Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided

"Remnants of Partition is a very poignant book. Through intimate conversations with survivors and their memories, unlocked by treasured items that they carried across the new border in the flight from India or Pakistan in 1947, Aanchal Malhotra recovers the buried emotions and traumas of Partition. She also tells the stories of her family, torn apart by Partition. What’s interesting is that the stories of pain, rupture, violence, chaos and displacement are pretty well known, but the deeply personal reflections of individuals on both sides are not. These are stories of cross-border longing and connections that are made utterly senseless by the division. She speaks to people from varied backgrounds and once their memories are jogged by these rather touching objects they bring out—whether cooking utensils, or a shawl, or books—the individuals are thrown back into that time. The objects and the interviews unlock traumas that had been long buried. Amidst the tears when the stories are narrated, you find that to all these individuals who were young people at the time, Partition made no sense whatsoever, because Muslims and Hindus lived in harmony with each other. “After Partition some have gone back to India or to Pakistan to visit family and they ruefully ask, ‘Why did this have to happen? Are we not one people? Are we not one nation?’” The book also shows (again through interviews and conversations) that for most of these individuals, it still doesn’t really make sense in the here and now. After Partition some have gone back to India or to Pakistan to visit family and they ruefully ask, ‘Why did this have to happen? Are we not one people? Are we not one nation?’ What she does in this book, very eloquently and poignantly, is restore the everyday to one of the great dramas of the 20th century. She hauntingly brings together the oneness of people separated from kith, kin and place. And the portraits are full of weight. Of course, they make you cry—but there are also a lot of funny, humorous sentences in the book. The portraits are full of nuance and wisdom. Her method of drawing on material culture to delve into memory and identity is very clever. Yes, and not just because of Kashmir. For quite a while now, in India, Hindu nationalism has been very much in the foreground. Politicians speak quite openly and categorically of India as a Hindu nation and that speaks volumes to the very many millions of Muslims in India and to India’s Islamic neighbours. And we have exactly the same happening on the Pakistani side. So yes, this small but very significant book. Were it to get the publicity it absolutely deserves in India and beyond, it would help to set the record straight and show that “the lies that bind” are actually lies that blind ."