In 2021, India officially designated 14 August as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day. As the name indicates, it marks a solemn event in Indian history, even if its nine-syllable length doesn’t lend itself to easy recall.
As the generation afflicted by it gradually departs, some with memories too painful for exposure to the light of day, it is incumbent upon younger citizens to capture the wounds of 1947’s rupture for posterity.
In the sombre spirit of Holocaust memorials in Europe and Israel, the idea is to affirm a commitment: never again. Indeed, the purpose of dwelling on the past is to learn from it. Post-partition generations, though, bear another responsibility.
They have the luxury of distance to ask how that carve-up may have shaped our national anxieties. These might explain the state’s crackdowns on various forms of separatist expression.
The folly of zero-sum thinking is observed to lose traction as people’s prospects for a better life brighten. Let’s commit this lesson to memory as well.