ABSTRACT
Those experientially affected by Partition 1947 actually engineered forgetfulness for themselves in order to escape an imaginary repetition of the pain of their trauma. But could that really exorcise them of the haunting of what they had gone through? Forced migration, abduction, violence, exile and separation from their loved ones left an indelible mark on their sense of being. They needed to make efforts to rehabilitate themselves and move forward. This called for a dismissal of all those gruesome memories rather than being crippled by them. The question to be asked is: Why should there be such a large body of literature of Partition when in common parlance there was silence about Partition experiences for a long time? Whether it was a Manto, Krishan Chander, Bedi or Bhisham Sahni, writers produced fiction that told tales of Partition decade after decade. Seeped in the memory of Partition, the writer’s subjectivity can be said to have actually evolved from those experiences. Partition literature can then be seen as ‘confessional’, even when the fiction created by the writer may seem to be telling someone else’s story. While perhaps all creative literature can be perceived as autobiographical, Partition literature in particular exemplifies the same convincingly.
