part-time-hooker-sticker.htm

date: 15 mar 2008



comment:



excerpt:



"the long silence"



"i am no longer a refugee, i am home. and i would like to tell my story

to the young."

<<... ten years ago, urvashi butalia, an indian author, said she began

listening to her parents' partition stories once more. she recorded

them and eventually produced a book called "the other side of silence."

she now speaks to schoolchildren about the importance of such stories

and is managing "the long shadow." 



"partition is a difficult subject to talk about because you do not have

clear categories of victims and aggressors. the lines are blurred,"

clear categories of victims and aggressors. the lines are blurred,"



said butalia, who is popularly known as "the partition lady."



"everybody was implicated in the violence. in order to forget, you have



to remember." ...>>











india's survivors of partition begin to break long silence







projects document anguish of 1947 split















by rama lakshmi







washington post foreign service 



wednesday, march 12, 2008; page a01 







new delhi -- every year in march, bir bahadur singh goes to the local



sikh shrine and narrates the grim events of the long night six decades



ago when 26 women in his family offered their necks to the sword for



the sake of honor. 






the sake of honor. 



at the time, sectarian riots were raging over the partition of the

subcontinent into india and pakistan, and the men of singh's family

decided it was better to kill the women than have them fall into the

hands of muslim mobs. 



"none of the women protested, nobody wept," singh, 78, recalled as he

stroked his long, flowing white beard, his voice slipping into a

whisper. "all i could hear was the sound of prayer and the swing of the

sword going down on their necks. my story can fill a book." 



although the political history of the 1947 partition has featured

prominently in indian classrooms, personal stories such as singh's have

gone unrecorded. hundreds of thousands of indians have remained trapped

in their private pain, many ashamed of the acts they committed, others

simply wary of confronting ghosts from so long ago. 



now, however, the aging survivors of partition are beginning to talk,

and historians and psychologists are increasingly acknowledging the

need to study the human dimensions of one of the most cataclysmic

events of the 20th century. 



about 1,300 survivors of partition, including singh, have been

interviewed as part of an ambitious, 10-year research project that

examines the experiences of people across india , pakistan and

bangladesh. and since late last year, a number of new books, research

papers and cultural events have attempted to lift the shroud of silence

surrounding partition. 



following the creation of the east india company in the 17th century,

the british established control over the subcontinent. it wasn't until

1885 that a nationalist movement began to blossom with the formation of

the indian national congress. later, as sectarian tensions grew, the

subcontinent' s muslims pressed for an independent state. 



by the time the british left in 1947, they had divided the colony into

a predominantly hindu india and a muslim east and west pakistan . the

borders were drawn hurriedly -- in a way that critics say ignored

social realities -- and the result was bloody. 



according to conservative estimates, about half a million hindus and

muslims were slaughtered and 14 million displaced, and about 70,000

women were abducted and raped, leaving both countries with deep

psychological and political scars. riots convulsed the newly

independent nations for months as centuries-old communities split

apart. 



government documents unearthed by researchers provide chilling details

of what happened during partition, as well as alphabetical lists of the

names of women who were abducted. historians and witnesses have said

that trains crossing the new border were filled with corpses from

either side. people were "cut down like carrots and radishes," an

expression heard in many indian family stories. 



"partition is the unwritten epic of our times," said ashis nandy, a

social psychologist at india 's center for the study of developing

societies. "now there is an urgency to capture the stories of a

generation whose voices will fade away soon." 



nandy heads the decade-long project to document the experiences of

partition survivors, an undertaking funded in part by the ford

foundation. witnesses interviewed for the project have recounted

horrible stories, but there have also been accounts of hindus and

muslims helping one another. nandy said it's important that all stories

be recorded. 



"we have to recognize the kind of scars we are living with and work

through these experiences so that they don't haunt us," he said, noting

that one-fourth of the subjects in his project had never shared their

stories before, not even with their children. the interviews represent

a radical step for a country where mainstream academics have tended to

neglect oral histories. india has no public memorial to partition that

would help survivors share their stories. 



"silence has been a way of coping that enabled the people to survive

and carry on with the business of life," said shobna sonpar, a clinical

psychologist who conducted 15 exhaustive interviews with survivors.

"many of my interviews began with people questioning the need to rake

up the past." 



still, sonpar said, "the silence around partition is breaking." a

recent editorial in the times of india newspaper said the country

needed a museum on the subject, citing the american novelist william

faulkner's famous aphorism: "the past is never dead. it's not even

past." in a project called "partition: the long shadow," playwrights,

historians and storytellers from india and pakistan have come together

to find stories about the era and how it shaped communities. a film

festival featuring six partition movies was screened to packed houses

last month. 



last august, about 50 heart-rending partition photographs taken by the

american photojournalist margaret bourke-white were exhibited

throughout a shopping district in new delhi. 



"we used every bit of public space available -- the walls, shop

shutters and parapets. the gruesome images were there for everybody to

see," said pramod kapoor, the organizer. "sixty years have passed. we

now have a generation that wants to look at partition dispassionately.

" 



discussion of partition is not completely new. ten years ago, urvashi

butalia, an indian author, said she began listening to her parents'

partition stories once more. she recorded them and eventually produced

a book called "the other side of silence." she now speaks to

schoolchildren about the importance of such stories and is managing

"the long shadow." 



"partition is a difficult subject to talk about because you do not have

clear categories of victims and aggressors. the lines are blurred,"

said butalia, who is popularly known as "the partition lady."

"everybody was implicated in the violence. in order to forget, you have

to remember." 



som datta mohan, an 84-year-old retiree who took part in the research

study, recalled in an interview how he had once thrown a bomb at a

muslim village to guard his hindu neighborhood, which is located in

what is now pakistan . his father was stabbed in reprisal killings, and

mohan had to make the perilous journey across the newly drawn border to

the indian side. 



"those pictures are still very, very vivid in my eyes," mohan said.

"such events should never happen again. it has taken a long time, but

the wounds are healing now. india is prospering. i am no longer a

refugee, i am home. and i would like to tell my story to the young."

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