The historiography of the Partition of India, the creative literature andthe films evoked out of the pangs of Partition are primarily concerned withthe Partition of Punjab and Bengal. Assam as the third site of Partition remained under the veil of silence for nearly six decades. In recent years, academic interventions are forthcoming to unveil the human history of the Partition of Assam which triggered a huge forced migration of population in the Brahmaputra Valley, Barak Valley and the hill areas of Assam.
It won’t be an exaggeration to say that agony flows through the arteries and veins of Sindhis in place of blood. The greatest blow of them all, the partition of India brought with it a series of tragedies.
Dr. Sengupta, Paula (Artist, Academician, Curator)
Bhattacharya, Vinayak (Asst. Prof. College of Art & Design, Burdwan)
Mukherjee, Debasish (Artist, Poet, Photographer)
Sen, Amritah (Artist)
Roy, Dilip (Artist)
The Legacy of Loss: Perspectives on the Partition of Bengal examines the Great Divide of 1947. It aims to capture the trauma inflicted upon a generation, and its scarring effects on the lives of successive generations. In the exhibition the power of human bonding to land and community beyond arbitrarily drawn political borders will be explored alongside the vital role of memory. The collateral programs will include curated talk sessions on Partition.
Jacques Rancière defined the "distribution of the sensible" as the effect of a type of aesthetico-political decision-making that creates a partitioning of the realm of the perceivable in relation to both art and society.
This Introduction examines the contested histories of Partitions in South Asia with an emphasis on memory and the line, the map and the museum. The map is read variously as a decolonial device through the works of contemporary artists such as Gulammohamed Sheikh's ongoing project ‘Mappa Mundi’, which uses psychogeography as a cosmopolitan palimpsest for exploring the rich layered histories of artistic production, mysticism and magic realism. The line we read in relation to Radcliffe’s rather hasty decision to carve up India in 1947. In Mountbatten's words, the British really ‘fucked up’.
"This is a copy of a letter from Winston Churchill to Clement Attlee, 1 July 1947.Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister of the Labour Government that drew up plans to grant independence to India. Churchill was the leader of the opposition Conservative Party and was deeply worried about the plans. He objected to the use of the term ‘Independence’ because the new legislation was supposed to grant India and Pakistan dominion status. This meant that they recognised the British King, George VI, as their head of state and that Britain would retain some influence over the country.
