Horrors of Partition
The book under review is entitled ‘Partition as Reception: A Critical Study of Indian Partition Literature in Translation’, edited by Indian scholar P V Laxmiprasad.
The year 1947 still bleeds in the Indian imagination. Partition — that colossal rupture in the nation’s history — continues to return not as mere political memory, but as a human wound. In ‘Papers on Partition Literature in Translation’, P V Laxmiprasad brings together a compelling ensemble of critical essays that revisit this trauma through regional writings and their translations. The volume serves not merely as an anthology of academic papers, but as a profound reflection on how the translated word becomes a site of remembrance, empathy, and resistance.
In his evocative Preface, Laxmiprasad sets the tone by invoking Urvashi Butalia’s haunting question: “How do we know this event except through fiction, memoirs, and testimonies?” He reminds us that Partition literature in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and Kashmiri is not just about statistics of death, but about fractured identities and displaced emotions. His editorial vision — to study Partition through translation — gives the book both its relevance and urgency, especially in a multilingual country still grappling with communal and cultural divides.
The collection features critical readings of seminal works such as Rahi Masoom Reza’s ‘A Village Divided’, Bhisham Sahni’s ‘Tamas’, Ikramullah’s ‘Regret’, and Intizar Hussain’s ‘Basti’, among others. Each paper unfolds as a meticulous exploration of how writers from different linguistic traditions chronicled shared anguish. For instance, the essay on ‘A Village Divided’ unravels Reza’s deep-rooted faith in cultural regeneration despite the chaos of Partition. The analysis celebrates the coexistence of Hindu–Muslim traditions and the symbolic value of the village as both homeland and heartland.
The paper on ‘Tamas’ examines Bhisham Sahni’s prophetic portrayal of religious manipulation by colonial forces. The study highlights how translation widens the novel’s impact, making the “darkness” of human cruelty a universally accessible narrative. Similarly, the discussions of Ikramullah’s ‘Regret’ and ‘Out of Sight’ draw attention to often-overlooked Urdu perspectives from across the border, where memories of migration merge with existential guilt and humanism.
What distinguishes this anthology is its consistent emphasis on translation as “re-memory” — a process that not only bridges languages but also heals historical amnesia. By presenting Partition texts across linguistic borders, the book becomes a cultural palimpsest — layered, polyphonic, and profoundlyhuman.
The contributors write with academic rigour yet with empathy, merging scholarship with sentiment. Their essays extend beyond textual analysis into meditations on belonging, exile, gendered suffering, and moral disintegration. The discussions on women’s trauma, for instance, reclaim the silenced voices of abducted and violated women — a reminder that Partition was as much a tragedy of the body as of the nation.
Laxmiprasad’s editorial sensibility ensures thematic coherence across the essays. His closing reflection ties the volume to the larger canvas of India’s Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, reminding readers that independence and Partition areinseparable twins of history — one celebrated, the other mourned.
