Some learn from history, others want to repeat it.
So often I worry if what I’m about to say is going to offend people. Then I read an article like this, “If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans?” and I think, “I’m way too kind.”
But I think that’s the problem. The worry I feel, and other good people feel, about hurting others. Because when you’re an innately good person, hurting people is the opposite of what you do. Rather, you consistently try to shield others from harm. And you don’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter who they are. What they believe. If they are good or bad. Or whether they agree with you or not. But that’s not how the other side plays it.
The side of evil doesn’t hesitate. They don’t worry. They go straight for what they want, and they take it by any means necessary.
I do wonder how all the people who write and talk about oppressing and displacing whole populations of people would feel if the script was flipped. If they were the ones on the losing end. If their possessions, their houses, their cars, were confiscated or destroyed and they were told to never return. Go start over somewhere else. I wonder if they would say “well it happened to the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Germans, guess it’s my turn.” Or if they’d fight back. History says, they’d fight back.
But the thing that’s so curious to me about invoking such events as the Partition of India, the swap of Greek Orthodox Christians and Muslims, or the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, to justify the displacing of people from Gaza, is that these aren’t examples to follow. These aren’t examples of a time when things turned out okay.
Rather, these are examples of what not to do. They are, or should be, reminders of atrocities invoked on innocent people that should never be repeated.
By the author’s own words he says that the Partition of India “led to some two million deaths and uprooted 18 million people.” Not ok. He goes on to say that “both India and Pakistan worked hard to integrate the new arrivals.” Insinuating that everything was peaceful from that moment forward.
He leaves out the genocide, supported by Nixon and Kissinger, that took place against the people of East Pakistan (modern day Bangladesh) just a couple of decades later, in part due to left over hostilities from the Partition. And he omits the India - Pakistan war that occurred soon after in response to the genocide, in which an estimated 2 million East Pakistanis were killed and 10 million refugees that fled to India to save their lives.
Netflix has a show out called Black Warrant (I highly recommend it). The show is based on the real life experiences of Sunil Gupta, who was a jailer in India’s Tihar prison in the 1980s. In one of the scenes a fellow jailer describes Partition and how it impacted his family.
“My dad used to say, before the Partition, we had huge, huge farms. We had to leave everything behind overnight and come to this side. So, one thing is clear to me since I was a child. The common man, Hindu, Muslim, they’re not our enemies. They suffered the same as us. You know who the real enemy is? The assholes who play these political games.” [emphasis mine]
I wonder what could drive someone to advocate for forcing people to leave everything behind, suffer, and start over. I wonder how someone could be so brazen to suggest that this as a good option, when it’s not something they would ever voluntary for themselves or their family. I can only assume that unless you’ve ever been displaced before, you have no idea what it must be like. But then again, I’ve never been displaced, and yet I know it’s not something I want to push on anyone else.
I think it requires a weak, fragile, scared, and insecure type of person to be able to overlook the devastation, loss of life, injury, and trauma being displaced causes. A desire to sacrifice others because it makes them feel safe. I think that’s the only way you could sit in a comfortable desk chair, in a temperature controlled room, typing away, and think, “Yes, this makes sense.”