Discourses on Partition through Visual Culture (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article examines This Side, That Side: Restorying Partition: Graphic Narratives from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, a 2013 anthology of graphic texts on the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent into Indian and Pakistan and the 1971 creation of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Hillary Chute has argued that politically oriented graphic narratives confront the problem of representing history through an urgent visualizing of historical circumstance that disrupts and realigns the narrative elements. The narration of history is thus disrupted by the use of collage, montage, non-linear image and verbal organization of the page. The current article isolates four specific representational and narrative techniques through which This Side, That Side disrupts the narration of history of the subcontinent’s traumatic Partitions.
Partition and the Visual Arts: Reflections on Method (2017)
2017
The experience of Partition in South Asia and its dysfunctional geopolitical result, the highly militarised northern borders of the Indian subcontinent, harbours all manner of tensions and contradictions around division and fusion, erasure and reinscription, fortification and permeation, enemy and friend. In the first instance, the cataclysmic separation of an integrated community with a shared civilisation and history, along exclusively religious lines, speaks to the nation itself as a cultural and ideological artefact -not a primordial form but rather an 'imagined' entity that achieves its shape through a logic of inclusion and exclusion and the fixing of horizons in the modern era. In the second instance, the massive displacement and unprecedented levels of violence connected to the population transfer that effected this rearrangement of identity presents significant challenges related to history, memory, recall and forgetting, and the recurrent sense of crisis and irresolution attached to a traumatic past. Moreover, these are not merely intellectual abstractions but a set of concerns that have serious social, economic, and personal permutations and ongoing geopolitical effects in the subcontinent.
2020
This paper attempts to analyze and understand the history and its representation through the visual-verbal literacy of the graphic narrative. Indian Graphic Novels highlight the district culture globalization process and social media network as a space for history. This article endeavors to deal with the traumatic experience of Partition that reshaped the borders, lives, and communities of the Indian subcontinent. Here it is very important to remember that, in 1947 the year of Independence, changed the whole history of India, and shaped new country and culture."This Side, That Side: An anthology of the graphic narrative", does not only try to retell Partition history but attempt to capture the nostalgia for home and loved ones last. This article concentrates specifically on the aspect of graphic retelling of the Partition. This graphic book is an anthology of graphic Partition narratives from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, curated by Vishwajyoti Ghosh. This Graphic text ...
A "Messy" History and its Many "Messy" Texts: An Essay on Partition (India, 1947) and its Narratives
Literature Compass, 2006
The division of British India into India and Pakistan in August 1947 was accompanied by the dislocation of between twelve and sixteen million people and the violent deaths of around a million. Punjab and Bengal, the two provinces that were divided, were the most affected but so were other parts of the country. After all, mixed populations (Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Christian, and so on) were more the norm than not in rural and urban India, making the very notion of two homelands, one with a Muslim majority and another with a Hindu majority, somewhat difficult to realize. Apparently the leadership expected what was euphemistically referred to as “an orderly exchange of population” in spite of the fact that the boundaries were officially announced on August 17, 1947, that is, after the actual transfer of power to the two successor states on August 14–15, 1947. Individuals, families, and communities that found themselves on the “wrong” side of the border were dispossessed of land and home, faced with the threat of bodily harm, spent months on the road and in refugee camps, and began the long process of resettlement. The place where the shock and disbelief first register, as do attempts to negotiate an impossible history of violence, is the literary text. This article attempts to introduce a literature that self-identifies with this traumatic historical experience. Partition literature is best contextualized by developments in two academic, disciplinary fields: history and literary criticism. Disciplinary history has only recently acknowledged the need for a social history of Partition and literary criticism has only recently expanded to allow for ways of discussing a traumatic literature other than the limiting one of “literariness.” Thus the article attempts to interweave a discussion of Partition literature with a discussion of shifting critical approaches to it. By beginning with a look at Partition's erasure in disciplinary history, the article aims to encourage the readership to consider ways in which the historiographical has informed or shaped Partition literature and the history of its reception.
Trauma of Partition: A Study of Khushwant Singh’s “Train To Pakistan” and Chaman Nahal’s “Azadi”
Journal of emerging technologies and innovative research, 2018
Abstract: Indian writings in English, a product of the clash between Indian and the Western cultures, have evolved to a great extent in the post-colonial era. The partition of India, also known as the “Great Divide”, has been depicted by many creative minds through novels, dramas and films. “Train To Pakistan” and “Azadi” are two such novels which depict the effect of the event on the individuals. The effect was manifold and the people had to face unprecedented problems like displacement, abduction of their womenfolk, atrocities and loss of near and dear ones. As an Indian trauma, the partition has been described as a massive human tragedy by both Khushwant Singh and Chaman Nahal. In fact, the incidents which took place as a result of the partition keep on affecting the relationship of India and Pakistan even today. Both the countries are mutually suspicious and the danger of nuclear war is not out of question.
Journal of Migration Affairs , 2023
Even after 75 years, the study of the Partition of British India in 1947 remains an ambitious project for many scholars. Over the years, not only historians but also people trained in other academic disciplines have attempted to interpret the Partition in their ways. As a result, there is a deluge of literature on the theme; nevertheless, scholars' interest in the Partition study will not end because many dimensions remain unveiled. Moreover, the "long shadow" of the Partition impacts the politics and social relationships in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Looking at the Partition and its aftermath in Bengal, Anindita's book is a collection of scrupulously written articles.
Third Text Everyday Partitions- * South ASIAN Contemporary Art Survey-Everyday Partitions-Sonal Khullar. UK Based research publication `Third Text`/Taylor and Francis Group published this review written by prof. Sonal Khullar . The art review on a recent survey of contemporary art of South Asia including -Rashid Rana, Shilpa Gupta, Iftikhar Dadi, Rishom Sayed, Firoz Mahmud, among others are highlighted with explication and artwork image here.
Re-envisioning Partition: An Alternative Analysis of Khushwant Singh's Train to Pakistan
The last official colonial agenda and the first step towards methodized decolonization drawn and materialized by British supremacy that cursed the lives of millions is India's partition in 1947. The event of partition made space for basically two types of literary approaches: in the first phase, writers concentrated on the depiction of overwhelming violence and incredible confusion and in the second, came a revised form of narrative, a contrapuntal mode of conceiving partition and its various receptions apart from the metanarratives. The second body of writings celebrates a subversive critical engagement concentrated on the cosmopolitan modes of diasporic existence and attempted to bridge the boundaries of transnational, cultural, and religious disparities. The partition constitutes a field of transformation and a reverse discourse that became the condition of multiple possibilities. It also created a framework for the resurgence of nationalism and a glocal positionality of Indian diaspora. The paper investigates a theoretical as well as the very personal fight and plight (along with the political hoax) of the protagonists to survive in changing realities. The protagonists in the course of this short novel evolve into more 2 compassionate beings and mature a sort of hybridity in this partition puzzle. It forges to heal the rupture and aporia and embarks on a potential resistance, intervention, and translation. The article envisions a gateway to rise from racial apartheid and reconcile towards empathetic partition possibilities.