Many commentators believe Indias Partition exemplifies the unfinished business of most such partitions, of which the most bitterly contested and intractable is Kashmir. But its not just unfinished business. Suvir Kaul maintains its ongoing business too because Partitions afterlife still guides our public policy and inhibits our progress from colonial state to post-colonial democracy. Further, he says, India and Pakistan require Partition, or its more local reiterations...to justify state authority.
Partitions of Memory, like other recent explorations of that shattering event, departs from political history and nationalist historiography to answer questions for those concerned with how Partition shaped relations not only between, but within, nations.