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“I have grown up listening to my grandparentsâ€� stories about ‘the other sideâ€� of the border. But, as a child, this other side didn’t quite register as Pakistan, or not-India, but rather as some mythic land devoid of geographic borders, ethnicity and nationality. In fact, through their stories, I imagined it as a land with mango orchards, joint families, village settlements, endless lengths of ancestral fields extending into the horizon, and quaint local bazaars teeming with excitement on festive days. As a result, the history of my grandparentsâ€� early lives in what became Pakistan essentially came across as a very idyllic, somewhat rural, version of happiness.”
― Aanchal Malhotra

“In Stalin’s famous words, one death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic. In this case, it is not even a particularly good statistic. The very incomprehensibility of what a million horrible and violent deaths might mean, and the impossibility of producing an appropriate response, is perhaps the reason that the events following partition have yielded such a great and moving body of fictional literature and such an inadequate and flimsy factual history. What does it matter to the readers of history today whether there were 200,000 deaths, or 1 million, or 2 million? On that scale, is it possible to feel proportional revulsion, to be five times more upset at 1 million deaths than at 200,000? Few can grasp the awfulness of how it might feel to have their fathers barricaded in their houses and burnt alive, their mothers beaten and thrown off speeding trains, their daughters torn away, raped and branded, their sons held down in full view, screaming and pleading, while a mob armed with rough knives hacked off their hands and feet. All these things happened, and many more like them; not just once, but perhaps a million times. It is not possible to feel sufficient emotion to appreciate this monstrous savagery and suffering. That is the true horror of the events in the Punjab in 1947: one of the vilest episodes in the whole of history, a devastating illustration of the worst excesses to which human beings can succumb. The death toll is just a number.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“If I considered the Partition an archeological site, and the many experiences of those who witnessed it as the site’s structural sedimentation, then the deeper I excavated, the more I found, and that too in innumerable renditions.”
― Aanchal Malhotra, Remnants of a Separation: A History of the Partition through Material Memory

“it was too loud for hope
it was too silent for victory.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Synecdoche

“PARTITION'

are your drains clean of blood now?
do you recall the names, and faces
of your own people?

did your countrymen get to die
right like human beings?

butchered sisters and mothers
still wait by the windows,
with no lantern.

that was no proper farewell
past midnight.
minarets whisper your ghazals
to an empty sky,
Koklass� know the borders too.

what have you done, sir?”
― Abhijit Sarmah, Dying With A Little Patience: Poems

“Partition tore India into three pieces. Disaster struck. There was East Pakistan, there was West Pakistan, and there was the rest of India. Millions of people were uprooted from their houses, tens of thousands massacred on both sides. It was one of the greatest mass migrations and killings in human history. People today do not realize the tremendous trauma of Partition, whose negative vibrations continue to haunt us even today.”
― Karan Singh, An Examined Life: Essays and Reflections by Karan Singh

“He could not help but admire his posters every time he saw them---the son of a rickshaw puller, now the chief of a prominent political party in this town, who was expected to win by an unprecedented margin of votes in the coming elections. There were many people in the party who begrudged his presence, his power, but they could do nothing. The people of Amrapur loved him and his speeches. Some people called them inflammatory, divisive, and harmful to the peace and harmony of the town. A smile spread across his face every time he heard that word. Has anything ever been achieved by harmony? What would the leaders do with harmony? Why would people come to listen to his speeches in droves if they wanted harmony? Elections can never be won by harmony.”
― Rohit Gore, A Darker Dawn

“1947, a found poem,
full of erasures in history
of India and Pakistan.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Synecdoche

“Although the rich and prosperous Hindus of Sindh must have felt insecure and frightened in the new state of Pakistan, by and large, the threat to physical safety was relatively less in Sindh. The danger to the lives and property of Sindhi Hindus became palpable once Muslim immigrants, driven out of Bihar and the United Provinces, entered Sindh.”
― Rita Kothari, Unbordered Memories : Sindhi Stories Of Partition

“Muslims said the Hindus had planned and started the killing. According to the Hindus, the Muslims were to blame. The fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped.”
― Khushwant Singh, Train to Pakistan

“A civil war was looming. Or partition. Partition was in their hands, civil war wasn't. Once it started, when and how would it end? How many would lose their lives? The Hindus were in a majority and might win, but at what price? Could they afford another Mahabharat?”
― Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

“Kashmir and Hyderabad were the two apples of princely India that were the rosiest, and on the thorniest branch too.”
― Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, Lahore

“Say mercy is another name
for water. Say water is another

name for escape, or unclenched fist.
After violence, an embrace of singing.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“The partition of a home or state in whatever context may remain harmonious and friendly in a beautiful and sweet relationship if people's hearts do not stay partitioned.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“What eight things never have their fill of what eight things?â€�
“The ocean, of water from the rivers; the fire, of fuel; the woman, of sexual pleasure; the raja, of dominion; the rich man, of wealth; the learned man, of knowledge; the foolish man, of folly; the tyrant, of oppression.”
― Intizar Husain, Basti

“India was operated upon by such clumsy hands and blunt knives that thousands of arteries were left open.”
― Ismat Chughtai, The Quilt and Other Stories