Partition Short Stories and the Socio Semiotics of Violence

Abstract

newline The Partition of India in 1947 that resulted in the death and displacement of millions of newlinepeople continues to inhabit the cognizance of the people of South Asia as a historical newlinephenomenon laden with violence. Although the bequest of the Partition is palpable in newlineepisodes of religious tension, discourses on minority belonging, secularism, nation and newlinenationalism in India, critical exploration of the phenomenon as a tension-ridden historical newlineepisode has largely been restricted. This is mainly because the multiplicity of discourses newlineon Indian national struggle leading to the momentous event of freedom at midnight has newlinesought to elide the Partition as the price paid for autonomy resulting in an obvious newlinehistoriographical lacuna. Nevertheless, despite its limited representation, the Partition of newlineIndia has continued to dwell in Indian cultural discourse as an alternative episode to the newlineglorified incident of Indian independence from the British. It is feminist scholars, newlinefilmmakers, subaltern historians, creative writers and other intellectuals who have sought newlineto encounter the elision of the Partition through their own documentation of the event and newlinethe trauma it engendered. newlineThe present research project investigates the articulation of the Partition from a newlineliterary and cultural point of view. Some of the prominent questions the research work newlineexamines is how violence as an integral element of the Partition is explored in creative newlineimaginative representations by writers. How short fictional narratives focus on the train as newlinea site of violence during the Partition. How gendered violence (somatic and psychosomatic) newlineis often deeply embedded in the essential patriarchal ideology surrounding motherhood and newlinehow fictional accounts of the Partition construct motherhood as a trope laden with newlinesymbolism. Further, the thesis discusses how stories of Partition document its violence newlinelinguistically and stylistically and how cultural documentation, together with the literary, newlinecompose the traumatic history of