Violent Belongings: Partition, Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial India

The 1947 Partition of India resulted in the death of two million people and the displacement of sixteen million more. It continues to haunt contemporary life in India - not only for discourses that debate the place of religion in India, but also for the historical interpretation of justice and minority belonging, and for the tension-ridden struggle over the production of secular national culture in the subcontinent. "Violent Belongings" is about the relation between culture and violence in the modern world, exploring contemporary ethnic and gendered violence, and the questions about belonging that trouble nations and nationalisms today. Daiya examines South Asian ethnic violence and related mass migration in and after 1947 through its representation in postcolonial Indian and, more broadly, global South Asian literature and culture, investigating such texts as Salman Rushdie's "Shalimar the Clown" and Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Interpreter of Maladies" and the writings of Mahatma Gandhi, as well as Bollywood cinema and films like Deepa Mehta's "Earth".