✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

How the Violence of Partition Forged National Identity in South Asia ‹ Literary Hub

lithub.com · 1,219 words · saved by 1 readers

I was seven years old during the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. My first political memory is of this short war, which lasted barely two weeks from 3 to 16 December. The blacked-out windows of our home in Delhi, the wailing air-raid sirens, the darkened tops of cars’ headlamps that made them look like Noddy-cars gazing coyly downwards—these are among my most vivid early recollections. After lights-out, my nine-year-old brother Ini and I played Monopoly by torchlight under the bed. Delhi is not far from the border of West Pakistan: this fact of geography now entered my consciousness. Our English mother who had survived the Blitz was terrified that the city would be bombed. Over our early supper before lights-out, Ini and I discussed the ‘heroic’ deeds of India’s Indira Gandhi and the ‘evil’ Yahya Khan of Pakistan. Our khaansama (cook), Diwan Singh, a condescending Hindu Rajput with a hennaed handlebar mustache, convinced us that just as Muslims and Hindus were polar opposites, so P

Literary Hub >> How the Violence of Partition Forged National Identity in South Asia Literary Hub Craft and Criticism Literary Criticism Craft and Advice In Conversation On Translation Fiction and Poetry Short Story From the Novel Poem News and Culture History Science Politics Biography Memoir Food Technology Bookstores and Libraries Film and TV Travel Music Art and Photography The Hub Style Design Sports BUY A HAT Lit Hub Radio The Lit Hub Podcast Awakeners Fiction/Non/Fiction The Critic and Her Publics Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast Memoir Nation Beyond the Page First Draft: A Dialogue on W

Explore this link on the map →

saved by

related reading