{"id":4113,"date":"2019-03-25T22:33:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T17:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/?p=4113"},"modified":"2019-03-25T23:05:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-25T17:35:59","slug":"stanly-wolpert-a-historian-we-should-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/editors-take\/stanly-wolpert-a-historian-we-should-read\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanly Wolpert: A Historian We Should Read"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>\n

PUNCHLINE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wolpert\u2019s\nworks<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanley\nWolpert is a historian who makes the difference<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Z.\nG. Muhammad<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our\ngeneration, perhaps rarely any of one might have read it or heard about it. In\nmy small collection of biographies, there is a purple coloured hardbound, with  pages\nturned to smoke yellow biography published eighty-eight years back by George Allen and Unwin Limited, 40\nMuseum Street, London. It has a foreword by father of Indian Nation Mohandas Karamchand\nGandhi.  The biography has been authored Mahadev\nDesai Gandhi\u2019s James Boswell and personal secretary. Inside the cover of the\nbook, there is a black and white picture of a man\nwith a   Van Dyck\nbeard,   dressed in black up-button long coat, a white\npyjama, black astrakhan cap and shawl slinging on his shoulders. The picture is\nof Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the man whose\nstory is told by Desai in Queen\u2019s English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In his eight lines\nforward to the biography praising Azad for his Islamic scholarship, Gandhi writes, \u201cHis nationalism is as robust as his\nfaith in Islam. That he is today the supreme head of the Indian National\nCongress has the deep meaning which\nshould not be lost of sight of by every   student\nof Indian politics.\u2019 The \u2018deep meaning\u2019 that Gandhi mention, in fact,\nsums up the political situation that obtained at that point of time in British India.  Maulana Azad was elected   as\nPresident of Indian National Congress in 1940- he stayed at this position for\nsix years. Those were the times when the communal divide in India had deepened,\nand the idea of a separate nation for the\nMuslims of the sub-continent had concretized in the shape of March 23, 1940\nresolution adopted by the Muslim League in the Minto Park Lahore. The election\nof Azad as president   at this historical\njuncture was projected by the Congress as an answer Jinnah\u2019s idea of separate\nnations for Muslims to the West. The League had accused Azad of allowing\nMuslims to be culturally dominated by the Hindu majority and Jinnah   described him as \u201cCongress Show Boy\u201d and\n\u201cMuslim Lord Haw-Haw\u201d.  \u2018Lord Haw-Haw was\na nickname of William Joyce an American broadcaster who broadcasted Nazi\npropaganda to Britain from Germany in 1940.\u2019 The phrases used by Jinnah against\nAzad had stuck to the name of President of the Indian National Congress. The\nobjective behind writing Azad\u2019s biography was to blunt the sway of Jinnah\u2019s\nphrases and introduce Azad and pluralistic image of the Congress to the West.\nIn his introduction to the biography Mahadev Desai writes, \u201cFor Western\nreaders, who do not know Maulana Sahib at all, the work should have obvious\nvalue\u2026 He has no traces of ill will against British people. It is, therefore,\nnecessary for Western readers, especially the British, to know something about\nhim\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\npurpose behind talking about this biography of archival value is to suggest\nthat the memoirs were also authored for\nachieving the political objectives. In Kashmir also we had our share of biographies\nwritten with political purposes. In 1933,\na year or less after the birth of the Muslim Conference, Pandit Prem Nath Bazaz\nwrote the biography of Sheikh Abdullah,\nwho had just begun his political inning and titled it as \u201cKashmir Ka Gandhi\u201d.<\/em> In comparing\nhim with Gandhi, Bazaz, of course, he had a bigger\ngame plan which unfolded almost six years after its publication. Nevertheless,\nit does not mean that all the biographies about the political leadership of the\nsub-continent were written for creating a halo of greatness around them or for\nscoring some points on a political rival\nor countering political discourses that ran parallel to each other. There have\nbeen biographers who candidly and honestly told the stories of the leaders that\nwrote the destiny of hundreds of millions.\nThe beauty of the top South-Asian\nleadership has been that they attracted internationally acclaimed historians to\nwrite their stories- one of them has been an American historian Stanly Wolpert.\nBecause of his work on the Sub-Continent over a period of time he became a\nhousehold name in political, academic and media circles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanly as\nhis friends called him died on February 19, 2019,\nat 91. In the din of the war cries that dominated the airwaves after the Lethipora blast the death of world-renowned\nhistorian of India and Pakistan was not reported in print or electronic media. It\nhad been Gandhi, who had metamorphosed this marine engineering into a\nhistorian. On, February 12, 1948, the twenty-one-year-old engineer disembarked at\nBombay port.  Thirteen days earlier\nGandhi had been assassinated, on this day   urn of his ashes was emptied into   holy\nwaters of Indian rivers and Bombay\u2019s Back Bay.\nHe had never before seen such emotionally charged   crowds\nwho out of devotion for the assassinated leader vied to touch the waters in\nwhich ashes were drowned. It was his first tryst with Indian History. \u201cThat\nearly encounter with India,\u201d wrote Stanley, \u201cChanged the course of my life.\u201d On\nhis return to his country, he bade adieu\nto his career in marine engineering for the study of Indian history and got\npassionately involved in it. In 1959, he earned his PhD and his dissertation, published as Tilak and Gokhale, was recognized\nas \u201cthe best book on the history of India originally published in the United\nStates.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout\nhis sixty years career as a professor of\nhistory at the University of California,\nLos Angeles, South Asia, India, in particular, remained subject of his writings,\nand he wrote about two dozen books on the\nregion. Besides, three books that reflect on the conflict between India and\nPakistan, one of his most significant\ncontribution has been biographies of Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah and Z. A. Bhutto. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Like a spider artfully weaving his web, Stanly\nhas spun the story of the father of Indian\nnation in his biography of him, \u2018Gandhi\u2019s Passion: The Life and Legacy of\nMahatma Gandhi. From the piles of Gandhi\u2019s writings, travel notes and reports\nof his meeting, archives he forthrightly maps\nhis non-violent resistance against the British. He has subtly brought out\ncertain aspects of Gandhi, which many of his biographers have chosen not to\nwrite about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stanly believes that \u2018the truth about great men\nneeds to be known and discussed. I don\u2019t see anything wrong with their having failings\u2019.\nHe wrote about Nehru what no biographer in India would venture to mention\nabout, so his biography of first Prime of India, \u201cNehru: A Tryst With Destiny,\npublished by Oxford University Press, New York, despite being described as best\nwas banned in India. \u2018Jinnah of Pakistan\u2019, by him is most quoted book about\nfounding the father of Pakistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of  his works,  \n\u2018India and Pakistan: Continued Conflict or Cooperation\u2019?, \u2018Roots of\nConfrontation in South Asia : Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the Superpowers\u2019\nand Shameful Flight, The Last Years of British Empire in India are essential works for the students of\ncontemporary Kashmir History. Last two chapter of Shameful Flight give genesis of the conflict. Nonetheless, it also provides an insight into\nNehru\u2019s mind, that he wanted to perpetuate Kashmir Dispute to drain resources\nof Pakistan to bankruptcy. The \u2018Roots of Confrontation in South Asia\u2019, besides giving an insight into the history of the relationship between neighbours is a critique\nof US policy towards the region. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To sum\nup, Stanly Wolpert is an essential\nhistorian for students of South Asia.  <\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PUNCHLINE<\/p>\n

Wolpert\u2019s
\nworks<\/p>\n

Stanley
\nWolpert is a historian who makes the difference<\/p>\n

By<\/p>\n

Z.
\nG. Muhammad<\/p>\n

In our
\ngeneration, perhaps rarely any of one might have read it or heard about it. In
\nmy small collection of biographies, there is a purple coloured hardbound, with  pages
\nturned to smoke yellow biography published eighty-eight years back by George Allen and Unwin Limited, 40
\nMuseum Street, London. It has a foreword by father of Indian Nation Mohandas Karamchand
\nGandhi.  The biography has been authored Mahadev
\nDesai Gandhi\u2019s James Boswell and personal secretary. Inside the cover of the
\nbook, there is a black and white picture of a man
\nwith a   Van Dyck
\nbeard,   dressed in black up-button long coat, a white
\npyjama, black astrakhan cap and shawl slinging on his shoulders. The picture is
\nof Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the man whose
\nstory is told by Desai in Queen\u2019s English. <\/p>\n

 In his eight lines
\nforward to the biography praising Azad for his Islamic scholarship, Gandhi writes, \u201cHis nationalism is as robust as his
\nfaith …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-take","category-kashmir-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4113"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4117,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4113\/revisions\/4117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peacewatchkashmir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}