The Invisible Holocaust and the journey as an Exodus

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the great Partition massacres and uprooting that took place from 1946–8, when the British Empire was being wound up and new states were being created in the region. The events have already written themselves up as an unwritten epic that everyone in South Asia pretends does not exist but are nonetheless forced to live by. That tacit epic, in itself a journey into the self, tells of great battles involving not only valour and sacrifice, but also psychopathic violence, sheer pettiness, and great betrayal. At the heart of that unwritten epic, there is a great journey to exile, too. That exile lasts not for a decade or two; it ensures a lifetime of homelessness.