ABSTRACT

This book studies literary and cinematic representations of the Partition of India. It discusses Partition as not just an immediate historical catastrophe but as a lingering cultural presence and consequently a potent trope in literary and visual representations. The volume features essays on key texts – written and visual – including Train to Pakistan, "Toba Tek Singh", Basti, Garm Hava, Pinjar, among others.

Partition Literature and Cinema will be indispensable introductory reading for students and researchers of modern Indian history, Partition studies, literature, film studies, media and cultural studies, popular culture and performance, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies. It will also be of interest to enthusiasts of Indian cinematic history.

chapter |17 pages

Introduction

Literature and film: an alternative archive of the Partition of India

part I|51 pages

Historical reality: texts of response

chapter 1|13 pages

Political mayhem and the moment of rupture

Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas

chapter 2|11 pages

Ideology of hatred and the violent making of nations

Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan

chapter 3|11 pages

Partition and the shattered familiar

Bapsi Sidhwa’s The Ice-Candy Man

chapter 4|6 pages

Saadat Hasan Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh”

A nation split by trauma and madness

chapter 5|8 pages

Translating trauma into sublime

Gulzar’s response to Manto’s “Toba Tek Singh”

part II|48 pages

Memory and mnemonic: of homeland and homelessness

chapter 6|12 pages

Politics of memory and the myth of homelessness

Intizar Husain’s Basti

chapter 7|7 pages

Redrawing the borders of nostalgia

A reading of Ritwik Ghatak’s selected short stories

chapter 8|9 pages

Memory of home and the impossibility of return

Reading Jibanananda Das’s “I Shall Return to This Bengal” and “I Have Seen Bengal’s Face”

chapter 9|11 pages

Tracing erasure and re-mapping the memory lane

Partition movies of Ritwik Ghatak

chapter 10|7 pages

From home to homeland

Negotiating memory and displacement in Dibyendu Palit’s “Alam’s Own House”

part III|55 pages

Body politics: the woman in question

chapter 11|13 pages

Decentrification and gendered perspectives in partition narratives

An analysis of Garm Hava

chapter 12|9 pages

Honour, woman’s body and marginalisation

A study of Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar

chapter 13|9 pages

History versus (her)story

A study of Jyotirmoyee Devi’s Epar Ganga Opar Ganga

chapter 14|9 pages

Immanent needs, immediate solutions

Body and reconciliation in Manik Bandopadhyay’s “The Final Solution”

chapter 15|6 pages

The aporiac self

Feminine and the poetics of silence in Sabiha Sumar’s Khamosh Pani

chapter |7 pages

Postscript

Inverted prisms, imperfect histories: towards a Dalit historiography of India’s Partition