Author: Mushirul Hasan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 393
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195651030
Description
This collection reflects on the forces that marked the prelude to partition, and introduces the different meanings attached to the Pakistan movement.
This work is a selection of the most significant writings on India's partition. It reconsiders important questions: Why did a people living with a long-standing history of shared living respond to symbols of discord and disunity at a particular historical juncture? Why did a society with its splendidly plural heritage become the site of one of the most cataclysmic events in twentieth-century history? Why was the innocence of the minds, in the words of a common man in Sakhua village in Mymensingh, 'banished after so many years of living together? Why did the structure of the human mind change overnight? How could that land become somebody else's forever?' Just 'Just one line drawn on the map and my home becomes a foreign country!'
This collection also reflects on the forces that marked the prelude to partition, brings into focus the diversity of political currents in the 1940s, and introduces the different meanings attached to the Pakistan movement. Its value is greatly enhanced by the prologue and the introduction that examine the more recent historiographical debates, evaluate old theories on how and why the parathion happened, and suggest areas of fresh research and inquiry.
The final section in the collection draws upon some evocative literary pieces to reveal as it were, the other face of freedom. 'Siyah Hashaye' or 'Black Margins' by Saadat Hasan Manto is one of them.
THE EDITOR:
Mushirul Hasan is Professor of Modern Indian History at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He is author of several books, including Nationalism and Communal Politics in India. He is currently doing research on the intellectual history of Islam in modern India.
Contents
Prologue : India's Partition Revisited
Mushirul Hasan
Introduction : Memories of a Fragmented Nation : Rewriting the Histories of India's Partition
Mushirul Hasan
PART I
THE POLEMIC
CHAPTER I
Thoughts on Pakistan
B.R. Ambedkar
CHAPTER II
Is India Geographically One?
Dr Kazi Said-Ud-Din Ahmad
CHAPTER III
The Communal Pattern of India
Kazi Said-Ud-Din Ahmad
CHAPTER IV
Some Aspects of Pakistan
Jamil-Ud-Din Ahmad
CHAPTER V
An Economist Looks at Pakistan
Radha Kamal Mukerjee
CHAPTER VI
A Case for Congress - League Unity
Sajjad Zaheer
PART II
THE RECKONING
CHAPTER VII
Negotiating with Its Past and Present : The Changing Profile of the Aligarh Muslim University
Mushirul Hasan
CHAPTER VIII
The Attitude of the Jam iyyat-i Ulama-i Hind to the Indian National Movement and the Establishment of Pakistan
Yohanan Friedmann
CHAPTER IX
Community, State, and Gender : Some Reflections on the Partition of India
Urvashi Bhutalia
CHAPTER X
Recovery, Rupture, Resistance : The Indian State and the Abduction of Women During Partition
Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin
CHAPTER XI
Businessmen and the Partition of India
Claude Markovits
CHAPTER XII
Hyderabad Today
Alec Reid
CHAPTER XIII
Punjabi Refugees and the Urban Development of Greater Delhi
V.N. Datta
PART III
THE REPINING
CHAPTER XIV
Black Margins
Saadat Hasan Manto
CHAPTER XV
An Unwritten Epic
Intizar Husain
CHAPTER XVI
Remembered Villages : Representation of Hindu-Bengali Memories in the
Aftermath of the Partition
Dipesh Chakrabarty
CHAPTER XVII
Objectifying Troubling Memories : An Interview with Bhisham Sahni
Alok Bhalla
CHAPTER XVIII
The Trauma of Independence : Some Aspects of Progressive Hindi Literature 1945 - 7
Alok Rai
CHAPTER XIX
In the Heat of Fratricide : The Literature of India's Partition Burning Freshly
Jason Francisco