Three witnesses to the 1947 Partition will talk about their experience in Mumbai

Srishtee Sethi, a PhD scholar at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences and a volunteer with the 1947 Partition Archive, has collected such stories of Partition that will be told at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai this week

Suraj Prakash Talwar being interviewed by Srishtee Sethi

For someone living in the Subcontinent, there are never enough Partition stories. Naturally so, as the deaths in this manmade disaster were over 200,000 by even modest estimates. Twenty-five million were uprooted through the 1950s, or 1 per cent of the world’s population at the time. It made indelible changes to the fabric of our society and created permanent conflicts. It is a history that by no one account one can afford to forget.

KL Sethi being interviewed by Srishtee Sethi

But time passes. Most survivors of the horror of Partition are now in their twilight years and with them will end the possibility of getting a first-hand account. It is this wealth of personal narratives that The 1947 Partition Archive documents with collectors across the subcontinent, piling up stories of personal experiences of the Partition — its pain, its cultural moorings and how their everyday existence changed.

Shamlal Chawla will speak at the event

Srishtee Sethi, a PhD scholar at Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences and a volunteer with the 1947 Partition Archive, has collected such stories of Partition that will be told at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in the city this week.

Sethi says that in a shift from the mainstream narratives, which focus on the politics and conflict, their focus is the “social, cultural and everyday lived experiences”. “Those who were in their early teens during the event are now mostly 85-90 years old. When this generation passes away, there will be no more primary sources to access this history,” she says.

Sethi grew up in Dehradun, which served as a British cantonment pre-partition and had become a focal point for migrants arriving from Pakistan. So, this project to document their memories intrigued her and she became a citizen historian, which is a voluntary position.

The citizen historians get a questionnaire from the archive’s website which they use to interview those who have experienced Partition. Sethi says the process exposed to her to a lot more than she had heard or read.

“It was a sensitive and nostalgic process. It is always difficult to talk about pain and trauma, how many years may have passed. A common factor among all Partition refugees I spoke to was that they tried to create a little bit of their earlier world in the new world they settled in,” she says. At the event, three speakers will recall their experience of Partition with Sethi, also a part of the panel.

The speakers:
Shamlal Chawla was born in 1938 in Gujranwala in Punjab. When Chawla was nine years old, Partition happened. Chawla’s father never explained Partition to his children, so they thought that theywere going on vacation to Moga to the Indian side.

Vimla Malhotra was born in Bannu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 1940. She first moved to Ambala and then her family moved to Dehradun after they received a claim from the government.

Peshuram Bulani grew up in the village of Kot Sabzal in Bahawalpur District, Punjab. He was barely 10 years old at the time of Partition. Bulani traveled with his uncles to Sukkur and on to Hyderabad in Sindh.

On: October 14, 5.30
At: TISS, VN Purav Marg, Deonar
Log on to: www.eventbrite.com

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