National Seminar on Partitions Revisited: Postmemory, History, Identity, 20th February 2020

National Seminar on Partitions Revisited: Postmemory, History, Identity, 20th February 2020

The English Literary Society

Zakir Husain Delhi College

One of the most defining events of South Asian history, the Partition of India in 1947 led to large-scale mass migration and altered the geopolitics of the region. Such has been the impact that its legacies continue to inform everyday experience of conflict and violence. As belated witnesses, we experience the historical and personal trauma through creative and literary works which constitute a rich corpus of Partition literature. While progressive writers like Sadat Hasan Manto have portrayed the movement of people across borders as a search for safe haven from the violence accompanied with this cataclysmic event, modernist writers like Intizar Husain have viewed this as an exodus for a promised land. The experience of suffering, exile, homelessness and loss have been immortalized by writers Faiz, Krishan Chander, Rajinder Singh Bedi, and Bhisham Sahni.

Bengal’s experience of Partition has been significantly different and has found expression in the works of Jibananda Das, Dibendyu Palit, Manik Bandhopadhyay, Sunanda Bhattacharya, Himani Bannerjee and others. Unlike Western India, the partition in Eastern India was a long drawn one. Here, the influx of migrant population continued over the next decades with a perceptible change in the demography of the north-eastern states of India, and continues to shape contemporary debates on citizenship. Homen Borgohain’s short story “Ismael Sheikhor Xandhanot” (2003) and Rita Chowdhary’s novel Makam (2010) document the trauma of migration and the related issues of resettlement in eastern India.

Narratives of partition help in understanding the workings of memory as well as ‘postmemory’, a term Marriane Hirsch uses to describe the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Memories of lost homelands, cross border romances and nostalgia of ruptured relationships continue to animate recent popular films like Gadar – ek Prem Katha, (2001), Veer-Zaara (2004), and more recently Qissa (2014), Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015) and Raazi (2018). Earlier films such as Subaranrekha (1965), Garam Hawa (1973), Pinjar (2003) and Khamosh Pani (2003) have sensitively portrayed displacement, relocation and loss of a sense of a community, with clashes not only based on religious lines but class, caste, and gender issues also resurface with great urgency.

While memory has been the mainstay of Partition scholarship, recent critical engagement has focused on issue of borders and how it continues to affect lives especially along the borderlands. Partition and its lingering aftermath continue to shape contemporary debates on displacement and dispossession, citizenship and identity. An area of interdisciplinary research, Partition studies has taken different directions and continues to be an enigma in popular imagination. This National Students’ Seminar seeks to examine historical, literary, cinematic, graphic and personal narratives of partition from varying theoretical perspectives as it resonates with our present concerns.

We invite original research papers from undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers from colleges and universities. 

Papers may be related but not restricted to any one

of the following sub-themes:

• Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Partition

• Partition films and adaptations

• Borders and Borderlands

• Women in Partition

• Oral Narratives and Testimonies

• Migration and Refugees

• Graphic Narratives, Science Fiction and Slam Poetry

• Memory and Postmemory

• Partition Museum & Partition Archives

• Trauma and Violence

• Citizenship and Identity

Abstracts of maximum 200 words must be emailed to seminarenglishzhdc@gmail.com latest by December 25, 2019.

Important Details

Last Date for Abstract Submission: 25 December 2019

Intimation of Acceptance: 05 January 2020

Last Date for Submission of Full-length Papers of 3000 words: 05 February 2020

Participants will be given 20 minutes to present their papers. Registration will be free for all participants.

Best paper awards will be given in the following categories:

Category 01: Bachelor and Masters level students

Category 02: M. Phil and PhD level students.

Please note that no TA/DA will be paid to participants. Refreshment and certificates will be provided to all participants.

For Further Information:

Ruchika Verma  ruchika07299@gmail.com 

Tishya Agrawal tishyaagrawal03@gmail.com