’s held (I think) ever since.
In nearly every article written about this very complicated situation, we’d add a brief paragraph about the history of India and Pakistan being created after India gained independence from the Brits in 1947. But the more I edited and read these stories, the more I felt like I knew absolutely nothing about partition. For me personally, it’s a historical event that’s not as well-treaded by film/tv/books like the Japanese occupation of Singapore (I grew up there), or slavery in the US, or D-Day in Europe. Even the Gallipoli campaign, I’ve definitely seen a couple TV movies on.
Confession: My first ever understanding of partition came from an episode of Ms Marvel. Can you understand how shameful it felt for me, a journalist who regularly edits South Asia stories, to be getting info on this from a superhero show? It was so dramatic, and I remember thinking then, “I can’t believe they aren’t making more movies about this.”
This latest crisis gave me the perfect impetus to go digging for literature, and that’s how I found The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani. I’ve also now realized I’ve written nearly 400 words to get to this point because I’m wordy af, but if you read nothing else, read this: Run, go get your hands on a copy of The Night Diary. It is phenomenal. Yes, for sure it is an excellent introduction into partition, but it also packed an emotional punch, a fist socking into my sternum; I repeat, it is phenomenal.
Set a month before India’s independence, the eponymous diary is written by Nisha, a 12-year-old girl living in Mirpur Khas, India. She was given a diary for her birthday — July 14, 1947 — and decides to start penning it as if she was writing to her late mother, who died when giving birth to Nisha and her twin brother Amil.
Nisha is painfully shy, and the only people she’s able to talk freely to is Amil — who is seen as the more open-hearted twin, though he struggles with school as he appears to have dyslexia — and their cook, Kazi, a Muslim man who lives with them. The twins’ relationship with their Dad is tense, while their grandma is a loving, if not a tad doddering, figure.
The diary format is incredibly effective at laying out the explanatory groundwork needed for Nisha’s world. Her late mother was Muslim and her Dad is Hindu, and even if there wasn’t overt religious division in the towns where Hindus and Muslims resided together before 1947, “marriage has always been different,” Kazi explains. Her mom and dad moved to Mirpur Khas after being secretly married by a Hindu priest — a childhood friend of the father — to escape the societal ostracization.
Through Nisha’s child-like eyes, we see Mirpur Khas slowly changing as the diary creeps closer to August. They start getting harassed by kids as they walk to school, and she reacts with confusion over why outsiders are angered by Kazi living with them in their Hindu household. Stern men also visit their home to talk to their father, telling the family to leave. After Amil tells her that “the British people are going to free India, but there’s talk of India being separated into two countries, where Muslims have to go one place and the Hindus, the Sikhs, and everybody else have to go to another place.
“I told him that sounded insane. Why would India suddenly become two countries?” Nisha writes.
Everyone knows who is Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh by the clothes they wear or the names they have. But we all have lived together in this town for so long, I just never thought much about people’s religions before. Does it have to do with India becoming independent from the British? I don’t see how those two things go together…
I used to think of people by their names and what they looked like, or what they did. Sahil sells pakoras on the corner. Now I look at him and think Sikh. My teacher, Sir Habib, is now my Muslim teacher. My friend Sabeen is happy and talks a lot. Now she’s my Muslim friend. Papa’s friend, Dr. Ahmed, is now a Muslim doctor. I think of everyone I know and try to remember if they are Hindu or Muslim or Sikh and who has to go and who can stay…
Amil said it’s good that we will be free from the British, but what does that mean? Doesn’t freedom mean you can choose where you want to be?”
Something else that shows how Nisha is very much a child — she suggests to Amil that since their mom is Muslim, that would make them half-Muslim. “If we told all the kids at our schools the truth about Mama, maybe we could be friends with everyone. Maybe it would be a good thing now, instead of a bad thing. Maybe we could stay and not have to leave,” she muses to Amil, who declared it the stupidest thing she’s ever said.
Having Nisha state the obvious in a child-like manner drives home how absurd partitioning India was as a policy, how utterly bonkers it is for politicians to play with millions of people’s lives as movable chess pieces. Even a spiritual leader like Gandhi, who protested carving up India with hunger strikes, is not spared from Nisha’s criticism as her family make the dangerous journey to India.
I wouldn’t dare say this out loud, but I’m so angry at all the leaders, like Jinnah and Nehru, who were supposed to know better, who were supposed to protect us, who were supposed to make sure things like this didn’t happen. I’m even angry at Gandhi for not being able to stop it.”
It really bothers me that the word “partition” shrouds how massive the event is. Such a clinical term to describe a mass migration of over 10 million people. It’s been estimated that about a million died during this upheaval, with stories of trains pulling up to station full of the dead bodies. Towns got labeled Muslims or Hindu, and roving bands of mobs killed masses who were not of the “right” religion. It was also well-documented that women were abducted and raped, targeted in a systematic manner by men of different religions.
Bombarded with all the awful news in the world, it’s easy to think of these events as removed from us. But Nisha’s voice made me think of the children in Gaza, forced to play indoors for fear of Israeli strikes, starving and suffering from malnutrition as aid is blocked from entering the territory. The trauma of partition is still felt today across South Asia — a fact that brings a dull ache within me when I think about the future, unknowable havoc wrought by decisions taken by current politicians.
Hiranandani’s Night Diary skims some of the more harrowing aspects of violence and rape, lingering instead on the family feeling real hunger and thirst while trying to navigate a new landscape of mistrust. Nisha is also forced to grow up quickly as she’s wrested out of her comfort zone to be a pillar for her family. As the weeks tick by, she grapples with what it means to have a splintered identity — not just as a Hindu-Muslim child or someone coming from a home that no longer exists, but also one who will always feel the keening loss of her mother.
Nobody ever mentions the fact that you were Muslim, Mama. It’s like everyone forgot. But I don’t want to forget. The truest truth is that I don’t know any other children whose parents are different religions. It must be a strange thing that nobody wants to talk about. I guess we’re Hindu because Papa and Dadi (her grandma) are. But you’re still a part of me, Mama. Where does that part go?”
I have no eloquent way to end my review except to say this again: Go read The Night Diary. It will be worth it, I promise.