Many a time, I’d imagine what my life would have been like had I too been born and raised on ‘the other side’, for, in these seemingly superficial tales of the past, the words ‘religion’, ‘faith’ and ‘Partition’ were never mentioned. As a result, the history of my grandparents’ early lives in what later became Pakistan essentially came across as a very idyllic, somewhat rural, version of happiness. In fact, through their stories, I imagined it as a land with mango orchards, joint families, village settlements, endless lengths of ancestral fields extending into the horizon, and quaint local bazaars teeming with excitement on festive days.

But, as a child, this other side didn’t quite register as Pakistan, or not-India, but rather as some mythic land devoid of geographic borders, ethnicity and nationality. The inspiration to many of his stories are born from the multiple identities of growing up and living in the traditionally working class London borough of Camden, home to 130 languages, and being a second-generation Brit born from Bangladeshi parents.I have grown up listening to my grandparents’ stories about ‘the other side’ of the border. His interests include British and European politics, race, faith and identity, border and frontier cultures, marginalized communities, workers rights, and social justice. Shafi Musaddique is a British journalist covering a range of topics for outlets such as The Economist, BBC, The Independent and CNBC. It won the Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize. Her first book, Remnants of a Separation, was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, Hindu Lit for Life Non Fiction Prize, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize and the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. She writes extensively on the 1947 Partition and its related topics. Ticket holders will have access for 7 days*Īanchal Malhotra is an oral historian and writer from New Delhi.

In this special event, Malhotra draws from her latest book, In the Language of Remembering, to expand the story and explore how the Partition of India is not yet an event of the past and its legacy is threaded into the daily lives of subsequent generations. Chaired by journalist Shafi Musaddique, this event examines how Partition memory is preserved and bequeathed, its consequences disseminated and manifested within family, community and nation. Oral historian Aanchal Malhotra’s critically acclaimed first book, Remnants of a Separation, marked the seventieth anniversary of India’s Partition and told a human history of the monumental event from the stories lying latent in ordinary objects that survivors had carried with them across the newly made border. PARTITION: IN THE LANGUAGE OF REMEMBERINGħPM (BST), THURSDAY 4 AUGUST 2022 (ONLINE)

Aanchal malhotra remnants of partition