1. Fluidity or Compartments: Hindus, Muslims and India’s Partition Bidyut Chakrabarty University of Delhi 1

2. Three Major Methodological Assumptions [a] Memory and History interconnectedness in a comparative perspective [b] Partition = event-process dialectics [c] Archive-drawn institutionalized history and multiple and also fractured voice 2

3. Factsheet The partition led to ferocious massacres that followed [a] at least one million Hindus and Muslims lose their lives [b] Hundreds of thousands of children were lost and abandoned [c] between 75000 to 100000 women were raped and abducted from families that were torn apart. 3

4. Data Base A body of literature was born that gave voice to [a] the traumatic realities of partition [b] the disillusionment [c] the psychological trauma. [d] the symbols of unity and humanism observed by the masses even during the massacre. 4

5. Resources Literary texts of Sadat Hasan Manto – pain, agony and exasperation, both internalized and very ‘matter-of-fact’ articulation Selective literary exposures from both sides of the border or erstwhile east Bengal – underlying bitterness, but highlighting humanism as a bridge despite sever losses 5

6. Concluding Observations Creative texts are powerful portrayals of a fragmented and wounded society due to [a] privileging of religious identity leading to human madness Ismat Chugtai: ‘The bonds of relationship were in tatters, and in the end many souls remained behind in Hindustan while their bodies started off for Pakistan’. 6

7. [b] the ongoing process of becoming human or at least renewing one’s humanity Manto: ‘I tried to retrieve from this man-made sea of blood, pearls of rare hue, by writing about the single minded dedication with which men had killed men, about the remorse felt by some of them, about the tears shed by murderers who could not understand why they still had some human feelings left’. 7