The historiography of and different disciplinary takes on Partition reflect the contested nature of its memory and meaning. Funded by the (Indian) Ministry of Education’s SPARC (Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration) program, with additional funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia, the “Canonizing Partition” project delves into various dimensions of understanding and canonizing Partition. By examining its representation and remembrance across scholarly, narratological, historiographical, and fictional domains, this project aims to contribute to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Partition’s legacy:  how Partition has been memorialized, contested, and understood in the public discourse. Led by invetigators from across diverse disciplinary backgrounds and spread across three continents, it aims to bridge disciplinary boundaries and foster collaborative research on Partition. The project also emphasizes the importance of transnational and comparative perspectives, recognizing that Partition’s impact extends national boundaries in and beyond South Asia. The migration patterns, diasporic connections, and global resonances of Partition underline its relevance to broader discussions about displacement, identity, and postcolonialism.

There are three main components of this project.

The first consisted of a Winter School on Partition at National Institute of Technology Silchar (Assam, India), held in December 2024, which brought together the Primarry Investigators for the project — Avishek Ray at NIT Silchar, Anne Murphy at the University of British Columbia, with their co-Investigators, Debjani Sen Cupta (Delhi University) and Sarah Ansari (Royal Holloway, University of London) to teach a cohort of 15 graduate students from across India. The Field School culminated in a two-day international conference on the theme of “Memoryscapes: Historiographies & Methodologies around the 1947 Partition.”

Participants in the NIT Silchar International Conference, “Memoryscapes: Historiographies & Methodologies around the 1947 Partition,” December 2024.

The second component of the project are two workshops — one online, in association with BRAC University, Dhaka (Bangladesh) (to be scheduled), and one in person, in February 2025, at Lahore University of Management Sciences – that will bring together an international group of scholars to consider Partition methodologies.

The third component of the project is a series of publications: a special journal issue with selected articles from the NIT Silchar conference, and an edited volume that will bring together essays from all three conferences/workshops. An additional co-authored book will be written by the Investigators/Co-Investigators.