Manmade borders are an intriguing entity. While on the map these lines divide differently coloured geographical states, on ground zero, more often than not, they cut through sameness—same landscape, same people, same features, same dresses, same food, same traditions, same language; in a nutshell, same culture.
Bishwanath Ghosh traverses one such line, with its two sections thousands of kilometres apart. It is the Radcliffe Line that partitioned the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. Such was the impact of this line—its course decided in mere five weeks—that millions of lives were lost and many more families separated just by a stroke of pen.
Such a topic can be tackled in various ways, from a historical serious tone to a pedantic academic one; Ghosh does it his way and that is the strength of this book. He travels along the line and puts down in words what he experiences. The first person anecdotal approach works well and brings out the passion and excitement of the author.
The book is divided, like the Radcliffe Line, into two sections, The West and The East. While the line on the western border in Punjab is 553-km-long, the other bordering Bangladesh is 4,096-km-long. The sections in the book are almost equal.
This could be because the travel along the western border seems new to the author while he seems familiar with the eastern border. And this shows in the way the two sections are dealt with.
Ghosh travels in Punjab as excited as any first-time traveller would, while his journeys along the Bangladesh border reek with cultural familiarity—no wonder, he feels “Punjab’s (green) was a loud song, Bengal’s a gentle poem”. The flag lowering ceremony at Wagah border and the one at Akhaura border in Tripura live up to this sentiment. Familiarity with the language—Punjabi in the West and Bengali in the East—too would have no doubt played an important role.
While in Punjab the barbed wire sets a physical and visible border, the zig-zag border along Bangladesh is marked by pillars and white paint. The crossing-overs by people too match this difference.
In Punjab, the fenced border sets an indisputable line between people on either side, thus the longing to go to other side more difficult to achieve; in Bengal, it is almost a casual occurrence with people walking across with shopping bags in tow.
This could also be due to the fact that on the Bangladesh border, partition occurred in phases—1947, 1964, 1971 (when Bangladesh came into being) and the latest one in 2015 when conclaves were exchanged between India and Bangladesh.
Coming at the 70th anniversary of the Partition, the book is timely. And one thread that comes out strongly is described by the author at one place succinctly: “To me it all looked the same; it was like being in the midst of one vast farmland…. When nature intends a region to be homogenous, manmade demarcations can look invisible—even insignificant—to an outsider.”