Challenging the political notion of partition through Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence and analyzing possible reasons for political disagreements

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the effects the partition had on the people. Usually, historical accounts of Partition are expressed from the viewpoint of political leaders. Such a view leaves accounts of people about actual events unrecognized. This paper aims to decipher partition’s effect and pre-partition attitude of Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities towards each other. The paper aims to show that partition was inevitable because of the existing insecurities and distrust within Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities. The aim is also to determine if the violence that took place was triggered by political mishandling of the ‘communal problem’. This paper questions if the reasons behind the turmoil left by partition were purely because of political decisions or if political decisions intensified an already existing rift among the Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh communities. With Singh’s Train to Pakistan and Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence, this dissertation decodes people's perceptions of their communal differences before partition. It also tries to decipher the possible reasons behind political disagreements between the Congress and the League with Ambedkar’s Pakistan or Partition of India supported with secondary resources.