This volume takes us away from the ‘history’ of official records to the domain of tragedy, where the drama of Partition was played with a pang in the heart. It is a people’s history, based on experiences, recollections and reminiscences in the form of eyewitness accounts, testimonials and oral narratives. These are occasionally, where required, supplemented by official documentation. The human dimension of the division of both Punjab and Bengal is well represented in the twenty-three articles of this volume, which bring out the totality of the experience, often missed by the historian. The contributors show us that inspite of the creation of two nations (and after 1971, a third), there is a bond of oneness among the divided, and a kind of nostalgia for the undivided past. Various genres of creativity, films, T.V. serials, paintings, folk dramas and, most important of all, literature and poetry show us how pain and anguish did not belong to the followers of one community or one segment of society but was shared by all the people involved in it. The Partition is sought to be studied through the literary representations of the period, which mirror the important contemporary concerns.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Indira Baptista Gupta
Indira Baptista Gupta taught history at Miranda House, Delhi, and then at Sophia College, Bombay, after receiving a first Class Master's Degree from the University of Lucknow. She is now Deputy Director at the Indian Council of Historical Research and one of the editors of its journal, the Indian Historical Review. She is the co-author of Conflict and Communication: Mass Upsurge in Assam (Vikas Publishing House, Delhi, 1990), and has published research papers on communication and broadcasting in the historical perspective. She prepared for UNESCO, Bangkok, two annotated regional directories on women and social sciences. She is now working on a history of colonial broadcasting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR S. Settar
S. Settar was Chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research (1996-9), served as Professor, Department of History and Archaeology (1971-96) and as the Director, Institute of Indian Art History (1978-95), Karnatak University, Dharwad. Among his well-known publications are The Hosyala Temples (2 vols.), Inviting Death, Pursuing Death, Sravana Belgola, Hampi: a Medieval Metropolis, Hoysala Sculptures in the National Museum, Copenhagen. He has edited several volumes of which those relating to the fields of archaeology are: Archaeological Survey of Mysore:P Annual Reports: A Study (3 vols.) and Memorial Stones: A Study of Their Origin, Significance and Variety (in collaboration with G.-D. Sontheimer). Since 1995 he has been collaborating with a team of scholars on the ABIA South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology Index project as the chief of Indian section and as the editor for South Asia.
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