Posted on Aug 17, 2022
75 years since partition: South Asians still grapple with the worst trauma of their families'...
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Ankita Mukhopadhyay always knew there was pain in her grandfather’s past. As a kid, she didn’t understand the depth of it, but she heard his stories about 1947. Families pushed from the rooftops of houses, bodies in the street. Unable to return to his home in what is now Bangladesh after the partition, he carried a lifelong sadness with him that she couldn’t quite explain.
“I used to send him letters in English. He used to tear apart my letters in front of me and say, ‘This is the language of our colonizers. I do not want you to write letters to me in the language of my colonizer,’” she recounted to NBC Asian America.
Now 29 and living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mukhopadhyay is far removed in time and distance from the India-Pakistan partition. But 1947’s violence has shaped lives, and its impacts still linger in the South Asian diaspora.
“I used to send him letters in English. He used to tear apart my letters in front of me and say, ‘This is the language of our colonizers. I do not want you to write letters to me in the language of my colonizer,’” she recounted to NBC Asian America.
Now 29 and living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mukhopadhyay is far removed in time and distance from the India-Pakistan partition. But 1947’s violence has shaped lives, and its impacts still linger in the South Asian diaspora.
75 years since partition: South Asians still grapple with the worst trauma of their families'...
Posted from nbcnews.com
India
Pakistan
World History
United Kingdom
Posted 2 y ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."Whether it’s in the region of Kashmir, where a humanitarian crisis is taking place now, or in India, where Muslim minorities are subjected to violence and political discrimination, or in Pakistan, where religious minorities are also targeted – the colonial legacies of the partition live on in the suffering experienced in these nations, and in the hatred that exists despite the fact that many of these people were once neighbours, relatives, and members of intertwined communities.
But, looking forward, I feel proud that as a community, young British south Asians today are repairing the cultural and religious ties that were broken by the partition, and that we are taking it upon ourselves to learn about the history of our countries. Whether it’s through art, music or simple conversation, self-education is playing a key role in rebuilding the relations that existed pre-partition, and in helping us work together for a better future as a wider community.
Despite what the British empire did to India and the lifelong divisions it attempted to stoke, there has always been far more that unites us than divides us, which is what I’m choosing to remember 75 years on."
..."Whether it’s in the region of Kashmir, where a humanitarian crisis is taking place now, or in India, where Muslim minorities are subjected to violence and political discrimination, or in Pakistan, where religious minorities are also targeted – the colonial legacies of the partition live on in the suffering experienced in these nations, and in the hatred that exists despite the fact that many of these people were once neighbours, relatives, and members of intertwined communities.
But, looking forward, I feel proud that as a community, young British south Asians today are repairing the cultural and religious ties that were broken by the partition, and that we are taking it upon ourselves to learn about the history of our countries. Whether it’s through art, music or simple conversation, self-education is playing a key role in rebuilding the relations that existed pre-partition, and in helping us work together for a better future as a wider community.
Despite what the British empire did to India and the lifelong divisions it attempted to stoke, there has always been far more that unites us than divides us, which is what I’m choosing to remember 75 years on."
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