The concern of Partition narratives has generally been with displacement, loss of identity, alienation, gender and violence, as well as the rehabilitation of refugees. What is elided in them is the tragedy of those villagers who lost their land and livelihood in order to make space for the thousands of refugees who were resettled in “refugee” colonies. This article explores a key aspect of the impact of the Partition of India; namely, the rapid transformation of rural spaces in the periphery of the capital city of Delhi, which saw a massive influx and resettlement of refugees. It does this by looking at the novels of a lesser-known Hindi novelist, Jagdish Chandra, to foreground the alienation and uprooting of members of rural communities from their traditional moorings.