Micro Partitions: Interrogating ‘Punjabi Refugee’ Identities

Abstract

This special section on micro partitions follows ‘the reduction in scale’ from macro in national to meso in regional and micro in micro-regional histories in the field of Partition studies through focusing on micro-narratives of Partition from Punjab, a region divided between India and Pakistan after the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The focus of the essays is on affective memories of Partition in testimonies and cultural representations to examine the microhistories of displaced persons in micro-regions in West Punjab, including the North Western Frontier Province (Kohat, Bannu, Derajat), South Punjab (Multan, Bahawalpur) and the Mewat region in India, resettled in metro and non-metro cities and towns in India, Pakistan and the UK, through the lens of microhistory or microstoria and affect theories. The section hopes to examine the Partition’s affective charge embodied in ‘vernacular’ languages and representational forms left out of print cultures, 1 which include both traditional genres such as ritual theatre, folk-songs, folk music, folk-tales and proverbs as well as contemporary ones like popular music, ritual practices, festivals and pilgrimage sites through which communities from these micro-regions have represented Partition’s collective trauma. It draws on the methods of microhistory to closely analyse narratives of small local events, communities and neighbourhoods in Punjab’s micro-regions and subregions to connect the stories of these small places and ‘little’ people with the macro-narrative or grand narrative of Partition, so as to inquire what microhistory can bring to the understanding of Partition, as well as whether the micro-narratives relate to or throw new light on metanarratives. 2