The problem with that is that silence gives rise to prejudice," she said. "For a lot of people who witnessed partition, what they saw receded into a silence within them. At least 2,000 people were killed and over 4,000 injured. Policemen in Calcutta use tear gas bombs during communal riots in the city. The stories of the objects became an entry point for talking about a larger history - one that is often obscured by silence. She began the interviews for her master's thesis at Concordia University in Montreal, then turned them into a book. But, 'You took this earring with you? Oh, wow.'" "But how can you possibly sit across from somebody and be so direct as to ask, 'Tell me about your most vulnerable, dramatic memory?'" she said. More than a million died.Īt first, Malhotra told The Sunday Edition's host Michael Enright, asking people about what they took with them felt "petty and insignificant, when compared to the mammoth trauma they might have witnessed." In 1947, after independence from Britain, the creation of Pakistan, and an explosion of sectarian violence,14 million people were forced to leave their homes. Aanchal Malhotra says it alarms her how many languages she's learned to say the word "things" in.įor her book Remnants of Partition: 21 Objects from a Continent Divided, the artist and oral historian interviewed survivors of the Partition of India about the physical objects they took with them as they fled in both directions.
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