Reconstructing a New Partition: An Analysis of Popular Literature and Oral Sources

Abstract

The transfer of power to the natives of the Indian sub-continent came with the formation of two nations: India and Pakistan. The breaking up of the sub-continent that has been called the Partition of 1947 became a major catastrophic event that saw violence, destruction and chaos on a large scale along with a huge displacement of population on the Punjab border and the East-Bengal border that opened towards the West-Bengal and Assam. This event has been also a part of academic research that looks to create its historicity and often in doing so has only presented constructions that have an iconoclastic ring to them. However, recent Partition historiography marks a change in its reconstructions where it has started to increasingly focus on the lived experiences of the people and how this shaped different aspects of social, cultural and economic existences in the post-partition period. This paper seeks to look at two new sources that are used to construct these new narratives of Partition.