Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:48:58.172Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Historiography of India's Partition: Between Civilization and Modernity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2015

David Gilmartin
Get access

Extract

More than sixty-five years after the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, controversy about partition, its causes and its effects, continues. Yet the emphases in these debates have changed over the years, and it is perhaps time, in the wake of India's recent elections, to take stock once again of how these debates have developed in the last several decades and where they are heading. What gives these controversies particular significance is that they are not just about that singular event, but about the whole trajectory of India's modern history, as interpreted through partition's lens—engaging academic historians, even as they continue to be deeply enmeshed in ongoing political conflict in South Asia, and, indeed, in the world more broadly.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 23 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Ahmad, Aziz. 1964. Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Alavi, Hamza. 1986. “Ethnicity, Muslim Society, and the Pakistan Ideology.” In Islamic Reassertion in Pakistan: The Application of Islamic Laws in a Modern State, ed. Weiss, Anita M., 21–47. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Ali, Kamran Asdar. 2011. “Communists in a Muslim Land: Cultural Debates in Pakistan's Early Years.” Modern Asian Studies 45(3):501–34.Google Scholar
Amrith, Sunil. 2013. Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ansari, Sarah. 2005. Life after Partition: Migration, Community and Strife in Sindh, 1947–62. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar. 2000. “Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics in India, 1945–47.” Modern Asian Studies 34(4):893–942.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 1999. Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bhagavan, Manu. 2013. The Peacemakers: India and the Quest for One World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Brass, Paul R. 2003. The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Brower, Daniel. 1999. The World in the Twentieth Century: From Empires to Nations. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Burbank, Jane, and Cooper, Frederick. 2010. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Butalia, Urvashi. 1998. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Delhi: Viking.Google Scholar
Charkabarty, Bidyut. 2003. “An Alternative to Partition: The United Bengal Scheme.” South Asia 26(2):193–212.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Indrani. 2013. Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages and Memories in Northeast India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterji, Joya. 1994. Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatterji, Joya. 2007. The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chatterji, Joya. 2009. “New Directions in Partition Studies.” History Workshop Journal 67:213–20.Google Scholar
Chatterji, Joya. 2014. “Partition Studies: Prospects and Pitfalls.” Journal of Asian Studies 73(2):309–12.Google Scholar
Chaturvedi, Vinayak. 2013. “A Revolutionary's Biography: The Case of V D Savarkar.” Postcolonial Studies 16(2):124–39.Google Scholar
Chester, Lucy P. 2009. Borders and Conflict in South Asia: The Radcliffe Boundary Commission and the Partition of Punjab. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Dadi, Iftikhar. 2012. “Partition and Contemporary Art.” In Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space, eds. Dadi, Iftikhar and Nasar, Hammad, 19–21. London: Green Cardamom.Google Scholar
Dadi, Iftikhar, and Nasar, Hammad, eds, 2012. Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space. London: Green Cardamom.Google Scholar
Daechsel, Markus. 2006a. The Politics of Self-Expression: The Urdu Middle-Class Milieu in Mid-Twentieth Century India and Pakistan. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Daechsel, Markus. 2006b. “Scientism and its Discontents: The Indo-Muslim ‘Fascism’ of Inayatullah Khan al-Mashriqi.” Modern Intellectual History 3:1–30.Google Scholar
Datla, Kavita. 2013. The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Devji, Faisal. 2013. Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Dhulipala, Venkat. 2014. Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam and the Quest for Pakistan in Colonial North India. Delhi: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eaton, Richard. 2014. “Rethinking Religious Divides.” Journal of Asian Studies 73(2):305–8.Google Scholar
Financial Express. 2013. “Modi, Manmohan at It Again; History, Geography the Latest Battlefield.” November 10. http://www.financialexpress.com/news/modi-manmohan-at-it-again-history-geography-the-latest-battlefield/1193249 (accessed November 1, 2014).Google Scholar
Free Press Journal. 2013. “‘Patel Agreed to Partition before Nehru, Gandhi.’” November 12. http://freepressjournal.in/patel-agreed-to-partition-before-nehru-gandhi (accessed November 1, 2014).Google Scholar
Gilmartin, David. 1988. Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gilmartin, David. 1998. “A Magnificent Gift: Muslim Nationalism and the Election Process in Colonial Punjab.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40(3):415–36.Google Scholar
Gottschalk, Peter. 2013. Religion, Science and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gottschalk, Peter. 2014. “Three Tales of Three Houses.” Journal of Asian Studies 73(2):301–4.Google Scholar
Gould, William. 2004. Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Green, Nile. 2012. Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hashmi, Taj ul-Islam. 1992. Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia: The Communalization of Class Politics in East Bengal, 1920-1947. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Iqtidar, Humeira. 2011. Secularizing Islamists?: Jama'at-e-Islami and Jama'at-ud-Da'wa in Urban Pakistan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jalal, Ayesha. 1985. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jalal, Ayesha. 1996. “Secularists, Subalterns and the Stigma of ‘Communalism’: Partition Historiography Revisited.” Modern Asian Studies 30(3):686–87.Google Scholar
Jalal, Ayesha. 2000. Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jalal, Ayesha. 2013. The Pity of Partition: Manto's Life, Times and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jeffery, Patricia, and Basu, Amrita, eds. 1998. Appropriating Gender: Women's Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kabir, Ananya. 2014. The Partition's Post-Amnesias. Dhaka: University Press Limited.Google Scholar
Khan, Naveeda. 2012. Muslim Becoming: Aspiration and Skepticism in Pakistan. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Gerald. 2014. “Partition: The ‘Pulsing Heart that Grieved.’” Journal of Asian Studies 73(1):5–8.Google Scholar
Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Female Subject. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Menon, Ritu, and Bhasin, Kamala. 1998. Borders and Boundaries: Women in India's Partition. Delhi: Kali for Women.Google Scholar
Minault, Gail. 1982. The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mir, Farina. 2010. The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in Colonial Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Moin, Azfar. 2012. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mufti, Aamir. 2007. Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nair, Neeti. 2011. Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. 1994. The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama'at-i Islami of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Oberoi, Harjot. 1994. The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. 1990. The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. 1994. “The Prose of Otherness.” In Subaltern Studies VIII, eds. Arnold, David and Hardiman, David, 188–221. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pandey, Gyanendra. 2001. Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rai, Mridu. 2006. “Jinnah and the Demise of a Hindu Politician.” History Workshop Journal 62(1):232–40.Google Scholar
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2012. “Midnight's Lines.” In Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space, eds. Dadi, Iftikhar and Nasar, Hammad, 25–35. London: Green Cardamom.Google Scholar
Rawat, Ramnarayan. 2001. “Partition Politics and Achhut Identity: A Study of the Scheduled Castes Federation and Dalit Politics in UP, 1946–48.” In The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India, ed. Kaul, S., 111–39. New Delhi: Permanent Black.Google Scholar
Richards, John. 1974. “The Islamic Frontier in the East: Expansion into South Asia.” South Asia 4:91–104.Google Scholar
Roy, Haimanti. 2012. Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens in India and Pakistan, 1947–65. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rozehnal, Robert. 2007. Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-first Century Pakistan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sarkar, Bhaskar. 2009. Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Dwaipayan. 2012a. “Caste Politics and Partition in South Asian History.” History Compass 10(7):512–22.Google Scholar
Sen, Dwaipayan. 2012b. “‘No Matter How, Jogendranath Had to Be Defeated’: The Scheduled Castes Federation and the Making of Partition in Bengal, 1945–47.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 49(3):321–64.Google Scholar
Sevea, Iqbal Singh. 2012. The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shaikh, Farzana. 1989. Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Singh, Jaswant. 2010. Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sivasundaram, Sujit. 2013. Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Tony. 1981. The Pattern of Imperialism: The United States, Great Britain, and the Late-Industrializing World since 1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Talbot, Ian. 1980. “The 1946 Punjab Elections.” Modern Asian Studies 14(1):65–91.Google Scholar
Talbot, Ian. 2006. Divided Cities: Partition and Its Aftermath in Lahore and Amritsar, 1947–1957. Karachi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Times of India. 2014. “Files on Gandhi among 1.5 Lakh Destroyed on Modi's Order: CPM.” July 10. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Files-on-Gandhi-among-1-5-lakh-destroyed-on-Modis-order-CPM/articleshow/38095916.cms (accessed November 1, 2014).Google Scholar
Wolpert, Stanley. 2006. Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali. 2007. The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar