Partitions: What Are They Good For?

Everyday contemporary life has been shaped, to some extent, by the political partitioning of nations. 9/11, the continued threat of nuclear wars, the rising fundamentalist threat of Islam, the increased military interventions by a 'retaliating' West are all considered to be some of the results of the partitions of Palestine and India. For those of us who live in Europe, partitions, reunifications and the threats of partition (in Europe) punctuate our daily news. The current debt crisis in Europe might result in yet another partitioning of Europe. This is a timely moment to examine the phenomenon of partitions and their repercussions on a global scale and to see how events, people, histories and ideas are all powerfully linked to each other.

The Comparative Partitions Network aims to arrive at a fuller understanding of the relevance of nation-states, communities and belonging in a transnational, global world. By following a comparative approach, this Network will invigorate the subject by promoting a more cross-disciplinary, cross-methodological and cross-cultural study of partitions. It will also bring out the connections within the scholarship into the open and thus appeal to a wider audience of academics. Through its additional focus on partitions and reunifications within Europe this Network will energise discussions of democracy and freedom that are considered to be particular to Europe by involving scholars who work on postcolonial thought with those of European history and culture.

The objectives of the Network are several: to bring scholars in diverse fields together to participate in three symposia which will lead to an edited collection of essays; to link public engagement events to the topics examined in the symposia; to develop a website on comparative partitions which will include announcements of conferences, podcasts of seminars and conferences, book reviews, job listings; and to link the Research Network with the oral history work done with migrant communities from partitioned countries. The public engagement events at each symposium are to underscore that the findings of the Research Network go beyond theoretical and scholarly knowledge to include the emotional lives of people, and to show the relationship between abstract knowledge and people's lives.

This Network will bring together scholars in English Literature, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Law, Cultural Studies, Women's Studies and Politics spread throughout the UK, US, Italy, France, New Zealand, and India. The beneficiaries will be multiple and will include academics in diverse fields working on democracy and nation-states, migrants, cultural memory and violence. Because of its additional focus on community engagement events such as the screening of films, public readings in the library and other forms of discussion, this Network will also benefit migrant communities from partitioned countries as well as the general public that is interested in European and world history.

PI Mohanram was team leader for an oral history project that collected memories of the Indian partition and has published widely on this topic. She also organised a conference on Comparative Partitions in 2009 as well as edited two special issues of refereed journals on the topic.

The key beneficiaries of this research outside the academic community will be the following: partition survivors and their families; migrant communities that have histories of partition and the general public.

1) At the most obvious level, several members of this research network also work with individual communities, collecting memories of specific partitions. These sharing of stories will be beneficial to communities that underwent partition as it puts them in conversation with each other as well as exposes them to other histories and people of other religions who have undergone similar losses.

At a deeper level, impact on individuals will also arise through the ways that the research network's ongoing activities influence the nature and quality of the one-to-one engagement that its members have with the people whom they interview and engage with as a central part of their research. Specifically, researchers who study partition will draw out key themes based on their own and others' research and use them to direct the interviews and the recuperation of memories when they go into the field. Thus, a cultural or political issue central to one partition event and its aftermath, shared and discussed at one of the symposia, is likely to influence the foci of future investigations in relation to other partitions. Further, cross-community discussion will allow the different aspects of often parallel collective memories to emerge and promote a greater understanding of often similar traumatic memories. The dissemination methods used by the network will include opportunities to percolate into the third sector, such as non-profit agencies that help migrants, new insights into the nature of a cultural experience of partition and how emerging themes might be used to support long term change in the perceptions of individuals about their own and others' experience.

2) The three different public engagement activities which will coincide with the symposia: the reading of partition fiction, a round table event of objects and memories and the screening of a film on partition will all make a contribution to supporting social cohesion within local communities. For instance, in Cardiff, there is both tension between the minority and dominant communities and between the ethnic minority communities themselves. Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in Cardiff do not interact socially with each other, even though their respective countries of origin separated only in 1971. The community work of the network will bring these groups in discussions, to exchange stories, and to listen to each other, which will develop lines of communication by demonstrating evidence of shared experiences and of similarity as well as difference.

3) The general public will benefit from an enriched understanding of British and European history. A number of partitions --India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine and Ireland-- have resulted from interventions by the British state. The findings of the Network and its activities will enhance the knowledge of British history amongst the general UK public as it is their history and not just that which belongs to minority migrant communities. Further, the network activities would interest them as Europeans, who are currently contemplating a possible partitioning of Europe caused due to the debt crisis. The partitioning of the Balkans is part of European history and therefore of interest to the general public. Network findings will serve as a stimulus to public discourse on history and identity, to show the changeable nature of citizenship, identities and the powerful connections between different histories. The Network's focus on the connections between histories and identities will powerfully address the AHRC's mission to enrich our understandings of human societies in the modern world.