Two-Day National Seminar on Partition of India and its Roots and Legacy: Memory and Trauma on the Eastern Corridor

Organized by:

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIAS)

(An Autonomous Body under the Ministry of Culture)

 Government of India

&

Department of English

Janata College

P.O. Kabuganj, Cachar, Assam, India-788121

5th & 6^th October 2018

Concept Note:

“Partition” – the division of British India on August 14-15, 1947 into the two separate independent dominions, India and Pakistan – was the “last-minute” mechanism by which the British handed over the political sovereignty. The euphoria of getting independence from almost two hundred years of British colonization made few people understood what Partition would bring about and the large scale violence and deaths and the enormous scale of migration that followed had left an inerasable scar on the vast majority of contemporaries who are still living with its memory and trauma.

The root of partition is in 1905 when the British Viceroy Lord Curzon divided the largest administrative subdivision in British India, the Bengal Presidency, into the Muslim-majority province of East Bengal and Assam and the Hindu-majority province of Bengal (present-day Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha). The overwhelming, but predominantly Hindu, protest against the partition of Bengal and the fear, in its wake, of reforms favouring the Hindu majority, now led the Muslim elite in India, in 1906, to meet with the new viceroy, Lord Minto, and to ask for separate electorates for Muslims. In conjunction, they demanded proportional legislative representation reflecting both their status as former rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. This led, in December 1906, to the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca. Although Curzon, by now, had resigned and returned to England, the League was in favour of his partition plan. (wikipedia)

This in turn led to the creation of the two-nation ideology which was based on the principle that that the primary identity and unifying denominator of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent is their religion, rather than their language or ethnicity, and therefore Indian Hindus and Muslims are two distinct nations, regardless of ethnic or other commonalities. (Robin W. Winks, Alaine M. Low. The Oxford history of the British Empire: Historiography. Oxford University Press, 2001). The two-nation theory was a founding principle of the Pakistan Movement which was undertaken by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who termed it as the awakening of Muslims for the creation of Pakistan.

In March 1940, on the last day of the League's annual three-day session in Lahore, the League passed, what came to be known as the Lahore Resolution or “Pakistan Resolution”, demanding that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in majority as in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute independent states in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.

After the Cabinet Mission broke down, Jinnah proclaimed 16 August 1946 Direct Action Day, with the stated goal of peacefully highlighting the demand for a Muslim homeland in British India. However, on the morning of the 16th, armed Muslim gangs gathered at the Ochterlony Monument in Calcutta to hear Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the League's Chief Minister of Bengal, who, in the words of historian Yasmin Khan, “if he did not explicitly incite violence certainly gave the crowd the impression that they could act with impunity, that neither the police nor the military would be called out and that the ministry would turn a blind eye to any action they unleashed in the city.” That very evening, in Calcutta, Hindus were attacked by returning Muslim celebrants, who carried pamphlets distributed earlier which showed a clear connection between violence and the demand for Pakistan, and directly implicated the celebration of Direct Action Day with the outbreak of the cycle of violence that would later be called the “Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946” One of the severest affected areas of this violence on the eastern side of India is Noakhali in present day Bangladesh. 

Following Gandhi's denial but Congress' approval of the plan, Patel represented India on the Partition Council. However, neither he nor any other Indian leader had foreseen the intense violence and population transfer that would take place with partition.

The partition displaced over 14 million people along religious lines, creating overwhelming refugee crises in the newly constituted dominions; there was large-scale violence, with estimates of loss of life accompanying or preceding the partition disputed and varying between several hundred thousand and two million. On the Eastern Corridor of India, the severest victims of partition were the Hindu and Buddhist population. Thousands of Hindus, located in the districts of East Bengal which were awarded to Pakistan, found themselves being attacked and this religious persecution forced hundreds of thousands of Hindus from East Bengal to seek refuge in India and primarily settled across Eastern India and Northeastern India, many ending up in neighbouring Indian states such as West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura. Women were often targeted as symbols of community honour and the Indian government claimed that more than 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women were abducted and many of them were raped during riots. The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that plagues their relationship to the present.

An important part of Partition historiography is Sylhet Referendum held on 7 July 1947 to decide whether Sylhet would remain in Assam and join the new country of India or would join the province of East Bengal and the new country of Pakistan. This referendum which became an almost non-existent chapter in the partition history brought catastrophe to many Bengali speaking people of Sylhet and has far reaching consequence.

The partition of India and the associated bloody riots inspired many in India to create literary/cinematic depictions of this event. While some creations depicted the massacres during the refugee migration, others concentrated on the aftermath of the partition in terms of difficulties faced by the refugees in both side of the border. Even now, more than 70 years after the partition, works of fiction and films are made that relate to the events of partition and the trauma and memory of well over a billion people who still live in the shadow of Partition.

It is in this context the proposed seminar is envisioned to generate a constructive debate around the above theme and also the following sub-themes.

Sub-themes:

     1)      Partition and its Roots

     2)      Historical and Political Narratives on Partition

     3)      Migration and Displacement - Refugee Crisis

     4)      Change of Demography and its Impact

     5)      Partition and Trauma

     6)      Partition and Memory

     7)      Women and Children: Victims of Partition

     8)      Partition and Sylhet Referendum  

     9)      Partition Literature

     10)  Partition and Film

     11)  Partition and the proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016

     12)  Partition and NRC in Assam

      Any other topic related to the main theme of the seminar

    

       Important Dates:

      Last date of Abstract Submission: 26th September, 2018

      Date of Acceptance: 27th September, 2018
      Last date of submission of full paper: 2nd October, 2018

      Seminar Date: 5th to 6^th October 2018 
     
      Publication:
     Selected papers will be published in book form having ISBN by the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies (MAKAIAS), Kolkata, an Autonomous Body under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
 

     VENUE: Janata College, Kabuganj, Cachar, Assam, India.

     Kabuganj is located 20 kms away from the district head quater Silchar on Aizwal Road. Silchar is well connected through direct train service from Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Tiruvanthapuram, Guwahati, Dibrugarh and other major cities of India. There is direct bus service from Guwahati which is 330 kms away. The nearest airport is Kumbhirgram, Silchar which is 42 kms away and air connectivity is there with Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Guwahati etc.

Registration Fee:

                                  Faculty:                  Rs. 1000/ (With Paper)

                                                                 Rs.   800/ (Without Paper)

                                  Research Scholar:  Rs. 500/ (With & without Paper)

Accommodation: 

     The organizers will assist the participants in booking their accommodation if it is communicated by 28th September, 2018

Contact Details:  

Dr. Munni Deb Mazumder, Coordinator
Email: munnidm@gmail.com 

Contact Nos. 9101607441/9706180446

 

      Organizing Committee:

     

Patrons: 
Professor Sujit K. Ghosh, Chairman, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata
Sri Kalpataru Nath, President, Governing Body, Janata College, Kabuganj
Director, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata 

Chairperson:    
Sri Subhas Chandra Nath, Principal i/c, Janata College, Kabuganj

Coordinator: 
Dr. Munni Deb Mazumder, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Janata College

Joint Coordinator: 
Smt. Gayotri Singh, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Janata   College

Members: 
Dr. Rumi Das, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Janata   College
Dr. Shirtaz Begum Laskar, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Janata College
Dr. Sudipta Khersa, Assistant Professor, Department of Bengali, Janata College
Sri Sanjit Mushahary, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Janata College 
Sri Pradip Singha, Librarian, Janata College
Sri Sumit Nath Choudhury, Head Assistant, Janata College
HOD, English, Assam University, Silchar Campus (Special Invitee)
HOD, English, Assam University, Diphu Campus (Special Invitee)