SCATTERED FATES
a novel on the second partition of India
Ram Garikipati
Copyright 2013 by Ram Garikipati
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For
Eunmiya
AUTHOR SNAPSHOT
Ram Garikipati (42) is a business journalist based in Seoul, South Korea for the past ten years. He occasionally writes op-ed pieces for business newspapers, commentary for academic journals, rambles his thoughts on a personal blog as Seoul Buffoon, and takes up corporate projects that help him buy expensive treats for his four adorable dogs. He has just taken up a project to be Chief Editor of a bi-monthly magazine, published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food & Rural Affairs, South Korea.
Before his freedom in the summer of 2012, he was head of corporate communications at the EU Chamber of Commerce in Korea and also Chief Editor of their monthly business publications for close to 8 years. Prior to this, he was a business reporter at The Korea Herald for less than a year.
An Indian citizen, by birth and choice, he relocated to Seoul in April 2004, to touch base with his soul, now his wife, who missed kimchi and preferred the morning calm of her own country to the unbearable heat and chaos in Bharat. He met her in New Delhi, while working for the business newspaper of The Hindu Group of Publications.
As Special Correspondent of The Hindu Business Line, from 1995 to 2004, he was responsible for coverage of Telecom/IT, Infrastructure, Finance and Macro-economic issues. He was also a fortnightly columnist and edit page writer, under the byline G. Rambabu. He joined the newspaper soon after completing his M.Phil in Applied Economics from the Center for Development Studies (JNU).
Scattered Fates is his debut novel, which marinated in his head for close to 5 years, but he only got to write it, after his azaadi. He hopes to be lucky enough to catch the eye of the public, so they can decide on the merits of his work, if any.
PROLOGUE
One fact that has been overlooked in contemporary fiction set in India is that the country came very close to a second partition, the outcome of racial tensions, less than two decades after Independence from Great Britain. It has not been fictionally explored in the domestic English publishing media, perhaps due to fears of stroking tensions, which explains why mainline publishers were wary of bringing this out in the first place.
This is an alternate history fiction that seeks to bridge the gap, and explore the underlying tensions that continue to exist in present-day India, by borrowing from the historical experience of South Korea, a country that was divided after war. It is therefore important to be aware of the actual history of the anti-Hindi agitations of Tamil Nadu to appreciate the ‘what if’ scenarios in this novel.
The agitations in Tamil Nadu (formerly Madras State, and not Tamil Nad as North Indians call it even today) started a decade before Independence, in opposition to the introduction of compulsory teaching of Hindi in the schools of Madras Presidency by the first Indian National Congress government led by the ‘Mango of Salem’ C. Rajagopalachari.
This policy decision was immediately opposed and protests raged for three years, which included fasts, conferences, marches and picketing. The local government responded with a brutal crackdown resulting in the death of two protesters and arrest of 1,198 persons including women and children. The British Governor of Madras, Lord Erskine, was forced to withdraw the policy in February 1940 after resignation of the Congress Government.
During deliberations for framing the Indian Constitution after India's independence, adoption of an official language for the country was hotly debated, and a decision taken to adopt Hindi as the official language of India with English continuing as an associate official language for a period of fifteen years. However, efforts by the Central Government to make Hindi the sole official language after 1965 were not acceptable to many Southern Indian states, who wanted the continued use of English.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a minor political formation in Tamil Nadu at that time, led the opposition to Hindi, under the leadership of ‘Arignar’ C. N. Annadurai. To allay their fears, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, enacted the Official Languages Act in 1963 to ensure the continuing use of English beyond 1965. The text of the Act was wishy-washy and did not satisfy the DMK, which argued that Nehru’s assurances might not be honored by future administrations.
Nehru died in May 1964 and Lal Bahadur Shastri became Prime Minister of India. Shastri and his senior cabinet members Morarji Desai and Gulzari Lal Nanda were strong supporters of Hindi being the sole official language. This increased the apprehension that Nehru's assurances of 1959 and 1963 will not be kept. Concerned over the preference of Hindi in central government jobs, civil service examinations and the fear that English would be replaced with Hindi as a medium of instruction, students joined the anti-Hindi agitations in large numbers. On 7th March 1964, the chief minister of Madras State, M. Bhaktavatsalam at a session of the Madras Legislative Assembly recommended the introduction of Three-language formula (English, Hindi and Tamil) in the state. Apprehension over the Three-language formula increased student support for the anti-Hindi cause.
The day (26th January 1965) of switching over to Hindi as sole official language approached, and the anti-Hindi movement gained momentum in Madras State with increased support from college students. The Tamil Nadu Students Anti Hindi Agitation Council was formed in January as an umbrella student organization to coordinate the anti-Hindi efforts. The office bearers of the council were student union leaders from all over Madras State. Several student conferences were organized to protest against Hindi imposition. The Madras State Anti-Hindi Conference was convened at Trichy and was attended by 700 delegates from Madras, Maharashtra, Kerala and Mysore. They called for the indefinite suspension of any move to sideline English. The Information & Broadcasting Ministry of the central government (headed by Indira Gandhi) upped the ante and issued circulars for replacing English with Hindi from 26th January.
Ten days before the deadline, Annadurai announced that the date would be observed as a day of mourning. He wrote to Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, asking for the language transition to be postponed by a week. Shastri refused, and the stage was set for confrontation.
The Chief Minister warned that he would not tolerate any blot on the sanctity of the Republic day and Annadurai was immediately taken into preventive custody along with 3,000 party members to forestall the agitations. The next day 50,000 students marched from Napier Park to the Government secretariat at Fort St. George to present a petition to the Chief Minister, who refused to meet them arguing that the protests were ‘not in the interests of national integration, not in the interests of higher education, and not in the interests of the students themselves.’
Stung by this insult, the students went berserk, they boycotted classes, made bonfire effigies of the ‘Hindi demoness,’ Hindi signs at railway stations and post offices were removed or blackened over, stores and public transport brutally vandalized. As the riots spread, police responded with force firing on student processions, further inflaming the situation. Inspired by this, other citizens too started joining the lawlessness. Strikes, processions, and boycotts ruled the roost.
More disturbingly, scores of youngsters set themselves ablaze, effectively using kerosene to fuel the bonfire. In the first two days of protests, five students immolated themselves while three others consumed poison. One of the agitators was killed as a result of police firing, which only served to act as a catalyst for more violence. Three days later, classes in Madr
as University, Annamalai University and other colleges and schools in the State were suspended indefinitely.
Rioting continued throughout the first week of February. Finally, after 10 days, with the fires still raging, student representatives petitioned the Chief Minister to find a compromise. This time he reluctantly met them, but as expected, talks failed and it was back to square one.Not a day went by without protests. Fifteen days after the first stone was lobbed, the students lost control of protests.
By mid-February, around 70 people were killed. Some unofficial reports put the death toll as high as 500, and a large number of students were arrested. The Central Government was forced to sit up. Two senior cabinet ministers from Madras State demanded constitutional recognition for English as an official language, and tendered their resignation.
Faced with open revolt in his cabinet, the Prime Minister realizing he was cornered, backed down and made a national radio broadcast calling for a truce.
He made five assurances:
Every state will have complete and unfettered freedom to continue to transact its own business in the language of its own choice, which may be the regional language or English.
Communications between States will either be in English or will be accompanied by authentic English translation.
The non-Hindi states will be free to correspond with the central government in English and no change will be made in this arrangement without their consent.
In the transaction of business at the central level, English will continue to be used.
The All India Civil Services examination will continue to be conducted in English rather than in Hindi alone.
This effectively ended the agitation as it served to calm down the protestors. Although sporadic protests continued till March 14th, victorious students went back to classes and DMK suspended the agitation, while Annadurai and the other leaders were released from detention.
However, Shastri’s efforts to amend the Official Languages Act faced stiff resistance from the pro-Hindi lobby. Congress and opposition parties hesitated to debate the issue in Parliament, as they did not wish to make their bitter divisions public. The Congress working committee finally agreed to a resolution, which amounted to slowing down of Hindi-influence, strong implementation of the three languages, and conduct of the public services exam in all regional languages. The three-language formula was not strictly enforced either in South or North India. The changes to public services exams were impractical and not well received by government officials. The only real concession to the South was the assurance that the Official Languages Act would be modified. However, any effort to follow through with that pledge received stiff resistance.
In April 1965, a meeting of a cabinet sub-committee debated the issue and could not come to any agreement.
The sub-committee recommended the continuation of English and Hindi as joint link languages and was not in favor of either quota system or use of regional languages in public services exams. They drafted an amendment to Official Languages Act incorporating Nehru's assurances explicitly.
This Bill, guaranteeing the use of English in inter-state and state-Union communications as long as desired by Non-Hindi states, was approved for discussion by the Speaker on 25th August, but withdrawn after a bitter debate citing inopportune time.
Shastri died in January 1966 and Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister. The election of 1967 saw Congress retaining power with a reduced majority. In Madras State, Congress was defeated and DMK came to power. In November 1967, a new attempt to amend the Bill was made. On 27th November, the Bill was tabled in Parliament; it was passed on 16th December. It received presidential assent on 8th January, 1968 and came into effect. The Amendment modified section 3 of the 1963 Act to guarantee the virtual indefinite policy of bi-lingualism in official transactions.
The agitations of 1965 led to major political changes in the state. The DMK won the 1967 assembly election and the Congress Party never managed to recapture power in the state since then.
This novel is set at the cusp of these important changes.
As regards Korea, the country continues to be divided today, with an archaic dynastic communist ruler in the North, and a free democratic and prosperous society in the South. In this novel, the country is united, under a parliamentary form of government and mixed economy model.
Many of the political characters whose names are used in this novel actually existed and their biographical details are correct up to 1965.
As for Korean history, after the war, South Korea became a parliamentary democracy for a brief period of time (August 1960 to July 1961), when a military dictator dislodged the government and ruled ruthlessly for 18 years, enabling it to become an industrial powerhouse. The country became a democracy again only in 1987, but not in this novel. North Korea continues to be ruled by the third generation of Kim dynasty and is one of the most repressive and poor countries in the world, denying basic human rights to its citizens.
In this novel, the country is unified after the Korean War, to remain a parliamentary democracy, but still retaining its third world status.
I have no intention of hurting anyone’s sentiments by this fictional narrative, taking liberty with political facts, which, in a hypersensitive country that India has become, is quite possible.