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july 21, 2012 vol xlviI no 29 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
4
LETTERS
Ever sinc e the fi rst is sue in 1966,
EPW has been I ndia’s prem ier journal for
comment o n curre nt affairs
and rese arch in the soc ial scie nces.
It succeed ed Economic Weekly (1949 -1965),
which wa s launched and shep herded
by Sachin Chaudhuri,
who was al so the founder-edit or of EPW.
As edito r for thi rty-fi ve years (1969 -2004)
Krishna Raj
gave EPW the reputation i t now enjoys.
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Editor: C Rammanohar Reddy.
Issn 0012-9976
Partition and the Mentally Ill
This is in response to the letter by
P R Chari entitled “Siachen in the
Time of Manto” (EPW, 9 June 2012) on the
continuing relevance of Manto and the
use of the story “Toba Tek Singh” where-
in the protagonist’s madness is taken as
a metaphor for contemporar y geopoli-
tics. However, the reality behind the
metaphor is equally, if not more tragic.
On 31 July 1947, Earl Mountbatten
notes in his daily diary (Mountbatten
India Offi ce Records L/PO/6/123 p a r t 3/
p 222, Para 56):
One of the few institutions that will not be
partitioned immediately is t he Punjab Men-
tal Hospital. It will continue to be shared
for some years. Some Hindu inmates of the
asylum have protested against being left in
Pakistan. They have been assured that their
fears are imaginary (italics added).
This process of Partition of the mental
hospital was dragged over several years,
as the interprovincial hospital in Ranchi
(which erstwhile undivided Punjab con-
tributed to) was too far, the one at Agra
was under the United Provinces, and there
were no other asylums in the (Indian)
Punjab as Delhi and Amritsar mental
hospitals did not exist. The asylum at
Amritsar was thus hastily constructed in
1949, but was essentially inadequate and
pati ents and famili es we re ac commodate d
in tents and looked after by the staff. This
incongruous but apparently successful
arrangement and the personal charisma
of Dr Vidyasagar eventually provided a
model for greater family engagement for
the care of the menta lly il l in Indi a.
However, the process of Partition
remorselessly ground ahead, and patients
from the mental hospital at Lahore, and
various hospitals in India, were eventually
exchanged. As the doctors in Amritsar
noted, 450 non-Muslim mental patients
were received in 1950, of which 282
Punjabis were retained at Amritsar, and
the rest sent on to Ranchi (the erstwhile
mental hospital for Europeans and Anglo-
Indians). As many as 233 Muslim patients
from various mental hospitals in India,
from as far away as Ranch i, were sent i n
the opposite direction to Lahore. The
reason for these hospitals being chosen
was probably administrative convenience,
rather than an effort to unite patients
with their families.
As the Director of Health Services,
Punjab notes in 1950 (Annual report of
Punjab Mental Hospital, Amritsar, 1950):
[O]f the 600-700 non-Muslim patients in
Lahore asylum at partition, only 317 were
exchang ed, is a tragic fact which sadly bet rays
the treat ment meted out to those unfor tu-
nate victims who could not be retr ieved ear-
lier fr om the Lah ore Ho spit al .
Although some of the patients were
transferred to Ranchi, contributions from
the Punjab government became erratic
and the central government had to step
in and make good the shortage, till it
became designated as a central institute
and not an interprovincial one.
In all this, the fates of the families and
the patients, who were transported across
hundreds of miles, often deluded or con-
fused, remain one of the unspoken trage-
di es of t he Pa rt it ion , u sed as met aph or and
farce, but hiding a very disturbing reality
of unwillingness to care for “the other”,
even when “the other” is unwell and
incapable of articulating distress. These
hundreds of real life “Toba Tek Singhs”,
like the original protagonist in Manto’s
story, lost their very real identities and
were now classifi ed as Hindu and Mus-
lim, Punjabi and non-Punjabi, and other
categories, probably on the basis of who
would pay the bills rather than any other
humanitarian, clinical or medical concern.
The mentally ill continue to be the
classic apocryphal “other”, and both pol-
iticians and society continue to use the
terms “mad” and “insane” to disparage
and insult, and almost never express the
honest concern and graciousness, which
may have helped provide balm to the
horrors of the Partition then, and to the
care of the mentally ill now. In this the
centenary year of Manto’s birth, we may
want to commemorate that acerbic and
insightfu l aut hor by refl ecting on this.
Sanjeev Jain, Alok Sarin
Kitchen ‘Sati’
I
read with interest “Anti-Dowry Law
Viewed from the Prison Cell” (EPW, 28
January 2012). One cannot factually and
emotively disagree with many of the con-
cerns that need to be addressed. Much is
Economic & Political Weekly EPW july 21, 2012 vol xlviI no 29 5
LETTERS
said about the misuse of the section on
marital harassment – 498A of the Indian
Penal Code. On the other hand, t here exist
many cases deserving registration as dowry
deaths or suicides due to harassment in
marriage (Sections 304B and 498A/306).
But they do not see the light of day. No
breath is wasted on di scussing thes e.
The National Crime Records Bureau
notes that in 2010, there were 8,391 cas-
es of dowry deaths in the country. But
behind every reported or written statis-
tic is a world of lost, disempowered and
silent, suppressed and manipulated sta-
tistics. Many do not have a voice, let
alone raise it. Other voices dry up before
gaining recognition as formal fi gures.
Many young girls, recently mar ried, die
of ulti-dast (a euphemism for poisoning),
as in Bihar, and “kitchen accidents”, as
in Madhya Pradesh. A lot of these inci-
dents do not have their tryst with justice.
When such a burns case gets initially
reported, it is largely a medico-legal case
report from the hospital. Police interven-
tion stays confi ned to recording the girl’s
statement. At this stage, no emphasis is
laid on visiting the crime scene. Often,
the girl is referred to a higher medical
centre. Hence, there is a greater lapse of
time in recording her statement and vis-
iting the crime scene. Usually the visit to
the crime scene takes place when the
“unnatural death” case is registered. By
this time the crime scene is a well-swept,
cleaned area with scant evidence.
The statement of the girl itself can be
a separate scholarship in gender dis-
course. Here is a woman dying, writhing
in pain, fi nding it diffi cult to speak, maybe
regretful of the rash step she took. To the
recorder of the statement, she is a disfi g-
ured, offensively smelling (of burnt skin,
pus, sweat) fi gure telling you the same
story through different mouths over and
over again. That it was an accident. So
the kerosene stove burst (while a gas
cy lind er m ay be used f or c ook in g, o r as if
fo od is cook ed i n t he b edro om) or a dibbi
(little kerosene lamp) fell on her when
in the event of power cut it was lighted.
And the recorder of the statement
records these white lies.
“Trut h sit s up on t he l ips of d ying men ”
(Mathew Arnold), but not women, in these
cases. Surrounded by in-laws and begged
by them and her husband to forgive them
before the statement is recorded, she takes
the soft course. If children are involved
in the situation, then thinking about their
future and the future caretakers, she
forgives all. With limited options in case
she survives, she “un-words” her plight.
Burns, it may be noted, are not cases of
gradual recovery but sharp deterioration.
Initially the girl and her family may be
deceived into believing that the girl will
survive. In the light of future options,
the statement is engineered.
Moreover, the relationships she has
been involved in are complex. Also a
girl, who would have hid her predicament
from family and friends, would scarcely
elaborate it before a stranger who comes
hurrying to get over with another rou-
tine chore of recording a statement.
The attitude of the girl’s family varies
from case to case. Many wait to see what
the daughter will say and usually echo the
same. In most cases the girl does not say
anything so the family sews its lips. If
the girl dies and the grandchildren are
involved, who will, in most cases, stay
with the in-laws, the parents do not
pursue the case. In some, it so happens
that the parents may bargain for the
items of dowry to be returned. Once this
“blood money” is received in part, or in
full, the issue stands am icably resolved
between the two families.
Deepika Suri
Bhopal
Bhagana Dalits
Fifty dalit men have been sitting on
dharna in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar
from 2 July. They are here for an indefi -
nite period till they get justice. They
have marched to Delhi on foot in the hot
summer, having left Hisar town in Haryana
on 27 June. These men are part of the same
70 dalit families whose exodus from
village Bhagana had been reported by
the national media in the last week of
May and who have camped outside the
mini-Secretariat in Hisar since 23 May.
They have been protesting against their
vicious social boycott by the Jats in their
village as well as the unauthorised take over
of common lands in the village by the
Jats, and the non-implementation of the
Mahatma Gandhi Basti Vikas Yojana. The
refusal of Bhagana’s dalit and backward
communities to passively accept the take-
over of their use and ownership land rights
resulted in their social boycott. When a
team of the People’s Union for Democratic
Rights (PUDR) and the Association for
Demo cratic Rights met them in Hisar on 21
June, they were concentrating their ener-
gies on resisting the pressure being brought
to bear on them to end their protest.
PUDR is shocked and angered to fi nd they
have now been forced to resort to under-
taking the padyatra as a heightened form
of protest and the dharna at Delhi as no
action against the guilty Jats has been
undertaken either by the state adminis-
tration, the Haryana government or the
local police. On the contrary, the protesting
dalits have been charged under Sections
332, 353, 186, 506 and 124A of the Indian
Penal Code. All attempts at mediation have
also failed as it has now become a matter
of izzat for the Jats. No case has been reg-
istered against them under the Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention
of Atrocities) Act that the dalits have been
demanding from the beginning. The pro-
test in Hisar is still continuing.
The protest of the dalits of Bhagana
village provides yet another example of
the caste oppression of dalits in Haryana
and the biased nature of the state admini-
stration working in alliance with the
upper castes to maintain the same.
Paramjeet Singh , Preeti Chauhan
Secretaries, PUDR,
Delhi
Web E xclusives
The following articles have been uploaded in the past week in the Web Exclusives
section of the EPW website. These articles have not been published in the print edition.
Read t hem at ht tp://epw.in
1) “Laxmipeta: Deadly Combination of Caste and Political Power” – Bojja Tharakam
2) “Unstable Rupee, Floundering Economy” – Surajit Mazumdar
Ar ticles posted before 29 Ju ne rema in av ailable in t he Web Exclusives se ction
july 21, 2012 vol xlviI no 29 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
6
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