But apart from gaining independence, this also paved the way for the largest mass migration of people in the history of the world a migration based on religion. With the end of British raj and the division of the subcontinent, both India and Pakistan could call themselves free nations. It pieces together an alternative history of the Partition – the first and only one told through material memory that makes the event tangible even seven decades later, lest we forget.Aanchal Malhotra’s MFA thesis project, Remnants of a Separation attempts to narrate an alternative history of the 1947 Partition of India through its material remnants. Written as a crossover between history and anthropology, Remnants of a Separation tells stories from both sides of the border and is the product of years of painstaking and passionate research.

A refugee certificate created in Calcutta evokes in a daughter the feelings of displacement her father had experienced on leaving Mymensingh, now in Bangladesh. A notebook of poems, brought from Lahore to Kalyan, shows one woman’s determination to pursue the written word despite the turmoil around her. They now speak of their owners’ pasts and emerge as testaments to the struggle, sacrifice, pain and belonging at an unparalleled moment in history.Ī string of pearls gifted by a maharaja, carried from Dalhousie to Lahore, reveals the grandeur of a life that once was. These objects absorbed the memory of a time and place, remaining latent and undisturbed for generations. Remnants of a Separation is a unique attempt to revisit the Partition through such objects carried across the border. This led her to search for the belongings of other migrants to discover the stories hidden in them.

A gaz, a ghara, a maang-tikka, a pocketknife, a peacock-shaped bracelet and a set of kitchen utensils: these were what accompanied her great-grandparents as they fled their homes and through them she learnt of their migration and life before the Divide. Generations have grown up outside the shadow of the communal killings and mass displacement that shaped the contemporary history of the subcontinent.ĭespite being born into a family affected by the Divide, artist and oral historian Aanchal Malhotra too had thought little about the Partition – until she encountered objects that had once belonged to her ancestors in an Undivided India. Indian Politics and International RelationsĮventy Years have Passed since the Partition and a momentous event now recedes in memory.Home Decoration and Furniture Designing.Communication,Journalism and media studies.Ayurveda Medicinal plants and Herbal Medicines.

Remnants of separation aanchal malhotra