Memories and Narratives of Partition - Guest Lecture and Interactive Session with Prof. Sucheta Mahajan

The Department of International Studies, Political Science and History held a lecture for India's 75 years of independence, focusing on the topic of Memories and Narratives of Partition. The guest speaker for the lecture was Professor Sucheta Mahajan. She teaches history at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her fields of interest include the short and long history of the twentieth century, its politics, political economy and social change, focusing on the India-Pakistan partition. Anjana Anil from 3MAIS delivered the welcome address for the lecture. Dr. Vagishwari from the Department of ISPH introduced the speaker to the audience.

In her lecture, Prof. Sucheta Mahajan gave a great glimpse into ‘Oral history and memory work - recovering the voices of freedom and partition in India’. As a historian, her work goes beyond archives and associate with oral history, which has been now called memory works. The oral history traces the people who participated in the freedom struggle and the victims of the freedom struggle and partition. She worked on alternative narratives by recovering the voices which haven’t been recorded in the mainstream narrative. She also stressed the essentiality of recovery and forgetting narratives if needed. Likewise, she mentioned the narrative of history changes with the regime change. “My memory is in the way of your history”- Agha Shahid Ali. By quoting this phrase, she dived in depth into the subaltern narratives. Oral history initiative, which we call today memory works. She traced its roots and explained its linkage with the feminist group in South America. It is the narrative of women who are victims and part of the conflict.

As a practicing oral historian, she shared two initiatives and the methodology of how they evolved.  She shifted her talk into the partition narratives by showing the image of the crowded train during partition–speaking histories, as she mentioned. The initiative by JNU during the 1980s is because of the fleeting voices and the essentiality of recording the freedom fighters and peasant fighters before their demise. They started recording in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and so on.  She also mentioned a Nehru memorial project representing the same goal, but the methodology differs. The one in JNU under Prof Sucheta is to search and collect the voices in their natural habitat. She introduced an oral history approach -The life story approach, where you began a story from childhood. This can make them associate with their experience and relive them through their narratives. It has been effective in questions while handling a tough and heavy story. She called it a “Fallacy of hindsight”. When a person goes back in time, they re–member. It helps people to recounter the story as they live it. For medical reasons, it has been noted that the memory of childhood is stronger than their childhood, she added. In the oral history of freedom life story, the narrator is the subject of the story. She stressed that they are not just mere vehicles of the fights against victimization. She also elaborated on the ethical viewpoint of oral history and the need to bring back the narrator. The idea is never to let them hang anywhere in the past. Oral history as she mentioned, is a way of transforming from victimization to restoring agency. She shared the example of Parvathiamma, a woman who contributed most of her wealth to activism and ashram during the freedom struggle, and so has been isolated by her family for the same reason of not saving up for the family. The oral history narrative she was involved in helped her to reconnect with the family.

Recovery of women’s voices - these women who have been abducted and forced into marriages were labeled as victims, but the memory work and living beyond the past transcend them to survivors, she noted. In some instances, she explained that the perpetrators are also victims of the pain and guilt of the incident.  Prof. Sucheta introduced us to the holocaust memory work, and Bearing Witness – Elis illuminates the need to remember and bear so that history will not repeat itself. As she analysis the India partition story, she now how they are a bit complex. “It is still out there. it is not yet done”, the association of communal violence in India with partition and using a partition as a reference supported her idea. 

With regards to the dilemma of remembering, she stressed that if we remember only the horrors of partition, it is problematic. She reinstated the importance to acknowledge the tremendous story of goodwill; if we don’t include the memory of goodwill, it will end up as pornography of violence. She closed her speech by stressing the need for closure for these memories. 

Following Prof Sucheta’s speech, the floor was open for a Q&A session moderated by Dr Vagishwari, head of the department of ISPH. Dr. Madhumati Deshpande, Coordinator, Department of ISPH, delivered the vote of thanks. The lecture gave the students and faculty an insight into the different narratives surrounding partition, and introduced them to the concept of Memory Work in history studies. It also gave the students an opportunity to clear their doubts about the partition narratives with a scholar actively working on it.