The Contemporary Challenges of the Partition of the Indian Sub-Continent in 1947

On the 16th of June 2023, Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICwS), School of Advanced Study, University of London, hosted a significant event on the Partition of India (1947). This is seminal in the sense that the academics speaking at the event have contributed to a reassessment of the historic phenomenon from contemporary perspective. This was by no means an attempt to water down the cataclysmic effects of the occurrence. On the contrary, the speakers highlighted the social, economic, and psychological challenges of Partition as contemporary issues, particularly as the legacies of the historically unprecedented event.

In the daylong symposium, the speakers focused on moving beyond the religious and ethnic nationalism in terms of which the Partition has been mostly discussed for the last 76 years. Our first keynote speaker, Professor Sarah Ansari (Royal Holloway, University of London), set the tone for the day by defining Partition as a ‘Long Process,’ since the historians have risen above viewing the event as a single devastating phenomenon. Far from it, the dislocation and culture shock it generated had far-reaching knock-on effects. Citing the examples of Western Uttar Pradesh and Delhi in India, Quetta and Sind in Pakistan, and even the erstwhile East Pakistan (Bangladesh from 1971), Ansari suggests that the tracks left by the Partition refugees are those of homelessness, linguistic and cultural alienations, undecidable citizenship, and living in a constant drift, which they are still confronting as concrete realities. Therefore, it is not simply Bengal and Punjab that have dominated the understanding of Partition, since they formed the major frontiers of its fall-out, the lives of countless people in today’s South Asia are profoundly affected by its short and longer-term impacts, which suggests the gigantic human costs triggered by its politics. Dr Haimanti Roy (University of Dayton) elaborates on the uncertainty of citizenship for uprooted Indians living in places like historic Burma, Ceylon, and Malay, because Partition made them unidentifiable through documentation. Thus, groups of displaced, migrants, border residents, and overseas Indians have not only been living in a state of flux, but also discovered them as non-citizens everywhere.

Dr Ilyas Chattha (Lahore University of Management Sciences) and Dr Yaqoob Khan Bangash (Harvard University) shed light on different facets of non-belonging due to Partition. Chattha’s presentation introduced us to a tribal community called, ‘Meo,’ who were displaced from princely states of East Punjab, settled in the rural areas around the international Punjab border, and never became part of the local people due to Mewati culture’s Hindu-like rituals. Bangash portrayed how the Christians in Pakistan, one of the smallest communities, struggled against their unrelatability in the nationalist narrative of Pakistan. Christian leader Dewan Bahadur SP Singha (1893-1948), for example, thought that it was pragmatic for 85% of the Christians of British India to be in Pakistan, and yet had to relinquish his position as the Speaker of the Punjab Assembly due to his religion. Dr James Chiriyankandath (Institute of Commonwealth Studies) demystified the sub-continental penchant for otherization through his elucidation of Bangladesh’s unique experience of being partitioned in 1905, 1947 and 1971, because the people of the land could not decide whether they aligned with the prevalent cultural or religious aspirations. Professor Golam Rabbani (Jahangirnagar University), though, is of the opinion that geographers would not have approved of Partition. Since they were not at the helm, implausible structures were created in 1947, which have been disrupting the life and livelihood of No Man’s Land population occupying the Indo-Bangladesh border.

Dr Antara Datta (Royal Holloway, University of London) argued that the 1971 refugee crisis in East Pakistan stretches back to 1947, because colonial government’s hierarchization of refugees is adopted by postcolonial states. This is why we have to broaden our historical vision to interpret the confounding Partition. The larger framework within which she placed Partition is that of the refugee crisis of World War II, which shows how refugees become a trope through which the modern armed conflicts can be investigated. Dr Amrita Ghosh (University of Central Florida) presented a trope of aesthetic productions of post-memory for comprehending the incomprehensible Partition. She depicted the current generation’s cross-border alliance through advertisement, AI generated photography series, and viral videos to create a ‘convivial resistance’ that questions the hegemonic understanding of Partition. Dr Amit Baishya (University of Oklahoma) presented a post-humanist trope by exemplifying Asamese literature’s representation of ecology, which offers a form of hope that is mostly absent in Partition narratives.

Our last speaker, Professor Anjali Gera Roy (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur), offered hope through exemplifying how émigrés moving to Lucknow from Punjab, or, the movement of Sindhis to the South (Maharashtra, for example) depended on their merchantry, which overturned the stereotypes of refugees as labourers and morally lacking people. Our second keynote speaker, Professor Amritjit Singh (Ohio University), spoke about his personal experience of Partition, which threw his family into a ghetto, but also made him believe in the triumphant spirit of humanity that resists the manipulation of memories like this for political purposes. This leads him to suggest that the healing rituals for Partition have not been done yet, which could be achieved through a South Africa-like Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the Indian sub-continent as well. As an organizer of the event, then, I was very pleased that we were able to propel the study of Partition in new and stimulating directions.

Dr Rehnuma Sazzad is a Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies and Associate Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and an Associate Tutor at the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia.