Interview: Sam Dalrymple Traces the Birth of Nations
The historian and author talks about his his latest book, which interlaces high political history with intimate human stories to examine the complex, often violent, foundations of modern west and south Asian countries
Shattered Lands is a sweeping book. Its scope spans from Yemen to Burma, from Kashmir to Hyderabad. It would be impossible for the book to be otherwise, for the story it tells is equally expansive—the difficult, often extremely bloody tale of how many present-day west and south Asian countries were born.
It is also a surprisingly emotional read for a subject that could have been extremely cut and dry. Sam Dalrymple achieves this by intertwining the stories of ordinary citizens with the grand narratives of political realities, showing the impact these realities have on people’s lives. Especially moving is the story of Sparsh Ahuja, co-founder with Dalrymple of Project Dastaan, an initiative to reunite survivors of Partition from across the India-Pakistan and India-Bangladesh borders with their birthplaces. Dalrymple ends the book with Ahuja travelling to the village in Pakistan where his grandfather was born, and where his Muslim neighbour, Sher Khan, protected his life during communal riots. It’s a fitting ending to a book that ultimately serves as a stark warning: if the world continues to be fragmented by vested interests, the legacy of violence, trauma and anger will remain forever unhealed, no matter how distant the past may seem.
Reader’s Digest: Was this book born of Project Dastaan, or were there other sources of inspiration for this book?
Sam Dalrymple: Very much so. We were planning a documentary in which we were trying to broaden the idea of Partition. Partition was deemed a subcontinental event, but it’s only ever really referred to in terms of Punjab and Bengal. In fact, the states most demographically changed by Partition included Tripura and Telangana. And yet, people from South India say, no, Partition didn’t affect us here in the South. There was one man in Tripura to whom we asked, “How did Partitio...
Shattered Lands is a sweeping book. Its scope spans from Yemen to Burma, from Kashmir to Hyderabad. It would be impossible for the book to be otherwise, for the story it tells is equally expansive—the difficult, often extremely bloody tale of how many present-day west and south Asian countries were born.
It is also a surprisingly emotional read for a subject that could have been extremely cut and dry. Sam Dalrymple achieves this by intertwining the stories of ordinary citizens with the grand narratives of political realities, showing the impact these realities have on people’s lives. Especially moving is the story of Sparsh Ahuja, co-founder with Dalrymple of Project Dastaan, an initiative to reunite survivors of Partition from across the India-Pakistan and India-Bangladesh borders with their birthplaces. Dalrymple ends the book with Ahuja travelling to the village in Pakistan where his grandfather was born, and where his Muslim neighbour, Sher Khan, protected his life during communal riots. It’s a fitting ending to a book that ultimately serves as a stark warning: if the world continues to be fragmented by vested interests, the legacy of violence, trauma and anger will remain forever unhealed, no matter how distant the past may seem.
Reader’s Digest: Was this book born of Project Dastaan, or were there other sources of inspiration for this book?
Sam Dalrymple: Very much so. We were planning a documentary in which we were trying to broaden the idea of Partition. Partition was deemed a subcontinental event, but it’s only ever really referred to in terms of Punjab and Bengal. In fact, the states most demographically changed by Partition included Tripura and Telangana. And yet, people from South India say, no, Partition didn’t affect us here in the South. There was one man in Tripura to whom we asked, “How did Partition affect Tripura?” He replied, “Which Partition are you talking about? 1937 when we were cut off from Burma, 1947 when we were cut off from Dhaka, or 1971 when another wave of refugees arrived in Tripura?” That comment kept playing in my mind.
How did you come to this concept of five partitions that formulate a picture of modern South Asia? Was it sparked by that comment?
(That is) where it began. I was stunned that I’d never considered the Burma angle. Whenever I looked at maps of the Raj, there it was—the largest province of India for 100 years. And in maps from 1909, there was Nepal and Bhutan. How did they fit into this network? Then I came across a book by James Onley, which said that Yemen, Oman, Dubai, Qatar, etc. were all part of it. My timeframe was when the first Indian passports are issued, [which leads to the question] who counted as Indian then? Who counts as Indian today?
The book includes the more overlooked people affected by Partition, such as Keenan, the Irish army officer in Punjab, as well as princely state heirs. What made you look at consider these stories?
I don’t think I went looking for them, but I found them rather extraordinary. Keenan’s daughter, Bridget, is my godmother, and she shared a number of her father’s letters from that time. Ultimately, an Irish family having to move to Britain after five generations in India is not the most tragic story in the book, neither is it framed as such, but I find little stories that fit between the cracks so interesting. Likewise, these extraordinary stories of the princely states. I wanted to highlight how varied the experiences of the time were across the class-caste spectrum.
Was there an emotional cost to writing the book?
Definitely. I’ve spoken to other authors about this aspect of researching these often very horrible things. Equally, this kind of research is full of the most hopeful stories you’ve ever heard. And what’s amazing is there are infinitely more stories of communities rallying together, than there are of the horrors. One of the great lies (about) the way that Partition is described is that it’s all neighbours turning on neighbours. I found that in 99.99 per cent of the times it was neighbours defending each other from organized militias and political groups. That neighbours turning on each other was, in a sense, rare.
These unresolved religious, linguistic and ideological issues continue to haunt us. What do you think is the greatest danger from this?
People associate anti-colonialism with nationalism, which isn’t true. I think that we are living in a time of resurgent nationalism. Walls are hardening rather than softening. A lot of the lessons that should have been learnt from this period are being forgotten—that wanting freedom from Britain didn’t necessarily mean fragmentation; that in the ’20s people in Rangoon, Yemen, Pakistan, Bangladesh joined Gandhi’s salt march. I’m often asked, why is this history relevant today? Because it’s everywhere, and yet we don’t associate our modern politics with these events.
Anam Zakaria’s observation is important: When she was interviewing Partition survivors and their families, the older generation, without fail, would harbour less animosity to those on the other side of the border—they remembered a time before the ‘other’ became the ‘other’. There are claims that the borders of modern India stretch back to Bharatvarsha, but in fact almost all the borders of this nation were created by chance, political folly and ethno-nationalism—ancient borders didn’t re-emerge. With each these borders, communities on either side have more in common with each other than they do with their respective national capitals.
Raja Tridiv Roy said the common man “ … is just a bit of flotsam in the whirlwind of politics.” Do you agree?
No, I think every person has a role to play and can assert themselves. But I agree that borders and nationality don’t align with the realities of the subcontinent, and they are largely random. People always have the ability to change the world. You see that in so many of the figures in the book—common men who become the great men of history.
Where do you place yourself in the legacy of Partition?
As a scholar, trying to understand the ways it’s broken everything up. It feels personal to me. Some reviewers have noted that it’s unusual for a white writer to feel that way, but I do. I grew up in post-2008 Delhi. All my early understanding of Pakistan, for example, were created post-the Mumbai attacks. So arriving in Lahore for the first time in 2016, and finding that it is, not just visually, but culturally, socially, culinarily, [like Delhi] ... really muddled me. In a sense, this book is me trying to solve how that could be, how I arrived in this, kind of scary ‘other’ place, about which I had all sorts of preconceptions, and find it’s exactly the same as home.
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple, Published by Fourth Estate