This book revisits the aftermath of the partition of 1947, and the war of 1971, to examine some of the longer-term consequences of the redrawing of borders across South Asia. From the eastern frontier of Assam to the westernmost reaches of Gujarat and Sindh, the chapters in this volume study the “minority question” and show how it has manifested in different regional contexts. The authors ask how minorities have sought to belong, and trace how their sense of belonging has shifted with time. Working with “intercepted letters, pamphlets, and poetry”, novels and ethnographic fieldwork, each of these articles foreground the voices of the “refugee” and the “minority”. Taken together, the essays argue that a deep dive into how people have been affected by border-making and remaking in each of these frontier regions is integral to understanding the “big picture” that is South Asia.
By drawing upon current research in history, memory studies and literature, this book will interest students, researchers and scholars of modern Indian history, Partition studies, colonial history, postcolonial studies, politics, and South Asian studies.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Asian Affairs.
Introduction: Citizenship, Belonging, and The Partition of India
Neeti Nair
1. Bordering Assam through Affective Closure: 1971 and the Road to The Citizenship Amendment Act of 2019
Antara Datta
2. Citizenship And Social Belonging Across the Thar: Gender, Family and Caste in the Context of the 1971 War
Farhana Ibrahim
3. Language Without a Land: Partition, Sindhi Refugees, and the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution
Uttara Shahani
4. The Roots of the Present are in the Past: Recapitulating Partition through Intizar Husain’s Novel, Basti
Mehr Afshan Farooqi
5. After Hyderabad’s 1948 Annexation: Muslim Belonging and Histories of the Long Partition
Sarah Waheed
6. Artificial ‘Borders’: Kashmiri Muslim Belonging in the Aftermath of Partition
Shahla Hussain
7. Poetry As Dissent and Placemaking in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
Ather Zia
8. Contested Sovereignty: Islamic Piety, Blasphemy Politics, and the Paradox of Islamization in Pakistan
Arsalan Khan
Biography
Neeti Nair is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia and Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC.
