Representation of Violence and Trauma in Fictions on Partition

Abstract

Negotiating the violence and its accompanying trauma generated by Partition has always been a momentous task. It was so vast, unexpected, and without precedent that it posed serious problems of interpretation at the social level. Partition was accompanied by such an unprecedented spurt of bestiality that it left the contemporary literary world dazed. However, the fictional narratives of Partition do exist, breaking the silence that veils the calamitous social and political reality and empathising with those who have suffered terribly. These texts do not act as passive reflectors of social reality but active components of an alternative discourse that resolutely strives to rise above sectarianism and hatred. Literary texts play an important role in filling gaps in historiography and in interrogating the logic of the nation-states that emerged after Partition.