The Other Side Of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India
India's 1947 Partition ranks among history's most catastrophic upheavals. The numbers alone shock: millions torn from their homes, countless lives extinguished, widespread sexual violence, shattered kinship bonds, obliterated livelihoods. Yet public discourse has largely sidestepped these harrowing truths, wrapping them in collective amnesia. Behind closed doors, though, survivors' testimonies persist, their wounds unhealed and their experiences still reverberating through families and communities. Urvashi Butalia spent a decade conducting painstaking interviews and research to excavate what this seismic rupture truly meant for ordinary people. Rather than privileging political grand narratives, she privileges human experience. By weaving together accounts from those traditionally marginalised—women, children, Dalit communities—alongside archival materials, she constructs a poignant, intimate portrait of a nation fractured. What emerges is startling: perspectives that India has spent five decades avoiding, stories that demand to be heard at last. This isn't abstract history. It's visceral, deeply felt testimony from those who lived through the rupture.
- Author: Butalia Urvashi
- Publisher: Penguin
- Genre: Cultural Studies
- ISBN: 978-0140271713
- Pages: 384 pages