Book Review: Broken Threads: My Family from Empire to Independence, by Mishal Husain

 

Well-known UK-based journalist Mishal Husain, formerly with the BBC and now with  Bloomberg, has written a touching personal memoir that traces the story of her great-grandparents and grandparents who migrated from parts of British India that are now in independent India, to newly created Pakistan. Broken Threads is written in simple, but elegant English, contains scores of minor stories, plots, incidents and anecdotes and is filled with beauty, joy, loss and pain. Husain, the raconteur, is always neutral and even when she narrates a particularly harrowing incident, she gives both points of view and moves on, without dwelling on it. Broken Threads has been on my reading list ever since it was released almost two years ago, but it is only now that I have managed to read it.

Husain’s paternal grandmother Mary, an Anglo-Indian from the Madras Presidency fascinated me the most. Mary’s father Francis Quinn was an Irishman who was born in India and spent his entire life in India. A widower, Francis had two teenage sons (Bobby and Kitty) when he met a teenage girl named Mariamma, who was the same age as his sons. After he had two daughters with Mariamma, one of whom was Husain’s grandmother Mary, a local Irish priest shamed Francis Quinn into marrying Mariamma instead of continuing to live with her in sin. Francis had a good job – he was a tax and licensing inspector – and he had four more children with Mariamma, before he died in a freak accident in his house.

I am assuming the name Mariamma is the name for girls common in Tamil Nadu, derived from Mariamman, the popular Tamil deity. However, Francis seems to have met Mariamma (pronounced Maariamma) at a place by the sea called Anakapalle, which is not far from Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. To the best of my knowledge, Mariamma is a Tamil name and not a Telugu name, but I could be wrong. Husain tells us that Mariamma’s native language was Telugu, but she also says that for Francis Quinn, home was near Madras and Francis’s teenage sons ‘often went to the beach where they met and became friends with Mariamma, a Hindu girl of about their age’.

FYI and apologies for further digression: In Kerala, Mariamma (pronounced Mariamma) is a common name for Christian women and is derived from Mary (Mary + Amma = Mariamma).  No, I don’t think Husain’s great-grandmother Mariamma was a Malayalee Christian girl.

Mariamma’s daughter Mary Quinn (Husain’s paternal grandmother) completed her school education thanks to the support and benevolence of a bunch of Catholic nuns. After finishing school, the nuns sent Mary to a special hospital in Lahore to train to be a nurse.  One of the convent girls had already gone to Lahore and the nuns were comfortable with the idea of Mary following suit. I could easily picture a flock of conservative nuns sitting across a table and discussing the risks and rewards of sending Mary from Anakapalle to Lahore for her nursing studies, though Husain does not take any extra effort to paint this picture.

At Lahore, Mary meets a kindly medical student named Mumtaz, who had made his way there from Multan in Southern Punjab. Just like Mary, Mumtaz is also from a traditional background, a small-town boy struggling in the big, bad, city of Lahore. Mumtaz’s family were Sunni Muslims, but not the hyper-fanatic types. Husain tells us that the family had many links to Multanis from the Shia sect of Islam and when Shia religious processions came past the house, they would stand in the doorway and offer water. Sweets were exchanged with Hindu and Sikh neighbours for Eid, Diwali and Dussehra.

Needless to say, Mumtaz and Mary fall in love and get married, despite opposition from Mumtaz’s Muslim parents who are traditional folk and did not like the idea of their eldest son marrying outside the community.  Husain tells us that this opposition from Mumtaz’s family continued even after Mumtaz and Mary got married and had children. I do not wish to divulge the exact reactions of Mumtaz’s family in this regard, which I found to be extreme, despite Husain’s matter-of-fact tone in describing it. Please do read this excellent book to find out more.

Husain’s maternal grandparents Shahid and Tahirah grew up in what was then United Provinces, later Uttar Pradesh. Shahid grew up in Lucknow and later went to college in Aligarh. Shahid’s parents were Syeds who traced their origin to the Prophet and had migrated from Arabia to central Asia in the 13^th century, then to Afghanistan and finally to India in the beginning of the 19^th century, where they built on their reputation as men of learning in the Mughal court. After the Mughal power started to fade, they moved to Lucknow and earned a living as writers, religious scholars and poets. Shahid’s mother Feroze’s ancestors had fought for the British in the First Anglo-Afghan war and then in the 1857 uprising, after which they were rewarded with a gift of land outside Lucknow. Tahirah went to the Lady Hardinge Medical College in Delhi.

Though Husain’s maternal grandparents and paternal grandparents are from different parts of British India, they have so much in common, in terms of values, outlook and willingness to learn and adapt. For example, Husain tells us that her maternal grandmother Tahirah’s parents were of Kashmiri origin and they settled in two different parts of Punjab. Tahirah’s grandfather was a tailor, and he managed to get a contract to supply uniforms to the Raj. With that money, he managed to educate his children. Tahirah’s father Ataullah became a doctor and did his Master’s in Germany. When Tahirah’s maternal grandmother Ameernissa was fourteen, her father died and her mother was cut-off from his property. So, Ameernissa’s mother would go to the market in Lahore, wearing purdah, buy baskets of whole wheat and unhusked rice, hand process them at home and sell them back into the market, which allowed the younger children to stay in school.  Ameernissa’s mother and Mariamma seem to be cut from the same cloth!

Husain’s maternal grandfather Shahid manages to join the British Indian army as a Kings Commissioned Officer. Husain’s paternal grandfather Mumtaz too joins the British Indian army and worked as an army doctor at various places in British India, before being attached to the Royal Airforce. Both men join the armed forces because their financial circumstances aren’t too good and they get paid well as army officers. Both men see some action during the Second World War and survive. Husain’s descriptions of her grandfathers’ wartime experiences are exceptionally good. Shahid saw action in Rangoon and in other parts of Burma. He developed an eye problem, and his vision was seriously impaired, which caused him to be evacuated by air to Calcutta. I am not going to divulge more here.  Please buy a copy of Broken Threads to find out for yourself.

The best thing about Broken Threads is how Husain unveils the character of each of her grandparents, anecdote by anecdote. One gets the feeling that Husain is learning more about her family as she tells us her family’s story. For example, Husain remembers a time when she was living in the UAE with her parents and her paternal grandparents Mumtaz and Mary were in Saudi Arabia (because Mumtaz was working for the WHO). Whenever her grandparents went to visit them in the UAE, Mary would use the opportunity to go to mass since the UAE had churches and Saudi Arabia didn’t.

Interspersed with her family history are snippets of Indian history and the stories from India’s freedom struggle. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan is someone who Husain has very high regard for, and rightly so. We are told that Sir Syed witnessed the violence of 1857 first-hand. When the rebellion began, he saved the lives of a group of Europeans at Bijnor who were besieged by the mutineers. At the same time, his own family was in besieged Delhi. An uncle was killed by the East India Company’s troops, and his own mother was close to death. Nevertheless, he led a campaign to push the Muslim community in British India to educate themselves, instead of pining for what they had lost. Towards this end, he managed to set up a college in Aligarh, the place where Husain’s maternal grandparents Shahid and Tahirah grew up.

Husain’s narration becomes much more vivid and intense as she describes the run-up to India’s independence.  Her paternal grandfather spent most of the war in Quetta, except for a posting in Calcutta which made him a witness to the Bengal famine. Mishal quotes Ian Stephens, editor of the Statesman, in order to describe the Bengal famine, not just explain it through her grandfather. After the war, Shahid was appointed as Auchinleck’s private secretary, which gave him a ring-side view of history being made.

Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck had spent much of his childhood in India and knew India very well. Under Auchinleck, the British army stopped Rommel at El Alamein in 1942. Churchill sacked him nevertheless, since he didn’t agree with Auchinleck’s suggestions for winning the war and appointed Montgomery who benefitted immensely from Auchinleck’s planning. Posted in India, Auchinleck supported General Slim’s fight in Burma.

Husain is a big fan of Auchinleck, but does not hesitate to criticise him when required. For example, she says that ‘when the first INA trial took place in the autumn, the flaws in the system Auchinleck had devised were immediately apparent’.  Husain’s description of why Auchinleck decided to hold trials for INA soldiers in the Red Fort is one of the various reasons you should read Broken Threads.  How and why, both sets of Husain’s grandparents, including Mary, opted for Pakistan over India, is yet another.

Husain is no fan of Lord Mountbatten and quotes Shahid to state that "his whole image and career has been built up because he is a member of the Royal Family."  Soon after Mountbatten's arrival in Delhi, he asked Auchinleck to sack Shahid, as he did not believe a Muslim should be serving as Auchinleck’s Private Secretary. Mountbatten’s own Private Secretaries were both British, but he did have a Hindu, the senior civil servant V. P. Menon, as his constitutional and political adviser. Menon seems not to have been regarded as a problem in the way Shahid was. Nothing came of the row because Auchinleck put his foot down and Mountbatten backed off.

Mountbatten was a man in a hurry, one who took important decisions on the basis of how it would affect British prestige. For example, Mountbatten (aka "Pretty Dickie") decided that Indian troops should be used when civil authorities asked for Army support, though Auchinleck advised him that Indian soldiers being repeatedly exposed to scenes which might well involve the targeting of their own community would make them partisan. India's police forces had already become partisan. When Abul Kalam Azad begged Mountbatten to exercise patience and delay partition saying that creating Pakistan in the then current atmosphere could lead to yet more bloodshed, Mountbatten casually assured him that once partition was accepted in principle, he would issue orders to see that there were no communal disturbances anywhere in the country. Mountbatten did not consult Auchinleck on the plan that was sent to London that May to maintain law and order. Mountbatten had no confidence in Auchinleck and did his level best to keep him in the dark.

Was Mountbatten biased in favour of India? If yes, how did that impact the partition and Kashmir’s accession to India? Broken Threads has a number of anecdotes that would help one make up one’s mind on these important points.

Husain underplays the influence and power Shahid had at his disposal when working as Auchinleck’s Personal Secretary, but she doesn’t fully succeed. For example, we are casually told that when Shahid’s politically active sister Jamila, who had been a committed leftist and Communist, wanted to know more about Jinnah, Shahid ‘agreed to take her to see Jinnah, and they went together to his large house on Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi.’  It’s a private meeting and Jamila’s tone isn’t too polite, but Jinnah addressed all her points, though it took him a very long time. When Shahid and Jamila took their leave, Jamila kissed Jinnah’s hand and said she had been converted to his way of thinking. The Quaid smiled at him. ‘Look, my boy, I have not wasted my time,’ he said. ‘I have gained a worker.’

How did Husain’s grandparents fare in Pakistan? On the whole, they did well but didn’t really get along with the army men who took over from Pakistan’s elected representatives. Husain tells us that Shahid told Ayub Khan that Martial law needed to end as soon as possible and that if he sought political power, he should set a date for elections, resign from the Army and run for office. Shahid felt that his views were not acceptable to Ayub Khan.

For me, the best (or the saddest) take away from Broken Threads is how relatable Husain’s parents, grandparents and the rest of her family are, and how tragic it is that a sub-continent populated with such good folks got partitioned with so much bloodshed. 

Highly recommended!

Broken Threads is available in India on Amazon.