Chaos of the unseen frontier
(With quotes from Fathima Ashgar ’s “ If they come for us”) Remember those thick chunky social science textbooks we used to study? The history textbooks taught us about Indian history, sacrifices, massacres, the non-violence movements. However, there was a less taught topic, an anticlimax to Nehru’s dream of Unified India, the Partition. I checked with my friends to see if I alone was oblivious to the monstrosity of this mass migration. And truth be told , they too had only a little knowledge about this. I realized the grotesqueness of this massacre especially when I read these lines from Fatima Ashgar ’s poem, “If they come for us” 1947: The cannons sound during Ramzan and everyone hold their breath To find who survived. Laylat Al Qadar Births two nations. No one knows the boundaries Bodies spoon like commas, waiting, linking , waiting.” India’s partition was an inevitable climax to the 200-year-old B