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Partition Studies: Prospects and Pitfalls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2014

Joya Chatterji
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Extract

Partition, unquestionably a pivotal event of the South Asian twentieth century, has become a subject of great significance in its own right.1 Studies of partition began with a profound reexamination of why it happened;2 they gathered momentum as scholars looked at the provincial and local roots of the drive to divide India;3 and the subject took a big step forward when oral histories revealed how women and men experienced the traumas of its bloody upheavals, the violence of “the burning plains of the Punjab” becoming a metaphor for partition itself.4

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 309 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2014 

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References

1 Only very few citations are given here, as a highly selective and partial guide to further reading, with readers encouraged to see David Gilmartin's forthcoming essay in the November 2014 issue of the Journal of Asian Studies for a much fuller overview of recent work on partition. I reference only work alluded to in this essay, with an accent on new “cutting-edge” research, both published and unpublished, by younger scholars.

2 Jalal, Ayesha, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Gilmartin, David, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Chatterji, Joya, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bose, Neilesh, “Purba Pakistan Zindabad: Bengali Visions of Pakistan, 1940–1947,” Modern Asian Studies 48, no. 1 (2014): 1–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Butalia, Urvashi, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (New Delhi: Penguin, 1998)Google Scholar; Menon, Ritu and Bhasin, Kamla, Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 2007)Google Scholar.

5 Ansari, Sarah, Life after Partition: Migration, Community and Strife in Sindh, 1947–1962 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Zamindar, Vazira F., The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

6 Roy, Haimanti, Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens in India and Pakistan, 1947–65 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Chatterji, Bengal Divided, op. cit. note 3.

7 Sherman, Taylor C., “Migration, Citizenship and Belonging in Hyderabad (Deccan), 1946–1956,” Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 1 (2011): 109–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sunil Purushotham, “Sovereignty, Violence, and the Making of the Post-colonial State in India, 1946–52,” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2013; Verkaaik, Oskar, Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

8 Ibrahim, Farhana, Settlers, Saints and Sovereigns: An Ethnography of State Formation in Western India (London: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar; Jayal, Niraja Gopal, Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

9 Chattha, Ilyas, Partition and Locality: Violence, Migration and Development in Gujranwala and Sialkot 1947–1961 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Mohita Bhatia, “Dominant Discourse and Marginalised Realities: Hindus in Jammu,” PhD diss., Cambridge University, 2011.

10 Copland, Ian, “The Further Shores of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan 1947,” Past & Present 160 (August 1998): 203–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Tan, Tai Yong and Kudaisya, Gyanesh, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London: Routledge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zamindar, op. cit. note 5.

12 Chatterji, Joya, “South Asian Histories of Citizenship, 1946–1970,” Historical Journal 55, no. 4 (2012): 1049–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sen, Uditi, “The Myths Refugees Live By: Memory and History in the Making of Bengali Refugee Identity,” Modern Asian Studies 48, no. 1 (2014): 37–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Uditi Sen, “Refugees and the Politics of Nation Building in India, 1947–1971,” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2009; van Schendel, Willem, The Bengal Borderland: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia (London: Anthem, 2005)Google Scholar; Verkaaik, op. cit. note 7; Chattha, op. cit. note 9.

13 Nahid Kamal, “The Population Trajectories of Bangladesh and West Bengal during the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study,” PhD diss., London School of Economics, 2009; Chatterji, Joya, “Dispositions and Destinations: Refugee Agency and ‘Mobility Capital’ in the Bengal Diaspora, 1947–2007,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 2 (2013): 273–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Amritpal Khosa, “Sacred Sikh Spaces in Pakistan,” MPhil diss., Cambridge University, 2011; Nakatani, Tetsuya, “Away from Home: The Movement and Settlement of Refugees from East Pakistan in West Bengal, India,” in State, Society, and Displaced People in South Asia, ed. Ahmed, Imtiaz (Dhaka: University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Uttara Shahani, “The Religious Reconstruction of Sindhi Hindus after the Partition of India,” unpublished essay.

15 Larson, Gerald James, “Partition: The ‘Pulsing Heart that Grieved’,” Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (2014): 5–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Ghosh, Papiya, Partition and the South Asian Diaspora: Extending the Subcontinent (London: Routledge, 2007)Google Scholar; Sherman, op. cit. note 7; Chatterji, “South Asian Histories,” op. cit. note 12.

17 See, e.g., Ian Talbot, “The August 1947 Violence in Sheikhpura City,” unpublished conference paper, Association for Asian Studies, Honolulu, April 2011.

18 See, e.g., Rohit De, “The Republic of Writs: Litigious Citizens, Constitutional Law and Everyday Life in India (1947–1964),” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2013.