A Worldwide Universities Network initiative

Locality and Partition: Lahore and Amritsar

Ian Talbot, Southampton University

The presentation reflects on the circumstances which led to the breakdown of social and political cohesion in the two major urban centres of the colonial Punjab. From March 1947 onwards the cities were the focus of a contest for supremacy which impacted on as well as was influenced by the All-India situation. The endemic violence made the Partition of the Punjab an inevitable outcome of the creation of Pakistan. The presentation examines the differential aspects of violence and migration within and between the cities. Finally it asks how these case studies influence wider understandings both of the 1947 partition of India and of ethnic conflict.

Locality and the 1947 Partition of India: The Case of Sialkot Town

Ilyas Chattha, Southampton University

The partition of India in August 1947 was the most important event in the subcontinent’s modern history. The event was marked by one of the largest migrations of the Twentieth Century. More than ten million Punjabies were uprooted alone at the time of the division. Until recently historians took August 1947 as a ‘natural’ end of an era without looking beyond this period. This paper examines the aftermath of the 1947 partition through the case study of Pakistan Punjab city of Sialkot. The city suffered widespread riot-destruction and demographic transformation at the partition of the Punjab. More than one-third of Sialkot was burnt down and about ninety per cent of its industrial concerns abandoned or closed because of the almost total migration of the Hindu and Sikh trading class. This paper makes an assessment of the localized acts of violence, migration and the refugee rehabilitation with respect to Sialkot locality.

This is particularly significant to understand the local impact of Partition in the locality because the city not only managed to overcome the disruption of 1947 but played a dominating role in the regional, national and to a lesser extent international economy. This locality driven approach to the post-partition experience will increase understanding by both highlighting the dislocation attendant on partition and how rehabilitation took place afterwards. This paper will thus represent an important contribution to empirical knowledge of the aftermath of Partition of India.