1st Edition

Partition and Post-Colonial South Asia A Reader

    1233 Pages
    by Routledge

    The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 was a turning point for the area, irrevocably altering the fortunes of the people of South Asia. This new three-volume reader brings together an array of materials drawing upon new theoretical insights and fresh bodies of data which critically examine the effects of that momentous division.

    Organized thematically, the contents cover a range of topics including: borders and boundaries; refugeehood and displacement; majorities and minorities; citizenship; diaspora; and the construction of post-colonial national identities. The set includes a critical introduction and provides a thematic overview identifying new developments and key debates. Presenting a plurality of viewpoints, the collection brings a new perspective to the literature by integrating topics within a comparative framework encompassing India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

    VOLUME I: HISTORY WRITING, VIOLENCE, BORDERS

    Part One: History Writing

    1. Mushirul Hasan, ‘India’s Partition Revisited’, in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), Inventing Boundaries: Gender, Politics and the Partition of India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 26–44

    2. David Gilmartin, ‘Partition, Pakistan and South Asian History: In Search of a Narrative’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, No. 4 (1998), pp. 1068–95

    3. Ayesha Jalal, ‘"Conjuring Pakistan": History as Official Imagining’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4 (1994), pp. 73–89

    4. Krishna Kumar, ‘Partition in School Textbooks: A Comparative Look at India and Pakistan’, in S. Settar and Indira Baptista Gupta (eds.), Pangs of Partition, Vol. II (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), pp. 17–28

    5. Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali, ‘A Rite of Passage: The Partition of History and the Dawn of Pakistan’, Special Issue, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1999), pp. 183–200

    6. Ravikant, ‘Partition: Strategies of Oblivion, Ways of Remembering’, in Ravikant and Tarun. K. Saint, Translating Partition (New Delhi: Katha, 2001), pp. 159–73

    Part Two: Violence

    7. Swarna Aiya, ‘"August Anarchy": The Partition Massacres in Punjab, 1947’, Special Issue, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 18 (1995) pp. 13–36

    8. Indivar Kamtekar, ‘The Military Ingredient of Communal Violence in Punjab, 1947’, Indian History Congress Proceedings, pp. 1–6

    9. Paul R. Brass, ‘The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab, 1946–47: Means, Methods, and Purposes’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 5, No. 1 (2003), pp. 71–101

    10. Ian Copland, ‘The Further Shores of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan, 1947’, Past and Present, Vol. 19, No. 160, August (1998), pp. 657–704

    11. Ishtiaq Ahmed, ‘Forced Migration and Ethnic Cleansing in Lahore in 1947: Some First Person Accounts’, in Ian Talbot and Shinder Thandi (eds.), People on the Move: Punjabi Colonial and Post-Colonial Migration (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 96–141

    12. Gyanendra Pandey, ‘The Long Life of Rumor’, Special Issue, Partition, Alternatives, Vol. 27, No. 2, Apr./June (2002), pp. 165–91

    13. Sucheta Mahajan, ‘Gandhi’s Swaraj or Hindu Raj? The Making of the Post-Independence Polity’, in Vinita Damodaran and Maya Unnithan-Kumar (eds.), Postcolonial India: History, Politics and Culture (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), pp. 55–71

    Part Three: Borders

    14. Tai Yong, ‘Partition and the Making of South Asian Boundaries’, in Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 78–100

    15. Joya Chatterji, ‘The Fashioning of a Frontier: The Radcliffe Line and Bengal’s Border Landscape, 1947–52’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1 (1999), pp. 185–242

    16. Shereen Ilahi, ‘The Radclifffe Boundary Commission and the Fate of Kashmir’, India Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, Jan. (2003), pp. 77–102

    17. Lucy Chester, ‘The 1947 Partition: Drawing the Indo-Pakistani Boundary’, American Diplomacy, Vol. 7, No. 1, Feb. (2002)

    VOLUME II: GENDER, MINORITIES, MEMORIES

    Part One: Gender

    18. Bharati Ray, ‘Women and Partition Some Questions’, in Bharati Ray and Aparna Basu (eds.), From Independence Towards Freedom: Indian Women Since 1947 (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 1–18

    19. Aparna Basu, ‘Uprooted Women: Partition of Punjab 1947’, in Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri (eds.), Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 270–86

    20. Andrew Major, ‘"The Chief Sufferers": Abduction of Women During the Partition of the Punjab’, Special Issue, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 18 (1995), pp. 57–72

    21. Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, ‘Abducted Women, the State and Questions of Honour: Three Perspectives on the Recovery Operation in Post-Partition India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 Apr. 1993, pp. 1–31

    22. Karuna Chanana, ‘Family Strategies, Gender Ideologies and Education: The Impact of Partition on Punjabi Women of New Delhi’, Economic and Political Weekly, 23 Apr. 1993, pp. 157–76

    23. Deepika Bahri, ‘Telling Tales: Women and the Trauma of Partition in Sidhwa’s Cracking India’, Special Issue, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, (1999), pp. 217–34

    Part Two: Minorities

    24. Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘"Divided Landscapes, Fragmented Identities" East Bengal Refugees and their Rehabilitation in India, 1947–79’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1996) pp. 24–39

    25. Meghna Guhathakurta, ‘Understanding the Bengal Partition through Reconstructing Family Histories: A Case Study’, Journal of Social Studies, Vol. 76, Apr. (1997), pp. 57–65

    26. Papiya Ghosh, ‘Partition’s Biharis’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. 17, No. 2 (1997), pp. 21–33

    27. Sumit Sen, ‘Stateless Refugees and the Right to Return: The Bihari Refugees of South Asia’, International Journal of Refugee Law, Vol. 11, No. 4, (1999), pp. 625–45

    28. Anindita Dasgupta, ‘Denial and Resistance Sylheti Partition Refugees in Assam’, Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2001), pp. 343–60

    29. Tai Yong Tan, ‘A Community in Crisis: Partition and the Sikhs’, in Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2000) pp. 99–122

    30. Sarah Ansari, ‘The Movement of Indian Muslims to West Pakistan after 1947: Partition-Related Migration and its Consequences for the Pakistani Province of Sind’, in Judith M. Brown and Rosemary Foot (eds.), Migration: The Asian Experience (London: Macmillan, St Martin’s Press in association with St Antony’s College, 1994), pp. 149–68

    Part Three: Memories

    31. Estelle Dryland, ‘Migration and Resettlement: the Emergence of the Muhaarjir Quami Mahaz’, South Asia Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, Dec. (2000), pp. 111–42

    32. Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff, ‘Voices of Difference’, in Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2004), pp. 113–42

    33. Priya Kumar, ‘Testimonies of Loss and Memory: Partition and the Haunting of a Nation’, Special Issue, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1999), pp. 201–15

    34. Dhoolekha Raj, ‘Partition and Diaspora: Memories and Identities of Punjabi Hindus in London’, International Journal of Punjab Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, Jan.–June (1997), pp. 101–27

    35. Ian Talbot, ‘Literature and the Human Drama of the 1947 Partition’, Special Issue, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol. 18 (1995) pp. 37–56

    VOLUME III: IDENTITIES, GEOPOLITICS, RECONCILIATION

    Part One: Identities

    36. Mushirul Hasan, ‘India and Pakistan: Why the Difference?’, in Mushirul Hasan and Nariaki Nakazato (eds.), The Unfinished Agenda: Nation Building in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), pp. 309–43

    37. Ishtiaq Ahmed, ‘The 1947 Partition of India: A Paradigm for Pathological Politics in India and Pakistan’, Asian Ethnicity, Vol. 3, No. 1, Mar. (2002), pp. 9–28

    38. Gyanendra Pandey, ‘Can a Muslim be an Indian?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (1999), pp. 608–28

    Part Two: Geopolitics

    39. Gurharpal Singh, ‘The Partition of India as State Contraction: Some Unspoken Assumptions’, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Vol. 35, No. 1, Mar. (1997), pp. 51–66

    40. Vali Nasr, ‘The Negotiable State: Borders and Power-Struggles in Pakistan’, in Brendan O’Leary, Ian S. Lustick, and Thomas Callaghy (eds.), Rightsizing the State: The Politics of Moving Borders (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 168–200

    41. Willem van Schendel, ‘Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves’, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 1, Feb. (2002), pp. 115–47

    42. Willem van Schendel, ‘Working Through Partition: Making a Living in the Bengal Borderlands’, International Review of Social History, Vol. 46 (2001), pp. 393–421

    43. Patricia Ellis and Zafar Khan, ‘Partition and Kashmir: Implication for the Region and the Diaspora’, in Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh (eds.), Region and Partition, Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 269–97

    44. Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘"Capitol Landscapes": The Imprint of Partition on South Asian Capital Cities’, in Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2000) pp. 163–203

    Part Three: Reconciliation

    45. Urvashi Butalia, ‘A Necessary Journey: A Story of Friendship and Reconciliation’, Special Issue, Partition, Alternatives, Vol. 27, No. 2, Apr./June (2002), pp. 147–63

    46. Ritu Menon, ‘The Dynamics of Division’, in Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes and Rada Ivekovic (eds.), Divided Countries, Separated Cities: The Modern Legacy of Partition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 115–29

    47. Virinder S. Kalra and Navtej K. Purewal, ‘The Strut of the Peacocks: Partition, Travel and the Indo-Pak Border’, in Raminder Kaur and John Hutnyk (eds.), Travel Worlds: Journeys in Contemporary Cultural Politics (London: Zed Books, 1999), pp. 54–67