Though I have a series of focal texts on my reading list\u2014and all tie back to the central issue of Partition\u2014I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever taken a moment to look at the primary evidence that announced the division of the British Raj.<\/p>\r\n
I\u2019ve chosen a brief article from The Times<\/em> titled \u201cBroadcast by Viceroy.\u201d It\u2019s simply a printing of Lord Mountbatten\u2019s radio broadcast made the day before announcing the plans for Partition (the broadcast aired on June 3rd, 1947 and the speech was reprinted on June 4th, 1947). This is likely one of the first times this announcement appeared in print, so I\u2019m counting it as a primary source. Lord Mountbatten, Viceroy of India, planned the Partition of India and Pakistan; in this speech, he explains the original plans, the final decision, and how he hopes the Indian people will react to the news of the transfer of power.<\/p>\r\n Works Cited<\/p>\r\n Mountbatten, Lord Louis. “Broadcast by Viceroy.”\u00a0The Times,\u00a0<\/em>London, 4 June 1947, https:\/\/www.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/education\/resources\/indian-independence\/mountbatten-radio-broadcast\/.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Though I have a series of focal texts on my reading list\u2014and all tie back to the central issue of Partition\u2014I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever taken a moment to look at the primary evidence that announced the division of the British Raj. I\u2019ve chosen a brief article from The Times titled \u201cBroadcast by Viceroy.\u201d It\u2019s … Continue reading Broadcast by Viceroy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It is this final section, here subtitled \u201cIndian States,\u201d that is of particular interest to me. Lord Mountbatten consistently stresses the need for this transfer of power to occur \u201cin a peaceful and orderly manner,\u201d and he states that \u201cevery single one of us must bend all his efforts to the task;\u201d these choices of wording suggest that the responsibility for the prevention of violence is a communal task passed onto the now-citizens of the newborn nation. Though Mountbatten is attempting to generate a sense of responsibility, it comes off as a transfer of blame.<\/p>\r\n
In the rest of the speech, his tone is extremely patronizing: \u201cThis is no time for bickering, much less for the continuation in any shape or form of the disorders and lawlessness of the past few months\u201d (“Broadcast by Viceroy”). \u201cBickering\u201d carries connotations of petulant schoolchildren, and his references to \u201cthe disorders and lawlessness of the past few months\u201d carefully covers up British complicity in inciting said lawlessness.<\/p>\r\n
It\u2019s the last three lines that feels especially condescending: \u201cDo not forget what a narrow margin of food we are all working on. We cannot afford any toleration of violence. All of us are agreed on that\u201d (\u201cBroadcast by Viceroy”). Lord Mountbatten, from his position of food security, likely refers to the Bengal Famine of 1943. It\u2019s essential to note that famines are engineered\u2014it\u2019s not the absence of available food, it\u2019s a withholding of available food.<\/p>\r\n
If anything, looking into colonial documents makes me question tone and word choice\u2014it\u2019s also important to note that these declarations are first broadcast in English, a language only accessible to the colonial elite and a South Asian ruling class with an Anglophone education. These are the kinds of official documents women writers are responding to, and this inherently accusatory tone fits with the same kinds of \u201cvictim-blaming\u201d enacted upon fictional women by the men in their lives.<\/p>\r\n