In Spite of Partition

In Spite of Partition
Author: Gil Z. Hochberg
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2010-07-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1400827930

Partition--the idea of separating Jews and Arabs along ethnic or national lines--is a legacy at least as old as the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. Challenging the widespread "separatist imagination" behind partition, Gil Hochberg demonstrates the ways in which works of contemporary Jewish and Arab literature reject simple notions of separatism and instead display complex configurations of identity that emphasize the presence of alterity within the self--the Jew within the Arab, and the Arab within the Jew. In Spite of Partition examines Hebrew, Arabic, and French works that are largely unknown to English readers to reveal how, far from being independent, the signifiers "Jew" and "Arab" are inseparable. In a series of original close readings, Hochberg analyzes fascinating examples of such inseparability. In the Palestinian writer Anton Shammas's Hebrew novel Arabesques, the Israeli and Palestinian protagonists are a "schizophrenic pair" who "have not yet decided who is the ventriloquist of whom." And in the Moroccan Jewish writer Albert Swissa's Hebrew novel Aqud, the Moroccan-Israeli main character's identity is uneasily located between the "Moroccan Muslim boy he could have been" and the "Jewish Israeli boy he has become." Other examples draw attention to the intricate linguistic proximity of Hebrew and Arabic, the historical link between the traumatic memories of the Jewish Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakbah, and the libidinal ties that bind Jews and Arabs despite, or even because of, their current animosity.

Bengal Partition Stories

Bengal Partition Stories
Author: Bashabi Fraser
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 640
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 184331357X

Through oral histories, interviews and fictional retellings, 'Bengal Partition Stories' unearths and articulates the collective memories of a people traumatised by the brutal division of their homeland.

Narrating South Asian Partition

Narrating South Asian Partition
Author: Anindya Raychaudhuri
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019-06-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190249765

The history of the 1947 Indian/Pakistani partition is one of separation: a country and people newly divided. However, in telling this story, Anindya Raychaudhuri, the son of a partition participant, looks to unity, joining for the first time the public and private memory narratives of this pivotal moment in time. Narrating Partition features in-depth interviews with more than 120 individuals across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the United Kingdom, each reflecting on a direct or inherited experience of the 1947 Indian/Pakistani partition. Through the collection of these oral history narratives, Raychaudhuri is able to place them into comparison with the literary, cinematic, and artistic representations of partition, and in doing so, examine the ways this event is remembered, re-interpreted, and reconstructed--and the narrator's role in this process. These stories also reflect on the themes of home, family, violence, childhood, trains, and rivers within these public and private narratives. Crucially, Raychaudhuri is the first writer to use oral history in addressing the Bengal/Punjab partition as part of this same event, examining the memorial legacy in both the Bengali and Punjabi communities.

Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence

Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence
Author: Jaswant Singh
Publisher: OUP India
Total Pages: 565
Release: 2010-03-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195479270

The issues concerning the Partition of India in 1947 have long been debated both by Indian and Pakistani historians, but now a leader directly responsible for the Defence and Foreign Affairs of India has come forward with a historical appraisal that helps both countries come to a better understanding of the contentions between them. Jaswant Singh has not written a hagiography of Jinnah, but focused on him as a key figure in the final deliberations preceding Independence.

Understanding Partition

Understanding Partition
Author: Yuvraj Krishan
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2002
Genre: India
ISBN: 9788172762773

This book brings out with clarity the growth of separatist movement in India leading to her partition.

The Indian Partition in Literature and Films

The Indian Partition in Literature and Films
Author: Rini Bhattacharya Mehta
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2014-12-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317669940

This book presents an examination of fictional representations, in books and films, of the 1947 Partition that led to the creation of the sovereign nation-states of India and Pakistan. While the process of representing the Partition experience through words and images began in the late 1940s, it is only in the last few decades that literary critics and film scholars have begun to analyse the work. The emerging critical scholarship on the Partition and its aftermath has deepened our understanding of the relationship between historical trauma, collective memory, and cultural processes, and this book provides critical readings of literary and cinematic texts on the impact of the Partition both in the Punjab and in Bengal. The collection assembles studies on Anglophone writings with those on the largely unexplored vernacular works, and those which have rarely found a place in discussions on the Partition. It looks at representations of women’s experiences of gendered violence in the Partition riots, and how literary texts have filled in the lack of the ‘human dimension’ in Partition histories. The book goes on to highlight how the memory of the Partition is preserved, and how the creative arts’ relation to public memory and its place within the public sphere has changed through time. Collectively, the essays present a nuanced understanding of how the experience of violence, displacement, and trauma shaped postcolonial societies and subjectivities in the Indian subcontinent. Mapping the diverse topographies of Partition-related uncertainties and covering both well-known and lesser-known texts on the Partition, this book will be a useful contribution to studies of South Asian History, Asian Literature and Asian Film.

Historiography of India's Partition

Historiography of India's Partition
Author: Viśva Mohana Pāṇḍeya
Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9788126903146

An Attempt Has Been Made In This Book To Examine The Writings Of The Oxbridge Scholars Who Have Based Their Studies On Different Assumptions And Have Tried To Cover Various Issues Related To The Partition Of India. The Author Has Made A Serious Effort To Trace The Course Of The British Historiography Of India S Partition. In The Light Of New Research And Facts, Several Age-Old, Deliberate But Fallacious Assumptions And Constructs Have Been Deconstructed. In The Process Of This Analysis Several Gaps Have Been Detected And The Underlying Aims Of The Imperialist Efforts Have Been Exposed. On The Top Of It, Various Sophisticated Versions Of The Theories Of Civilizing Mission And Whiteman S Burden In The Post-Colonial Context Have Been Challenged On Several Counts. In Spite Of Several Changes In The Imperialist Writings, It Has Been Found That Even The Neo-Imperial Historians Have Been Extending Their Support To The Several Myths, Deliberately Created By The Orthodox Imperial Ideologues About India S Past And Present. The Only Difference Is That The Former Have Been More Delicate And Sophisticated In Their Presentations. Thus, This Book Opens Up New Areas For Further Research And Will Generate More Curiosity Among The Students Of Indian, Pakistani And British History And Those Who Are Concerned With The Problems Of Nationalism And Decolonisation.

Partition’s First Generation

Partition’s First Generation
Author: Amber H. Abbas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-11-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350142689

The Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAO), that became the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in 1920 drew the Muslim elite into its orbit and was a key site of a distinctively Muslim nationalism. Located in New Dehli, the historic centre of Muslim rule, it was home to many leading intellectuals and reformers in the years leading up to Indian independence. During partition it was a hub of pro-Pakistan activism. The graduates who came of age during the anti-colonial struggle in India settled throughout the subcontinent after the Partition. They carried with them the particular experiences, values and histories that had defined their lives as Aligarh students in a self-consciously Muslim environment, surrounded by a non-Muslim majority. This new archive of oral history narratives from seventy former AMU students reveals histories of partition as yet unheard. In contrast to existing studies, these stories lead across the boundaries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Partition in AMU is not defined by international borders and migrations but by alienation from the safety of familiar places. The book reframes Partition to draw attention to the ways individuals experienced ongoing changes associated with “partitioning”-the process through which familiar spaces and places became strange and sometimes threatening-and they highlight specific, never-before-studied sites of disturbance distant from the borders.

Partition's Legacies

Partition's Legacies
Author: Joya Chatterji
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2021-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 143848335X

Partition's Legacies offers a selection of Joya Chatterji's finest and most influential essays. "Partition, nation-making, frontiers, refugees, minority formation, and categories of citizenship have been my preoccupations," she writes in the preface, and these are also the major themes of this book. Chatterji's first book, Bengal Divided, shifted the focus from Muslim fanaticism as the driving force of Partition towards "secular" nationalism and Hindu aggression. Her Spoils of Partition rejected the idea of Partition as a breaking apart, showing it to be a process in the remaking of society and state. Her third book, Bengal Diaspora, cowritten with Claire Alexander and Annu Jalais, challenged the idea of migration and resettlement as exceptional situations. Partition's Legacies can be seen as continuous with Chatterji's earlier work as well as a distillation and expansion of it. Chatterji is known for the elegance of her prose as much as for the sharpness of her insights into Indian history, and Partition's Legacies will enthrall everyone interested in modern India's apocalyptic past. "What emerges from the essays," David Washbrook writes in the introduction, "is often quite startling. The demarcation of Partition followed no master plan or even coherent strategy but was made up of myriad ad hoc decisions taken on the ground, often by obscure actors. Refugee policy, immigrant rights, and even definitions of national citizenship ... were produced by no deus ex machina but out of day-to-day struggles on the streets and in the courts."