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alternative versions of history.These novels can be viewed as double voiced discourses where dominant voices of history are refracted through subversion and provide space to other voices that have been suppressed. The texts are analyzed with respect to their use of different voices through the novelists " emphasis on how history is a human construct and how they highlight the silenced histories of the marginalized groups. I argue that it is in these works of fiction that much of the suppressed history of marginalized people has been recorded; untold stories are told from the experiences of those who were involved in events, rather than from the objective perspective conjectured by the historian. The hypothesis of this research project is that novels also offer crucial insights in understanding historyand it is assumed that a literary text is coterminous with history, and it is intertextual.An analysis of these literary texts allows a scope for rethinking and re-reading different versions of history.In documenting the evidences in this thesis, I have followedthe MLA style sheet of the seventh edition, 2009. To support my analysis Ihave referred to the views of scholars who have worked on the partition such as RanjitGuha, Pandey, Jill Didur, ParthChatterjee, MushirulHasan, Veena Das, RituMenon, KamlaBhasin, Joe Cleary and others to argue how these novels destabilize the hegemony of mainstream and official narratives of the catastrophic event of the partition.The study is divided into six chapters. Chapter I.Introduction: Representation of the partition, history and the Novel This chapter serves as an introduction to the question of representation of the partition event.Literature is an important source of history as accounts of creative writings are testimonies of the marginal voices and memories. Among the various literary forms, the connection of the novel with history has been the closest. However, there has been constant evolution in the nature and scope of the novelist " s engagement with history and vice versa too. The novel established its base by imitating history: it progressed by making massive use of history, incorporating within the fictional frame a large number of social, political and

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References (37)

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