Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided

In this reverential oral history, artist and historian Malhotra explores the reverberating impact of the brutal partition of India and Pakistan through objects carried across the new border and their owners’ associated memories. Malhotra interviewed 21 people who span a wide range of status, occupation, and nationality: a young girl whose father occupied a prominent position in the British government, a soldier who found himself fighting his former colleagues and friends, a British official adrift after independence, and rural landowners from villages where Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs lived in peace. Photographs of objects (a stone plaque that a man recovered years later, at great expense, from the former home his family abandoned in a hurry; a sword carried for protection and kept as a memento of a husband’s unwavering love) grace the beginning of each chapter, followed by memories, often of riots, rapes, killings, fleeing in the dead of night. Each story of flight and separation is unique, but themes emerge: horror at the violence, especially violence against women; gratitude for family and community; and a continuing sense of bewilderment at the fact that people who had cohabited for centuries began slaughtering each other for the sake of religion. This moving book provides a uniquely personal view of the event and its enduring impact. (Sept.)