PARTITION; ITS LITERATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF IT IN SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE

Abstract

The event of partition is considered to be the most evolutional and the most disastrous event on the surface of earth. One cannot easily find such a great event, in which millions of people got displaced, leaving their home and property, the time of great trauma and chaos, lives of people were taken, women were torture, sexually violated and humiliated and considered their bodies as an object. Most of the time, writers and historian wants to make it safe for the record and it happened with such disastrous event. So, all most all the writers, fictional (novelist, short story and poets) and non-fictional writers (Historians) attempted to record it in the best possible way. It is said that most of the time histories are subjective and cannot truly present the event and its complexity and consequences is the ideal way because they focused on the facts not the consequences. On the other hand, great events like the partition of India is given the immortal life by the hands of fictional writers, which is considered by many the true and realistic representation on their behalf. Many scholars, commentators and critics are of the view, that history gives us facts but Literature explores the feelings and emotions of the people. By reading a book of literature and history side by side, we can easily understand the difference between the historical and literary narratives on partition. The extract of history gives us facts about the partition, it cannot provide us any details about the suffering of people but a book of literature is lively and will provide you the real-life situation, violation and disturbance occurred at the time of partition. History cannot give the deeper insight of human minds and hearts that expresses the experience and violence resulted by the event of partition but literature does it, simply history is just the record of partition and literature is the representation of the violation, chaos, humiliation and exploitation resulted by the Partition of India. Simply, the facts history is unable to find, literature finds it. Thus, literature is considered complementary to history.