corey porter!

5.1.08

On Second Chances,

Or This Time, I’ll Remember to Include a Title

On the blacktop, when teams fail to come to an agreement on whether or not a ball is fair, a baserunner is safe, or a catch is made, to keep the argument from escalating and maintain the integrity of the game, schoolchildren apply a do-over. Each side concedes its claim and the play begins anew. While I’m obviously not above comparing this second posting to a game of kickball, I’m wary to call it a straight-up do-over. Instead, consider this a companion—or better, a prequel—which strives to link together a number of incidents of forced migration and the texts concerning them. What I’m now looking for in the Faragher book, A Great and Noble Scheme, is a sense or representation of Acadian culture (a meaningful mash-up of colonizers and colonized) and its eventual loss at the hands of British and American interests and how a similar integrated communitie (Mano Majra, in Train to Pakistan) is, likewise, torn asunder.
            It might be prudent to begin with the beginning: l’Acadie, the small French-Canadian fishing and trade post community which blossomed into a culturally-diverse and fiercely independent population. Two prominent and influential Acadians, Charles Biencourt and Charles de La Tour, first arrived in l’Acadie as boys. Growing up among the native Mikmaq, they boys became attuned to the Mikmaq’s culture. Faragher assumes that “they [even]…began to think and feel Mikmaw” (36). The Charles’ engagés (employees) were well-versed in Mikmaq culture; they became familiar with Mikmaq customs sure, but more importantly, they adopted Mikmaq life: knowing how to “use birchbark canoes and snowshoes, to snare moose in early winter and spear salmon at nightfall by the lure of burning pitch pine, to dress in moccasins,” etc. (36). Furthermore, the lack of French women in l’Acadie furthered the assimilation to native culture by pairing lonely French trappers with accommodating Mikmaq women, who didn’t consider illegitimate children “stigma[s],” but rather as measures of fertility (Faragher 37). Even the church records, dotted with “interethnic unions,” are testament to the unity of the Acadian and Mikmaq communities (Faragher 46). This mutual respect and integration was vital to establishing such a unique society. Even after the revocation of a royal charter granting a fur monopoly to Acadian founder, Sieur de Monts, and the subsequent abandonment of the settlement, the Mikmaq preserved and maintained what the French had built (for they returned three short years later).

For years, l’Acadie continued on its own under no foreign influence. The Acadian spirit reflects this isolationist principle—not to say that Acadians were unaccommodating; on the contrary, they adapted quite extraordinarily to new peoples and situations—the spirit which led the Acadians to reject any number of oaths of loyalty the British would have them take. Acadians were concerned that any oath of loyalty might pit them against their neighbors, against the Mikmaq, against one another. At the onset of the French Indian War, the French pushed a treaty with Mikmaq leaders, prompting British officials to press the Acadians to swear loyalty (and presumably, their fertile farmlands) to the British crown. With the possibility (probability?) of taking up arms against their neighbors, the Acadians held out. Eventually, the British (with help from the colonies) forcibly removed the Acadians from l’Acadie, sending a few refugees to France, and splitting the majority up amongst the colonies and islands in the Caribbean.

The Great Upheaval is rooted more in others’ financial gain than it is conspirators’ plot. It’s ironic then, that the British weren’t able to maintain the Acadian’s intricate reclamation/irrigation system of dikes and levies. [An aside: A likely correlation may be found in China, where the construction of Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River is displacing (an Archimedical pun) over a million people from their homes for others’ economic gain.] What I think is most important to take from this bit of history (and to relate it to Train to Pakistan), is the destruction of a unique, integrated community by an outside force with little to no understanding of the dynamic it is systematically destroying. The British, in accordance to their treaty with India, left the fledgling nation to rule itself at the close of the Second World War. As the British left, however, they split the country in twain. The newly-Muslim Pakistan and newly-Hindu India found themselves in the middle of a massive population exchange, and rational thinking succumbed to unchecked fear and aggression. Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan examines the fictional, multi-cultural village of Mano Majra, where Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus coexist peacefully until the partition.

Alone amid the confusion of the partition, this “oasis of peace” exists because of its ignorance of the politics surrounding it (2).  “‘We live in this little village and know nothing,’” claims the lambardar when he asks the city-dweller, Iqbal, what news he brings (47). Iqbal relates to the villagers stories both of despair and hope, division and unity. He arrives amid a village controversy, which has sent a young Sikh, Jugga, to the clink on suspicion of murder. Shortly thereafter, Iqbal joins Jugga, who pontificates on the division of power in India: “‘The police are the kings of the country…[i]f they want to keep me in, the will trump up a case...’” (106). Truly, though, this power is what the English left behind, for as the Muslim says to Iqbal earlier, “‘We were slaves of the English, now we will be slaves of the educated Indians—or the Pakistanis’” (48). After its initial encounter with Iqbal, the village of Mano Majra is quick to realize drastic changes are soon coming. The village turns on itself: “Quite suddenly every Sikh in Mano Majra became a stranger with an evil intent” (120). A plan is soon formulated to remove the Muslims to Pakistan for their own good. The Muslims are cast out of their own village because of what was set into motion by the actions of the colonizing British, and quite literally, on the very rails they brought into India.

Looking at Singh’s language alone, it’s easy enough to draw a comparison between l’Acadie and Mano Majra:

Slowly the Muslims began to come out of their homes, driving their cattle and the bullock carts loaded with charpoys, rolls of bedding, tin trunks, kerosene oil tins, earthen pitchers and brass utensils (133).

There was complete confusion. People ran hither and thither shouting at the tops of their voices (136).

There was no time to make arrangements. There was no time even to say good-by (136).

These read as though the partition of India, too, could be called the Great Upheaval, though I suspect nearly all forced migrations may resemble these two examples. What I find most interesting is the similarity of the two communities’ situations (which speaks volumes about the reach and consistency of the British Empire, able to decimate populations separated by two centuries and half the globe) and their abilities to reassemble after their forced migrations. Years after the Great Upheaval, remnants of l’Acadie eventually worked their way towards then-Spanish-controlled Louisiana, where the resettled and began to reestablish a semblance of their culture (the term Cajun is most likely a variation of the word Acadian). Similarly, (though the partition is British edict), the Muslims of Mano Majra relocate en masse to Pakistan, where they begin their do-over, sans kickball.

Works Cited 

“Acadia.” Wikipedia. Online. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadia> 22 Mar. 2008. 

 Faragher, John Mack. A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland. New York: Norton & Company, 2005. 

L’ACADIE. Webmaster Geneviève Lanteigne. Historical Overview. Online. <http://www.acadievacances.com/en/default.asp?id=15> 22 Mar. 2008. 

Singh, Khushwant. Train to Pakistan. New York: Grove Press, 1956.