Author: Ian Talbot
Darshan Singh Tatla/
Translator(s)/Editor: Ian Talbot / Darshan Singh Tatla
Publisher: Permanent Black
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 234
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8178241315
Description
Through twenty-five first-hand accounts of those caught in the turmoil of Partition, this book provides us with a means to understanding the human dimension of the division of India in 1947.
The interviews in this book were conducted in what was, in 1947, the epicenter of violence: the city of Amritsar, on the volatile border between India and Pakistan. The links of those interviewed with a single city provide unique insights into processes of migration and refugee resettlement, and lend a unity to the recollections that is rare in Partition literature.
Even as each account possesses unique characteristics, various themes unite the oral testimonies-the suddenness of the uprooting, the belief that migration was only to be temporary, the sense that the violence was politically rather than culturally and religiously rooted.
The abduction and rehabilitation of women and children, the differing experiences of elite and subaltern classes, the memories of refugee convoys and camps, the hazards of border crossing, and the nostalgia for pre-Partition bonds between Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus are other important issues that emerge.
The variety of experiences recounted here is historically important as it reveals the immensely differing impact of Partition and its consequences for people’s later lives. This discomfiting fact has frequently been obscured by master narratives of the event-an event which continues to exert a profound impact on the subcontinent.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
INTRODUCTION
INTERVIEWS
1. The Abduction and Rehabilitation of Women and Children, and Related Issues
2. An Aristocratic Family’s Experience of Partition and the Arya Samaj
3. Migration from the Last Sikh Village in the Chenab Canal Colony
4. The Experiences of a Ninety-three-year-old Man from Sialkot
5. A Clerk Flees Lahore Under Gurkha Escort
6. From D.A.V. College, Lahore, to Khalsa College, Amritsar
7. Strong Bonds Between Sikh and Muslim villagers in District Sialkot
8. On Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindu ‘Imperialism’
9. The Experience of Forced Migration for the Rich and the Influential
10. A 1948 Sikh Migrant from Jammu and Kashmir
11. The Partition Memories of an Eminent Educationist from the Ramgarhia Sikh Community
12. Radical Dislocation from Muzaffargarh and Relative Poverty in Amritsar
13. The Massacre of Sikh Women by their Own Families
14. Escape Without Injury from the NWFP to Amritsar
15. Memories of Life in a Refugee Camp
16. A Haveli Becomes a Sikh Fortress
17. A Granthi Narrates Exactly What Happened in a Refugee Convoy
18. A Lahore Sikh Delegation Meets Sardar Patel in August 1947
19. A Rare, Uneventful Crossing for Pakistan to India
20. A Christian Preacher’s Experience of Partition
21. An Upper-class Army Doctor’s Recollections of Partition
22. A Secular Schoolteacher and Educationist’s Nostalgia for His Pre-Partition Homeland
23. From Prosperity to Destitution-A Village Woman’s Nightmare Journey Through the Partition Riots
24. A Landed Farmer, Wounded and Reduced to Penury by Partition
25. An Arya Samaji Philanthropist and Original amritsar Resident’s Memories of 1947
The Partition of India: A Select Annotated Bibliography