"La linea dell’odio: la frontiera nella letteratura della Partition."

The Line of Hatred: the border in the literature of Partition
When, after a series of violent riots, the Congress Party decided to accept the demand of
the Muslim League for a separate and independent Muslim state, the British authorities drew
the boundaries that split up the regions of Punjab and Bengal creating East and West Pakistan.
To the West the line was called Wagah and successively sadly known as the line of hatred. The
year 1947, while marking the freedom and independence of the Indian population from
British rule, at the same time marked the simultaneous partition of the subcontinent into two
different nations.
This article examines the ethnic, religious and gender violence which deflagrated in and after 1947, through its representation in South Asian literature. I take as my point of departure the role played by the frontier between the new two countries: a territorial wound
which caused a still unhealed infection. Questioning the nationalist idea of identity and the role played by borders, the analyzed works deal with the necessity of unearthing the trauma
and loss attached to Partition. The kernel of meaning of this fiction lies at the intersection
between aesthetical research and moral concern. An intersection from which the various voices seem to vindicate the primacy of narrative in the acts of understanding and witnessing
what chronicle, politics and even history were failing to see: the dark side of the glorious Independence of India, the Partition, in all its absurdity and horror.