Paper short abstract:

Tareque Masud is one of the most well-known film directors of Bangladesh who had captured the cultural landscape of the nation during the events of the 1971 War. This paper analyses the films of Masud as a cinematic archive capturing personal and collective memories and his own artistic positioning.

Paper long abstract:

Bangladeshi film director, Tareque Masud, has been recognized as one of the most important cultural-political voices in Bangladesh, documenting the post-Partition cultural landscape of the nation through his camera. His first film, "Muktir Gaan" (Songs of Freedom) (1995) shows the travails of the members of the Bangladesh Mukti Shangrami Shilpi Shangstha (Bangladesh Freedom Struggle Cultural Squad) across the landscape of war-time Bangladesh, trying to fathom the rootedness of Bengali cultural existence in common people's homes and refugee camps. The cultural movement bears remnants of memories of its predecessor—the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA)—in the 1940s that saw an artistic assemblage and mobility between the two Bengals prior to the Partition. Masud's other films, "Matir Moyna" (The Clay Bird) (2002), "Ontorjatra" (Journey into the Soul) (2006) and "Runway" (2010) explore the personal against the backdrop of political upheavals, the diasporic entity in search of "homeland" and the individual descent to radical Islam respectively. This paper analyses the films of Tareque Masud as an archive of the cultural heritage of post-Partition, post-War Bangladesh, and how each of these representations uphold the collective and individual memories. For each of these films, the larger cultural identity of Bangladesh (once entwined with its other half in current West Bengal) is a reference frame through which this cinematic archive can be understood. This paper will use the films, interviews of the director, his writings and memoirs in order to understand a cultural milieu he recreated in his films, coming from a pre-Partition socio-cultural geography.

Paper short abstract:

East Bengal Hindu refugees settled in the Andaman Islands can be characterised both by their local “Indian-ness” and their translocal “Bengali-ness”. This paper will highlight three dimensions of memorisation among Bengali settlers by analysing the interplay of belonging, place-making practices, and politics.

Paper long abstract:

The post-partition history of the Andaman Islands is represented as showcase project of Indian secularism. Settlement policies aiming to uplift subaltern refugees, repatriates, and landless people were accompanied by labour migrations from all over South Asia. In nationalist speak, this multi-ethnic and multi-religious society is designated as "Mini-India" and stands exemplary for the communal "harmony" of 400,000 Andaman residents.

The state directed rehabilitation of 3652 East Bengal Hindu refugee families as agricultural pioneers on forest lands was influenced by secularist policies. As a result, Bengali settlers - coming both after partition and the 1971 war - have adapted to their new homelands by appropriating values, norms, and practices of Mini-India. Moreover, their place-making processes have been accompanied by an ethno-history composed of a nostalgia for their lost homelands in Sonar Bangla (Golden Bengal) as well as memories of violence and deprivation. Refugee settlers thus display a hybrid diasporic belonging encompassing both localised "Indian-ness" and translocal "Bengali-ness".

My paper will highlight in which way the trope of Bengal becomes efficacious in the present Andaman society. I will concentrate on three dimensions of memorisation: First, Andaman "Bengali-ness" can be regarded as a dynamic socio-cultural and ecological reconstruction involving an "ethnic" transformation of the cultivated landscape, environment, and infrastructure. Second, Bengalis adopt a political identification as nationalists by invoking the hegemonic memory of the anticolonial struggle focussing on the infamous Andaman Cellular Jail as a site where Bengali freedom fighters suffered for the nation. Third, they refer to historical victimisation and deprivation when claiming affirmative action.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the complex relation between social movements, memories and digital media mainly online blogosphere with a reference to the Shahbag movement in Bangladesh. The study of this relation is important in comprehending how contested memories can shape a historical event.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss conceptual issues related to the complex relation between social movements, memories and digital media mainly online blogospheres. This research will first discuss how a present social movement's unique characteristics are indebted to the past movements and struggles. Then the research in this paper will elaborate how the memories of the past and past movements in general with the help of digital media platforms and through the process of mediation are responsible for elevating a local movement to a global stature. By applying this conceptual framework to the Shahbag movement of Bangladesh in 2013, I would argue that the study of this complex relation is important in comprehending how contested memories can shape a historical event. The process of reshaping history which is not officially documented can add dimensions to past struggles, and as a result it will indicate 'silenced' histories. This articulation of 'silenced' history and references to the past movements are capable of adding features of global protest movements to a region specific social movement. Finally, this research will address if the study of the relation between social movements, digital media and memory can be important to comprehend the dynamics of social conditions such as modernity in the globalized world.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the memories and expressions of the victims of one of the most tragic and violent events in the history of the 21st century: the partition of the Indian subcontinent. The partition of India created two states in political terms, but countless were displaced from their homes in this process.

Paper long abstract:

The partition of India in 1947 has been referred to as one of the greatest human tragedies in the history of mankind. While a whole nation rejoiced the end of the British Raj in the Indian subcontinent, a vast section of the population mourned the loss of home, homeland and a way of life, because independence came with a very expensive price to pay: the partition of the subcontinent into two nations (now three). Thus, India saw partition on its western and eastern borders to form the state of West and East Pakistan. For the formation of the new state of Pakistan the two dominant states which were torn apart were Punjab and Bengal with West Punjab and East Bengal going to Pakistan while East Punjab and West Bengal remained in India.

Existing historiography on partition has looked at almost every aspect on this subject: causes, course and consequence. The new focus is on the meaning of partition, the human side of the story. Here the historians’ archive is limited and one has to take recourse to oral testimonies and contemporary as well as present day literary works to understand the experience of partition. Hence, the use of memoirs, stories and cinema to explore the meanings of partition for the people who went through this experience.

Elsewhere, I have compared partition in the Eastern and Western borders of India in the context of rehabilitation of refugees and the role of the government of India in this regard. I have also compared the experiences of the refugees and their role in the rehabilitation process. In this paper I will be looking at the ways in which the refugees from West Pakistan and East Pakistan remember this day. My sources are existing oral testimonies, literary works and cinematic expressions. It will be seen that memories often resemble but also significantly differ. And hereto, it is the long process of rehabilitation that affects such memories and reminiscences.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the way state and local management of signage at the Aam Khas Bagh (Sirhind, Punjab).

Paper long abstract:

By analysing the display, use and management of signs at the Aam Khas Bagh, this paper thinks through the way in which Mughal-era and pre-partition histories and memories of Punjab persist in fractured and discontinuous ways in the contemporary landscape.

Paper short abstract:

How did Punjabi musicians view the 1947 borders through time, and how have they worked to negotiate these boundaries? I re-situate musicians as historical agents, functioning in diverse contexts; critiquing their romanticisation as carriers of a “syncretic” phenomenon.

Paper long abstract:

Music is often invoked as the 'glue' that unites people like little else, perennial symbol of a composite culture disrupted by the rupture of Partition. Such a simplistic perspective, however, rides roughshod over the complex trajectories musicians' lives took post-1947. This paper examines two questions.

First, how have musicians viewed this division through time? I explore the views of a handful of musicians like Pt. Ramakant Sharma (Jalandhar), and the late Md. Hafeez Khan Talwandiwale (Lahore), based on ethnographies conducted in Pakistani and Indian Punjab (Basra 1996, Lybarger 2003, Kapuria 2012). While casteist views (with a longer genealogy going back to the nineteenth century) on the mirasis (Punjab's hereditary caste of musician-genealogist bards), ironically serve to unite musicians across the border, other, communally hostile inflections reveal Partition's divisive impact.

Second, how have musicians relentlessly traversed one of the most militarized borders in the world? Through a case study of some prominent Punjabi musicians, e.g. Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Iqbal Bano, among others, I demonstrate how processes of musical tutelage and pedagogy, as well as the more mundane reasons of kinship, have worked to consistently subvert, since at least the 1950s, the "hard borders" engendered by Partition.

These two foci, then, help us re-situate musicians and patrons as historical agents functioning within complex and diverse historical contexts (Orsini and Schofield, 2015). In the process, I critique their commonplace romanticisation as "affective" carriers of a "syncretic" cultural phenomenon that defies analysis.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is based upon field work conducted in Ahmedabad. It examines how the memory of 'Partition' is re-inscribed before and after an episode of communal violence.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based upon field work conducted in Ahmedabad. It examines how the memory of 'Partition' is re-inscribed before and after an episode of communal violence, especially with reference to the post-Godhra attacks on Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. A close look at the history of communal violence (whether riots or pogroms) reveals how a localised incident is extrapolated from the present and portrayed as yet another manifestation of a long-term inter-group animosity. The Godhra incident evoked contesting discourses of victimhood. The asthi kalas yatra (funeral procession) of the victims of train-burning was staged by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad with full complicity of the state in an attempt to polarise communities on a binary of perpetrator-victim. But the deaths of those killed in post-Godhra massacres are sought to be expurgated from public memory, as revealed in the controversy aroused by the proposed construction of a memorial at Gulberg Society, one of the loci of the Gujarat carnage. The memory of 'borders' is resuscitated to demarcate boundaries of urban spaces, as noticed in relief colonies like Ekta Nagar in Vatwa. Localities like Juhapura with a predominant Muslim presence are labelled off as 'mini-Pakistans'. Relief colonies like Citizen Nagar in Danilimda are characterised by the lack of sufficient approach roads, so that they are veritably isolated. This paper examines how the local is confronted and altered by the consequences of state and societal failure to come to terms with its rupture from the past.

Paper short abstract:

In the light of recent anthologies of short stories and interview collections, this paper aims at questioning memory and subjectivity in the recent narration (whether fictional or historical) of Partition, as an attempt to trace an unwritten social and popular History.

Paper long abstract:

In the light of recent anthologies of short stories (Bhalla 1994, Hasan 1995) and interview collections (Bhalla 2006, Butalia 1998, Talbot 2006), this paper aims at questioning memory and subjectivity in the recent narration (whether fictional or historical) of Partition, as an attempt to trace an unwritten social and popular History.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the work of Punjabi-language Lahore-based short story writer Zubair Ahmed to understand the configuration of pre-partition memories that haunt the author's present.

Paper long abstract:

The short stories of Lahore-based writer, Professor Zubair Ahmed, are constructed around a creative and intimate re-framing of the political, social, and affective worlds of modern post-colonial Pakistan, in conversation with a larger internal and external world. Memories animate this affective landscape, as do the personal and the political, the embrace of the fragments and hauntings a pre-partition past with a partitioned present. Ahmed's work also provides a window into the activities of a little-known language movement that seeks to reconfigure language politics in the Pakistani Punjab and which connects to a broader transnational linguistic and literary movement that seeks to enliven and empower the Punjabi language across borders. Work in this arena suggests emergent possibilities for a new experience of the contentious border that separates the Pakistani Punjab from the Indian Punjab, built both out of memory and out of the present.

Paper short abstract:

This paper uses Muslim women’s autobiographical writings to analyse how partition memories are constructed in relation to gender, class and community at different historical moments and locations.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, academic studies on the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 have shifted their emphasis from the grand narratives of high politics to the neglected experiences of individuals. To recover these personalised and often gendered pasts, oral testimonies have been employed alongside fiction, memoirs, diaries and newspaper accounts with an aim to understanding, not just the event of partition, but also how it has been remembered and represented. In this process, the voices of Muslim women have continued to be underrepresented, often considered inaccessible to the Indian researchers who have pioneered the field on the basis that relevant historical subjects and sources are located primarily on the 'other side' of the border. As a necessary corrective, this paper will focus on the theme of partition in Muslim women's autobiographical writing. Specifically, it will use their memoirs, travelogues and short journal articles - both published and unpublished, and many of which have not previously been employed to this end, if at all - to analyse how partition memories are constructed in relation to gender, class and community at different historical moments and locations. Sensitivity will also be shown to the selective deployment of silences as a means of dealing with trauma and complicity. Other themes to be considered include assertions of victimhood and agency, the role of rumour in remembrance, and the creation of binaries between self and other. To uncover regional specificities, authors from Punjab and Bengal will be considered alongside those from other Muslim centres in South Asia.

Paper short abstract:

My discussion moves from a reading of Bapsi Sidhwa’s short story "Defend Yourself Against Me" in order to analyse how it represents the memory of Partition relocating it in the everyday life of a community of migrants in the West.

Paper long abstract:

In the field of the Anglophone literature created by South Asian writers the Partition of India and Pakistan has been affronted by several authors on both sides of the border. Some of the novels based on this historical event and its consequences have been widely known and discussed. This kind of literary production has thus played a role un-silencing memory both in India and in Pakistan since the years that followed Partition. My discussion moves form a reading of Bapsi Sidhwa's short story "Defend Yourself Against Me". The aim is to analyse what happens to the memories of that event when the personal stories related to it are translated through a border that is not the one dividing the once united Indian Subcontinent but is the frontier separating an Asian community living in a contemporary American town from its original place. Thus, memory as something that ties people to a far homeland becomes an element that unites a group constituted by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs whose members recognize their roots in a common past. At the same time, memory as a still open wound and, as such, as a burden on the shoulders of the new generations, is something that chases people, even when they are far from the place where and time when that historical facts occurred. While dealing with it can open breaches into the community, it can also give a chance to learn from that past trauma.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the role of Udero Lal in constructing Sindhiyat in Pakistan and India. It focuses on the memories and physical spaces of the temples of Udero Lal in Sindh and Jhulelal in Maharashtra. It also discusses how these temples negotiate with national borders and religious belongings.

Paper long abstract:

The paper introduces the role played by a charismatic figure named Udero Lal / Jhulelal in the production of Sindhiyat both in Pakistan and in India. In the first part, it deals with how the figure is venerated by Muslims and Hindus in the main temple of Pakistan, located in the eponymous village of Udero Lal. It focuses on the organization of the space in the temple, which is said to have been built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (17th Century), as well as on Cheti Chand, the main annual festival which commemorates the birth of Udero Lal. Knowing that the gaddi nashin is a lady who lives in Bombay, it furthermore highlights the negotiation through which the management of the temple is shared between Hindus and Muslims.

In the second part, the paper explores the concept of Sindhiyat as translated within the physical space of Chaliha temple in India. The temple which serves as the epicentre of Chaliha festival that had originated in Sindh, symbolises and imagines an ongoing connection to the motherland Sindh for the Sindhi Hindus of India and the diaspora. The popular narratives believe that the lamp in the heart of the Chaliha temple was brought lit during the turmoil of Partition and with proper care, the flicker has never died out since then. The paper further argues that the fasting rituals for 40-days dedicated to Jhulelal have transformed this Chaliha temple from a small physical space to a symbol of memories of motherland Sindh in India.