Narratives of nation and division – Post colonial theory and the partition of India

Lawrence W.

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Narratives of nation and division – Post colonial theory and the partition of India

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Abstract

This paper will explore the partition of India into India and Pakistan at the end of the era of British colonialism as a narrative story of the imaginary. (Bhabha, 1992). In order to discuss the rift between the two nations, which can be understood as exacerbated communal and ethnic tensions which take on a nationalistic form, the events will be framed in post-colonial theory and discussions as well of Said's Orientalism,(1982) which deals with colonial mapping of the ‘collective other'. Narratives which re-frame the meaning of the historical event will help to reveal the social forces that were part of the transition period, and the violent emergence of Hindu and Muslim nationalisms in the new neighboring states, are examples of the liminal space where violence emerges in the post-colonial conflict that re-inscribes patriarchy. (Hayden, 2000) Apart from Said and Bhabha, other theorists' work which will be used to frame this discussion are Gupta, Ferguson, Foucault and Anzaldua.

Introduction
The normative way in which maps map out discontinuous space
Ramaswamy: The mystical Hindu body-map with the British colonial scientific mapping process
1. The mapping of space
2. The anti-colonial agitation
3. The ethnic violence during and after partition
4. Indian-Pakistan border tensions and the struggle over Kashmir
Apartheid in South Africa or segregation in the U.S.
The cooperative sharing of territories
The commission investigating grievances in Palestine and Samuels
1. Said's Orientalism
2. British colonial policy throughout the Empire
3. His role in the debates in British Parliament
4. Palestinian background in his writings
What post colonial, post modern readings provide
The emergence of the subaltern voice inside the former colonial subaltern
Conclusion
References

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[...] References Anzaldua, G. (1999), Borderlands/La Frontera, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Bhabha, H. (1992) World and the Home” Social Text, No. 31/32, pp. 141- 153 Bratlinger, P.(1995) Imagining the Nation, Inventing the Empire” Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol pp. 329-338 Foucault, M. (1994) The Essential Foucault. Selections. Rabinow, P. and Rose, N. eds, London and New York: New Press. Gupta, A. and Ferguson, J. (1992) “Beyond Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference”, Cultural Anthropology, [...]

[...] As a result, what transpires in formerly colonized areas when one elite takes the place of the British (or other colonial administrators), in this case the Israelis, leads to a certain degree of continuity or integration with, as well as rupture with, the past; the hierarchical colonial methodologies remain embedded in the post-colonial ruling apparatus as a tool to manage conflict that was fanned by British colonial policies in the first place, though the conflicts (in the Middle East and in India, are deeper rooted, predating colonialism). [...]

[...] (Samuel: 149) In discussing the partition of India and Pakistan in another contemporary article, Spate, (1948) in the Geographical Review, asserts of British colonial rule in India, in some seasons it found its account in Indian disunity, it can hardly be denied that in the creation of a great, if inadequate, system of transport and communications and of a uniform machine of administration for the larger part of the subcontinent, and in the provision of a common language for the intelligentsia, it laid firmer material bases for unification than had previously existed.” (Spate: Spate, therefore, a commentator at the time of Partition, just as Samuels is writing prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, points to parallel but similar kinds of promises and conflicts. [...]

[...] What post colonial, post modern readings provide is therefore a way to interpret an historical event, such as the partition of colonial India into two conflicted new national states: India and Pakistan. The history of the struggles for independence would involve narratives of Gandhi's role, his place within the Hindu congress movement, and its idealistic aims for a secular inclusive state versus the fears of the Muslim League that a post- colonial greater India would be one that oppressed the Muslim minority. [...]

[...] 1).21 As Matthew Edney rightly notes, such a map image was essential to the colonial definition of India as a single and coherent political and territorial entity, an imperial space over which the British reigned supreme.” (Ramaswamy: 100) In the period of the partition, the admixture of scientific-rational boundary demarcations and ‘irrational' symbolic maps of the gendered body identity, perhaps became joined in a fusion of Western and indigenous tropes. The mapping of space (of the nation) makes concrete the imaginary abstract principle of the state or territory to which one belongs as citizen. [...]

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