‘Midnight’s Borders’ book review: A skewed presentation

Express News Service

Borders are ubiquitous. From the fence or wall that separates your home from your neighbour’s, to the fences at the Rajasthan border – one cannot escape boundaries in life. Like death, disease, war, poverty and such unsavoury things in life, borders too exist. Every border is arbitrary and irrational. But that does not make them unnecessary.

India, as we know it now, came into existence as a political entity in 1947. When the colonisers left, they left a bruised land, drenched in the Partition’s blood and gore. But the Radcliff line was not the only line that redrew the borders and destiny of the subcontinent.

More than 500 princely kingdoms got sucked into the Indian Republic after independently gaining independence from the British. Many parts of the country that had rarely shared a common political history or borders with each other from the dawn of history, such as Travancore or Baroda, became part of the Indian Union.

Seventy-four years later, we can see that almost all these princely kingdoms that merged with the Union of India have coexisted peacefully under one Constitution. The exceptions to this rule are the few states bordering Pakistan, China or Bangladesh.

Midnight’s Borders deals with stories of individuals living near these borders. All of them are about the sufferings of people on the Indian side, except one story from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The stories are meticulously collected and detailed, and the language is precise and evocative.

If the history of pre-World War II Europe where hyper-nationalistic narratives led to pogroms and a world war is an indication, India too has a reason to worry about the rising shrillness of her Right Wing hyper-nationalism. The book is perhaps an attempt to take on such toxic nationalism, but the author falters by going to the opposite extreme.

Sample this from the introduction. Vijayan narrates the brutality of Dogra rulers of Kashmir in the 18th century. She writes about the massacre of thousands of Muslims in Jammu by the Dogra king.

As per Vijayan, it was in response to this religious persecution of Muslims by a Hindu king that the Pathan frontier tribesmen marched to Srinagar. In the next paragraph, she says, “Pakistan is accused of using this strategy by deploying non-state actors widely in Kashmir’. Please observe the term ‘accused of.”

As one can expect from the tone set in the book’s introduction, there is no word about the atrocities committed by the well-documented Pathan invasion on Kashmiris before Indian forces repelled them; the Kashmiri Pandit massacre; nor their fleeing of the Valley three decades later finds even a mention anywhere in the book.

No one can or should normalise the possible human rights violations that happen in a conflict zone. There is no denying that there would be innocents caught in a crossfire on either side of the border, belonging to different ethnicities or religions.

Why such areas and borders remain a conflict zone while the 500-odd kingdoms, whose borders also arbitrarily changed after their integration with the Indian Union, remain peaceful is a question one needs to ask while reading the book.

Vijayan does not mince words while pouring out her anguish against Indian forces or the government in power. The stories of people in the margins that she portrays are told poignantly, and it can move anyone with a conscience. But again, by amplifying only one side, she reduces what could have been a striking piece of journalism to mere propaganda.

The book puts ‘freedom fighters’ in quotes while talking about Jallianwala Bagh martyrs. And it concludes with hope about the ‘Azadi-Azadi’ chants that reverberate spontaneously across the nation (as per the author) against an elected government of a democratic country. 

One would wonder what would happen if we opened all our borders without restrictions and disband the ‘oppressive’ military. Would it result in a Utopia where Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese and Afghans would live as loving siblings?

Or would the new ‘Azadi’ mean living in a Sharia or a Communist state? If you think the answer is the former, this book is an apt one for you. If not, then perhaps we should thank the borders and the men who stand guard there, protecting our freedom and right to read and hear diverse opinions, including this one, as guaranteed by the Constitution of our democratic, secular, socialist republic.