Remnants of Partition
21 Objects from a Continent Divided
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- 27,99 €
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- 27,99 €
Publisher Description
Seventy years on from the partition of India, a momentous event now recedes in memory. Despite being born into a family affected by the great divide, artist and oral historian Aanchal Malhotra had thought little about it until she encountered the objects her own great-grandparents had saved as they fled their homes: jewelry, kitchen utensils, photographs, and a pocketknife.
Remnants of Partition is a unique revisiting of Partition through dozens of personal belongings carried between the new India and Pakistan, amid the chaos of communal killings and mass displacement. Hidden in these objects is the memory of a time and place, a story of migration, and a life that once was. Malhotra unearths possessions from both sides of the border, interviewing their owners and uncovering a rich tapestry of struggle, sacrifice, pain, and identities forged and unforged.
From a string of pearls gifted by a maharaja to a young woman's poetry notebook, this is an extraordinary alternative history of Partition, both powerful and poignant. Aanchal Malhotra takes the material legacy of a unique human drama, and places it back in our hands as vivid, living memory.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this reverential oral history, artist and historian Malhotra explores the reverberating impact of the brutal partition of India and Pakistan through objects carried across the new border and their owners' associated memories. Malhotra interviewed 21 people who span a wide range of status, occupation, and nationality: a young girl whose father occupied a prominent position in the British government, a soldier who found himself fighting his former colleagues and friends, a British official adrift after independence, and rural landowners from villages where Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs lived in peace. Photographs of objects (a stone plaque that a man recovered years later, at great expense, from the former home his family abandoned in a hurry; a sword carried for protection and kept as a memento of a husband's unwavering love) grace the beginning of each chapter, followed by memories, often of riots, rapes, killings, fleeing in the dead of night. Each story of flight and separation is unique, but themes emerge: horror at the violence, especially violence against women; gratitude for family and community; and a continuing sense of bewilderment at the fact that people who had cohabited for centuries began slaughtering each other for the sake of religion. This moving book provides a uniquely personal view of the event and its enduring impact.
