Abstract
The book under review tries to take into account the nuanced and the varied forms of dialectics and dynamics of partition from 1947 to the contemporary. In its 355 pages, the book takes a brave attempt to touch upon almost all the aspects of partition and its after-effects. Impressively, unlike other accounts on partition, this book is a brilliant attempt to include not only the social analysis of partition and its aftermath but several other neglected aspects from the genre of literature. This anthology edited by Rakhshanda Jalil, Tarun K. Saint and Debjani Sengupta commence the book with an introductory section and distributes its thirty-five chapters into six parts: Essays and Studies, Memoirs, Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Interview.
The first section on Essays and Studies has a total of eleven chapters that cover diverse aspects on society, polity and a range of other issues. The section opens with a chapter on the reconsideration of the Cabinet Mission that draws attention towards the dilemma and inevitability of partition by distributing the guilt to more than one or two. The section goes on to include the acuity of ‘other’ that is in no way dissimilar from the ‘we’ but at the same time recreates and defines ‘we’ by creating the ‘other’ as enemy. Nuanced understanding of partition remains incomplete in the social science discourse of partition if the aspect of caste is not been included. Here caste dynamics is incorporated by bringing the Dalit politics of Bengal during and after Partition in the then east-Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by examining Jogendra Nath Mandal’s role as a Dalit leader in the changing nature of caste politics of his times. This opens up an area of investigation that is overwhelmingly ignored but needs serious engagements across the borders to understand the (un)making of identities.
By going beyond the non-literary and non-textual aspects, this section also encompasses an interesting aspect, in the domain of film and music that has mostly remained unexplored. In the chapter by Vidya Rao, the unusual aspect of music is brought into focus through the work of two musicians, one in Pakistan and other in India and argues, ‘Can music be partitioned?’ Moreover, a chapter on the two lesser known film analysis brings out the subversive strategies through humour during the period of historical change. Additionally the section has ironic accounts on the dissenting voices, includes story of partition survivor that is based on an interview and photographs from the childhood memories at Karachi, critical accounts on state-sponsored-memory history and interestingly a comparative analysis on the third generation Hungarian narratives on the Holocaust and the graphic narratives on the partition and thereby places it in the global context of violence and tragedy.
The second section on memoirs show that the memories of partition never really fade completely, it remains dormant. The memoirs depict how even after seven decades of partition, the memory of violence never gets blurred. It brings out the accounts on partition from the memories of its victims, survivors and the later generations. Memoirs remain an important source of understanding the nuances of society as it opens up several avenues of analytical interpretation and this section, though brief, does that. Where a chapter on memoir brings out the memories of violence by describing how a sixth river, the river of blood, flowed in the land of five rivers on the other hand another one portrays how a grandmother’s memories of Karachi becomes a shared memory and a pride for a granddaughter. This section also incorporates the intimate history of the partition of home, family and domestic spaces and also of a government-appointed-person who describes the rehabilitation of the refugees in the uninhabitable places of Dandyakaranya.
The rest of the sections of this book comprises on the literary genres of fictions that include several stories, poetry and one drama translated to English from Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi and Bangla. This segment consists of literary texts of those works whose translations have remained unpublished. Literature remains a mirror of society and sociology can never neglect the literary domains to understand the fractured reality which is not one. The segment of fiction includes several stories from Bengal and Punjab of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which also embrace significant accounts of gendered take on partition, painful memories of riots, creation of identities like muhajirs. The section of poetry brings into the never known translations of famous poets like Sudhir Ludhianvi, Javed Akhtar, Sankha Ghosh, Birendra Chattopadhyay, Kaiser Haq to name a few who paints ecstatically the experiences, memories and effects of partition cross-culturally.
The significance of this volume also lies with the fact that it incorporates the neglected and excluded terrain of north-eastern regions of India, which was also affected by partition. This anthology will remain pivotal in the sociological discourse on partition as it thematically and analytically takes account of not only the discourse of India but of Pakistan and Bangladesh as well that creates a much needed and nuanced understanding. However this multi-genre and cross-sub-continental volume remains to a certain extent uneven as it incorporates not only academic writings but also journalistic, activist, fictional, poetic, autobiographical and other forms of writings but nevertheless remains succinct and renews the debate and importance of partition to understand the lives and dynamics of the social that creates the everyday of South Asia and its people. The volume creates the lacuna not only for those who are the survivors and victims but also of those who have acquired the memories through their earlier generations that brings the nuances of remembrance and its re-affirmations in the public and private spheres. The book, nevertheless, tries to focus on the diverse accounts of partition, which was earlier absent in other literature works of partition and therefore invites explorations and intrigues its readers to understand the nuances of contradictions and complexities of the partition discourse and hence remain within the scope of sociological reading.