Redrawing political boundaries

, where the grandmother while taking a flight from Calcutta to Dhaka is amused by the logic of honouring a man-made boundary line separating people speaking the same language but living across it.

Not just in India, partition has led to forced separation of groups and societies in other regions of the world as well. India-Pakistan, East-West Germany and Israel-Palestine""each of these three areas has seen forced separation of people who were otherwise bound by the same culture or language. The logic and rationale of partition in each of these cases may have been different. Which is why the 14 essays included in the book under review provide a useful comparative perspective of the territorial and political separation of people that took place in three different parts of the world.

Two broad conclusions emerge out of this exercise. One, the trauma that partition caused for the people across borders in India and Pakistan and its impact on social and cultural processes are not unique to the sub-content. Similar issues""cultural, economic and emotional""surfaced also for Germans, Jews and Palestinians. Two, partition as a traumatic event continues to influence social and political processes everywhere the same way""for several decades after the boundaries are redrawn""as they do in India and Pakistan.

For instance, Ina Dietzsch in her essay argues that the partition in Germany resulted in a complete reshaping of society, challenging the earlier idea of a common German nation. So much so, that even after the unification of Germany in 1990, there have been debates and discussion in Germany over the status of the East German experience in a unified Germany. John Borneman echoes similar thoughts when he argues that the euphoria over the unification of Germany has given way to "bureaucratic training of East Germans ..., wholesale rewinding of their histories, undoing their habits and thoughts, because ultimately they were not the proper (or prior) Germans, as many West Germans had thought." Borneman concludes that while the material basis of life for most East Germans has not greatly improved, economic stagnation of sorts has set in for the West Germans. Even after 16 years of unification, Borneman seems to argue, the issues arising out of a separated Germany are haunting the nation.

Ursula Rao's assessment of what is happening in different Muslim-dominated regions of India is no different. She cites the case of Bhopal and concludes that "partition continues to imprint itself on the minds of Indians" even now. Hindu activists in Bhopal, according to her, are acutely conscious of the powerful presence of Muslim architecture in the old city. This unites them in asserting their Hindu identity, as reflected in the movement to rename buildings and roads that were named after the erstwhile Muslim rulers. The short point that comes through once again is that the after-effects of partition cannot be easily overcome.

Vasanthi Raman's is the only essay that seems to offer some hope that society can perhaps overcome the trauma of partition. Citing the communal tension in the wake of the bomb blasts in Varanasi in 2006, she points out how the assertion of the Banarasi identity led to the union of Hindu and Muslim religious leaders on the question of maintaining peace and harmony. Even though political parties were waiting to take advantage of the communally tense situation, "the triumph of Banarasi identity had prevailed over communal identities," Raman has argued.

Raman's analysis may have over-simplified the complex inter-play of politics and religion in Uttar Pradesh and Varanasi in particular. But even she, along with other essayists in this volume, acknowledges that a reunification of regions that are once separated throws up new challenges. Indeed, it will be naive to believe that the damages caused by partition can be easily repaired by reunification. This could well be an important lesson for those who still dream of a reunited Bengal or a united India. Political boundaries, once drawn, are often irrevocable. Even when they are redrawn, they pose bigger challenges.

THE PARTITION MOTIF IN CONTEMPORARY CONFLICTS

Editors: Smita Tewari Jassal & Eyal Ben-Ari
Sage
Rs 480; 381 pages