Author: Suranjana Choudhury Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1527557103 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 157
Book Description
This book engages with diverse modes of representations of Partition violence and its consequences in a selection of Partition narratives from Bengal. Violence constitutes one of the most obvious images of this traumatic period in Indian history. Its dynamics of representation—the nature of violence, its impact on society and the individual, the forms of its socio cultural and political implanting—invariably highlight the aesthetic sensibility of its writers. The book questions if it is possible to qualify violence with all its complexities, and examines how these narratives offer a critique of historical and political engagements with violence. The experiences of suffering, pain, trauma, affliction, torture, fear and betrayal are also constituted within the structural analysis of violence.
Author: Bashabi Fraser Publisher: Anthem Press ISBN: 184331357X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 640
Book Description
Through oral histories, interviews and fictional retellings, 'Bengal Partition Stories' unearths and articulates the collective memories of a people traumatised by the brutal division of their homeland.
Author: Debjani Sengupta Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1316673871 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
This study looks at the rich literature that has been spawned through the historical imagination of Bengali-speaking writers in West Bengal and Bangladesh through issues of homelessness, migration and exile to see how the Partition of Bengal in 1947 has thrown a long shadow over memories and cultural practices. Through a rich trove of literary and other materials, the book lays bare how the Partition has been remembered or how it has been forgotten. For the first time, hitherto untranslated archival materials and texts in Bangla have been put together to assess the impact of 1947 on the cultural memory of Bangla-speaking peoples and communities. This study contends that there is not one but many smaller partitions that women and men suffered, each with its own textures of pain, guilt and affirmation.
Author: Paulomi Chakraborty Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199095396 Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 399
Book Description
The Refugee Woman examines the Partition of 1947 by engaging with the cultural imagination of the ‘refugee woman’ in West Bengal, particularly in three significant texts of the Partition of Bengal—Ritwik Ghatak’s film Meghe Dhaka Tara; and two novels, Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Epar Ganga, Opar Ganga and Sabitri Roy’s Swaralipi. It shows that the figure of the refugee woman, animated by the history of the political left and refugee movements, and shaped by powerful cultural narratives, can contest and reconstitute the very political imagination of ‘woman’ that emerged through the long history of dominant cultural nationalisms. The reading it offers elucidates some of the complexities of nationalist, communal, and communist gender-politics of a key period in post-independence Bengal.
Author: Yasmin Khan Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300233647 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 285
Book Description
A reappraisal of the tumultuous Partition and how it ignited long-standing animosities between India and Pakistan This new edition of Yasmin Khan’s reappraisal of the tumultuous India-Pakistan Partition features an introduction reflecting on the latest research and on ways in which commemoration of the Partition has changed, and considers the Partition in light of the current refugee crisis. Reviews of the first edition: “A riveting book on this terrible story.”—Economist “Unsparing. . . . Provocative and painful.”—Times (London) “Many histories of Partition focus solely on the elite policy makers. Yasmin Khan’s empathetic account gives a great insight into the hopes, dreams, and fears of the millions affected by it.”—Owen Bennett Jones, BBC
Author: Barney White-Spunner Publisher: ISBN: 9781471148033 Category : Languages : en Pages : 432
Book Description
The International Bestseller 'Barney White-Spunner's book stands out for its judicious and unsparing look at events from a British perspective.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times Review 'This book is at its most powerful in its month-by-month narrative of how Partition tore apart northern and eastern India, with the new state of Pakistan carved out of communities who had lived together for the past millennium.' Zareer Masani BBC History Magazine 'A highly readable account . . .' Times Literary Review Between January and August 1947 the conflicting political, religious and social tensions in India culminated in independence from Britain and the creation of Pakistan. Those months saw the end of ninety years of the British Raj, and the effective power of the Maharajahs, as the Congress Party established itself commanding a democratic government in Delhi. They also witnessed the rushed creation of Pakistan as a country in two halves whose capitals were two thousand kilometers apart. From September to December 1947 the euphoria surrounding the realization of the dream of independence dissipated into shame and incrimination; nearly 1 million people died and countless more lost their homes and their livelihoods as partition was realized. The events of those months would dictate the history of South Asia for the next seventy years, leading to three wars, countless acts of terrorism, polarization around the Cold War powers and to two nations with millions living in poverty spending disproportionate amounts on their military. The roots of much of the violence in the region today, and worldwide, are in the decisions taken that year. Not only were those decisions controversial but the people who made them were themselves to become some of the most enduring characters of the twentieth century. Gandhi and Nehru enjoyed almost saint like status in India, and still do, whilst Jinnah is lionized in Pakistan. The British cast, from Churchill to Attlee and Mountbatten, find their contribution praised and damned in equal measure. Yet it is not only the national players whose stories fascinate. Many of those ordinary people who witnessed the events of that year are still alive. Although most were, predictably, only children, there are still some in their late eighties and nineties who have a clear recollection of the excitement and the horror. Illustrating the story of 1947 with their experiences and what independence and partition meant to the farmers of the Punjab, those living in Lahore and Calcutta, or what it felt like to be a soldier in a divided and largely passive army, makes the story real. Partition will bring to life this terrible era for the Indian Sub Continent.
Author: Debali Mookerjea-Leonard Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317293886 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 404
Book Description
Partition occurring simultaneously with British decolonization of the Indian subcontinent led to the formation of independent India and Pakistan. While the political and communal aspects of the Partition have received some attention, its enormous personal and psychological costs have been mostly glossed over, particularly when it comes to the splitting of Bengal. The memory of this historical ordeal has been preserved in literary archives, and these archives are still being excavated. This book examines neglected narratives of the Partition of India in 1947 to study the traces left by this foundational trauma on the national- and regional-cultural imaginaries in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. To arrive at a more complex understanding of how Partition experiences of violence, migration, and displacement shaped postcolonial societies and subjectivities in South Asia, the author analyses, through novels and short stories, multiple cartographies of disorientation and anxiety in the post-Partition period. The book illuminates how contingencies of political geography cut across personal and collective histories, and how these intersections are variously marked and mediated by literature. Examining works composed in Bengali and other South Asian languages, this book seeks to broaden and complicate existing conceptions of what constitutes the Partition literary archive. A valuable addition to the growing field of Partition studies, this book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian history, gender studies, and literature.
Author: Rini Bhattacharya Mehta Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317669932 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
This book presents an examination of fictional representations, in books and films, of the 1947 Partition that led to the creation of the sovereign nation-states of India and Pakistan. While the process of representing the Partition experience through words and images began in the late 1940s, it is only in the last few decades that literary critics and film scholars have begun to analyse the work. The emerging critical scholarship on the Partition and its aftermath has deepened our understanding of the relationship between historical trauma, collective memory, and cultural processes, and this book provides critical readings of literary and cinematic texts on the impact of the Partition both in the Punjab and in Bengal. The collection assembles studies on Anglophone writings with those on the largely unexplored vernacular works, and those which have rarely found a place in discussions on the Partition. It looks at representations of women’s experiences of gendered violence in the Partition riots, and how literary texts have filled in the lack of the ‘human dimension’ in Partition histories. The book goes on to highlight how the memory of the Partition is preserved, and how the creative arts’ relation to public memory and its place within the public sphere has changed through time. Collectively, the essays present a nuanced understanding of how the experience of violence, displacement, and trauma shaped postcolonial societies and subjectivities in the Indian subcontinent. Mapping the diverse topographies of Partition-related uncertainties and covering both well-known and lesser-known texts on the Partition, this book will be a useful contribution to studies of South Asian History, Asian Literature and Asian Film.
Author: Amritjit Singh Publisher: Lexington Books ISBN: 1498531059 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
Revisiting India’s Partition: New Essays on Memory, Culture, and Politics brings together scholars from across the globe to provide diverse perspectives on the continuing impact of the 1947 division of India on the eve of independence from the British Empire. The Partition caused a million deaths and displaced well over 10 million people. The trauma of brutal violence and displacement still haunts the survivors as well as their children and grandchildren. Nearly 70 years after this cataclysmic event, Revisiting India’s Partition explores the impact of the “Long Partition,” a concept developed by Vazira Zamindar to underscore the ongoing effects of the 1947 Partition upon all South Asian nations. In our collection, we extend and expand Zamindar’s notion of the Long Partition to examine the cultural, political, economic, and psychological impact the Partition continues to have on communities throughout the South Asian diaspora. The nineteen interdisciplinary essays in this book provide a multi-vocal, multi-focal, transnational commentary on the Partition in relation to motifs, communities, and regions in South Asia that have received scant attention in previous scholarship. In their individual essays, contributors offer new engagements on South Asia in relation to several topics, including decolonization and post-colony, economic development and nation-building, cross-border skirmishes and terrorism, and nationalism. This book is dedicated to covering areas beyond Punjab and Bengal and includes analyses of how Sindh and Kashmir, Hyderabad, and more broadly South India, the Northeast, and Burma call for special attention in coming to terms with memory, culture and politics surrounding the Partition.
Author: Frank Stewart Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 0824832272 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
For nearly a century, Britain ruled the South Asian subcontinent from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. After World War II,however, the vast Indian colony became ungovernable from London and the British hastily departed, leaving behind conditions that led to communal rioting and unfathomable violence. In the midnight hours of August 14, 1947, as hastily drawn borders carved the region into the independent nations of Pakistan and India, more than a million people fled across the lines of Partition in both directions. In 1971, when civil war transformed East Pakistan into the independent nation of Bangladesh, communal violence erupted again. The horrors of Partition did not end with the migrations and resettlements of 1947 and 1971, however.On several occasions, open warfare has broken out between Pakistan and India.Kashmir’s borders remain in dispute, and across the region, rioting continues to erupt. The stories in Crossing Over depict the responses and emotions of ordinary people caught in the tragedy of Partition, when tolerance, respect, and compassion broke down. Written by some of the region’s finest authors—in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and English—these works make us aware of the possible responses to ethnic, religious, and national divisiveness. Reading the literature of Partition is bound to arouse comparisons with situations in other parts of the world,where sectarian violence seems unstoppable and solutions intractable. Where will we find the wisdom to create a new future? Crossing Over suggests some answers—and the consequences if we fail. Authors include Abul Bashar, Samaresh Basu, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Urvashi Butalia,Gulzar, Rashid Haider, Intizar Husain,Kamleshwar, Saadat Hasan Manto, Khadija Mastur, Joginder Paul, Mohan Rakesh, Prafulla Roy, and Bhisham Sahni. Period photographs from a Karachi family album illustrate the effects of Partition on a Goan Catholic community.
Author: Suranjana Choudhury
Author: Bashabi Fraser
Author: Debjani Sengupta
Author: Paulomi Chakraborty
Author: Yasmin Khan
Author: Barney White-Spunner
Author: Debali Mookerjea-Leonard
Author: Rini Bhattacharya Mehta
Author: Amritjit Singh
Author: Frank Stewart