Guwahati: The horrors and the trauma of the Partition of India is the outcome of the imperial way of cartographical demarcation of the boundaries without physical verification of people and the culture, said Gauhati University Vice Chancellor Prof. P. J. Handique.
Prof. P. J. Handique said this while inaugurating a seminar on Partition and Northeast India: Human Tragedies and Political Uncertainties, organized as a part of the initiatives of the Ministry of Culture, ‘Partition Horrors Remembrance Day’ on Monday. The Seminar was organized by the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) of Gauhati University.
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Delivering the keynote address in the seminar eminent scholar Udayon Misra said, “Let the Partition horrors that brought in unimaginable human disaster make us committed to plurality of lives, faiths, and thought’.
Prof. Misra, in his address, delved into the trauma and the critical journey, both during the Partition and the post-Partition phase in India and reminded that it were the makers of the Constitution who refused to be swayed away by the horrors and trauma and committed themselves to the values of democracy, justice and mutual tolerance, based on the principles of secularism and plurality of lives and thought.
Prof. Misra, citing literature and archival materials, went into deep description of the Partition process, which was done in a rather insensitive way by the imperial forces and had left the region of Northeast India quite unsettled, which continues to haunt us. However, the shared culture has saved and sustained us and our polity, and we need to be hopeful about our future.
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Prof. Akhil Ranjan Dutta, the Coordinator of the Seminar, noted that the Constitution of India, which was framed during the period of horror and human disaster of Partition, promised to come out of it through the vision of reconciliation, based on the fundamental principles of mutual tolerance, accommodation, basic human freedom, social justice and fraternity and upholding the Constitution as the fundamental law of the land. As we remember those horrors of partition, we also take the pledge to refrain ourselves from any act that bring in any kind of divide based on faith or religion, community, caste, or gender.
Participating as a key speaker in the Seminar, Prof. Bibhash Choudhury, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Gauhati University, dwelt at length with the literary works of eminent authors, like Bapsi Sidhwa, Khushwant Singh, Urvashi Butalia and Salman Rushdie, who have captured the trauma and tragedies of the Partition.
Dr. Binayak Dutta, another key Speaker, reminded that, beyond the binary of Hindus and Muslims, many other communities in Northeast have been living under shadow of Partition.
“The Khasis-Jaintias, Garos, Nagas, etc. are all still affected by the Partition created by the colonial powers. We only have limited literature on them, which we need to work on,” he said.