The Long Shadow of Manto’s Partition Narratives: ‘Fictive’ Testimony to Historical Trauma

My initial premise is that the extreme and near-genocidal violence during the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 led to unprecedented psychological trauma, which had a differentiated impact on survivors (as I have argued at greater length elsewhere). In the wake of the event, during which collective violence and an extensive breakdown of social and cultural norms took place, this historical trauma left its indelible imprint, especially evident in our society in the falling off from the high civilisational ideals embodied in the notion of a syncretic Indo-Islamic culture, the Ganga–Jamni tehzeeb. The belated psychological after-effects of the rupture of the Partition, after an initial phase of dormancy, continue to bedevil descendants of refugees as well as minority groups across South Asia to this day, despite State and community-sponsore efforts at rehabilitation and resettlement.