YouSaid · the spoken record

Mishal Husain

lines on the record: 59
first: 2024-12-23
most recent: 2024-12-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“No one in their family was longing or missing or frankly had left property behind and was never able to claim their property or was impoverished because of independence. All of these things also happened. So the sort of memory and the experience of it is extremely uneven regionally obviously also varies a lot. And then of course it's the great passage of time.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not sure that this re election does anything different. I think the real problem with the memory of these times is it is just slipping away. That's kind of really why I wanted to write this now is because this is still just about within living memory. And that's such a precious resource to document while we still can. But I'm conscious that There are so many families who are untouched by all of this, right? Especially, you know, I think if you go to, for example, Delhi is full of many families who came from, say, Hindu and Sikh families who came from Lahore. Karachi is full of Muslim families who came from Delhi. But actually many Lahores are pretty much born and bred Lahores. That is not, you know, their families didn't cross the border. It's not a part of their heritage.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Through that, he educated his children. One of his sons became a doctor. And that again then transforms the family into another generation. And so all of that is happening. And I think especially for Muslims in the north of India, there was a real, by the end of the 19th century, there were sort of twin responses to the entrenched British presence after the Indian mutiny uprising, First War of Independence, whatever you want to call it. The British are there to stay and some Muslims are really, really struggling with that, and they're much more theological in their approach. And then other Muslims are just thinking, we have to stop thinking of English as the devil's language and the missionary's language. We just need to learn the language, advance, teach our children, this is the future. And so my family are part of that.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really try and avoid it anywhere because no one is ordinary and everyone's lives are interesting. I really believe that and it just depends what questions you ask and how interested you are and how much work you're prepared to do. And I'm so grateful to Mumtaz for documenting the everyday life and for his observations of just how people lived, how people lived. This book is actually also a story of social mobility. It is also the story of people whose within two or three generations whose circumstances improve considerably because of education. and hard work and I think there is a real Taira I could see I was trying to figure out what did Tyra's ancestors do and I realized that her grandfather was a tailor I think and believed that he got a contract to supply uniforms to the Raj.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know I felt really ashamed actually as I sat and read this properly. And especially because right at the beginning he says, I don't think anyone in my family is interested in this, but I'm going to write it down anyway. And he was right. None of us were interested at that time. And so I really am ashamed because, you know, I was, I mean, especially as a journalist, I should have taken an interest much earlier. I really, you know, sometimes in journalism we talk about like we'll do some, I really hate this term ordinary people.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I'd really love this to be a record of the fact that there is so little contact today between India and Pakistan. Of course, that's not true for those of us who live in Britain because the contact is there for us, although things can sometimes still be fraught. But I want this to be a record of that where there is contact, all the natural things that flow from that, the understanding, the companionship. I mean, my grandparents... Until he was about 20, and he came here to be a cadet at Sandhurst. But from birth, he was a British subject. And so there's that kind of sense of, and you have your own connection to this subject matter. Y”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To use their nicknames. So Husu instead of Hassan, Gurya instead of Shenaz, it was her nickname meaning Dol and Chutu, the little one for my mother Shama. So these are nicknames that are not necessarily Muslim and hence he's trying to protect them. I'm imagining how could he protect them even if he's not there anymore. So there are heroes for sure. And to me, it was really important that mine is primarily the story of a Muslim family, but these were a mirror image experiences. And some of them are in broken threads, but others, when I've spoken about this already, people have shared their own. And, you know, every community was both victim of violence and target of violence. and also perpetrators of violence.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Men lining the road that she realized that the country was in a state of absolute ferment because until that point, she had been sort of in a bit of a bubble wherever she was living in Simla and she hadn't realized how bad things were. And Govind Singh, who is the young officer who was in charge of them, my uncle Hassan remembers him saying to him as a six-year-old, seven-year-old, if anything happens to the car, and anyone asks you who you are, you must say that you are Govind Singh's children. So Govind is imagining the situation where the adults are gone and these children, small children, my mother, her siblings, they had some cousins with them, and these children are left to fend for themselves. And he's wondering, he's basically giving him something that will make him sound like a Hindu or Sikh to anyone who finds these children on their own. And he also said if anyone asks the children's names.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Children in obvious disarray wending their way on foot or in bullet carts with whatever they had rummaged out of their household belongings while escaping from the frenzied, marauding hordes. So this is what they can see from the air. And my grandfather, Shahid, went over also on a military transport at the end of August 1947, but it was my grandmother Tyra who has a very difficult and dangerous journey out of Simla down to Delhi where Auckenleck looks after her until he's able to get her to Pakistan as well. And I do tell that story in broken threads in some detail. It's a young Hindu officer who's very fond of the whole family who goes up to Similar. And even he is deeply apprehensive because you may have a platoon of infantry, but if there are mobs lining the road and my grandmother Tyra said that it was at that moment when she saw the faces of the men.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Much better, yes, it's fine. And they get booked on the 16th of August on a train. And in the end, it is a British officer who happens to be passing through Air Headquarters. He says, you know what, the trait, I really don't think you should take the four children and your wife on one of these trains. My plane will be going back empty and you can take that plane. So with some others, they do end up getting on this plane and they have this extraordinary journey where the sites below are just awful. He says that the fields are all, this is what Muntaz writes in his memoir of their journey. That day it was a depressing sight. Some sporadic cultivated fields, but mostly burned ones, perpetrated by wild mobs on land which was the granary of the subcontinent. There were columns of people, men, women, many with babies in their arms or astride their waist and young children.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where they were going, and his Hindu colleagues at Air Headquarters really tried to tell him to change his mind, especially they say you've got a Christian wife, don't take her to Pakistan. The country probably won't last anyway. And so all of this is happening. But in the end, it's my grandmother Mary who says, no, you're the only son of your parents. These are parents, by the way, who are not giving her the time of day at this point. But she says we can't stay in India. We have to go to Pakistan. Your parents will get old and you're the only son, and how can you be in a different country? So they opt for Pakistan. And he went to Delhi's station and asked the station master because trains are notorious on either way. Any train going towards Pakistan, it's known it'll be full of Muslims. It could get attacked by Hindis and Sikhs and exactly the same is happening to Hindus and Sikhs who are traveling east through Punjab. So these trains are really dangerous. But the Delhi station master system actually thinks...”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And actually they have very similar experiences. They are Montaz and Shahid are both serving men. And Montaz, after he became a medic, after he qualified as a doctor in 1943, he was very, very short of money, not least because he'd married my grandmother Mary, and he knew that once his parents found out his allowance would probably be cut off. And he's in debt and all the rest. And he essentially joins up because there's a very generous stipend for final year medical students because the army desperately needs, the Allies desperately need doctors for the Second World War. And so he remains in, by that stage, the RAF as a doctor after the end of the war. And so when the summer of 1947 comes, all four of my grandparents and all their children who are born at that point are all living in Delhi. And Mumtaz had opted for Pakistan. They all had to fill in forms and say,”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The angularities of these different communities start to disappear. And he says that doesn't mean that you stop being Hindus and Muslims, but that your citizenship essentially becomes more important. So what he's looking at, he's thinking back to Tudor times and Mary's reign and Elizabeth's reign, and he's trying to say, look, you know, that has become less important over time in Britain, and that is how I think it will happen in Pakistan. And I guess he means in India as well. But he's talking about citizens of different religions being citizens of Pakistan.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a very secular minded Muslim. It's like your Muslim identity is, of course, religion is part of it, but it's about, I don't really know how to describe it, but it's about your culture. It's about your language. It's about your sense of identity. It's about your heritage and your background. It certainly doesn't mean that you want some kind of, certainly not an Islamic state. That wasn't how Jinnah envisaged it at all. And he's very clear about that in the speeches that he makes as Pakistan is coming into being. In fact, one of the things he says in his key speech as Pakistan is being born in August 1947 is he says to Pakistan. He's in Karachi.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Malbatten becomes the viceroy towards the end of March 1947, so it's only a few months until what eventually transpires is independence in the middle of August. So it's an incredibly fraught and frenetic period. And Shahid and Orkinlek are still doing ordinary military things like the whole of May 1947. They're in the UK because Montgomery is having an important military exercise, a sort of post-war military exercise. And so there's all kinds of other things that are part of the post-war sort of reorganization and strategy of the army that are happening at the same time. But Jinnah is an important figure in the book because he was for my three Muslim grandparents, I mean, I think it's really important to understand that he's not certainly not a religious leader. There's no sense of that. Jinnah was a very secular”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Previous viceroy before Mountbatten still tried to work really hard to keep to try and still plug the gaps and keep people together. Jinnah and Nehru, most importantly, at one point he brings them all to London on his plane in December 1946 and sort of takes him to lunch at Buckingham Palace and gets them to meet and just hopes that there's the sort of way to smooth over the waters. But the king, but George VI writes in his diary, you know, it just seems impossible. They barely speak to each other and it's all very difficult.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Could group together on particular issues and have an extra voice. And Jinnah, even though there were some within his party, the Muslim League, who were adamant that there should be a separate homeland, he agreed to this federation, this cabinet mission principle in June 1946. Subsequently, communal tension began that summer and it developed and relations between Jinnah and Neru were not good. Wavel, who was the”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Demand for a separate homeland. But yes, as late as 1946, there was a cabinet mission involving Stafford Cripps that came in April, May of 1946, and it explicitly advised the British government that there was no question of dividing India. It was not an outcome that could be recommended to the British government. India was too complex, had too complex demographically religiously, ethnically for all of these reasons, assets. It was unworkable. And instead it recommended essentially a federation and that some provinces within this federation, the federation would also include princely states and the British ruled provinces. Some of the provinces could group together in their common interests. And so that might mean that Muslim majority provinces, roughly the areas which are now Bangladesh and Pakistan,”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Any detail. And this was one of the most complex things for me to get my head around because both in 1942 and then again in 1946, there were two significant British efforts to try and find a blueprint for future government which would allow the handover of allow the transfer of power from Britain to Indian leaders. And it was really unclear. Essentially, Muslims as being a minority in India were very, very worried about being, in a sense, about being overrun about rights and language and what would a free India look like, what safeguards would it have for minority communities. That was how what eventually turned out to be Pakistan. That was how that demand began. It began as a demand about safeguards and rights and eventually grew into the”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he is one of the great Second World War generals because in 1943, which was a 1942, which was a really terrible year, the first half of 1942, East Asia is falling to the Japanese. Rommel is sweeping through North Africa. Orkinek is the one who holds Rommel at El Alamein. And it is a few months later that the second battle of El Alamein, the one where Montgomery defeated Rommel, that is the one everyone remembers. But a few months before it was Orkenleck, who had held the Nazis in the Africa Corps.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I consider myself a patriot and essentially a patriot in your country, just like we are British patriots, we must see these men in the same way. The fact that they eventually want us, the British to leave India, does not make them traitors in and of itself. And it's really an incredible document, and I do quote it at length in broken threads because I thought it was so interesting. And I thought, okay, now I get it. Now I understand why my grandparents thought that Orkinleck, you know, they held him in such.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Outclassed by the Japanese when those territories in East Asia started falling. They felt abandoned. They would not have shown disloyalty if the opportunity did not arise. And he says, most interesting to me that I want you to search your hearts about their experiences in the Indian Army, the times when they were racially discriminated, the times when people even officers wives were discourteous to their wives. And he's essentially saying, I want you to think about their experience of racism. And I thought it was just an extraordinary, it showed extraordinary foresight. It was really a man ahead of his time, I think, because he said the fact that these men are nationalists, and by that really, you know, nationalism then essentially means patriotism wanting freedom for your country. He said,”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Through all those prisoners, figuring out who is actually accused of serious crimes and who was simply part of the INA. And it's a long and difficult process. And in the end, some are convicted but have their sentences reduced or commuted. This is Orkinlegg's decision and others eventually, as their fate is increasingly politicized in the run-up to independence, eventually the whole judicial process comes through an end. And as it comes to an end, there's a memo in Orkin Lakes Archives, which was a private memo who wrote his British offices. And he says this is not for public consumption, but I want you to know why I have mitigated many of these sentences. And he says, I feel there is a much bigger picture than simply these men joining the Japanese, and it is not the same as Britons joining the Nazis. He says most of these men found themselves inadequately led because British forces were so”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why were you fighting for the British? We will liberate your country. We will take you to Delhi. You will be able to overthrow them and liberate your fellow countrymen. So it's a very complex picture. But as Japan is being defeated, these men of the Indian National Army are being captured and brought back to Delhi. And Orkinek as Commander-in-Chief had to decide what to do with them. Almost all of his British officers are saying These are traitors, they are to be treated the same way that any British soldier or officer who went over to the Nazis is to be treated and these are very, very serious crimes. Now some of these men were accused of brutality against fellow prisoners of war. But a lot of them were just simply arrested and the charge would have been treason for joining the Japanese. And Aukin Leg does begin a process of essentially sifting”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ryland's library, John Ryland's library in the University of Manchester. Some of you might know it. And I looked through his archive and he now obviously this is the choice and someone leaves their papers. They have taken out whatever they really don't want to see, but you still can, you know, you do get a really good sense of what there is. And there was one paper in particular that really jumped out at me. And that was that when the Second World War was coming to an end and the fight against Japan, this is before the surrender. And there were soldiers who had been part of the Indian Army who had fought in Burma and Malaya and Singapore who, after they'd been taken prisoner by the Japanese, joined the Japanese. And the circumstances of this are complicated. Some, you know, might have wanted to avoid the worst kind of punishment. Some might have been induced. Others were strongly nationalistic and the Japanese were saying,”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You see, I knew that he was, I mean, my grandfather, I think it's fair to say absolutely worshipped Orc. I think he was his boss for 18 months, but they stayed in touch for the rest of Orkinlack's life. And he remarkably lived until 1981. He was the last of his generation. He outlived all his Second World War contemporaries. And so they were very, very fond of him. I never met him, but my mother and her siblings, you know, whenever they were in England, they would visit him and they were all very close to family. So he was like this, you know, there used to be a picture of him in a silver frame and my grandparents' living room. That's what it was. I remember seeing this picture. And so I thought, look, I've got to research this man properly. I can't just take it as read that he was so all out amazing. And so left his papers to the University of Manchester, and I went and I sat in the amazing.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Business trip to Hong Kong came to India very, very briefly, did take my eldest uncle, did pray at his father's grave. But it wasn't the kind of trip where he could catch up with his old school friends or teachers or many of his relatives. And I found this letter from I can't figure out if it was an old teacher or an old fellow pupil from Lucknow, but this person finds out that Shahid has been to Lucknow again after all these years and writes to him and says, I'm so sorry that you didn't have time to see me while you were here. It would have been wonderful to see you again. And I thought, I think it just was such a hurried trip. And how do you really, if you've been away for 30 years from the place where you were born and brought up and had all your education, how much time could you really ever have to catch up and soak up everything? But that was the only trip you made. And I think when he left India for Pakistan in 1946,”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Went back to India. Well, he didn't really see, and I think this is still the case, but as a serving army officer, he certainly couldn't go back. And then even as a retired army officer, it was difficult visas and how it looks. But he did at one point, I think in the late 1970s, there was a friendly Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad, and he said, and Shai had said to him, I would like to pray at my father's grave before I die. And his father had been buried in Laknau in 1945, and he said, and I would like to take my elder son, and I'd like to go to India. He had died quite young. He died when he was 16. Yes, this is my great-grandfather who died before independence. And so the High Commissioner, the Indian High Commissioner said, look, I can't issue you this visa in Islamabad, but if you're going abroad for any reason, I could pick up this visa somewhere else. And Shai had picked it up on a...”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The border, it reduced your, I mean, it could even affect my grandfather's career in the army, the fact that my grandmother Tyra went back and forth to see her parents. And indeed, one of my grandfather's bosses, the Army chief, who later became president at Yubhan, said to my grandfather Shahid, these trips of Thira's to India, they don't look good. And he said to Ayupahan, I'm sorry, sir, I could never stop her from going to visit her parents. So, you know, there were all these kinds of dimensions they had to think about that the most basic and ordinary and understandable desire for human contact was...”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fled in fear of their lives and feeling they had nowhere else where they would be safe. But many others made a choice. And my grandparents Shaidan Thara were definitely those who made that choice. After a while though, it started to be that there's a narrative started to develop which was about the sons of the soil and those people who were born and bred in Sindh and in the part of Punjab that was Pakistan or in the northwest frontier or in Balochistan these are the true Pakistanis you know these these are the people of the soil and that that's that left no place for the people whose roots were across the border that started to be not something that you would emphasize that was not something that would look look good and so I think that just meant that everything was downplayed your your origins your actual experience of independence your relatives that are across”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Colonies by that stage. But that whole, and there was also an emphasis on Indianization, so opportunities for Indians within the civil service and within the army and my grandfather Shaid and Muntaz both benefited from that. So there are all these kinds of moves, but they tend to be behind Indian expectations at every stage of the process. But I felt, unless I understood that whole trajectory of events, I couldn't put the lives of my four grandparents into any kind of context. And I've remembered now what I was going to say earlier about Pakistan in the 1950s, is that the kind of narrative that developed very soon and which my grandparents really suffered from was that after a while, the people who had sacrificed the most for Pakistan and those were the people who had left homes in India and come to Pakistan to be part of founding the new country. And yes, some of those...”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and they certainly didn't have a good working relationship, and I think that had very serious consequences. But I think one of the things was I needed to, there were times when I really wanted, I was really flinching from getting so deep into the history, but I thought I can't understand these people, these four people and their generation. If I don't understand what was happening politically at every stage. So there's the First World War is a very significant moment after which because of the numbers of Indians who served and died, it is really a moment where the British government realizes that we have to do something that puts some kind of path towards greater autonomy or self-rule. Remember India is not even a dominion. It's not on a par with Canada or Australia. It doesn't have anything like that kind of system of government which has evolved for other major”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I certainly, because so much of my work is in political journalism, I certainly could not approach this without thinking about the decision-making of the time, the politics and how those decisions would be made. One of the conclusions I realized was just how few hands those decisions were in. Essentially, on the British side, it was really only the Prime Minister Clement Attlee and the Viceroy who were making those decisions, not even Claude Organleck, the second most important person supposedly in British India, was he wasn't privy to many of those.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely, yes. And I've touched on this a bit. And for those of you, I know there are people here who know Pakistan, but this founding generation, it didn't take long, and I think the death of Jinnah only a year after independence was an absolute tragedy for Pakistan. And there was no one of his caliber, really, who was the obvious sort of next founding father. Although Lia Telikhan, who was the first prime minister of Pakistan, was also an extraordinary individual who then was assassinated a few years later. So Pakistan really had a terrible time with its early leaders and what happened to two notable ones. But she, sorry, where well...”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For a long time because we were used to a pattern of life, friends made and kept, despite prejudices of life like religion or nationality. But these things don't matter, the human values do. And at another point, she said, partition was a sad, sad era, not because India was being partitioned, although that too was a tragedy, I think, but the way it happened was tragic. And to the eternal shame of the people of India and Pakistan, that big tragedy has been followed by others. So she was really very eloquent. But interestingly, that's her verdict that the partition of India was a tragedy. I don't think her husband would have said that. I don't think would have said that. And I think, you know, I think he would have been like, I'm a patriot. This is the country I chose. For better or worse.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Her in her own words, her voice, which I hadn't heard for ages, and it's credit to my mother because my mother, I think probably also partly to keep her occupied when my grandfather died in 1993, had got her this tape recorder and first recorded her and then said, you know, when you're on your own sometime, you could record yourself. And I can sort of hear my grandmother press record and play and then sort of clear her throat and take a deep breath. And then she comes out with these complete sentences. I think I've got a couple of quotes here, but I realize that, you know, at one point she said, we had learned to live with each other over centuries. This is when she's talking about Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims and the society that she knew in the north of India. And then this was the bit that really made me think in certain ways people of my generation were not really complete.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It felt quite extraordinary, and that myra was the grandparent I knew the best. She and Muntaz, so my mother's mother and my father's father, because they lived the longest. But Tyra and I talked a lot about, you know, she talked to me about India, and I remember her saying to me, you never saw what we left behind. And she meant what we left behind in India, because both of those grandparents, that was where they grew up. Aligar and Lucknow, which are Aliga is very close to Delhi and Lucknow is a bit further away. But in that same geographical area of the Gangetic plain of North India. And so she had, so I could have just about done this book purely relying on my memories of her and what she told me, the story of her journey to safety in September 1947 she had told me herself. But of course the tapes were amazing because it's”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, her family came round to it much, much sooner than his did. I think they were not, I think they actually got over the Muslim part relatively quickly. I think the part that worried them more, first of all, was that times were really hard. And, you know, there was very little money in that family. And Mary has gone to train as a nurse and then got married to my grandfather who is not qualified as a doctor at the time they get married. And they start having children soon afterwards. She drops out of her nurse training. He's not yet a doctor. This is not a great combination from the point of view of my great-grandmother who was struggling to bring up six children and who's this eldest child was becoming a nurse and about to be okay. And so I think she was, there's definitely a sort of like how they're going to support each other or how is he going to support it?”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who lives in Oldham and is about to have her 100th birthday next month. But I just tried as hard as I could to get Mary in her own words, or at least Mary through her own family rather than always seeing her through the lens of her husband. And actually my father died a few years ago, but my two other uncles were actually good on this and were very honest with me about what they saw in their childhoods.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, she was in her late 50s by then. So, you know, I was just conscious, and I did talk a lot to Mary as a surviving sibling, my great-aunt Anne, who's 99 years old, God bless her.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they lived with tremendous hardship because of their circumstances when she was growing up. And she then went to train as a nurse on the other side of India in 1940, which is how she met my grandfather Montaz, who was a medical student. So they then made their home in Pakistan after independence. My grandfather's description of it is like, yes, initially my family didn't accept her. That was very bad of them. It took a long time. She was amazing, but eventually everyone was reconciled. But actually, I know for a fact it was more complicated than that, not least because years later, even in my early childhood, my mother remembers Mary, her mother-in-law, saying to her, I still worry that Montaz's family are still unhappy about our marriage and would still rather that he had married someone else, actually his cousin.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and the hardest one was my grandmother Mary, who died when I was 11. And so a lot of what I knew about her, I gleaned through the lens of my grandfather, either through our conversations or what he'd written down. And that is obviously his side of the story. Not that I think her side of the story would have been so different, but for example, she has an unusual background in that her father was Irish, part of Irish emigration, which reached India in the 19th century, as it did so many other parts of the world. And he, and I tell this story early on in the book, it's slightly complicated and doesn't necessarily reflect that well on my great-grandfather. But he married a much younger woman who was born a Hindu and then converted to Catholicism. And Mary, my grandmother, was the eldest child of that union. There were six children in all.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Into these, and then I went back. And my grandmother Tyra was a very sensitive woman and who realized later in her life that a lot of things she had sort of seen extraordinary things, but she was a 27-year-old at the time of independence. And she said, I was too immature at the time to really...”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He describes the way how close they live to each other. It's a joint family system, so brothers and their wives and children are all under the same roof. And behind a curtain, he can hear his aunt giving birth. And, you know, all these kinds of, like, they're so close to life and death because it all happens in the four walls of the house. And then he also describes his mother living in Perda and what that actually meant, exactly what she wore, what the procedure was when she wanted to leave the house, how she, anytime they went out of Multan, which was the only time she could remove her burqa in public, she would fling it off as soon as she could and her husband would look at her really disapprovingly and basically want her to keep it on for longer until they got right out. And I thought he's actually, he's like the perfect journalist of his time. He's observing and he's writing things down. But I'd only ever sort of dipped it.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Computer, and when he died, and my uncle saved it, thankfully. But it just starts with saying, essentially, I don't really know why I'm doing this because I don't think anyone in my family is particularly interested in the story of my life, but I'm going to write it down in the hope that one day it tells my children and grandchildren and future great-grandchildren what made their existence possible. And the thing is that he actually what he put together, the unpublished and the published went really well together in the end because what Montaz did was paint a whole picture of the social fabric in which he grew up in the southern part of Punjab in a city called Multan and he was born into really a very simple conservative Muslim family of the time, middle class in a very simple modern brick traditionally built house in the old city of Multan.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But when I did come to read it, it's full of what's amazing is it's a diary of what was happening when and some really extraordinary figures he sits in the room when Gandhi comes to meet Orkinleck and talks to him and my grandfather is the private secretary is sitting in the room so there's some amazing detail there but it's very little about my grandmother, very little about the three children, including my mother. And so I was like, you know, like, where's everyone else? What are you thinking? When are you deciding which and how are you deciding which country you are going to go to? There's none of that. And then my other grandfather, Mumtaz, just in his retirement, he became a widow word, a relatively young age, and he was retired and he needed to occupy himself and he just started, right, my father, I remember, gave him a PC. This must have been in the late 80s. And he wrote, you know, and the file he left on his”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, some of this material I had looked at before, certainly my grandfather Shahid's partition diary was published in 1986 when I was 13, and I was at boarding school in England. And I was the only member of my family who was in the country at the time. I was hauled out of boarding school to attend his book launch, about which the most important thing I remember was that his publisher was the husband of Jilly Cooper, which at age 13 I thought was the best possible thing about this book. And the only really relevant thing to my life.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be self sufficient. You shouldn't wear imported British cloth. Ideally, you should spin your own yarn and make your own fabric.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Various other female relatives, including Sharmen as a young child, and they just took what they could carry, got the train to Bombay and a boat to Karachi. And I thought to myself, in the midst of all of that, someone in the family grabbed this sari and thought, this is Jamila Sari and her daughter Sharmen should have it one day. And I thought, there are sort of multiple reasons why I'm just amazed that this has survived. You know, Raze, you know, there's so much like fabric is such a part of Asian women's lives, right? It's like it's our heritage, it's what we inherit from our mothers, it's the saris, the kurthas, the shuls, whatever it is. And so, yes, there are sort of metaphorical threads, threads to the past, but I think also fabric is resonant and important. Personally, and actually the story of South Asia politically as well, if you think about Gandhi and all of the campaigning that he did on India.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be destroyed. And so the border was still intact, and she took it off, and she had it stitched onto this very plain woolen shawl. And she gave it to me as this incredible actual thread that linked my wedding in 2003 to this 1940 wedding of my grandparents. And I thought this was the most beautiful and evocative wedding present I was given. As I started to think about by family, I thought it's even more extraordinary that I have this because I think the autumn of 1947 Charmin, that cousin of my mother's, was a small girl in Lucknow in India living with her grandmother because her mother had died a few months before independence and her father was working somewhere else. So she was in the care of her grandmother and they all left Lucknow as law and order deteriorated. They all left Lucknow in a great hurry. It was a household of women, my great grandmother.”
2024-12-23 · Intelligence Squared · The 12 Books of Christmas | Mishal Husain on Family, Empire and Why Partition Still Matters · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT