115 – New Directions in Partition Studies

October 3, 2025
8:30 am
H13
2027 would mark 80 years of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent of 1947. For South Asia, independence from over two centuries of British rule in 1947 was accompanied by a violent and bloody partition of British India into India and Pakistan separated by new international borders in 1947, which eventually led to the formation of another nation Bangladesh in 1971. This was a pivotal and foundational moment of postcolonial nation-making in South Asia, ushering in paradigmatic shifts in the configurations and ramifications of nation, place, identity, community, state, citizenship, borders, belonging and home for the subcontinent. For the millions of people caught in that historical moment as well as bearing its long-lasting legacies, the Partition of 1947 marked a particular epochal moment, (re)organising the foundations of national and cultural identity construction and political and community formation. While, the Partition of 1947 has by now led to a wide range of scholarship on a diverse range of issues, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Partition, this panel aims to look at new and hitherto under explored dimensions in Partition studies which would contribute towards new scholarship in the field. Topics may include but are not limited to: The Partition and material memory • Narratives of the non-human in the Partition • The Partition and Indian Ocean Studies • The Partition, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and the Lakshwadeep Islands • The environmental ramifications of the Partition (land, rivers, ecologies, memory) • Children’s experiences of the Partition • Caste in the Partition • Gendered experiences of the Partition not limited to women’s experiences • The Partition, health and disease • Sindhi narratives of the Partition • Partition narratives/histories from north-east India • Representation of the Partition in newer cultural forms like graphic narrative, web series • The Partition and foodscapes • The Partition and cultures of performance • Partition museums

Convenors

Sandrine Soukai
Laurence Gautier

Presentations

Routes of Return: A Study of Post-Partition Sindhi Travelogues
Sawlani Abhilasha - Department of English, Ashoka University, Sonepat, Haryana, India
‘I have been awake ever since I have come here’: Sleep, Space and Madness in Partition Literature
Bansal Rupal - Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom
The impact of partition on Muslim political representation in India
Gautier Laurence - Centre de Sciences Humaines, Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi, India
Singing in silence: kitchen, shongshaar, and women’s memory-making after Partition
Bhattacharyya Sumedha - Institute of Ethnomusicology, University of Music and Performing arts, Graz, Austria
Multidirectional and archipelagic memory of Partition and indenture in Ismith Khan’s The Jumbie Bird
Soukaï Sandrine - Gustave Eiffel University
Drawn Lines in/as This Side That Side: A socio-analytic study of Partition Narratives
Abrol Mohit - Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Delhi, India