Partition Literature and Cinema

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Partition Literature

Implementing Partition: Proceedings of the Punjab Partition Committee, July–August, 1947

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
YAQOOB KHAN BANGASH
Keyword(s):  
Large Degree ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Middle Tier ◽  
Partition Literature ◽  
New Material ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Human Side

Abstract This article focuses on the workings of the Punjab Partition Committee in the crucial months of July and August 1947. In bringing new material to the historiography of partition, this article challenges the widely held assumption that the Punjab Partition Committee did not deliver. It argues that one must assess and value the large degree of cooperation and agreement between Punjab political leaders on the Committee, despite the charged political and communal atmosphere of the summer of 1947. Furthermore, it argues that the Committee created a limited sense of order during the disarray that prevailed in the run-up to the Transfer of Power. This order was brought about by the cooperation and work of the ‘middle tier’—the bureaucrats and other officials who are often missing from partition literature. The article shows the hard, bureaucratic—yet human—side of partition during these deliberations: at the same time as these people were carrying out partition, they were also suffering its effects. Finally, the Committee's negotiations show how the soon-to-be-established provinces and dominions were setting up their respective states through the procurement of assets and resources.

Partition Literature: A Study of Intiār Ḥusain

1980 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Umar Memon
Keyword(s):  
Great Expectation ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
Great Hope ◽  
Partition Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Direct Outcome ◽  
Partition Of India

In an interview given in July 1974, Intiz̤ār Ḥusain, one of the most perceptive creative writers of Pakistan, had this to say about the experience of migration that was the direct outcome of the Partition of India in 1947:A decade ago when I was talking about the experience of migration and the articles I wrote concerning it, I was in a state of great hope and optimism. It was then my feeling that in the process of the Partition we had sudenly, almost by accident, regained a lost, great experience—namely, the experience of migration, hijrat, which has a place all its own in the history of the Muslims—and that it will give us a lot. But today, after our political ups and downs, I find myself in a different mood. Now I feel that sometimes a great experience comes to be lost to a nation; often nations forget their history. I do not mean that a nation does, or has to, keep its history alive in its memory in every period. There also comes a time when a nation completely forgets its past. So, that experience, I mean the experience of migration, is unfortunately lost to us and on us. And the great expectation that we had of making something out of it at a creative level and of exploiting it in developing a new consciousness and sensibility—that bright expectation has now faded and gone.

Adaptation or Historical Anomaly?: Partition Narratives and Their Visual Counterparts

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (I) ◽  
pp. 12-32
Author(s):  
Ayesha Akram
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
Partition Literature ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Subjective Meanings ◽  
Alternative Archives

This research accentuates the presence of multi-layered histories within partition literature and its adaptations as a historiographic mise en abyme— an interpretive multiplicity of historical narratives. The aim is to highlight, probe and eventually determine the significance of addressing multivocality within sensitive historical accounts when told through the aesthetic mediums of fiction and film. In the context of this research, the traditional narrative of the partition of the Subcontinent includes political and nationalistic attitudes on both sides of the divide. The research sets out to explore the extent to which these overreaching accounts and wide-ranging versions of the partition empower the concerned entities to give subjective meanings to their partition experiences. Gurinder Chadha’s film Viceroy’s House (2017), which is partly based on the memoirs of Louis Mountbatten, documented in Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (1976) is taken as the case study, with reference to its source text. The primary trigger of this research is the debate between the Traditionalist and Revisionist school of Historiography, as it seeks to examine the inherent problematic nature of revisionist partition history on text and on screen. This research presents the textual and film narratives of partition as alternative archives, whose authenticity and validity is yet to be established, in comparison with the historical documents/texts. It advocates the necessity to constantly re-evaluate and reinterpret history in the light of new facts; however, all attempts to revise history in the name of aesthetics, without merit and evidence, should be recognized as subjective versions.

The Domestic Sphere in Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961): The Home Mirrors the World.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arunima Dey
Keyword(s):  
Private Sphere ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Space ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Partition Literature ◽  
Partha Chatterjee ◽  
Partition Of India ◽  
Freedom Movement

By analysing Attia Hosain’s Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), the article attempts to foreground the significance of home in Indian partition literature. As its theoretical framework, the article refers to postcolonial scholar Partha Chatterjee who claims that the Indian nationalist agenda during freedom movement turned home into a sacred site that was meant to safeguard the native values from the ‘corrupting’ Western ideology, which led to the segregation of the public and private sphere. In this context, the article examines how by focussing on the domestic sphere of home as a microcosmic reflexion of the socio-political changes happening in the country, Hosain reveals that both the private and the public are closely interlinked, thereby debunking the notion that private space is outside of history. Furthermore, the article explores the novel’s depiction of the purdah/zenana culture in order to highlight that though considered a place of refuge, home becomes a regulatory site of assertion of patriarchy-instigated familial, societal and religious codes, which makes it a claustrophobic place for its female inhabitants. In essence, the article argues that Hosain partakes in an alternate, gynocentric narrative of the partition of India.

Unsettling Partition: Literature, Gender, Memory (review)

2008 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 395-397
Author(s):  
Chelva Kanaganayakam
Keyword(s):  
Partition Literature
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