The historiography of and different disciplinary engagements with 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 and the Department of History 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.
Primary Investigators: Avishek Ray (National Institute of Technology, Silchar) and Anne Murphy (University of British Columbia)
Co-Primary Investigators: Sarah Ansari (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Debjani Sengupta (Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi)
The first component was pedagogical in orientation, bringing together advanced graduate students and recent doctoral graduates to consider their engagment with Partiion methodologies, and the new directions they are taking them in. The Winter school was taught by Dr. Ansari and Dr. Murphy.
The second component of the project consisted of three workshops (or, we could say, one workshop, at three inernational locations): one at NIT Silchar in December 2024, and two in February 2025 — one hybrid online-inperson, in association with BRAC University, Dhaka (Bangladesh) from February 17-18, and one in person at Lahore University of Management Sciences from February 22-23. The workshops brought together an international group of scholars and artists to explore new methodologies and historiographical approaches in Partition Studies. Presentations address memorialization and ethical practices; the intersection of the creative, visual and historiographical; narrative method; material culture; literary interventions in Partition remembrance, neglected stories and communities in the larger Partition story; and the impact of digital tools on Partition historiography. By bringing together scholars from different disciplines, this workshops critically engage with how Partition is studied, remembered, and taught today – and lay out approaches for the future.
The third component of the project is a series of publications: a special journal issue with selected contributions from the NIT Silchar conference, and an edited volume (or series of journal issues) that will bring together essays from all three conferences/workshops. An additional co-authored book will be written by the Investigators/Co-Investigators.