Trauma and Memory in South Asian Partition Literature

Abstract

The 1947 Partition of British India is the most traumatic event in South Asia, displacing over 14 million and killing almost a million people (Talbot & Singh, 2009). Literature born out of this break in history records the collective and psychological traumas suffered by individuals and groups.The work of trauma and memory in South Asian Partition fiction is critically examined in this academic study, with a focus on narrative meaning in the works of Saadat Hasan Manto, Khushwant Singh, Bapsi Sidhwa, Amrita Pritam, Intizar Hussain, and others. Drawing on trauma theory (LaCapra, 2001; Caruth, 1996) and memory studies (Assmann, 2011), the research investigates the ways in which novels write individual suffering onto shared memory and reconstruct violent histories. Its interests lie in fractured identities, suppressed histories, gendered trauma, and intergenerational transmission of memory. The essay explores Partition literature as a site of witnessing, grieving, and resistance to the erasures of official history through close reading and thematic analysis.The paper also reveals the transnational medium of Partition memory in diaspora fiction. With the coming together of literary analysis, historical fiction, and theories of trauma, this essay excavates the high-stakes game of narrative, memory, and self in post-Partition literary imagination. The evidence is presented to illustrate how Partition literature is not a record of suffering but a successful site of testimonial history and moral intervention.