In contrast to the story of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan as an epiphenomenal event of independence, this article suggests that the division of British India signaled a unique rupture in which the creation of borders became the defining traumatic event of that history.

This article will address the themes of partition, gender and trauma within two independent films from Pakistan, Sabiha Sumar's Khamosh Pani (2003) and Mehreen Jabbar's Ramchand Pakistani (2008). The article will consider how the events of 1947 – partition of India and creation of Pakistan – recur within the films as disruptive trauma. The article will consider what an engagement with the characteristics of trauma such as involuntary recall and disruption can bring to my readings of the films.

Abstract: The colonial archives are filled with documents detailing incidents of arson, beatings, shootings, robberies and harassment that occurred along the contours of the numerous borders that separated French India from India following the departure of the British in 1947. The framing of these years as a period of terror wrought by “goondas” covered an underlying anxiety about the future of the nation-state and national citizenship at the moment of decolonization.