#1947 partition archive

[iamadarshbadri]

Digitised Archival Sources on India and South Asia

The days when only members of the upper class of urban society had access to knowledge-producing sites (mostly archives) are long gone. Today, one may easily access digitised archival sources thanks to the internet on mobile phones. The growth of digital technology has also enabled a new arena of history-keeping. Publicly-owned digitised archival sources have gained popularity in recent years as…

[roco2808]

“If we say nothing about Israel’s brazen slaughter of Palestinians, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it.”

If we say nothing about Israel’s brazen slaughter of Palestinians, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it. Something in our moral selves will be altered forever. Are we going to simply stand by and watch while homes, hospitals, refugee camps, schools, universities, archives are bombed, a million people displaced, and dead children pulled out from under the rubble? The borders of Gaza are sealed. People have nowhere to go. They have no shelter, no food, no water. The United Nations says more than half the population is starving. And still they are being bombed relentlessly. Are we going to once again watch a whole people being dehumanised to the point where their annihilation does not matter?

The project of dehumanising Palestinians did not begin with Benyamin Netanyahu and his crew—it began decades ago.

In 2002, on the first anniversary of September 11 2001, I delivered a lecture called “Come September” in the United States in which I spoke about other anniversaries of September 11—the 1973 CIA-backed coup against President Salvador Allende in Chile on that auspicious date, and then the speech on September 11, 1990, of George W. Bush, Sr., then US President, to a joint session of Congress, announcing his government’s decision to go to war against Iraq. And then I spoke about Palestine. I will read this section out and you will see that if I hadn’t told you it was written 21 years ago, you’d think it was about today.

September 11th has a tragic resonance in the Middle East, too. On the 11th of September 1922, ignoring Arab outrage, the British government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine, a follow-up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration which imperial Britain issued, with its army massed outside the gates of Gaza. The Balfour Declaration promised European Zionists a national home for Jewish people. (At the time, the Empire on which the Sun Never Set was free to snatch and bequeath national homelands like a school bully distributes marbles.)

How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilisations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain’s festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modern world. Both are fault lines in the raging international conflicts of today.

In 1937, Winston Churchill said of the Palestinians, I quote, “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.” That set the trend for the Israeli State’s attitude towards the Palestinians.

In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, “Palestinians do not exist.”

Her successor, Prime Minister Levi Eschol said, “What are Palestinians? When I came here (to Palestine), there were 250,000 non-Jews, mainly Arabs and Bedouins. It was a desert, more than underdeveloped. Nothing.” Prime Minister Menachem Begin called Palestinians “two-legged beasts”.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called them “grasshoppers” who could be crushed. This is the language of Heads of State, not the words of ordinary people.

Thus began that terrible myth about the Land without a People for a People without a Land.

In 1947, the U.N. formally partitioned Palestine and allotted 55 per cent of Palestine’s land to the Zionists. Within a year, they had captured 76 per cent. On the 14th of May 1948 the State of Israel was declared. Minutes after the declaration, the United States recognized Israel. The West Bank was annexed by Jordan. The Gaza Strip came under Egyptian military control, and Palestine formally ceased to exist except in the minds and hearts of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people who became refugees.

In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Over the decades there have been uprisings, wars, intifadas. Tens of thousands have lost their lives. Accords and treaties have been signed. Cease-fires declared and violated. But the bloodshed doesn’t end.

Palestine still remains illegally occupied. Its people live in inhuman conditions, in virtual Bantustans, where they are subjected to collective punishments, 24-hour curfews, where they are humiliated and brutalized on a daily basis. They never know when their homes will be demolished, when their children will be shot, when their precious trees will be cut, when their roads will be closed, when they will be allowed to walk down to the market to buy food and medicine. And when they will not. They live with no semblance of dignity. With not much hope in sight. They have no control over their lands, their security, their movement, their communication, their water supply. So when accords are signed, and words like “autonomy” and even “statehood” bandied about, it’s always worth asking: What sort of autonomy? What sort of State? What sort of rights will its citizens have? Young Palestinians who cannot control their anger turn themselves into human bombs and haunt Israel’s streets and public places, blowing themselves up, killing ordinary people, injecting terror into daily life, and eventually hardening both societies’ suspicion and mutual hatred of each other. Each bombing invites merciless reprisal and even more hardship on Palestinian people. But then suicide bombing is an act of individual despair, not a revolutionary tactic.

Although Palestinian attacks strike terror into Israeli citizens, they provide the perfect cover for the Israeli government’s daily incursions into Palestinian territory, the perfect excuse for old-fashioned, nineteenth-century colonialism, dressed up as a new-fashioned, 21st century “war”. Israel’s staunchest political and military ally is and always has been the US.

The US government has blocked, along with Israel, almost every UN resolution that sought a peaceful, equitable solution to the conflict. It has supported almost every war that Israel has fought. When Israel attacks Palestine, it is American missiles that smash through Palestinian homes. And every year Israel receives several billion dollars from the United States—taxpayers’ money.

Today every bomb that is dropped by Israel on the civilian population, every tank, and every bullet has the United States’ name on it. None of this would happen if the US wasn’t backing it wholeheartedly. All of us saw what happened at the meeting of the UN Security Council on December 8 when 13 member states voted for a ceasefire and the US voted against it. The disturbing video of the US Deputy Ambassador, a Black American, raising his hand to veto the resolution is burned into our brains. Some bitter commentators on the social media have called it Intersectional Imperialism.

Reading through the bureaucratese, what the US seemed to be saying is: Finish the Job. But Do it Kindly.

What lessons should we draw from this tragic conflict? Is it really impossible for Jewish people who suffered so cruelly themselves—more cruelly perhaps than any other people in history—to understand the vulnerability and the yearning of those whom they have displaced?

Does extreme suffering always kindle cruelty? What hope does this leave the human race with? What will happen to the Palestinian people in the event of a victory? When a nation without a state eventually proclaims a state, what kind of state will it be? What horrors will be perpetrated under its flag? Is it a separate state that we should be fighting for or, the rights to a life of liberty and dignity for everyone regardless of their ethnicity or religion?

Palestine was once a secular bulwark in the Middle East. But now the weak, undemocratic, by all accounts corrupt but avowedly nonsectarian PLO, is losing ground to Hamas, which espouses an overtly sectarian ideology and fights in the name of Islam. To quote from their manifesto: “we will be its soldiers and the firewood of its fire, which will burn the enemies”. The world is called upon to condemn suicide bombers. But can we ignore the long road they have journeyed on before they have arrived at this destination?

September 11, 1922 to September 11, 2002—80 years is a long time to have been waging war. Is there some advice the world can give the people of Palestine? Should they just take Golda Meir’s suggestion and make a real effort not to exist?”

The idea of the erasure, the annihilation, of Palestinians is being clearly articulated by Israeli political and military officials.

A US lawyer who has brought a case against the Biden administration for its “failure to prevent genocide”—which is a crime, too—spoke of how rare it is for genocidal intent to be so clearly and publicly articulated. Once they have achieved that goal, perhaps the plan is to have museums showcasing Palestinian culture and handicrafts, restaurants serving ethnic Palestinian food, maybe a Sound and Light show of how lively Old Gaza used to be—in the new Gaza Harbour at the head of the Ben Gurion canal project, which is supposedly being planned to rival the Suez Canal. Allegedly contracts for offshore drilling are already being signed.

Twenty-one years ago, when I delivered “Come September” in New Mexico, there was a kind of omertà in the US around Palestine. Those who spoke about it paid a huge price for doing so. Today the young are on the streets, led from the front by Jews as well as Palestinians, raging about what their government, the US government, is doing. Universities, including the most elite campuses, are on the boil. Capitalism is moving fast to shut them down. Donors are threatening to withhold funds, thereby deciding what American students may or may not say, and how they may or may not think. A shot to the heart of the foundational principles of a so-called liberal education.

Gone is any pretense of post-colonialism, multiculturalism, international law, the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Gone is any pretence of Free Speech or public morality. A “war” that lawyers and scholars of international law say meets all the legal criterion of a genocide is taking place in which the perpetrators have cast themselves as victims, the colonisers who run an apartheid state have cast themselves as the oppressed. In the US, to question this is to be charged with anti-Semitism, even if those questioning it are Jewish themselves.

It’s mind-bending. Even Israel—where dissident Israeli citizens like Gideon Levy are the most knowledgeable and incisive critics of Israeli actions—does not police speech in the way the US does (although that is rapidly changing, too). In the US, to speak of Intifada—uprising, resistance—in this case against genocide, against your own erasure—is considered to be a call for the genocide of Jews.

The only moral thing Palestinian civilians can do apparently is to die. The only legal thing the rest of us can do is to watch them die. And be silent. If not, we risk our scholarships, grants, lecture fees and livelihoods.”

Arundhati Roy

[hummussexual]

Why Palestinians protest every May 15

Around the time that Israelis celebrate Independence Day, Palestinians commemorate “The Nakba,” or “The Catastrophe.” The Nakba was a series of events, centered around 1948, that expelled hundreds of thousands Palestinians from their homeland and killed thousands. The Nakba isn’t the beginning of the story, but it’s a key part of Palestinian history — and the root of Israel’s creation. Prior to the Nakba, Palestine had a thriving population — largely made up of Arabs — that had lived and worked the land for centuries. But with the founding of Zionism, years of British meddling, and a British pledge to help create a Jewish state in Palestine — things began to change drastically. By 1947, with increasing tensions between Jewish settlers and Palestinian Arabs — the British left Palestine, and the UN stepped in with a plan to partition the land into two states. What followed was known as Plan Dalet: operations by Israeli paramilitary groups that violently uprooted Palestinians. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, more than 500 villages were decimated, and roughly 750,000 Palestinians displaced. Most who were expelled from their homes couldn’t return to historic Palestine. And today, millions of their descendants live in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank and surrounding countries. The history of the Nakba has been deliberately concealed and often ignored in western narratives around the creation of Israel. In this episode of Missing Chapter, we break down how the Nakba happened — and how it defined the future of Palestine. 

Sources: Check out the documentary “1948: Creation & Catastrophe” by Ahlam Muhtaseb and Andy Trimlett for more information about the events around the Nakba - https://tubitv.com/movies/513674/1948... All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 was a great resource in helping us understand the Nakba - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... For our maps, we relied heavily on these organizations: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, Institute for Middle Eastern Understanding, Palestine Remembered and Zochrot http://www.passia.org/maps/view/2 https://imeu.org/topic/category/maps https://www.palestineremembered.com/M... https://www.zochrot.org/ 

This report by Ilan Pappe helped us understand how Zionist forces planned to destroy villages - https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/... 

For our population breakdowns, we mainly used Australian National University’s Palestine Census reports archive - https://users.cecs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/ya... 

[xtruss]

The Nakba and ‘Forever Palestine 🇵🇸’ Refugees | Institute For Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Questions and Answers

Palestine refugees load their belongings onto a truck fleeing Al-Falouja village during the Nakba. © 1949 UN Archives Photographer Unknown. Photo used with permission.

What Is the Nakba?

Nakba is an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” and refers to Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine, its exiling of Palestinians and making them into refugees, its dispossession of Palestinian property, its destruction of Palestinian cities, towns, and villages, and its attempt to erase the existence of the Palestinian people from its homeland in 1948.

Before, during, and after the establishment of Israel in May 1948, first Zionist militias and later the Israeli military used terrorism and committed massacres and other atrocities to drive Palestinians from their homes. Zionist militias and the Israeli military also systematically looted and demolished Palestinian property. By the time Israel signed armistice agreements with neighboring Arab states in 1949, there were an estimated 750,000 Palestinian refugees (approximately 75 percent of the Palestinian population of that lived on land that became Israel). Israel demolished between 400 and 500 Palestinian villages, town, and cities.

The Nakba is not only a historical event; Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinians and colonization of Palestinian land means that the Nakba is ongoing and accurately defines Palestinian life under Israeli military occupation, apartheid, and settler-colonialism.

What Was Life Like in ‘Forever Palestine 🇵🇸’ Before the Nakba?

Palestinians enjoyed a thriving and multi-religious society in Palestine long before Zionism began in the 1880s. Before World War I, Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together in Palestine with equal citizenship rights and religious autonomy under the Ottoman Empire. Palestinians ran for elections to the Ottoman Parliament and represented their Palestinian constituencies there. The indigenous Palestinian economy was self-sustaining and also integrated into regional and global economic trade networks. Before and after World War I, Palestinian identity formed the basis for a modern-day Palestinian nationalism, expressed through newspapers, magazines, civil society organizations, and political parties.

After World War I, Great Britain was given a “mandate” over Palestine by the League of Nations. Mandates were supposed to provide for the self-determination and independence of indigenous populations. However, the Palestine Mandate was different from all other mandates in that it committed Great Britain to promoting the establishment of a vaguely defined Jewish National Home in Palestine. Throughout the mandate (1922-1948), Great Britain privileged the establishment of Zionist political institutions to the detriment of the indigenous majority Palestinian population.

Why Did Palestinians Not Accept the UN 🇺🇳 Partition Plan?

At the time of the UN Partition Plan, which was recommended by the General Assembly in November 1947, the Zionist movement owned just 7 percent of the land of Palestine and Jewish people constituted only one-third of the total population. Despite this, the partition plan called for the establishment of a Jewish State in more than 55 percent of Palestine. Even within the proposed borders of the Jewish State, there would have been only a tiny majority of Jewish residents (498,000 to 497,000 Palestinians).

Palestinian political bodies, led by the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), rejected the partition plan as a violation of the principle of self-determination and majority rights. Instead, the AHC proposed that Palestine remain a unitary, democratic state with strong minority rights, including proportional representation for Palestine’s Jewish citizens in the legislature, and Jewish communal autonomy in some spheres.

Even though the United States voted in support of the partition plan, the Truman administration quickly realized that the partition plan could not be implemented and instead threw itself behind a proposal to place Palestine under a UN trusteeship until a political resolution could be found. The Truman administration reversed itself again by recognizing Israel.

Was Illegal Isra-ll’s Ethnic Cleansing of ‘Forever Palestine 🇵🇸’ Planned?

Yes. In March 1948, Zionist leaders headed by David Ben Gurion, who would become Israel’s first prime minister, approved Plan Dalet (D), which called for the “Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris)...In the event of resistance, the armed force must be wiped out and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

The implementation of this plan began before Israel’s establishment in May 1948. By that time, there were already between 250,000-300,000 Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from their homes often after attacks by Zionist militias on major Palestinian cities–Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias–and villages, bombing campaigns targeting civilians, and massacres at villages such as Deir Yassin.

This ethnic cleansing campaign accelerated and intensified after the establishment of Israel, making an estimated 750,000 Palestinians into refugees by the time armistice agreements were signed with neighboring Arab states in 1949. Even after the armistice agreements, Israel continued to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes. For example, Israel continued deporting Palestinians from their homes in al-Majdal (known today as the city of Ashkelon) to the Gaza Strip until October 1950.

Who Are Palestinian Refugees Today?

From an original estimated population of 750,000 in 1948, today there are more than 7 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, 5.7 million of whom are refugees registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a specialized UN agency established in 1949 to provide social services to refugees.

In addition, there are estimated to be more than 400,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel who are classified as internally displaced persons (IDPs). These Palestinians were driven from their homes and dispossessed of their properties, too. Although they remained within the borders of what became Israel and received citizenship in the state, Israel has never allowed them to return to their lands and properties.

What Are Palestinian Refguees’ Rights?

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”

In addition, UN General Assembly Resolution 194, adopted in December 1948, resolved that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible”.

In addition to international law recognizing refugees’ right of return, refugee status is also automatically conferred on the descendants of refugees. According to the UN, “Palestine refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises.”

The Palestinian refugee crisis has persisted for nearly 75 years because Israel refuses to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties in violation of international law.

What Is ‘War Criminal US’ Policy on the Nakba and ‘Forever Palestine 🇵🇸’ Refugee Crisis?

The United States voted both for UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948, reaffirming Palestinian refugees’ right of return, and for the establishment of UNRWA in 1949. Except for a few years during the Trump administration, the United States has consistently supported UNRWA, contributing more than $6 billion to its budget since 1950.

The United States, through its chairing of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, originally pushed Israel to accept the repatriation of a significant number of Palestinian refugees; however, this commitment proved to be short-lived as the United States began favoring schemes to resettle Palestinian refugees in other countries as early as 1949.

The fate of Palestinian refugees was hardly addressed at all by the United States again until permanent status negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis began at Camp David in 2000. Shortly before his term ended, President Clinton issued “parameters” for Palestinian-Israeli peace that undermined Palestinian refugee rights. His parameters stated that “One should not expect Israel to acknowledge an unlimited right of return to present-day Israel,” and that repatriation of Palestinian refugees to Israel would be subject to its “sovereign decisions”.

In the most recent round of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in 2013-2014, then Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly put forward a figure of only 80,000 Palestinian refugees who would be allowed to return to their homes–less than two percent of registered refugees at that time.

How Is Congress Undermining ‘Forever Palestine 🇵🇸’ Refugees’ Rights?

Congress has also taken steps to undermine Palestinian refugee rights. Senate Report 112-172 to the 2013 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations bill directed the Department of State to issue a report to Congress detailing “the approximate number of people who, in the past year, have received UNRWA services: (1) whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948 and who were displaced as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict; and (2) who are descendants of persons described in subparagraph (1).” This reporting requirement attempts to differentiate between the refugee status of original refugees and their descendants, which is contrary to international law.

The intent of Members of Congress to utilize this report to try to extinguish the rights of Palestinian refugees is evident from a 2020 Dear Colleague letter, led by Rep. Doug Lamborn, pressing for the declassification of this report. The letter attempts to erase Palestinian refugees by claiming that their rights are a “fiction”.

Instead of passing legislation to try to negate Palestinian refugee rights, Congress and the Biden administration must center the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as part of any principled effort to establish a just peace. Any attempt by the United States to broker Palestinian-Israeli peace that is not based on principles of international law and justice is bound to fail.

[noctomania]

"The Palestinian People Do Have Rights" Publication date: 1979

Presenting the Arab perspective on Palestine, includes archival footage, maps, current film of refugee camps, and interviews with individuals who reveal the Palestinian viewpoint. Traces events from 1947 when the U.N. recommended a partition of the region

[garudabluffs]

“But our country, which once was a true friend of colonised people, is silent today. Most of the public intellectuals and writers, all but a very few, are also silent today,” she rued, while stating that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza is a crime against humanity."

8:30 if we say nothing about Israel's Brazen

8:33 Slaughter of Palestinians even at is as

8:36 it is Liv streamed into the most private

8:40 recesses of our personal lives we have

8:43 complicit in it something in our moral

8:46 selves will be altered forever are we

8:50 going to Simply Stand By and Watch while

8:53 homes hospitals refugee camps schools

8:58 universities archives are bombed a

9:01 million people displaced and dead

9:04 children in their thousands pulled from

9:06 the r the borders of Gaza are sealed

9:10 people have nowhere to go they have no

9:12 shelter no food no water the United

9:16 Nations says that more than half the

9:19 population is starving and still they

9:22 are being bomed delightly are we going

9:25 to once again watch a whole people being

9:28 dehumanized

9:29 to the point where the inhilation it

9:32 doesn't matter the project of

9:34 dehumanizing Palestinians did not

9:37 beginning with Benjamin Nan yahu and his

9:40 crew it began decades ago in 2002 on the

9:45 first anniversary of September 11th 2001

9:49 I delivered a lecture called come

9:52 September in the United States in which

9:55 I spoke about the other anniversaries of

9:58 September 11th

9:59 the

10:00 1973 CIA backed coup against President

10:04 Salvador aende in Chile on that

10:07 auspicious date and then the speech on

10:10 September 11th 1990 of George W bush

10:14 senior then US president to a joint

10:17 session of Congress announcing this

10:20 government's decision to go to war

10:22 against

10:23 Iraq and then I spoke about palestin I'm

10:27 going to read this section to you and

10:29 you will see that if I hadn't told you

10:33 that I wrote this 21 years ago you think

10:37 that I was talking about today

in

13:24 1947 the UN formerly partitioned

13:27 Palestine and allotted

13:29 55% of palestine's land to the zionists

13:33 within a year they have captured

13:35 76% on the 4th of May 1948 the state of

13:39 Israel was declared minutes after the

13:43 Declaration the United States recognized

13:46 Israel the West Bank was annexed by

13:48 Jordan the Gaza Strip came under

13:51 Egyptian Military control and formerly

13:54 Palestine ceased to ex exist except in

13:57 the minds and hearts of the hundreds of

13:59 thousands of Palestinian people who

14:02 became refugees

[histoirededire]

Captain America : l'Histoire comme socle

Quand on évoque la place de l’histoire dans le Marvel Cinematic Universe ou MCU, on ne voit pas forcément de lien ou de références directes. Cela dit, en tant que fan de cet univers et en tant qu’historienne, je vais vous présenter une série d’articles sur la place de l’histoire dans le MCU, en ne parlant pas des comics.

Au cours des années et les nombreux projets, Marvel Studios a incorporé plus ou moins clairement des véritables évènements historiques liés à l’histoire des Etats-Unis. Pourtant le MCU ne s’est pas cantonné uniquement à ce pays. Comme nous le verrons au fur et à mesure des articles publiés ici, le MCU a tenté de présenter d’autres récits historiques tels que les mythes égyptiens ou la Partition de l’Inde en 1947.  Pour commencer cette série d’articles, je voulais débuter notre analyse par le rôle qu’a l’Histoire que je vais appeler "réelle" dans cet univers ponctué de super-héros.

Ma première réflexion s’axe sur Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) et sa relation à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, qui a fortement impacté le personnage. Ce film prend racine lors de cette guerre qui sert de contexte historique et visuel. 

La motivation première du personnage incarné par Chris Evans est de rejoindre l’effort américain pour vaincre les Nazis. Le film traite de la volonté et de la détermination pour aider l’armée américaine. Au-delà du symbolisme patriotique de ces représentations de la guerre, je voulais évoquer le personnage principal qui change au cours du récit. Steve Rogers a tenté de se porter volontaire à maintes reprises dans des postes de recrutement. En revanche, à cause de ses problèmes de santé, il est rejeté à chaque fois. Steve est trop petit, pas assez fort et paraît trop fragile. Cela montre l’effet qu’a eu la propagande aux Etats-Unis, notamment sur les jeunes hommes.

Steve Rogers à un poste de recrutement de l'armée, on peut lire "Il est illégal de falsifier votre formulaire d'enrôlement".

Se porter volontaire pour rejoindre les rangs de l’armée est profondément ancré cette génération. Peut être sont-ils en quête de reconnaissance ? Lors de la Première Guerre mondiale, ces vagues de recrutement chez les mineurs ont profondément marqué l'Angleterre et sa jeunesse. La violence meurtrière du conflit était telle que les recruteurs ne tenaient pas compte de l'âge des volontaires. L'armée avait besoin d'hommes au plus vite.

Visuellement, cette propagande aux Etats-Unis peut être remarquée par les affiches réalisées à l’époque de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Elles mettaient avant les Etats-Unis et leur position de force dans ce conflit mondial. Pour un coup d’œil sur une exposition numérique disponible par National Archives c’est ici: https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/powers-of-persuasion  

Après s'être fait repéré par un scientifique, Steve Rogers devient le sujet d'une expérience de l'armée. Son but? Créer un super soldat capable de combattre les forces ennemies. Il obtient une puissance physique surhumaine et problèmes de santé disparaissent. De plus, c’est son cœur qui lui donne toute sa grandeur et le caractérise. Pour paraphraser le scientifique ayant réalisé le sérum : un homme bon devient un homme meilleur, et son contraire est vrai : un homme mauvais devient violent. Comme Steve Rogers lui explique : "Je n'ai envie de tuer personne. Je déteste les brutes, quelle que soit leur origine." Son pouvoir est donc utilisé non pour tuer, mais simplement pour contribuer à l'effort collectif.

Cet aspect du personnage est essentiel. C’est sa bonté originelle qui le place en tant que cobaye idéal pour le sérum. Même s'il est un peu lisse et manque parfois de profondeur, ces changements se remarquent dans la manière dont les personnages qui l'entourent le considère. Le spectateur en est témoin au travers des parallèles du films, dont voici quelques exemples :

A gauche : Steve Rogers se place devant une affiche de recrutement. Etant trop petit, son reflet ne rentre pas dans le soldat.

A droite : Steve Rogers fait le salut militaire à son supérieur après avoir sauvé des soldats capturés.

A gauche : Steve Rogers en tant que Captain America dans un studio avec des faux soldats.

A droite : Steve Rogers menant un groupe de soldats qu'il a sauvé d'une base ennemie.

Continuons sur quelques éléments de contexte. Hydra, le programme scientifique secret d’Hitler, prend son indépendance. Il suit la route des mythes et utilise un artefact appelé le "Tesseract" pour gagner en puissance. La magie a une grande part dans le Marvel Cinematic Universe. Elle permet d’explorer l’Histoire de façon plus détachée et permet d'emprunter des sujets tels que la guerre, les conflits mondiaux. Ces éléments font partie des fils rouges que l'on peut retrouver dans le récit global du MCU. Ils permettent de lier des histoires situées dans des époques, villes ou planètes différentes sans que les personnages se croisent régulièrement. 

Un autre de ces fils rouge, c’est le sérum du super-soldat. Il en existe plusieurs versions, qui sont plus ou moins empreintes de réussite. Créer des humains aux capacités physiques développées est présent dans des projets tels que Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D (2013-2020), Agent Carter (2015-2016), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021), What If... (2021) ou encore Black Widow (2021). Steve Roger est le seul ayant pu recevoir sans encombre le sérum original. Cela souligne le fait qu’il est le représentant idéal des super-héros en Amérique du Nord. Ce reconnaissance lui permet d’obtenir une crédibilité de poids. Les autres personnages (ci-dessous) ayant reçu une dose du sérum modifié ont eu des symptômes différents.

De gauche à droite : Steve Rogers après avoir reçu le sérum; Johann Schmidt s'injectant une dose de sérum; Daisy Johnson avec une fiole du sérum retravaillé.

De gauche à droite : Red Guardian, le super-héro du programme soviétique; John Walker, le Captain America du gouvernement américain face à une fiole; Peggy Carter après l'expérience.

Steve Rogers ne devient pas directement un grand héros et il n’est pas considéré comme tel après l'expérience. Il est recruté par la branche de communication de l’armée. Il la figure de Captain America, un symbole patriotique et divertissant, Steve Rogers se transforme en symbole de l’effort de guerre par l’achat de bons et de donations pour les soldats. En tournée dans le pays puis en Europe, Captain America devient la vitrine des Etats-Unis et de ses valeurs pour le plaisir des enfants et de ses supérieurs.

A gauche : Captain America signe un autographe à un jeune garçon avant de monter sur scène.

A droite : Captain America devant des affiches d'achats de bons et porte un bébé.

Une scène du film met en avant le spectacle réalisés par l'armée pour soutenir les soldats américains et l’économie du pays.  On y voit aussi la popularité du Captain. Pour la visionner, c'est juste ici : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtSrWn7eYbU&ab_channel=TopMovieClips 

La séquence dans son entièreté nous aide à mieux comprendre la place de Steve Rogers dans la propagande de l’armée américaine qui rencontre un certain succès. Sa prestation est fait salle comble et le public est au rendez-vous. 

On peut revenir à l’exposition en ligne des archives nationales des Etats-Unis qui présente une chanson de propagande intitulée “Any Bonds Today ?” (lien pour l’écoutér ici: https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/powers_of_persuasion/audio/any_bonds_today.wav ) 

Ce genre de chanson était écrite et circulait pour constituer et cristalliser un sentiment patriotique à travers le pays. C'était un moyen d’évoquer la guerre d’une manière différente. Au delà des chants et musiques louant le pays et ses valeurs nobles, l’industrie musicale américaine et la musique populaire ont pris leur envol de façon exponentielle comme le souligne Anastasiia Gordeeva dans un article.

La seconde séquence de l’extrait évoque le succès commercial de Captain America. On vend des comics relatant ses aventures fictives auprès des jeunes et des soldats. La séquence est un exemple de l’illustration des films de propagande. De nombreux exemples sont consultables sur Internet, donc celui-ci: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzDHEJoE1ao&ab_channel=PeriscopeFilm 

Dans le film, la communication sur la guerre est relayée au public au cinéma. Ces films représentent Captain America en studio et ne montrent pas de vrais soldats sur le champ de bataille.

Capture d'écran avec Captain America au centre, entourée de soldats. Au premier plan, on devine une équipe de tournage.

Plus tard dans le film, le spectacle de Captain America se fait dans une base militaire en Italie. La scène est en contraste de par l’utilisation des couleurs. Là où les couleurs étaient dans les tons chauds (rouge, orange, bleu), le spectateur est confronté à des tons plus ternes. Le ciel, la boue, les uniformes reflètent le moral des soldats et la difficulté de la situation en Europe. C’est le moment de l’histoire qui cristallise la frustration du personnage principal. Faire face à la difficulté des soldats le pousse à revenir à ses idéaux de liberté et à son envie de participer à l’effort global. Juste après cette scène il dit : "Depuis toujours mon rêve le plus cher, c’était de venir ici, en Europe, en première ligne pour servir mon pays. Et voilà, j’ai eu ce que je voulais. Et je porte des collants."

A gauche : Captain America lors de son spectacle sur scène.

A droite : La scène de Captain America dans une base en Italie, à 8km du front.

Ce moment charnière lance Steve Rogers au cœur d'une action, ce qui va le propulser en tant que leader naturel d'une escouade composée de personnes de confiance.

Après toutes ces évolutions et moments phares dans les origines du héros patriotique du MCU, le film se termine sur une séquence forte. Steve Rogers, devenu un véritable capitaine, se sacrifie pour sauver des millions de personnes. Par une suite d'évènements indescriptibles en quelques mots, il se fait congeler pendant plusieurs décennies. Sa disparition met en place la création de son mythe. Cet élément scénaristique permet de justifier sa présence dans les années 2010.

Le prochain article de cette série évoquera le travail historique dans le MCU au cours de la phase 4. 

Article écrit par Chloé Schaeffer, publié le 24/01/2023.

[ninja-in-skirts]

Memories of Partition and Life today

Memories of Partition and Life today

My passion to interview and record my first story with a willing intervieweeon behalf of the 1947 Partition Archive finally came true on 19th December,2022 when Mr. Debnath, a resident of Shyamnagar, West Bengal came forward toshare his story. Originally, born in Bangladesh he had migrated while themarsh-country was embroiled in inter-communal riots in 1946. At present, anoctogenarian recalls how…

[raghavkumaaar]

Critical Reflection

In my current studio 2 project in the MoP program, I use photography to explore themes of partition, diaspora and inter-generational trauma using memory. When I began my research any archival photographs that belong to the partition of the Indian Subcontinent have mostly been photographed from a colonial gaze – displacement, chaos and violence. While these images evidently tell a broader situation happening in India at that time, what went missing were the personal narratives of millions of people that were displaced. I intend to collect and resurrect the lost narratives of the displacement and trauma of Punjabi refugees of 1947. It is an attempt to understand my own cultural identity by preserving intergenerational traditions, anecdotes and belongings passed on as a token of remembrance.

I have always found difficulty in situating my work within any particular methodological framework because I’ve always made work revolving around psychoanalysis of my own childhood trauma which was mostly a result of growing up in a dysfunctional refugee family.  Hence, the critical frameworks I’m researching mostly revolve around auto-ethnography and decolonisation of photography.

In my dossier, most of the research references I have are non-western photographers and artists who are using traditional studio practices (majorly India) and photographs to build diasporic narratives work towards decolonising the photographic image. However I also draw inspiration from photographers like Jeff Wall and Max Pinckers whose practice blur the line between reality and speculation. The landscapes and the narratives in my photographs are mostly created from family memory, this project situates itself in the expanded documentary genre.

For this project I draw inspiration from Geoffrey Batchen's 'Forget me Not' and Susan Sontag 'On photography'. Sontag positions photography as an evidence taking tool and describes the dual nature of photographs as a pseudo presence and also a reminder of absence. (Sontag, 1977) My current ongoing series is a non-linear narrative that contains portraiture and still-life photography. I photograph people who have experienced partition directly or indirectly through stories from their parents or grandparents. I have recreated a traditional Indian studio from my memory which uses a hand painted scenic backdrop very similar to the landscapes my grandparents crossed when they migrated. The metallic pot vessels I stage and photograph as a still life series contains fragments of my memory of my grandparents. It is an everyday vessel used to store liquids in an Indian household and is also used to carry the ashes of a person after they pass. What's fascinating about this vessel is how the meaning of the same object changes. With these images I want to shine light on the narratives of Paritition that are forgotten.

[mariacallous]

Why is the sky always falling in debates about U.S. intervention? Disaster-mongering has tended to pervade U.S. efforts to garner public support for policies since the creation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, sometimes justifiably. Catastrophism is so often the rationale for government foreign-policy actions that, twinned with American exceptionalism to make the world “be like us,” this mindset seems to have become embedded in U.S. pathology from the Truman era to the present.

When then-U.S. President Harry Truman asked then-Sen. Arthur Vandenberg how to persuade a war-weary public to back aid for Europe, Vandenberg told Truman that if he wanted congressional support to contain the Soviet Union, he had to “scare the hell out of the American people.”

The victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 etched this psychology deeper into the American psyche. The “who lost China” debate brought about the scourge of McCarthyism. Top China hands like former U.S. diplomats John Service and John Paton Davies Jr. were demonized and purged from the foreign service along with a generation of Asia hands. Among the consequences: Warnings by China specialists that Beijing would enter the Korean War if Gen. Douglas MacArthur crossed the Yalu River into North Korea went unheeded as were admonitions by Asia hands against entering the Vietnam War in support of an unviable South Vietnamese government after the French defeat in 1954.

Yet, the roots of the United States’ exceptionalist pathology run deeper and have a religious foundation in Puritanism. Since Massachusetts Bay Colony Gov. John Winthrop’s 1630 sermon advising to “be as a city upon a hill,” the notion of America’s unique moral virtue by Divine Providence to serve as a “beacon to the world” has suffused foreign-policy thinking. The flip side of this exceptionalism is catastrophism, stoking zero-sum fears of disaster that our world will crumble if bad guys prevail over virtue.

In the case of the Truman Doctrine, based on what we now know from Soviet archives about former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s intentions, the scare tactics were arguably mostly justified. But not so for the long string of subsequent invocations of catastrophism based on the same logic and assumptions—whether that’s the looming prospect of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or the domino theory of Vietnamese communism sparking a wave of Marxist triumph.

The policy inertia of decision-makers in the Vietnam War, driven by fear of imminent catastrophe, began a disastrous so-called March of Folly that has all-too-often served as the rationale for subsequent major foreign-policy interventions. The die was cast by then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking at a 1954 press conference: “You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is a certainty that it will go over very quickly.”

As France abandoned its colonies and Vietnam became independent, partitioned between the communist North and the South, another characteristic of catastrophism—mission creep—occurred as the United States slowly, incrementally got involved, sending arms and training.

After then-U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. told then-U.S. President Lyndon Johnson that Vietnam “would go under any day if we don’t do something,” Johnson, shortly after being inaugurated, said on Nov. 24, 1963, that “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.”

In the aftermath of the U.S. exit from Vietnam in 1975, there were fears and many predictions that the United States would be permanently out of Asia. But fast forward a few years, and the United States’ forward-deployed posture and influence in Asia appeared stronger than ever. Today, Vietnam is an important economic and strategic U.S. partner.

The first Gulf War in 1991 was a realist detour from this pattern of foreign policy. A combination of the Powell Doctrine—intervene with massive force when there is vital interest—public support, a clear military objective and exit strategy, and transactional diplomacy led by then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker not only rolled back then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait but mobilized not just the West but most of the Arab world as partners in the venture.

The limited goal of reversing Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was key to garnering widespread support at the United Nations and from much of the world—including Moscow.

In sharp contrast, the sequel, former U.S. President George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq in the aftermath of 9/11, with the utopian goal of “ending tyranny,” was the exact opposite. Amid the trauma of 9/11, the administration invoked the purportedly imminent danger of Iraqi nuclear weapons (which U.N. inspectors were searching for) as its rationale. “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” warned then-U.S. National Security Council advisor Condoleezza Rice in full catastrophism.

The belief that the world’s fate must rest on the back of the United States is still a powerful one. I was struck by a recent comment from a senior U.S. official responsible for Middle East policy that the United States is “not going anywhere and we are not going to leave a vacuum in the Middle East for Russia or China or Iran to fill.”

This illuminates dubious U.S. assumptions, not least that the world order can only be binary and zero sum. In fact, as the region has perceived a reduced U.S. role there, the Saudis/Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, and China as well as the United States are increasingly competing for influence in the Middle East. This is likely to result not in a vacuum and new hegemon but rather in a balance of competing forces. In part, the Sunni Arab states-Israel rapprochement as well as the Saudi/GCC-Iran steps toward detente reflect these emerging trends.

What of the two top current flash points: Ukraine and Taiwan? They both raise the specter of potential war between nuclear weapons states. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine could be seen, like Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, as an unacceptable use of force to violate sovereignty, a core principle of the 1990 Paris Charter that Moscow signed.

As in Kuwait, the United States was not obliged by treaty to intervene, but the threat to European security made a compelling case for a needed U.S. and allied response: unprecedented sanctions and military aid. U.S. President Joe Biden framed it not as a singular response to a particular autocrat violating international law but as a part of the universal Manichean struggle of “democracy versus autocracy”—if Putin is not defeated, it’s the end of the rules-based order. Nonetheless, a Putin victory would be a serious blow to core principles of the international order. I suspect the precedent would have mixed consequences and be case-specific considering the sacrificing of Russia’s future for what would be a Pyrrhic victory.

Yet to his credit, Biden has tempered idealism with realism, making clear his intent not to directly fight Russia and risk World War III. As the quality and quantity of U.S. military aid to Ukraine steadily increases, the risk of unintended escalation remains. But clearly, Biden recognizes the limits of U.S. power in Ukraine.

This does not appear to be the case with Taiwan. Already, Ukraine’s impact on Chinese plans for Taiwan is being hotly debated. Misconceived frenetic panic over China’s allegedly imminent invasion of Taiwan leads some experts to posit that it would be the new Fulda Gap, the Cold War analogy through which World War III would begin by Soviet troops pouring into Europe and destroying the West. Under this analogy, China would then eject the United States from Asia and advance its goal of world domination.

CIA director William Burns recently said Chinese President Xi Jinping has instructed the People’s Liberation Army to be prepared for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027. Beijing may have non-kinetic means of coercion to force unification, but it lacks the amphibious landing capabilities for a feat akin to the allied D-Day landing at Normandy, France, in World War II. John Culver, a former senior CIA China analyst, has outlined the needed preparations for an invasion, most of which are not evident yet.

There seems an almost fatalistic assumption of the “Thucydides Trap,” inevitable conflict over Taiwan, as political scientist Graham Allison explains. Nuclear risks, given the existential nature of the issue to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), seem forgotten or cavalierly downplayed almost as if the Cold War never happened. In his much-discussed book, The Strategy of Denial, author Elbridge Colby argues that Taiwan is just the first step in a Pacman-type aggression to dominate Asia. Yet he matter-of-factly argues that nuclear escalation would be a manageable limited nuclear war, with the United States mixing “nuclear and conventional strikes to selectively and discriminately” impose costs on China “calibrated to avoid precipitating a massive response.” This is lunacy.

Taiwan has become the fulcrum of U.S. China policy, overshadowing the multitude of issues in a complex relationship that is defining the shape of world order. I don’t mean to suggest that some form of unification is not an existential imperative for the CCP nor that the United States shouldn’t help Taiwan build a porcupine defense. But the near-hysterical Washington political climate is more likely hastening a Chinese gambit than deterring it. A sober recognition of the risks would be helpful.

Taiwan, like North Korea, is a wicked problem over which compromise seems increasingly unlikely. In his classic 1952 work, theologian and social philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr counseled humility in disputing U.S. exceptionalism, warning of “the illusions about the possibility of managing historical destiny … always [involving] … miscalculations about the power and the wisdom of the managers,” and about the “manageability of the historical ‘stuff’ which is to be managed.” Still pretty good advice.

[reveal-the-news]

75 years of India partition: How tech is opening window into past | India-Pakistan Partition News

75 years of India partition: How tech is opening window into past | India-Pakistan Partition News

Growing up, Gunita Singh Bhalla heard her grandmother recount how she crossed with her young children from Pakistan to newly independent India in 1947, witnessing horrific scenes of carnage and violence that haunted her for the rest of her life. Those stories weren’t in Singh Bhalla’s school textbooks, so he decided to create an online history — the 1947 Partition Archive, which contains about…

[nasiknews]

India 1947: Partition in Colour review – a heartbreaking, rage-inspiring history of Britain’s colonial legacy | Television

India 1947: Partition in Colour review – a heartbreaking, rage-inspiring history of Britain’s colonial legacy | Television

How many documentaries about the brutal partition of India have opened with an RP-accent uttering a variation of the nostalgia-scented sentiment: “India was the jewel in the crown …”? India 1947: Partition in Colour (Channel 4) begins with these words, too. But the tone of this taut and enraging two-parter is different, and not just because the archive footage has been colourised for the first…

[catdotjpeg]

Today on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, we honor and celebrate the rich legacy of global solidarity with Palestine, past and present.

In 1977, on the 30th anniversary of the 1947 UN partition plan and in commemoration of the ongoing colonization and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, the UN marked November 29th “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” While UN resolution 194 (passed December 1948) guaranteed the right of return to all Palestinian refugees who were displaced during the Nakba, 73 years later we are still fighting for our right to return home.

As we reflect on all of the UN resolutions and broken promises to Palestinians on the international stage for generations, we also ground ourselves in the uncompromising support that we have received, and continue to receive, from oppressed and colonized people around the world.

This collage that we made last year features artwork by Palestinian painter Ismail Shammout, posters from the archives of the Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, Malcolm X’s 1964 meeting with the PLO, and signs that our Mexican, [Caribbean] and Filipino comrades have brought to our protests here in New York City.

While the zionist entity and their reactionary partners seek to normalize the ongoing annexation of Palestinian land and genocide of the Palestinian people, the masses of the world stand with Palestine, and will continue to struggle alongside us until we have achieved liberation within our lifetime.

- Within Our Lifetime, 29 Nov 2021

[mybeingthere]

Waseem Ahmed, Untitled, 2011, pigment colours, silver leaf on archival wasli paper, 37.3 x 17.8 cm, Collection Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Waseem Ahmed was born in Hyderabad, Pakistan, in 1976. He grew up in a Muhajir (immigrant) family who, because they were Muslim, had migrated from India after Partition in 1947 to settle in the newly independent state of Pakistan.Ahmed is a key player in the contemporary miniature painting scene. Combining traditional miniature techniques, such as gouache and gold and silver leaf on wasli paper, with genuine experimental techniques, Ahmed creates finely rendered small and large scale works that address various social, political and cultural issues. Ahmed joins a number of South Asian artists that use tradition as a means towards innovation. The miniature is not treated solely as a historical heritage, but emphasized in its theoretical potential as a contemporary art form. 

Crossing cultural borders, Ahmed’s rich vocabulary borrows elements from Asian and European art history and mythology. His eclectic repertoire of images composed by animal shapes, bearded men, blood splattered surfaces, burkas, letters from the Arabic-Farsi-Urdu alphabet, often suggesting religious rhetoric, guns, rosaries, suicide-jackets or forms derived from prominent ancient sculptures, creates multiple layers of meaning. Ahmed’s thought-provoking works depict the turbulent time, characterized by conflict, violence and displacement faced today by both Eastern and Western societies.

http://www.gowencontemporary.com/time-braden/wasseem-ahmed/

[xtruss]

People exercise in an Indian refugee camp to stave off despair in the wake of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. Kurukshetra was home to one of the largest camps due to its proximity to the hastily drawn border that carved two independent states out of the former British colony. Photograph By Henri Cartier-Bresson, Magnum

Why The Partition of India and Pakistan Still Casts a Long Shadow Over The Region

The end of British colonial rule birthed two sovereign nations—but hastily drawn borders caused simmering tensions to boil over. 75 years later, memories of Partition still haunt survivors.

By Erin Blakemore | August 2, 2022

On the night of August 13, 1947, 13-year-old Suri Sehgal was so excited he couldn’t sleep. The next day, he’d watch the lowering of the British flag and the raising of a new one in his native Punjab province. Once part of India, his town would now become part of a new nation called Pakistan. The newly demarcated country of India would become a self-governing state a day later.

Sehgal remembers the Lalamusa train station where the Pakistani flag ceremony took place, the optimistic mood, and the special meal he shared with family and friends. “We all celebrated together,” he recalled in a 2016 oral history with the 1947 Partition Archive. “It was wonderful.”

Muslim refugees sit on the roof of an overcrowded train near New Delhi as they try to flee India on September 19, 1947. Partition exacerbated simmering religious tensions on the subcontinent. Millions of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs were uprooted from their homes or killed in riots. Photograph Via Associated Press

But within hours, the long-awaited transition of power—and the partition of India into two nations, majority-Hindu India and majority-Muslim Pakistan—had become a nightmare as simmering secular tensions, stoked by divisive colonial rule, boiled over. That evening, Sehgal watched in horror as hundreds of people carrying knives and other weapons ran past, on the hunt for Hindus to attack.

Days later, Sehgal’s father, worried about the safety of his half-Hindu children, pushed them onto a sweltering, packed, moving train at the same station where they had celebrated Pakistani independence. As the refugee train made its slow way southward into India, its exhausted occupants were confronted with piles of dead bodies being eaten by vultures alongside the tracks.

Sehgal was one of hundreds of thousands of Indians and Pakistanis whose lives were disrupted—or ended—during what is now known as Partition. On its surface, the August 1947 creation of two self-governing nations was a victory for those who longed for self-determination. (It would be another several decades, however, before people who lived in what is now Bangladesh would gain that right.) But simmering secular tensions and a severely mismanaged transition turned Britain’s historic exit from the colony into a bloodbath.

The Colonial Roots of Partition

Partition’s roots date back to the 17th century, when the British East India Company, a private company that traded in Indian riches like spices and silks, began acquiring Indian land, taking over local governments, and making laws that flew in the face of longstanding cultural traditions. (How the British East India Company became the world’s most powerful business.)

In 1857, Indian soldiers mutinied—prompting the British government to dissolve the company and take over India. The newly established British Raj appointed officials—many of whom had never set foot in India before—to keep its colony in line. Those privileged British administrators and their families lived in wealth and luxury, while most Indians lived in poverty.

As Britain drained India of its wealth and profited from its natural resources, it subdivided 60 percent of the nation into provinces and recognized a patchwork of hundreds of pre-existing "princely states," autonomous entities overseen by local rulers.

An English merchant ship approaches Bombay circa 1754—during which time India was governed by the British East India Company, a private company that exploited its riches like spices and silks. Oil on canvas painting by British painter JC Heard. Universal History Archive, Getty Images

To preserve its dominance, the British Raj deliberately emphasized differences between religious and ethnic communities. As geographer A.J. Christopher explains, colonial administrators used traits like religion and skin color to segregate and isolate their subjects. They eventually established a limited political role for Indians—but the process for getting those positions often pitted Hindus and Muslims against one another.

Lord Curzon, the British viceroy to India, further fueled these divisions in 1905 when he split India’s largest province, Bengal, into two: one majority Muslim, the other majority Hindu. A staunch colonialist who believed Indians were inferior, Curzon faced sharp resistance to this attempt to “divide and rule.” But though the split only lasted until 1911, it galvanized a growing independence movement within the Indian National Congress, a political party that had been formed by educated elites to negotiate with the British Raj. It also spurred the formation of the Muslim League, a political party agitating for Muslim rights within India.

Left: Lord George Curzon and his wife, Mary, ride on an elephant, circa 1895. Despite his controversial tenure as viceroy to India—in which he deliberately attempted to sow tension among religious and ethnic groups—Curzon became Britain's foreign secretary in 1919. Photograph By SSPL, Getty Images.

Bottom: A college-aged Suri Sehgal in Mussoorrie, a Western Himalayan hill station in the Indian state of Uttarakhand in 1956. Sehgal later studied plant genetics at Harvard University and is now a philanthropist dedicated to rural development in India. Photograph Courtesy The 1947 Partition Archive

The Fight For an Independent India

In the early 20th century, attorney and politician Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi was elected to the Indian National Congress and began pushing for independence from Britain through non-violent civil disobedience. But boycotts, demonstrations and marches met with brutality and legal crackdowns.

British officials attempted to appease the nationalists, enfranchising more people and increasing their representation in local government. These reforms only benefited a small group of Indians: By 1935, only 12 percent of citizens could vote.

Then, the United Kingdom entered the Second World War—and took India with it. Forced to defend their colonizers’ interests with their own blood, many Indians opposed the war. To shore up support, the British government offered India status as a British-owned dominion that could govern itself with British oversight. But the Indian National Congress rejected the plan. In 1942, Gandhi launched “Quit India,” a campaign of widespread civil disobedience demanding immediate independence. Britain responded by arresting Gandhi and other leaders and outlawing the Indian National Congress.

Top: Calcutta police use tear gas bombs during the five days of Muslim-Hindu riots that took over the city in 1946. Prompted by clashing visions of an independent India, an estimated 4,000 people were killed in the riots and up to 10,000 were injured. Photograph By Keystone, Getty Images.

Bottom: Members of the All-India Muslim League demonstrate in favor of the Partition of India and the creation of the state of Pakistan in London in August 1946. Muslims worried their concerns would be ignored as a religious minority in a unified independent India. Photograph By Hilton-Deutsch Collection, Corbis Via Getty Images

The move backfired: The crackdown galvanized many who had not supported independence in the past. Widespread riots and mass detentions followed. “Quit India” had been suppressed. But it—and the mistrust sown during a catastrophic famine in Bengal that killed millions in 1943—convinced British leaders that India’s future as an obedient colony was doomed.

Clashing Visions For an Independent India

Though independence began to appear within India’s grasp, divisions between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League deepened.

Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, another National Congress leader, had long believed an independent India should be a single, unified nation. But though the Muslim League also supported home rule, its leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah publicly abandoned the cause of a unified India in 1940.

Though the Indian National Congress billed itself as a party for all Indians, members of the Muslim League were concerned it only represented Hindu interests. A united India, Jinnah argued, would give Hindus control of the Muslim minority. Instead, the party demanded autonomy through the creation of a nation called Pakistan.

Matters became even more fraught when, in 1946, talks between the two groups fell apart and Jinnah called for a “direct action day” of Muslim protest. “We will either have a divided India or a destroyed India,” he said.

The call resulted in catastrophe. On August 16, 1946, Muslim-Hindu riots erupted in Calcutta, the capital of Bengal province. “The air was electric,” wrote a military official in a report. “The result of this riot has been complete mistrust between the communities.” An estimated 4,000 were killed and 10,000 injured in the conflict, and 100,000 were left homeless.

Mahatma Gandhi, center, visits the Muslim refugee camp of Purana Qila in New Delhi, India on September 22, 1947. Having found themselves on the wrong side of the border after Partition, the camp's inhabitants were preparing to depart to Pakistan. Photograph By Acme, AFP Via Getty Images

Britain Oversees a Hasty Partition

As India teetered on the brink of civil war, Britain’s interest in maintaining its waning control evaporated. Facing international pressure to withdraw, George VI sent his cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, to India in March 1947 to manage Britain’s retreat. (How the Commonwealth arose from a crumbling British Empire.)

Mountbatten convinced leaders to agree to the creation of two new states, Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. But though he was given a year to complete his task, he rushed the schedule—giving Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer who had never set foot in India, just five weeks to divide the country in two and demarcate the new nations’ borders.

Lord Louis Mountbatten (third from left) presents Britain's partition plan for India at a conference in New Delhi on June 3, 1947. Also pictured (left to right): Indian nationalist leader Jawaharlal Nehru; Lord Hastings Ismay, an adviser to Mountbatten; and president of the All-India Muslim League Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Photograph By Keystone, Getty Images

Princely states could decide which nation they wanted to join, and Radcliffe and his team were otherwise told to draw boundaries that respected religious majorities and prioritized contiguous borders. The “Radcliffe Line” was easy to draw in areas with a distinct majority, but Radcliffe soon found that the religious groups were dispersed throughout India. In areas like Bengal and Punjab, which had near-equal Hindu and Muslim populations, drawing a line proved particularly difficult.

In the end, Radcliffe and his team—none of whom had expertise in mapmaking or Indian politics and culture—split both provinces in two and awarded roughly half to each new nation. This meant the new country of Pakistan would not be a contiguous nation: Most of its land mass lay in the northwestern corner of India, with a chunk called East Pakistan that lay in Bengal in the west.

The decision was fateful: It stranded hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims in the “wrong” new nation and separated Bengal from the rest of Pakistan by a thousand miles.

On August 14 and 15, 1947, Pakistan and India became dominions of the British crown—with the understanding they would ultimately become fully independent. But Mountbatten refused to issue the maps until two days later in an attempt to keep the international focus on Britain’s benevolence.

India's Border Security Force and Pakistani Rangers (in black) lower their respective flags during the daily Beating Retreat at the Wagah-Attari border on November 15, 2021. A longtime British tradition, the ceremony signals the return of each side's troops at the end of the day. Photograph By Narinder Nanu, AFP Via Getty Images

Partition’s Bloody Aftermath

What Britain cast as a triumph was actually the beginning of the largest human migration in history and one of humanity’s most brutal episodes. Uncertain about where the borders had been drawn—and which country they currently lived in—as many as 18 million people packed up their belongings and set out to reach the “right” country.

The ensuing confusion and fear was like tinder for longstanding Hindu-Muslim tensions. After years of increasingly polarized rhetoric, old grudges became deadly, and new animosity broke out among those whose minority and majority statuses had suddenly switched. Assailants abducted and raped tens of thousands of women; people butchered members of their own families. Mobs attacked refugees and villagers, set buildings on fire, looted homes and businesses, and committed mass murder.

The violence was especially dire in Punjab and Bengal. In Punjab, ex-soldiers who had fought in World War II used their weapons on behalf of local elites who, writes historian Mytheli Sreenivas, “used the chaos of partition to settle old scores, assert claims over land, and secure their own political and economic power.” Though the countries were technically its dominions, Britain did not quell the violence.

The Legacy of Partition

By the time the violence faded around 1950, an estimated 3.4 million people were missing or dead and both nations were forever transformed. In 1948, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist who reportedly thought the leader was too pro-Muslim. (The roots of the Kashmir conflict can be traced back to Partition.)

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s unusual geography had seeded tensions between east and west that would ultimately lead to a push for Bangladeshi independence. Home to 56 percent of Pakistan’s population, East Pakistan received less funding and had less political power than its western counterpart. In 1971, after decades of discord, Bangladesh declared independence. Despite Pakistan’s efforts to subdue the uprising, launching a genocide against three million civilians and a bloody, eight-month war, Bangladesh officially became an independent, secular democracy in 1972.

In the 75 years since Partition, territorial disputes between India and Pakistan have continued to simmer, erupting into four wars and ongoing cross-border attacks. And Partition is still raw for many of those who experienced it firsthand, like Suri Sehgal. Although his entire family survived, reuniting in India at the end of 1947, others were not so lucky. For many in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the losses and memories of those bloody, uncertain days are still haunting.

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I witness pro-Israeli arguments online every day – and one of the things that always depresses me is when I see those defending Israel get stuck down pointless rabbit holes. Anti-Israel activists are only interested in the present ‘what’ – as in ‘the prisoner’, ‘the checkpoint’, ‘the wall’ – and they do this because this is where they are comfortable. These propagandists deliberately avoid the ‘why’ because the truth is quicksand for them. Such as why the ‘wall’ was built in the first place. And why on earth would anyone argue over a ‘settlement’ like Ariel – if the person you are arguing with thinks that Tel Aviv is an ‘illegal settlement’ too. This cannot be stressed often enough – it is simply foolish to fight on their turf.

Nowhere is this more visible that in discussion over what they call the ‘Nakba’ – the Arab defeat in a war that they wanted, started and lost. A war in which they sought to annihilate the Jews. Arguing from within their narrative is like bitterly arguing over the size of the thrones in the Narnian Capital ‘Cair Paravel’.

A recent comment piece in the Jewish Chronicle provides a perfect example. One of our naive and privileged youth wrote a piece bemoaning the fact that she wasn’t prepared by her Jewish school to fight for Israel on campus – because as she sees it – ‘we do not talk about the Palestinian narrative in a meaningful way’. Her answer includes introducing ‘Israel-critical’ groups like Yachad into schools and to teach our children about the ‘Nakba’. This is an absurd and submissive response to the problem. Her suggested solution would send an entire generation down the rabbit hole.

The Nakba narrative is a lie. Should the UK have taught children Soviet propaganda so that they would have been better prepared to defend the UK at uni too? Yes campus is hostile. Some places have adopted a far darker and more Islamist vision. I know it is deeply uncomfortable for young Zionists, but submission is not the way forward. If we Jews do not defend ourselves – then who will defend us? Adopting the lies of our enemies onto our own platforms will only lead to self destruction.

The Nakba – as it is described by our enemies – never happened. They have taken isolated incidents, such as the disputed events of Deir Yassin or what took place in Lod – and built an entire fairytale around them. The truth of 1948 – the foundation of everything that followed – is very simple and we should never lose sight of it – nor stop teaching it to our children. The truth can sometimes be really unpopular – but it does not stop being the truth.

What follows is a list of pillars and myths. The pillars are the foundations of the self inflicted distaster that was to befall the Arab population. The myths are the lies upon which the history is being rewritten.

SEVEN OF THE PILLARS THAT LED TO A SELF INFLICTED DISASTER

Pillar 1. The pillar of Arab violence

Conventional wisdom has it that the ‘civil war’ followed sporadic Arab violence in reaction to the partition vote in November 1947. In some ways this is misleading. The Arab massacres of Jews in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936 and 1938 all occurred before 1947. And between each of these major events were lots of little ones – many of them never properly advertised because the British wanted to protect the image of ‘successful control’. The truth is that by the 1920s there was organised violence against Jewish communities and by the 1930s it had spread throughout the area of the British Mandate.

In the early days, armed local Arab gangs saw the Jews as a soft target and frequently attacked them. The British were often uninterested in robustly defending Jewish communities from these attacks. This Telegram from the High Commissioner provides an example from Jerusalem in Nov 1921 (British archives – file CO 733/7).

“A disturbance took place in Jerusalem this morning when a small crowd of Arab roughs appeared in the Jaffa Road. They were dispersed by police but soon after gathered for an attack on the Jewish Quarter… A bomb was thrown and a few cases of knifing occurred. Four Jews and one Arab was killed and fifteen persons were wounded”.

This consistent problem led to the creation of the Jewish Defense Force – the ‘Haganah’. But the violence against Jews was a growing feature – and became a regular and vastly under-reported feature of Jewish life in the Mandate.