States of being divided
Why this special issue on Partition?
Is history too much with us? In some sense, yes, but in its broader and deeper sense, no.
Partition 1947: How a nationalist movement turned communal
Who is to blame for the 1947 Partition of India and the large-scale violence that it triggered? There are accusations and recriminations.
Partition 1947 / Akhilananda Dutta
Akhilananda Dutta comes from a family of doctors. Born in Dhaka in 1942 to a doctor and a housewife, he recalls that most of their family members were doctors at that time.
Partition 1947 / University of Dhaka and the partitioning of Bengal
A recent and a very good historian of Bengal, Nitish Sengupta has observed that [in the mid-19th century] 'Nowhere else in the subcontinent were Muslims as worse off in Bengal, just as, paradoxically, few other communities derived as much benefit from British rule as the Bengali Hindus'.
Partition 1947 / Separating a once historically indivisible people
"The partition of India was effectively the partition of the two main Muslim-majority provinces, Punjab and Bengal. There was nothing inevitable or pre-determined about this."
Partition 1947 / Manju Chakraborty
She says that when she visited Noakhali recently, she felt that both East and West Bengal are part of same culture. She would like to do away with the complex wires and visa system between two Bengals, she says.
Partition 1947: Uprooted and divided
"It took me a long time to realise that my family and I, like every other citizen of the current state of Bangladesh, were directly and indirectly a by-product of the Partition to the extent that even our daily struggles sometimes evolved around it," writes Meghna Guhathakurta.
Partition 1947: The tears that still bind
Ten years ago I met Gazi in Bangladesh's Satkhira region, in a small island called Koikhali. He had come with his immediate family about 60 years back, at the stroke of midnight, with nothing but the clothes on his back.
