Contents: Revisiting the Partition of India, 1947 (Issue 48)
Contents: Revisiting the Partition of India, 1947 (Issue 48)
Dec 28
Guest-Editorial: Past in Present: Partition of India
By Kamayani Kumar
Much of the exhibits on display are material in nature, objects that displaced people sought to carry with them, “like a trunk, a water pot or a lock, or they’re very emotional objects... so a wedding sari, a favourite dress, a father’s pocket watch,” says Ahluwalia (CEO and Curator, Partition Museum) and which they have held on to not because of their utilitarian value but because of the memories they are steeped in.
Poem: Home
By Somrita Ganguly
I hear the historians discuss history
I hear the linguists discuss etymology
I hear politicians talk about patriotism and nationalism
And wonder where my allegiance lies
বাংলাদেশ/مشرقی پاکستان/ हिंदुस्तान
Bharat/ India/ Hindustan.
Poem: Partition, 1947
By Varsha Sundriyal
Wives tearing their hair out.
Not sindoor but blood on heads.
Clutching their tattered clothes running for their lives.
Hiding children on their breast shielding them from the bullets.
Poem: Home as Home
By Sourav Debnath
Never have I thought home as home
Until I was dragged out from mine own.
In that unconscious, uncertain turn,
I left my home to burn.
Short Story: They showed partition
By Shivesh
We keep silent and hidden from the outside world for our safety, but it is getting harder every day. Toilets are clogged and some are overflowing, full bellies are a thing of past and so is sound sleep, I feel that my father’s return will improve things a little but I know it is unlikely.
Talking Partition with Children: A Herculean Task or Not?
By Anurima Chanda
Children’s literature has forever battled with these anxieties, mostly falling prey to becoming a representative of the author’s overpowering ideological system and seeping into the child’s psyche without being adequately filtered. This can have harmful ramifications in the way a child perceives the world, feeding into its system with unwarranted prejudices. Sabnani’s text is one of those rare instances which has been able to steer away from such ideological manipulations.
Children as victims of Partition, 1947
By Shrila Pokhriyal
Some men boarded the train to unload the bodies. Khushwant Singh was one of them. He was looking for some life amidst the dead when he found Jeet too afraid and traumatized. He picked her up, wiped her tears and said, “Don’t worry child, take the name of god, we too have sent a train loaded with dead on the side.” A child, who didn’t even know the meaning of religion, community, partition, saw her family and thousands being ripped away by these things.
Partition and Nationalism through the Perspective of the Sex-workers in Srijit Mukherji’s ‘Rajkahini’ (2015)
By Priti Mandal
The film Rajkahini projects the lives, experiences, reactions of the suppressed voices like sex-workers and other women in the context of the historical event of Partition and creation of two independent nations – India and Pakistan. Throughout the film we can see how the sex-workers and women feel detached from the mainstream of nation as they are treated as mere objects by the police, the representatives of the two nations, and by other men.
Partition’s Little Red Book: Revisiting Krishan Chander’s ‘Infamous’ Partition Stories, 70 Years On
By Raza Naeem
On the 71st anniversary of partition, reading Krishan Chander’s stories anew, one gets the feeling that the women were affected more adversely than the men in what has also variously been described as a ‘holocaust’ and ‘genocide’ in the horrific events of 1947; but it is also the women who are the saving grace of a humanity which will be born anew, however dark and hopeless the situation.
Beyond Partition
By Nishat Haider
The frame of childhood in Firaaq enables Das not only to re-witness the realm of the unofficial/non-mainstream historical memories and narrate the violent loss that might otherwise challenge representation, but also to explore, albeit innocuously, the ways in which family, religion and society intersect with postcolonial identities.
Partitioned Selves
By Rosy Sinha
In another video installation, “Mother India: Transactions in the Construction of Pain (2005)”, Malini returns to the theme of Partition and the recurrent instances of intercommunity violence. While the demolition of Babri Masjid was the catalyst for Remembering Toba Tek Singh, it is the horror of Godhra riots which compel Malini to return to this narrative. The image of the motherland is juxtaposed with the contradictory narrative of interethnic cleansings.
South-Asian Partition Studies: An ‘industry’ in the making?
By Debasri Basu
The subcontinent has, thus, in later decades offered an environment favourable to the bourgeoning of the subject through an assortment of academic and cultural exhibits. Their profusion, particularly in India, has generated appellations like ‘cottage industry’ to designate Partition Studies as a lucrative discipline. It is nowadays quite common to come across numerous seminars, conferences and symposia on this theme, and according to some the topic is fast approaching the stage of saturation.
Crosses and Knots: Subcontinental Partition Cinema
By Prithviraj Sinha
As my critical framework is built around the narrative of Partition, for me the agency of art vis-à-vis cinematic image and the written word is the one that has made me look at Partition as a tragedy as also the trickle effect of complexities affecting people across these border lines.
A leaf from Kashmir
By Farhana Fayaz
While the independent countries of India and Pakistan are constantly at loggerheads – be it through border skirmishes or on the cricket field – the state of Jammu and Kashmir stands in a horrific limbo. This article aims to examine the woes of Kashmiris who have had to live, struggle, suffer and die amidst tension throughout the valley. Over the decades, the perception of Indian army for the Kashmiris has completely changed, and for the worse.
Book Review: Salman Rashid’s ‘Of home, loss, and healing’
By Anubhav Pradhan
Rashid’s memoir is valuable precisely because it talks to both sides of this unfortunate border. In our uncertain times of abuse and aggression, his words are a potent reminder of our shared history, of what many of us lost when India and Pakistan were born, and how the dark shadow of that tragedy continues to cloud our vision of the future. It is no mean feat that the power of his narrative emerges from its sheer simplicity, language which just states things as they were and are.
