Abstract
While the Indian and Pakistani governments engage in monumental and ceremonial commemoration of their independence from the British, neither government officially memorializes the traumatic experiences and human loss of the division of British India into the two new nations in 1947. This chapter investigates the absence of Partition memorials and how global South Asian communities are producing virtual memory initiatives modeled on Holocaust commemoration to confront their fear of erasure. It juxtaposes the development of new digital oral history projects by South Asian diaspora communities and formal recognition (and the absence thereof) at physical sites of Partition memory in both India and Pakistan. The absence of formal commemoration of Partition remains conspicuous. Since memorials are both “sites of memory” and “sites of mourning,” the lay public has intervened (Nora 1989; Winter, 1995). Digital media allow them to circumvent the involvement or support of the state. In the absence of official commemoration, transnational communities are asserting ownership over these experiences and developing initiatives to ensure their remembrance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The horror and brutality of these train attacks have become an iconic reference point in cinema and literary works grappling with Partition, one of the best known being Khushwant Singh’s novel 1956 Train to Pakistan.
- 2.
Jammu-Kashmir is the primary exception to this rule of postcolonial military conflict between India and Pakistan. For insight into the way the experience of violence permeates life in the disputed territory, see Robinson (2013).
- 3.
The name Teen Murti literally means ‘three statues’ and refers to three bronze soldiers standing sentinel around a monumental stone pillar, honouring the contributions and sacrifices of Indian Army soldiers during World War I on behalf of the Allies.
- 4.
Author visit to Teen Murti, Gandhi Smriti, and Sabarmati Ashram, 2012 and 2013.
- 5.
- 6.
Author visit to Purana Qila and Humayan’s Tomb 2013.
- 7.
Author visit to Lahore Museum 2014.
- 8.
Interview by author at the Lahore office of Citizens Archive Pakistan October 13, 2014.
- 9.
Conversation with Furrukh Khan, professor of Postcolonial Studies at Lahore University of Management Sciences, September 9, 2014.
- 10.
A similar project by CAP on the 1971 war, in which East Pakistan seceded and became independent Bangladesh, acknowledges political and personal cleavages reminiscent of 1947.
- 11.
Visit to Lahore office of Citizens Archive Pakistan October 13, 2014 (Perlman 2011).
- 12.
Parts of the museum technically opened in October 2016, but the grand opening of all of its galleries was not until August 2017.
(
(References
Agarval, B. (1922).
Kanpur: Rajhans Press.Alam, A. R. (2009, January 5). ‘Goodbye Walton?’ The News International. https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/154289-goodbye-walton?.
Ashley, S. L. T. (2016). Re-Colonizing Spaces of Memorializing: The Case of the Chattri Indian Memorial, UK. Organization, 23(1), 29–46.
Bab-E-Pakistan Foundation. (2015). http://bepf.punjab.gov.pk.
Bahadur, L., & Johari, J. C. (1988). Struggle for Pakistan: Tragedy of the Triumph of Muslim Communalism in India, 1906–1947. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
Bose, A. (2017, April 5). Should the Jinnah House Be Demolished, Handed Over to Pakistan, or Given to Jinnah’s Daughter? Huffington Post India. http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/04/05/a-bjp-mla-wants-it-demolished-pakistan-wants-it-badly-as-does_a_22026440/.
Brass, P. R. (1990). The Politics of India Since Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. (2006). Victims, Heroes or Martyrs? Partition and the Problem of Memorialization in Contemporary Sikh History. Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory, 2(1), 17–31.
Buncombe, A. (2009, January 9). The Martyrs of Amritsar. The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-martyrs-of-amritsar-1242616.html.
Butalia, U. (2000). The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Chattha, I. (2011). Partition and Locality: Violence, Migration, and Development in Gujranwala and Sialkot, 1947–1961. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
Connerton, P. (2008). Seven Types of Forgetting. Memory Studies, 1(1), 59–71.
Coombs, C. (2011). Partition Narratives: Displaced Trauma and Culpability among British Civil Servants in 1940s Punjab. Modern Asian Studies, 45(1), 201–24.
Daiya, K. (2008). Violent Belongings: Partition, Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial India. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Das, V. (2000). Violence and the Work of Time. In A. P. Cohen (Ed.), Signifying Identities: Anthropological Perspectives on Boundaries and Contested Values (pp. 59–74). London; New York: Routledge.
———. (2007) Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dhavan, P. (2009). Reading the Texture of History and Memory in Early-Nineteenth-Century Punjab. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 29(3), 515–27.
Gellner, E. (1987). Culture, Identity, and Politics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gilmartin, David. (2015). The Historiography of India’s Partition: Between Civilization and Modernity. The Journal of Asian Studies, 74(1), 23–41.
Greenberg, J. D. (2005). Generations of Memory: Remembering Partition in India/Pakistan and Israel/Palestine. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 25(1), 89–110.
Gupta, J. P. (1920).
Benares: Ganga Prasada Gupta.Harrison, R. P. (2001). Hic Jacet. Critical Inquiry, 27(3), 393–407.
Hassan, M. (2016, August 14). Bab-E-Pakistan Memorial Still a Dream After 31 Years. The Nation. http://nation.com.pk/national/14-Aug-2016/bab-e-pakistan-memorial-still-a-dream-after-31-years.
Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (Eds.). (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hodson, H. V. (1969). The Great Divide: Britain, India, Pakistan. London: Hutchinson.
Hoffman, E. (2004). After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. New York: Public Affairs.
Jalal, A. (1995). Conjuring Pakistan: History as Official Imagining. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27(1), 73–89.
Khan, Y. (2007). The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. New Haven: Yale University Press.
LaCapra, D. (2001). Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Menon, V. P. (1957). The Transfer of Power in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Menon, J. (2013). The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan, and the Memory of Partition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Menon, R., & Bhasin, K. (1998). Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
Mookherjee, N. (2006). “Remembering to Forget”: Public Secrecy and Memory of Sexual Violence in the Bangladesh War of 1971. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12(2), 433–50.
Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24.
Pandey, G. (2001) Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pandey, G. (2010, August 14). Missing Memorials to the Victims of Partition. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10951466.
1947 Partition Archive. (2015, January). Collect Stories. http://www.1947partitionarchive.org.
Perlman, C. (2011, April 27). Archive Documents Oral Stories from Survivors of India’s Partition. The Daily Californian. http://archive.dailycal.org/printable.php?id=112974.
Qureshi, I. H. (1965). The Struggle for Pakistan. Karachi: University of Karachi.
Rajagopalan, M. (2016). Building Histories: The Archival and Affective Lives of Five Monuments in Modern Delhi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Robinson, C. D. (2013). Body of Victim, Body of Warrior. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Roy, S. (2007). Beyond Belief: India and the Politics of Postcolonial Nationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Saikia, Y. (2011). Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sangari, K., & Vaid, S. (Eds.). (2010). Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History. New Delhi: Zubaan.
Sarkar, T. (2001). Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and Cultural Nationalism. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Sarkar, B. (2009). Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sayeed, K. B. (1968). Pakistan: The Formative Phase. London; New York: Oxford University Press.
Scroll.in. (2017, August 15). India’s First Partition Museum to Open in Amritsar This Week. https://scroll.in/latest/847339/indias-first-partition-museum-to-open-in-amritsar-this-week.
Sengupta, S. (2013, August 13). Potent Memories from a Divided India. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/arts/potent-memories-from-a-divided-india.html.
Shah, S. A. (2013).
Dawn, June 15. http://www.dawnnews.tv/news/101430.Talbot, I., & Singh, G. (2009) The Partition of India. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Citizens Archive of Pakistan. (n.d.) Accessed 6 Feb 2015. http://www.citizensarchive.org/about-us/.
The News International. (2014, June 27). SC Moved Against Plan to Acquire Walton Aerodrome Land. Accessed 14 May 2017. https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/510970-sc-moved-against-plan-to-acquire-walton-aerodrome-land.
The Partition Museum. (n.d.) Request an Oral History. Accessed 2 Sept 2017. http://www.partitionmuseum.org/get-involved/request-for-oral-history/.
Viswanathan, R. (2006). Need A Partition Memorial. Accessed 1 June 2014. http://ram.viswanathan.in/2006/08/need-partition-memorial_21.html.
Young, J. E. (1988). Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. (1993). The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Zamindar, V. F.-Y. (2007). The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories. New York: Columbia University Press.
Zia, K. H. (2009‚ January 8). The Camp at Walton. The News International. https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/154798-the-camp-at-walton.
Kanpur: Rajhans Press.
Benares: Ganga Prasada Gupta.
Dawn, June 15. Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Utne, K.J. (2021). The Commemorative Continuum of Partition Violence. In: Otele, O., Gandolfo, L., Galai, Y. (eds) Post-Conflict Memorialization. Memory Politics and Transitional Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54887-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54887-2_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54886-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-54887-2
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)