Narratives of nation and division – Post colonial theory and the partition of India

This paper will explore the partition of India into India and Pakistan at the end of the era of British colonialism as a narrative story of the imaginary. (Bhabha, 1992). In order to discuss the rift between the two nations, which can be understood as exacerbated communal and ethnic tensions which take on a nationalistic form, the events will be framed in post-colonial theory and discussions as well of Said’s Orientalism,(1982) which deals with colonial mapping of the ‘collective other’. Narratives which re-frame the meaning of the historical event will help to reveal the social forces that were part of the transition period, and the violent emergence of Hindu and Muslim nationalisms in the new neighboring states, are examples of the liminal space where violence emerges in the post-colonial conflict that re-inscribes patriarchy. (Hayden, 2000) Apart from Said and Bhabha, other theorists’ work which will be used to frame this discussion are Gupta, Ferguson, Foucault and Anzaldua.

[...] References Anzaldua, G. (1999), Borderlands/La Frontera, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Bhabha, H. (1992) World and the Home” Social Text, No. 31/32, pp. 141- 153 Bratlinger, P.(1995) Imagining the Nation, Inventing the Empire” Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol pp. 329-338 Foucault, M. (1994) The Essential Foucault. Selections. Rabinow, P. and Rose, N. eds, London and New York: New Press. Gupta, A. and Ferguson, J. (1992) “Beyond Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference”, Cultural Anthropology, [...]

[...] As a result, what transpires in formerly colonized areas when one elite takes the place of the British (or other colonial administrators), in this case the Israelis, leads to a certain degree of continuity or integration with, as well as rupture with, the past; the hierarchical colonial methodologies remain embedded in the post-colonial ruling apparatus as a tool to manage conflict that was fanned by British colonial policies in the first place, though the conflicts (in the Middle East and in India, are deeper rooted, predating colonialism). [...]

[...] Racism (and caste) and gender exploitation in India are examples of ways in which internal boundaries and borders that separate one group from another in a hierarchical trope, are employed in the nationalist state; and how they are emergent out of European tropes of colonialism. The pseudo- scientific justifications for categorizing and cataloguing and assigning place or position to people who are either inside the elite or outside of it, as Foucault has demonstrated, is a 19th century bourgeois phenomenon. [...]