Memory Politics of Partition: How History is Used in Modern South Asian Identity Formation

Abstract

The partition of British India in 1947 is one of the most important and controversial events in South Asia history, affecting collective memory, political debates and national identity in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Partition is not an historical event but is being reconstituted through state narratives, schools, commemorations, the media and private memories. This work aims to fill the existing lacuna in research about how competing narratives of Partition are being activated to build, normalize and negotiate contemporary identities in a variety of political and cultural settings. This is a qualitative research that aims to explore the relationship between the politics of memory and the construction of modern South Asian identity through an analysis of the politics of memory as it is encountered in the lived experience of South Asians. The study is a qualitative interpretivist research design that uses thematic analysis of secondary sources (scholarly literature, history textbooks, political speeches, displays of the museum, memorial practices, autobiographies, oral history, and media narratives). The analysis relies on three theoretical frameworks, which are the approaches of collective memory, cultural memory and social identity theory and examine the dynamic between memory, history and identity. The results show that the memories of Partition are not homogeneous nor neutral, rather they are constantly reconstructed to meet political, ideological, and national needs. The institutionalization of historical narratives is often carried out by the State institutions and personal testimonies and community memories question the official narratives by preserving historical experiences of displacement, violence, resilience and coexistence. Such competing memories have profound impact on intergenerational identity-building, nationalism, collective identity, and perceptions on the other side of the borders in the region of South Asia. This study adds to the growing body of literature on memory politics by combining the study of history with memory studies and identity theory to help develop a more holistic qualitative analysis of the construction of identity in the post-Partition era. The results have implications for policy makers, teachers, curriculum designers, historians and peacebuilders, in terms of the need to have inclusive historical narratives, critical history education and dialogue-based approaches to reconciliation in culturally diverse societies.