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This seminar will give students a sound overview of the events of the Partition of British India that led to the violent episodes of 1947 by tracing their historical development, and more specifically, their afterlives. Focussing on one of the severest episodes of death and displacement in the sub-continent, the seminar will take us through multiple sites in Pakistan (from Faqiranwalla, Sheikhpura and Lahore) to those located in present day India (Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Dandakaranya, Kolkata and the Andaman Islands) and contemporary Bangladesh. Seventy years after the creation of the two nation-states of India and Pakistan, and over four decades after the creation of the state of Bangladesh, these episodes are still relevant for understanding contemporary politics in the Indian sub-continent.
The Projektseminar is divided into two concrete blocks:
(1) In the first block students will be introduced to the existing historiography on Partition by giving cognizance to experiences of displacement, relocation, trauma, re-shaping of lives as well as their periodic re-telling. More importantly we will focus on oral history as a source that informs the writing of Partition. This becomes pertinent in order to emphasize the multifarious and fragmented nature of remembrance and testimony. How have literary works and oral history helped to fill the gaps and silences produced in official state discourses? How are events explained by blaming a religious “Other” on all sides of the borders? How has Partition impacted not only numerous partitioned human lives but also those of objects?
(2) Based on the context and reading in the first block, the second block will focus on developing specific projects on topics related to Partition. Here individual and group work will enable students to design their own research content and format on themes related to Partition. The objective is to focus on a specific kind of source or sources to see Partition, its events and afterlives in a new light. The desired format of the final product will be the students’ decision (based on prior consultation with the seminar organiser). Some tentative ideas could be (though are not limited to)–a short film, a scrapbook, a demo chapter for a school history textbook, a retelling of history through cartoons or other visual media, a poster, interviews with second and third generation survivors within diaspora, a Q and A card-kit etc.
Sources such as material objects, memoirs, films, literary works and databases of new Partition Archives and museums will be utilized for each session. The main objective is to trace the history of the episodes but also to show how Partition continues to inform public memory in contemporary South Asia.
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