Divided Countries, Separated Cities The Modern Legacy of Partition

by Deschaumes, Ghislaine Glasson; Ivekovic, Rada

• ISBN13: 9780195665406
• ISBN10: 0195665406
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-10-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This interesting collection of writings presents a sensitive, complex, andwide-ranging analysis of the mechanism of nation-building in partition, bothpost-colonial and in the context of post 1989 transitions in Eastern Europe andthe Balkans. The partition of the Indian subcontinent acts as a paradigm caseand stands out as something of a reference point in the present volume. Thetexts critique the ways in which narratives of nationhood naturalize andessentialize difference and hierarchy, and how received histories erase memoriesof possible alternative histories in situations of shared experiences and ashared past. The particular histories of nationalism and partition are differentin the countries involved, but commonalities in the narrative structures, stateand nation-building strategies, patriarchal patterns of control, and mechanismsof inclusion and exclusion are striking. This particularly so with respect tothe ways in which exclusive national identities are constituted through genderedrepresentations of the nation and its members. A particularly critical andfar-reaching analysis of the relationships of power involved in the state andnation-building projects, the critique is, at the same time, a dismantling ofthese power relations. The processes of transformation in different countriesand at different times, however, are not identical and move at different ratesof speed and in different historical contexts. This is one reason why they arenot transparent to each other and why their interpretations may clash with oneanother. The events following 1989 and those at the end of the colonial eraexemplify these conflicts. The authors of this volume confront these clashes,compare these situations and see the entanglement of these processes not asdeadlock, but rather as a challenge for theory and practice.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
PROLOGUE	1	(18)
Settling Partition Hostilities: Lessons Learnt, the Options Ahead	3	(16)
Radha Kumar
DIVIDED COUNTRIES, SEPARATED CITIES	19	(156)
The Last Hurrah that Continues	21	(15)
Ranabir Samaddar
History as Drama	36	(14)
Friedrich Dieckmann
The Partition of India	50	(13)
Claude Markovits
Divorce by Mutual Consent or War of Secession? (Czechoslovakia-Yugoslavia)	63	(10)
Jacques Rupnik
On the Hague Conference, 1991	73	(12)
Goran Fejic
Refugee Memory in India and Pakistan	85	(11)
Syed Sikander Mehdi
Families, Displacement	96	(10)
Meghna Guhathakurta
The Mostar Story, or the Twenty-first-century Berlin	106	(6)
Ozren Kebo
Lies of the Island: Cyprus	112	(3)
Ahmet Altan
The Dynamics of Division	115	(15)
Ritu Menon
Women's Trauma and Triumph	130	(10)
Subhoranjan Dasgupta
Asymmetrical Nationhood in India and Pakistan	140	(10)
Mushirul Hasan
From the Nation to Partition; Through Partition to the Nation: Readings	150	(25)
Rada Ivekovic
PORTRAIT	175	(9)
Jerusalem's Stumbling Blocks	177	(7)
Antoine Maurice
List of Contributors	184	(2)
Index	186