Patriotism, Partition and the Persecuted

This book illustrates the intertwining of the local (family, neighbourhood, village(s)) dynam­ics of patriotism, communalism and nationalism with the wider (regional and national) social and political processes through a social biography.

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This book explores the theme of continuous wreaking of brutal persecution of a Hindu family on the one hand and the uncompromising efforts of Muslim friends and neighbours to protect this family on the other. It is set against the resultant and barbaric forces let loose after the propagation of the two nation theory, and the ultimate partition of India in 1947. Based on the soical biography of a Hindu family that stayed back in East Pakistan, it traces their journey, how they became 'other' in the country of their birth and faced persecution. This, being branded the other, led to part of the family migrating to Inida, away from their natal roots. The 1965 India-Pakistan war further brought prolonged separation and sufferings for these half-families living on both sides of the borders. Subjecting one to encounter helplessness, uncertainty and poverty in India, and the other to state sponsored apathy, coercion, arrests and physical tortures. The vicious atmosphere of violent communal aggression though did not stop their Muslim friends from protecting them. When the Muslim friend was killed by the religious fanatics in the newly liberated Bangladesh, the left behind member of the Hindu family realized that it was time to leave their motherland for India, where they died with the desire to go back to their motherland, buried along with them. Despite prolonged violence and tragic separation thereafter, numerous memories of the self-sacrificing efforts of the compatriots served as recollection in collective living in the Indian subcontinent.