River and Memories: Migration, Ecology and Landscape in The Narratives of India’s Partition
River and Memories: Migration, Ecology and Landscape in The Narratives of India’s Partition

Author(s): Anuparna Mukherjee
Subject(s): Environmental interactions, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Migrants’ Literature; Memory; Landscape; 1947-Partition;
Summary/Abstract: The creative literature that grew out of the event of India’s Partition in 1947, which resulted in the uprooting of nearly twelve million people across the borders not only embodies one of the most significant sites of mourning but also explores the variegated responses to the violence through spatial memories associated with trauma and nostalgia. In Partition Dialogues, Alok Bhalla purports that India’s vivisection into two nation-states, and the subsequent exchange of population based on their religious identities not only dislocated the migrants from their homes but also from their sensory world rife with words like “friendship”, “neighbourhood” with which they had forged strong emotive bonds. So, nostalgia became a cardinal affect underpinning migrant narratives and aesthetics, replete with allusions to the life of abundance amidst the natural environment in the former home(land), as opposed to the cramped spaces of the refugee ghettos that severely ruptured the everyday rituals which gave shape and meaning to home.

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