The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India

a lot of the criticism regarding repetition is fair, yes. But it misses the point. Ms. Butalia has done something that really no other author has: record first-person accounts of the partition violence, from a population that is rapidly dwindling due to age. It is regrettable that more of such work has not been done. Of course she has her own agenda-- she is angry, and especially towards the violence visited on women-- but at no point does she make an attempt to HIDE this bias. You've got to be blind not to know that there is a personal pain and anger driving all this, and what is the matter with that. Stop criticizing her for tangential stuff and focus on the unique scholarship here.

Urvashi Butalia is citizen and activist in India, the world's largest democracy. This book is a "must read" for those interested in the intersection of faith, ethnicity and identity in the Indian subcontinent in particular and in the world at large. It is one of the few outstanding books on recent Indian history which integrates gender into the narrative to provide witness to the horror and pain of the subcontient's partition into India and Pakistan from the standpoint of one family, Butalia's own.Part family biography, part oral history, this remarkably even-handed book deserves to be made into an epic movie. Besides loss of property and loss of life, two of the subcontinent's many ethnic groups, more than all the others, underwent a sort of psychic dismemberment with partition that they have never really got over. The Punjabis in the north, who lost west Punjab to Pakistan (and it is fair to say, west Punjab lost east Punjab to India) and the Bengalis of the east who saw east Bengal become East Pakistan, later Bangladesh, and West Bengal become a major state of the new Indian Union. Urvashi, or someone with her exceptional gifts, needs to round out this narrative by doing a sequel on what happened in Bengal at Partition.

Having researched the whys and wherefores of the India/Pakistan Partition quite a bit, I have been surprised by how little has been heard from the people who lived through it (compared to other historical cataclysms such as the Holocaust, World Wars, etc.). Most books on Partition tend to concentrate on the "big picture", with a few anecdotes thrown in as an afterthought. This book provided by far the best account of how the Partition affected real people and real lives. The sections on the impact of Partition on women, children and the untouchables are especially powerful. Highly recommended, even for people who may not be familiar with this monstrous tragedy. You can't help but be moved by the first-hand accounts of such intense pain and suffering. Those interested in the human aspect of Partition should also watch "Earth", a great Indian movie on this subject.

This novel uses multiple stories taken from interviews to illustrate the effect of Partition on the people of India and Pakistan. The authors style is straight-forward. Definitely worth the read.