Every country’s Independence Day is a significant instant in its history. The events of the day are the finale of years of great effort and the day hearkens to a fresh beginning. The similar is true for Pakistan, except for that we have however to shift on from our ‘1947’ moment. This is not since historians keep writing concerning it but that in our group memory, we still have to settle with the events of 1947 and go forward.
Memories Of Partition is still problematic. Few talk concerning the colossal incidents of rape that took place. Memories hang on in several ways and haunt culture, as history seems less problematic. One senses an entire generation haunted not by dislocation and aggression but the thousands of each day choices it forced on them. The questions they solicit are about their choices, not of the judgments of politicians. In numerous ways, Lord Mountbatten emerges in their heads in the role of an extra. Their autobiographies are occupied of village events and the poignancy of every day. That memory haunts in India and even hush-up its character.
Stories of Partition can remain inside you, rotten in silence. Partition, as well as the memories of Partition, can only be tackled as a new type of ethical experiment, an experiment in settlement and storytelling where survivors, hardly any left, enlighten their stories. Evaluating the records of Partition, one realises nation construction is an insensitive word.
What we should have appeared for is reconciliation, an avenue for an apology, repair plus storytelling. Memories require therapy and as memories of Partition haunt us, let us determine that anniversaries do not reconstruct events similar to a taxidermist’s dummy but as lived realities.
The reality is that the partition was not over in 1947. The mistrust amid communities, the communal divide, as well as the irrational killings all these features of partition, are still around . this is the real fact that partition can not be effaced or set aside as a thing of past. Even after further than fifty years of independence, the Partition is not a blocked topic of history.
