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The Partition's Afterlife: Nation and Narration from the Northeast of India and Bangladesh

Debjani Sengupta
Cambridge University Press
2015
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Summary: 
Even after so many years after the break-up of British India in 1947, a number of false assumptions have remained in place especially in regard to the discussions and writings on the partition that have focused mainly on the Punjab. The Punjab partition was seen as a national crisis because of its sheer scale: millions of people crossed the newly-created border, while still others faced violence, mayhem in their homes. In contrast, the partition on the eastern border did not begin with a mass exodus. In the months following the partition people trickled in and continues to do so even today. The Bengal partition, less dramatically bloody and less talked about, is only now beginning to attract critical attention but people still know very little about other provinces directly involved like Bihar, Assam or Tripura. Literary narratives of the partition have an affiliation with the nation; they offer much material for investigating the workings of the Indian state particularly in the way one remembers or forgets the events of 1947. Any study of the histories and fictions of the partition of Bengal remains incomplete unless some account of the Bangla literature from the Northeast of India and Bangladesh are taken into consideration because the division of the country had a trans-regional impact whose complex contours are slowly coming to light. For example, the Northeast of India was a creation of the partition and the region has experienced all the vagaries and problems that a forced vivisection brings in its wake: the region's economy, social and future political life have been directly affected by partition's shadows. The exigencies of the modern postcolonial state have often hidden these regional and local fallouts of the disruptions and dislocations of the partition, while a rootless and migratory population has journeyed like flotsam and jetsam in search of a livelihood and a place of sojourn. www.cambridge.org/core/books/partition-of-bengal/partitions-afterlife-nation-and-narration-from-the-northeast-of-india-and-bangladesh/0059B62CA73D34E6F493FC580F775B6E
Language: 
English